Thanks to Brighid and the DRV girls for feedback. Thanks to Empress Nestra for finding a title -- this story's for you.

Please note that I am only posting this for grit kitty. Please send feedback to gritkitty@hotmail.com.

Antiphanes said merrily, that in a certain city the cold was so intense that words were congealed as soon as spoken, but that after some time they thawed and became audible; so that the words spoken in winter were articulated next summer.
-- Plutarch (A.D. 46? - A.D. c. 120) Attribution: Of Man's Progress in Virtue.

When the doughnut cart glided in on faintly squeaking wheels, the homey scent of doughnuts coaxed Jim to sniff deep, his mouth watering for sugar glaze and fat and flour and the chance to push the pretty new girl to the floor, cast off her Gap capri pants and start rearing and plunging into her tight, wet.... Jim's eyes snapped open from their hedonic repose as his jaw tensed, causing his molars to break through the final scant layer of enamel and begin the implacable process of wearing a groove into the dentine. Here it is again, he thought disgustedly. For the past two weeks, all Jim could think about was the constant barrage of pheromones emanating from people like a sultry miasma of temptation, and it irritated the piss out of him.

"Can I get you anything today, Jim?" Jim kept his eyes down, trying hard to ignore the shy hesitation in the girl's voice -- *she's got a crush on me, she's blushing, I can* feel it -- and replied, "No, thanks. Not today." The cart moved along, emitting its dog-whistle squeal from the wheels, but Jim could still smell the girl's unabated yearning.

He'd always been able to sense this dimension to people; he'd just never known what it was and had relegated it safely to the background. Far as Jim was concerned, ignorance was more than bliss; ignorance might well have saved his sanity, graying out the glut of sensory input to static fuzz that, even if it left him prone to sudden zone-outs when something leapt out from the morass, enabled him to be basically functional.

But he couldn't remain ignorant, not now, not about this. Sandburg had revealed the truth, and it wouldn't fit back in the tidy gray area of ignorance or background. Nope. Nothing gray about smelling all the shades of lust from curious sparks to nuclear meltdowns to soft afterglows exhaling from the masses of humanity all around. Nothing gray about that at all.

Jim couldn't blame his growing exasperation on irresistible, larcenous (and now incarcerated) Laura, his misguided feelings for her, or even their sticky fumble in a coatroom, the memory of which still mortified him. No, he blamed Sandburg for gathering the evidence, doing the research, and enlightening him to the fact that it was human pheromones that had bound him and Laura in a manic, licentious embrace. Jim knew with reluctant certainty that it was in his best interest to identify everything his senses detected; hell, Sandburg had enlightened him exactly just how enlightenment was in his best interest, showing him a graph plotting a decreasing trend of trance-episodes, but sometimes, too much knowledge ruined the mundane wonder of it all. Jim used to like flowers until the kid asked him to concentrate on the smell of roses followed by a seemingly endless tour of scent shops with infinite bottles of floral fragrances. The result of that little experiment meant that Jim couldn't stay in the same room as a bouquet without sneezing his head off because his olfactory awareness had been sensitized to all things floral; he knew every discrete scent and couldn't ignore any of them. It gave him a whole new dimension to hate about weddings and funerals.

This time, the object he'd been sensitized to was unadulterated human lust. And he really wanted no reason to associate doughnuts with sex. Not in the bullpen, at any rate.

To top it off, now that he knew how to identify it, quantify it, it seemed that, given the right motivation, his roommate was a veritable factory of pheromones, pumping them out with alarming regularity and in copious amounts. Jim figured -- hoped -- it was a temporary condition; he knew Sandburg was seeing a girl on campus lately. Maybe, after the fucking-like-rabbits period, everyone's chemistry would settle down. Jim hoped so. Sensing all this passion made him feel anxious. And feeling anxious, well...it irritated the piss out of him.

He thought about getting laid, but wondered when he'd feel like getting that close to anyone in the near future. God knew he'd been screwed by Laura, in more ways than one. He didn't want entanglements. He certainly didn't want the level of complications Laura brought to bed, and frankly, he felt vulnerable with his nose holding open a direct line to his libido. In a very direct way, it was just too risky to find sex without strings. At least for a little while, until he managed some control.

The morning wore away under a tepid flow of paperwork and phone calls. The length of wood in his lap slowly softened after the cart finally left the bullpen so when it came time to leave, standing posed no problem. As he slid into his truck, he calmly anticipated his afternoon destinations: first to the university to pick up Sandburg, grab some take-out for lunch, then off to interview a witness. He found it easier to relax while alone, isolated from the smells of people, away from his ubiquitous partner and roommate...

...and then he felt the tingle. And groaned, figuring there were random molecules riding in with him from that woman on the elevator, or an errant cache of trapped air he'd carried from the doughnut girl on his clothes, or some lingering scent on the seat from when he'd given Sandburg a ride this morning, or... He cursed and tore out of the garage at an unsafe clip, leaving black skid marks on the concrete floor.

He reasoned with himself while he hurtled down the streets of Cascade, terrorizing commuters and pedestrians alike, telling himself he just had to tempter the bad with the good. His nose didn't automatically seek out every flower within a two-block radius anymore. Hell, he could still enjoy the smell of flowers, just so long as they weren't concentrated in a small space. And don't forget, he did manage to find The Switchman because of his inherited sense of smell and his learned ability to distinguish jasmine from purple orchid. He'd eventually be able to face humanity without a porn show flickering in his head.

He just hoped it'd happen soon.

Hargrove Hall's mellow ambience blunted Jim's angry edge by the time he walked past the receptionist. There was an association between the polished wood, the dusty sunbeams, the settling of an old building's bones and the man, Blair Sandburg; an association that held no element of this new and prickly awareness of his partner as a sexual person. Funny how such a twist of energy as Sandburg could calm Jim's nerves, or used to before this whole pheromone thing, but the evidence was irrefutable; Jim felt better just by walking down the same corridor Blair traversed most days.

A door opened up the hall from Jim, and a woman issued forth. She smiled at someone still in the office, a friendly litany of polite farewell words passing between her and the unseen office-dweller. He liked her legs from a distance and unconsciously let his eyes and ears reach out to discover that he liked her voice and her profile, too.

...glad I could help, Jim overheard her say.

Does this mean you have finished with the department, then?

No, there's one office that needs a little extra work.

*Oh, well, seems to me there have been some persistent difficulties down the hall, hmm?*

Well, she replied, and the woman's color deepened, just a hint, *some people mistreat their computers more than others, but right now I've got to mess around with the servers some more, the cranky things*.

A few more long strides and Jim could hear the conversation without extraordinary means.

"Mess around? You make it sound so simple. Lord, I admire you young people who can manage computers." A British accent thickened in the male voice.

"Oh, you flatterer," she said, and shrugged one shoulder, making it look like a dance move. "It's just a different education, Dr. Tanner. You have a good day and call me if you run into any problems accessing the network, okay?" The woman closed the door. A minute breeze from the door's movement brought a whiff of intoxicating yearning to Jim's nose. He didn't like the idea of biochemical coercion, but he liked what her scent did to his insides. He'd liked how she looked before he smelled her and told himself that counted as an exercise in free choice. Really.

"H'lo," she said as she noticed him.

"Hi," Jim said politely.

Jim found her exponentially more attractive at close range than from down the hall. Lovely legs on low heels stretched up to a miniskirt and fitted jacket of smoky red. Straight fall of light brown hair down her back and bangs, spears of bangs over amazing eyebrows and an upturned nose. She radiated health like she was channeling Betty Page. As they drew closer, Jim looked up and saw she'd caught him looking.

She grinned. Her lashes lowered, and she scoped him thoroughly. He saw her eyes zig-zag vertically: chest, waist, crotch, legs, up to shoulders, back to crotch, and return to his amused look. One shared smile, a sort of regretful gee, if only we were going the same way sentiment, and then they passed each other, walking in opposite directions. Jim waited three, four, five steps, hazarded a look behind, and caught her peeking, too. She winked at him before she turned and walked on.

Jim blinked, mildly surprised and pleased. He didn't ravish her in the hall. There wasn't a tent pole poking out his pants. He even enjoyed the mild flirtation. Maybe the painful sensitization was waning. His hope died, though, garroted by a skein of stirred air just outside Sandburg's office that carried a thread of olfactory information telling him with biting clarity that Blair was horny as a goat.

He rapped his knuckles against the glass with excessive force and yanked the door open.

Behind his desk, Sandburg turned with a defensive jerk. His arms came up, palms out, surrendering. "Jim, scare a guy, huh? Take it easy."

"Are you ready or what? I want a chance to chew my lunch before I've got to interview that moron."

"This promises to be a really fun, productive afternoon," Sandburg retorted with blunt sarcasm. He reached into his pocket and fiddled a moment until he produced a hair tie, set it between his upper teeth and lower lip, and reached back, capturing his hair into a bunch before taking the tie from his mouth and quelling the hairy riot away behind his head.

Jim shook his head. He'd been staring at the rebellious wilderness of brown curls, and then how the tie pushed into the soft flesh of bottom lip, a faint shine of wet there. Horny clowns began making inroads on erecting that big top tent pole in his pants. Jim stamped out, leaving Sandburg to catch up.

Crap.

Endurance was Jim's forte, one of his greatest strengths. He endured the day. And the perverse prickle that dogged his awareness of Sandburg couldn't completely overcome the calming effect he drew simultaneously from the young man. By the time they returned to the loft for supper, Jim wasn't sure if he wanted to shake Sandburg or hug him, but when he balanced out the tiny brass weights of daily irritations and curly haired comfort, he found he was better off with Sandburg's dichotomous presence while out in the world than without.

"I think you assigned him way too much credit when you called that guy a moron," said Sandburg as they stepped into the elevator, continuing a sporadic rant started in the truck hours ago.

"Which moron?" Jim pressed the button. "LeClaire, or that interdepartmental yo-yo at the station?"

He chuckled knowingly. "Tough call, Jim. I was talking about the witness, though: LeClaire."

"So, back on the hillbilly." Jim crossed his arms, grimly amused. Pete LeClaire had taken great delight in picking on Sandburg with a back-woods conservatism that took shotgun blasts of contempt at his clothes, at his hair, and, worst of all, at his status as an 'educated idiot'. Jim had found the man innocuous; dealing with Dave Manley from Vice had bothered him a great deal more.

"The assumptions he made! An earring --"

"Or two," Jim interjected blithely.

"--or two does not automatically equal "queer". Harrison Ford has an earring -- you think anyone's gonna disparage his masculinity?"

"You think homosexuality makes a man less of a man?" Jim asked mildly.

"No," Sandburg said, annoyed, "of course not, but LeClaire thought so. Everything he said, every twisted, ignorant word out his mouth was about ridicule. I mean, "tree-hugger"? That was uncalled for."

"I dunno." Jim canted a speculative look at Sandburg. "Somehow, I can see you chained to a tree in the tropical rainforest."

"It wasn't the tropical rainforest, and that's besides the point," he retorted, dismissing the rainforest with a gesture. "He was slapping labels on me, left, right, and center, and dumb ones at that. I prefer 'eco-terrorist' to 'tree-hugger' if someone's gonna presume to label my efforts at conservation. At least it sounds dangerous."

"He's just a good old boy. A redneck."

"Redneck's too good for him," he complained. "He's a classic example of the lowest common denominator regurgitating pre-masticated pap spoon-fed to him through sitcoms and NASCAR racing. The TV says so, so it must be true. And the prejudice against higher learning!" His hands moved, ardently describing an air-sculpture probably named 'Injustice', or maybe 'Tirade'. "It's not like I assumed the status of his education."

"No, Chief, you read it off his file."

"I hate that clich of the esoteric professor who can't remember to match his socks, just because someone achieves more than an eight grade education. I mean, I don't deny the type exists, even in my own department, but it just...aigh!"

Jim pointedly looked down at Sandburg's feet.

"Oh, ha, ha." Sandburg threw a mock punch that gently bapped Jim's shoulder, and then resumed his recreational fuming. Jim knew it was just more of the usual jitter and prose that defined him. Strangely, Jim liked that about the young man and knew best what patter it took to keep the momentum going.

Sandburg's chin sunk to this chest, affecting defeat. "No, really, what is so heinous about a degree?"

"Degrees, Sandburg. You made sure to point out your degrees after his crack. Plural."

"Whatever. Why are they bad, huh?"

"You're the anthropologist," Jim said just as the elevator doors opened, "you tell me."

"No, no, I could do that, sure, but this is personal. I don't want to dilute the root emotion of outrage with intellectualization."

"Uh, what? Outrage?"

"He insulted my style, man."

Jim chuckled darkly at the other man as he unlocked the apartment door. "Ah-ha, the truth comes out. Kinda hard to miss that particular target, though, Chief."

"You suck, you know," he replied conversationally.

"Helluva comeback. Nice to see those degrees are good for something." Jim hung his coat, stashed his keys, aimed for the fridge. "You hungry?"

"Yeah. No. I mean, I've got plans," said Sandburg as he made for his room. "I'm meeting Ginger for supper."

"Ginger, so that's her name." Jim contemplated the innards of his refrigerator. Cold cuts. Some broccoli. A lone beer that seemed to commiserate with the lone pickle floating in a solitary bath of brine in the jar next to it. Jim wondered if there was any good bread left.

Sandburg emerged from the curtains in his doorway, clean clothes in hand. "What?"

"Your girlfriend, Ginger. Is this some kinky Gilligan's Island thing, Ginger and the Professor?"

"Now that, my friend, sounds like a plan." He indulged his eyebrows a moment before storming the bathroom.

Half an hour later, he came out, humid and clean and presumably date-ready by his standards although Jim could see little difference between jeans and flannel of the day and jeans and flannel of the evening. Contentedly tucking into the second half of his sandwich and a beer as he lazily perused the sports section of the paper, Jim just shook his head, amused.

"So, Jim, how did you know I had a girlfriend? I didn't say Ginger was a girlfriend." asked Sandburg. He dropped into a chair at the table and put on his boots, picking at the individual loops of laces, tightening each weave through eyelets.

"Huh?"

"You knew I had a girlfriend. How? I never mentioned it. I didn't mention Ginger at all until tonight."

Jim shrugged. "I dunno. You must have mentioned it."

"No, Jim, I'm pretty sure I didn't." He tilted a look up, his face angled just a bit, like he wanted to veer away as he admitted, "I, uh, didn't say anything on purpose. I mean, it'd been a, a little while after, you know, she left." Jim knew. Maya. "And you seemed kind of, uh, touchy after...you know." He knew that, too -- Laura. "I just didn't want to jinx it or anything, so I didn't say anything. But, you knew. How'd you know?"

Oh. Jim swallowed hard. "Ah, well..." Covert ops be damned; he couldn't spin lies off the cuff to Sandburg. Anyone else, sure, but not Sandburg, not when it involved his senses.

"What? C'mon, spill it."

"You've been...glowing the past few mornings," he said brusquely.

"Oh, gimme a break." Sandburg had one heel on the edge of his chair, knee up under his chin, his hands paused over the laces, a casually limber pose Jim envied.

"Okay, okay," Jim wiped his mouth with a napkin and gulped some beer, wiped his mouth again. He reluctantly said, "I could smell it."

"Smell what?"

"The damned pheromones, Sandburg. Ever since you pointed out just what they were, I've been smelling them everywhere, on everyone." The confession felt better than he thought it would, giving him an outlet for the generic irritations of enduring this facet of his senses as well as the specific annoyance with Sandburg for pointing it out in the first place.

"Really?" Sandburg's eyebrows shot up. His foot thumped to the floor, laces flopping, forgotten.

"Yes. Really." Jim let every iota of exasperation rasp that simple affirmative into a swung mace that Sandburg ignored.

"Wow, that's, like...it's not affecting you, is it? Is it like what Laura --?"

"No," Jim interrupted with an abrupt syllable. "It's not like Laura." His lips tightened. "It's just...unsettling. Constant."

"Constant. What do you mean, constant?"

"I mean, I can smell them on everyone. Women, men, young, old: everyone, to some extent. It's not like I always want to," he flashed a warning look at the younger man, "you know. Like Laura. But I can smell it, sense it, and I know what it means."

"This is, whoa. Wild. The unique chemistry between people is one thing, but sensing it on everyone, that's --"

"Irritating, Sandburg. I'd prefer if everyone kept their damned love lives in their pants, including you."

"Me?" His eyes widened. "What do you mean? You smell it on me?"

"That's what I said, Sandburg. You're human, aren't you?" Jim liked leaning hard on that dig, wondering on some vague, deep level if that weren't a real question to which he wanted an honest answer, but something always quashed that murky line of inquiry in his brain, turned it into blunt humor. "You're the one who told me that everyone manufactures pheromones. And you've been doing some serious overtime on the production lines. It's why I knew you had a girlfriend."

"Oh, well, sure, that makes sense. Ginger and I --"

"Hold it, Romeo," protested Jim. He raised his hand palm-out at the same time. "I don't want any more information. Bad enough you reek of it. I don't need visuals here."

Sandburg colored. "Uh, yeah, sorry about that." He quickly rebounded; as usual, his curiosity obliterated everything in its path. "So, is it better after I shower? With Laura, you could sense concentrations that lingered behind in a location, how is it...?"

"Chief. Really. You're gonna be late for you date, and my beer's getting warm."

"Heh. Yeah, you've got a point." He lifted up his foot and finished tying his laces. Talking to his boots, he began muttering about procuring lab time, equipment, test cases, his mouth obscured and his words muted by the corkscrews of hair that fell forward. Jim heaved a sigh. It was futile to think Sandburg would just drop it.

Sandburg lowered his leg, footwear tidy. "You know, if you could jot down some your perceptions of and reactions to the pheromones you detect, that'd be a great way for me to outline specific test cases."

Jim glared at him as he contemplated what those perceptions entailed. Just casually tumble down the bulwark of his inner life and allow the glaring light of clinical examination. Jot down how he'd get a boner from a whiff of doughnut girl, how his gut would tighten expectantly when a mother towing three kids passed him on the sidewalk, how smelling Sandburg first thing in the morning made his hands clench on his top sheet, wishing it was twin fistfuls of thick, brown hair.

Not in this lifetime, he thought.

He felt a level of pissed off at Sandburg. He'd already told him to keep his nose out his private life -- how many times would he have to repeat himself? Yet, he also felt flattered that the kid kept sticking it in anyway. Jim didn't think too hard about his mixed feelings and let his humor take the flak, noticing how the repeated workouts were bulking up his wit into a bullet-headed tank of gruff comedy.

"I'm not doing homework, Professor. Just go already before Gilligan steals your date."

"Okay, Jim." Sandburg looked sober a moment; it passed, and his mouth quirked. "Don't wait up for me." He grabbed his coat and left.

"Wasn't planning on it," he replied to the empty room and took a huge bite of his sandwich.

Sandburg disappeared. He called, gave excuses: blah blah paper due, blah blah midterms, blah blah you know how it is; she's hot, Jim, just out there, in orbit, man. Jim had developed a filtering system that allowed him to pick the pertinent information from his roommate's matrix of words. Then Blair poured on the concern; Jim listened wholly. You doing okay? Any zone-outs? You sure it's quiet down there at the station? I could skip out, pull a couple all-nighters to catch up this weekend...

No, Jim assured him. Sounds like Ginger's got you doing some of that already. Enjoy. I'm fine.

And he was fine. The quiet felt refreshing. He liked having his stereo back, liked the solitude, liked eating when and where and what he wanted. Not that eating was a big deal; Sandburg liked to rib him, and he ribbed Sandburg right back, but there was that sense of obligation when someone shared your meals, a sense that you had to compromise, even if a little, to cater to different tastes and schedules. So, Jim enjoyed the smooth silence.

For two days.

After that, he was bored. No one to talk to, no one to joke around with. He tried to think about what he used to do before Sandburg moved in. It hadn't been that long. More than a few months, less than a year. He shrugged it off; after all, he was adaptable -- he had to be, whether or not he liked it. Besides, he used to amuse himself quite effectively before he took on a tenant.

When his third solitary supper rolled around, the loft seemed too empty. Tedious. Something. Jim refused to succumb to the strange melancholy and walked to the closest place to get food: a greasy spoon diner located a block from the loft that served burgers and shakes, great soup of the day, and a pretty good meatloaf amid stainless steel and red Formica. Cool mist in still air softened the edges of the evening, just wet enough to give his exposed skin a frosting of dew but not so cold that walking was uncomfortable. He sat at the bar, occasionally chatting up the servers while he ate pea soup and a toasted ham and cheese sandwich.

"H'lo."

Mildly startled, Jim turned. A woman settled on the red-topped stool next to him. She smiled and said, "I thought it was you. I saw you, at the University. Remember?"

The girl in red. He blinked. Nodded. And smiled.

"I'm waiting on a friend, but he's late. I hope you don't mind if I join you."

"No, not at all. Please do." Jim signaled the waitress then turned back to the woman. "He? A boyfriend or a friend-friend?"

"A special friend," she said firmly and smiled, one side of her mouth curling. "I've got lots of friends." The waitress approached. She took the woman's order, coffee and soup, and bustled away.

"Good choice," said Jim. "It'll cure the chill."

"It's nippy, yes." The woman unbuttoned the long navy raincoat she wore. She was dressed casually, just jeans and a sweater, the sweater clinging to her breasts. They looked as though they'd comfortably fill Jim's hands. Her hair swung free down her back like it had when he'd first spied her, long, and ashy brown. He liked her eyebrows even more tonight; they arched, darker than her hair and expressive over hazel eyes.

"Um," said the woman. Jim came back from his indulgent perusal, a bit embarrassed, but she smiled and quirked those eyebrows at him. She leaned close. "I guess we got the weather out of the way. Maybe we can talk about other things, hm?"

"Of course." Jim heartily agreed. "I like to talk about things. Things other than the weather." He shifted his position on his stool so he settled a couple inches closer to her, not caring if it were pheromones or her hair or those mischievous eyebrows. He just liked her. "Any old thing you want to talk about is fine." Jim rolled out his best smile, heated it with innuendo and attention, and focused it on her. A faint blush graced her freckles: direct hit.

"Okay, how about we just start with names, hm?"

He swung his body to face her, wiping his hands with a napkin before he offered a handshake. "I'm Jim."

"Hi, Jim. I'm Ginger."

Jim's detective mind arrested time, slammed it up against the wall, and took over, coldly examining the evidence. Ginger: Sandburg's girlfriend's name. Ginger, here at the closest, most convenient public place to Sandburg's residence. Ginger, waiting on a friend, a special friend, who was late. The tardiness alone was clue enough. It couldn't be a coincidence, not when Jim realized he'd first seen Ginger mere yards from the kid's office in Hargrove Hall.

Time stopped deferring to the detective and lurched forward for the disappointed man. Jim released Ginger's hand. His smile faltered and melted off his face. He recovered it quickly as he could, but the moment was dying, suffocated by a nasty case of social awkwardness. Ginger seemed to sense it and drew back a fraction; her brows lowered, and her smile began to slip, going the same way Jim's had.

"Um, so, are you a Mary Ann kind of guy, then?"

"Excuse me?"

"Well, you didn't seem too keen on 'Ginger' so I'm wondering if you like Mary Ann better. You know, Gilligan's Island." She took a sip of water, outwardly cool, but a warm and faintly bitter scent rose from her: not fear, but nervousness, or maybe disappointment.

Her vulnerability first elicited Jim's plain empathy, then something darker. He wasn't always fond of the dating dance, either, certainly not now as it got nerve-wracking because she was now forbidden, but that didn't stop a sizzling mental movie of her pliant body bent over the bar to lance through his brain. Cloudy with shadows, overlaid with layers of imagined sensation, he pictured the raincoat flipped up over her back, pants shoved down and legs spread as he clutched her hips and plummeted into her like an anchor dropped into the sea. Jim buckled that thought down quick and hard, ashamed of the casual lust he'd conjured. He focused on Ginger's words, looked at her as she sat next to him, faintly uneasy, and cataloged her with vision and hearing so he could see her as a person, not merely a vessel for sexual allure blooming sharp and heady. He found success, sublimated the dreamlet, and instead absently wondered if the Gilligan's Island joke had come from him through Sandburg to Ginger and back to him, the circle complete. Then, Jim wished for simplicity. Or less integrity.

"I have to confess, I've always had this fantasy about being Mrs. Howell's well-paid gigolo," he said. Ginger chuckled. He smiled, less strained. "No, I was just taken aback because I know the friend you're waiting for."

"Blair? Blair Sandburg? You know him?"

"Yep, sure do." Jim spooned in more soup, swallowed. "He's my roommate."

"Oh! Well, that's..." Ginger leaned back and glanced around the diner as if the adjective she wanted was floating around above the paper hats of the servers. Then she looked him straight in the eye and said, "...awkward."

Her simple acknowledgement banished the discomfort. Jim's smile warmed, feeling rare and healthy on his face, and gratitude welled up for a kindred spirit in the shark pool of social interaction, someone who faced an impasse with enough bravery to slice through the bull. His life was royally fucked up on a regular basis; he appreciated her robust courage in an uncomfortable situation, even something so trivial as this. "Yeah. It's awkward." And Jim found that he still liked her just fine, screw the situational awkwardness; in fact, he felt a radiant, friendly affection for her. "But does it have to be? We could be seeing a lot more of each other, you know, what with sharing a mutual friend."

She smiled. One dimple graced her left cheek and further lightened the moment. "Look, I hate this pussyfooting around. Truth is, I've got friends and friends and friends. Blair's a friend, a good friend, a special friend." She tilted her head. "You want to be one of my friends, Jim?"

"Yeah, I want to be your friend, Ginger."

The waitress presented Ginger with a cup each of soup and coffee. Ginger and Jim ate together companionably and found a comforting hollow of small talk, first conversing about jobs (she was a computer network consultant and free-lance tech writer), Blair (they both agreed his habitual tardiness was a terrible character flaw), and sports (Ginger was neutral towards basketball, but a rabid hockey fan), and then they walked to the loft, well fortified against the lingering damp by coffee and hot soup and conversation.

Blair used to have healthy boundaries, once upon a time. He had begun that seasoning process of the mid-twenties when people gave up adolescent behaviors, buckled down, got professional, in behavior if not necessarily in appearance. So, when had he lost the ability to keep his canoe bailed, keep his train on the track, or even how to say 'no'? Or was it a question of losing that physical prime? He was getting older. Nineteen-year-olds had enough stamina to juggle college (major and a minor), parties, work, lovers, but did twenty-seven-year-olds? Twenty-seven didn't feel all that old to him, although Blair worried about the mileage lately. It had been weeks, and his ribs still ached at night from when he'd had the shit kicked out of him by a gun smuggler's hired goon.

Whatever the reasons, he was not living the expectations he'd had for himself at this time of his life. He was running late, literally sprinting down the hall: arms full of books relating to his next lecture, backpack stuffed with photocopies of medical references about the effects of pheromones on the human animal bouncing on his back, head ringing with self-recrimination because he hadn't seen Jim in three days. All that, and staggeringly late to see Ginger, too. She was to meet him at the loft after she dropped her car at her mechanic's shop just four blocks east of Prospect. Blair was glad for the chance to check in with Jim before they headed to her place; he felt odd, missing out on the regular documentation of his thesis subject. He needed clean clothes, too.

A door opened on his left and light splayed out; he slowed, sprint to jog to walk, unwilling to showcase his obvious deficit of time management to the fellows in his department.

"Oh, Mr. Sandburg, hello." Dr. Tanner looked up as if startled out of a reverie. Shortly after he'd met the doctor, Blair had noticed that he seemed to bask in the absent-minded professor clich, a trait Blair found trite. The doctor wore an overcoat and a casually slung scarf, a briefcase and tightly furled umbrella in his hand, ready for home.

"You're here late," Blair said conversationally as they walked down the hall together.

"As are you, but then, you're a bit of a night owl, aren't you?"

Blair shrugged. "Something like that."

"You seem to be in a hurry," said Dr. Tanner, and Blair winced internally. Busted. His reputation was tenuous; that he'd stalled and dithered on his dissertation for so long after such a precocious academic rise was bad enough. He didn't need more hard evidence of his general flakiness to circulate the department. If mere rumor spattered his character, he could plow it away with his own snow job, but brushing off eyewitnesses required a stronger spin. "It wouldn't have to do with that enchanting young lady who's fixing the computers, now, would it? Ms. Sullivan?"

"I'm late to meet her, actually. You know, it never fails that when I really want to be somewhere, it's guaranteed something's going to throw up a roadblock, and the more I want to leave, the more stuff comes out of the woodwork."

"Ah. Well. As Einstein said, 'When you are courting a nice girl, an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder, a second seems like an hour. That's relativity.'" Blair chuckled, and Tanner adjusted his scarf as they reached the building exit. "Don't dawdle over the trivialities; there are roses to smell out there. It'll never do to keep such a vibrant gem as Ms. Sullivan waiting, you know."

Blair glanced at the doctor, mildly surprised at his sudden romantic ebullience. "I do know. Here's hoping my car starts." He settled his pack and took a secure grip on the books in hand. "Goodnight, Dr. Tanner." He trotted toward the parking lot.

"Oh, a caution, Mr. Sandburg: Do make haste slowly," Dr. Tanner called after him. Blair glanced back; the man actually waved his umbrella at him like a well-heeled Quixote. "If you drive carefully, you'll have a better chance of reaching the young lady in one piece."

Blair smiled grimly as he ran to the car. He hadn't felt like one piece for months.

The books seemed to gain mass exponentially while Blair waited for the elevator. A sharp yearning for his own room loomed larger than his urge to see Ginger. As soon as he saw her, caught a whiff of her, that'd change. He enjoyed the totality of her like he enjoyed few others. She combined intelligence and humor under a comely skin, enticing enough, but also a sexually aggressive streak and hints of a dark complexity under her casual wit. A rousing curiosity to uncover her mystery (and sample more of that sexual aggression) had kept him from his room in the loft; buried as he was under accumulated schoolwork, he'd kept company mostly with the dusty artifacts in his office over the past two days and saved what time he had left in the evenings to spend with Ginger. If he could stay awake long enough tonight, she would blast the dust and the eyestrain and the writer's cramp right out of him, possibly by doing something aggressive and maybe even kinky. He juggled his books to one arm and opened the lock smoothly.

"Hey, hi, sorry I'm late." Blair pushed through the door, talking fast and casting about, looking for Jim, for Ginger, knowing she was there, and probably angry. "Seems the more I want to leave, the more crap hits my desk, and --." His eyes lit upon them, sitting on the couch. Ginger lifted her head from Jim's shoulder and they both turned to look at Blair.

"You are late, Chief," said Jim. He smiled lazily, completely at ease.

"Late but integral," Blair retorted automatically, stung.

"Integral is good," said Ginger. "That means I can take you apart myself, later." She sat up straight and rose gracefully to meet Blair as he rounded the side of the couch, put her hand on his arm, and brushed his cheek with her lips.

"Uh." Blair felt ten kinds of stupid at the moment, wondering if his eyes had played a nasty prank on him or was he just suddenly prone to mind-twisting delusions. He'd have preferred Janet Reno in pink tulle if hallucination was the case. Rush Limbaugh in tie-dye, eating tofu. Anything that might make more sense. "Let me drop this stuff and, uh," he looked hard at Jim sitting sanguinely on the couch, "get some clean clothes. Then we can, um, go."

He retreated, relieved to leave the confusion behind and let his room surround him with comfort. The comfort didn't last long. He saw what he saw, and more than anything, it confused the hell out of him. Jim wouldn't snuggle up on the couch with someone else's girlfriend, Blair was sure. Sharing rent with him, observing him on the job, testing his senses, Blair thought he knew Jim pretty well. The man could be anal about little things, but Blair saw this behavior as a reflection of Jim's deep-seated need to embrace what was right. Blair and Ginger weren't serious, but Jim wouldn't know that, and Blair didn't think it would matter if he did. Criminals belong in jail, drink glasses belong on coasters, and other men's girlfriends are hands-off: it was that simple.

Yet, Ginger's sleek head had gracefully detached from Jim's shoulder, implying previous attachment.

Blair shoved some clean jeans and underwear and shirts into a duffle with stiff thrusts of arm. Jim wouldn't put moves on another man's woman. He might compete before things settled out, but after? Ginger had said it herself, plain as day after she'd accepted a dinner date from Blair over two weeks ago, Oh, I think we can have lots of uncomplicated fun, Blair. She wasn't about being tied down, he understood that intellectually, and approved. He just hadn't expected she would express her free spirit on his own couch with Jim.

That he left his room still intent on spending the night with Ginger didn't penetrate his defiled sense of morality. At his foundation, he was okay with it, really okay. He saw it was a friendly cuddle. A playful gesture. Clothes on, hair tidy. He'd seen her pet Dr. Tanner, tweak his ear with teasing fingers, and Blair found that endearing; Ginger was a very demonstrative girl. Then again, while Dr. Tanner was tall and distinguished, he was no Jim Ellison, and Blair felt snapped by the sting again.

"I'm ready," he said as he emerged into communal space, irritated that he felt a need to announce his presence. Jim remained on the couch. Ginger stood by the door, coat on.

"You kids have fun, now," said Jim with broad, avuncular patronization, aiming for humor, Blair supposed, but missing as far as he was concerned. Blair's lip curled, a false smile for a lame joke as Jim leaned forward, snagged the remote, and turned on the TV. "Yeah, we'll be fine, Jim; don't wait up." Blair glanced around the loft, feeling a bit lost, then opened the door and gestured for Ginger to precede him.

"Thank you," Ginger murmured.

Blair held on to a sullen silence and by-passed the elevator. He clipped down the stairs, letting his weight land heavily on each step, stomping hard the entire first flight. By the time he reached the first landing, the repeated shocks hurt his feet. He realized his inner petulance was showing, bad, slowed his pace and quit assaulting the steps.

He held the downstairs door open for Ginger. She passed through, a tight smile on her face.

"You done your hissy fit?"

"That wasn't a friggin' hissy fit," he contradicted, his breath lightly smoking. The mist had lightened but the sidewalk was still damp, and the temperature had dropped.

"So, what do you call that, on the stairs? Aerobics? An audition for 'Stomp', maybe?"

Blair opened his car door while she opened the passenger side. He slid in and slammed the door. "Can't a guy conserve electricity? No reason to call the elevator to go down stairs."

"You're full of it, Blair. You know that, right?" She shut her door with more force than necessary, a non-verbal snap-back to his, his... His mind blanked. He silently groaned; it was a hissy fit. He liked to think he could do stoic, but truth bit hard and implacably; he knew he was on the volatile side and perfectly capable of throwing the odd act of passive aggression. Outburst. Tirade. Paroxysm. Hissy fit. Whatever. This one hadn't sprung from nothing.

"I'm full of it, yeah. I own up to my bullshit quotient, no problem. What about your snuggling-my-roommate quotient?"

She glared at him. "That was hardly a snuggle. Unless you haven't been paying attention in bed, you should know that by now."

He glared back. She frowned ferociously; it looked good on her in the high contrast light and shadows cast by the streetlight, and he couldn't hold back a self-depreciating chuckle. "Maybe you want to refresh my memory?"

"I'm not sure. I think I'm still ticked." She folded her arms, turned her head, and looked out her window.

"I'm sorry, you know," he said, adding a conciliatory gesture of hands she couldn't see. "I shouldn't assume..."

Her head snapped back. "No, you shouldn't. It was just a--." She bit off the end of that thought but recovered quickly. "We're not exclusive, but I wouldn't nail your roommate without letting you know about it first."

Feeling dribbled out of Blair's face, leaving it cold. Then the import of what she said registered fully, and sensation returned to his face in a blistering wave of embarrassed heat. He swallowed. "You, ah, what?"

"What, what? You heard me," she said, grimly defiant. "I refuse to apologize or explain myself to you about something that's none of your business. This isn't Romeo and Juliet, not by any stretch of even your fevered imagination, right?"

"Well, no, but --"

"But nothing. I laid it on the line our first night. I though you were fine with it."

"I was, I am!" he protested. He had appreciated her candor then but he wondered if he'd been cursed with what he'd wished for, an adventuresome lover without commitment, then dismissed the thought. He'd had fuck-buddies before, lots of them, although maybe none had been as forthright. Blair just found her manner unsettlingly abrupt, especially in her cavalier attitude about Jim. "Good times, mutual respect, non-exclusivity, I got that, I dig it, totally. It's not like I don't appreciate this set up. I just, ah, it just. I mean, Jim's my roommate, Ginger. My roommate. That's, that's..."

"Awkward," she grinned suddenly.

"Yeah, damned awkward." Blair ran his hand through his hair, flipping it back from his face. He stilled when he saw the continued good humor on her face. "What's so funny?"

"You're really cute when you're worked up."

"Cute. Great." 'Cute' wasn't his favorite adjective despite its historical application to his looks. Why not 'handsome', or better yet, 'fucking hot'? Maybe Dr. Tanner was onto something, affecting his distinguished English gentleman thing, not that Blair could envision himself as distinguished. He heaved a sigh and reached for the ignition, but Ginger's hand stopped his. He looked at her quizzically and asked, "What?"

She scooted across the seat and twined her arms around him, kissing his cheek and jaw. Just a slight turn of his face brought their lips together, and Ginger launched an assault on Blair's mouth, thrusting his lips open. Her tongue reached for his, sliding across his teeth, retracting so she could bite his top lip, then his bottom, and dive back into his mouth, sealing them together breathlessly. Blair decided he could get behind 'cute', no problem, nothing wrong with this kind of cute at all.

"Mm, so," he muttered when she broke off, "is this the reminder of your snuggling form?"

"Maybe," she husked. "Or, maybe," she said as she reached down between his legs, leaning low, and caused the front seat to hitch all the way back with a jolt, startling Blair. Ginger's arms invaded his clothes like twin snakes, flicking open his pants, hauling up his shirt, hot fingers patting his stomach and reaching down into his suddenly tight underwear as she completed her thought, "Just maybe, it's a blowjob in the car, Blair." And then she buried her face into his lap.

"Hey, hey, whoa!" he gasped. "Whoa-whoa-whoa!" He reached out with his hands to push her head away and found his fingers buried in the cool, silky weight of her straight hair as he felt his cock abruptly sheathed in her hot, wet mouth. The interior of the car thinned to white for a staggering moment as the world went away. "Jesus," he choked.

Ginger's hands burrowed under the undone flaps of his jeans, one laying flat on his stomach then wandering back and forth from hip to hip, fingertips drawing furrows in the hair there, the other hand pushing around his shaft, deeper into the crotch of his pants to finger his balls.

A small, twisted bit of sensibility managed to string together a few words of protest from the rapidly shrinking logic centers of his brain, and Blair gasped, "Someone could come."

Ginger laughed around his hard-on and slipped off. "Well, duuh!" she said, her shoulders shaking with amusement. She gobbled him back down before he could protest further, and Blair moaned as he let his head fall back on the headrest, appeasing his inner warden by pointing out that at least now the windows were obscured with foggy steam. No one could see them, and the windows were shut against the cold so no one could hear them unless they were pressed against the glass, or Jim Ellison.

"Oh, god," he said thickly. "Oh, man!" He closed his eyes as a continuing stream of moans and gasps filed his throat. The thought of Jim listening in raked Blair with equal measures of shame and lust: lust because it was Jim, Adonis in chinos, and shame because it was Jim, the man he'd promised to help with his senses in return for the dissertation, a vulnerable man towards whom he felt ever-growing responsibly. Ginger's mouth responded to the sudden surge of hardness; his dick felt like a stone pillar in a bath of molten lava, heavy and hot and fluid, and he found it nigh on impossible to banish a vision of Jim listening in as Ginger slurped Blair down like a creamsicle. Blair imagined it in his fevered bliss; Jim's head would be cocked, face first puzzled, then slack with realization, then...

"Oh, jeez, Ginger, that's it, I'm...fuck!" The monstrous roll of orgasm suddenly pitched over that happy abyss and used his body like a diving board, bucking him up as Ginger drank him down. As he spiraled back to earth, he uttered between harsh breaths, "Mm, Ginger. You're so...fucking...audacious."

Ginger sat up, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. "Thank you, but that's not audacious." She settled on her side of the car, hair appealingly tumbled around her shoulders, and carefully fastened her seatbelt. Blair began pulling his clothes to a semblance of order as Ginger continued, "What's audacious is what you'll be doing to me with your free hand on the way home."

Blair blinked. "Okay."

"You know, you must have a damned good PR agent on your team."

"Huh?" His brain refused to process her statement; to him it sounded like Martian and made about as much sense.

"You're a tiger in bed, but I didn't expect you'd be so conservative."

"Conservative?" Blair lifted his hips so he could tuck in his shirt and tug his pants up and closed. He fell back down on the seat and let out a mild wuff. "That's name calling, and so not true. I'd hoped for better from you, Ginger."

"To hear some people tell it, you'd cheerfully screw on the front steps of the library."

"That is an exaggeration and unwarranted at that," he retorted and started the car, his good cheer restored. Looking over his shoulder to back out, he added, "The stacks, sure, but the steps? Naaaah...."

Blair slept late, luxuriating in a warm bed with company. He liked Ginger's bedroom, all airy with wood floors, braided rugs, and a ceiling fan; clean, Scandinavian furniture; and best of all, fluffy pillows and a down quilt that buried them in a snowdrift of radiant comfort. Ginger woke as slowly as he did, another avowed hater of the morning, and wormed her way to his side of the bed. She ran her fingers up his back, dug her fingers into the muscles between shoulder and neck, and then skated her fingers around his throat, a light, almost dangerous touch, unusual and arousing, which led Blair to think they were going to replay the energetic antics of the night before but instead segued into sweet, uncomplicated sex, him on top, her legs wrapped around his waist, latched at the ankles and heels digging into the small of his back.

After, Ginger fetched mellow, golden apples and sharp cheese and buttered English muffins and grape juice, and spread the Sunday paper all over the bed. Blair scanned some headlines, and then the colored comics while Ginger held them up, his head pillowed on her shoulder, but soon he opened up his laptop and worked while she read, the soft rustle of a page turn occasionally blending with the plastic sounds of his typing.

"Cool," said Blair, the word drawn out of him before he realized he'd spoken.

"Cool, what?"

"They set a date for the dedication for the Emerick Room at the Arts center. Wine and cheese reception, it ought to be good. Gotta love free food." Blair reread the e-mail invitation then looked at her. "It's next Friday," he said, "you want to go?"

Ginger's eyes remained on the newspaper. "I got my own invitation."

"Yeah? So, you want to go?"

"I was thinking I might take someone else." She turned a page.

"Uh, okay." His regard slid off her and centered on his computer screen. Good times. Mutual respect. Non-exclusivity. He was a tiny bit pissed that he simply didn't have the time to take as much advantage of the non-exclusivity clause as it seemed she did.

"You think Jim would be interested in something like this?"

"Ginger!" It shot out of him, a knee-jerk reaction.

She grinned at him. "Kidding! God, you're easy."

He smiled, a polite response one-third genuine, and silently questioned why he tolerated her casual but pointed teasing -- her aim was deadly. He wondered if it wasn't envy. He liked to think of himself as an adventurous guy, someone who wore long hair and jewelry and dressed like the apathetically cool; a traveler, curious and sharp; someone who experimented with the academic (and sometimes chemical) boundaries of his mind; someone who could have casual lovers, who might have sex in a public place. It wasn't as if he weren't adventurous, hadn't traveled or had never done any of those things, but he had uneasy longings for normalcy, too, and was unsure what to do about them. He thought that maybe a lifetime of one thing primed a person for futilely wanting its opposite, but contemplating the roots of his soul's desires didn't appeal, not when he realized he was seeking a taste of longed-for mundanity in Ginger's unconventional bed.

"So, are you serious or what? You going to take someone else?"

"I was thinking about asking Diane." She began folding the newspaper. "I think you ought to ask Jim. We could all go together. It'd be fun."

"Diane Peterson?" Library sciences grad student. Tall. Green, almond shaped eyes. High cheekbones. Shoulder-length waves of reddish brown hair. Nice woman, no sparks that ever flashed for him, but he could see she smoldered under the surface. He thought Jim would like her. "You playing matchmaker, or what?"

"Sort of," Ginger replied coyly. "It would be fun, Blair. Trust me."

"Trust me? That's my line."

"I didn't know there was a copyright on it." She slouched down into her haystack of pillows and began nibbling Blair's elbow. "You done your e-mail yet?" She chewed down his arm and took command of his hand. She reached to the night table behind her and came back with a dollop of jam in her palm; she smeared it on his fingers and began sucking it off. Between digits, she mumbled, "Hm? You done?"

"Done sounds good," he said, and closed his computer.

When he made it home that evening, Blair found Jim measuring his length along the couch, one arm resting on his stomach, the other flung over his eyes.

"Hey, Jim." Blair shook free of his various bags and packs and walked closer. Jim grunted. Blair leaned over him a moment, looking to see if Jim's eyes were open or not. "You okay?"

"Headache."

Blair sank into the chair. "That sucks. Can I get you anything?"

"No."

Blair frowned. Jim wore a thin tee-shirt and faded sweatpants with a hole in one knee and trailing threads at the sprung elastic cuffs. Old. Soft. The only illumination came from one small light in the kitchen. Dim. Gentle. "Is it your senses, Jim? You zone at all? You spiking now?"

"I'll be okay."

"You got to tell me this stuff, you know that. You should'a called." Blair got up and rooted out his laptop, forgetting about his coat and ignoring the mangled pile of his stuff by the door. A shiny hank of dj vu piqued his interest and sent him rushing along a flight of conjecture. "I've got to check, but you know, I think you had a cluster of headaches after that visual test, with the disco lights, remember? and the same right after the whole Switchman thing, you know, with the flowers. Which is kind of alarming, but at the same time sort of good because as I recall, in each case the headaches abated. I wonder if your adjustment to sensing pheromones in your environment is doing the same thing. This could be a predicable trend, and prediction is the first step towards prevention." He settled into the chair again, opened his computer, and rubbed his hands together while he waited for the operating system to boot.

Jim made a small noise. "Do you have to do that now, Sandburg?"

"What? This?"

"That computer sounds like a dentist's drill grinding through my skull." He lowered his forearm and glared at Blair, his brow an eloquent snarl of pain.

"Damn, I'm sorry, Jim." He quickly turned off the laptop and set it on the coffee table. "You sure there's nothing I can get you?"

"No. Just don't turn that thing on."

"Uh, there are a couple things you could try. Couldn't hurt."

"I took aspirin."

"You still have a headache."

Jim sighed.

"C'mon. Nothing painful, I promise."

"You're going to make me chant or puff or something, aren't you?" He squinted at Blair with defensive suspicion.

"Well, some cleansing breaths are a good start." Blair hitched forward to sit on the edge of his chair.

"Great," Jim muttered, "more New-age mumbo jumbo."

"Jim, increasing oxygen flow to that walnut you call a brain isn't mumbo jumbo. Just draw in a long breath through your nose for a count of five, hold it, then let it out again. Simple enough for a lab rat like you."

Jim frowned, and grunted a neutral acquiescence.

Blair leaned forward, his arms braced on his thighs. "Close your eyes." Jim's lids slammed shut. "Good, good. Now, inhale, slowly. Count if you have to, count to five, slowly, and then hold it. Hold your breath, hold it," Blair paused, waving his hand like he was pushing in his own air, lips sympathetically pursed, "okay, now let it out. Shooo." Jim's air escaped with quiet dignity. Blair made him repeat twice more. "Well? Does that help?"

"No. I don't know. I think I just want to go to bed and sleep it off."

"It's only seven," Blair said. He was mildly exasperated that the laptop was off-limits to punch in data, but he couldn't blame the man for having a headache, could he. On the heels of that uncharitable thought, he felt like a shit for thinking it and once more offered, "Jim, really, can I get you something? A drink? An ice pack? Guillotine?"

Jim snorted dryly. "Tempting, Chief, but no."

"Have you eaten anything? I could whip up some supper. Something bland, maybe?"

"I --." Jim covered his eyes with his arm again. "Would it get you to stop bugging me?"

Blair loved confirming his theories. Jim could be hounded into submission. It was useful information. "Sure, Jim. What do you want?"

"I don't care, Sandburg. Anything. Just stop talking and go away." Jim had hit the wall; Blair heard it in his voice. He knew it was time to back down, but he couldn't resist a parting shot, saying, "Okay, okay. I'm going, hear me go, I'm heading to the kitchen to fix your supper."

With magnificent restraint, he tamped down the urge to poke at his research subject further, fixed him soup, and gave him some in a bowl with crackers to eat on the couch, after which Jim ghosted off to bed so it wasn't until he sat down at his desk in the bullpen Monday morning that Blair remembered to tell Jim about the reception at Rainier. That memory ricocheted off the non-incident on the couch with Ginger and Jim, something that Blair (conveniently) had forgotten to think about, sidetracked by multiple sex acts with Ginger and then Jim's headache and then mopping up the final logjam of schoolwork that had plagued him last week. He wasn't entirely sure how to broach the subject with Jim, or if he should even bother, but Jim resolved it with a tossed off comment after hearing about the invitation.

"So it'd be me and you and Ginger and her friend, Diane, right?"

"The tall red-headed librarian."

Jim looked interested. "Yeah, sure. I could go for that. Ginger's real fun; I'm sure any friend of hers will be fun, too." He looked up at Blair with candid sincerity and said, "You know, Ginger's a great girl. You made a good catch there, Chief: don't screw it up." He gracefully bowed his head to the police work on his desk, leaving Blair to feel as if both overt and subliminal matters surrounding Ginger were apparently resolved. Since the doughnut cart just entered the bullpen and Jim seemed absorbed in his work, Blair decided it would be pointless to bring up the couch and so left in search of coffee.

Monday. New week, old shit. Mondays should be a chance for a clean slate.

Jim knew his wistful thinking was just that -- wistful -- but once in a while, the honorable ten-year-old in him piped up -- "It isn't fair!" Too many things weren't fair, weren't right, he knew. He also knew how to deal with things, fair or not.

He eased into this cumbersome Monday, his headache gone but the memory daunting enough to motivate a slower pace. He checked his e-mail and his messages and found more reports from Vice that pertained to the case last week that stoked his ire about old business and clean slates. Then Sandburg told him about some opening or dedication at the University and a double date. It sounded really good to him right then, something quieter than the cacophony of a bar or a basketball game but more interactive than a movie, not to mention the chance to meet a tall redhead, so he agreed. When Jim looked up a few minutes later, Sandburg was gone, and the doughnut cart pulled adjacent to his desk. The girl smiled down at him, her young face scrubbed and earnest.

"Finally oiled those wheels, huh?" said Jim. He was suddenly struck by how he wasn't struck by the girl or her smells. He thought about it for a moment, concentrated, and detected it: the distinct scent of the girl's crush under her soap and deodorant. He smiled; it hadn't hit him like a truck this morning. Things were looking up in the senses department.

"I-I don't know," she said shyly. "George, he takes care of the cart. I just sell the pastries and coffee."

"Well, how about a chocolate glazed today? And a cup of coffee, please." Jim directed his smile at the girl. She pinked. It was like watching dew on roses, or children at play. He felt an abstract shame for wanting to ravish her last week.

"Here you go," she said as she set his food and cup on his desk. Jim tipped generously, and she left with a graceful swish in her stride, as beautiful as a doe's slender-footed travels in the forest, and as remote; it felt right to appreciate her that way.

Simon opened his door and looked out, a frown weighing heavy on his dark brow. He spied Jim, raised his hand and gestured, beckoning. "Jim," he said, "you and Sandburg."

"We'll be right there, sir," Jim said. Simon retreated, and Jim cast about, looking for Sandburg. He found him talking to Joel, some harangue about the judicial system and the Bill of Rights. Jim didn't listen too closely. He called over, loud enough to interrupt. "Hey, Chief. Heads up."

Sandburg hopped off Joel's desk. Jim spared a glance: Joel looked relieved. Jim had to grin at that, amused how Sandburg could be so obviously irritating, a sixties throwback hippy-wannabe spouting all sorts of liberal nonsense, but he felt the grin melt and reabsorb into his face as the kid -- the young man -- the man -- walked towards him. There it was, that loose, easy, manly grace that Jim realized he'd always noticed about the grad student, well hidden under youth and clothes and hair and a genial self-effacement that fooled most people to underestimate him. Now, Jim knew his senses made him privy to a level of splendor in the mundane not available to others. He accepted it as a perk, a blessing where the zone outs and headaches were curses. Watching the doughnut girl or any beautiful youth, observing wildlife, tracking the languid path of clouds in the sky, smelling distant rain, hearing a lone night bird, admiring a woman: all were decoration for his warped life, as ornamental and separate from him as framed pictures on a wall. But this, Jim wasn't used to this flare of beauty so close to his everyday, intimate life, not in his roommate, Blair Sandburg, who had nothing to do with distance.

Jim suddenly remembered Sandburg's offer to double date, hied back further and remembered how he'd wanted to hammer Ginger over the diner's bar. He tilted his head, just a fraction, and looked for rationality. Ah, there it was -- pheromones, rolling off Blair. Less than before, but still detectible. Explainable. It was just the pheromones.

"What's up?" asked Sandburg as they converged by Simon's office door.

Jim shrugged. He had a good idea but said, "Dunno. Simon wants to see us; he didn't say why." Jim rapped on the door and entered, a supple, masculine shadow at his heels whose invading presence he thrust from his mind and kept at arm's length.

"What's up with the Doyle case?" Simon asked directly. He sat at his desk, a coffee mug at his elbow reminding Jim that he'd left his morning indulgence on his desk.

"Got a meeting with Manley right after we're done here."

"You should have seen him already. The Chief called me this morning; you've got to process the weekend material, get the collaboration going, and get it going yesterday."

"What happened this weekend? All I've got are Friday's reports. That bastard's holding out on me again, Simon."

Simon nodded, a gesture of deference. "There was a low-level bust, a few witness reports. Manley, he won't make it easy, so that means you'll just have to work harder on this one to pick up his slack."

Jim's inner Boy Scout began protesting about fairness again. He wondered if the yammering brat had somehow talked to Sandburg and picked up his mildly endearing but useless hippy politics. "Nothing new, I guess. But it rankles, sir."

"Sure it does, but you getting rankled doesn't get us an arrest." Simon rapped his pen against the blotter restlessly. "Did you see the paper this morning? The press is loving this."

Jim pushed out a breath dirty with disgust.

"I missed it. What's going on?" asked Blair.

"The Doyle kid was released from the hospital. Everyone's reminded of what his father did, and there's still a bad supply of meth out there that we haven't nailed down," explained Simon.

"Oh," Blair's lips pursed, a small twist of abhorrence that covered a more tender hurt. Jim felt a momentary pang. It was hard to learn just how evil and stupid people could be. Certainly, Roy Doyle counted. He'd ingested crystal meth on a regular basis, bought and sold it, and two months ago, he'd freaked out while under the influence and threw his twelve-year-old son from his converted van while speeding along the freeway at sixty miles an hour. The boy barely survived with a broken back and the prospect of a lifetime in a wheelchair. He'd become the poster boy for the consequences of a vibrant crystal meth trade, and the police department became the most visible target for people to vent their frustrations on.

"Get down to Vice. Corner Manley, see if you can't find a higher rung on this ladder. And get out of my office; I've got work to do, too." Simon made a shooing motion with his pen.

Jim lost Sandburg just before noon. Still irritated with Manley's excuses and crappy attitude, Jim found he wanted the paradoxically calming effect of Sandburg's jittering wind-up toy shtick to shake away the petty exasperations of the morning. He looked around the bullpen, zoomed past the blinds, focused his hearing to the babble of voices in the hallway and beyond until he finally heard the deep, familiar voice near the Personnel office.

"...*oh, sure. It'll be excellent. And you know, after, it could be even better*," said Sandburg, his tone low and suggestive.

"I like the sound of that," replied a female voice. "*I'll be ready at eight*."

Jim frowned, yanked back his sense of hearing and focused on the pedestrian sounds of productivity in the office around him. Soon, Sandburg appeared, his joints even looser if possible and nearly reeking of lust. He saw Jim and grinned a mile wide.

"Hey, you ready to eat? I could take down an entire salad bar, man."

"Dream on. Ain't gonna happen. You eat with me, it won't be rabbit food," admonished Jim, but Sandburg wasn't listening. He was turning, tracking the progress of a woman as she walked by the window. Jim smacked his arm. "Hey, you paying attention or what?"

"Sorry, distracted." He didn't look sorry.

"What, another conquest?"

"As a matter of fact," replied Sandburg as he rose up on his toes and fell back again, "yes. I've got a date tonight."

Jim let himself look puzzled and little distressed. "But, what about Ginger?"

Wariness thinned the enthusiasm on Sandburg's face. "What about her, Jim? You care about my love life?"

"Yeah, I do, actually. I told you, Ginger's a great girl. You couldn't do better."

"Oh, really? I couldn't do better, huh?" Sandburg's face stilled, leaving his expression looking vaguely pissed-off. "You do realize people don't usually butt in on their friends' love lives unless they've got a vested interest."

"C'mon, Chief, I don't mean it that way," Jim snapped, covering the guilt he felt about his fantasy of fucking Ginger. "I mean, Ginger's great. A real class act. Why would you want to give her up?"

Sandburg smiled at him, a knowing, hard expression. "Who says I'm giving her up, Jim?" Jim foundered a bit, and the damned kid -- man -- whatever! -- seemed to enjoy his discomfort. Then it seemed he relented and said, "Jim, Ginger and I aren't exclusive. We date who we want, it's no big deal. And when we feel like it, we, you know, get together. For fun, for laughs, for..."

"Sex, right?" The thought of Sandburg and Ginger having casual, meaningless sex bugged Jim but he couldn't say why.

"That too. Hey, it works. It's not like I've got time for some huge, involved romance. God, I barely have time to sleep." He placidly picked up his coat and backpack. "So, it's your turn to pick. Where're we eating lunch?"

"Bandito's."

"Oo, lard infusions. Whee. Can't wait," Sandburg deadpanned. He shrugged into his coat and slipped his pack over one shoulder.

"Look, you don't have to eat lunch with me."

"I don't have any other time to document that whole headache episode, either today, or tomorrow. Or Wednesday." He led the way out of the bullpen to wait by the elevator. "God, I wish I could find some time to get you in the lab. I really need controlled data about how you're dealing with the pheromones, but since we can't, we should document what we can at lunch. You know, since I'll be busy tonight." The mildest of irritation rimed his last comment, barely detectible even with enhanced hearing. Jim wondered if Sandburg even knew he was still pissed.

Jim followed unenthusiastically. Much as he needed the help, he didn't like trying to put the experience into words, didn't like how naked he felt talking about the intimate details of how his senses worked -- or how they screwed up his life. He usually gave Sandburg only what he felt comfortable giving, but that strategy could backfire. Not long ago, he'd neglected to share enough information with the kid and ended up hanging on for dear life under a train rushing through the night, cursed by the maddening kaleidoscope a simple cold remedy had made of his vision.

Okay, so totally ignoring input was a bad idea, and frankly, since he'd found such success using help Sandburg had given him, Jim found it hard to lie to him about his senses. However, he had omission down cold. He wasn't going to confess to his pheromone-induced fantasies. He'd prefer dangling from another train.

Ginger showed up at the loft on Wednesday night. Jim answered the knock and stood mute, stunned by the blast of attraction that hit him as he opened the door. Scent, mostly: a heady concoction of her musk, some earthy perfume, and the brown leather jacket she wore, but also her honest good looks. She didn't wear much make up, just a light dusting of powder, eyeliner, and something sheer on her lips; Jim thought it might be chapstick.

"Hi, Jim. Can I come in, or should I wait in the hall?"

Jim shook his head. "Christ, I'm sorry. C'mon in." He backed away and let her draw her charm past him.

Sandburg popped out of his room, his face shining with an anticipatory grin that flashed like heat lightening. "Hey, Ginger." They met, kissed, a lingering clasp of lips. Jim heard the soft smack of adhesion and the faint, wet, tearing sound when they parted. Jim noticed Sandburg and Ginger were exactly the same height. He wrenched his attention away and marched to the refrigerator, opening the door and basking in the cold while he cursed his wayward nose (and eyes and ears and dick...).

"...so, what do you want to do?" Sandburg said to Ginger. Jim could hear the faint hasp of skin on skin, the rustle of cloth, and so continued staring into the cold, white interior of his refrigerator, seeing nothing of interest. He wondered how long he could hold this pose before anyone noticed or the chilled air started competing with the furnace.

"You want something to drink?" asked Jim, initiating a two-fold strategy that would allow him to shut the door and get the love-bunnies to stop warming up for their romantic evening.

"Water would be great, thanks," said Ginger. Jim hauled out two bottles and shut the door before he ambled out to the living room and handed one to Ginger.

"What about me?" complained Sandburg as Jim downed half the other bottle. Jim lowered his water, perversely happy. He patted Sandburg's cheek with a cold hand and said, "You live here, Chief. You can get your own damned water."

Sandburg made a disgruntled noise and shook his head, the curls bouncing just a bit. He pointedly looked past Jim to tell Ginger, "Let me get ready, and then we can blow outta here." Jim watched his room swallow him up again, satisfaction warming his gut as he thought, ha. If people could screw around with his libido, he felt totally justified to screw 'em right back. Especially Sandburg.

He took another swig from his bottle, wiped his mouth. Ginger looked at him, her head tilted and face full of speculation. The frank regard made him feel like he should say something, but just then the phone rang. Gratefully, Jim answered, habit making him bark, "Ellison."

After a nervous hesitation, a voice asked for Blair Sandburg. Jim called out, "It's for you, professor."

"Damn." Sandburg stomped out of his room, one foot shod, the other still in a sock, and took the phone, at first talking fast but falling silent after a few breathless words. Whoever was on the other end snagged his attention well and good. Sandburg covered the bottom of the phone with his palm and said, "Hey, Jim, entertain Ginger for me while I take this." He smiled apologetically at Ginger and returned into his room, interspersing rapid-fire strings of words between lengthy pauses.

"Sure, Chief," he replied woodenly to the stirred curtain. There was a prickle of recognition, something tainted and uncomfortable about the situation he couldn't trace to its root. He remembered a night, years ago: two friends, both handsome, both with dark hair, one a man, the other a woman, and he'd felt confusion, a twisting of desires in his gut, wavering for long, giddy moments, not sure who he'd desired more -- Alan or Veronica. Looking down the perfect view of hindsight from the comfort of distance and time, he saw that his disappointment had been greater when he'd lost Alan to Veronica, not the other way around.

Jim blinked and wondered if he'd just had an epiphany.

Ginger joined him in the kitchen and leaned against the counter, her vibrant presence taking Jim outside himself. She unscrewed the cap of her water bottle, drank, replaced the cap. "So, how's the cop trade?"

Jim set his hand on the opposite counter and wrapped his brain around the present. "Oh, the same old thing. Crooks, car chases, and court, but mostly just paperwork."

"That doesn't sound very glamorous."

"It's not."

"I'm looking forward to Friday night. You will be joining us, right?"

"Wouldn't miss it. I look forward to meeting your friend."

"Yes, Diane." Ginger's eyes slanted away, and she took another drink.

Jim heard a faint veneer of insincerity in her voice, attributed it to some mild trouble, and asked, "Is there a problem?"

Ginger looked back, her eyes showing mild surprise. "No, not at all. I'm just thinking, though, if something came up and Diane couldn't attend, then Blair and I would have to make sure you felt included, Jim. Remember, we are friends." She smiled, a frankly appealing twist of features under her bangs.

Jim heard an audible memory echo, a conversation playing in his head: "*I don't love him, Jim*," Emily had said. "Emily... he's my partner," Jim had argued, to which Emily had rebutted, "And you're my friend."

"Yeah, we are friends, aren't we?" Jim agreed weakly, distracted by this crumple of memory and process that burrowed, trying to undermine his foundations. A wisp beckoned to him, an elusive idea, something sensed not with eyes, ears, skin, nose, or mouth, but with his reason and his heart. The intangibility of it frustrated him, and it slithered out of range when sound impinged.

"...*yeah, well shit, I'm working on that, I have been working on that, working my fucking ass off on that*," said Blair. His voice rose, not enough for Ginger to hear, but Jim noticed. His hearing easily leaped to the person speaking on the other end of the phone.

"*You know, I'm not sure your prodigy status has done you any favors, Blair. Such a precipitous rise, and now...nothing. For a long time. People talk, they wonder*."

"What people, Louis? What people? No, wait, I bet I know." Blair sounded angry.

"*Does it really matter? Just show something, get some articles out, anything. So, what about this dissertation of yours? Tell me you're making progress*."

"*I just told you, I am working, working hard, you wouldn't believe, but it's going to take time, man*." Enthusiasm nudged the anger in Sandburg's voice into frustration.

"*Great, I'm glad to hear it, but in the meantime, put out more product, my friend. Give 'em something to chew on while they're waiting for that fabulous diss you're sitting on*."

"Jim?" Ginger touched his arm.

"I'm sorry. What?"

"You were a million miles away. Enjoy the trip?"

Jim chuckled, the uncomfortable warp of his thoughts blown away, leaving him to face pretty Ginger and her knowing eyebrows. "Uh, you caught me. It was a long day."

"We'll be out of your hair in a minute, I'm sure."

"No, no," Jim protested. "It's not --."

"Jim, friends know when to back off," she interrupted. She raised her bottle, a salute. "And they know when to come closer, too." Her voice's timber lowered, a husky sound that vibrated down his spine. Jim wondered if that was how she sounded in bed. Sandburg would know.

Jim mentally cursed and wished Ginger would stop the innuendo, wished he could ignore her, and prayed he'd stop thinking about his roommate's sexual activities. Before he could formulate some response to Ginger, Sandburg came out of his room, entered the kitchen, and replaced the phone on the charger.

Jim stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. "Everything okay?"

"Oh, yeah, fine," replied Blair, but there was a distracted frown between his brows. Jim tightened his grip, a squeeze before he let go.

"Okay, just so everything is good."

"Of course, Jim; didn't I just say so?" Sandburg chucked an accusatory look at him; he knew Jim had eavesdropped. Ginger moved to the door, silent but watchful.

"Hey, just trying to..." Jim couldn't think of a way to end that sentence, so he brushed away the lame pause with an absent wave of his hand and retreated to the couch, flopped down, and began foraging for the remote.

"Yeah, well." Sandburg's mouth thinned; he wouldn't argue with Jim about the use of heightened hearing to violate privacy, not with Ginger there, and so apparently gave up. He and Ginger both made appropriate departure noises and left.

Jim couldn't settle for television. He got up and walked to Sandburg's room, stopping just outside the curtain. He teased it open with one finger. Sandburg should have a door, thought Jim. A barrier. A man needed space to himself, and Jim felt guilty that he had butted in on a private conversation.

If he weren't so irritated about it, he'd feel bad about intruding on Blair's sex life, too, even if only in fantasy.

Blair's dark gray suit coat pulled across the shoulders. He'd worn it nearly two years ago at his uncle's funeral, and it had fit fine then but now when he brought his arms forward, he could hear the fibers behind him groan ominously at the seams and feel where bunches of fabric bit into his underarms. The discomfort pleased him on a deep level; the pants still fit, so it wasn't fat, no: he'd broadened, grown a few more muscles, something one didn't notice when living day to day in oversized flannel and denim. The downside was that he'd be uncomfortable at the reception, a mild annoyance. He planned on ditching the tie and jacket as soon as he endured whatever administration appeasement hoops he felt obligated to jump through.

Hearing Jim's tread on the stairs, Blair came out of his room, running a careful hand over his hair to feel if it'd all been captured in the low ponytail at his nape. Jim was tugging on his cuff, lining up the vivid blue dress shirt with the end of the navy jacket sleeve. He glanced up as he reached the bottom of the stairs, and Blair was pleased when he saw Jim's eyes widen in surprise.

"You clean up pretty good there, Chief."

"Nothing but the best for serious ass-kissing."

"I thought you said this was going to be fun?" Jim moved off to the living room to pick up his wallet from the coffee table.

"Oh, it'll be fun, don't worry. You'll have a blast; you and Diane can, you know, get to know each other." He rotated his fists around each other, heard Jim rumble a paternal disdain. "It's just gonna be a pain in the ass for me the first hour, putting in a good impression as well as the aforementioned ass-kissing, but after that, I plan on thoroughly enjoying myself and take advantage of all the free booze I can drink."

"Ah, so that's why I'm driving."

"Busted." Blair raised his hands at Jim a moment then stocked his pockets with wallet and glasses. "Hey, got to medicate to forget you know. The politicking is the worst part of the job."

"Doesn't public drunkenness negate the whole ass-kissing thing?" Jim picked up his overcoat and wrapped himself into it with one of those rolling moves of suppressed strength that Blair appreciated. He rotated his shoulders sympathetically in their confinement and smiled, pleased to be reminded of their new breadth.

"No, I can get toasted because the old stogies will leave early, and the rest of the administration will get drunker than I plan on getting. Hey, everyone wants to let loose once in a while. Even tenured assholes."

Jim laughed, and Blair felt like he'd earned a prize. He felt light with anticipation and jazzed with the uniqueness of having Jim accompany him to something related to his life at the university. Blair expected and accepted that he'd have to fit into Jim's sphere of existence, not the other way around, and found he wanted to put forth his best foot, like a kid showing a new friend his tree-house for the first time. That they wore special clothes made the experience that much more remarkable. Blair had seen Jim in his court suit; somehow, he looked better in the intimacy of evening rather than under the flickering exposure of florescent lighting at the courthouse. The circumstances pinged his awareness, made everything seem new and skewed, and stirred the pot of his complicated priorities. He'd been there, lusting after the stony cliffs of Jim, but he'd dealt with it and learned to be with Jim as a friend. This re-visitation to adolescent palpitations was vaguely unsettling in its intensity.

But Jim looked like a familiar stranger as he stood by the door, overcoat on and hanging open, keys in hand, and an interrogative look on his face comprised of mingled annoyance and good humor that Blair knew was for him and no other. A beautiful man viewed in strange circumstances but no longer a stranger because Blair knew he didn't like pineapple, and did like Chinese food; took his coffee sweet; kept his shoes lined up by descending size order in his closet; always hung toilet paper in the over position, going so far as to change it if Blair hung it under; small, odd quirks like anyone had but were peculiar to him.

Blair slung his knapsack over one shoulder, eliciting another one of those twisted irritated/amused reactions from Jim that nailed Blair's lower gut with a slug of heated craving. Nothing new about that feeling; he'd found Jim attractive from the very first time they'd met, but his sense of professionalism and a warily active self-preservation made him quickly shelve that impulse as a very bad idea. Still, he wondered. He wondered and indulged to an odd bit of mental jerking off while thinking about smiling blue eyes, molded thighs, shoulders, a chest to dash himself on, a neck to -- oh, god, what a neck to...

"You're bringing the knapsack?" asked Jim.

"Yeah. So?"

Blair saw Jim's gaze flick over him. "It ruins the look, Chief."

"Oh, yeah?" Blair smiled. He liked the idea of Jim noting his appearance. "I'll keep that in mind."

Jim shook his head and led the way out as Blair considered the odds that Jim might be game for some man on man action and decided they were pretty good odds. It was probably still a bad idea, though.

They bantered all the way, curiously easy. Blair occasionally found their give-and-take a tad clumsy because he knew he tried too hard -- fitting in wasn't always easy -- but nothing felt forced tonight. He knew what he could say, knew Jim could handle his barbs and teasing, knew he could withstand Jim's, one of those aspects of growing friendship that crept up on one. He suddenly considered himself lucky -- he and Jim were friends, it was true, and good friends at that. It made the dissertation stuff easier. It also made him feel weird about continually revisiting his unrequited crush on Jim as they wandered through this evening in suits and ties. Let it go, he told himself. Bad idea plus a sure thing waiting wrapped in Ginger's form equals time to concentrate on the attainable.

As they converged with trickles of people intent on the Arts building, a tall man approached Blair and Jim. Blair squinted myopically, trying to identify him in the wan light outside the entrance.

"Blair."

"Hey, Louis." Blair paused and sensed Jim did the same, looming just behind him.

"Can I talk to you a minute?" Louis shuffled his feet in that awkward way he had. Blair frowned, unwilling to hide his impatience. He was enjoying himself; listening to the excitable Louis continue his rant from last week's phone call about his suffering academic career wasn't what he wanted to do right now, but he didn't see much choice in the matter. Louis was a friend. He also held clout comprised of favors owed over Blair's head. Blair said, "Go on in, Jim. Ginger and Diane are waiting in the lobby. I'll be there in a minute."

"Sure. See you inside," Jim said, and ambled away.

"That your roommate?" Louis goggled through thick glasses at Jim's back. "He pretty much looks how he sounds on the phone: intimidating as hell."

"It's a cop thing, don't sweat it." He looked at the door yearningly. "Can you make this quick? What do you want?"

"Just trying to do you a favor, my friend. Don't want to put you out or anything."

Blair pushed out a sigh to void his resentment. Yes, Louis was a friend, if a casual one, had helped him out in the past, was trying to help him out now. The litany sounded dutiful in his head rather than warm. "Sorry. I'm just kind of distracted; I've got a girl waiting. What is it? Shoot. I'm all ears." Blair noticed Louis' clothes: jeans and a sweatshirt under a ratty, vintage pea coat, and asked, "Aren't you going to the dedication tonight?"

"Nah. Not my thing, any more than it's yours. I'm surprised you're taking my advice, frankly."

"Hey, I really considered your pep talk the other night. It's not easy to listen to that stuff, you know. But I got over it, took it to heart, and then I figured that coming here tonight would be a good chance to feel around for opportunities, maybe just kiss some ass."

"That's what I wanted to tell you about. You know who's gonna be there? Janet Mackenzie."

"And?"

"She's Eli Stoddard's new secretary, Blair! Rumor has it he's sending her out to fish for him, that he's got something brewing and is looking for some young up and comers to help reap the glory on his next expedition."

"Yeah?" Blair's brain lurched with sudden covetousness; he was proud he could hang onto his low-key manner even as he had to swallow a surfeit of spit as his brain raced around the concept of joining Eli Stoddard on an expedition. He wanted that sort of legitimacy in his anthropological pursuits in a visceral way, something quicker to hand than the sentinel project, something with potentially more prestige.

"Yeah. I say, get in there, find her, and suck up for all you're worth. An expedition with him could really give you a boost --"

"And we both know I need one, right," Blair said sourly, but he nailed a smile on his face for Louis. He realized the clod meant well, in a clumsy way. "Thanks for the tip, man, but why aren't you going for it?"

"Who says I'm not? I've got a direct route, Blair. I do my brown-nosing where it counts -- in the lecture halls and on paper. It's something you ought to consider."

"Lessons from the master, huh?" It came out with more ire than Blair intended, but Louis kept hitting his insecurities dead on.

Louis glared at him. "Don't make me regret helping you out."

"No, no." Blair's hands came up in his usual gesture of conciliation. He generated the right tone for gratitude, but his words tasted bitter. "Thanks, really. I appreciate it."

"Okay then." Louis glanced at the door to the Arts building. "Looks like it'll be a crowd. Have fun. And don't forget to brush your teeth after all that brown-tonguing."

Blair watched him melt into the darkness, then softly said, "Yeah. Right." Maybe he was a friend, but he ran hot and cold, and warmth Blair had felt for him in the past was hard to remember at the moment. Louis' intrusive delving into his perceived shortcomings angered Blair; his untimely interruption irritated Blair; and his holier than thou (and --admit it -- justified) attitude just now made Blair want to quit school and find some beach to haunt in a tropical clime where he could live, barefoot and penniless and free from all things academic.

Blair took the steps two at a time, feeling like a snarl. At the top, he stopped and consciously shed the tangles of anger, shaking his head and shrugging his shoulders in their confinement, his thoughts groping for and finding a different, pleasant direction to meander. He flexed again; flexed his broader shoulders, manly shoulders, getting to be a solid man shoulders. All this worry over career made him suddenly aware of the appalling lack of recreational sports in his life of late, not counting the bed-play when he could get it or the adrenalin-junkie thrill rides courtesy of the Cascade PD and sundry wackos. He had a sudden yen to shoot hoops, maybe get Jim to go for a little one on one, Ginger as cheerleader. She'd congratulate him when he won, maybe take him in her avalanche bed after a couple of beers and a shower. Or if she wasn't as fastidious as most girls (and by now, he had faith in her), she'd do him in the shower. Or maybe even before the shower.

Basketball. Beer. And sweaty sex, just like the sweaty blowjob he'd gotten last year in the men's locker room after a pick up game at the Y. God, that had been hot, memorable. Well, with Ginger it'd be different -- Ginger was neither six feet tall, black, nor male -- but she could generate the same level of heat. It occurred to Blair that lately there'd been as little gay sex as sports in his life. Maybe he should go trolling at the YMCA or the park for some hoops and a guy. Or maybe to a club for just a guy. A big guy. Yeah, that would work. He liked fingers digging into his flesh hard enough to leave bruises, missed the direct passion of casual masculine sex. He flashed on Jim, the mountainous question mark. Solid muscular Jim. Despite the extra layer of muscle, Blair would never be that big, wouldn't want to be, really, but whoa, ascending those beams, cresting that prow of chest... All the frustration and worry Louis had laid on him fell away. He couldn't act on his specific cravings tonight, but he was going to have a good time. And as for his mood for men, Ginger was a fabulous consolation prize. He'd forget the guy sex stuff in a heartbeat of her lips.

He pushed through the doors of the Arts building and looked for his party. He quickly spied Jim in his suit and sanguinity, talking to Ginger, and strode over, taking in how good they looked together: Jim in navy, blue eyes spiked by his blue dress shirt, and Ginger in her jewel blue cocktail dress, dark hose, and obscene black sandals that made him want her to wear them tonight when she took him home, the sandals and nothing else.

Ginger flashed a smile of greeting before kissing him and said, "There you are. Jim was right; you look fabulous."

"Hey, thanks, but I bet he didn't say 'fabulous'," he said.

"Well, he said something about how you'd given up dumpster-diving for your clothes, but I'm sure he meant 'fabulous'," replied Ginger. Blair grinned at her, deliberately standing in the warmth between her and Jim, absorbing it greedily. He unleashed his avid eyes and let them roam over Ginger, silently telling her all his lustful thoughts as they cruised her curtain of nut-brown hair, rich expanse of bare neck and shoulders, cling of satiny blue dress that accentuated the fact she was chilly, spread of hips a turbulent cradle for his own. He sighed, a small, happy sound of mild regret; he had obliterated too well his troubles with escapism into sex...and now the night would drag on interminably until he could go down the rabbit hole for real.

"I guess the news wasn't bad, then," said Jim.

"Huh?" Blair ripped his attention from Ginger's assets with as much subtlety as Velcro, only to find it caught by the super-glue of Jim's formally wrapped charms. Blair's heart banged sideways, loudly, knocking him hard on his reason and that damned, demanding urge for men. For a man. For Jim. Maybe, just maybe, it wouldn't be too complicated, just this once, urged a dark whisper in his head. Or unethical. Certainly, the rest of his body was hog-tying his conscience right now, gagging it and daring it to chirp or whistle a protest while they stowed it behind his libido.

"Your friend, outside. I thought for a minute he was bringing you some bad news or something."

"Uh, no. Louis? No, no. Not at all." Blair rocked up on the balls of his feet, a habit of pent energy, and noticed the mild silence, like he'd missed something. It took him a moment to realize the lack and ask, "Where's Diane?"

"She had to bow out," said Ginger. Her smile turned enigmatic. "Headache."

Blair bit back a curse. He glanced at Jim apologetically. "I'm sorry, man."

"C'mon Blair," said Ginger, and she ran her hand down his tie. "Don't underestimate my entertainment abilities. You go bow and scrape in front of the graybeards, and I'll escort Jim around. I'll show him a real good time, promise."

"Yeah, sure." The roller coaster of his inner life lurched over a precipice as jealousy bit, a deep and surprising betrayal, worse than the forgotten couch cuddle. All the altitude changes of his emotions threatened to give him vertigo...or a nosebleed. "Be sure to swing by the exhibit of Inuit hunting tools. And the Mayan ceramics. And the West Mexican tomb figures. I'll quiz you on it all later."

Ginger grinned wickedly at him. "You worried I'm going to drag him into the coatroom for a quickie?"

Blair winced. He saw Jim gape at Ginger, and then smile. Slowly. Blair complained, "Ginger, you are pure evil."

"That's not called for, Sandburg," said Jim. "You should recognize witty humor when it walks up and kisses you on the cheek."

"Thank you, Jim," said Ginger approvingly, and wrapped her arm around his. To Blair she said, "Now go. I'll take care of your roommate."

Jim reached out and chucked Blair on his arm. "Don't forget to stow that knapsack before you start your abject groveling. It really does ruin the look." Then they were gone, two well-clad backs merging in with the pack. It felt good to be alone for a moment, a chance for Blair to draw breath and feel unfettered; watching people walk away held nothing forlorn for him anymore, not since he was a kid.

Usually.

The tug was a bit of a surprise, but Blair shrugged it off; he had things to do. The bill for his unconventional academic career stared him in the face in the guise of tweed coats and obsequious chitchat. He stiffened his upper lip, held his head high, and entered the fray.

After stowing his pack in one of the mostly forgotten clutch of storerooms buried in the awkward union between the old building and the newer Arts center, Blair swung out into the currents of people as they converged, eddied, and fell apart. He greeted Sidney warmly; it never hurt to suck up to the department head. He shook hands with various professors and Ph.D.s, making sure to mention any of their published articles or research projects he could dig out of his brain. Ricky Carson bumped into him as Blair made for the archaeology head. They chatted amicably for a while; as age peers in parallel tracks, they compared notes and shared information. Ricky had a line on an urban dig by the waterfront, working a corporate job with Emily Watson, a fine archaeologist whom Blair respected. Blair sincerely congratulated him, and then lied elaborately about his own prospects, after which he veered off, letting Ricky cadge brownie points. Archaeology wasn't Blair's focus anyhow.

Hal Buckner, once Blair's advisor, cornered Blair and enthusiastically described the cabin in the woods he'd just signed closing papers on. He was going to retire in the next year or so, and his plans for newfound leisure time sounded heartfelt. Happy for the man as a friend, Blair still begged off soon as he could so as to spend more time searching for Janet Mackenzie. Between his various encounters, Blair caught occasional glimpses of Jim and Ginger, drinks in hand, leisurely strolling past the exhibits, but once he got Janet in his sights, his focus narrowed. He concentrated his charm and enthusiasm on her, shamelessly pointed out his various correspondences with Dr. Stoddard, even brought her a fresh glass of wine and small plate of cheese and crackers. When he felt he'd reached the natural end of the interchange, he gracefully bowed out, confident that he'd left her with a favorable impression. He hoped. Only time would tell now.

Janet had been his big fish. Finished work and ready for play, he pulled off his tie, folded and tucked it into his coat pocket. He loosened the top buttons of his shirt while mapping the flow of foot traffic with an exacting eye. Standing tall, scanning the crowd, Blair couldn't see Jim or Ginger. People milled, clumped in cozy groups of friends or around particularly interesting displays. He noticed fewer gray heads, more young people taking advantage of the free booze and food, even a couple of the brighter kids from his intro classes.

Blair found the bar next, picked up two glasses of wine sitting ready on a silver tray, and poured one into the other, filling it to the brim. He drank enough so he could walk around with the full glass, grimacing a little at the weedy taste of a mediocre sauvignon blanc. A casual amble brought him around the Arts center but he found no sign of Jim or Ginger by the exhibits, the food, or the lobby. Suspicion snuck around his better judgment, and he had the awful thought that Jim and Ginger had left. Gulping down the rest of his wine, he set the empty glass down at the bar and headed with determination to the coatroom, looking to retrieve his backpack and check his cell phone, see if Jim or Ginger had left a message.

The abrupt infusion of alcohol flushed his limbs, and Blair tripped lightly over the edge of carpet runner in the hall leading to the coatroom.

"Are you alright, Mr. Sandburg?" Dr. Tanner angled through the door opposite Blair, extending a hand and a concerned expression.

Blair stared at the floor, mortified that he'd been caught stumbling drunkenly by Dr. Tanner, appalled that the good doctor wore a bow tie -- and managed to make it look charming. Blair waved off the attention and said, "I think the carpet is loose right here."

"It's criminal negligence."

"I'll let the maintenance people know about it." Blair lifted his head but didn't meet the doctor's gaze.

"I say, how is that lovely girl, Ms. Sullivan? Are you two still, ahem, an item? Is she here tonight?"

"Uh, fine, yes: she's here and she's fine." Heat slowly cooled from Blair's cheeks. "She's been here for a while now. I'm looking for her, soon as I get something from the storerooms."

"Ah. Luck to you, young man. It's quite a crowd." Dr. Tanner turned around to re-join the exhibit room across the hall. "Do take the opportunity to see the exhibits tonight."

"Oh, I will." Blair beat a hasty retreat and turned the corner only to stop himself short before he collided with Ginger.

"Ginger!" he exclaimed.

"Blair!" she mocked him. Then she stepped close and cleaved to him from hips to shoulders and wrapped her arms around his neck. Boosted by her high heels, she stood three inches taller than Blair; she nuzzled his ear with her nose and fingered his open collar with a curious hand. "Are you done your back-door climb up the flunky ladder, then?"

Blair's arms closed around her automatically. "Yeah, for now. What a world." He admired her perfume, sharp at her cleavage and faintly smoky in her hair. "I couldn't find you; I was looking."

"I was in the bathroom."

"Where's Jim?"

"He gallantly volunteered to fetch my shawl from my car." She drew back so they looked at each other comfortably and continued, "I told him to meet me by the coatroom." Her head tilted, a charming angle. "He gave me a funny look. What is it about you guys and coatrooms, anyhow? There's definitely a vibe there."

Cheerful because he'd found Ginger by herself, because neither she nor Jim had abandoned him, he grinned and then leered. "Why don't you let me take you there and show you?" Ginger raised her eyebrows and took his hand, pulling him along, once again usurping the leadership. Blair fell happily into the subordinate role and followed with happy anticipation.

The coatroom had two entrances. Arranged traditionally, a counter stretched along the front and long closet rods with hangers traced the back wall. Another door bisected the hanging rods, leading to a larger, rectangular area, filled with storage boxes along the perimeter and another door at the back. Ginger led Blair through the first room to the second and kissed him in front of the open doorway.

"You have a thing about public displays of affection, don't you?" muttered Blair, distracted when her hands came together at the back of his head and tugged at the hair tie. The mass sprang free. Ginger urged the riot with both hands. Blair leaned his head back into the massage and closed his eyes.

"Um-hm. Doesn't it give you a thrill, knowing someone could walk in on you?" she whispered hotly in his ear. Blair ran his hands down her back, cupped the cheeks of her ass through her dress, feeling nothing but a smooth expanse devoid of pantylines, and wordlessly agreed even as he moved her, entwined around him and stumbling, through the second room to the third. An odd-shaped room filled with mismatched boxes, empty display cases, and, curiously, portable clothes racks filled with old marching band uniforms, it buffered the presence of people by the sequence of rooms and an old accordion door between the second and third rooms. Muffled by old wool and boxes, only a softly indistinct murmur of voices penetrated.

Ginger pushed Blair's suit coat off his shoulders and tossed it onto a nearby box. She pulled his shirttails free and walked her fingers up under the cloth, drawing a swath of gooseflesh after her light caress that covered his stomach, ribs, and chest, all the while her mouth clung to his and they mutually sampled lips and tongue. Blair felt he'd turned 180 degrees around from the almost dirty feeling of feigned obeisance to a place of simple sensation and enjoyed the ride until Ginger's slender fingers descended to his belt.

"Hold on, hold on," he said. He grasped her wrists, trying to still her hands. "Not here."

"Why ever not?"

"Jim's coming back any minute, right?"

Ginger's lips curved languorously. "Oh, that'd be nice, wouldn't it?"

"Uh, what do you mean?"

Ginger looked searchingly into his eyes, and he returned the regard. He saw an avaricious heat in the darkened depths that he knew about, but hadn't suspected ran quite so deep. She said, "Jim's hot, Blair. I can see you two, and me..."

A familiar rumble filled the doorway; it was Jim, clearing his throat, a wisp of black shawl in his hand.

"Jim. Hey," said Blair. He moved back from Ginger, disentangling her hands that hadn't yet relinquished his belt.

"Here." Jim laid the shawl on the nearest display case. His movements seemed easy, free; Blair didn't think he was upset, just embarrassed. Well, turn-about was fair play. He recalled catching Jim and Laura in the coatroom. At least Blair and Ginger had on more clothes. Technically, this wasn't a coatroom.

Jim smiled politely and said, "I'll, ah, leave you two alone. Thanks for the company tonight, Ginger."

"Jim, you don't have to rush off," said Ginger.

Jim blinked at her. Blair's head swiveled quickly to look at her. She ran her hands down her dress, smoothing the wrinkles, a sensuous trail of her fingers along her curves. "I mean, why not stay? I told you, Blair and I would make sure you had a good time."

Without thought, Blair's head turned back to look at Jim, both worried and curious about his reaction. Ginger had laid an unparalleled opportunity between them, a chance for inimitable sex. Another prospect, one far more personal, reared its head, too, and Blair couldn't help but think about attractions, misgivings, and facilitators. Breathing became challenging.

"I--." Jim cleared his throat. "I'm flattered, really, but I don't think it's a good idea."

"What's so bad about it?" asked Ginger, her voice devoid of accusation. She sounded honestly curious. "You seem to like me. I know you like Blair."

"Ah, it's..." Jim blushed. Blair could hardly believe his eyes, but the evidence stained the man's cheeks pink, and Blair found his confirmation. He muffled a grin and watched Jim mentally squirm before tripping over words again. "Ginger, it's a generous offer, I know, but there are things to consider, to, to ask, some assumptions to, ah." He faltered. Blair saw Jim's eyes leap from him to Ginger and back again, watched the pink on his cheeks darken, and his heart leapt, a fierce victory. Jim was interested, interested in Ginger. Interested in Blair. Jim cleared his throat yet again, and said, "I'll go. Can you give Sandburg a ride?"

"Cripes, Jim, all I wanted was a little romp here behind the coatroom. I'm not proposing anything harmful. You don't have to run away."

"A little romp," Jim echoed.

"Behind the coatroom," finished Blair.

"What? You boys have something against sex in coatrooms? From the way you guys acted, I figured you'd be all for it." Ginger looked from one man to the other. Jim was gaping at her, and Blair knew he had the same, vacant idiocy on his own face. Ginger sounded defensive. "What?"

It seemed Jim would never take the initiative here, so Blair tried, and found it harder to put the concept into words than he'd thought. "It sounds like you want, uh," Blair lowered his face and watched his feet shuffle. "You know. Both. Of us."

"Blair Sandburg, you are such a fraud," Ginger rounded on him. "A man having sex with two women is acceptable, but you can't even entertain the concept of two men with one woman?"

"Two?" Jim's voice sounded strangled. Blair spared him a glance; he still looked vaguely stunned.

"I thought the point had been made that I'm a healthy girl," said Ginger, tugging at Blair's sleeve to regain his attention. "I thought you guys were nice, healthy boys, too, maybe up for a little, you know." Her shoulder rolled, eloquently suggestive as she glanced from Blair to Jim. "Are all my assumptions about you two wrong?"

"Healthy?" croaked Jim. He stepped forward, one heavy foot, then the other, and stopped, remaining near the door. Blair thought he didn't sound very healthy. Then again, Blair thought his own heart might burst from the suppressed excitement. Not real healthy to drop dead of a coronary before age thirty, nope.

Ginger lifted her chin and faced Jim squarely. "Yeah. Healthy. I'm just looking for a healthy expression of sex, Jim. It's no big deal unless you want to make it one. Or, I suppose, you could just walk out...but I'd prefer it if you stayed."

Blair raised his head and looked at Jim despite a raging embarrassment so intense his stomach tightened its slippery hold on supper and that sub-standard wine. Ginger moved closer to Blair, tucking herself into his side and shoving her hand into his back pocket. She stretched out her other arm, a graceful curve, an invitation. Blair's cheeks were blasting out heat, his lungs felt over inflated, and his dick surged, carried up by a rapid springtide of zeal.

Jim. Jim, having sex with Ginger, right next to him. Him, having sex with Ginger, next to Jim. And maybe, an inappropriate crossing of boundaries... He quashed that thought before it formed fully. For what seemed the hundredth time tonight, Blair revisited the painful crush he'd had on Jim when they'd first met, the intensity now ramped up exponentially, and he knew that he had to make this offer, if only this once, if only with Ginger as the fulcrum. Heart thudding painfully, he raised his own arm, mirror to Ginger's; it felt heavy and wooden and then suddenly buoyant. Ginger turned and dimpled at him, her eyes crinkling at the corners. Then she returned her attention to Jim.

"C'mon, Jim. It'll be fun," she said.

Blair's mouth followed his arm's lead, and he added, "Yeah, Jim, c'mon. We'll all have fun. You know, fun? Kick back and enjoy the good stuff? Take advantage of your opportunities?" He paused, waiting for a reaction. His arm began to ache from holding it out; he worried because the ache ran straight to his pants and might become a permanent condition if Jim didn't join them or walk out and let him let Ginger have her way with him. His eyes darted from Jim to Ginger to Jim again. He jerked his head at Ginger, grinning a little, hamming it up. "Jim. Man. We're waiting here."

Jim's nose flared. Air whooshed in, a huge, audible breath, and the intervening space between them silently crumpled and Jim was there, right there, his arms going around Ginger and Blair, creating a companionable triangle. He turned and lowered his head to Ginger's upturned face and kissed her. Blair watched from an intimate distance, fascinated by the proximity and turned on by the movement of lips on lips, tongues sliding through, the small, wet sounds. He knew from experience that Ginger was a nibbler; she loved to suck and chew, and she lavished this cheerful service on Jim.

Blair felt a fumble behind him. Ginger's deft hand remained in his back pocket, pushing down the give in his pants to cup half his ass through the cloth. A larger plane of heat pressed against the flat of his back, surprising him. Jim's palm began to move in small, slow circles, an implacable movement that raised heat. Low rumbles stacked up in Blair's throat, but he felt self-conscious about setting them free until Ginger uttered husky little noises of pleasure under Jim's lips the way Blair wanted to under Jim's hand. He wallowed in Ginger's sound until Jim lifted his face from hers, and she smiled beatifically at both men.

Then Jim turned to Blair. His face loomed close, and Blair thought Jim was going to kiss him, which made his breath whoop from the top quarter of his lungs in excited pants before Jim angled his head and burrowed into the liberated curls at his neck. He heard Jim take long breaths though his nose like long draughts, smelling him. Blair closed his eyes and wilted into the sound, languorous waves of heated want pulsing through his bones, liquefying them. Ginger paid him homage on the other side, pushing through his hair to gain the soft skin of his neck and begin her nibbling, sucking routine up to his ear while the busy fingers of her right hand slid from button to button of his dress shirt, uncoupling them from the top down.

"M'm, yeah," muttered Blair as he moved past embarrassment into sensation. He couldn't tell what felt better, Ginger's tongue in his ear and fingers walking down his chest, or Jim's breath on his neck and strong press of hand against his back, decided it was poor taste even to try to compare apples and bananas, and just let his body react the way it was begging to react. He extricated his arm from around Jim's waist and inserted it between the press of three bodies so he could finger Ginger's hip, reach down her thigh to seek the hem of her dress. He felt Ginger's lips curve, smiling around his earlobe before she relinquished it and kissed his mouth.

Her fingers left off exploring the exposed grasslands of his chest. Blair suspected her hand now engaged Jim somehow, considering Jim's sudden odd noise and the seizure of movement on Blair's back and ass, but Ginger's lips and teeth and tongue were feasting on his mouth and he couldn't track what hand belonged to what person.

"Mm, mm!" moaned Ginger and broke off her feeding. She looked at him, her eyes dark and deeply lidded, and rolled over Blair with a delicious corkscrew movement until her back pressed hard against his chest, and her ass undulated suggestively over his crotch. She grabbed his hands and placed them on her hips; he needed no more encouragement and read her front like a Braille book, passing his hands over the silky cloth of her dress, paying close attention to all the sloping bits and the fulsome bits and the hardening bumpy bits, uttering deep exclamations of approval all the while. Ginger fisted Jim's jacket lapels and pulled him to her, obliterating the huddle they'd made, trapping Blair's hands between Jim's rocky abdomen and Ginger's ribcage, and putting her in the middle of a man sandwich.

Blair started to laugh at the mental image, trying to envision what kind of bread and filling would make a good metaphor and failing (Rye and swiss? Pita and hummus? No, that was a pocket. Multi-grain and tomato?), but Ginger's yank and Jim's enthusiasm crushed him to the wall so that Ginger's ass ground into his groin and enveloped his dick in a cushioned oven while his lungs emptied with a funny, hollow sound. Man sandwich, man pizza, he thought, and then he did laugh, then gasped, then choked on his own spit.

"You okay, Chief?" Jim's voice sounded quizzical and normal, if soft, and stoked Blair's sense of absurdity. It wasn't like he was in peril here, no exploding buses, no megalomaniacs or pitching helicopters, no psycho killers or assassins or renegade secret agents or virgins, sweet and ultimately dangerous with stinging rejection and homicidal fathers. No, nothing perilous here. Just sex. But it might kill him when all those other dangers hadn't.

"It's kinda hard to --. Back!" he ground out, laughter and respiration fighting for his lungs' limited capacity. The pressure abruptly eased. "Muuuuch better, oh, yeah." Able to think about something besides oxygen, Blair scraped Ginger's hair out of the way with his chin and bit her neck at his hard-on's insistence. He could hear the nasty sounds of kissing resume, felt his forehead bump against the rocky shelf of Jim's collarbone. He wanted to watch them kiss again, but his mouth was loath to relinquish Ginger's salty, sweet skin. He manually explored the heaving, tight space between Ginger and Jim. Her stomach quivered under his palms while Blair could feel the taut strength of Jim's abs under his knuckles. The contrasting sensations confused and delighted his senses; he liked the resultant spike of excitement.

He liked the strong curve of Jim's hot hand on his hip, too. It had abandoned his lower back when Ginger had rearranged them; he welcomed its return, welcomed how it gripped, loosened, slid back and splayed half on his back, half on his ass. Jim. Jim's hand, on his ass, his mouth on Ginger's neck, Ginger's ass warming his cock.

"God, this is so fucking hot," he said into Ginger's shoulder, butting Jim's chest with the top of his head just because he could, and pulling a hand free so one continued explorations of Ginger while the other ran up and down Jim's side, catching every hard cut of muscle and bone he could reach.

"Mm-hm!" Ginger agreed. She performed that lewd little shimmy and turned, once more purchasing the most body contact for the least movement, and faced Blair. She turned her head to look up at Jim over her shoulder. She said, "Here. Do it, really, I want you," and Blair could feel her squirm against Jim while her hands moved behind her back, "really, I want you to."

Blair spent a few quality moments reacquainting himself with Ginger's front from this perspective until Jim's hastily absent hand left behind a coolness on Blair's ass. Blair looked over Ginger's head to Jim; Jim looked down, his hands busy, a zipper sound ripping, and Ginger suddenly erupted *oh, oh, oh, yesss, do it, please, now*! rousing Blair's curiosity to unbearable levels. He leaned into Ginger, reached around her, behind her, ran his hands down until he felt Jim's hands on Ginger's bare ass. She moaned, scooted down as her legs spread, and she leaned into Blair, wrapping her arms around his neck, hanging on and kissing him again, breathing her closed-eyed pleasure-sounds into his mouth.

Blair kissed her back while his open eyes watched Jim. He covered one of Jim's hands with his own. Jim looked up, directly into Blair's eyes, and it seemed a circuit closed, triggering a blast of outrageous pleasure to shoot between them: Jim's hand under Blair's, Ginger's tongue in Blair's mouth, Blair's gaze locked into Jim's.

Ginger writhed, catalyzed new attention from Jim. Jim stared down, concentrating hard. Blair's brain struggled with what his hands and ears told him; they told him that Jim was going for it, taking out his dick, baring Ginger, probing for her entrance. With her lips covering his excitement, Blair could hardly breathe for the audacity of their actions. Air seemed superfluous, but he needed the image of Jim's face, dark and intent, needed Ginger's knowing mouth to keep pace with his.

He wished Jim's hand was on his ass again, and then he was unexpectedly hurled to the moon as Jim's face came up at the same time that he penetrated Ginger, shoving her up into Blair, Blair up into the wall.

"Uhh!" Out went that unnecessary oxygen in a startled whuff; his teeth clacked painfully into Ginger's as Blair's weight came off his heels briefly, then thumped back down as Jim backed the length of his cock and then reamed in again, forcing noise from Ginger this time.

"Oh, God!" she cried. Blair retrieved one hand from behind her and cupped her breast, palmed it, then slid up to her jaw and thrust his finger between her lips. She sucked it in enthusiastically, mumbling with pleasure around it, and then pushed it out. "Blair, please," she asked, but it sounded like an order as she fumbled for Blair's hand and drew it between them, hiking up the front of her dress and molding his palm over the wiry hair of her mound. Blair felt a quick jab of guilt for falling thrall to the moment and ignoring Ginger's unspoken signals and so happily applied his manual skills to rectify his mistake. "Mm, just right," she said. Hot, slick grooves yawned wide under his fingers; he swiped over them, a firm, gentle pulse of movement. Ginger sighed and snuggled her face back into the juncture of his neck and shoulder, too far gone to manage anything coordinated like kissing.

Thump. Up into the wall again. Blair hit his head, and the impact sent a jolt to his cock. Long, strong fingers, Jim's hot fingers humped rudely into the sweaty waves of his hair and anchored to the base of his skull, shocking more response from Blair's aching dick. Blair took his hand from Ginger's ass to worm between his body and Ginger's, trying to pop the button and straining zipper of his fly. Ginger helped as she could between the violent thrusts that rhythmically squashed them all together with breathless pressure, finally freeing his trapped erection and circling it with her slender hands, one at the base, one at the head, pulling an embarrassing sound from his throat.

Thump! "Shit! Jim!" That earned him a nip from Ginger; he focused on her sly smile.

"You, you, don't you forget who has her hands on your merchandise," she panted, then was shoved into Blair's chest again. Blair continued his manual exploration of her crotch, distracting her with a clever strum of fingers on her clit while his other hand meandered lower, back, and felt it, that silky, slippery titanium pole wedged up inside Ginger.

Jim groaned. Blair looked up, met his eyes, felt the breathless mote of anticipation before a universe-shattering big bang. Jim's lips moved, a scarcely heard puff of air blowing gently on Blair's face as the lips came together, the tongue came forward, and Jim softly said, "Blair."

Jim's naked passion burned Blair, bore him up, humbled him. Blair's dick surged in Ginger's two-fisted grip, turned impossibly harder by the blue stare burning into him. Jim stared hard at him, never losing his place on Blair's face while he hurled himself into Ginger faster and harder as if he could drill right through her and reach Blair. He appeared focused, but his helpless gaze seemed to plead for something; Blair boldly reached down, feeling Jim's cock rear and plunge into Ginger's dripping flesh and pressed his fingers into Jim's hot, slippery skin, sliding over it. He hunched down, losing a few hairs as Jim's hand didn't follow quickly enough, fumbled until he could extend sufficiently far to cup Jim's balls as he thrust forward, rolling them with a gentle squeeze, never once pausing the nasty dance of his fingers in Ginger's slit.

"Blair! Jesus!" and Jim's face crumpled, deconstructed by a landslide of orgasm as he rode it with a last flurry of movement from his hips.

The thudding cadence against the wall nearly drove Blair to spatter right there, but Ginger distracted him as she wriggled between the men, chin on Blair's shoulder, panting into Blair's hair, each breath gaining definition as sound, rising in a surprisingly subdued crescendo, "Nn, mm, ah, ah, ahhh!" Her hands tightened on Blair's cock, spastic and oblivious, too random to bring him off, and fell away to pluck helplessly at his open shirt under a deluge of pleasure.

"Ohh," Blair breathed, suffused with palpable sparks of release rolling from Jim and Ginger. Both leaned into him, quaking randomly as residual bolts of chemical joy caromed through nerves, lax where they had been tense with effort just seconds ago. Once again, their combined weight inexorably pushed the air from his lungs. Since all his blood was pulsing in his cock, Blair doubted his brain would miss the lack, but his arms were tired from the cramped angle and continued movement of his fingers. "Move," he said.

Jim melted away to lean one shoulder against the wall and survey his ravaged front stupidly. Shirt undone, jacket half down his back, pants open and bunched around his knees, dick bobbing, still red and dripping. Ginger unrolled like a sultry quilt to Blair's other side and took up residence on the wall there, laying flat against it as if it alone held her up. Her hair had been teased from the back and forth thrusting; it balled up into a rat's nest around her shoulders. Both panted and gulped, not quite all the way back to earth.

Ginger eventually caught her breath. As she tugged the hem of her dress down, she murmured, "You guys." She sounded admiring. She put her hand on Blair's shoulder. "Here, let's take care of you," she said, and then gracefully dropped to her knees in front of him and began eating his dick.

"Fuck!" he swore, surprised with the suddenness of it. Ginger had a way with her mouth, aggressive and sweet all at once. The nibbling thing she did with kisses she did with blowjobs, tracing his length with little bites that felt like a hail of bliss on his nerve endings. He set his hands in her tangled hair, messing it up some more and liking how it looked, all sticking out. It made her look like a debauched, pretty witch. Her eyes flicked up, a saucy gleam in the dark depths, and she deep throated him, gliding on and off his entire cock, sparking involuntary bucks from his hips. He closed his eyes and let his head fall back heavily; it hit the wall noisily.

"Careful, Chief," said Jim, his voice low and affectionate. Blair's eyes snapped open.

He'd forgotten Jim was there, how could he forget Jim was there, Jim was, Jim was half naked and sated and looking at him while a girl sucked him off and Jim had already fucked her right in front of him and Jim was...

"I'm okay, oh, boy am I okay, I don't think I've ever been quite this okay in my life," he babbled. "Oh, yeah, that's it, just like that, Ginger, oh, jeez, yeah, yeah, more, more than okay, shit, yeah." His head flopped back and forth on the wall in a dither of embarrassment and throb; it had been one thing to share the sex train with Jim and Ginger, but they had reached their destination, he was on a different platform, and he didn't like the spotlight. His nerves and lust fizzed and jumped under his skin; he had to do something with it or bust. Nonsense and nerves continued to stream out of his mouth and then he swallowed, licked his lips, and cursed as he bucked in her mouth, "Damn, oh, Christ, oh, yeah!"

Ginger pulled off. "Blair! Shut the fuck up!" Laughter bubbled through the words, softening them, and she resumed her oral ministrations to his hard-on.

"Can't say I'm surprised," murmured Jim. Blair ventured a look, trying hard to focus when all he could feel was Ginger's wet, hot mouth working him ex