Work Text:
The Missing Piece
by romankate
Blair trudged up the steps to the loft with his mind on dinner, sex, chai, sex and a shower. One look at the living room, however, and his plans for the afternoon were in doubt. "Jim?" Blair spread his hands wide. "Prepping for an undercover job at a toy store?"
Jim looked up from where he sat with his legs extended under the coffee table. The table itself was covered in puzzle pieces. Thousands of them, to Blair's eye. Millions.
"Very funny, Chief." Frowning, Jim fitted a piece the size of Blair's thumbnail in with the morass of others. He tamped it into place and brightened. "Department shrink recommended this. Y'know, for relaxation."
"Relaxation?" Blair dropped his courier bag on the hardwood with a thump and wandered over. "Since when do you listen to that psycho?"
Jim shrugged, his thick fingers dancing over the tiny pieces. "Since I need a clean bill of health from him to keep carrying." He selected a piece that was perfectly white, no markings, and slotted it into the burgeoning mass. "Heh. So this is me, relaxed."
Blair slid down the side of the couch and squirmed in next to Jim at the coffee table. "Huh. Is it working?"
"I guess."
Blair looked over the blizzard of pieces scattered across the blond hardwood and found himself falling into the rhythm of the puzzle: the evaluation of each piece, the feel of the smooth, curved edges against his fingertips, the...
The numbers.
"Jim," Blair asked, picking up another piece just to check. "Did you number these yourself?"
"Nope!" Jim answered cheerfully. "Did you know you can buy 'em this way?" He grinned, then fished among the pool of pieces in front of Blair. "Have you seen #377?"
Blair opened his mouth to object, then stopped. "This is relaxing for you? This? This...cheating?"
Jim considered, head on one side. "I just don't get what people see in this, that's all. It's just another task."
Blair looked from the piece in his fingers to the table and back, then tossed it over his shoulder. Crawling to his knees, he swept all the puzzle pieces off the table in one move, spraying them around the living room.
Jim looked down at the piece in his fingers, then over at Blair. "Chief?"
Blair got to his knees and bore Jim over, knocking him to the floor, straddling his muscular hips, claiming a hard kiss that seemed to last a night and a day.
When they parted, Blair stared down at Jim, looking for some sense of acceptance, some sense of recognition.
Finally, a wide grin split Jim's face. "Y'know, Chief, I think I'm starting to get the hang of this relaxing thing."
end