Under its rare cloak of white, Cascade didn't look like itself, even to its Sentinel's eye. The snow had been coming down softly, persistently since dawn, covering everything in a layer of white that hid, masked, or softened the most recognizable of landmarks to vaguely familiar shapes. Navigation became an interesting chore, made more so by the conditions on the road.
Crews had kept the roads relatively clear at first, but the accumulation had slowly but surely overwhelmed them, forcing them to concentrate on main thoroughfares and highways. Sensibly, most people were hunkering down for the duration, despite the nearness of Christmas day, to the point most businesses closed as well.
Banks, after studying the view out his own window for the better part of an hour, looked around a bullpen filled with detectives doing little more than catching up on paperwork or beating dead ends on moribund cases and sent all but a skeleton crew home. For once, Jim didn't argue. For some reason, his own home called him with an arcane siren's voice that he only felt, but couldn't deny.
That same instinct demanded he toss Sandburg his jacket and offer his partner a ride, rather than risk the cantankerous behavior of Blair's Volvo stranding him somewhere between the department and the loft. He was persistent enough about it that Blair slanted him a look filled with speculation and capitulated abruptly.
A short ride later Jim paid for the easy victory when Blair spotted a Christmas tree lot and insisted on pulling over, saying that they should get one to dress up the loft for the poker party next week. Though he protested, he still wound up tramping through calf high wetness, amicably arguing with his partner whether it should be a spiky blue spruce or a bushy Douglas fir. In the end they picked a spruce, one almost too big to fit into the truck, and definitely too big for the elevator. They ended up wrestling it up the three flights of stairs to the loft, nearly laughing their asses off at each other for getting one so huge, making ridiculous jokes about finding an owl's nest in the branches or having it take root and grow through the skylight.
They put it in the corner near the balcony door, then dug out the ornaments and lights that he and Carolyn had bought when they were married, but never gotten around to using. With typical Sandburg enthusiasm, Blair claimed that the only way to decorate properly was to set the mood, and found a station playing non-stop Christmas carols. Grinning winningly, he pulled out a jug of hard cider originally meant for the annual holiday party and began heating it, spices floating aromatically on top of the amber liquid.
Oddly, once they began stringing lights, they both turned contemplative, as if the hush created by the falling snow out side was slowly permeating into the loft. For that fact, as if it were saturating the entire city. Underneath the soft music there was almost no other sound to be heard, not even to Jim's hypersensitive hearing.
There was the nearly subliminal hiss of the flakes falling, joining their brethren already on the ground; the lap, lap of the water on the harbor shore; the occasional sad moan of a gust of wind wandering by itself through the streets and buildings. Even 827 Prospect was close to silent. Most of their neighbors were gone for the holidays or had chosen to spend the snowy winter's evening somewhere else.
It felt good, a balm to sentinel senses that Jim usually had to hike into the heart of a wilderness preserve to find. Nor was it just the quiet. As if acting on some instinct of his own, Blair wove a tapestry of simple sensory pleasure that complimented the silence.
Their home was fragrant with the scent of the pine, the cider, the spices in it, and rolls that his partner had whipped up to go with the simple meal of clam chowder and salad they munched as they worked. As good as the food smelled, it tasted better. Even Mr. Healthy Food succumbed to the holiday season, pulling out sweet, buttery cookies with crunchy sugar decorations on top, shrugging almost sheepishly as he admitted to having a weakness for them.
They had kept the lights low, depending mostly on the softly filtered daylight that made it through windows and snow. Against that ghostly background, the slivers of brilliant hues from the tree were almost magical, especially as they cavorted and bounced from bulb to ornament to tinsel to freedom in the darkening twilight sky.
Feeling as if every muscle, every joint, every *nerve* in his body were gradually, nearly imperceptibly, dissolving into a state of laxness that he couldn't remember ever experiencing before, Jim soaked up the atmosphere being created in his home. Not even the rare times he'd been dead drunk had he felt so relaxed, so at ease in his own skin, in his own head. True, the hard cider was at least partially to blame, but the spell of that the weather and Blair had more to do with it.
When the last ornament was in place, the last recalcitrant light bulb was fixed, Jim and Blair stepped back to admire their handiwork, unconsciously slinging an arm around each other. "Perfection, man," Blair murmured. "Perfection."
Lazily, saying it teasingly though he meant it, Jim contradicted, "Not quite. Something's missing."
"Well, unless you're thinking that a leggy blonde is called for under it, I can't imagine what," his roommate argued without a trace of heat in his voice. "I have never seen a more beautiful tree."
"Most of the credit is yours, Chief," Jim said. "You're a pro at this. Which I admit surprises me some. Naomi never struck me as the type to follow any tradition, Jewish or Christian."
"She's not," Blair agreed mildly. "But lots of the guys she saw did the tree thing, and I just like making something that looks this great. But I refuse to take all the credit here; your expertise with those lights was awe-inspiring. Usually takes me three or four tries to get all the strings done right."
"Not expertise," Jim corrected. "Sentinel sight and touch. Never actually done this before."
"Your dad always did the lights?" Blair asked carefully, as if he didn't want to believe what his partner had said.
"Naw, the old man always hired a professional to come in and put up a tree for us, all nice and color coordinated with whatever was in fashion that year. There never seemed much point in doing this when I got out on my own, and Carolyn and I were both too busy the year we were married." Jim spoke absently, mind seriously sorting through sense information, looking for what was missing.
"That sucks," Blair said flatly, automatically tightening the arm he had around Jim's waist and leaning in closer.
"I guess," the sentinel answered disinterestedly, the aroma rising from his partner attracting most of his attention. There was a hint of something besides Blair himself and the lingering cooking odors in it, and part of him insisted that identifying it was important.
Wood smoke, he realized suddenly, from the fire at the tree lot. Sandburg had stopped by it several times to warm himself and chat with the attendant, and a bit of the scent was lingering on his hair. It was a good compliment to his natural fragrance, Jim decided, and, the clue he needed to decide what was missing. "Fire," he said abruptly, but, as always, Blair was with him.
Slanting him a look similar to the one he'd given Jim at the station, Blair nodded. "Of course," he said, tone sounding as if he'd just made a connection, not as if he were agreeing with Jim.
"What?" Jim asked, mildly amused at seeing the anthropologist peek through the man-child who had been humming along with carols and sneaking bites of cookies.
"Of course you want a fire. For you it's the finishing touch for a day like this. Not to mention we could lose power with all this white stuff." Blair bustled off to get newspaper from the recycling bin for tinder, and Jim went to the hearth to check the firewood, shaking his head and wondering when his friend would share whatever sentinel theory he had cooking under his curls.
In very short order, a good blaze was going, and he was on the couch, cider in hand, angled so that he had his choice of looking at the tree or the fire. So of course, he wound up staring at Sandburg, who was sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of him to have the same choice. His partner was so close that his hair would brush over Jim's denim-clad knee every time he moved to take a drink of his cider.
And *that* was the perfect finishing touch as far as Jim was concerned.
He let his mind slide away into doing nothing more than enjoying the movement of the flames and how they reflected in tiny glints in Blair's red-touched locks. Heaving a sigh that could have come from China, it was so deep, he all but melted into the cushions, not concerned that his spine seemed to have taken a holiday.
Blair tilted his head back, a small grin playing at the corners of his mouth. "I've never seen you so mellow."
"I don't think I've ever been so mellow," Jim agreed.
"Bet I know why."
"Yeah, Sandburg?" He really didn't care why, but liked the sound of his partner's voice rubbing over his nerves and wanted to keep him talking.
"Because of the storm," Blair said, using his excited researcher's voice. "Not much a primitive man could do in this kind of weather but settle in and try to stay warm. Can't hunt for food, no need to worry about enemies or animal attack. Eat if food's available, and a full stomach means the tribe is doing well, as far as that is concerned. More reason to be mellow."
That made a certain amount of sense, so Jim mmm, hmmed, eyelids drifting down to half-mast, making the lights on the tree look larger if more diffused.
"So you should probably sit back and enjoy it, man," Blair finished. "This kind of snow in Cascade is almost as rare as it would be in Peru's jungles."
"Don't think I could move if I had to," Jim told him sleepily. "What about you, though? Much as you like to get out and around doesn't this," and he waved negligently at the stillness of the loft, "Bore you to death?"
All Blair did was squirm into his backrest, letting his head drop backwards all the way. "Guess you must be contagious. All I want to do is hang out here and watch the fire."
"Ass is going to get cold," Jim remarked off-hand, not really thinking about it. "Not to mention the floor is hard."
"Well, you've got the best seat in the house. I'll just have to make do with concert seating."
"Mmm." Jim thought about that for a minute, then suggested cautiously, "We could share?"
Without moving, Blair returned, "What did you have in mind?"
He didn't really have a definite plan, and while he was mustering up enough concentration to formulate one, his mouth opened and said, "Lie beside me?"
That made Blair stare at him, eyes going wide. "Huh?"
"If we both put our head at this end, but you scoot down some, we can both be comfortable *and* see the tree and fire. Couch is wide enough if we're on our sides." As surprised as he was by what he had said, it sounded perfectly reasonable to him, but Blair looked thoughtful.
"Instinct," he muttered.
"Now what?" Jim swung up his feet, carefully making sure he didn't hit him and lay down, pushing an end pillow into place under his head.
"Well, that's the other thing to do in a primitive culture when snowed in. Cuddle for warmth." Blair didn't move, but instead straightened, putting his elbows on his knees and resting his chin in his hands.
"Teach you to do that in survival courses, too," Jim pointed out.
"This isn't exactly a life and death situation here." Blair rocked a bit, not taking his eyes off the fire.
"You got something against a good cuddle, Chief?" Jim asked, finally understanding why his partner was beginning to withdraw into himself.
"No, not really. It's just, ah, you know, you lay down and that's really all you intend, but then you notice how nice she smells or how soft looking her skin is. Then your hormones sit up and take notice, and next thing you know your dick is telling you that you've already got her horizontal and that's half the battle. So you get a boner, and she either huffs off, all pissed at you for putting the moves on you when all you asked for was a cuddle, or you wind up having sex. Which just encourages dirty thoughts the next time you try to cuddle. No win situation, man."
"Well, none of that applies here, so what's the problem?" Jim asked reasonably.
Blair didn't answer right away, but hunched in on himself a little more. "I don't think it matters much to my hormones that you're a guy, Jim," he finally said softly.
"So? I'm not going to get offended at a woody, and might even spring one myself. The little head doesn't know or care who's close to it, just that someone is, and it wants to take advantage of that. I won't huff off if you don't."
For some reason, that hit Blair's funny bone, and he laughed, laying his cheek where his chin had been so that he could peer over his shoulder at Jim. "I can't imagine you 'huffing off,' period. Storming off, stomping off, yes. But even when you're *in* a huff, you still look dangerous."
"With my size, if I tried to 'huff off,' crooks for miles around would fall on the floor laughing," Jim grinned, stating the obvious. "Never be taken seriously again as a cop for the rest of my life. Not that you take me seriously even when I'm stomping, dangerous or not."
"Oh, I take you very seriously," Blair denied. "I just don't let that stop me."
"No shit. Not much of anything does, does it, Chief? You can add determination to your list of good traits, the top of which is 'how to change the subject without answering the question.' Simon *loves* you for that one. So you going to come up here or not?" Jim shut his eyes completely, wanting to give Blair that much space to make up his mind, not sure why he was making an issue of it.
There was a minute or two of silence from Blair, punctuated by the snap of the wood burning and the distant hum of the snow-laden wind. Then Blair stood creakily, and Jim was certain that he didn't know himself if he was going to retreat completely to his own room or take Jim up on his offer. A moment later the cushions dipped as he gingerly lay down, trying to keep a few inches of space between them.
Jim allowed that to go by without comment, but continued his waiting game, letting the magic of this special evening work for him. Around them, the loft grew very dark, brightened only sporadically by the uncertain illumination of the fiery coals in the hearth. The Christmas tree was an oasis of color and brilliancy that drew the eye and lulled the mind into dreaming of long-held fantasies and deepest wishes as only the promise of the holiday could. Outside the snow continued its hushed addition to the serenity, making its own promises that peace could be a reality, if only for a short while.
By and by Blair forgot to hold himself stiffly and relaxed into the support that was always waiting for him, fitting himself to Jim's contours as if he'd been born knowing how. Head pillowed on Jim's arm, he absently reached up with one hand to take Jim's when he draped an arm over him. Eventually woodies did appear, but there was plenty of time to deal with those later. Utter contentment is far too rare to disturb, even with soul-claiming sex.
And to paraphrase the song, "Isn't it good, knowing you could?"
finis