Title: Time Of Need

Author: Heuradys

Pairing: Jim/Rafe, Blair/Rafe, Jim/Blair... oh heck, the IMC universe's pairings.

Rating: R - for no graphic, slippery, raunchy BDSM action

Disclaimer: Mine. All mine. Always have been, always will be. The stories and the situations and the words, that is. Characters belong to PetFly, Paramount, and a bunch of other despotic beasts.

Warning: This is an adjunct to In My Command, an epic PWPIP, which, if you haven't guessed from the rating on this story, does contain graphic BDSM without a net. This being an adjunct/prequel means angst, history, and discussion of BDSM without a net at the very least.

Thanks: to Panther mine for yelling at me not to change a single thing and for helping me with the title; to all the IMC fans who, yes, will be getting more *soon*, I promise.

Without further ado, the dark and twisted side of 'adys presents:

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Time Of Need
Heuradys, 2001

~~~~~~~~~~~

I turn forty in three days.

I've spent most of the last fifteen years of my life devoted to Jim Ellison.

Surprising, huh? To see us together at work, you'd sometimes think we hardly know each other at all. That's the way we both want it, though. But for different reasons.

We have to keep it professional there, obviously, and we have to keep our real relationship a secret. Hypothetically it could destroy both of us were it to come out. I lie to my own partner, to my captain - both very good friends - who wouldn't understand my... needs and desires, and in fact believe, in my partner's case, that anyone who gets off on what I do (unless it's a playful spanking from a latex-clad bimbo) is a twisted pervert. I have to keep those needs and desires entirely separate from work; I have to keep Detective Jim Ellison separate from the man I call 'sir', the man that takes me to the heights of ecstasy and the depths of depravity.

I manage, for the most part. Work and pleasure have always been distinctly divided in my life, and what Jim and I do together is definitely pleasure. Sometimes, occasionally, things he's done to me affect my job, but those instances are rare and the difficulty they raise in keeping the friend I work with and the friend I spend leisure time with apart is something I can deal with. And my other friends don't really need to know about how I get hurt, but I always let the people I get involved with know that, while they may have my love, there's someone with a claim to my body whenever he wants it.

Jim keeps them separate even further than that, usually; keeps the detective and even most of the man I know away from others. Women, men... he's dated both in the time I've known him, even has been married. But I don't socialize with his companions, despite our friendship; I don't even know most of their names - even the ones he's given the privilege (with my enthusiastic permission for the most part) of sharing some of our time and my willing body. What he does with me isn't something he does with many of them. I know there have been others that he's shared his sadistic side with, I do, but that doesn't bother me. It never has bothered me that I share his body with other people; the other people I've dated don't bother him, either.

What bothers me is that I want more, and I know I'll never get it.Never even ask for it.

See, he doesn't love me. I know that. I'll never be considered for that short list. I'm on a different list than anybody - the friend he can turn to when he doesn't want the emotional entanglements of a relationship, when he wants to physically hurt one of his companions, when he needs to reassert control over himself through the medium of my willingly submissive body. Or I was.

Right now, he loves Blair. Blair, who lives with him, who works with him, whose heart is in his eyes whenever he looks at him. The irony of that gets me sometimes, the lonely nights when my skin's crying for his touch.

His touch. Which him do I mean? Either, both...

God, I still love Blair. I think I always will. Even on the day he walked into Major Crime with Jim and looked at me like he'd never seen me before. We'd spent four mostly happy years together, and yeah, that ended eight years ago, but...

I hadn't wanted to let him go... and I know he didn't want to go. See, Blair used to look at me with that same expression he now looks at Jim with; he loved me. Watching him walk away from our breakup was one of the hardest things I've ever done; going to Jim - who I saw only on the scarce occasions the Army allowed him - and asking him to hurt me far worse than he'd ever done before was one of the hardest, too. Yet, Jim, so giving and generous, did it and made everything easier for me to bear. Two nights under a false name in a Portland hospital, new scars on my body that eased the pain of the scars on my heart, and I went on.

Went on, with both my personal and my professional life. Joined the force, drove the city with a homophobic partner fifteen years my senior, and threw myself into the dating pool trying to find the metaphorical quarter on the bottom of the deep end. I'm a catch, you see; I'm pretty and I come from money. I'm a princess.

Jim's Princess.

Then Jim was gone, too, and in what seemed a far more permanent way than Blair was. The Army was sending him, he told me, on a long mission somewhere in South America. Before he left... that was a good time. I had two solid weeks with him; one at the cabin, the other in town, where we did the sorts of things friends do together.

I tried to replace him, but I could never find anyone I trusted even half as much as I trust him. Well, I had trusted Blair just as much, but he... he'd always wanted to be the one experiencing the rapture and pain of submission, not dish it out to me. But Jim... without him, in a sexual sense, I felt lost. Thankfully our times together had been sporadic enough that, while I loved him, I knew that I could live without him for long periods. It had just never been so very long before, and I was afraid he'd abandoned me.

I didn't know what happened in Peru until I saw his face on the cover of a magazine nearly two years later. I didn't see him for several months afterward. And he'd changed. He was exhausted and heart-sore when he returned to me; the jungle had ground some of his sharp edges away, leaving some new, sharper ones in their place. He was even stricter, harsher. What we did together moved beyond the realm of what most people would consider safe and sane ever farther. Yet, I'd changed, too, moved up in my career and was steps away from that gold shield, burned out on shallow, pointless relationships with people who only saw my money, and I was lonely and I love him... so I was with him every step of the way.

His decision to become a cop had nothing to do with me, and frankly it startled me. But he became a damned good cop, a loner, and, at least outwardly, a total bastard. I don't know how many people actually saw the man behind the utter prick he seemed to be. Many times I couldn't see him either, but I knew he was still there. Time and again before he joined Major Crime, there were nights he spent just holding me or letting me spoil him with hours of massage. No matter how obnoxious other people thought he was, how hard they found him to work with, he said he didn't need them. I knew he did, but it wasn't my place to tell him. And I guess, to be honest, that more than a little part of me wanted to believe that I could be enough for him.

I'm such a fool, but how could I not love him?

From the day I picked up a soldier on furlough at a nasty little bar, the respect he has always had for me has been stunning and humbling. The constant innovation and imagination he uses when coming up with new torments for me, the care he uses to expand my limits... Hell, the fact he can melt my spine with a word or a touch after fifteen years has more than a little to do with it, too.

God, how could he not know that I love him?

Probably because of the hidden parts he allows me to have, that we allow each other. There have always been secrets between us, the privacy and care friendship demands. It's not just that I don't know the names of the people he's been with besides me or the depths of those relationships; he doesn't know the history of my love life in detail, either, or every detail of every problem I've had. Perhaps it's just that I know he doesn't want to love me, and I'd be setting myself up to lose him in a heartbeat if I let him know with words.

So he doesn't see that I love him, and perhaps that's for the best. He wants uncomplicated; I'll give him that. But he asked me yesterday what I want to do for my birthday... and, foolish as it might be, I'm going to ask for one night with him... and Blair.

Blair. I wish I could have made him as happy as Jim obviously does, wish that I could have brought him the peace and happiness he's got now. I thought I was. I still don't know why we parted. We are still friends, have had hours of casual conversation and even some casual drunken sex over the years, but never have talked about what tore us apart. On my side, I'd have to say that I don't mind... much. It took us a long time to get to the effortless friendship, and even with the unspoken business between us, it's a comfortable one. I don't think he knows that I still love him; I hope he doesn't. It makes me feel... It makes me feel pathetic and needy and idealistic when I think about it too much.

I'm not usually this melancholy or contemplative of my emotions; it's probably just birthday depression - God, I'm turning forty! - and next week I'll have my equilibrium back. I am not weak. I am not stupid. Well, sometimes I am stupid - when it comes to wanting things I can't have.

But perhaps, for just one day... just one... I can ask for love.

And get it.

~~~

end.

Feedback, as always, drooled over and framed for my fridge.