Archive of Our Own ^beta

Thanks Gayle, for all the help and for putting up with my latest kink: men who don't talk back and the men who love them. <g>

There's a little violence, but Gayle assured me it was still PG.

"Okay, now, spit it out." Jim rolled his eyes as frothy water dribbled down his partner's chin, onto the front of his t-shirt. "Sandburg," the detective growled. "Lean over the sink, remember? Like this." Jim patiently demonstrated again the proper way to spit into the sink after brushing and Blair watched, smiling impishly, foam still dripping from his chin.

"Very funny, wise guy." The scowl Jim graced him with as he wiped the remnants of toothpaste from the younger man's face only caused the unrepentant grin to expand. "You're lucky I think you're kinda cute, in spite of your warped sense of humor."

Unable to contain his own smile, Jim shook his head fondly as he gazed into the wide blue eyes filled with sincerity, trust and a bit of mischief. Sandburg was looking up at him, his eyes speaking volumes even though Sandburg himself had not spoken for nearly six weeks.

A flash of memory took him back in time, back to that fateful day, Thanksgiving, of all days.

Jim and Blair had driven Naomi and her companion to the airport and seen them off. The two detectives had to work Thanksgiving Day and thus had celebrated it the day before with Naomi and Thierry.

The day started out with a call to the Rainier campus. Jim remembered Blair being uncomfortable on the way -- jumpy and overly talkative, as he usually was when nervous. They found the body floating in the fountain outside of Hargrove Hall. It was a disturbing, unsettling scene, and one that brought back vivid, unwanted memories for Jim Ellison.

The victim's features were bloated, distorted-looking, but after a few minutes Blair, as well as some of the onlookers, had recognized the victim: another young prodigy, an eighteen year old in his junior year. It turned out that Blair had met the boy, spoken with him on a few occasions. Being that the young man was in a similar circumstance as Blair had been years earlier, he'd taken a vague interest in following the boy's academic career. Jim's sensitive hearing had picked up bits of conversations mentioning the possibility of drug use; eventually the lab reports confirmed the suspicion. Jim doubted that the circumstances would matter to Blair.

Later the same day, they had been summoned to a hostage situation at a convenience store. Blair, being Blair, had insisted and been granted permission to attempt to speak to the obviously strung-out perp, in hopes of talking him down and ending the standoff peacefully. Instead, right in front of their eyes, the man had shot the female hostage, point blank in the side of the head -- and then to Jim's shock and horror, he'd turned the gun on Blair.

Adding insult to injury would be putting it mildly, but possibly the most scarring event of the day -- for Blair Sandburg, anyway -- had been being broadcast at the very same time that everything was going down at the convenience store.

It didn't take Sentinel ears to hear the breaking news coverage as it played and replayed in the background on the small television behind the counter. Although Blair made no intimation that he'd heard any part of it, there was no mistaking the details of the reports, stated quite frequently as they were, describing the demise of the small private jet that had originally taken off from Cascade International Airport. The plane had gone down a couple hundred miles off the coast of Hawaii. No names were mentioned - pending notification of relatives, but the authorities expected no survivors would be found.

Whether the report was true, or some facade made up to protect Naomi from the dangerous organization she had gotten herself involved in, Jim had yet to prove. In hindsight, the dinner they'd shared had seemed a little too much like a farewell dinner. Naomi had been wistful and reminiscent most of the time. Blair decided it was simply because his mother knew they wouldn't be seeing each other again for awhile, but now that Jim thought about it, Naomi often popped in on them and then left again for months on end. Why was this time any different? There were too many questions, too many loose ends for Jim to be convinced that Naomi and her friend Thierry Budreaux were dead. He wished that he could discuss it with Blair. Soon, he told himself.

When Blair had opened his eyes hours later, Jim had been tentatively relieved, knowing that his partner's strength and will, if anything, would be major factors of getting him through this -- but knowing also that a man could take only so much. And Blair had taken many times his share in the past year.

The bullet had only grazed Blair's head, causing a laceration and accompanying concussion -- a few stitches and an overnight stay in the hospital. Except that those weren't the only injuries that Blair had sustained that day, they were only the visible ones.

"Post Traumatic Stress," he remembered the term -- a diagnosis that Jim could have easily made himself, for free. The doctors had reached their brilliant conclusion after a week or so of the patient's total lack of response to anyone, or anything. Afterwards, they'd suggested a probable brief stay in an institution, which they deemed to be a more suitable atmosphere for dealing with this type of illness.

Jim had taken his partner home.

"Don't bat those baby blues at me, Chief. It won't work. You already brushed your teeth and I ain't goin' through the 'Old Yeller routine' twice in one night."

Blair looked longingly at the clock, which read: eleven forty five.

"Water." Jim's chin lifted stubbornly. "It's water or nothing. It isn't written in stone that everyone has to have champagne at midnight."

Blair nodded, his expression equally stubborn and Jim was shocked for a moment, unsure of to how to react. This was the first time Blair had even attempted to communicate. Sure, he'd used 'the look' -- those big blue eyes had their own way of speaking, more impelling than any words could ever hope to be. But this simple gesture was much more than an affirmation. Though it was only a nod, it was definitely a big step forward.

"Is that yes to water, or, yes to it's written in stone that we have to have champagne?"

Blair smirked, his eyes glinting, saying in their own language: "What do you think, Mr. Detective?" Jim had to resist hugging the kid to pieces.

"Okay, water is it, Chief. Anything to make you happy." Purposely he ignored the look of disbelief and reached around the smaller man, pulled two champagne glasses down from the shelf, filled them with water and set them on the counter. "Cheers."

Blair gestured again.

"Ah, ah, ah...rule number seventeen, no profanity in the loft," Jim playfully admonished as he dumped the water down the drain. "For that, you have a week's worth of latrine duty."

This time it was Blair who rolled his eyes as he handed the 'Sparkling Champagne' to his grinning roommate.

It was now thirty-seven minutes into the New Year and Blair was sleeping soundly in Jim's arms, his cheek pressed against the broad chest. Jim yawned, feeling a little tired, but mostly just content to sit quietly on the couch, watching the beautiful young man. Every now and then, he gave into the urge to drop a tender kiss on the sleeping man's brow as he contemplated his life, their life, over the past year.

There had been so many bad times, he couldn't help but wonder if they made the good times worthwhile. Knowing he shouldn't dwell on the negative, he forced himself instead to count his blessings, the most important perhaps, that thankfully he still had Blair in his life. And as Blair would remind him, the past was exactly that: the past. No matter how many regrets he had, how many things he wished he'd have done differently, there was nothing he, or anyone, could do to change the past. It was over and done - history. But, you could learn from the past, use the knowledge to change things in the future.

This was a new year, a time to look ahead; because the future always held hope, it was full of possibilities.

And, he thought with a rueful smile, looking down at the man who had come to mean everything to him, that had never been more apparent to him than right now. Blair was living proof that there was always hope. He'd been through hell and had the scars, visible and invisible, as proof. Yet, here he was getting better every day, returning little by little to his old self.

Knowing that most of the traumatizing events Blair had been faced with in the past year couldn't have been foreseen, or prevented, didn't make it any easier. Jim knew that his partner would never have had such brutal and senseless things forced upon him if he hadn't have been...well, his partner. And as much as he wished he could protect and shelter his friend from every ugly thing in the world, he knew that was impossible - and that went for the future, too. Besides, Blair was already chronically pissed at him for the 'mother hen thing'. The only other way he could see for Blair to avoid the ugliness of their job was by cutting Blair out of his life and that was a thought that caused Jim Ellison's heart to physically ache.

So, maybe he couldn't spare his partner any of the pain that went with being his partner and maybe, in some ways, the past would always continue the same way, right on into the future. If so, they would just have to continue the same way, as well: day by day, taking the bad with the good, helping out where they could and helping each other when circumstances didn't allow.

At least they had each other and maybe together they could watch over each other to make sure the good and the bad always balanced out in the end. Together, they could make sure that life stayed worth living.

In the early morning darkness of a fresh new year, he made a silent promise, a resolution: To never again take for granted one single day. To cherish each smile, each witty remark, every caring gesture and every heartwarming embrace.

Looking down at Blair now, feeling the warm, soft breaths against his skin, he vowed in the future always to treasure the feeling of that sensual mouth, whether it was pleasuring his body or involved in a long, boring philosophical conversation. The future was theirs to make with it what they wanted and he had no intention of letting his -- or Blair's -- slip meaninglessly into the past.

End In the Minutes after Midnight by Sheryl: [email protected]

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