Title: The True Love Look

Author/pseudonym: Tinnean

Fandom: The Sentinel

Pairing: Blair Sandburg/Jim Ellison

Rating: NC-17

Email address: Tinneantoo@aol.com

Disclaimer: Still belonging to Petfly, people.

Status: new/complete

Date: 2/14/04

Series/Sequel: no

Other Web Site: http://www.angelfire.com/fl5/tinnssinns

Archive: OK, I surrender. Yes to all the list archives. (I'm so easy!)

Summary: Valentine's Day. To Jim, it's just another day. Blair intends to show him it isn't.

Warnings: m/m, spoilers for Switchman and The Debt. Orvelle Wallace and Dwight Roshman are from Three Point Shot.

Notes: This is not quite a companion piece to Just Another Day, the Valentine story for 2003, which can be found here: http://www.angelfire.com/fl5/tinnssinns/Valentine.html . Blair is singing Colors of the Wind. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Nightowl's Nest Resource Site, which has proved to be an invaluable... um... resource. :) Gail beta'd, and I thank her muchly.



The True Love Look
By Tinnean

I knew there was true love out there. I hadn't found it, not for myself, but that was just because I hadn't found the right person yet.

But I wasn't going to stop looking.

In my wallet was an old picture I'd cut out of the newspaper. There was no date on it, but there didn't need to be. It was February 14, 1975.

I'd been almost six years old at the time.

Naomi, my mom, had seen them on television, the young actor and his new bride, and she'd gone very still.

"There, baby," she'd said to me. "See that? See the way he's looking at her? That's what true love looks like." I stared at the couple on the television screen. Her voice dropped to a whisper. "That's what I want."

She was living with some guy. I could never remember his name, which was funny, because he was one of the few men my mother had shacked up with that I'd really liked.

She stood up, went into the bedroom she shared with the guy, and pulled her suitcase down from the closet.

"Mom?"

"Go pack your backpack, Blair. We're leaving."

She didn't even say good-bye to the guy, just scribbled a note and left it on the pillow.

The next day, the bus pulled in for a lunch stop in the middle of nowhere, and while we were waiting until it was time to go on again, I found a newspaper. On the entertainment page was a picture of the actor gazing at his bride. I ripped it out and saved it.

One day I was going to find someone who looked at me exactly like that.

****

Twenty years later. I hadn't stopped looking.

I'd just kind of ... tabled my search. The world was filled with pretty girls and good-looking guys. I didn't discriminate; I believed in being an equal opportunity lover.

Why settle for the one, when I could have the many, y'know?

Jim Ellison, Cascade Detective of the Year and my roommate, was a little overboard when he inferred that I'd hump everything, even a table leg, or words to that effect. Just because I had an eye for a sweet ass did *not* mean I couldn't maintain a little decorum.

Jim Ellison. Now there was a man with a sweet ass.

The first time I saw him was in a waiting room at Cascade General. Poor guy had gone there for a battery of tests, trying to figure out why he was seeing things, hearing things, *smelling* things that no one else seemed to.

I was a grad student at Rainier University, and my dissertation was on sentinel abilities.

I'd had to just about promise ... um... tutoring in perpetuity to the nurse who was on the lookout for patients who might be of interest to me. She faxed me a chart, and according to the pages the department fax machine spat out, he was the perfect subject for my dissertation.

So I hot-footed it to the hospital, grabbed a lab coat some doctor had carelessly left lying around, barreled into the room, and there he was. He had these blue eyes that seemed to physically stroke over my body. I could feel it, man. It was as if his fingernails scraped over my nipples, down through my chest hair, followed the line of hair that joined my torso and groin. My dick did an impression of an iron bar, and that look absolutely turned my brain to mush.

I mean, c'mon, why else would I make such a dumb mistake as to introduce myself as Dr. McKay, then try to cover the gaff by telling him that was the Gaelic pronunciation of McCoy?

Of course, those eyes'd turned to ice-blue when he opened the door to my office in the basement of the Rainier building that housed the anthropology department. He hadn't exactly been thrilled to see me; he thought I'd been jerking him around. He'd thrown me up against the wall of my office, called me a neo-hippie-witch-doctor punk, and stormed out of my office.

"Oh, no, Sandburg," I muttered to myself as I watched him take his fine ass out of my vicinity. "You know better than to get involved with straight guys."

But I'd still chased after him, and that was a damned good thing. I wound up saving his fine ass when he zoned on a Frisbee, shoving him to the pavement just before a garbage truck passed over us.

We rose to our feet. "That really sucked, man!"

"Yeah. How come you came after me?"

"I was gonna tell you to watch out for the zone-out factor."

"'Zone-out'? What the fuck is that?"

"What you just experienced."

Those blue eyes narrowed. "Fuck."

"A man of few words. I like that."

Reluctantly, he'd concluded that he needed help with his senses, and even more reluctantly he'd agreed that I should be the one to help him.

That led to me signing on with Cascade PD as a kind of unpaid drive-along observer. Emphasis on 'unpaid.'

Not too long after that, the warehouse I called home was destroyed when a drug lab that, unbeknownst to me was sharing the space, blew up.

On a scale of one to ten, that seriously topped the suckage scale.

Jim, again reluctantly, agreed to let me move into his apartment until I could find a place of my own. He gave me a week.

****

One week flowed into two flowed into three. We found a routine and settled into it, and we actually seemed to be on the road to becoming friends.

"Going out, Chief?" Jim was sprawled on the couch, waiting for the start of an exhibition baseball game on TV. He tipped a bottle of beer to his lips, and I watched as his throat muscles rippled.

"Huh? Oh, yeah. Don't wait up." I didn't tell him the date I had lined up was with another guy. I hadn't told him I was bi; I liked my head on my shoulders. And I liked having a place to stay, even if it was a teeny tiny bedroom under the stairs.

But I forgot to take into account his senses. When I got back home, around three in the morning, I was sated and slightly tipsy. The elevator wasn't working, so I wobbled up the stairs. It took a couple of futile stabs before I found the keyhole with the key and unlocked the door.

"'Have you ever heard the wolf cry to the blue corn moon...'"

I dropped the key. I chortled and stooped to retrieve it, almost falling on my face when the door was pulled open.

"Had a little too much to drink, Chief?"

I reared back and would have fallen on my ass if he hadn't caught me. "Jim, ol' buddy, ol' pal!" I looped my arm around his neck and petted his chest. "How the hell've you been?"

My roommate started to laugh, and then his nose wrinkled. "Not as good as you, I'd say. You smell as if you got lucky, Chief."

"Awesome, Jim!" The anthropologist in me struggled to surface through the beer. "What can you smell?"

"Semen. Two types."

Uh oh. Not awesome.

"I don't smell anything female, so that leads me to conclude you weren't involved in a threesome. Something you want to tell me, Chief?"

Abruptly I was sober. I unlinked my arm from his neck and backed off, hitting the door which he must have closed when I wasn't paying attention. "You're the detective; you can connect the dots."

"Suppose you spell it out for me."

I pushed my hair out of my eyes. "I'm bisexual. Do we have a problem here, Jim?"

"Depends. Am I going to have to fight you to protect my virtue?"

"Dammit, Ellison, I've never come on to you!" Much as I had wanted to. "I wouldn't do that to a friend!" I was disappointed in him, the homophobic shit. Boozy tears welled up, and my throat burned with the effort to keep them from falling. "If you don't know by now you can trust me..." I stomped past him to my room, regretting that I didn't have a door that I could slam shut behind me.

"Don't get your shorts in a bunch, Chief. I'm bi too. I was just yanking your chain!"

"You are?" I poked my head around the blanket that acted as my door. "You were?" Talk about being stupidly relieved.

"Yeah. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have teased you, especially when you're a little looped. It's okay. I don't have a problem with who you choose to date." He sighed.

Now that the adrenaline rush seemed to have died down, the beer took over again. I blinked blearily. He sounded disappointed. What was he disappointed about?

"House rule number ten: don't bring any of them back here."

****

Three years later, I was still there, still in that bedroom under the stairs.

Where I really wanted to be was in that bedroom up at the top of the stairs.

Jim Ellison was a good cop. He wouldn't have been named Detective of the Year if he'd been content to sit on his ass and let others do the hard stuff.

He was a good man. He wouldn't have let me stay with him otherwise, sharing the loft, tolerating the occasional wet towel left lying on the bathroom floor, the nagging about his diet...

I had gone from wanting to study Jim for my diss, to liking him for himself, to being in love with him.

I worked like a bastard to make sure he didn't know I was interested in him in more than a purely scientific way, but it sure as hell was tough.

Occasionally I'd see him as he came out of the bathroom after showering. He'd be in white boxers, a towel draped around his neck. His chest was pale, he didn't get out in the sun much. Well, Cascade, Washington. Even when the sun was out, the temperature didn't much encourage sun-bathing.

It was almost completely free of hair. His nipples and the aureoles around them were a dusky beige. I'd look at them, my mouth would water, and I'd have to lick my lips and adjust the pants I was wearing.

He had a six pack of abs that made my fingers itch to touch, to see if they were as hard and toned as they looked.

Lower down, I could just make out the shadow of his pubic hair. I never dared look hard enough to see if I could trace the shape of his dick.

I had to conceal how much I wanted to trace his dick, with fingers, with tongue...

I did such a good job of hiding the fact that I was head over heels in love with my roommate that the guy was totally clueless.

And it left me up shit creek, because I knew I'd never find anyone I would love more than Jim Ellison.

That didn't stop me from going out on dates, but by that point they were strictly camouflage.

Jim, on the other hand, seemed to have hit a dry patch. This was four straight weeks that he was dateless.

"Another hot date, Chief?"

"Yeah, I'm seeing Tammy."

"... Bambi."

"... Joe."

"You'd hump a table leg, Sandburg." I was certain that it was my imagination that made it seem as if he paused a beat before saying, "Have a good time."

And he was still doing his dateless phase. I began to wonder about that.

"You're not going out tonight, Jim?"

"Nah."

"It's been a while. I'd hate for you to forget what to do with it."

"No big deal, Dr. Ruth. It's been a tough week, and besides, the Jags are playing tonight."

"Yeah? Mind if I stay home and watch the game with you?"

"What about your date? Who are you seeing tonight, anyway? Inga? Bette? I can't keep track of your women. Or your men."

My head shot up. Was that a note of jealousy I'd detected in his voice?

"I was just going for a beer with some of the TAs from Rainier. They won't miss me. Besides, I ... have a couple of bucks riding on the game." I didn't, but the desire to spend some time with him was overpowering, and any excuse in a storm, so to speak.

"That'd be nice, Chief." He smiled. It was warm and... There was something about that expression that nagged at me. I should know what it meant.

The announcer started screaming, and I was distracted. We both got pretty caught up in the game.

"Hey, ref!" Jim protested and threw a handful of popcorn at the screen.

"C'mon, Wallace! You can make that point blindfolded!" It was my turn to bombard the television with popcorn when his teammate, Dwight Roshman, slammed into him, causing them both to land on the court with a jarring thud. "Ouch!"

Jim flinched. "That's got to hurt."

The game was a squeaker, but the Jags took it, and we leaped to our feet and grabbed each other, a guy hug kind of thing.

It was a real battle not to reach up and pull his head down and kiss that mouth that was inches from mine.

By the time I shook myself out of my stupor, Jim had dropped his arms and backed away from me. "I'm... uh... I'm really beat. Clean up for me, would you, Chief?" He disappeared up the stairs.

Dammit. What had happened?

And then my brain cells caught up with the messages my body had received, and I bounced on the balls of my feet.

That had been a hard-on nudging my hip. Jim's dick had been hard. He wanted me!

I began to put the clues together. He'd stopped dating. He'd been finding excuses to touch me, even more than the usual hand on my shoulder or fingers on my arm. And he had sounded kind of jealous.

Okay, maybe it wasn't love, but it was a start.

****

It took me hours to fall asleep, and my dreams had been filled with an elusive sentinel always just out of my reach.

When I finally woke up, I was exhausted.

"Shake it, Chief. You're running late!"

Jim was gone by the time I left my room, and I sighed.

The coffee was still warm. I poured myself a cup and stared blankly at the calendar in front of me.

February 14. Valentine's Day.

Well, well, well. I went back to that room under the stairs and got dressed. If things went the way I hoped, last night would turn out to be my last night in that lonely bed.

I put some bills in my wallet. The Rainier payroll department had finally seen fit to cut me a check for covering a few extra classes, and I was looking forward to taking Jim to lunch at El Sombrero Blanco. We'd talk, and maybe we'd wind up doing more than talking.

I got through the morning on autopilot, pounding knowledge into heads that should have been more receptive, and at noon I called the Cascade PD.

"Major Crimes. Detective Brown speaking."

"Hi, H."

"Hairboy! You... uh...you looking for Jim?"

"Yeah. I wanted to see if he's available for lunch." I'd called ahead for reservations. Before I could say so, Brown interrupted me.

"Gee, Sandburg, he's not here. He... uh... he's out on a case. Yeah."

"Oh. Do you know when he'll be back?"

"Nope. Not a clue. Really couldn't say." He coughed lightly. His response to my simple question was curiously emphatic, but I was so disappointed that I didn't pay much heed to it. "Sorry. Listen, when Jim gets back," he raised his voice, and I assumed it was so everyone in the bullpen could have a laugh at my expense, "do you want me to tell him he missed out on you buying him lunch?"

"Never mind." The wheels were busy turning. I'd surprise him with dinner instead. "Gotta go, H."

"Okay. Oh, and Hairboy? Happy Valentine's Day." He half sang it.

"Uh... yeah, you too." I hung up the phone. That was weird.

I pushed Henri Brown and his tendency to tease us about our living arrangements out of my mind and concentrated on my roommate. If things went as I planned, my roommate would soon be my lover.

Jim Ellison might not be aware of it, but he was going to be seduced to within an inch of his life tonight.

****

I had no afternoon classes. I drove my Volvo home and made a phone call.

"Buonas tardes, El Sombrero Blanco. Um... Este es Yelena aqui."

"Buonas tardes, Yelena. Quisiera ordenar..."

"I'm sorry," she sighed, "that's all the Spanish I know."

I started to laugh. "All right, Yelena. I'd like to order one of your special dinners." I told her what I wanted.

"Okay. Your name, um...senor?"

"Sandburg."

"It will be ready at six. Adios, Senor Sandburg." She sounded relieved to have completed the order.

"Adios, Yelena." I hung up, laughing softly, and decided to clean the loft. I dusted, dry-mopped, and changed the sheets on both our beds, just in case we couldn't make it to Jim's bedroom.

There were some candles in the loft someplace, and I went searching for them. We'd needed them once when Cascade had been hit with a massive power outage. Fortunately they were odorless; his sense of smell wouldn't go haywire.

I showered, dressed in jeans and a blue Henley I'd been assured brought out the blue of my eyes, and gave the apartment a quick glance. Everything seemed perfect.

I really hoped I wasn't putting one and one together and getting two, when there should have simply been one and one.

I grabbed my jacket and car keys; I had just enough time to look for some music that would be the epitome of romance before I'd need to get to El Sombrero Blanco for dinner.

My mouth went dry when I thought of kissing him while we danced. I drove to The Whirling Disk, browsed the stacks, and wound up with a selection of CDs with lush orchestrations.

Satisfied with what I'd chosen, I drove to the restaurant, picked up our dinner, and headed for home.

I turned into Prospect and realized that I'd forgotten flowers. If that wasn't a guy thing. And then that went right out of my head when I saw the blue pick-up parked in its usual spot.

Jim was home before me.

I parked behind the pick-up, swearing under my breath. Maybe he wouldn't pay much attention to the candles all over the loft. I hurried into 852, and for a change the elevator was working.

There wasn't time to meditate my nerves away, but I did some deep breathing and hoped Jim wouldn't notice.

I unlocked the door, juggling the bags, and pushed it open.

Jim was standing before the open fridge, a hand on his hip, studying the contents, or lack thereof. He was wearing jeans and a Jags sweatshirt, and white sweat socks. I could tell he'd showered; his hair was still damp.

"I've got dinner, Jim." I put the bags on the counter and hung up my jacket.

"I thought it was my turn to cook, Chief." He turned to look at me, and his eyes seemed to grow hot.

"I know, but as you can see, the cupboard is bare. We forgot to go food shopping the other day." My Henley was unbuttoned at the throat, and I hadn't bothered with an undershirt, in spite of the temperature. I hadn't bothered with underwear, period.

"Well, something smells good. How much do I owe you?" He reached for his wallet.

"No, this one's on me, Jim."

"Blair, I know how much you're bringing home as a teaching assistant. Grad students can't afford this."

"This one can. Let me do this, Jim. I..." I was about to tell him how I felt about him, but at the last minute I lost my nerve. "You've given me a home for three years. This is just my way of saying thank you."

"And it has nothing to do with Valentine's Day?"

I pretended I hadn't heard him. "Why don't you set the table and pour us some wine."

"All right, Chief. What did you order?"

"Cuban style sea bass. I told them to go easy on the red pepper flakes. Frijoles negros, ditto on the pepper. Manduros, those sweet, fried plantains you liked so much the last time we ate at El Sombrero Blanco? A tomato and onion salad, and for dessert, caramel-flavored custard."

"Flan?" He smiled at me over the glass of wine he offered, and my heart turned over.

"Yeah. I'll just put some music on the stereo." I took a gulp of wine, put the glass down, and went to find Jim's Santana CD, Lotus. I didn't want to spook the guy with make-out music while we ate.

"That was the first CD I bought after I came home from Peru," he murmured as Going Home filled the air.

"Apropos, I'd say. Sit, please. I'll join you in a moment." I lit the candles, turned out the overhead lights, and sat down.

"This is so romantic, Chief." Jim's blue eyes seemed to glow in the candlelight. His expression was... It suddenly hit me what it was. The true love look.

My dick, which had been half-hard since I'd walked in and seen him leaning against the refrigerator door, became completely hard, and I shifted in my chair.

His nose twitched. He smiled, raised his glass to me, and we began to eat.

****

The table had been cleared off and soft sultry music was on the stereo.

"Dance with me, Jim."

The man I loved trembled in my arms. I let my hands slide down his back, over the curve of his ass, and I pulled him toward me.

Our dicks pressed against each other. His groan was almost silent, but I was so close I didn't need to be a sentinel to hear it. I turned my head toward his and captured the next groan in my mouth. His breath was warm and tasted of the wine.

"I've wanted this, Chief, since I knew you swung this way. I saw you going out; I knew you'd be seeing some lucky guy, and I wanted it to be me."

"I wish I'd known. I wish you'd said something. I was so scared it would ruin our friendship."

"So was I. Why are you making a move now?"

Because I finally got the nerve, dug up the courage, bought a ticket on the clue bus.

I cradled his jaw in my palm. "Because I just couldn't wait any longer!"

He turned his face into the caress. His lips were parted, and the tip of his tongue teased the skin between my fingers. He pulled back a bit, then took my fingers into his mouth, one after the other, and made love to them. And I trembled.

"I need you inside me, now, here! Please, *I* can't wait, babe."

Jim deserved soft sheets on a soft bed, but I lost my head. I worked his pants down off his hips, gave a stroke to his dick, then turned him and bent him over the back of the couch. And he let me, uttering a hoarse laugh and spreading his legs as much as his jeans would allow.

I did take the time to prepare him, using the lube I'd stashed behind a seat cushion. I opened my jeans, ripped a condom free of its wrapper with my teeth, got it on single-handed, slid my dick into Jim's hot, tight passage, and made love to him.

He reached behind to settle his hands on my hips, urging me to ride him harder. Being inside Jim was like being inside a heated velvet channel. His muscles clenched rhythmically, and each thrust took me closer to the edge.

"Not going without you, babe," I groaned in his ear. I took his lobe between my teeth and bit gently. "Come for me!"

He did, and I was right behind him. In more ways than one.

At least I managed to get him up the stairs to his bedroom for the next time.

I lost count of the number of times I had him, but the last time, the time we made love face to face, he whispered softly, "I love you."

I barely had the energy to mumble, "I love you, too," before I fell asleep.

****

//He loves me!// I came awake the next morning to find my lover was still dead to the world. I eased out from under the arm that was hanging onto me possessively, turned off the alarm, and got out of bed.

My clothes were all over the floor, tangled with Jim's. I picked them up, folded his and laid them on the chair by his desk.

//He loves me!// I glanced back at my sleeping lover, tempted to rejoin him in bed and wake him up with a blow-job that would blow his mind, but I needed to piss in the worst way.

I tip-toed down the stairs, and after I'd taken care of business, showered as well. I blew into my hand and inhaled, and decided I'd better brush my teeth while I was at it. No sense offending sentinel sensibilities.

While I was brushing my teeth, I pondered my great good fortune. Jim loved me. Jim loved *me*!

James Joseph Ellison loved Blair Jacob Sandburg.

I felt like a character in one of Shakespeare's happier plays. My love was requited.

I put on a pair of sweat pants and dropped the used towels in the hamper, wanting to please Jim, even with that little gesture.

I'd make him breakfast, too.

I opened the refrigerator, to be reminded of the fact that there were no eggs, no bacon, no bread or butter.

Jim was still sleeping. I stepped into my Nikes, grabbed my jacket and the Volvo's keys, and headed out to hunt the fearsome Egg McMuffin.

****

While I was on line in McDonald's, I was struck by a brilliant idea. I just hoped I'd have time to put it into effect. I went looking for the roses I'd forgotten the night before.

When I got back to the loft, the shower was running. It looked like I was going to be lucky for a second time in twenty-four hours.

I put the bag from McDonald's on the counter and ran up the stairs. The bed had been made. Well, that was Jim, neat to the point of being obsessive.

I threw the blankets back and began to pull the rose petals from the stems and strew them over the sheets. I stuck a finger into my mouth and sucked at the drop of blood from the tiny puncture a thorn had made.

Then I stripped out of my clothes; I could hear the bathroom door open, and I posed myself on the bed.

"Come and get me, Jim," I murmured, knowing he would have no trouble hearing me.

"Chief? What are you..." He stood at the top of the stairs. A towel was knotted at his hip, and a stray drop of water clung to his left nipple. My tongue peeked out, wanting to gather it up. His mouth opened and shut. "I knew I smelled flowers but I..."

"I hope you like them." I was starting to get nervous. This wasn't going the way I'd thought it would. Jim should be jumping my bones. We should be getting the scent of roses all over us.

"Is that where you've been? When I woke up and you were gone, I thought..."

"What? What did you think, Jim?" I propped myself up on my elbows.

"I always said you'd even hump a table leg."

"Jim, I don't do table legs. I don't do one-night stands. I love you, don't you get it?"

"You do? You didn't say. When I told you last night..."

"I did too say!"

He hunched a shoulder. "If you did, I couldn't make it out."

"Well, I do love you. Dammit, you're a sentinel, Jim! You've got these enhanced senses."

"Yeah, well, Brown was teasing me all day yesterday about you being my valentine. I didn't want to get my hopes up. I guess I was kind of overwhelmed."

"By me? *I* overwhelmed you?" I liked that. I thought I liked that. Jim still wasn't in bed with me.

"Uh... these are red roses, Chief."

"What's your point, Ellison?"

"You know what red roses mean?"

"Yeah. And d'you have any idea how hard it is to find red roses the day after Valentine's Day?"

"You had a hard time?" A smile was curling his lips, and the weight on my heart started to lift.

"You could say that."

"What else could I say, Blair?"

"Say you love me again, and come to bed!"

He looked at me with that true love look, and he did.



~End~