Thanks to Cori the Magnificent, who once again did battle with the adverb hordes and emerged victorious.

The lines of poetry Blair recites are from Walt Whitman's "The Dalliance of the Eagles."

Fear of Flying

By Lanning Cook

"Jiiiiiiim."

Jim stumbled over a tree root and peered blearily through the dark, trying to triangulate, with limited success, on the soft, enticing voice. "Sandburg?"

"Jiiiiiiim." The disembodied voice took on sultry, provocative tones.

Jim growled and loosened his bow tie as he moved deeper into the small grove of trees. "Sandburg, it's late. Simon's ready to go. Get your ass out here."

"Come get my ass," came a seductive purr.

"Jesus, Sandburg, how many did you have?"

"I don't remember. The mayor kept filling my glass." Something of sufficient mass to scatter the leaf litter struck the ground in the vicinity of the voice. "Look out below!"

Jim sighed and moved in the direction of the bombardment. "What a night. Come on, Chief, it's nearly two in the morning. What the hell are you doing out here?" He still couldn't see Blair, which was weird, considering how close he sounded. Hell, maybe the beers had affected his vision.

"I am communing with the intricate web of life that is the upper canopy." Another object struck the ground. "Behold! I am the mighty harpy eagle of Amazonia! RAWK! RAWK!"

"Christ in a cathouse," Jim sighed as his gaze was drawn, finally, upward.

Blair sat straddled on a tree limb, his back to the trunk, about twenty feet off the ground. His curls had pulled free of their restraining tie and floated wildly around his face as he flapped his arms in a vigorous, if inaccurate, imitation of a large bird of prey. Jim tripped over something in the leaves, and glancing down, realized that the mighty harpy eagle had disposed of its shoes.

"Damn it, Sandburg--" Something soft floated onto his head, and snarling, Jim snatched Blair's bow tie out of his hair and stuffed it in his pocket. "Come down out of there before you break your neck!"

Blair's tuxedo jacket plummeted in Jim's direction; he sidestepped it hastily. "Aw, Jim. You would never let me fall, man."

"Don't count on it," Jim lied, ignoring the siren call of Blair's sweet smile.

"Come up." Blair leaned a precarious distance from his limb to waggle his eyebrows at Jim. "You can be a mighty harpy eagle with me. The harpy eagle is the jaguar of the upper canopy. RAWK! RAWK!"

"Will you keep it down?" Jim snapped, with a nervous glance at the mayoral residence several yards away. "The house is still full of brass and old money. And press, too. So unless you and your eagle want to be on the front page of the Cascadian-"

"Don't you want to be a mighty harpy eagle, Jim?" Blair sent his cummerbund earthward with a serene expression.

"No, I don't fucking want to be a fucking harpy eagle! I want to go the fuck home and sleep in my fucking bed."

Blair nodded gravely as he unbuttoned his vest. "That's an awful lot of fucking for one sentence, man."

"Sandburg-" Jim dodged the vest. "Blair, for crying out loud-"

"It's code, isn't it?" Blair leaned over, yanked off his socks and tossed them into the air like confetti. "Subliminal communication. Ellison-speak."

"Sandburg, get your ass down here now." Jim spoke with an authority that only many years in the military and police force could give a man, knowing as he did so that he was pissing in the wind. Blair had, from the moment they'd met, possessed some bizarre immunity to his I've-been-a-Ranger-and-eaten-goat-shit-for-breakfast-obey-me-or-die voice, and it still bugged the hell out of him.

"Maybe fucking is what you want." Blair licked his lips and started unbuttoning his shirt. "You want fucking, Jim?"

Jim felt his jaw drop and his cock jump to attention. "G-get the fuck out of the tree, Sandburg."

"I thought so." Blair smiled in inebriated triumph as he slipped out of his shirt and sent it wafting toward Jim.

Jim batted the shirt out of his way and grabbed the nearest available branch. "Goddamn it!" He swung himself into the tree. "If I tear this tux-"

"The mighty harpy eagle has abundant plumage. RAWK! RAWK!"

"Shut up, you fucking lunatic! And don't take anything else off!" Jim sighed as Blair's belt slithered past him. "Oh, for God's sake."

"'The rushing amorous contact high in space together, the clinching interlocking claws, a living, fierce, gyrating wheel-'"

"Yeah, you bet your ass your wheels'll be gyrating, junior," Jim muttered, clambering awkwardly up to the next limb. "Your damn wheels'll never know what hit 'em when I get my hands on you."

"Aw, ease up, man, I'm being poetic here. 'Four beating wings, two beaks, a swirling mass tight grappling-'"

"And you can forget about any tight grappling! You're coming down out of this fucking tree and going home to sleep it off. And we are never going to another goddamn Cop of the Year dinner for the rest of our natural lives."

"'In tumbling turning clustering loops, straight downward falling-'"

"Don't even think about it," Jim snapped as his grip slipped slightly. "If there's any straight downward falling here, Sandburg, so help me God I will bust your ass for disorderly conduct and indecent exposure." He hoisted himself up to the limb under Blair's.

"That's silly, Jim," Blair observed with a grave, puzzled air. "How can a mighty harpy eagle be disorderly and indecent? I think maybe you've had too much to drink."

Jim paused in his climb, the effrontery of the suggestion leaving him momentarily speechless. "Yeah, that must be it. Thanks for clearing that up, Sandburg." He grabbed the branch above him, but the soles of his shoes slipped against the bark beneath them, and his fingers slid from Blair's branch. Gasping, he grabbed for it wildly, only to find himself steadied as a strong hand curled firmly around his wrist. Jim stared into midnight blues as Blair, hanging upside down from his branch by his legs and one hand, reeled him close enough to get both hands firmly around the branch.

"I've got you," Blair whispered.

Jim spent a couple of airless seconds wallowing for the thousandth time in the extraordinary sensory experience of those eyes, then swung himself up to straddle the branch. "No kidding," he breathed. Blair scrambled upright with more energy than coordination and clung to the branch, shivering. Jim shimmied close. "Here." He struggled out of his tuxedo jacket and wrapped it around Blair. "Have some abundant plumage."

Blair slipped his arms into the arms of the jacket with one of those smiles that inevitably knocked Jim out of his socks. "Thanks, man. Cold out here. Did the temperature just drop suddenly?"

"Nah," Jim said huskily, pulling Blair close, burying his cold hands in the mane of curls. Abundant plumage. Jim felt himself grin absurdly. "Think it's gone up, actually." He felt Blair's arms tighten around his waist, and nuzzled his friend's ear. "Nice catch, Chief," he whispered.

"I'll always catch you." Blair's voice was very soft.

Jim's grin faded; he rested his cheek against Blair's. "Yeah. I know. You always have."

"And you've always caught me."

Jim closed his eyes and let one hand slide from Blair's hair, down his neck, to his chest, to the rough scar tissue there. "Not always." His voice sounded like the turning of rusty gears to him.

"Always," Blair contradicted fiercely. "I'm here, aren't I?"

Jim felt something small snap. "Yeah, you're here. You're here taking a bullet for some two-bit slime-ball politician-"

"Now you want to talk about this?" Blair pulled back to regard him with an exasperated expression.

"After you told him what was going to go down, after he fucking ignored you-"

"This is so damn typical. For three weeks I do everything but take the Jaws of Life to the Twitchy-Jawed Lipless Wonder that is Jim Ellison-"

"-after the son of a bitch treated you like something he'd scraped off the sole of his shoe-"

"-and me looking cute as hell in a hospital gown-"

"-because the fraud who has no business being a cop couldn't possibly know what he was talking about, and his partner couldn't be there to convince the prick because he was testifying in court, all because the fucking DA says a fraud's not a credible witness-"

"-and you nod or grunt or say 'Not now, Chief,' or 'Everything's fine, Chief,' or 'Can I have your jello, Chief'-"

"-so when it did go down, I got there too damn late to catch you."

"-and now you want to talk, when we're in a tree being eagles?"

Jim stopped, breathing hard, clutching Blair's shoulders so tightly that it must have hurt. "I didn't-"

Blair jostled Jim's ribcage with a fierce expression. "So I, what, flew to the ER?"

Jim leaned his forehead against Blair's and closed his eyes.

"You saved my life. Again. You caught me, Jim."

Jim growled inarticulately, suppressing the memory of Blair lying bleeding on the mayor's office floor while His Honor cowered under his desk, howling for someone to save his miserable hide. God, he wished he had video of that; he'd give a copy to every reporter he could find. As it was, the only people who knew about it were Jim, the mayor's assistant, and the mayor's stalker, who was, fortunately for His Honor, very dead indeed after Jim got through emptying his Glock into him.

Jim opened his eyes and took Blair's face in his hands. Two minutes. If he'd just gotten out of court two minutes sooner, he could have stopped that psycho before he'd so much as laid eyes on Blair.

"And you saved the mayor's life, too," Blair added with an excruciating overabundance of wide-eyed innocence.

"Fuck the mayor," Jim muttered, refusing to smile.

"And we're back to fucking again."

"Shut up, Sandburg."

"I thought you said no tight grap-"

Jim kissed him, laughing into the kiss in spite of everything as Blair did his level best to keep talking. Blair eventually gave up, and drew his arms around Jim's neck, deepening the kiss, his tongue teasing Jim's mercilessly as he drew him inside. Encouraged, Jim pressed against him; Blair yielded to the pressure until his back made contact with the tree trunk. Jim felt Blair's hands slide down his neck to his chest, then gasped as they lunged for his belt buckle. He yanked back, breaking the kiss as Blair threw his legs over Jim's and wrapped them firmly around Jim's waist. "What the hell are you-"

"Tight grappling, man," Blair murmured, all dark eyes and heavy breathing. He opened Jim's pants with hot, shaking fingers.

"You're certifiable," Jim rasped, unable to resist a little thrust into Blair's eagerly groping hand.

"I'm alive," Blair corrected him. He stroked Jim gently. "We're alive."

Jim buried his face in Blair's hair, breathing in the familiar, beloved scent. Blair had a bad case of faith. He always had, from the moment they'd met, and that still bugged the hell out of Jim, too, because Blair's faith was absurd, and dangerous, and uncannily contagious. Jim gave up, drew a shaky breath and humped shamelessly into Blair's hand, shoving Blair against the tree trunk with each thrust. "Yes," he rasped. "Alive."

Blair laughed in breathless delight; the warm, whiskey-scented air tickled Jim's ear as Blair broke into a whispered chant. "And flying, flying, flying...."

"Because I can catch you." Jim believed it.

"Catch you," Blair murmured.

Jim kissed Blair's ear, running his tongue over the lobe. God, he tasted so good. Felt so good. Smelled so good. Musk and spice and sweat and cigars.....

Jim froze.

"Ellison! Sandburg!"

Jim pulled back and stared into Blair's wide, laughing eyes for a moment. "Shit!" He smacked Blair's hand away and made a frantic and profoundly uncomfortable attempt to zip up his pants.

Blair's laughter became giggles. "Uh...officer requires assistance-"

"It's Simon!" Jim hissed in exasperation.

"Ellison!"

"Over here, Simon," Blair called with a blithely unconcerned air.

Jim set his teeth and managed through sheer force of will to get his zipper up and smack Blair on the top of his head before Simon loomed out of the darkness, a cigar clenched between his teeth. "Where?

"Here, sir." Jim abandoned a feverish attempt to buckle his belt with a resigned sigh.

Simon lifted his gaze to the two men above him, coming to an abrupt halt as he stumbled over Blair's shoes. An ominous silence fell as Jim watched Simon take in every detail of their disheveled appearance, then very slowly pull the cigar from his mouth, eyes narrowing. "Hell's. Bells."

Jim cleared his throat. "He climbed the tree, sir."

"You don't say."

"I was trying to help him down."

"We're being harpy eagles," Blair added helpfully.

Simon bared his teeth in what someone with no regard for the sanctity of human life might have called a smile.

"The harpy eagle is an apex predator of the rainforest," Blair continued, evidently construing the ferocious display as ardent interest. "Do you want to be harpy eagles with us?" He wiggled his toes in Simon's general direction.

Simon lowered his head to level a fearsomely baleful glare over the rims of his glasses.

"Oh. Okay," Blair said in a very small voice. "Consider the question withdrawn."

Simon turned the glare on Jim. "Detective, the mayor wishes to say goodnight to the Police Officer of the Year."

Jim cleared his throat. "Yes, sir."

"So get the Police Officer of the Year's sorry ass out of that tree and put his clothes back on him."

"Yes, sir."

"And get some coffee into him."

"Yes, sir."

"And never, under any circumstances, allow me to offer you my services as designated driver again."

"No, sir."

"Now, move." Simon shoved his cigar back in his mouth and turned away to stalk off into the dark toward the house, muttering audibly about eagles and mental cases. Jim let loose the breath he'd been holding.

Blair watched him go with an uncharacteristically sober expression. "I guess he doesn't like flying."

Jim swung down to the branch beneath them, knowing he had a dopey smile on his face and not giving a damn. "Yeah, I'd say that's a safe bet. Give me your hand, Chief."

Blair glanced down at him uncertainly. "You okay with flying, man?" he asked softly, taking Jim's hand.

"Yes," Jim said firmly, helping Blair off the limb above him and into his arms.

Blair wrapped his arms around Jim's waist, letting Jim balance them both, and studied Jim's face carefully. "You sure?

"Oh, yeah." Jim pulled him close, still smiling. "I'm the jaguar of the upper canopy, Chief."

End

End Fear of Flying by Lanning Cook: LanningCk@aol.com

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