DUST

Blair had no idea why he looked up at that precise moment and in that exact direction. He shouldn't have. He and Henri were deep in discussion over a file spread out between them on H's desk, both sure the solution to the case was there if they could only see it. Regardless, something - a flutter of motion, a nearly unheard sound, maybe even a wisp of scent - caught his attention, and he lifted his head to look over at Jim in time to see a large, heavy man dressed in a conservative suit and black overcoat reach for Jim's shoulder with one hand, a knife in the other.

With shout of Jim's name, Blair launched himself across the room, realizing even as he moved that the sentinel was zoned. To his adrenaline-accelerated perception, other people reacted to the threat in slow motion as they noticed the intruder and his obvious intent. They were all too far away to be of any help, and he demanded more speed from himself, praying it would be enough.

In the hope that it would pull Jim back, Blair bellowed, "Soldier! Drop! Now!"

Whether it was the lingering imprint of his military training or simply the panic in Blair's voice, Jim jerked into awareness, automatically doing as ordered. At almost the same instant the intruder lunged, but miraculously, the new distance between them was just enough that Blair was able to hit his target before the assailant could get his. He crashed into the intruder's side with a picture perfect tackle that landed them both on the floor.

As he slammed into the man, Blair felt the most peculiar sensation in the arm that impacted the man's ribs. It was almost as if a thousand grains of sand stabbed into him at incredible speeds, tunneling through his biceps, into his chest at an angle, then down out of his body through the hip that hit the ground first. The feeling lasted only a second; barely long enough for Blair to grasp that it was there.

Then it was gone save for a weird little jiggle of unease in his bowels that made him worry that he would soil himself if he wasn't extremely careful in how he moved. Even more weirdly, it was somehow connected to the back of his mouth, where it tugged on his molars from the inside, giving rise to nausea. Regardless of the odd complaint from his body, Blair allowed the momentum from the fall to spin him away from the intruder to give the others a clear shot at him, if needed.

He wound up with his back against Jim's desk, feet drawn up until they were almost at his bottom, to give him the maximum space to maneuver again, if he needed to. Thankfully the intruder was obeying H's barked commands to stay down and not move. Blinking, Blair studied him as Jim pivoted on a knee, unnecessarily drawing his own weapon, holding it slightly to one side as he surveyed the situation.

Frowning, Jim made a patting motion with his free hand. "Stand down, everybody stand down. Looks like Sandburg's imitation of Mean Joe Green put this guy out for the count."

Eyes on the terribly still and silent man, Blair barely heard the nervous chuckles of relief, watching with morbid interest as Jim cautiously stretched out an arm to place his fingers on the throat of the fallen intruder. Expression blanking, he said to the room in general, "Somebody call the M.E. and get the crime tape."

"Oh, my, god," Blair breathed, freezing in place.

For Blair's ears only, Jim said, "You're not responsible, Chief. I didn't hear anything break, there's no blood from a head wound, which are the only things that could have killed him that fast from a fall, and you didn't hit him that hard to start with."

Offering a hand to Blair to help him to his feet, H said, "Man must have been on something to come into a bullpen full of cops to take one of us down with a knife, of all things."

From behind him Simon put in, "Which begs the question of how he got up here in the first place. Conner, you take that. Miller, you take statements, in detail, with attention to when it was clear to each individual that there was imminent danger. I don't want I.A. to find the smallest crack to get their egos into as an excuse to make more of this than it is."

Horrified, Blair didn't acknowledge either H's hand or Simon's words. A man was dead; dead because of what he'd done. The thing in his gut tugged sickeningly, turning his insides watery, ready to spill from either end at the slightest provocation. He stared at the, the, the body, willing the chest to move in a deep breath, or the lips to voice a moan of complaint.

Jim squatted in front of him, blocking his view, and threaded his fingers through the curls at the nape of Blair's neck. "Listen to me. You are not responsible for this." He pulled him closer, silently demanding that Blair meet his eyes. Slowly, almost reluctantly, Blair did as told, unsurprised to see the deep compassion and understanding in his partner's gaze.

"Saved my life again," Jim murmured. "I had no idea he was in the room, let alone that close."

Grabbing after the comment like a lifeline and pushing his distress down until he could process it better, Blair said, "What is up with that, man? You haven't zoned in ages, and here of all places?"

Blair could see the guilt and frustration set in as Jim scrubbed a hand over his head. "Honestly, Chief, I don't know." He glanced back over his shoulder as more people came into the bullpen, and stood. "Talk about it tonight?"

"Believe it." Blair got to his feet as well, grateful yet again for Jim's broad back, this time because it was between him and the fallen man.

As if that was the cue he'd been waiting for, Simon snapped, "Anybody you know, Ellison?"

Turning, Jim shook his head. "No. And while I've got my share of enemies, I can't think of one who would come at me like this." He walked around the body, confusion showing in his expression. Bending, Jim sniffed and held out one hand so that it was inches from the intruder. "There's something off here; something's not right."

"Care to be more specific, Detective?" Banks said sarcastically.

Either not hearing the tone or not caring, Jim said, "This can't be a fresh corpse. Too cold, decay has already set in, the skin is waxy."

With a side-long glance at him that Blair pretended not to see, Simon said, "Jim...."

Sharply, Jim said, "I've seen my share of death, sir. This is not a recent kill."

"Dan Wolf will be able to tell," Blair put in, vaguely surprised at how calm he sounded.

For a moment he thought Simon would explode, but he visibly held it in. "Without prompting from either of you, gentlemen. Now I believe you both have statements to make."

With something very like gratitude, Blair let himself be swept up in procedure and paperwork, all the while battling that odd squiggle of disquiet in his middle. Thankfully it didn't grow any stronger, and after a while he thought Jim had to be picking up on it through one sense or another. He stayed close to Blair as much as possible through the process, growing more and more agitated to Blair's experienced eye.

At first he thought it was protectiveness on Jim's part. Yet when Dan confirmed that body temperature indicated the intruder had to have been dead for at least a day, if not longer, Jim didn't lighten up at the evidence that Blair couldn't have been responsible for the man's death. Though obviously relieved for Blair's sake, he silently rode out the waves of confusion and conjecture that followed the news, wearing his most impenetrable professional mask.

For his own part, Blair didn't feel as reassured as he'd thought he'd be. For one thing, the first thing Dan did after pronouncing his conclusion over the fallen man was to look right at Jim. "He was after Ellison?" He didn't seem surprised when H confirmed the guess. Instead he peered at Blair from under his lashes while feigning concentration on what his fingers were doing. "And Sandburg was the one who stopped him?"

Half-laughing, but with a vibe of freaked under it, H said, "Hey, the uniforms talking about it already?" Without waiting for an answer, he filled Wolf in on the details of the attack.

Miller showed up about then to take Blair to one of the observation rooms for questioning, apparently resigned to Jim's glowering presence. Throughout the interview, the newest member of Major Crimes glanced repeatedly at the door, well aware that Jim had stationed himself on the other side. Despite that, he was thorough, relaxing somewhat as Blair answered quickly and in detail with no attempt to hide his own confusion. Eventually it was Jim's turn for questioning, and it went as smoothly, though Miller seemed more than happy to let him go when Simon showed up to send them home.

All in all, Blair expected a fight of mammoth proportions once they reached the loft, probably a variation of the 'stay in the truck' argument they had on a regular basis. As always, that wouldn't be what the fight was really about, but Blair was willing to exchange shouts and insults with Jim to reassure him that he was alive, well, and utterly determined to remain at his side, no matter what. To his shock, once they were inside the loft, Jim reached for him slowly, carefully, giving Blair plenty of time and room to say no or step away, if that was what he wanted.

Since one of Jim's full-body, no-hurry hugs was exactly what he needed, Blair went into his arms willingly, not even bothering to take off his jacket, any more than Jim had. "Oh, man," Blair sighed, losing a great deal of the tension that had been dogging him.

After a long, soul-satisfying moment, Jim eased up enough to pat over Blair's back. "You're hurt."

"No," Blair denied. "Well, not exactly, anyway."

Expression going intent as he turned his senses onto him, Jim said, "I can feel it, Chief." He drew back, hands roving restlessly over Blair's sides and arms until he found the place that had been jabbed when he hit the intruder.

"There," Jim muttered laying a palm over the injury. Warmth flared over Blair's nerves, though that was a weak word for the heat/comfort/light that tried to erase the invisible mark. With a noise of frustration, Jim pulled at Blair's clothes until he could reach bare skin. He put a hand on either side of the spot, which undid more, but not quite all. Apparently sensing that, Jim grumbled wordlessly and knelt in front of Blair, one hand over Blair's tummy as he sniffed at the area.

Despite it all, Blair couldn't help a thrill at being the focus of Jim's abilities and the intimacy of what Jim was doing. Blessedly, Jim was totally involved in whatever instinct was driving him to remove the traces of the intruder, sparing Blair the need to explain the sudden rush of his heartbeat. He nearly whimpered when Jim decided that a more personal contact was called for.

Jim covered the mark with his mouth, sucking gently as if to remove poison from a wound. A tsunami of sensation swept over Blair, one that he had no name for, but was as hot and sweet and consuming as love-making. For the first time in his life, he understood what it meant to swoon as he collapsed weakly against door, held upright only by Jim's strength and barely aware of anything more than the lips on his flesh and the feelings the touch created.

Apparently unsatisfied with removing the entry wound, Jim traced a careful, thorough path over the trail scored through Blair's body, palm on the back as he suckled his way across Blair's abdomen, down toward his hip. When he hit the general location of the disquieting niggle in his belly, Blair stifled a moan as it evaporated with a burst of pleasure, growing physically aroused.

If Jim detected it, he didn't let it divert him. Undoing Blair's jeans, he continued on his way until he pinpointed the exit wound just past Blair's hip bone, nearly on his thigh. He lingered there, sucking hard enough to leave his own mark, which resonated with Blair as the perfectly right thing to do.

That done, Jim sat back on his heels, leaving his hands on Blair's waist, face still blank with the concentration of working his senses to some distant limit that Blair couldn't begin to imagine. Seeing him on his knees in front of him like that, in the submissive position of a lover, as if ready to service him with his mouth, sent another spike of pleasure through Blair, this one completely carnal in nature. He had fantasized about being with Jim, in just this pose, too many times for the shadow of it not to rock him to his core.

He wasn't surprised Jim paid no attention his response. Early on, before they were friends, really, they had playfully, nearly wordlessly, acknowledged their mutual attraction, then dismissed it for so many reasons, Blair couldn't even remember them all. Since then they had tacitly let any sign of that desire slip away into their normal give and take, paying no more mind to it than they would the smell of Simon's cigars or the expensive suits Rafe wore.

Not for the first time Blair wondered if they shouldn't revisit that decision. So much had changed between them since then. Blair had discovered he could dig in and fight for what he wanted, instead of 'detaching with love,' and moving onto something else. He had learned that it was possible for someone to care enough for him to fight with him until they made it right; to fight for him when he was too bewildered and hurt to do it himself.

And Jim - a man who would never be comfortable showing what was in his heart - opened up to Blair at the most unexpected times and in the most unexpected ways. He knew more about Jim than anyone else ever had, and, Blair suspected, ever would. Most importantly, Jim had finally stopped fighting his trust in Blair, and just as importantly, had stopped fighting his need to give that trust.

The love, of course, had been there between them practically all along. Neither ever acknowledged it though, as they moved from friends, to partners, then to something that was a step beyond even partners, closer to lovers, barring only the physical aspects of that relationship.

Maybe that should change, too.

Thinking all that, feeling all that, in a few scant seconds since Jim sat back, Blair said shakily, voice reflecting what was going on inside him, "Jim."

With a grimace, Jim came back from wherever his senses had led him, and Blair braced himself for a quip or teasing grin when Jim realized the condition Blair was in. Instead he was blessed with the most beautiful, winsome, happy smile that he could have ever imagined seeing from Jim. His hands slid up Blair's sides, the language in them completely different from the searching healer's touch from earlier, and he rose with them, closing the small space between him and Blair.

Blair didn't know what would happen once they were face-to-face, but he had his hopes. While he wasn't above making the first move, a part of him was looking for something from his partner, wishing for it with all his heart. What that something was, he didn't have a clue, but he would recognize it when he saw/felt/heard it.

A sharp knock sounded at the door, startling Blair into twisting out of Jim's light hold to spin and stare at the door, all arousal lost. Another knock sent him back a step, swallowing hard at the irrational fear that suddenly gripped him. For some bizarre reason he was positive that the man with the knife was on the other side, ready for another try at Jim.

Though he stepped around him, putting him protectively at his back, Jim muttered, "It's Dan Wolf. He's on our side, remember, Chief?"

"Yeah, yeah, forgive me for being a little spooked after taking down a dead man earlier today." As he spoke, Blair hastily pulled his clothes together to look more presentable for a guest, though he worried that the flush he felt would give them away.

"As if that's the weirdest thing we've dealt with since being dumped into the sentinel thing." At Blair's snort, Jim added dryly, "Okay, it's up there. Way up there."

Before Blair could voice an opinion about that, Jim opened the door to Dan, not making an effort to hide his curiosity that the M.E. had shown up at their home. "Late hours for a house call, Wolf."

Holding up a handful of file folders, Dan said blandly, "Thought you two might be interested in the official autopsy results - and a few old cases of mine that bear some remarkable similarities."

Coming out from behind Jim, Blair said brightly, "Come in, come in, please. Can I get you a beer? Wine? A geisha girl?"

With a laugh, Dan accepted the invitation, and after getting settled amid the usual courtesies, tapped a long finger on the top file. "Your John Doe, identified by prints and family ID as Ryan Perry, a free-lance writer from San Diego. He died instantly from a single knife thrust directly into his heart from under his rib cage; there are indications that the blade was left where it was until rigor began to settle in."

"Little or no blood splatter, then," Jim said, looking through the photographs in the file. "A pro - a seasoned, experienced pro did him."

Pointing to a forensic photo of the blade, Dan said, "There was a minute trace of blood on the knife, which was the man's own, but there was no way he could have stabbed himself like that during a fall. Even stranger, while there are ways to frustrate determining the time of death, none of them apply in this case. Trust me, I know what to look for. He'd been dead at least fourteen hours before attacking you. If you're looking for an explanation, I don't have one. Medical science doesn't have one."

"Whoa." Blair muttered, mind whirling instantly with a thousand and one questions.

"I take it back," Jim said, only half-facetiously. "This is the weirdest thing that we've dealt with."

Blair focused on Dan, noticing for the first time the wary assessment he was giving them. "You said that you have similar cases? Dead people up and moving around?"

Though he sat back in the chair, Dan kept his expression inscrutable. "M.E.'s are required to testify in court, and the testimony is only as good as our reputation and work ethic. If you run into... inexplicable anomalies, let's say... during an autopsy, you keep them to yourself unless they have bearing on the case itself. If that happens, most of the time the DA's office and investigating officers are more than willing to work around any unusual findings."

Choosing his words as carefully as Dan obviously had, Blair said, "I can see why that would be the case, given current cultural attitude in regards to the use of scientific methods and technologies to gather evidence."

Dan smiled fractionally, his attitude mellowing somewhat. "Still, coroners have conferences or get called in to work with other M.E.'s from time to time. Like any other profession, they share confidences over a meal or a few drinks when they do get together. I'm not the only one who's had a case or two that defies logical explanation, though you never heard me say that."

"Like ours?" Jim asked.

"Like yours." Dan shuffled out a folder from the bottom of the stack to lay it on top, and opened it so they could see that it wasn't from Cascade PD's records department. "This one is almost identical. Major difference being that the woman who took down the dead guy is a practicing Wiccan with a reputation for having remarkable... luck. She gave the vic a solid shove when she went backstage to visit a musician friend and saw him dodging away from the first strike."

"A shove was all it took?" Blair asked curiously, trying the information on this way and that in his head.

"Yes." Dan's voice gentled considerably. "Blair, you really had nothing to do with Perry's death."

"I...." Blair swallowed hard. "I'm beginning to believe that." To change the subject, he asked, "You say this one is the most like ours. How close are the others?"

"Same cause of death, right down to nearly identical butcher knives. In most cases there were no traces of blood or knife damage on the clothing, indicating that the victim had been re-dressed, though for no discernable reason. Most interestingly, several victims were reported missing a few days, even a week, before the body was located. They were found in an entirely different state, let alone the same city, that they lived in. To add to that, at least one was seen by reliable witnesses after his disappearance, but before the discovery of his body."

"Kidnapping?" Jim murmured, picking up the file to glance through it for himself.

"That's what the investigating officers went on, but it didn't pan out for them. Not enough money available to make it profitable," Dan said. "And despite the similarities, the possibility of a serial killer has been dismissed, as well. The profilers say it would have to be an entirely new species of them to fit the pattern most people see on the surface."

Closing the folder he held and bouncing it off the palm of a hand, Jim said, "I really appreciate you bringing this to us, Wolf, but, no offense, I have to ask why. If all you wanted to accomplish was to reassure Sandburg in person that he wasn't responsible for the man's death, all you would have had to do is give us that autopsy report."

"None taken," Dan said as if he'd expected the question and was pleased that he'd gotten it. "Let's give this the wildest twist that we can come up with and say, for instance, that a mad scientist has learned how to resurrect humans, or maybe, that the CIA has developed a chemical formula that creates zombies that will obey every command of their controller."

"Well, that last theory has the benefit of fitting the facts as we know them," Jim said dryly.

Unperturbed, Dan went on. "Since we're already stretching the limits of credulity, let's add in that our cloak and dagger friends bought into that tall tale that you and Sandburg created to draw out Zeller, and decided that testing their zombies against a so-called super cop would get them the results they need to convince the black ops financing committee to let them zombify a small army instead of one or two at a time."

With the ease of too much practice, Blair didn't flinch at one of the many explanations of the diss disaster that his mother had somehow managed to sell to various people during her campaign to make sure he got his degree. To this day he didn't know how she managed it, apparently with Jim's full cooperation and assistance.

"Since we're reaching here, why not?" he murmured. The look of understanding that Dan sent his way almost undid him, but he held it together well enough to add blandly, "You think our covert covert spies or mad scientists or whatever won't be happy with one test run; that we can expect another attempt on Jim."

"It's a valid possibility, don't you think?" Dan said quietly.

Pinching at the bridge of his nose, Jim said, "Yeah, it is. Thing is, I'm only human, Dan. Look at how easy the first assassin got the drop on me. So if you could come up with a way to tell these guys from everybody else without using a thermometer, you'd be saving my ass. Theoretically."

An idea zipped across Blair's mind, and he bounced to his feet to pace, hands already moving as if the gestures could pull more details from the spark of insight. "I think I might know how he got the drop on you. In fact, it could have happened to any of the guys in Major Crimes.

"The bullpen has to be this serious safe-zone for them, emotionally, maybe even intellectually speaking, probably more so even than their homes, because they're surrounded by fellow cops. Not just any cops, either, but ones they trust to watch their back on a regular basis, not to mention that under normal circumstances, no one who hasn't been vetted to some degree or another is allowed on the floor, never mind the bullpen itself, which means interlopers are immediately noted, assessed and acted upon in the most appropriate way, including dismissing them.

"But nobody notices this guy until he's almost close enough to strike. It's because he wasn't giving off any vibes, any life signs, if you know what I mean. People overlooked him like they would a piece of furniture."

Dan opened his mouth as if to speak, shut it again, and turned slightly toward Jim. "You get that?"

"Yeah, but I've had more practice at translating. Basically he thinks Perry got past everybody because he was dead, and we deal with dead people often enough that on a subconscious level we don't regard them as a threat when we pick up on them."

To his credit, Dan gave the theory serious thought, nodding once. "In a busy room, with other, more important distractions, especially if he moved confidently... I can see that, actually."

Resisting the urge to beam at Jim for getting it, Blair said excitedly. "All we have to do is retrain Jim's assessment levels, and I've got an idea or two about how to go about that. Thanks so much for the help, Dan, and the warning. I promise, we won't say a word about dead people walking, 'cause you know, we don't want to sound like nutcases, any more than you coroners want to, so we won't mention where we got the files if it should come up for some reason or another."

While he spoke, Blair squatted in front of Dan as if to make his reassurances face-to-face, but when he stood, he put his hand on Dan's arm. Dan responded automatically by standing with him, and Blair used the momentum to start walking with him toward the door. By the time he'd finished blurbling promises and guarantees, Dan was on his way out, a bemused smile on his face. Gently closing the door behind him, Blair turned and leaned back on it, as if to prevent Dan from changing his mind and coming back in, sighing theatrically as he did.

Grinning, Jim said, "That was the nicest, most polite bum's rush I've ever seen in my life. Wolf probably doesn't know how he wound up in the hallway, sans files, I might add."

"Hey, he did us a major favor. The least I can do is be civil about getting rid of him so we can give your sense memory a run-through." Blair doused lights as he made his way back to the couch.

"That wasn't a line of bullshit to pacify Wolf?" Jim asked.

"Not entirely, no." Blair sat on the coffee table in front of Jim. "In your case, it's the opposite of why everybody else didn't see Perry. Most of us have this mental profile, on a level where we can't really see it, of living versus non-living objects in our general area. If a bird moves, we don't freak because it's a bird, it's supposed to move. If the thing doesn't breathe or make noise, it's inanimate and we disregard it. It's why taxidermy animals are both creepy and compelling. They look alive, but we know they're not."

"So I zoned on Perry because he was a sensory contradiction; not alive, but moving." Jim said.

"The question is, what senses told you that?" Blair said as encouragingly as he could.

To his surprise, Jim muttered in resignation and settled back into the couch, head dropping onto the back, legs lolling slightly apart. Eyes closed, he said, "I know, I know, a deep cleansing breath."

Without thinking, Blair leaned forward to rest his hands on Jim's knees. "You got it. Now, what were you doing just before you zoned?"

Jim's face lost a great many of the stress lines that had been marring it, oddly making him look younger. "Comparing the witness list in the Korman file to the one in my notes, looking for a discrepancy. I'm positive we spoke to someone who doesn't have an official statement."

"That's good, that's good.... Now what did you hear?"

Reeling off the list, Jim worked his way down from the most obvious (You and H talking), to the more subtle (the hum of Rhonda's cable sending a command to the printer) that Blair had come to expect since their first attempts at this sort of recall. The rest of the sensory check went as well, then, when Jim was at ease and not expecting it, Blair asked, "What sense did you zone on?"

"Touch," Jim answered instantly.

"What did you feel?"

"The floor vibrating with approaching footsteps, the air pressure changing with the mass of someone coming close." Jim's eyes popped open. "And that was all I sensed, when I should have heard breathing, heartbeat, felt body heat, scented a human presence. I was trying to resolve the, the, distortion with the fact that I felt somebody walking toward me."

"Of course!" Blair could have smacked himself for not putting it together before now. "People are more than just surface to you; you pick up a detailed sensory signature. So when this guy didn't come off as 'human,' you reacted by trying to focus on what input you did have to resolve what it was getting in your space." He beamed at Jim. "All we have to do is sensitize you to that contradiction so you know to duck."

Groaning, Jim slammed his eyes shut again, but obediently went through the routine of defining the parameters of his perceptions until they both felt confident he would recognize the approach of another corpse. Blair would have been happier if they'd had a way to test him, but couldn't think of a practical way to do it. It didn't stop him from dreaming up a few wild possibilities while he and Jim read through the files Dan had brought them.

The practice stood in good stead for them, though, only a few days later, while they were doing their own particular brand of checking out a crime scene after forensics had finished with it. It was a simple, if high-profile, robbery that had been bounced up to Major Crimes to help alleviate the case load of the seriously over-worked Robbery detectives who were coping with the swell of petty thefts, break-ins, and car jackings that came with the summer's heat.

Hoping to coax more details from the owner about the quick smash-and-grab, Blair chatted her up in his most ingratiating way and didn't think twice about Jim going out the back door, following in the footsteps of the robbers. The moment he was out of sight, though, the hairs on the back of Blair's neck stood straight up, a wash of disquiet chilling his stomach. Interrupting his self-deprecating description of his job as an official consultant to the P.D., he looked the way Jim had gone, bit his lower lip, and lost his chain of thought.

Dimly recognizing that he'd lost his chance at getting more personal with her, he excused himself and went after Jim. The alley behind the store was empty, and Blair frowned, suddenly uncertain as to why he'd gone outside. A garbled noise caught his attention, putting his feet in motion before he had time to consider niceties like calling for backup. When he reached the corner, he spotted the biggest man he had ever seen trying to grab Jim with huge, meaty hands.

Jim was ducking and weaving like a boxing pro who'd been hit a time too many, but he didn't have his gun out. Instead he was concentrating with blank-faced determination on not letting his opponent touch him in any way. Even if he hadn't been acting so strangely, Blair would have known that he was facing another reanimated corpse from the cold shiver that ran through him.

Acting on impulse, he ran for the combatants, darting between them to catch the next blow between his hands on the down stroke of the forearms. His palms shouted their discomfort as a sandblast of prickles spiked through them, and he went down on one knee, both from the force of the punch and the dizzying gust of sensation. As soon as he touched the ground, the man collapsed bonelessly, as if the force that had held him up had abruptly disappeared.

Blair scrambled away as he fell, right into Jim's arms. Holding him to his chest while Blair shuddered at the squirming uneasiness in his gut, Jim called for backup, curtly telling Dispatch that he'd been attacked. Almost throwing the cell down, he caught Blair's hand in his and brought it up to his nose. At the same time, he cupped the knee that was hurting from the hard impact on the pavement.

Much as he wanted the taint of the dead man removed from him before the residual in his belly made him soil himself, Blair tugged gently to get away. "Not yet, man. Uniforms on the way."

With a sniff, Jim said, "It's the same scent, Chief. Not a variation on it like you'd expect it to be from person to person, but the exact, same smell. Like there was something in the victim that left through you, or maybe, maybe, you yanked out, I don't know. But Perry smelled like this, then you, then this guy, and now you again."

"You mean, like he was possessed or something," Blair said, hardly believing what was coming out of his mouth.

Though it was obvious that Jim didn't like the description, worse yet, the implication that something supernatural was going on, he said grudgingly. "That's what the evidence points to."

Mildly shocked at not being stonewalled, Blair found himself playing devil's advocate. "It could be whatever process is being used to keep them mobile erases normal human odors, and what you're picking up from me is just transfer."

"I can live with that explanation," Jim said with a lightness Blair knew he didn't feel because of the tightness in the muscles against his back. "At least, until one of them starts spewing pea soup."

Hearing the sirens in the distance, Blair took a deep breath and made himself pull away and stand. Jim went with him, hanging on until the last second, as if aware of how much it calmed wrongness running from Blair's hands to his knee, twisting in his belly along the way. "I am not going to hear the end of this," Blair said to no one in particular. "Two 'kills' in as many weeks."

"About that, Chief." Jim hesitated, then his jaw throbbed and he went on. "The official story is that this guy tried to hit me, I dodged, and we went around a few times before he just dropped. There's no blood, no knife that we can see, and the last thing we need is I.A. looking at you for another incident."

At Blair's automatic sound of protest, Jim added hastily, "You watched my back out here by teaching me how to sense one of these things, and it made a difference. Let me watch yours at the department. After all we went through to secure your place there, I don't want this craziness to endanger it, okay?"

There was no way to argue with that, especially since it contained a truth that shouldn't be obscured or diminished. It was also, Blair realized suddenly, a matter of trust. If he fought with Jim on this, it would look like Blair didn't trust him to do what was right for Blair. All those times Jim had tried to comfort or help him that he had brushed aside, Jim had interpreted as Blair lacking faith in him.

Unintentionally Blair winced. He'd been trying to prove himself by handling problems on his own, by showing the same self-reliance and independence that Jim did. At the same time he picked, pounced, and nagged to convince Jim to let him do whatever he could to protect and, well, tend to his sentinel. No wonder trust issues were always rearing their ugly heads; it had to be a two-way street or it wasn't a solid thing on either side.

With that insight ringing through his heart, Blair said to show he'd go along with Jim, "What about my knee?"

"You tried to distract him so I could get a punch in, and he knocked you down?"

Raising his leg so that he could see the scraped skin through his torn jeans, Blair said lightly, "You know, the department really should give their plain clothes cops a clothing allowance, given how often their detectives wind up tattered or stained from crime scenes, not to mention the odd chase after a suspect." He peeked up at Jim through his lashes, catching the flash of surprise - and pleasure - in his eyes.

All Jim said, though, was "That would certainly make Rafe a happy man." Lifting a hand, Jim called, "Down here," to the uniforms coming down the alley and just like that they were caught up yet again in regulations and procedure.

By the time they reached the loft, Blair felt like he'd actually been pummeled by the fallen man, who turned out to be one Carter Wells, a professional wrestler. At Jim's request, Dan had been happy to push the autopsy to the top of his list, and the verdict was that Wells had died of a cerebral hemorrhage, possibly caused by his last match, the night before. It was also his opinion that the cranial pressure from it could have caused overly aggressive, even homicidal behavior, which allowed Simon to close the case with a minimum of fuss. As far as the rest of the world was concerned, the only similarity to it and Perry's was the butcher knife found on Well's person when he was prepped for autopsy.

The obnoxious tugging under his bellybutton reminded Blair otherwise, as did Jim's constantly jumping jaw muscle. It wasn't until they were safely at home that either of them took a deep breath. Jim let them both get their coats off, a beer from the fridge, and established on the couch before twisting in his seat to look at him expectantly.

Without a word Blair stripped off his shoes and shirts, sat on one hip to face him and offered his hands, palms up, fingers slightly curled. Jim cupped his own palms under them and brought them up to his nose to softly sniff at the wrist and heel before licking them, practically burying his face in the cradle of Blair's fingers. Like before, intense pleasure replaced the nasty remainder of the contact with the dead man, but it was the intimacy of the act that Blair found almost unbearably erotic. No lover's caress had ever made him quiver and ache as much as that simple touch.

Apparently unaware of Blair's arousal, Jim made his way along Blair's arms, sucking and massaging until he reached Blair's chest. He rested his forehead there as he slipped his arms around Blair, hugging him gently, and Blair returned it, rubbing small circles into his back and shoulders. They rested together like that for a few moments, then Jim sat back, expression solemn.

"Blair..." He glanced down at Blair's lap, the reason for his pause obvious.

"I was hoping you hadn't really noticed that," Blair said, inwardly cringing, as it was clear that Jim hadn't been as oblivious as he'd thought.

Apologetically, Jim said, "The stain goes down across your groin into your leg. I, ah...."

"It's okay; I know you're not being a tease. I can't help but respond, though." The impulse was there to make light of his condition, to offer up an excuse for banter or teasing, but Blair pushed it down. This was a serious moment, one calling for honesty, if he were any judge of Jim Ellison at all.

The tense line of Jim's shoulders dropped fractionally and he straightened up and peeled off his sweater, showing that he was in the same condition as Blair. "I can't either. I'd walk away, but this stain is making you sick. It has to be removed."

Much as Blair wanted to argue that they could wait, his intuition shouted that it was a bad idea, not that he thought he could convince Jim to go against his own in this instance. Instead, he admitted softly, "I've thought about being with you. Wondered why we haven't. God knows there's no one I care more about."

Head hanging so that Blair couldn't see his expression, Jim said just as quietly, "I love you, Blair, and I don't want our love-making to happen like this - driven by the senses or instinct or whatever shit is going down in our lives. I want it to be just me and you, being as close as we can be because that's what we want and need."

Inhaling sharply to stop a surprised cry, Blair carefully drew Jim back to him to enclose him in a loose hug. At times he forgot just how much courage this precious, damaged man had. When it came to his emotions he might hide behind stoic silence or blistering verbal attacks to protect himself, but when it mattered, he soldiered on and told the truth. With all his heart Blair wished he could respond in kind. If life as Naomi's son had taught him anything, though, it was to never use the "L" word unless he was committed totally to the person he said it to.

He believed Jim might be that person, almost prayed that he was. Yet there was some small thing missing; some piece of him holding back, looking for god knew what. With self-reproach and sadness weighing him down, Blair gave Jim a last squeeze and carefully pushed him back a few inches.

"We've taken care of each other through injuries and illness," Blair said hesitantly. "We can deal with the, ah, physical aspects of this in the same way; just, I don't know, put it into that category for a while? Then revisit it when we've gotten rid of the zombies once and for all?"

Though he couldn't see into Jim's face, he could feel the weary resignation. Despite that, Jim said in a completely matter of fact tone, "We need to get those pants off."

"Ah. Point." Blair was nonplused, but then realized that Jim was, in his own way, agreeing to his suggestion. To show his understanding, he undid his top button and zip, wiggling to get his jeans past his bottom without standing up. Jim gave him a hand in getting them off past his feet, then neatly set them aside.

With a complete lack of self-consciousness, Jim bent until he could rest his forehead over Blair's breastbone, sliding his hands behind Blair until they rested on his back in the corresponding place. It was surprisingly comforting, but that evaporated in a blaze of pleasure when Jim kissed the skin nearest his mouth. He worked his way downward, palms moving in tandem, and Blair had to close his eyes against the charge of lust from the sight of him doing that.

Literally holding his breath as Jim skimmed at an angle toward his groin, hands tunneling under his backside, Blair didn't exhale until he was past it and moving away from the erection so close to his face. Blair's dick bobbed, once, despite everything Blair could do to keep it under control, and tapped Jim on the cheek. How he held back a moan, he had no idea, but he managed for Jim's sake.

After a forever of exquisite torment as Jim worked his way down Blair's thigh, he finally reached Blair's knee, laving the scraped flesh carefully before biting just under the wound hard enough to leave a mark. Back arching, Blair rode out the rush of bright, vivid release, cleaning away the last traces of contamination. He would have been content with that, but Jim didn't ask for permission to remove the hint of wrongness just under his navel. With a nearly silent sigh, he laid his cheek over the disturbance, his chest smooth and satiny against Blair's lower body.

Slick with pre-cum, Blair's hardon rubbed over Jim's pec, and that was simply more than Blair could take. Thrusting once with all his strength, he came in hard, long spasms that left him trembling in ecstasy, insensible to anything but Jim's soft cry as he spilled his seed as well.

He lingered in between heaven and his body for an unknowable time, then roused himself to cooperate with Jim as he struggled to his feet, taking Blair with him. Leaning drunkenly against each other, they made it to Blair's room and tumbled into his bed. Jim only stayed long enough to situate Blair comfortably before going to the bathroom and bringing back a warm washcloth to clean them up. Pulling the blankets over Blair, he dropped a soft kiss to his forehead, and that was the last thing Blair remembered until the alarm sounded.

Blair didn't quite know what to make of it when Jim didn't turn cold and remote the next morning, shutting him out. He didn't become irritable and sharp, either, pretending that everything was one hundred percent, then sniping at Blair whenever the opportunity arose. Instead he was subdued in a way Blair had never seen in him before. Communication was there, friendly and easy-going as ever, but it was only words with no sense of the depths behind them that he had come to expect from Jim.

It was such a subtle perception that Blair would have been willing to think it was all in his own mind if the other members of Major Crime hadn't started shooting strange looks at Jim. Under other circumstances, he might have tried to call Jim on it, but the underlying sadness he sensed in the quiet made him hold his tongue. Since he was the cause, however unwillingly, he kept to his end of the bargain to table the whole subject of sex between them until they stopped the attempts on Jim's life.

With that as motivation, he paid a call to Dan Wolf as soon as he could get away. Dan quickly confirmed that the time of death for the wrestler was off by several hours, in his opinion, but hadn't thought about it because of the semi-natural causes. It took less persuasion than Blair expected to convince him to do another search through his files for other instances that fit their profile of the dead people, but who did not die by a knife thrust. Getting him to query other coroners was trickier, but he agreed, giving Blair a speculative stare that reminded him of the one he gave him after the first attack.

Pondering that, Blair went back up to Major Crimes and was immediately swept into a new case. It, along with the other work already piled on their desks, kept him and Jim running at full speed for the next few days, but not so much so that he didn't notice when Jim stopped dead in his tracks at a crime scene. Sniffing, Jim turned slowly on his heel, looking at the crowd on the other side of the police tape.

At the same time, Blair broke out into goose bumps, the hair on his neck and arms trying to poke its way through his shirt. One hand on Jim's forearm, both to ground and proclaim his defense of him, Blair studied the crowd himself and spotted a young Oriental woman staring at them. Her expression was blank, but her eyes, which were the muddled color of an oil slick on pavement, were filled with fury and frustration.

He had no doubt it was their assassin in another body. As if to confirm his opinion, the woman stiffened, eyes rolling up into the back of her head. A moment later she was just another morbid bystander wondering who was hurt and how badly. Most interestingly, her eyes were now deep brown, in standing with her Oriental features.

Turning away casually, Jim said, "Did you see that?"

"Her eyes change?"

"And the dust that drifted away from her just before they did." Jim squatted down and lifted the sheet over the body of the man who had fallen or jumped from the top of the building - the third that week. Quietly, so that the people around them would think they were discussing the remains, he added, "It was like somebody blew a puff of air off a dirty surface, and a passing waft of air caught it to swirl it away."

"No, no I didn't." Blair considered the new information. "Is it possible that's why it wants you dead? Because you can sense it in its host?"

"How did it know I could?" Glancing over his shoulder, he added more loudly, "Simon's coming. And no, I do not think all these jumpers are copycats. There's a connection we haven't found yet."

To keep up appearances Blair argued the opposite theory, all the while trying to fit the newest piece of the puzzle into what they already knew about the possessions. That night he searched the 'net for information on zombie and demonic control, not really expecting to find anything useful but intrigued by how widespread the concept was, culturally. A few of the more extreme websites made him raise an eyebrow, experienced as he was in alternative beliefs. One seriously freaked him out. Who would want to deliberately turn a loved one into a decaying zombie simply so they would never leave?

Just as he was about to give up and try more traditional research venues, he found a reference that seemed to fit the few parameters they had established for the assassin. The author called the entities "Riders," and seemed to think it was a hitherto undiscovered natural phenomenon, perhaps a unique life form. It was an interesting possibility, but other than the name, Blair didn't find much pertinent to his needs in the site.

The next day, when Dan delivered the stack of folders Blair had asked for, he had to wonder if perhaps the author had happened onto a genuine mystery. There had to be nearly thirty possibly related cases from the past ten years, and that was just from Dan's circle of professional acquaintances. His and Jim's work load was too heavy for more than a cursory look at them, but when the Rider made an appearance again, this time in a store where he and Jim were shopping, Blair made it their priority.

They waded through the pile during every free moment they could scrape together over the next week, increasingly worried when the Rider turned up nearly every other day to watch them. Unsurprised to discover that most of the records were private ones with hand written notes on the edges discussing the oddities, they added their own notations and comments. Using the files Dan had already given them as a guideline, they were able to eliminate most, but unable to find anything relevant in the remainder, at first.

To Blair's chagrin, it was Jim who suddenly started laying them out in chronological order on the coffee table, going back once to the kitchen table to retrieve a discarded file. When he was done, there were seven all together, linked by date and place of where one body was found and another person went missing.

Absently tidying up the new rejects as he sat on the couch, Jim said, "The same phenomenon might be behind these, but I think it's a single, specific example of it connecting the others."

Sitting on the floor, Blair jotted down dates and locations in a grid. "There's another pattern here, too. When the Rider takes someone with a knife, it stays with the body longer; at least a week. See - drowning, drug overdose, CO2 suicide, those bodies were replaced within a few days."

"That's a pattern, too," Jim said thoughtfully. "All the causes of death left minimal damage to the corpse, which makes sense. The Rider might be noticed if he's navigating around with the back of the head missing."

Bits and pieces of information from the various websites he'd scanned bounced through Blair's mind, warning him that he was missing a link common to their selection of files and their own case. But too many days with too little sleep, too much to do, and what small amount of rest he got disturbed by this too quiet, too compliant version of Jim dulled Blair's thoughts to the point he couldn't catch any of the fleeting references. Almost automatically he kept adding columns and filling in the data, not really reading any of it, while Jim went the opposite route and read each one individually, in depth.

Finally, Jim rubbed his eyes and checked the time. "Last one for now, Chief. We have that meeting with Simon and the other captains first thing in the morning." He stood and ambled toward the bathroom. "Don't stay up too late."

Taking off his glasses, Blair stretched, trying to work a few of the kinks out of his back. "Believe me, I'm right behind you; I want the sleep. We're due to be watched by the Rider again, tomorrow, too. Wish I could figure out how it finds us so easily.

"Anyway, apparently when it's done playing peeping tom, it takes a few days to recharge before taking another body. Ha. Another pattern." He glanced down at his grid to see if he could fit that into what he'd already done and found himself scanning the column marked "Profession."

One, a Daniel Deforth, was listed as an actor, and Blair suddenly recognized the name. The man had been a gay porno star, quite a good one in Blair's opinion. He'd seen several of Deforth's flicks and thought him to be a very sensual, very believable actor. In fact, he had a reputation for truly enjoying the action being filmed, and that came across very clearly. If he'd had a few more years, he might have acquired a reputation that reached beyond the porn market.

He was a knife victim, as was the woman after him, Julie Shafer, an up and coming artist who had painted extremely realistic scenes that existed only in her imagination. Next one after that was also a knife killing, and she'd been a fashion designer who loved to use faux fur and other luxurious fabrics. Picking up a marker, Blair hastily highlighted all the knifed people, then their professions, and read down that line.

Musician, photographer, herbalist specializing in perfumes - each and every person worked in a job or craft that demanded the use of one sense or another, with exacting skill. Perry, the last victim, was a freelance magazine food critic, noted for his discerning palate. To Blair it was suddenly obvious the Rider wanted to take people who could give it a strong sensory experience.

Remembering the oily film on the eyes of the people it had been using to spy on them, Blair wondered if it could only perceive a dim portion of what a human normally could, and if it had different senses of its own. Jim said he saw dust as it departed, perhaps meaning it ordinarily had no specific form. That would explain....

The shoe dropped for Blair. Heartbeat going into hyper-drive, lungs struggling to keep up, he finished the thought out loud - but not so loud Jim would hear. "...why it wants Jim. Because he's a sentinel. The ultimate experience for it, all the senses, all at once, all maxed out beyond what it's experienced before."

Needing to convince himself otherwise, he looked at the locations where the victims had been found, and had to put his hand in his mouth to stop a shout of denial. In the first instances, it appeared as if the Rider had meandered around, not really caring about where it was. The last few victims, though, since shortly before the time of a certain press conference that Blair never wanted to think about again, had been heading directly north.

"Sandburg!" Strong hands closed over his upper arms and turned him gently until Jim could see into his face. "Blair! What's wrong?"

Words deserted him, even as his mind raced for what to say. He couldn't tell Jim that the thing was hunting him because of the senses, and that it was his fault, thanks to the many times be-damned dissertation. He couldn't! They were only beginning to put that disaster behind them, just finished healing the wounds. My god, they were inching toward becoming lovers. If he opened his mouth, he'd ruin all of that. How much more stress could their relationship take before it shredded completely?

Guessing that Jim had been alerted by his vital signs, Blair summoned all his will and said lightly, "Nothing. Just stood up too fast after sitting cross-legged too long. Got one heck of a charley-horse."

Jim didn't buy it, but Blair hoped he would let it go, anyway, taking the lie as a cue to give Blair his privacy.

Instead Jim went very, very still. With too much pain in his voice, he asked, "Am I really such a rat bastard you can't talk to me when there's trouble, Chief?"

"What? My, God, no!"

Gripping his arms a bit more tightly, as if willing himself not to shake him, Jim said, "From the first you went toe-to-toe with me, getting in my face if that was what it took to make me listen to you. I've always respected, even admired, you for that. But when it cuts too close to home for you, or maybe for me, you back down, slide away, obfuscate your way past me."

He stopped, looked away for a second, but went on. "Sometimes, when the sentinel thing is involved, it's not a good idea. You... we... we get in trouble. Whatever's going on in your head right now, much as I don't want to be nosy, I think you need to share."

For a moment all Blair could do was stare at him, astonished at the length of the speech itself, let alone the revelations in it. It was so not what he expected from Jim where emotions were concerned that he was almost willing to bet that the Rider already had him. A moment later rage, fueled by his disgust at himself, rose to cover it, and he tried to twist away.

Jim hung on doggedly. "I swear, I swear I'll hold my tongue and my temper. I'll just listen, that's all. If you hit a nerve, I'll say so afterwards and why, okay?"

"No, it's not! You might make that promise, but you'll break it before I get halfway through!" Jim flinched, as Blair meant him to, but didn't let go. "Damnit, acting like a muscle-bound Neanderthal isn't going to convince me of it, either!"

"Right now I am a muscle-bound Neanderthal, acting on what my gut says, and it's shouting loud and clear that you need to talk to me."

Not paying the slightest attention to Blair's writhing to get away, Jim gingerly wrapped him up in a hug, absorbing jabbing elbows and fierce shoves without making a sound. Eventually Blair admitted to himself that he wasn't going to get free unless he did a damage to Jim, and he could not bring himself to do that. Exhaustion caught up with him suddenly, making his knees so weak that he sagged against Jim, forehead on that wide chest.

From his hiding place, Blair muttered, "The Rider wants you because you're a sentinel. It's looking for extreme sensory input, and you're an all-you-can-eat smorgasbord of it."

Slightly rocking him, Jim carded his fingers through Blair's curls. "Yeah, I thought maybe that was the case. I take it you found evidence?" At Blair's reflexive stiffening, he added, "There are lots of people out there smarter, stronger, better looking, richer - everything - than me. The only thing that makes me stand out is the senses. I mean, why else come into the bullpen and try to take me there if I didn't have something the Rider is so eager for, it couldn't wait for a better time and place? It must want to experience what I do pretty badly."

"I feel like I put a great, big, neon-red bull's eye on your back," Blair said to Jim's chest, unable to meet his eyes despite the utter lack of blame or irritation in his voice.

"I've always had one, since the first time I put on a uniform. You," and Jim gave him a careful squeeze, "taught me new ways to duck when someone is aiming for it. If you brought me to the Rider's attention, well, you taught me how to dodge that bullet, too, along with becoming my personal bodyguard to make double sure he doesn't get me."

The guilt didn't go away that easily, but Blair swallowed hard, accepting that Jim, at least, didn't blame him. Relaxing into Jim's hold and hugging him back, he tried to infuse himself with a portion of the strength being offered, needing it to finish the conversation. Jim's patient waiting told him clearly that sooner or later, he was going to have to explain why he would rather run than talk to him, sometimes.

The gentle combing of his hair soothed him to the point that he thought he might fall asleep standing up. Rather than stop the wonderful touch by moving away, Blair finally confessed, "I don't want to tell you things that I think might cause you pain. The first chapter of the diss - man, I thought you were just pissed because you didn't understand why I took the remote, academic tone I used. It didn't occur to me until later that you honestly believed that I didn't think much of you, and that hurt you."

This time Jim was the one to go rigid, and while Blair braced himself for the verbal blast he'd expected earlier, he also kneaded the strong back muscles under his palms. "Like when I met Alex Barnes. I knew that you'd be upset that there was another sentinel in your territory and that you would take it personally that I had to help her. So I convinced myself that the two of you had to meet under controlled circumstances, and that I should wait until you'd recovered fully from your injury."

Uncharacteristically - as he'd been since they'd started this conversation - Jim said kindly, "You felt you had to help her, didn't you? Like with me, it wasn't just about the diss."

"God." Blair shook his head at himself. "I didn't even like her, though at first I couldn't have given you a good reason. But, yeah, I couldn't have simply walked away."

With understanding in his tone, Jim said, "That's why you forgave me so quickly for what happened on the beach, and later, at the temple. You understood I had to try to get through to her. And I didn't just dislike her, I hated her guts, from the very start when all I knew about her was the spirit animal I kept seeing and hearing."

Seriously needing Jim to believe him, Blair said, "What was to forgive? You were working under hormonal and biological imperatives I couldn't begin to comprehend. Well, maybe I had an idea when I was fifteen and a walking hardon. At the end all you were trying to do was what was right. Besides, I knew it would take a lot longer for you to forgive yourself."

"Called me on that one," Jim confessed, resting his cheek on the top of Blair's head.

Daringly, because of their closeness and Jim's unprecedented willingness to talk, Blair added, "Well, I had the memory of the vision we shared. I felt like I had a personal tour of you, inside and out."

"What I saw wasn't any surprise to me," Jim said. "I already knew you were beautiful all the way through."

Though flattered and touched, Blair waited, expectantly, trying to encourage Jim to keep going without verbally pushing him. It paid off when Jim said, "For you in was a wonderful, incredible, once in a lifetime experience. It left me bitter, as if I'd had my nose rubbed in what I could never have."

Blair started to protest, pulling back enough to look into Jim's face. Taking it as saying without words that enough was enough, Jim drew away as well, turning as he went. "You've got such a pure soul and spirit, Chief, and an honest belief in the inherent goodness of man that lets you see the best in everybody, do your best for everybody, like a Shaman should. I've got too much blood on my hands, seen too much of the worst of people."

Catching him by the arm before he could turn around completely, Blair said persuasively, "You're a warrior, a cop. You've never wantonly taken a life, uncaring of the consequences of what you've done. Yours is a different kind of spirit, that's all."

Jim started to say something, stopped, and spun back to Blair. "Warrior sprit, shaman spirit - Chief, that's why you can unseat a Rider, why Dan Wolf felt you were involved in the first intruder's fall. He's a lot more traditional in his beliefs that he lets most people know. And because of that fundamental difference between you and almost everybody else in the world, you can stop the Rider in its tracks. That's why it came after me when were separated at the jeweler's shop, and why it hasn't since. It's looking for the opportunity to catch me alone, without you there to stop it."

That sounded right; better yet, it sounded as if Blair had a chance to make up for bringing the thing down on them to start with. "If I can unseat it, maybe I can do it permanently, take away the ability, like, like blinding it."

A wave of deja vu swamped Blair, and for a second he could have sworn it hit Jim, too. "Whoa."

"That's it, bedtime," Jim announced, putting a hand under Blair's elbow to steady him.

"Wait a minute! We're onto something!"

"So sleep on it and dazzle me tomorrow with the details of your marvelous plan over a rushed breakfast and the dash to the station." Jim nudged Blair toward his room and waiting until Blair took a few steps on his own.

Bed seemed like such a fantastic idea that Blair finished the trip to his door willingly. "The really sad part is that's probably how it'll go down, too."

Jim laughed and climbed up to his own bed, leaving Blair smiling after him, sure that tonight, at least, they'd both sleep well.

***

As the days went by, punctuated with the visits from the Rider, a good night's sleep became only a distant memory. Try as he might, Blair couldn't come up with a single theory as to how to permanently unseat it. In desperation he even started considering methods of damaging it, if that was what it took to eliminate the threat.

Though they stayed in each other's company as much as they could, the job occasionally forced them to separate. Blair worried almost non-stop when they did, and not without cause. The first time he was in court while Jim was out interviewing witnesses, a young man on roller blades barreled at him, full speed, knife in hand. Fast as he was, Jim was faster, warned by both the unique scent and absence of heartbeat. He dodged; the Rider swerved too hard and hit a moving car. Whether the Rider gave up that attempt or the additional damage to the corpse from the accident was too much, Blair couldn't guess.

A week after that, Blair stayed with a victim of an assault while Jim took off after the suspect on foot. Seconds later, Blair's 'early warning' system for the Rider kicked in, and he got to Jim just as a small child, crumpled on the ground crying, sprang for him. Jim lurched back into Blair's embrace, and the thing snarled viciously before abandoning the body.

To make matters worse, they discovered that the Rider could control a living person's muscles, if only for a few seconds. That was enough to send a brick off scaffolding, aimed at Blair's head, or to pull a uniformed officer's gun hand to one side during a hostage standoff to fire at him. Luck, vigilance, and the growing ability to detect the Rider's presence over increasing distance, kept Blair alive, if a bit battered.

With each failed attempt on Jim, Blair grew more determined and anxious. With each failed attempt on Blair, Jim grew grimmer and quieter. Amazingly, they managed to do the job, though Simon asked in varying ways and with increasing ire what was wrong. After a silent exchange of looks the first time, they opted not to tell him. Though Simon was the only one in Major Crimes who would believe them and not call the men with the white jackets, the possibility of the Rider finding a way to use Simon haunted both of them.

At long last a break came in their workload, and Blair blatantly begged Simon for a long weekend so they could go camping. The plan was to go home, grab their gear, and be on the road so fast the Rider wouldn't know they had left town. If nothing else, Blair reasoned, he might get a clue as to how the thing always found them, if it did, and it didn't seem likely a corpse would be able to get the drop on them in the middle of nowhere.

Blair and Jim left the bullpen Thursday in a better mood than they'd been in for weeks, bumping and slapping at each other playfully in a silly debate. Jim wanted to drive like hell to get there that night and put up the tents by lamp light; Blair wanted to find a motel along the way and sleep there before going to the park. To Blair's mind, it didn't matter to either of them as long as they got out of Cascade as soon as possible, right now would be good.

When the elevator reached the parking garage, though, the door opened onto a loud, ferocious argument between two uniforms. As Jim moved to break it up, it turned into a fist fight, blows flying with the deadly precision of trained cops. Other officers moved in to stop the violence, but not before each man had landed a few telling blows on the other. One soon had a broken nose, the other a split lip and rapidly swelling eye.

Catching the man with the broken nose in a textbook head-hold, Jim held on while his opponent was restrained by several of the bystanders. Blair moved in to help Jim, bracing his forearm over the upper chest of the one he detained. His name swam up from memory, along with the information that his trainer had been harassing him mercilessly, far beyond what was what standard or acceptable for rookies.

"Switt, he threw the first punch," Blair said urgently. "That puts him in the hot seat. Add to that, as your trainer, Turner is supposed to be the one in control, which means he's in way more trouble here. I don't care what your sergeant thinks of you or him, at the very least Turner will get a suspension, but only if you are the one to walk away."

Still livid, Switt snarled, "Maybe I don't want to serve on a force that lets an utter shit like that wear a badge and gun."

"So you give up and prove that you don't deserve one either," Jim murmured quietly into Switt's ear. "He wins. He gets a letter in jacket that no one cares about, and you lose what you've been working toward for years."

"He's just jealous, man," Blair added. "A couple of captains already have their eye on you, hoping you'll go for detective in a few years. He'll never be anything but a uniform, and I think he's just beginning to realize that."

Between Jim and himself, it was clear they had Switt thinking. It didn't hurt that Turner was under a pile of bodies, screaming obscenities and fighting for all he was worth. With a huge all-over shake, Switt became limp and calm, belligerence draining away.

"I let go, you going to let me check that nose?" Jim asked, already easing up on his grip.

"Feels like he did a real number on it," Switt mumbled, chin dropping to his chest as the adrenaline faded, letting the after effects of the blows take effect.

Stepping back, Blair kept one eye on Turner to make sure he didn't get free, and the other on Switt, in case it was a ploy to give him the chance to rejoin the fray. Cautiously Jim released his prisoner, moving around in front of him, handkerchief already in hand. As he reached to help, Switt coughed explosively, blood from his nose and mouth flying everywhere. A good portion of it landed square on Jim, especially his hands, but he simply rolled his eyes and tilted Switt's head back, carefully feeling for the break.

In the end, it took too many men too long to bring Turner under control, and the Watch Commander got wind of the altercation. He showed up as Jim was encouraging Switt to sit and Turner wrenched free a fist to plant it in the face of one of the uniforms. With a voice as cold as ice the Commander announced that if every single man didn't freeze, immediately, there would be a wave of blue at the unemployment office the next morning. He pointed to one of his officers and asked for information, reminding him sarcastically that there were security tapes of the entire incident.

The Commander asked for Jim's statement next, whether because of the blood all over him made it look like he'd been in the fight or because of Jim's seniority, Blair didn't know. With typical brevity, Jim explained the situation as he'd seen it coming off the elevator, and dryly added the scuttlebutt he'd heard about Turner taking a personal dislike to Switt to the point of deliberately sabotaging his training. Expression thunderous, he dismissed Jim and advanced on Turner.

Unsurprisingly, Jim didn't want to wait around to see the end. As soon as the commander's back was turned, he took Blair by the shoulder and steered him toward the truck. "I don't care if he decides to make an official inquiry; he can wait until Monday to get any other statement he needs from us."

"I'm with you on that." Blair looked at Jim's bloody front. "Want to go wash up first?"

"Home sounds good. I'm dialing it all down right now, so it's not so bad." Affecting a lighter mood than Blair knew he felt, Jim added, "Looks like you win about where we sleep tonight. I'm going to need to shower and change; that'll slow our leaving."

"If it gets us on the road faster, I'll do all the packing. You've seen me go from asleep to ready to rock in less than fifteen minutes. I can always catch a shower at the motel." Eager to be gone already, Blair hoisted his pack higher on his shoulder, mentally running over what they would need and where it was currently located. He walked around the truck to the passenger side, mildly regretting the loss of Jim's touch as he did.

Jim opened the driver's door, but tried to slam it shut the next instant. Catching a blur of motion through the back window, Blair leaped the few feet to his door and ripped it open as the Rider shattered the glass separating it from Jim. From its position on the floor underneath the steering column, it slashed upwards, but inexplicably stopped mid-motion and cringed away from Jim.

Before it could change whatever it used for a mind, Blair grabbed it by its bare foot and hauled it out of the truck, landing on the floor ass first from the momentum. The shock of contact arrowed through him, stronger than it had been before, to the point he could almost feel each individual grain of dust tunnel through his body. He fought off a wave of despair and self-loathing that wasn't his own, learning more about the Rider in that single flash of empathy than he really wanted to know.

When it faded enough for him to be aware of his surroundings again, Jim had pulled him away from the corpse, and was yelling loudly, "Whose idea of funny is it to steal a stiff from the morgue?"

Quietly, for Blair, he said, "There's a toe tag, and it's got one of the morgue's sheets wrapped around it. If we act like we're the victim of a practical joke, we might derail any suspicions that could crop up from all the bodies we've been running into lately. And maybe still get out of here before tomorrow."

Nodding his understanding, Blair struggled to his feet with Jim's help, forcing down the urge to empty himself - from both ends. Loudly, he half-laughed and said, "Thought for a moment there one of my old girlfriends was trying to hook up with me again, without calling first."

The people lingering after the fight between Turner and Switt laughed appreciably, making their own jokes about the body falling on Sandburg. Despite the fact no one took credit for the prank, a few of the officers present must have decided that Ellison and Sandburg had been through enough for the day and volunteered to return the corpse to the morgue.

Much faster than Blair expected, he was in the truck on the way home. Closing his eyes, he concentrated on not losing control of his bodily functions, grateful for the cool air from the broken window. He felt the truck pull over and stifled a groan, not wanting to disgrace himself all over Jim's upholstery but not sure he wouldn't if he didn't get to the refuge of a bathroom soon.

"It's worse this time, isn't it?" Jim asked quietly, twisting in his seat to face him.

"Yeah," Blair managed to gasp out.

Without asking, though Blair didn't think he would have been able to say no, Jim pulled Blair's shirts out of his jeans and pushed them up until he could cover the awful squirm with his hands, one on Blair's tummy, the other on the matching place on his back. Immediately Blair felt better, and after a selfish moment to enjoy the hum of pleasure, he patted Jim's arm to let him know they could get going again. Tugging down the shirts for him, Jim moved back to his side and put the truck in gear.

To distract himself from the side effects of the Rider, Blair said, "I think because I grabbed it after it had already started to let go, I got more of a, a, well, charge from it; like it wasn't as grounded as it usually is when inhabiting someone. The question is, why?"

"Charge - that's a good way to look at it," Jim said absently. "It has an entry point and exit point, scrambles your nerves on the way, and leaves by whatever part of you touches the earth, just like an electrical charge." He glanced at Blair, frowning slightly. "The only difference between this attack and the others is that I have blood on me, and it wouldn't know it wasn't mine, would it? Could it be that's why it recoiled from me after trying so desperately hard to get me?"

Blair followed his analogy. "If a battery is damaged, the charge dissipates. All the people it used short term were physically whole, skin un-damaged."

"Minimum blood splatter on the other victims," Jim broke in. "Leaves the knife in place until the blood can't flow any longer. If the person it's trying to take has an open wound it didn't cause, maybe it can't hold on to the body."

"Fits the facts as we know them," Blair said, deliberately using Jim's own words to get a rise out of him and break the odd tension he felt rising between them.

"Mmmm," Jim agreed absently, wearing his 'cop-thinking-hard' expression.

Leaving him to it, Blair put his head back and tried to focus on his breathing, still queasy enough to have trouble doing it. The miles slid by in comfortable silence, but he could still feel Jim's preoccupation. When it turned to the sensation of quick peeks aimed at him, he lifted his lashes to see the tell-tale jaw muscle throbbing.

Despite that, Jim's voice was gentle when he said, "I need to get this blood off me, but I don't think we should try to wait until I've had a chance to bathe and change to finish removing the Rider's taint." He hesitated, but added, "Maybe you should share the shower with me."

As diversions went, that suggestion was enough to keep Blair from obsessing on an imminent explosion from his partner, let alone his internal distress, and they made it all the way back to the loft with him still unable to decide what to say. The trip from the car to the door to their home, however, did it for him. How he stopped himself from losing everything he'd eaten that day, from one bodily exit or another, would forever remain a mystery to him.

He allowed Jim to tow him into the bathroom and undress him, unable to do more to help than not hinder him in his efficiency. He couldn't quite make up his mind whether he was insulted or relieved that Jim could be so impersonal, but he succeeded in getting him into the tub with all the detachment of a nurse handling a small child. That same detachment allowed Blair to be naked without embarrassment, and to accept Jim's shielding presence behind him, protecting him from the water until the temperature was right.

The hot spray was wonderful, but not anywhere near as good as the talented fingers massaging his neck and shoulders, then gliding slowly up and down his arms until Jim held Blair's wounded hand in his. He brought it up so that he could kiss Blair's palm, thumb rubbing over the back of it, then held it against his cheek as he did the same to Blair's wrist. Perhaps because the Rider's taint was so much stronger, the relief from it was incredibly powerful, leaving Blair shaking from bolts of sensation.

Growing hard, he half-sobbed an apology to Jim as he braced his free hand on the wall.

"Shhh, shhh," Jim crooned. "There's no reason why this shouldn't feel good; why you shouldn't enjoy what's happening. I'm just taking care of you, like partners do, that's all. Let go, Blair. Let go."

Head hanging, wet curls a veil between him and the reality of why he did, Blair surrendered, shuddering as Jim nipped the side of his neck. The next tiny bite was to his shoulder blade as Jim pinched on the opposite side, counter-acting the Rider's stain, the sharpness of the contact the perfect blissful antidote to the powerful nastiness of the taint. He left a chain of marks down Blair's back and front that stung in a way that was unexpectedly exciting.

When he reached the curve of Blair's backside, he paused, and Blair had a split second to be grateful for cleanliness' sake that they'd agreed on taking a shower. With a quiet groan that tore through Blair, sending a scorching trail of need straight to his erection, Jim scrubbed a whiskered chin over the dimple of Blair's ass before nipping and tweaking his way down to where the Rider left its exit wound. There he bit hard enough to draw blood, but Blair didn't care; it was necessary, he knew to the bottom of himself.

It also left him on the verge of climax, his cock throbbing with the sullen frustration as he fought the urge to push back to ask for more. More what, he didn't know precisely, but what few brain cells he had not preoccupied with the demand to come trusted Jim to give it to him. Barely not whimpering, he waited, both hands on the wall in front of him, forehead resting between them.

Mouthing a sensuous line up Blair's spine as he did, Jim slowly stood and copied Blair's position, leaning in so close to him that Blair honestly couldn't tell where he started and Jim ended. Cheek against Blair's temple, Jim murmured something so quietly Blair couldn't understand him, and dropped a hand to take Blair's hardon in a loose fist. Wrapping his arm around Blair's chest, he thrust slickly along the crease of Blair's ass at the same time, driving Blair's erection into the channel he'd made for him to use.

It shouldn't have felt so good. The grip was slightly wrong, the angle slightly off, the spray of the shower a nuisance. He should have lost all ardor.

Instead he went on his toes as the first scream of release tightened every muscle, suddenly craving penetration from the thick shaft teasing his crack. He angled his hips in hope of capturing it, and Jim tightened the grip around his cock, groaning his name. There was so much in that single sound - love, hunger, passion, tenderness, joy - and it all wrapped around him as surely as Jim's strong arms to hold him forever.

Teetering on the brink of coming, he suddenly had a moment of pure clarity, his heart speaking to him in a way that he usually needed hours of meditation to hear. He's walked with me through fire, stood with me against ice, sheltered me against the cutting wind, held me when dust would have taken all. This man is mine; we are meant to be.

The next instant his seed roared out of him, blinding his mind to everything but ecstasy. He pumped jerkily, milking his own cock for the last dregs of his finish, pushing back against Jim's, hungering for the length of it filling him. "Want it, want it, want it," he chanted in time to the pulses of creamy wetness.

"Blair!" Jim whispered, as if he were saying, 'I love you.'

Only ingrained habit stopped Blair from saying it back, but the simple fact that he could was enough to cradle him through the euphoria of his climax. Though his body shook and weakened to the point he couldn't stand, he only felt it dimly, along with the hard throb of Jim's release against his center. He quietly moaned his disappointment at not getting what he longed for, and Jim sank to the floor of the tub with him, still sighing his name over and over.

When sleep began to creep into his rapture, he tried to bestir himself, but couldn't manage more than a feeble twitch or two. It was enough to rouse Jim, though, and he found the energy to pull them both out of the tub. Drying Blair as they went, one towel wrapped around Blair's hair, Jim navigated him to his room and sat him on the edge of the bed to dry and comb his hair for him.

Blair fuzzed out for a while, coming back as Jim gave his curls one last pat before coaxing him into lying down. He would have left, but Blair caught him by the arm and mutely asked him to stay, begging with his heart in his eyes. With a small smile, Jim kissed his forehead and crawled into bed with him, shifting until he was spooned behind him, one arm over Blair's waist.

He woke up alone, but when the smell of breakfast cooking hit his nose, making his stomach grumble, he forgave Jim and with wry resignation tabled everything but eating as soon as possible. After seeing to morning practicalities, he sat down to poached eggs, whole wheat bread, and turkey bacon. The only concession to Jim's dietary preferences was the real butter and home-made strawberry jam from the farmer's market. As courtship rituals went, it came off more as an apology, but Blair couldn't find it in him to make Jim more uncomfortable than he already had to be about last night.

Jim sat down to eat, newspaper in hand, commenting on what he read as usual, leaving Blair to think maybe he'd over-estimated how disturbed Jim was by what they had done together. On the other hand, they'd already shared more meals the morning after a long, difficult night than most couples had in a lifetime and they both had practice at putting aside their issues in favor of taking care of more immediate needs. On the other other hand, intimacies aside, they had a lot to discuss concerning the Rider's latest attack.

Sighing to himself, Blair tried to quit thinking and just fill his empty belly. Besides, it was nice to contemplate that Jim knew exactly how to cook his eggs and how crisp to make his bacon. He was the first person besides his mother to bother to learn such details about him, and even she hadn't troubled herself to discover how his tastes had changed since childhood. Part of it, he was sure, was Jim's trained skills of observation, part was Jim's innate courtesy toward his partner, and most of it, Blair suspected, was Jim's own need to take care of those he cared about.

Meal done, Blair cleared the dishes and began the clean up. When Jim automatically stood to join him at the sink, he said, "I suppose camping is out of the question now."

"Since we know it takes the Rider at least a day to recharge, we've got a window of opportunity we should use." Jim took out a towel to dry the dishes, slung it over his shoulders and put away the few things left out from cooking.

"Window? Use?" Blair asked over the running water, truly perplexed.

"To set a trap for it." Though he kept his gaze on his task, it was clear that Jim was in full cop mode.

"You've figured out how to stop it?"

"I think so." Jim stopped and looked into a distance that existed only in his mind. "Last night was a move of pure desperation on its part; there was too good a chance you could have gotten to it before it took me. That had me looking back with a different perspective at the first attack in the bullpen, before it learned you were my partner. Either it was too eager to wait to get me alone, or it takes its victims as it kills. It enters the body with the knife, taking control quickly enough that it would have simply walked away before anyone had a chance to react to 'me' leaving the scene."

Rinsing a dish, Blair mulled that over, comparing it to the brief flash of insight he'd gotten from the Rider in the police garage. "You're right; it could have been eagerness to experience your senses. What I felt when I grappled with it - shame mixed with horrid hunger, underlined with self-disgust and guilt - made me think it was like a junkie needing a fix."

"It's ashamed of killing? Is that all you got from it?"

"Not ashamed of killing people," Blair corrected, scrubbing at a pan. "The best comparison I can give you for its attitude about us is that it's about the same as ours about meat animals. No emotional attachment to our value as individuals and no concern above its own appetite." He examined the other's emotion carefully, then added, "What it is doing is wrong by some standard of its own that isn't human, so I don't understand it. Considering how strong the shame is, the equivalent for us would be along the lines of walking naked into the middle of a cathedral or temple and squatting to defecate."

Taking a moment to digest the information, Jim said slowly, "That adds weight to the eagerness theory, though you also have to add in the possibility that it was there to tag me with whatever it uses so it could find me when it wanted to. It just took the chance that it could get me on the first try. But when you add in your proximity before the last attack, we're back to it taking over the body as the knife does its job, not before or after."

"I don't see how that's very useful."

Putting away the juice glasses, Jim said, "If you go by the concentration of its scent and how affected you are afterwards, you must hurt it every time you force it to vacate. So last night had to have been seriously bad for it. What if you interrupt it while it's on the way into the new body?"

"Bad enough for it to give up?" Not waiting for Jim to answer Blair shook his head. "No, the need is too strong. Like any drug addict, it'll spend its last dying breath, so to speak, trying to satisfy the monkey on its back."

"I don't think we have any choice but to use that, Chief." Voice gentling considerably, Jim said, "We have to kill it."

"What? No!" Blair argued instantly, lifting a dripping hand to point at Jim. "A junkie can be rehabilitated or put where he can't get his drug of choice."

"Neither of which we know how to do. Assuming there are others of its kind, how do we find them, let alone persuade them to make the Rider stop? We can't leave it running loose, and the authorities won't believe us if we try to explain that it exists."

Pausing to face Blair, patting and stroking along his arms, Jim added, "Sometimes, with a predator, the only choice is it or your people. How many more victims could it claim before someone else comes along who can meet it on its own terms and take it down?"

"There has to be another way than just cold-bloodedly killing it. I can't do that. I can't. And I can't stand aside, so to speak, and let you do it, either!"

"Chief...."

"No...."

Deja vu hit Blair so hard that he gripped the edge of the sink and swayed. In his mind's eye he saw a forest aflame with fall colors and a column of brilliantly yellow leaves dancing in a lazy spiral. Jim hadn't been in front of him, then, he thought dimly. He'd been behind him, pressing so close his weight had been a constant, hot pressure against his back, supporting him throughout the danger.

Another thought chased closely behind that, this time echoing the wild moment of clarity he'd had when he'd been in the shower with Jim. Walked with me through fire....

"Chief! What...."

Eyelids flying up, Blair glared at Jim. "You're going to use yourself as bait!"

Jim started to speak, stopped, and scrubbed his face with both hands. "Yes."

"No. No way. Absolutely not. No, no, no, no, no...."

Cupping Blair's shoulders in careful palms, Jim waited until the denial faded into quiet. "Who else? How else?"

At Blair's stubborn silence he went on persuasively, "It's strong because it doesn't hold back - no need for the preservation of the body it's in - but it's not fast. I know how it has to stab me, and that it can't afford to simply cut me. If I let it get through the skin but nothing else by controlling the knife, you can pull it out through me. Chief... Blair, my touch heals what it does to you. I'm pretty damned certain that if we do this, we'll either destroy it or make it impossible to ever take anyone else again."

"It's a good theory, but just a theory," Blair snapped. "We are not going test it on you. I can think of a dozen things that can go wrong. And if it's a bust and the worse happens, you'll be dead, and it'll still be killing for its own brand of jollies."

Clearly fighting for patience and just as clearly losing the battle, Jim said, "That could happen anyway. We can't dodge it forever. Sooner or later it'll get past our guard or, like yesterday, we'll be distracted at the wrong time. If we do this my way, we'll be as in control of the situation as it is. At the very least we'll be on equal footing with it for that instant."

Voice raising and unable to stop it, Blair spun away from Jim, stomping out of the kitchen. "That's the key word here, isn't it? Control. It has all the control, and you can't stand that. No matter how foolhardy the risk, you'll do whatever's necessary to regain it."

"Damn straight I'm tired of being hunted," Jim shouted, following him. "There's a word for people who don't go after the predator stalking them. Food. I'm not going to lie down and wait to be this thing's meal. Your 'all life is sacred' routine only works when you've either got protection from the animals or you're not on the menu!"

"There's more to life than predator and prey!"

"Yes, there is, but I don't get to live that life. Sentinel or cop, it's my responsibility to stop this thing, and I will do what I have to do, including dying if that's the only way."

"Then you'll do it without me." Blair whipped around and shoved at Jim, catching him off guard so that he stumbled a step back from the force. "You hear me?" Taking advantage of the momentary lack of balance, Blair shoved him again toward the door. "You want to be a martyr for a tribe that doesn't give a shit if you live or die, you do it without my help." He put his shoulder into the next push, putting Jim right beside the door, and punched at his chest with a finger. "You tell me you love me, then sacrifice yourself in the name of your own ego - that's not love. That's playing to some half-assed image of being a noble soldier with a sacred cause to die for!"

"What you know about love?" Jim snarled. "Have you ever used the word in your life the way it's meant to be used?"

"NO! But that's a hell of a lot better than using it as a fucking leash to drag me into your stupidity." Blair reached out and flung the door open. "If that word means anything to you at all, if I mean anything to you at all, you'll get the hell out of here, and stay the hell out of here until you give up the insane notion of taking on an enemy you know next to nothing about!"

Expression stony, jaw muscle throbbing like an over-stressed rope, Jim did the one thing Blair honestly never thought he'd do, even in the heat of an argument. He walked out the door and slammed it behind him. Blair heard his heavy, determined steps move down the hallway to the staircase, then the loft was silent.

His rage evaporated as if it'd never been, revealing itself for the pure panic it had been in truth. When that, too, faded, it left Blair cold and bereft. He gently touched the door, as if it were Jim, regretting the field he'd chosen for their battle, scarcely able to believe he'd used Jim's heart as a weapon, even to save his life. Turning, he sat on the floor, back against the door, and drew his knees up to put his forehead on them.

He couldn't believe he'd just tried to what every manipulative girlfriend he'd ever come to despise had done: put a price on his affection. And to use that tactic on Jim, of all people, who may well have never had received unconditional love his entire life - Blair couldn't imagine sinking any lower on the asshole scale. He was going to wind up going along with this harebrained scheme of Jim's, just to make amends.

Groaning, Blair felt the asshole meter drop into the negative numbers as the full impact of what he'd done sank in. He'd thrown Jim out of his own home, possibly sending him straight into the clutches of the Rider. There wasn't a thing Blair could do about it except pray that their guess on how long it took the Rider to recharge between possessions wasn't wrong.

How long he sat like that, he didn't know, but his backside grew cold, then painful, then numb. Accepting it as a sort of penance, he took everything they had observed, theorized, or wondered about the Rider and twisted it this way and that in his head, to find a new angle or another hidden pattern. True, he'd been doing the same thing for weeks, but now he was beyond motivated. They had gone from the possibility that Jim might get hurt to the absolute surety that Jim was going to get hurt.

In the end, Blair dejectedly acknowledged that they had more to go on after every encounter with the Rider. If he could be sure they could minimize the injury to Jim, it might be worth it, even if they didn't destroy it. Shrinking from that likelihood despite it all, he had to admit that Jim was on the nose about one thing. Jim's touch undid the damage to Blair, so removing the Rider through Jim could be very, very instructional, if nothing else.

Reaching the conclusion that Jim had been right all along did nothing to improve Blair's mood. Nor was the prospect of explaining to Jim the 'why' behind his fury very appealing. Once Jim cooled down he'd probably work it out for himself, which, of course, left Blair with another problem. How was Jim going to react to having a raise-the-rafters shouting match as a substitute for Blair saying, 'I love you?'

For that fact, how did he feel about having that out there between them? Obviously he had an issue or two left; otherwise, why pull a Jim Ellison and act one way when feeling another? And, damnit, he wanted to give those words to Jim, who certainly deserved to hear them. Why couldn't he just open his mouth and say them?

Weirdly - as if there wasn't enough weirdness on their plate right now - the question brought back the mental image of walking down a country road on a bright fall day, as well as one of the shimmer of ice covered mountains during a moonlit winter's night. Tired of the riddles of his own mind, Blair stubbornly pushed the almost memories away, abruptly deciding that sitting around doing nothing wasn't helping their current problem.

Stretching cautiously to get his blood flowing properly again, Blair pressed back hard into the door to relieve some of the ache between his shoulder blades. He froze in place when he felt a vibration through the wood, not fearing the Rider so much as astonished that Jim would have waited so patiently just on the other side of it all this time. Not that Jim couldn't be patient if he needed to be, or that Blair felt Jim wouldn't think he was worth it, or, or, or....

With a huge effort Blair reined in his mental babbling and slowly stood. He heard the creak of the floor in the hallway and knew that Jim had done the same. Hesitantly he opened the door, unsurprised to see that Jim had donned his most aloof and icy attitude. While Blair had never had a problem with being the first to apologize, he needed this one to be special so that Jim would know that it meant more than any other he'd ever given; so Jim would know instantly it was much, much more than an apology.

Without thinking Blair stepped forward and wound his arms around Jim's neck, stretching up on tip-toe to kiss him. It wasn't a full out, please fuck me now, kiss, but a tender mating of soft lips against soft lips, simply intended to tell Jim in the way a sentinel understood best that Blair was his and would follow where he led.

For a split second Blair worried that it wasn't going to be enough. But Jim picked him up by the waist and moved them three steps into the loft, kicking the door closed behind them, never once breaking their kiss. Only when he put Blair down did he return the caress, coaxing for entrance to Blair's mouth, which Blair eagerly granted.

Until that moment Blair had worried down deep where he couldn't see it that the explosive pleasure from Jim's touch had been a side-effect of the Rider, not the natural result of their chemistry together. That notion was dispelled forever with the first slow, velvet sweep of Jim's tongue over his, twining with it in a sensuous dance that wanted nothing but an eternity to do more of the same. In complete contradiction of that, Jim growled deep in his throat and held him closer, his growing erection a hot ridge against Blair's belly.

Dizzy with the overload of sensation, starving for more, Blair did his best to give as good as he got, already achingly ready for whatever Jim wanted. His nipples were tight points digging into his clothes to be free of them and get against Jim's chest, sending sharp pangs of lust through his gut with their effort. Swollen and wet, his lips felt as lush as he'd heard them described, exquisitely responsive to the moist slide of Jim's tongue. He longed to use them to explore every inch of Jim's body, especially the secret, private places that only a lover should know, but could not give up the sweet joy of Jim feasting on him as if he'd never stop.

When Jim drew away, panting for breath, Blair moaned in loss, but understood without being told that they needed to clear the air and not just tumble into bed. He reluctantly dropped his hands until he could clutch at the collar of Jim's shirt, and eased back enough to look him in the face. Thankfully Jim looked just as unwilling to let their passion cool, and that gave Blair the strength to turn aside the urge to beg to be taken.

Taking a deep breath, he yanked at Jim's collar in lieu of giving him a hard shake. "First, you wear Kevlar. There should be a way to modify it enough that it will still protect you but let Rider draw blood without a serious cut."

"We'll manage something," Jim murmured.

"Second, the instant you pick up on it, you spin all your senses up to high. Remember how disorienting it is for you, and you were born to deal with the input. If it doesn't burn out, it might be overwhelmed enough to give you a useful edge to use to fight it."

"I can do that." Jim kneaded Blair's shoulders, bending so he could rest his forehead against Blair's.

"Last, whatever wild-assed idea you came up with to ambush the thing, well, forget it. You're going to hate it, but I've got a better plan, and it wants you so bad, I'm sure it'll work."

"Your plans usually do, Chief." Jim cupped Blair's face, fingers trailing into his curls, thumb drying the tears seeping down Blair's cheeks. "And I've got a couple of other things going for me that will help bring the Rider down. I've always had a cast iron will to survive, and now you've given me the best reason anyone could have to live. I probably won't come through unscathed, but nothing worse than a new scar, I promise."

Swallowing hard on a sob, Blair forced a lighter tone. "Hey, maybe we can arrange for it to go for something besides that six-pack of yours. At your age, you don't want to be damaging major attributes, you know."

"I don't know, I've been told a broad, well-muscled back can be appealing, under the right circumstances." Jim returned the banter, but kissed the tip of Blair's nose. "Now tell me this brilliant plan of yours."

***

Blair hadn't been kidding when he told Jim he was sure he was going to hate what Blair had in mind. Of all the duties a cop could pull, Jim would rather write parking tickets than work security for anybody, but especially politicians. He was so notoriously scathing and irascible while doing it that Simon usually reserved forcing those assignments on him for either punishment detail or when the threat was well beyond credible.

Fortunately, since the Governor was in town campaigning, one serious attempt on his life already on the books, Blair was able to convince Simon that Jim was just the man for the job because of his grumpy attitude. After a long weekend of doing nothing but planning, preparing and rehearsing for the next attack, Blair was so pumped, snowing Simon was almost pathetically easy. It didn't hurt that the Governor had specifically asked for Jim by name, either.

That didn't make it any easier to bear the three days of crowd control and the sort of too hearty glad-handing by the Governor that even Blair had trouble enduring. For Jim's sake, Blair tried to project confidence and optimism in what they were doing, but inside he questioned his own conclusions over and over. He wore a rut in his thoughts so quickly that he soon had to give up pretending he would actually see a flaw in the plan if there was one. Each step in the chain of logic they were depending on had become more like mental worry beads than actual facts.

Mentally going over it yet again, Blair entered the convention hall where the Governor was scheduled to give the keynote address for Cascade's Citizens for Democracy and looked over the crowd until he spotted his partner. Jim was in a far corner, earwig in place, doing his own scan of the huge room. When he saw Blair he gave an all clear sign to show that the Rider wasn't present and Blair could work his way closer.

Allowing Jim to come and go on his own was the riskiest and hardest part of their plan. If Blair was right about how the Rider perceived their world, though, it was the best way to lure the thing into making a try for Jim. Resolutely Blair reminded himself that if he was wrong, the worse that could happen would be yet another near-miss.

Circulating through the hall, automatically looking for the other members of Major Crime on duty, Blair decided yet again he honestly didn't think he was wrong. The one incontrovertible fact in the whole situation was that he was the closest thing to an expert in the ways anyone could use any of their senses, thanks to his studies of Jim. He might not know what senses the Rider had, but he could deduce a great deal from what he had observed.

Given the facts they had, the Rider had to be able to perceive where Jim was going to be, as well as where he was, at least to a limited extent. How else could it set up the traps it had and have appropriate bodies to use? Not even Jim always knew ahead of time what cases would come up and where they would lead him.

Absently stopping by the refreshment table for a ginger ale dressed to look like a cocktail, Blair peered over his glass as he drank. He studied the only entrance the Rider could use if it didn't want to thread its way through the packed hall. Of course that was why Jim was close, but not too close, to it. It was only a guess that the Rider would want to take the most direct route to Jim, but it was a logical one.

It was also logical to theorize that however it was tracking Jim, he was the only one it could follow right now. None of the attempts on Blair's life had happened when he was alone or vulnerable. He had always been with Jim, who had been willing to take the hit to protect Blair - which had to be the last thing the Rider wanted. So it was likely it couldn't find Blair for whatever reason.

While he wasn't sure exactly how well the Rider could 'see' him, Blair was betting the most precious part of his life that it couldn't pick him out of a crowd. To misquote one of Naomi's vegan friends when he was trying to explain why more people didn't protest the treatment of cows, it was hard to get sentimental about a cow when you couldn't tell one from another. He doubted that the Rider would worry about where Blair was as long as it thought Jim was alone.

In fact, it could even feel more confident about approaching Jim from a mass of people, rather like a wolf in sheep's clothing hiding in the flock to take down the shepherd. This time, however, the shepherd had a wolf of his own on the prowl. It could make the difference. It had to make the difference, Blair thought grimly, casually working his way to within a few yards of his partner.

Maybe learning that he and Jim had found a way to go on the offensive would be enough to make the Rider seek help from its own kind go overcome its addiction to human senses. Or it would convince itself that Jim would never allow himself to be taken undamaged, and it would give up, regardless of its obsession. Oh, hell, while he was indulging in wishful thinking, maybe Blair would discover a way to scream out to Rider's kind what it was doing, and it would be forced to leave them alone.

Snorting at himself in derision, Blair took up his post on the fringe of a small conversational group as if he were part of it, giving the impression of listening intently. In reality, he was doing his best to imitate his sentinel and keep all his senses on high, waiting for the snap of foreboding that marked the Rider's appearance on the scene. Surely the thing would strike now, during the Governor's last formal engagement in Cascade.

As it was, Blair could have been half-drunk and totally involved in the discussion and still not missed the zing! of sensation from the Rider's entrance. It came through the door they wanted it to use, moving far too quickly and purposefully for a casual partygoer, probably not realizing that would call attention to itself. Blair had no choice but to move quickly himself, not that it noticed anything but its target.

Though Jim feigned being unaware of its approach, he silently signaled Blair that he saw it coming at him. To Blair's practiced eye, he tensed with combat readiness, head dropping slightly as he took a deep breath in preparation. Swallowing hard to hold down his own fear, Blair forced himself to hold back and not interfere until the Rider made his move.

When it did, though he was watching for it, Blair almost missed the swift punch upward of the knife it had held hidden against the leg of the suit pants it wore. Despite having time and warning enough to knock the blade aside and disarm the thing, Jim brought his crossed wrists down on the Rider's forearm, blocking it from completing its thrust. As Blair had hoped, it had no idea how to counter Jim's resistance, quite possibly because it had never encountered opposition before.

As it struggled to bring the weapon up, Jim strained to keep it down, turning the attack into a contest of strength and will. The Rider was so focused on its assault it didn't see Blair until he was at Jim's side, closing his hands over Jim's. Before it could react, Jim allowed the knife to complete its path, controlling, if barely, the angle, depth and speed of penetration.

By pure accident Blair's grip slipped a scant few millimeters, putting his thumb in the way of the cutting edge. The steel sliced his flesh at almost the same instant it lightly sliced into Jim over his breastbone, above the Kevlar protecting his abdomen. The Rider wailed in a voice that echoed in octaves and tried to break away, but Jim held it fast. Jim's blood flowed down the knife to mix with Blair's, then dripped onto the Rider's fist.

The now-familiar sandblast etched through every inch of Blair's skin, all at once, as if to scour him into non-existence. Mind working through the pain with amazing speed and clarity, he thought, like an electrical charge, conductivity, blood is very conductive, each time I touched it I made better contact, cloth covered shoulder to cloth covered ribs, bare hand to sleeve covered arm, bare hand to bare ankle, that's why the discharge was stronger every time, why the contamination was stronger, too.

A film of white, sparkling dust lifted from the Rider's face, as if an ultra-thin mask was being removed, only to disperse like a plume of warm breath into cold morning air. It keened again in its multi-layered voice and struck out at Blair with its free hand, tossing him up and into the wall a few feet away. The instant Blair was separated from Jim, the world changed, twisting oddly and losing all color.

The convention hall was replaced a vast space filled with layers of fogs of differing densities and shades of gray, filtering through and into each other with no discernable pattern or plan. Unrecognizable shapes sifted through the vapors, not disturbing them at all, but instead changing themselves, growing thinner or thicker, taller or shorter, or taking on the hue of the mist it encountered.

It was a silent place, save for the Rider's howls which Blair somehow knew he was hearing from the convention hall, and without scent or sensation. Blair could not even feel the wall he rationally knew he had to be leaning against or the floor beneath him. He looked down at himself to see if he had changed physically, and screamed mutely for Jim when he found a deformed and twisted thing he could not possibly inhabit.

Whether in answer to the Rider or his own wild calls, pieces of the fog detached and drifted haphazardly toward Blair. He recoiled, but a faint shimmer of something stretched in that direction, somehow conveying with its motion both fear and pleading. The mists ignored it in favor of getting much too close to Blair for his peace of mind.

Demanding his body to run, or crawl, or something, as long as it involved escape, Blair psychically cringed away from the apparently living mists, when he realized he couldn't move at all. Surprisingly, they froze in place, then went so far as to withdraw into themselves, the slowness of the retreat somehow reassuring him they meant no harm. At the same time, from some incredibly far distance, he felt Jim's fingers dig into the curls at the back of his head, hanging on as if to never let him go.

Gathering his courage from that, Blair took a deep breath to speak, letting it out on an exasperated exhale when he realized he couldn't make a sound here. It seemed to encourage the entities with him, however, and one eased close enough to brush over Blair's foot, if it had been where it was supposed to be. To Blair's shock, his jaw dropped on its own and something oily and vicious unspooled from inside him, coiling around the nearest entity.

It accepted the contact with a flash of mottling over its surface that almost made sense to Blair, then it paused, slowly drifting up and down as if to consider what it had learned from what Blair had spewed. Fascinated, Blair watched until it settled beside him again, gulping dryly when it tentatively extended a silver tendril toward him. Not without trepidation he permitted the touch, wildly grateful a split second later when he was bent and warped back to his own reality, with Jim squatting beside him, fingers at the nape of his neck.

Or mostly back, at least, and he weakly grabbed at Jim's arm as if that would haul him the rest of the way. Not ten feet from them, the Rider pounded at the body it wore with its own already bloody fists, shrieking in what was now a perfectly normal voice, though most of the words it used were nonsense. Except... except, Blair could hear a thread of meaning in them that set off a domino-like cascade of information through his head.

Overwhelmed, Blair nearly lost his hold and tumbled away again, but Jim, bless him, sensed it and tightly clutched a fistful of curls. Not satisfied with that, Jim put one knee on the floor and leaned down, stealing a fast kiss, complete with tongue. The taste of him anchored Blair as securely as the fingers in his hair, the clean, musky scent of him helped, too.

"Jim," Blair murmured, because he needed to hear him, as well.

"It's okay, Chief. Just got the wind knocked out of you."

"Jimmmm." Blair struggled to say more, but like Jim had pointed out, he was too short of breath for much else.

Putting his lips almost against Blair's ear, Jim whispered, "No one noticed the kiss, if that's what you're worried about. Too much else going on, and we picked this spot because of no security camera coverage, remember?"

Shaking his head, Blair tried again, and managed a faint, "need you...."

"I know, I know, but that's going to have to do until we can get clear. I promise, I'll give you whatever it takes to keep you from fading again. It won't be long."

Gaining better command over his muscles, Blair shook his head, the made a 'yak-yak' sign with the fingers of one hand before pointing significantly at Jim.

Clearly a little amused, if against his will, Jim said, "You want me to keep talking?"

Ignoring the hint of humor, Blair nodded, spread the fingers of hand wide, slammed them closed into a fist, and mouthed, "senses."

"That's what you need to stay put? Me giving your all your senses something to work with?" At Blair's half-sigh, half-groan of relief, Jim added, "Got it. Now let me get us cut loose from this mess."

As Jim straightened up, leaving his hand where it was, Rafe called, "Hairboy okay, Ellison?"

"I think so, but I'd like to get him out of here and make sure. Mind taking custody of the nutcase for the time being?"

"Sure, I'll be glad to take the Governor's commendation for personally bringing down a threat to his exalted person," Rafe smirked.

With a faint grimace at the joking tone, Jim said, "Thanks," pulling Blair up as he struggled to stand.

Doing his best to pretend that the fog wasn't materializing at the periphery of his vision, Blair leaned heavily on Jim and stubbornly put one foot after the other. The trip out to the truck felt perilous and sketchy, as if he were taking one step in reality and one in the mists. Jim never stopped murmuring reassurances and encouragement, though; never left Blair feeling adrift.

It helped so much that Blair was able to endure with a minimum of panic the eternity-long separation of Jim closing the truck door on the passenger side and walking around to the driver's side to get in. Once the motor was started, Blair toppled to his side, squirming around until he had his head in Jim's lap, nose buried in the yielding mound of his maleness. The intimate contact cleared his head considerably, and he took his first easy breath since the Rider hit him.

"Better?" Jim asked quietly.

"Much." Blair considered the condition he was in, and added shyly, "Umm, taste isn't getting much use. Could I... I mean... I know this isn't..."

"I get it, Chief. Trust me, if anybody would, I would." With the same amazing casualness he'd used since the first time they'd gotten naked together, Jim reached down and undid his zipper. He rearranged things until he exposed his dick. "There. Scent should be stronger, too."

"MMMMmmmmmmmm," Blair agreed, as much in relief as pleasure. He relaxed, nuzzling at the quiescent flesh, timidly tapping the spongy crown once with the very tip of his tongue. The flavor was wonderful, but he wasn't sure he should do more.

His experience with men had been limited to the occasional bravado of 'I'll show you mine if you'll show me yours' and a few hasty fumblings in the dark. While he was familiar with masculine nudity, thanks to the variety of communes and nature camps Naomi had taken him to, this was his first time up close and personal with a flaccid penis, and it was far more thrilling than he'd expected it to be.

Part of it was that it was Jim's prick, and part of it was the vulnerability implicit in a limp dick, but most of it was the simple knowledge of how it would grow and harden, all for his pleasure and use.

True to his promise to keep talking, Jim said, "Don't expect much from that thing yet. I haven't recovered from seeing you shed a layer of dust, just like the Rider, then fade into black and white as if you were vanishing into a fog."

"Huh!" Blair croaked.

"You think it worked? The way the Rider acted - crumpling to the floor and wailing - we must have done something serious to it." Jim tugged gently on the curls he still held, then spread his hand over the cap of Blair's head, the weight and heat of it sinking in luxuriously.

"Did." Blair sucked in a Jim-scented lungful of air and gasped out, "Trapped in the flesh."

He glanced up as Jim glanced down, frowning slightly. "It's stuck in the body it's in?"

"Yeah. 'Til charge bleeds off."

Jim considered that, obviously looking for what Blair couldn't say. "A human body has more voltage in it than most people expect. Is that the charge that has to bleed away, not the Rider's own? Because I think you'd be more upset if it was going to die from what we did."

Beaming at Jim for understanding him so thoroughly, which mysteriously also added to his growing sense of, well, stability, Blair nodded again. "Punishment." He jabbed a thumb at himself, then at Jim. "Protection."

"You were able to contact its people? And they agreed to make sure there were no more attacks on us?" Jim stared down at him in astonishment, then grinned widely as he returned his attention to the road. "That's my Blair."

"Definitely!" Blair said with as much emphasis as he could muster.

Laughing, Jim stroked down Blair's back, then up again. "Works both ways, you know, Chief."

"Yeah," Blair whispered contentedly, and gently nosed the prize in front of him for more of its aroma.

It stretched toward him a tiny bit, capturing his interest to the point where he didn't want to talk about the Rider or its kind any longer. Giving into impulse, Blair carefully engulfed Jim's manhood in his mouth, cradling it with his tongue. The taste of it went through him, stirring his own dick into lengthening, despite his lethargy.

"God! Sandburg! Give a guy some warning, next time, will you?" Despite his words, Jim held still and let Blair do what he wanted, all the while petting wherever he could reach.

Blair made a noise, neither agreeing nor disagreeing, then a questioning one.

"No, it's okay, you don't have to stop," Jim said quickly. "Feels good. Almost too good, and no, that's not a request for more, not if we want to get home in one piece."

Chuckling, Blair concentrated on the texture and weight of his morsel, delighted at the way it grew, creeping over his palate in the strangest but most satisfying way.

"I can't believe you're doing that," Jim said huskily. "And watching you do it is damn near the hottest thing I've ever seen."

"Mmmmmm." Blair had to inch back a bit to accommodate the new thickness and length, and he swept his tongue over the slit in the head, moaning at the burst of bitter flavor.

Jim's answering moan darted into parts of Blair he had never thought to feel a sound, pinning him permanently to his own reality. Not that he considered that a reason to stop what he was doing, relief though it was to feel fully alive and connected again. Blair started to suck in earnest, but Jim stopped him with a cautious shove against his forehead.

"Not until we get home, okay?" Jim ground out, then, to Blair's surprise added, "Please. We... I... it should be together, this time."

He was right of course, Blair mused dreamily. Not only about the sharing, but that he wasn't going to be able to stop once he got started. Servicing Jim was that addictive.

Somehow Blair was able to contain himself to dainty sniffs and languid licks until they reached the parking lot at the loft, approving words spilling from Jim all the while. Despite the improvement in his condition, he had to depend on Jim to pull them both together enough to go out in public. He was still too weak and uncoordinated to do more than idly hope that no one got between them and home.

In a mercifully short time Jim had him upstairs in front of the big bed that Blair had never expected to occupy, steadying Blair as he ruthlessly stripped away his clothes. Jim lowered him into a sitting position on the side of the mattress before just as ruthlessly stripping himself, sparing a moment to clean away the trickle of blood from the minor cut over his breastbone. With a nudge and careful tug he pulled Blair into the middle of the bed and spread himself over Blair like a living blanket.

Shouting Jim's name, Blair wound his arms and legs around him as tightly as he could, hanging on with all he had. Jim turned them to their sides so he could do the same, creating a Jim'n'Blair knot so secure that it felt as if it would never be severed. Completely happy, completely at peace for what honestly felt like the first time in his life, Blair would have been blissful even if this was all they did.

Eventually, though, hormones couldn't be denied any longer, and of one mind, they thrust gingerly, groaning in harmony at how good it was. Before they could go further, though, Blair pushed Jim back enough to be able to look into his face.

"The problem of the Rider is officially solved," Blair announced solemnly. "And it's time to revisit the whole sex thing."

When Jim only waited warily for him to continue, expression suddenly shuttered, Blair went on. "I love you. I'm not in this for physical relief from what the Rider did to me, I'm not curious and experimenting, I'm not adding a notch to my bedpost. I. Love. You. In the forever, even death can't part us, kind of love."

As if love gave the blue color life, Jim's eyes cleared, warmed, and turned brilliant with an intensity that Blair had begun to think would never be aimed at him by anyone. It was his reward for beating down his fears and worries, for surrendering that small piece of himself that had been holding back in wait. And damn, if that hadn't been exactly what he needed to understand what he'd been waiting for: that look, exactly that look from Jim, with all his heart and soul there for Blair to see, promising so much on so many levels that Blair could have fallen for him for that alone.

He tilted back his head as Jim lowered his, lips barely brushing over lips in a tender, reverent kiss that to Blair's mind, sealed their union in typical Ellison fashion - without a word. Gradually it deepened, turning voracious and demanding, and he simply went with it, willfully losing himself in pure sensuality. Head pillowed on Jim's biceps, he savored the taste and shape of Jim's mouth, the satin strength of the body against his, the quiet, needy noises they both made, the musk of arousal. They traded control of the kiss on whim and fancy, tongues kneading and stroking over and around each other in a leisurely duet for satisfaction.

Without consciously deciding to, Blair drew away and trailed a line of tiny licks along Jim's jaw and down his throat. He paused to plant a sucking bite that would leave a mark, pulling a whispered, 'yes' from his lover, then continued downward. Flowing over Jim in unhurried increments, hands as busy as his lips, he adored every magnificent inch of luscious skin that he encountered, lingering at the spots that made Jim tremble or cry out, tenderly touched the wound left by the Rider as if to heal it by will alone.

Blair was so absorbed in his exploration that he didn't immediately notice that Jim had guided him with gentle nudges and kisses until they were head-to-toe with each other. To him the exquisite glide of moist lips and tongue over hard muscle and taut tendon was the whole world. His body, though, soaked up Jim's attentions, adding another level of excitement to the erotic haze clouding his mind.

When he reached the massive length of Jim's hardon, Blair spared a moment to compare it with its dormant state, not afraid of the size of the thing. To him the change was impressive and moving. He'd done this to Jim, and it was meant for him to enjoy as he wished, giving Jim as much as Blair received.

Murmuring "I love you," he took Jim's cock into himself, sucking lightly at first, just to tease them both.

To his delight, Jim echoed both the words and the caress, matching Blair's tempo and force perfectly. It was almost as if he felt what Jim felt, at the same time Jim was feeling it. The very thought was deliciously heady, enough to bring him to the trembling edge of completion, and sensing Jim was in the same condition did nothing to calm him down.

It was far too soon to give up the scrumptious rod plunging past his lips, though, let alone the heavenly wetness surrounding his cock, and Blair held on. But each stroke tightened the fist of pleasure at his core; each of Jim's throaty moans lashed Blair's need to a higher level. If he had been able to think, he would have insisted to himself that he could stave off the inevitable as long as he wished, enjoying every second of it.

Jim must have had a different opinion. He shifted one hand to the bottom of Blair's hardon, jacking it gently while he delved deeper into the crease between Blair's thighs, clearly seeking the opening hidden there. Even expecting the limber probing, Blair couldn't stop a startled cry when he was given a plunging kiss in that most intimate of places. It wasn't like anything he'd experienced before, and he was forced to give up his mouthful in order to pant through the rush of climax threatening to overwhelm him.

Head on Jim's leg, Blair lifted a knee to give his lover complete access to his center, though he managed to wrap a hand around Jim's erection to pump in time to Jim's busy tongue. He shivered and shook through wave after wave of sensation, then screamed when a finger joined in on the careful penetration, brushing over the hot spot buried inside of him. It was the last straw.

Wriggling away, almost weeping, Blair muttered, "...gotta, Jim, gotta... in me, please... please... want it so bad.... Jim... Jim... in me...." He turned to his stomach and lifted his ass high. "Please, in me, now, now, now."

"Wait, wait," Jim panted. He flopped to his back and grabbed Blair by the arm, hauling him toward him. "Have you ever...."

"No... doesn't matter. Please!"

Wiping his face with a trembling hand, Jim shook his head. "I will. I will. But not like that. C'mere, Blair. Take what you want."

"I...."

Reaching into a drawer, Jim took out a condom and bottle of KY. "Want you, too. So much. C'mere. Take it, love. Your speed, as much or little as you want."

Swallowing hard, Blair watched him roll the condom on and coat himself, then scrambled to perch over him on all fours. "Do me, too. Hurry, hurry, hurry...."

"Hang in there." Jim skimmed a palm down Blair's back, cupped an ass cheek briefly, then deftly slipped a finger inside him while dribbling the KY along Blair's cleft.

It was every bit as wonderful the second time around, and Blair rocked back on it, hoping to get that jolt of sensation from the special nub in his passage. After a moment, Jim added another finger, which was even better, though Blair had to drop his head onto Jim's chest to catch his breath at the impact from the fullness. When he'd recovered, he tightened around the invaders, earning a groan of his name from Jim.

"Now, god, now!" Blair reached between them to capture Jim's cock, aiming at his pucker as he sat back on his heels, one hand braced on Jim's shoulder.

"Wait!"

"No, now. Ready... so, ah! ...yes!"

Blair sighed in satisfaction as Jim breached his hole, relishing the burn as he stretched to accommodate him. Jim was so much bigger than anything he'd ever used on himself, and the difference between plastic and a living, throbbing hardon was beyond incredible. The only thing that stopped him from plunging down the full length was Jim's hands tight on his waist, and the half-worried, half rapturous expression on his face. It made Blair rein in his reckless dash toward fulfillment and work Jim into him slowly, pausing whenever they both vibrated on the edge of coming.

"Not going... ah, Blair! ...last... sorry!"

"S'okay. Going to do this again, going to do it a lot." Blair settled down fully onto Jim's groin, his balls weirdly squishy and hairy against his bottom. He took a deep breath and pressed a hand over his belly button, almost willing to swear he could feel Jim's hardon under his palm. "God. You're... we... god...."

Jim's hand edged under his, fingertips outlining a shape on Blair's groin. "That's us. Me. In. You." Awestruck eyes met Blair's. "I can't wait for you to do that to me."

For a moment lust took a back seat to love, and Blair beamed at him. "I'll make it beautiful for you, just like you're doing for me, I promise."

"I know you will. Love you, Blair."

Rising up slowly, Blair held Jim's gaze. "Love you, too. So much."

He lowered himself, losing the breath and wit to talk as instinct took over. He rode Jim frantically, gaining speed and force with every lift of his hips. When Jim's eyes glazed over, then rolled up into the back of his head, Blair closed his own, diving into the release he no longer wanted to hold back. Jim's keening as he bucked under Blair, trying to get in that much deeper, that much harder, broke the knot of need in him.

With a wail he came, seed jetting from him in hard jerks that dissolved the world around them, leaving only a whiteout of ecstasy that seemed to last and last and last.

Blair drifted back to awareness only because Jim was there, waiting for him, holding him secure until he reclaimed his body. When his mind cleared, he was lying on his back, Jim curled around him with his head in the hollow of Blair's shoulder. At some point Jim must have tidied them up as well as repositioning them, and while Blair thought he probably should apologize for checking out on him, he also wanted to chortle in triumph that he'd been so blasted away by coming.

Somehow Jim must have known what direction Blair's thoughts had taken. He chuckled and scrubbed his cheek over Blair's chest. "Welcome back. Thanks for the compliment," he said sleepily.

"Well, you have to admit, it was pretty spectacular." Lazily Blair pet the hair on the back of Jim's head, absently thinking it was unexpectedly soft and fine.

"Worth waiting for," Jim murmured, sounding more asleep than awake.

For some reason the words rebounded through Blair's head, calling up an image of a cold, dark cave and being in the exact same position with Jim. Frowning, suddenly feeling more alert and focused than he had in weeks, Blair chased after the memory, which was weirdly associated with the taste of apple juice.

He opened his mouth to ask Jim when they'd been together like this before, knowing for a fact they never had. What came out was, "Hey, Jim, have we ever walked together down a country lane and seen a mini-whirlwind of golden aspen leaves?"

"In a dream," Jim said, then abruptly tensed. "A fever dream, when I was healing from an infected wound when Incacha first brought me to the Chopec village. That was you! I saw you in a dream, being hunted by, by, by...." He trailed off, uncertainty coloring his words.

"Maybe more than a dream," Blair said reflectively. "A vision? That we shared? Or maybe something more?"

"I." Jim bit the word off, then sighed. "After the weirdness we just survived, I suppose it's hypocritical to balk at accepting the 'spirit walk' that Incacha said I took as being factual."

He leaned up on one elbow looked down into Blair's face, a faint flush of embarrassment coloring his cheeks. "Maybe it's time I tell you about the voodoo lady that haunted your sleep almost from the time you moved in with me. You never once woke up while she was doing her thing, except maybe the time we had that blackout, remember?"

Blinking, Blair said slowly, "Voodoo lady? Haunting? And you're just now getting around to telling me?"

"Well, you didn't tell me about visiting you on a spirit walk."

"More than one," Blair confessed sheepishly. "I think - though I came to you on the other one. I guess I'd better tell you about the time one of my mother's boyfriends spiked my apple juice. I'm pretty sure, I mean, I've got these fractured, oh, hell, stop laughing."

Cuddling back up to him, Jim shook his head. "I'm laughing at both of us, Chief. It sounds like we need to compare notes on a few things. Let's see, Incacha said...."