Archive of Our Own ^beta

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"Blair."

"mmp"

"Blair."

"ung."

"Blair."

"FerChrissake, Jim, what? Ouch."

"Are you all right?"

"How are we defining all right these days? Does it include gaping headwounds?"

"It’s not gaping."

"Whatever. Some guy hit me with a two by four, it’s bleeding, close enough."

"It’s superficial."

"This is your idea of supportive, isn’t it?"

"What do you want me to say? That’s a big fucking headwound you got there, Sandburg, maybe it’ll scar?"

"Well, there you go."

"I don’t get you."

"That’s ‘cause I’m an eternal mystery."

"hmp. Eternal misery perhaps."

"You know what? Next time, I’m planning on getting stuck in a, where are we?

"Freezer."

"yeah, a freezer, with a guy who’s actually funny."

There was some scrabbling as Blair pulled himself into a sitting position and leaned against the wall.

"It’s not cold," he said, suspiciously.

"Usually, gun runners don’t set up illegal operations in a working fish processing plant."

"Ah," Blair sighed and winced.

"Don’t poke it," Jim said.

"So. um. what’s the plan?"

"Well," Jim hesitated.

"yeah?"

"We’re trapped. It’s locked. From the outside."

"And?"

"And they left. I don’t hear anyone."

"And?"

"And that’s it. There’s nothing—I mean, unless you’re carrying a rocket launcher or something, there’s no way we can break down a wall."

"We could yell."

"No one will hear us, there’s no one, Sandburg."

"We’re trapped in a freezer, there’s nothing we can do. That’s your plan?"

"Yeah."

"Hey, no offense, Jim, but your plan sucks."

"You were out for forty-five minutes, Sandburg, believe me, I tried to think of a better one."

"And then you couldn’t, so you thought you’d wake me up so I could participate in the exciting final hours of my life."

"I’m sorry, I should never have, I should have tried to shoot that guy—"

"And gotten shot yourself and left me in here to die alone, now there’s an attractive option."

"More air."

"Forget it. If I’m gonna die, I’d rather do it with you."

"Really?"

"No, not really, that’s why I keep jumping out of planes and getting shot at when I’m with you. I would have thought it would be amply clear by now,"

"Okay, jeez, I got it."

"Fine." He stopped talking and Jim spun his hearing out for a minute, but heard nothing but Sandburg’s lungs, still steady, quick, confident.

"Forty-five minutes," Blair said.

"I’m not sure."

"You could look at your watch."

"In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s pitch black in here."

"In case you hadn’t noticed, you’re a fricken Sentinel. Dial it up."

"Doesn’t work. No source of light."

"oh."

"How much longer, anyhow?"

"Couple hours, maybe."

"Maybe there’s a leak."

"no."

"How can you tell?"

"The amount of oxygen in the air’s been falling pretty steadily. A little faster since you started yapping."

"Sorry."

"Blair, I didn’t mean it like that. Yap. I want you to yap."

"I don’t know what to say."

"Oh."

"Blair, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—"

"Self-recrimination isn’t really helping me."

"Sorry."

"We’re gonna die."

"Yeah."

"Shit."

"Yeah."

"You wanna tell me some revealing anecdote or something?"

"Am I supposed to do that?"

"That’s what usually happens."

"When?"

"Like on tv."

"You don’t fucking watch tv."

"I do too, I watch tv."

"No you don’t. You have weird liberal guilt about watching tv. And anyhow, I hate to break this to you, but you’re the one who’s supposed to come through with the cryptic fable."

"What?"

"Yes, yes, you know, you’re supposed to offer me illumination and peace because, being the Shaman, you’ve already made peace with yourself."

"Oh you’re so full of shit, Ellison, see, this is the type of crap I can’t even believe I put up with. How hackneyed and lame is that, I ask you? No, see, it’s you, because it’s unpredictable--everyone’s expecting me to be all calm, but I prove myself to be only a man, you know, with normal fears and everything and you prove to have unseen depths."

"I told you you didn’t watch tv."

"I’m scared. And if you tell me to take it like a man, I’m gonna punch you."

"Technically, that would be taking it like a man."

"Before. Last time, you know, I didn’t know it was happening. It wasn’t like this. Just, it was fast, you know."

"You don’t really talk about it."

"Well. It’s not cocktail party material."

"Since when do you go to cocktail parties?"

"Haven’t you been paying attention? I go to cocktail parties all the time. Department parties, and now, of course, all my friends are getting old, so they have cocktail parties and it’s, I can’t stop talking in the present tense."

"Yeah."

"Do you regret stuff?"

"What kind of question is that? Of course I regret stuff. I regret saying, hey, Sandburg, let’s check out that suspicious light in the abandoned fish processing plant. And I regret not having that damn danish this morning and I spent last Friday night dusting the Loft, so, yeah."

"oh."

"Do you regret stuff?"

"Naw."

"Really?"

"Hey, I got laid last Friday."

"oh. Well, that’s nice that you don’t regret anything."

"I don’t know. You know, after I died the first time, I thought, well, hell, I should change stuff, that there was definitely stuff I wanted to change. But I never really got around to it. So I can’t have regretted it that much, right?"

"I guess."

"Yeah."

"Are you cold? You’re freezing, Sandburg, why didn’t you say anything?"

"Nothing to say."

"Come over here," Jim said, and Blair shifted and he put an arm around him.

"It’s weird not being able to see you."

"yeah."

Blair reached out and ran a hand over Jim’s face, tracing the outlines. He came up on his knees and hugged Jim and gave him a kiss on the cheek and they clung to each other for a minute before Jim’s mouth found Blair’s. In the darkness, Blair’s mouth and body seemed warmer than they had any right to be, and, after all, it was better than screaming or crying, better to gather Blair’s body to his and have his urgent mouth, have Blair’s hands in his hair and stroking down his back. Better to find out that Blair’s neck tasted like blood and gunpowder, to taste the salty curve of his jaw, to use up the last of the oxygen with the obliterating comfort of lust.

Soon, even kissing took too much breath, and Jim had turned all his senses down because he couldn’t bear to hear the confused heave of Blair’s diaphragm. With his mouth on Blair’s, he’d been able to hear the first faint crumble of cells from lack of oxygen. Jim’s head was whirling, and when he closed his eyes, the insides of his eyelids spun with queasy color. Blair’s hand found his, fingers scrabbling down his arm before clutching his fingers.

When the light came in, he zoned.

"You didn’t miss much," Blair told him later. "You know, paramedics, oxygen, Simon stalking about and taking all the credit for weaseling our location out of those guys. Oh, and I told everyone that you had terrible claustrophobia and you shut down from the fear."

"Why’d you do that?"

"You zoned, man."

"You couldn’t make up some lie that made me look a little less like a dork? No one’s even gonna believe that."

"Yes, well, sorry if, in my oxygen deprived state, I was unable to come up with something that would preserve your super stud image."

"I didn’t say I was a stud."

"Whatever.

They got the weekend off.

"I don’t suppose," Simon had said, glaring at them before giving them a ride home, "that there’s any way you could have avoided stumbling into a dozen gun runners."

"Sorry," Jim said.

"I can’t think why they didn’t just shoot you."

"Who knows? Sadistic thrills," Blair suggested.

"About all that," Jim said. They’d spent most of Saturday having unexpected fits of relief. Jim had eaten a danish and done some laundry and Blair had graded some tests and offered to make paella for dinner. It was cooking and they were both staring out at the city.

"Yeah." Blair squinted out into the night and Jim waited a moment, expecting some sort of theory on near death experiences from Blair, who had, after all, had them before. Pointing this out seemed insensitive, though, so he said,

"Well. No big deal."

Blair shrugged a little and then said, "Yeah, you’re right."

"I was. I mean. I was glad you were there. Except, I mean, I wish you hadn’t been. But if anyone had to be, I’m glad it was you."

"Thanks." The timer pinged.

There was definitely something very wrong with him: that was the conclusion that Jim had drawn a few days later. He’d snapped right back from the near death part of it all, of course—he always did. Perhaps it wasn’t ideal that every job he’d ever had involved people trying to shoot him, but he’d grown used to it.. And he didn’t even feel all that bad about dragging Blair into it. Blair could make his own decisions; Blair understood the danger. But, maybe, Jim thought, maybe he should be worried about all this near death stuff. And he should certainly be thinking it over more than he was thinking over the kissing. But, no, it was Blair’s mouth that preoccupied him.

Well yes, the stress of the situation, and the need for human contact, but that didn’t seem quite right at all, because he was in life or death situations all the time and he’d never really had the urge to do anything of the sort until he felt the small shivers climbing up Blair’s spine, his cool fingers on his face. He was getting soft, that was all there was to it. Once he’d been trapped in a fucking collapsed mine shaft. With a woman, a very attractive woman at that, all dark hair and curves, and they’d played checkers with rocks they’d found for three days. Checkers, for God’s sake. And then, Blair.

Jim spent a lot of time having stupid inner dialogues which took a long time, in spite of the fact that he was agreeing with himself:

"It was just kissing."

"Well, it was."

Still, though, the oddest thing about it was how easily he could accept it. Makin’ out with Blair in a fucking industrial freezer: just another day in the life of Jim Ellison. It was interesting; it was a hell of a lot more interesting than thinking about suffocating. It was like a scab—wrong to pick at it, might get infected, might scar, but it was always irresistible to worry at the outside edges, to dig a fingernail underneath. Jim found himself contemplating it, almost detached about it, the way Blair’s mouth had opened under his, the hand that had slid under his jacket and fisted in his shirt.

Jim had never been much of one for delicate women—the women who really knocked him out were tall and strong, fucking monuments, women with thighs that wrapped unforgivingly around his hips, all this perhaps the residue of his first serious college girlfriend, whose father had been some sort of crazy martial arts type. Their first date, she’d more or less kicked the shit out of him and then they’d had sex in the bed of his truck and the fact that she’d just about ripped his arm out of its socket made the sex even better, a confused mixture of pleasure and pain and adrenaline and the cold metal of the truck bed against his spine that he’d never really been able to recapture again. Until the freezer, until Blair, who was, of course, no martial artist, but was still strong, simply by virtue of being a man, he’d dragged Jim over on top of him and their legs had tangled and just feeling Blair’s leg scrape up calf and wrap over the back of his thigh had been shocking.

He had time to think all this over during long boring hours when he decided that he definitely could not afford to piss Simon off, because being a security guard, even undercover, was boring as all hell. He almost wished someone would try to break into Hydra Security so he could shoot them. And what kind of asshole name was Hydra Security anyway?

"That’s the monster in—" Sandburg had said.

"I know," he’d said.

And, because he was a detective, because he collected facts like some people collected matchboxes, it was simply good to know that Blair wanted to be kissed before he died. It was good to know his lips fit perfectly against Blair’s throat. His whole job was supposed to be figuring things out, figuring people out, and it sometimes surprised him that he ever succeeded, because people were so hard, impermeable, warped by the inevitable isolation of their own thoughts, and how could you ever know what people were really thinking, even when they told you, even when they weren’t trying to lie? So the kissing, Blair’s muffled contented sigh against his lips, was finally just comforting proof—that perhaps he knew Blair, that he could figure him out.

"Jim," Megan said. He realized that she’d been trying to talk to him for several days. He’d been busy, one way or another. After they packed off Vince Deal, he’d had to clean the whole loft. ("It smells like cheese or dead things or something," he’d said. "yes, yes," Blair had said soothingly, and offered to vacuum the couch.) Jim looked sideways at Megan who was busily emptying a packet of sugar into her coffee.

"Megan," he said. She cleared her throat and said, again,

"Jim. I just, I wanted to say," she nodded a few times, looked hard at her coffee and continued, "no hard feeling about the kissing."

"About the," he gaped at her. Christ, did everyone know? And what did Megan have to do with all that—unless Sandburg was seeing her. He couldn’t possibly have missed something like that, could he? No. And Megan looked apologetic, too, which made no sense.

"It was just, it was nothing." She gave him an ingratiating smile. Jim realized he was glowering and tried to stop.

"Um." Jim said, suddenly remembering the fairly indistinct recitation Sandburg had given him after his undercover stint. He hadn’t said anything about any kissing.

"It’s. It wasn’t my intention to step on any toes or, you know, um, invade your turf."

"My turf?" Jim said.

"It was undercover," Megan said, warming to her topic. "And Sandy would never cheat on you."

"Connor. I’m not. Sandburg is not my turf." Jim took a deep drink of his coffee, and glared at her a little, because he couldn’t really think of anything else to say. Under his gaze, Megan went startlingly pale and then a deep shade of red.

"’scuse me," she said quietly. "I need to go kick Henri in the balls."

Jim went back to his desk and started to muddle through forms, right as Henri was saying,

"I didn’t know you’d believe me, what kind of idiot are you?" and Rafe was laughing,

"You said what?"

Later, once again in the break room, Henri said,

"Hey, Jim, I really had Megan going, huh?"

"yeah," he said.

"Man, who’da thunk? That woman believes everything you tell her," but Jim could hear Megan’s sharp voice in the interrogation room two floors below and she was asking,

"do you think I’m soft in the head? You’ll have to come up with a better story than that, because no one would believe that."

"You should have seen her face," Henri chortled.

I’ve got to stop coming in here, Jim thought. Poorly made coffee is not worth this.

Sandburg wasn’t in when he got home, which was too bad, because he was in a rotten mood. He felt like giving someone a hard time about starting dinner, then remembered it was his turn. Shit. He got a beer and stalked around a little, trying to calm down. He felt a little—indignant. At Megan, of course: how could she simply assume—but no, that wasn’t it either. Whatever it was, it was giving him a headache and after a few minutes of staring out the window, trying to dial it down, he realized that it was the memory of Henri’s laugh. He’d been so pleased with the absurdity of the joke. Because, what, it was so ridiculous that Blair might want him? He’d wanted him that night in the freezer, that was for damn sure. Jim finished the beer, sighed, and started dinner.

An hour later, Blair still wasn’t home, and he still had a headache, and Blair had broken the rice cooker and forgotten to tell him, and he was trying to cook a pork shoulder, but the meat thermometer had gone missing and he was trying to figure out a way to see if it was cooked without hacking into the middle of the thing every five minutes. This is exactly the kind of thing I should be able to use the whole Sentinel thing for, he thought. He stared glumly through the window of the stove and wondered where the hell Sandburg was, because he might have some bright idea about this. He sniffed experimentally and then widened the range to see if he could smell anything—Sandburg was close—just outside the building and he was wearing some god awful perfume. Huh. Jim went out on the balcony to investigate.

There was a girl down there, no big surprise. Blair had a companionable hand on her back and was kissing her, and Jesus, Jim could see his tongue moving over her lips and Blair wasn’t even bothering to cover her mouth with his, he was just kissing her lazily, his tongue barely dipping inside her mouth. It was the lewdest thing Jim had ever seen anyone do in public who wasn’t undercover. Or a hooker. He wondered if it had looked like that when Blair kissed him. He went inside and hacked into the middle of the pork, which was pink and hot. He burnt his finger on the pan. He was running it under cold water when Sandburg came in.

Jim bit back a "Where the hell were you?" and said, "Hey," instead.

"Hey," Blair answered. "Smells good."

"It needs to go for another twenty minutes or so, I think," Jim said. He felt too tired to bring up the rice cooker.

"Pork?" Blair asked.

"If you’re gonna rediscover your Jewish roots or something, there’s salad."

"This isn’t the patented Jim Ellison, ‘one crappy leaf of iceberg lettuce and an orphan tomato’ salad, is it?" Blair said.

"Oh, shut up," Jim said, "you eat bacon all the fucking time."

"Oh, it’s the patented Jim Ellison, ‘I’m in an incredibly crappy mood for no good reason’ scowl."

"Oh, it’s the patented Blair Sandburg, ‘I’m a big smartass’ remark."

"Whoo, good one, Jim."

"Would you like the patented Jim Ellison ‘fuck off’?" Jim said.

"Naw. I already got a few of those." He grinned at Jim and rummaged in the drain board for utensils and Jim sighed and smiled, his headache quietly gone.

"So who was that," he asked, forking up the last piece of potato on his plate, leaving a bite of meat for last.

"Who?"

"Person outside with you—I smelled her."

"Mm, just a friend."

"Didn’t look like just a friend, really."

"What, you spying on me now?" Blair smiled.

"Don’t need to spy on you, you were frenching some girl in a public place."

"Hey, Jim, it’s no big deal."

"Look, you don’t want me to meet her, fine," he speared the last piece of meat and brought it to his mouth, but it dropped off his fork and onto his shirt. He picked it up and dropped it on his plate, but it left a greasy spot, "Shit," he said, as Blair said,

"Jim, it was just a kiss, she’s no one special."

"Oh." Jim said, too quickly. He stood up and said "I’m just gonna go change this shirt." He climbed the stairs and pretended he hadn’t heard Blair say,

"Wait." By the time Blair got to the top of the stairs, he’d pulled off the t-shirt and realized that he really needed to soak the stain. He was still holding it in his hands, and Blair said,

"Jim."

"S’nothing," he said. "It’s, no, right. That’s fine," not even sure any longer what he was talking about and Blair tried again,

"Jim, I didn’t mean it like that."

"I know that."

"And that was," Blair sighed and said, "it was different."

"Right." Jim nodded. He put the shirt in the hamper.

"So we’re okay," Blair said.

"Yeah, sure."

Blair turned to go down the stairs but Jim was suddenly on him, pulling him back, twisting him in his arms, pushing him down. He ended up on the bed, under Jim, their faces inches apart.

"Jim, what the fuck—" Blair said,

"I’d be really interested," Jim said slowly, pretending his heart wasn’t pounding, "to find out exactly what makes a person special."

"Jim—"

"C’mon Sandburg. It’s a scientific inquiry."

"Oh you’ve got to be kidding me," Blair said, rolled his eyes and laughed and Jim kissed him then, long and hot and he finished with a long definitive lick around Blair’s lips and Blair gaped up at him and Jim said,

"Just a kiss," Jim said, and pushed Blair’s hair off his forehead. Blair wiggled a little beneath him, but didn’t really try to get away, "doesn’t really make special material."

"Jim, "

"Answer the question," Jim said, and squeezed experimentally at Blair’s hip.

"Question?"

"Yeah. We’re going for special here, you know, so what’s it gonna be?"

"You’re bluffing—you’ve never even done this before."

"You think I can’t find your sweet spots?" Jim said. "I can feel you—you’re so fucking hot for me you can barely hold still." He felt himself redden at the words, at the entire exchange, asking himself, who the fuck d’you think you are, anyhow, and he suddenly really wanted to stop, wanted to get up and leave, but Blair really was hot beneath him, looking up at him, panting slightly, and it was too late, because he’d relaxed his hold and Blair reached up and gripped the back of his neck and pulled him down and said,

"Fine, then." He kissed Jim gently, ending with a teasing bite.

"um," Jim said.

"I mean, this I’d like to see, so, go ahead," he let go of Jim's neck and grinned suddenly and Jim knew that grin, the last time he’d seen it, he’d lost a basketball game to Blair and ended up making dinner for two weeks running.

"Blair,"

"What, you’re backing out? Don’t be a fucking wimp, Jim, you’re right, I’m hot for you—you gonna do something about it?" Blair raised his eyebrows and rolled his hips slightly against Jim’s groin. He wiggled his shoulders invitingly, smirked. Jim did nothing, started to roll off him. "I knew you’d never do it," Blair mocked. Jim stopped and glared at Blair before saying,

"Fine." He frowned in concentration for a moment and then reached for Blair’s shirt. He unbuttoned it and opened it slowly, trying to do it seductively and failing. He knew he just looked as if he didn’t know what he was doing. He fumbled open the last button and Blair leered at him and Jim swallowed and stroked his fingertip across a nipple. Blair’s lips parted a little, possibly in surprise, so Jim bent down, slid one hand behind the smell of Blair’s back and licked the nipple. And then he did it again, harder.

"oh, shit," Blair said, and Jim’s hand caught him as his back arched, and his knees came up on either side of Jim’s waist and Blair’s cock was abruptly hard against Jim’s stomach. Blair set his heels against the bed and started pressing his dick up against Jim, one hand flying up to clutch the back of his head, until Jim was hunching frantically against his ass, still worrying at the same nipple and Blair managed to gasp,

"you wanna fuck my ass, that it, Jim?" his voice strained and Jim pulled off him, said

"no," slightly appalled, not sure if the words had been calculated to incite him or slow him down. He looked carefully at Blair, who was flushed and panting.

"Look, Blair," he said, and pulled his hand from Blair’s back.

"Hey, Jim, I really hope you don’t pull this kind of crap with the other people you sleep with." Blair pulled Jim back down and then rolled him swiftly over, "or do you have some weird kink about making people beg for it, which in my opinion, points to some serious self-esteem issues on your part."

"Would you shut up," Jim said, making token efforts at moving Blair.

"I’m not the one who was so interested in knowing what turned me on," Blair smirked.

"It’s not stopping in the middle of things to make stupid psychological assessments, is it?"

"So, we’re in the middle of things?"

"No," Jim backtracked.

"Look at my nipple, Jim." Blair said, pulling his shirt off his shoulders and then over his hands, dropping it on the bed. Jim looked. It was red and wet and slightly distended and the skin around it was pink.

"oh, fuck, Sandburg, I’m sorry, I don’t know why I,"

"Save it, Jim. Look, why don’t you just pretend we’re about to die, and let’s get it on."

"You know, that doesn’t get me in the mood at all."

"You’re so fucking picky." Blair said, exasperated. "Okay, then." He reached out and ran his finger across the shallow curve of Jim’s cheekbone, and then cupped his head gently and leaned down for a kiss. Blair kissed his lips and his throat and his chest and rubbed his cock teasingly against Jim until Jim was squirming underneath him and Blair whispered,

"You saw me kissing her and it got you all jealous and hot."

"so?" Jim said.

"You want it so bad, I bet you’d love to suck my cock."

"You’re a fucking pervert, Sandburg." But his voice faltered and his hands were on Blair’s ass pulling him up closer and Blair unbuttoned his pants and he wasn’t wearing any underwear. He shoved himself off Jim enough to get at Jim’s pants. He drew the zipper all the way down and Jim’s hands were entirely preoccupied with the small of his back and his thighs and his ass and then they found the crease directly beneath his ass and moved slowly along it several times and Blair threw his head back and pushed himself against Jim’s hands and panted,

"Jim, I can’t wait, I have to," he snugged his hips into Jim’s and at the first touch of their cocks, Jim’s hands fell off him, but they came back when Blair moved again, he felt his hips jerk involuntarily and then Blair’s hands were everywhere, twisting a nipple almost roughly, letting out a fierce knowing grin at Jim’s yelp. Then he put his hands on Blair’s shoulderblades and forced him down until their chests were touching, Blair’s chest sliding sweatily against his, soft kisses on his collarbone a sharp contrast with the slick lunges of Blair’s hips, his tongue slithered across Jim’s nipple and Jim moaned, tried to shift his legs but they were trapped in his pants and he moaned again, brutally excited by the trapped feeling, by Blair’s nipples digging into his chest, and he reached between them for his cock, but Blair grabbed his wrist and held it against the bed and gasped,

"no no no, you come with me, you come from me, from my touching you," and then Blair found his other wrist and it was all so good, and Blair’s cock was so amazingly hard against his and Blair stuck a few fingers inside the waistband of his underwear and it ought to have been nothing, Blair’s cock already thrusting against his, but the strange intrusion set him off, made him come and Blair came almost immediately after that, his fingernails digging hard into Jim’s hip.

Jim found the fingernail marks there the next day, small half moons. He considered picking at them so they’d scar, getting them good and full of bacteria. Stop it, he told himself, and resolutely smeared neosporin across them. He stood in the bathroom, still another hour before he had to be at work. They hadn’t said much anything to each other afterwards—Blair had rolled off him and into sleep. Jim thought briefly about waking him up, but abandoned the plan. He was pretty sure it would be an unpleasant experience. Blair would probably yell, and sex tended to really fuck with his controls, make them fluctuate haphazardly. Women were nice in this regard—he’d hold them and sort of mumble a little, and gradually the painful prickle of their skin would die down and become soft again. It helped to have someone to touch, but Blair was on the other side of the bed, so he gritted his teeth and stared at the wall until his sight stopped weaving around.

"So what now?" Blair said when they got home that night. They hadn’t seen each other all day, although Blair had left him a voicemail message: ""Hey, Jim, just, reminding you, remember I can’t make it today." He sounded nervous. He sounded less nervous now, curled on the couch, a cup of tea in hand. Jim sat down on the other couch, sighed, and said,

"I don’t know. We could just forget it," he added hopefully.

"yeah. Why’d you do it?"

"Wanted to. Wanted to see if I could."

"Well, you can. Pin a rose on you. I meant, what for," Blair looked at theground.

"That’s the same question," Jim pointed out.

"Okay, to what end, then?"

"You wanted it," Jim said helplessly, knowing it was true, wondering how he could have known at the time, because this Blair was staring at him with opaque eyes, tilting his head like an intelligent dog, saying,

"So what?" It scared him a little when this happened, when his sight zoomed up so far that everyone became just a big pile of cells and he’d have sudden panicked feeling that people were set up like those old Western movie sets where the facades of houses were propped up with wooden beams and Blair wasn’t insulting him or reminding him of any of the thousand tiny things he knew about him, he wasn’t helping, goddamit, so Jim said rudely,

"I don’t know what your problem is: can’t you just accept a good orgasm like normal person?"

"Can’t I just, what?" Blair said, dumbfounded. "No, never mind, it’s too weird to hear you say orgasm, man, I can’t, it’s—did you have a plan or something?"

"Do I have to have a plan?"

"So you just did it for the hell of it."

"I guess." Jim rolled his shoulders nervously.

"I don’t believe this."

"You know," Jim said, starting to get a little annoyed, "I don’t understand why you’re always whining about how I don’t have a plan."

"Jim, you fucking jumped me, okay? I was just trying to figure out if that was the product of months of introspection or if—"

"You think that if I thought about it for months, that’s what I’d come up with?"

"We’ll, I don’t know what you’d come up with, because I never thought about you thinking about it for months, did I," Blair said vehemently.

"I don’t know."

"We’ll neither do I." They glowered at each other and then Jim looked away first and said,

"It was spur of the moment."

"Well, okay."

"And I’m sorry." He tried to prevent the gratitude from creeping into his voice at this crabby Blair, with his accounting for time, his winning the argument, because Blair always won, and that was one more strike against that mysterious shit you could never know about a person, because Blair always won and that was proof, wasn’t it?

"That’s okay," Blair said magnanimously. He knew he always won too.

"No, it was pretty rude."

"Look, no hard feelings. You got a little nutty, I wasn’t exactly Miss Manners about the whole thing."

"No, you weren’t."

"Your apologies suck, Jim."

"What the hell do you want from me, Sandburg?"

"Usually, people kind of go for the routine, ‘I’m so sorry, Blair,’ or ‘Whatever can I do to repair the terrible psychic damage, Blair,’ but this is original, it’s very creative."

"Smartass," Jim smirked, and got up to make dinner.

And that was all that was said about it. Jim felt vaguely confused about the whole thing—as if the conversation had started out in one place and effectively ended up someplace else, without really getting to any of the places he wanted to go. His own fault, really. He’d known it was coming; he should have been prepared. He should have practiced his questions. It had been a fairly slow day at the station; he ought to have made a goddam list or something. He wondered if Blair regularly rubbed his cock against other guy’s cocks, felt somewhat ill at the prospect, and ended up relieved that he hadn’t prepared, since he probably would have ended up blurting out that very question, which would have led to Blair saying things like, "That isn’t the issue," or "None of your fucking business," or, worst of all, "As a matter of fact, I fuck other guys on a regular basis."

Better this way. It was proving to be the best one night stand he’d ever had. Never mind that the sex, even if they hadn’t gotten all of their clothes off, had been fucking hot, relations between them jogged along amicably. Blair kept seeing Jody or Judy or whoever the kissing girl was. Jim kept beating off, although he found himself taking his time lately. This was new; usually he was workmanlike about the whole thing—just something he did like brushing his teeth, doing it before the water turned cold. With the Sentinel thing, fantasizing wasn’t even necessary anymore. He could just screw up the dial a little and everything prickled and shuddered with sex. Now, though, every once in a while, he had a fleeting thought of Sandburg. He wasn’t jerking off to Sandburg, though; that would be weird. It was just, sometimes he turned up the dial and thought, inescapably, "huh. Sandburg."

There was something unsatisfying about all this. Well, obviously. But he found himself growing more and more indignant about the way that Blair had shrugged it off. At first he’d been grateful, and a part of him was blithering somewhere about gift horses, but how could Blair just shrug it off like that, as though they’d had one more minorly ugly fight about cleaning or Jim’s bossiness and everyone had gotten over the snit and that was that?

It wasn’t as though he couldn’t appreciate the irony of the situation, after all the times he’d said, "can you calm the fuck down," to Blair—but he did wish that Blair had been a little more upset about it. He had come to rely on Blair being upset about things like this, which meant he could say things like "calm down," or "it’s no big deal." But with Blair being calm, that only left the excited role for him. That wasn’t much of a pleasant thought. Even less pleasant was the thought of saying something to Blair about this and having Blair come up with the patient face he used with women he’d dumped. The "of course we’re still friends" face. The "of course you can see why it’s a poor idea for us to continue having sex" face. Blair was very reasonable with the women he was no longer sleeping with. Jim hated it when Blair was reasonable with him.

But all this was minor, really, and Jim wasn’t used to being content with his life. It was more normal to have little things not quite right—basically inescapable with the senses and all. So his feelings with Sandburg didn’t even stand out as odd. As with everything else, the weird taste of potato chips that he’d finally decided was some sort of soybean additive, Rafe’s incessant knuckle cracking, the fact that he could hear the yeast bubbling and multiplying in the bakery down below, he learned to tune it out, soon without even thinking about it.

He got called to a crime scene late on a Saturday. Blair had left an hour earlier on a date. Luckily so, he decided when he got there. At least three people had been cut into pieces and it was nasty and horrible, especially when it turned out the killer hadn’t actually left the premises. Jim lost his gun in the struggle and ended up clubbing the guy with a wrench, the whole floor slippery from the blood of the fourth victim, and then Megan and Simon finally burst through the goddam door, and explained to him that he couldn’t just say he heard something and go haring off up the stairs and expect them to be able to find him immediately and he got home at one-thirty, fairly certain he’d fucked up his rotator cuff, and pulled off his clothes and got in the shower and then fell into bed, and only woke up at a gentle tug on his arm. Sandburg. He hadn’t even heard him come up the stairs, but there he was, in the dark, whispering

"Jim, hey, Jim" and it was dark, a starless night, clouds over the moon, cold, it was like the inside of the freezer all over again, when Blair’s mouth had been so warm against his, hot, and his body had shaken with the giving of comfort, so he pulled Blair in under the covers, rolled him over and covered his mouth.

He made the most pleased noise when Jim kissed his stomach, arched his back and sighed. Jim slid down between his legs and Blair’s thighs cradled his shoulders, one curious toe rubbing along his side, and Jim wrapped his mouth around Blair’s cock. It had taken him a while to rethink the ass as an erogenous zone. He was still working on it, truth be told—and it was going slowly because he wasn’t altogether sure if he wanted to rethink his ass as an erogenous zone. He wasn’t sure he wanted to think about Sandburg’s ass as an erogenous zone. But he hadn’t really had any problem with Sandburg’s cock.

The Sentinel thing tended to change what really seemed sexy. Jim had come to accept this, that lipstick caked on the narrow crannies in people’s lips was no longer sexy, while a woman’s nipple, unwittingly outlined behind a bra, behind a white t-shirt, the narrow fragrant fissure of skin between a shirt and the beginning of pants, was. Sandburg’s cock was hot and it was a nice color, he liked the turgid pressure in his mouth and the taste. He liked the way that Sandburg was whimpering for him, clutching at his scalp.

He looked up right as the moon broke through the clouds, the room was palely illuminated and he met Sandburg’s startled eyes and looked away hastily, concentrating on his cock. He stroked at the back of Blair’s thighs and Blair’s foot came up and rested square in the center of his back and Jim felt his nipples go rock hard. Told himself to suck harder, made Blair come in his mouth before pulling himself into a kneeling position and jacking off all over Blair’s cock and splayed thighs. He licked Blair gently clean.

"oh, my God," Blair whispered when Jim slipped up and kissed him, wiping his tongue thoroughly around the inside of his mouth. "Oh," he said and got hard again, and this time while Jim was sucking him off, he stuck a tentative finger up Blair’s ass, decided that Blair’s ass was indeed an erogenous zone worth thinking about, especially when Blair’s hole tensed and quivered and slid eagerly down over his knuckle to the base of the finger. Jim curled his finger and Blair came, gasping his approval.

There was silence after that. Jim didn’t feel much like moving his face from Blair’s thigh—he couldn’t see very well, but he could hear the pops and crackles that Blair thought might be neurons firing: cells being told, no doubt, to pack up and get a move on because the show was over. And sure enough, Blair was shifting around now, fidgeting a little against the bed, rolling to the side,

"Did you fuck her and then come home and fuck me?" Jim said, wiping the semen off his mouth with the heel of his hand.

"What?" Blair said—he couldn’t really see the expression, but Sandburg had managed a convincing level of shock.

"Did you fuck her and come home and fuck me," Jim repeated. "It’s not a difficult question." He flopped onto his back so he’d have an excuse for not looking at the shifting shadows of Sandburg’s face.

"Orgasms apparently make you into a big asshole, man. You know I didn’t."

"Uh,"

"You could smell her on me if I were sleeping a mile away, let alone in your bed. And exactly how many times do you think I can get it up in a night, anyhow?" He paused and then said, exasperated, "I really can’t take your new technique of asking rhetorical questions to make me feel bad."

"You might have taken a shower," Jim said, logically.

"You think I’m a really classy guy, don’t you? I’d have sex with a woman and then come home and have sex with my roommate."

"Well I think you’d think taking a shower in between was pretty classy."

"You know what? You didn’t have to fuck me."

"You came up here," Jim explained.

"And that, of course, meant that I wanted you to fuck me," Blair said flatly.

"Didn’t hear you objecting."

"No. But I—"

"Are you telling me that you came up the stairs for some other reason?"

"There are bloody handprints in the hallway and the bathroom, Jim. I came up here to see if you were bleeding to death or something, but next time I guess I just won’t bother."

"So, seeing that I was okay, you thought you’d just have sex with me, seeing as you were up here."

"Who jumped who?"

"You can’t just go coming up here," Jim said.

"What, I’m so irresistible? I just show up and you have to have me?"

"I didn’t, I’m not having you."

"Don’t quibble about terminology with me."

"Don’t be an idiot."

"Oh, I see we’re abandoning roundabout ways of making me feel bad and just moving on to rank insults."

"Sandburg." His eyesight was back, it zoomed up on him and Blair had an enormous hickey on his stomach, punctuated by a few clear gnaw-marks.

"Fuck you, Jim, you have totally weird control issues."

"What are you talking about?"

"I have never in my life slept with someone who gave me two blow jobs and beat off on me. It’s weird."

"Isn’t it against one of your stupid-shit new age rules to tell someone what they do in bed is weird? Naomi would kick your ass for that."

"Yeah, well, it’s a well established fact that Naomi sometimes has a hard time distinguishing normal people from utter freaks. For instance, she seems to think you’re all right."

"Criticizing Naomi, Sandburg? I thought that was against one of your—"

"Shut up. I can’t fucking take this—are you this nice to everyone you sleep with?" Blair rolled out of bed and scrabbled on the floor for his clothes."

"You don’t have to be so fucking immature about this."

"Oh, sorry, I didn’t realize there was some required level of adulthood for buddy fucking," Blair said tightly. He found the last shoe and went downstairs.

Jim listened carefully after that—Blair usually talked to himself, especially when he was angry—his muttered monologues on recalcitrant Sentinels on the days when Jim refused to do tests had reached virtuoso proportions, but tonight he said nothing. He brushed his teeth and climbed into bed. No shower, which was a little odd—he himself was caked with streaks of semen, his own and Blair’s, because he hadn’t been able to swallow all of it, and he had been sweating a lot as well. He ought to get up and take a shower, but he didn’t. He lay in bed, listening to Blair’s breath even out.

"Um," Blair said the next morning over breakfast. "We have to stop having sex."

"I know," Jim said.

"We’re just," Blair said at the same time as Jim began "The fighting,"

"Okay," Blair nodded and offered a tentative smile, which Jim returned.

"All right." And things were. Jim thought to himself, well, all we needed to do was figure out a few ground rules. Unfortunate, though, he thought a week later, that the ground rules had appeared right as he’d finished working out his ass/erogenous zone issues. And it was thoughts that included the word ‘issues’ that made him realize that he’d been hanging around Blair too much. Not even Blair so much as Naomi, who tended to drop by for the odd weekend and say things like

"Now, Jim, just lie down on the floor and let me walk on your back, I’m sure you’ll find this very soothing," in the same tone that she might offer to make Blair a grill cheese sandwich. She’d once given him a very thorough run-down on the benefits of primal scream therapy. She told him he was a excellent candidate, to which he’d said,

"This is a great grill-cheese sandwich, Naomi." He wasn’t lying; Naomi made terrific grill-cheese sandwiches and she had been right about that whole back walking thing. He almost wished he could talk to her about his ass. She’d be so proud, he thought, grimacing: overcoming societal conditioning and all that. But then, any discussion of his ass would inevitably lead to contemplation of Blair’s ass, at least, that was the pattern he’d found, and he didn’t think he could conduct that conversation with Naomi with any amount of equanimity. He wasn’t even doing so well with the equanimity while regarding it alone.

Jesus, the freezer seemed like months ago now, although it had only been, he checked his calendar, three and a half weeks. Blair had had sex with two women. And him, of course. But Blair had a lot more sex these days, since his death in the fountain.

"I just can’t turn anyone down," Blair had said one night on a stakeout. At least a month before the whole freezer thing. "I think, you know, why? Why bother? What if I die? What if they die and they could have had this great memory of having sex with me, but, no, what’s flashing behind their eyes are memories of clammy handed Carl from junior prom."

Jim had laughed and Blair had continued on,

"Awful Carl, who’s now a used car salesman. Do I want that on my conscience?"

"Your moral dilemmas are always a lot more interesting than mine, Sandburg."

"yeah?"

"’Course."

"What was the last one?"

"I was buying pickle relish and I forgot to put it on the conveyer belt and they didn’t see it."

"And?"

"And I needed pickle relish. For tuna. So I just took it anyway."

"That’s very heavy, Jim."

"Well, not everyone can have a moral dilemma that includes naked chicks."

"Gather your rosebuds while ye may and all that."

"hm."

"That’s--"

"Christ, I know, Sandburg, it isn’t like I’ve never taken an English class."

"Yeah, but it was fifteen years ago."

"Yeah, but in the book it was right next to the poem about nipples."

"Poem about nipples?"

"Some woman. Nipples. This guy liked them quite a bit."

"There aren’t any nipples in seventeenth century poetry."

"Yes there are."

"You’re full of shit, Ellison."

Which had resulted in Jim spending an hour in a bookstore paging through poetry books just so he could slap down the book in front of Blair and say,

"There you go, Professor Sandburg, Upon the Nipples of Julia’s Breast, and you can keep your remarks on education to yourself in the future."

"This is a fluke, you know."

"Yeah, but I’m right."

"Did you buy this book?" Blair said.

"Yeah, so?"

"This is a twenty dollar book. You spent twenty dollars on a book of seventeenth century poetry so you could say you were right?"

"Maybe I like seventeenth century poetry."

"That’s you all over, Jim: a pickle-relish stealin’ poetry fan."

"Well, we can’t all be God’s gift to women who might unexpectedly die."

"That’s quite true."

"You’re such an asshole," he had said, and thrown a pillow at Blair who’d said,

"It’s all a facade for my humble and retiring personality."

Hm, he thought now, recalling the conversation. Upon the nipples of Sandburg’s breast. But enough of that, really. He said,

"You doin’ anything tonight?"

"Playing Bingo."

"Bingo?"

"Community Hall. Bingo every Thursday night."

"Bingo?"

"You wanna come? I’ll let you wear my lucky hat."

"Your lucky hat stinks."

"Fine, man, but don’t come crying to me when you don’t win the gift certificate to Mama’s Lasagna Hut."

"I never said I was coming."

"Ah, but you feel the lure, the, uh, ancient lure of the Bingo gods."

"Since when do you play Bingo?"

"I had this idea for a paper on modern shrine creation—and you should see the shit that people set up."

"Old people."

"What?"

"There’ll be old people."

"And?"

"They stink," Jim explained.

"They don’t stink any more than regular people. In fact, they probably stink less because they’re less hormone ridden."

"I still think they smell."

"This is because you’re a Sentinel, you know."

"What is?"

"Your aversion to old people; they endanger the tribe, they’re dead wood. In certain tribes, you’re even the one who has to, you know, cull the herd."

"I thought I was the protector."

"Well. It protects everyone else. The fertile ones."

"I don’t want to kill old people, Sandburg. I just said they stink."

"I think you do; I mean, when I’m sixty or something, I bet you’ll be trying to stick me in a snowbank someplace."

"You’re not gonna have to wait that long if you don’t shut up."

"So, Bingo? Tonight?"

"Can I bring a beer?"

"I’m not sure. People mostly drink Kool-Aid, I think."

"I’m not drinking Kool-Aid."

"Geez. And the list gets ever longer: old people, lucky hats, Kool-Aid. Is there anything you do like?"

"Seventeenth century poetry, of course."

It hadn’t been too bad, although neither of them had won. The old people had been less smelly than he expected, most likely because his controls had improved. Sandburg’s last bright idea had involved zooming senses up and down as fast as he could and although it had caused an unpleasant vomiting incident, he had to admit that it had helped. Sandburg had managed two interviews on his hand-held recorder and was nearly punched by a small angry woman for interrupting her concentration. Jim had apologized.

It was the baby he heard first; screaming. Babies screamed all the time, he told himself, as he turned the truck back towards downtown: exercising their lungs, wanting something to eat. But this baby was screaming the scream of something really wrong, the scream of a baby who knows that the person who’s holding it is terrified. The pitch was wrong and it bored a nauseated hole into his skull as he yanked the truck around the final corner and narrowly missed a parked ambulance.

Simon was already there, studying a map laid out over a police cruiser hood. The map flapped in the wind and the baby screamed and someone got hit across the face with a gun and elevators ground to a halt.

"They’ve got some hostages up there," Simon said.

"A baby," he said, someone was yelling at the mother to shut it up and she was cooing and clucking but it wasn’t helping because she was so afraid, dial it down for Christ’s sake, Ellison,

"They want to talk to you," Simon said.

"Right."

"How many?" Simon asked.

"Three. Maybe four."

"Anything else?"

"They’re gonna kill them," he said abruptly. "It’s a statement or something. I have to get in there."

"They’re dangerous, Jim."

"Gee, Simon, really? Because usually guys who take hostages and plan to blow their heads off are real pussycats."

"Sandburg’s rubbing off on you in a really unpleasant way," Simon said.

"There’s a baby," Jim said.

"You know shit about hostage negotiation."

"It’s screaming, Simon, look, it’s my job, and if I have to listen to that fucking baby another minute, I can’t, please," he said, his headache was starting to take over, and he said quietly, "Just let me go, okay?"

Simon nodded.

He hadn’t heard Blair arriving over the shivering wails of the baby, but there he was, walking quickly towards Jim,

"Jim."

"Hey," Jim pulled him over to the truck and said "you can stay here, it shouldn’t be long."

"Jim, you aren’t going in there."

"Yeah, I am."

"Jim, these guys wanna blow someone away."

"What do you know about it?"

"They sent some nutty statement to the press. They’re fucking psychos and they wanna kill a cop and if you go in there it’ll be you."

"Not if I do them first."

"What the fuck is Simon thinking?" Blair said angrily, "I mean, I know there’s no reasoning with you because you’re an idiot, but he should know better."

"I don’t understand why everyone’s arguing with me on this," Jim said, and adjusted the straps on his Kevlar vest before looking at Blair.

"Because you could die, man, because it’s too fucking dangerous. I really don’t know what your problem is," he said, loudly, still trying to talk him out of it and Jim couldn’t help himself, he put his hands on Blair’s hips and pulled him up close, kissed him warmly, gently,

"you don’t?" he said, against Blair’s mouth, and jogged off towards Simon’s car without looking back.

He got out, but not without having to shoot two people, not without having to crawl through what seemed like several miles of ventilation shafts, not without having to hold the baby which yowled and spit at him no matter how he tried to joggle and grin at it and he had finally gotten it quieted down when it vomited on him. All in all, it was a difficult afternoon, and Sandburg wasn’t there when he got out of the building and he wasn’t at home, so Jim shrugged and took a shower and was eating a bowl of soup when he got home. He looked at Jim, nodded, and went into his room.

"You want some soup," Jim said, when he saw that Blair wasn’t going to say anything.

"No, thank you," Blair said, and closed the door, hard.

I was just doing my job, Jim thought, and as if on cue, Blair flung his door open and said,

"What the fuck was that this afternoon, Ellison?"

"I was just doing my job," he said.

"Not that, fuck you, not Detective Ellison’s daring rescue of four civilians, you fucking asshole,"

"Then,"

"The kiss, you asshole, the kiss, the part where you kiss me like you’re a goddam soldier leaving for war."

"oh,"

"oh," Blair mimicked.

"Well, I’m sorry. It all happened kinda fast."

"That’s not. I thought you were gonna die,"

"I didn’t die."

"So what? You just kissed me and left, were you trying to make me walk around for the rest of my life wondering what secrets you’d carried into the grave?"

"No,"

"Then, why,"

"Sandburg, you can’t just parade around with your hair and your smell and expect me not to want it," Jim said, tired of lying about it, tired of all the time he spent even lying to himself about it.

"I do not parade, and do you want me to live in a fucking bubble? So I smell, so what?"

"So, nothing. I’m sorry, the excitement, you know, just got to me." He considered mentioning the baby, but said, instead, "You were there, and—"

"oh, now it’s my fault?"

"What did you want me to do?"

"You could have said, ‘hey Sandburg, nice knowing you,’ or something."

"Okay. Next time, I will." Blair looked disappointed. He rubbed at his mouth and then said,

"It’s just a hell of a way to find out."

"Find out what?"

"Find out that you still, that you want, that you’ve apparently turned into a self-destructive moron while I wasn’t looking. Who wants to sleep with me."

Jim said nothing.

"Right? Is that, do you want that?"

"Yeah." Jim rubbed his palm against the table top and Blair threw up his hands and said

"Well, Jesus Christ, you could have said something."

"You told me, you said,"

"What?"

"We should stop having sex, remember that, Sandburg?"

"Well, you were pretty quick to agree."

"What was I supposed to do?"

"You didn’t have to just say okay."

"You didn’t want to," Jim said weakly.

"I never said that, I just said I thought we shouldn’t."

"And I was supposed to say, no, you know what, let’s keep on doing it?"

"Yes, that’s exactly what you were supposed to say. What, it would kill you to say, gee, you know Blair, since I can’t keep my fucking hands off you anyway, I think stopping having sex is a rotten idea."

"I couldn’t say that."

"I know you couldn’t say that, because you’re a fucking asshole, you know, because it’s fine for me to want it, Jesus Christ, you fucking loved it in the dark when you could pretend it was because I needed to be comforted and when you made me want it, that was fine too, but you couldn’t fucking want it, you couldn’t fucking want me."

"That’s not—"

"Funny how you’re so goddam accommodating, oh, look, Blair’s horny, perhaps he’d like a blow job, but it has nothing to do with me, with my wanting him."

"Blair—"

"Screw you Jim, I saw how you looked when you had my cock in your mouth. Don’t even start with that ‘doing a friend a favor’ crap, because you were really enjoying yourself. Did it taste good? Do you get off on having your mouth fucked? Whatever, you know, I don’t care." He threw himself down on the couch and watched as Jim put the empty soup bowl in the sink and walked towards him. Jim slid down in front of Blair and pulled Blair’s knees open around his hips and slid his hands around Blair’s shoulders. Blair shifted uncomfortably but Jim kissed his neck and said quietly,

"It tasted good," and then he opened the top button of Blair’s shirt and whispered,

"I get off on having my mouth fucked." He unbuttoned another button and he was halfway down Blair’s chest now, and this time he bit the flesh gently and held on a moment before saying,

"I think, I might, want you to fuck me."

Blair started to laugh, sobered instantly and dragged his head up for a kiss. Their mouths were an inch apart and Jim was breathing heavily from the kiss when Blair asked,

"Has anyone ever even touched your asshole?" He didn’t say it meanly. Jim blushed, felt the heat crawl up his neck and over his cheeks.

"That’s a yes," Blair said.

"uh. no. not quite." Jim said.

"Not quite. Look, either someone has or someone. Oh." Blair said.

"yup."

Blair grinned and kissed him again and said,

"You’ve been touching yourself."

"mm."

Blair kissed him again, really hard this time, tongue hungry in his mouth, and flopped back against the chair with a breathless sigh.

"Jim Ellison finger-fucking himself. Now there’s a mental picture I can stand to have." Jim shifted on his knees, pulled himself up closer so he could grind his hips against Blair’s, who said, "Did you like it?"

"yeah,"

"Did you, were you thinking about me--my cock?" He stumbled over the words and covered it by pulling Jim’s mouth to his, pinching a nipple, letting Jim anchor a hand at the base of his skull. Jim’s broad hand traced down his chest and he blurted "This is a bad idea, you understand."

"You’re gonna do it anyway, right?" Jim had meant it to sound suggestive, but it came out desperate, eager.

"Yeah. Yeah, I’m gonna do it." He kissed Jim’s jaw and amended, "I’m gonna do you."

Jim had always considered himself to be a relatively in control individual, which was not the same as wanting to be in control all the time, although the distinction was lost on most people. Bad choice of words, perhaps; he was used to knowing what to expect. He was prepared. Blair snickered at him for dragging fire extinguishers everywhere they went, but eventually they’d have some sort of sterno accident and Blair would admit that it was worth carrying the extra weight. It was generally nice to be prepared, and he sure as hell thought he was prepared for this, he knew what sex felt like, for God’s sake, he even knew what sex with Blair felt like, but here was Blair pulling him up on the couch and then shoving him down and whispering against his mouth,

"How many fingers?" and he wasn’t prepared for this, no way, because he said,

"Huh?" and Blair had lost his shirt somewhere and had pulled his hair out of the elastic and his eyes were bright and blue in the late afternoon sunlight.

"How many fingers? How many did you use?" Blair repeated and he would have been embarrassed, except for the tight clutch of Blair’s thighs against his hips, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to answer, that was private, wasn’t it? but. Blair had slid down and pushed up his t-shirt and started licking his stomach,

"Two," he said. Blair said nothing, urged him up and dragged the shirt over his head, kissed his neck until he gasped,

"you, I was thinking of you,"

"Good," Blair said, tumbling off him, "good. Jim, my room, I can’t carry you." and the next thing that was worth focusing on, after a blur of yanked off pants and Blair’s frantic fumbling in his closet, was Blair, wetly kissing his left shoulderblade, rubbing a wet finger into his hole and whispering,

"Don’t worry, I’m sure two fingers is enough, you have very big fingers," and then he whispered, even more quietly, even lower, right into the small of Jim’s back, "I’m gonna fuck you."

He woke up itchy from dried semen, and it was dark, Blair was half on top of him. He rubbed his forefinger across Blair’s cheek and Blair shifted and mumbled,

"What time is it?"

"Ten-forty-five."

"Are your sheets clean?"

"They’re always clean."

"Can we fuck in your bed?"

"You mean now?"

"It was just an idea, forget about it,"

"No, no, I’d like to."

"Um, Jim, it’s okay. I’m not gonna self-destruct from the pain or anything if you don’t want to—"

"Sandburg, can you cut me a break here?" He kissed Blair, as lingeringly and convincingly as he could, and said, "ten minutes? I gotta drink something."

Blair was already there when he climbed up the stairs, under the covers, watching him avidly. Jim climbed in, touched his shoulder awkwardly, and said,

"What do you wanna do?"

"You wanna do anything?"

"No. I mean, yeah. nothing specific, though."

"I’d sorta like. Your fingers. I mean, two fingers up my ass."

"What are you gonna be doing?"

"I was thinking of moaning a bunch."

"That’s good."

"Turns you on."

"Yup."

He only woke up this time because Blair was watching him. He opened one eye to check and closed it quickly. Blair was sitting, wrapped in a blanket, on the bed, just watching him. He kept his eyes closed, breathing evenly.

"Um, Jim? How long are you gonna do that?" Blair asked. Jim squinted at him and then gave up and heaved himself up into a sitting position against the railings, mumbling,

"Oh God, here we go again."

"I’m just not gonna leave this time, okay? I’m just gonna stay here and nothing you say will budge me."

"You gonna keep seeing other people?"

"That would be sort of hard to do from my permanent position in your bed."

"Okay then."

"Okay what?"

"Okay, you can stay."

"I already said I was staying."

"Good," and then he wanted to do something, but nothing big, something to be sort of symbolic about it all, so he kissed Blair on the cheek and said,

"wait here," before rushing downstairs.

"Okay, close your eyes, hold out your hands," he said when he got back, and carefully put the bowl of Cheerios in Blair’s hands. "Steady," he cautioned, and poured the milk over it before saying, "You can open your eyes now."

"It’s—cereal."

"I thought if you were staying here then, it’s stupid, you know, here, just" he reached out to pull it away, but Blair pulled back sharply, holding the bowl close, the milk sloshing dangerously up the side.

"No, no, I want it. I love it, I love you."

"oh."

"Did you bring a spoon," Blair asked a minute later.

"uh, no."

"It’s getting a little soggy."

"Are you really not getting out of bed?"

"I do need a spoon," Blair admitted, climbing out of bed. "And we’re supposed to be at the station in forty-three minutes."

"You’ll come back though. Tonight."

"Yeah. You know me."

"Not really. Not enough. Never enough." He laid a careful hand on Blair’s calf.

They were eating lunch on a picnic table outside a sandwich shop when Jim said,

"I’m in love with you. By the way, I mean." Blair choked fairly spectacularly, and Jim said, "oh come off it, it can’t be that much of a surprise, can it?"

"er, Jim. Yeah, it can."

"Haven’t you been paying attention?"

"Well, I’m sorry. Women are easier, you know. They say stuff like, Hey Blair, you wanna get a taco? Or Blair, you have beautiful eyes."

"I buy you tacos all the damn time," Jim growled.

"Okay, yes. But I thought they were manly tacos."

"They were manly tacos."

"Right. In that case, I didn’t realize they were manly tacos. And what about my eyes?"

"There are two of them. They’re blue."

"That’s not really how it’s done, Jim."

"Oh."

"You want me to show you how?"

"Do I have a choice?"

"For that, I’m taking your pickle. Okay. here we go. You ready?"

"okay"

Blair leaned across the table and touched Jim’s face and said, "Your eyes," and then he cleared his throat and said, "you know what they really look like? They look like that ice from Antarctica, where it’s so cold, the ice isn’t even clear any more, it’s blue, and it’s so cold, when you touch it, it doesn’t even feel cold, it burns you."

"oh."

"So what do you say to that?"

"Do you want some of my fries?"

"What I want is some of your cock, but, fries will do, I guess."

"No doing anything lewd with them."

"Fuck, you saw right through me."

"I’m sorry."

"No, I want you to. That’s exactly what I want." He smiled crookedly at Jim and began to gather their sandwich wrappers to throw in the trash.

End Seemingly Impermeable.