Note: This story was inspired by a story by another author. If you have read it, you would recognize the plot elements immediately. In case you haven't, and you do not like having the plot spoiled for you before you read a story, I am putting the detailed explanation of my "borrowing" at the end of my story.

Spoilers: References to "The Debt" and "Sentinel Too." The last parts of this story might not make any sense unless you have seen "The Real Deal" and "The Sentinel: by Blair Sandburg."

The first thing he registered was a pair of worried blue eyes hovering several inches away from his own. One of Blair's hands rested on his shoulder, while the other one moved gently back and forth over his thigh.

"Jim. Come on man, you with me here?"

Jim nodded. He reached out to tuck the emergency blanket more securely around Blair's shoulders, and frowned as the movement caused the blanket on his shoulders to start sliding off. Blair grabbed it and held it in place, and they huddled together, holding each other's blankets and exchanging goofy grins. Jim's awareness gradually spiralled outward, taking in Simon's bark punctuating the general bustle of emergency personnel rushing around in the background.

"Guess the cavalry arrived, huh?" The raspiness of his voice accentuated the dryness of his mouth.

"Here, drink this." Blair felt around and came up with a bottle of purified water.

"Detective Ellison! Glad to see you decided to grace us with your presence!"

Simon's grin was insufferably smug and self-congratulatory. Jim took a slow swig of water and made a show of swallowing it deliberately.

"Lucky for you two I managed to badger your location out of those guys," said Simon, still insufferably upbeat. "You look pretty beat up. Hang on while we wrap this up then I'll drive you home."

"uh,"

They were back in the loft. Simon had left after assuring himself that they would be alright and telling them to take it easy for the weekend. Jim had ensconced himself on the couch with a beer in hand, while Blair had gone into the kitchen to fix himself a cup of tea. Now he was back in the living room and perched on the arm of the couch right next to Jim.

Another houserule that Blair blatantly disregarded, Jim reflected.

He looked up, patiently resigned, and waited.

"You zoned," said Blair.

Jim raised an eyebrow, indicating, so what?

Blair chewed his lips. "So do you, uh, know what you zoned on?"

Jim rolled his head back on the sofa and stared up at the ceiling. God, he was tired. "Do we have to do this now, Sandburg?" he growled.

"Well, you know, we need to know what causes a zone-out, because hopefully if we know what caused it, we can figure out how to control it, to avoid it in the future. So..."

Jim raised a hand to stem the ramble. "I've heard all that. It's just, do we need to do it this minute?"

"Well, the fresher the event is in your mind, the better your chances of recalling the cause of the zone, you know."

"yeah," Jim took a swig of beer. "Well, excuse me if rehashing the events of this afternoon is not on the list of my favorite things to do at the moment."

Blair stared. Hard.

Jim sighed. "Okay. Just, get off there and come over here," he patted the seat beside himself, "so I don't get a kink in my neck looking up at you, okay?"

Blair obediently shifted over. "It's not, you know, like I don't understand your not wanting to do this now," he said, as he settled on the couch, "I'm actually pretty wiped, myself. But, man, the way you zoned today, it was real scary. God," he shuddered at the memory.

"What, it was more scary than suffocating to death in an industrial freezer?"

Blair fidgeted, glancing nervously at Jim. "I, uh, I mean, I was, we were, bitching at each other, and um," he blushed, "when, you know," he mumbled.

Jim closed his eyes. Unbidden, the events of that afternoon filled his mind: the mind-bogging series of errors in judgement and unadulterated bad luck that had ended with their being shut up together in that pitch-dark freezer, with no way to get out and no way to contact outside help.

Huddled together, they had bickered about whose fault it was that they had ended up in this predicament, finally settling down to wait grimly for the air to run out. As guilty as Jim felt about having dragged Blair along with him to an untimely death, he couldn't help feeling perversely glad at the knowledge that they were together, even in this.

"How long do you think it will be before Simon finds our bodies?" Blair had asked.

"Who knows," Jim had replied, "Nobody has any idea where we are. It might take them weeks. Years even."

"Like twenty years later, they finally decide to tear down this building, and they discover our mummified bodies..."

"Yeah, like that."

"I've had a good life," Blair had said.

"You could have had a longer life if you hadn't met me," Jim had said.

"Maybe, but what the heck, it's been a great ride," Blair's voice broke.

"Blair."

Blair had began trembling. Whether from the cold, or from the effort to keep back tears, Jim couldn't tell. He'd gathered Blair in his arms and kissed him on the forehead. Blair had clung to Jim like a lifeline. Jim's mind was unclear on who had first kissed whom, but feeling Blair, warm and alive in his arms, stroking his hair, tasting his skin, caressing his pliant body, hearing his soft moans, had seemed like a far better way to spend the time than sitting there fretting over their fate.

So they had sat entwined in each other's arms, until the oxygen ran out, and Blair's lungs started to heave irregularly, his heart speeding unnaturally as it tried to pump enough oxygen through his body, and Jim, unable to bear feeling Blair's body gradually shutting down, had turned down his senses until he was aware only of the comforting presence of the weight in his arms....

"it was nice," Blair said.

Jim didn't say anything.

"so, I, I wasn't happy that we were dying. but I was uh, comfortable, I guess. and then I think I passed out. And the next thing I know, I have an oxygen mask on my face and a paramedic is working on me, and I get him to let me up and look around and you are just sitting there with this totally blank look on your face..." Blair's voice hitched. "Yeah, it scared me. It took forever before Simon got the paramedics to leave you alone with me, and then it took forever to bring you out of it..." he shook his head.

"sorry," Jim said.

"not your fault," said Blair, "but, so, do you think we can figure out what happened?"

"I don't remember much," said Jim. "I had dialed everything down, so I didn't know even that the door was opening, until the light hit me..."

"You dialed down? Why?"

Jim sighed. He reached out and put an arm around Blair's shoulder, drawing him to his side, taking in the reassuring warmth of his Guide's body, the steady pulse of the blood coursing through his veins, the evenness of the breath flowing in and out of his lungs.

"Ever listen to somebody dying?"

Blair stiffened in Jim's arms. Jim reflexively run a soothing hand down Blair's back.

"it's all right," he said, "it wasn't so bad. it was no way as bad as finding you... in that fountain. I was dying too, I didn't have to live without you, it was just a matter of, well, making myself more comfortable, I guess."

Blair shifted his head so it was over Jim's chest, close to his heart. "you didn't want to live without me?" he asked.

Jim nodded. "when we were working on you, that's what kept on going through my head. it can't be over, how can I live without him, he can't leave me..."

Blair lifted his head so he could look into Jim's face. "If I had died, you wouldn't have..."

"I don't know. Probably not. It's not like I really thought this through or anything. Just, you know, gut reaction, really."

Blair nodded slowly. "You know," he said reflectively, "now that I think about it, I don't think I'd like living without you, either. In fact," he concluded, firmly, "I'm pretty sure I'd hate it."

"But you'd do it." said Jim.

Blair sighed, burrowing closer until he was practically in Jim's lap. "I would really, really hate it, though," he said.

"Blair?" said Jim after a while.

"hmmm?"

"Are we having an emotional reaction to a near-death experience?"

Blair huffed. "We've both had close calls before, man."

"So why is this different?"

Blair thought about that for a second.

"We had time to think about it?"

"Yeah," Jim smiled, nuzzling into Blair's head, "we did."

Blair shifted his head, planting a soft kiss on Jim's neck, "love you, man," he whispered.

"mmm," Jim murmured, shifting his hold on Blair so he could kiss along Blair's chin, ending by capturing his lush lips.

Soft. Warm. Wet tongue sliding along tongue. Blair's taste slid into his mouth and down his throat. So close. So dear. why couldn't he admit it before?

"god, I love you, Chief"

Blair moaned as Jim suckled his throat.

Blair leaned forward, hands clasped together, and stared hard at Jim, who was intently pursuing the Saturday Sports Section in his seat across the table. Jim valiantly ignored him for what was at most twenty seconds, but seemed like an eternity, before he exasperatedly gave up.

"What?" he shot across the table.

"you've done that before."

"Done what, exactly?"

"uh, you know, the guy thing."

"the guy thing?"

Blair nodded.

Jim shook his head and turned the page of his paper. "nope," he said.

Across the table, Blair went wide-eyed with surprise. "No?" he squealed.

"What, why is that such a news to you?" Jim asked irritably.

Blair shrugged. "uh, well, you uh, seemed to know what you were doing."

Jim snorted. "I'm sure I didn't do anything new to you."

"uh, actually..."

Jim looked up.

"most of that was new. to me, that is."

Jim frowned. "Don't tell me you've never had your dick sucked," he said, incredulously.

"Well, that's about the only part of last night that wasn't new. Getting it sucked, that is."

"oh," said Jim. "hand job?"

"not to the point where I came, no."

Jim blinked. He put down the paper and leaned forward. "What do you do with all those women, Chief?" he asked.

"Well, I talk to them, mostly," Blair counted on his fingers, "I hug them, I kiss them, and if I'm lucky, I fuck them?"

Jim stared.

"Come on, Jim," said Blair, "There's no point in getting a hand job if you can fuck them, is there?"

"Oh god," Jim groaned, "That actually made sense."

Blair smirked. "so, you've had women give you hand jobs? how does that work?"

"Can we just say it happened when for one reason or another fucking wasn't on the table, and leave it at that?"

"Sure," said Blair, leaning back in his chair. "You know, we never finished discussing your zone-out."

Jim sighed. "You have a theory, Chief?"

Blair nodded. "I think it's safe to say that the cause was a combination of your having dialed down your senses so low, plus the unexpected stimuli, in this case the light, correct?"

Jim nodded.

"So I was thinking we could run some tests, figure out how to prevent a recurrence..."

"No need," said Jim.

"But Jim..."

"Frankly, Chief, I can't think of very many situations where I will ever turn down my senses like that again. It's not going to happen, okay?"

"You can't know that, Jim."

"Yes, I can." Blair stared at him. "Oh, come on, Chief, what possible use is there for shutting down my senses like that?"

"But you turn down your senses all the time, when there's too much stimuli."

"Yeah, one, at most two, at a time. And never to the point where I don't feel anything."

"Was that how far you had turned them down?"

"Pretty much. I still knew you were there, but other than that, I was sort of just... floating."

Blair looked intrigued. "You know, that sounds like it might be useful, for instance if you were injured, and in a lot of pain..."

"I wouldn't do it unless you were there to monitor me, or I knew for absolutely certain that there was no hope of rescue. Either way, I don't think we have to worry about zone-outs, do you?"

Blair tilted his head as he thought about that. "And those are the only instances you can think of where you might dial down your senses that far."

"Pretty much, unless we have a repeat of yesterday."

"Well, that was an instance where you were dying, with no hope of rescue..."

"Nah, rescue was unlikely, but still possible. It was just total selfishness on my part to do that."

Blair quirked an eyebrow. "So you are saying you wouldn't have done that if I weren't there with you?"

"Yeah. In fact, I might have dialed my senses all the way up waiting for you to show up with the cavalry."

"Oh really?" Blair chuckled. "I still think it's a good idea to practice dialing up and down, in different combinations, just to make sure you have control."

"And I think it's a good idea to do the laundry."

"Come on, Jim, we have two days off!"

Jim raised his hands in surrender. "Laundry first, okay?"

Blair folded another t-shirt to Jim's strict specifications and tossed it into the laundry basket. Besides him, Jim finished ironing the last pair of pants.

"Okay," Blair said, picking up the basket, "I'll just run these up to your room."

"Uh, Blair?"

"Yeah."

"Want to keep some of that upstairs?" Jim nodded toward the other laundry basket, which contained Blair's clothes.

Blair put down the basket he'd picked up and eyed his laundry. "Planning on keeping me upstairs all the time?" he asked.

"Were you planning on going anywhere else?" Jim countered.

"Not as long as you want me," Blair replied.

"That'll be as long as you want to stay," said Jim.

Blair squinted as he tried to make sense of the exchange. "Are we making any sense, here?"

"Probably not."

Blair speculatively regarded the piles of laundry.

"You know," he grinned, "I've never lived with any of my lovers before."

"You've been living here going on four years."

"I guess I have, haven't I?" Blair bent down and shifted a few items from his basket into Jim's. "You know," he said, as he picked up Jim's basket and headed toward the stairs, "We are doing this totally backwards."

"Oh, yeah?"

"Yeah," Blair replied from the top of the stairs. He plopped the basket down on Jim's bed and started back down the stairs. "Usually, you meet someone, date them for a while, get them into bed, see how it works out, then you move in. I moved in, we worked out great, we got into bed... we completely skipped the dating part."

"No reason we couldn't do the dating part, now."

"That reminds me," Blair bounced, "you promised to do some tests. So what do you say we take a romantic drive through the Cascade Forest..."

Jim gazed warily at his partner. "This is going to be painful, isn't it?"

"Oh, come on. Don't tell me you have traumatic memories of romantic drives!" Blair took a look at Jim's pained expression and burst out laughing. "Or how about a nice, romantic picnic? Yes, that definitely has possibilities. Hmmm. Let's see what we have here..."

And Blair wandered off towards the kitchen, looking for supplies. Jim sighed in resignation, knowing he would do whatever Blair decided. Like when was the last time he had been able to say no to Blair.

He made his way upstairs where he proceeded to put away the folded laundry.

Even with Alex, when he had been mad at Blair for helping the woman who had turned out to be a criminal, he had really, just been venting steam. And not even because Alex had turned out to be a criminal, but because he had been hurt, and jealous, really, that Blair had found another Sentinel. It was a relief, actually, knowing that she was a criminal, because it gave him a valid reason for not letting Blair work with her. Knowing that, of course, had made him even more cranky. Go figure.

Had Alex not put Blair in the fountain, he would have cooled down in a few days, he would have gone to Blair, or Blair would have come to him and gotten him to sit down, and they would have talked, and things would have calmed down. That was what really hurt about the fountain, that he had nearly gotten Blair killed just because he was in a snit, because he was having a god damn temper tantrum, damn it. Nobody, least of all Blair, should die because of a fucking fit.

A few items shifted here and there and Blair's clothes fit in neatly among his own stuff, just like Blair himself had slipped seamlessly into his life.

He was just damn lucky that Blair was still here, that he wanted to be here, wasn't he? And he had better make sure that he do whatever he could to make sure things stayed that way.

He looked around the room and idly wondered how long it would be before Blair's things sprouted all over the space, just like they had elsewhere in the loft. Blair was still rummaging around downstairs, taking things out of cabinets, muttering under his breath. Jim sat on the bed, running his fingers idly over the spread, and briefly toyed with the idea of getting Blair up here and persuading him to spend the afternoon snuggled in each other's arms.

Loving Blair was easy. So easy, in fact, that Blair'd thought he'd done it before. Jim snorted at the thought. Seemed like he'd always loved Blair. Always wanted Blair. When that warehouse blew up, hadn't he thought of his spare room as Blair was gathering his stuff? But he'd kept his mouth shut, even resisted Blair's initial request, because it would have been, well, weird. You didn't just take people you just met a few weeks before and move them into your place. That ape, Larry, had been such a convenient excuse. For both of them. Come to think of it, Larry'd spent hardly an entire day in the loft. He'd escaped the day after Sandburg moved in, and once they caught him, Blair'd quickly relocated him to the University's research lab, where he'd borrowed him from in the first place.

"Hey, Jim? Where'd you put the picnic blanket?" Blair called from the bottom of the steps.

"It's up here. I'll bring it down." Jim got up to retrieve the requested item. "Need anything else?"

"Nope, got it all covered, man."

What would it take to guarantee he'll stay, Jim wondered, as he walked besides Blair toward his truck, smiling as he half listened to the excited chatter. Would this newfound intimacy bind them to each other, or would it just be another source of potential conflict? Of potential pain?

Blair flashed a brilliant smile at Jim. Knowing that they were hidden between the body of the truck and the side of the building, Jim leaned down and captured Blair's lips in a gentle but thorough kiss.

Dazed, Blair blinked up at him.

"Get in the truck," Jim said, and walked around to the driver's side.

"Jim?"

"mmmm?"

"you want to, you know, fuck me?"

"...."

"Jim?"

"jesus, blair,"

"well?"

Jim shut his eyes tight. God, Blair could drop bombshells on him out of thin air.

"I... can't"

"why not? you do like, um, touching me there."

Maybe a good offense was the best defense, Jim thought. Bending, he caught Blair's cock in his mouth, while at the same time he raised a finger to Blair's lips, gently pressing until Blair opened his mouth and sucked it in. Once the finger was sufficiently slick, he took it away from Blair's mouth, and prodded cautiously at Blair's anus. Blair gasped, wriggling against the sheets.

A few minutes later, Jim cradled a sated and exhausted Blair in his arms, congratulating himself on the shrewdness of his strategy and its deft execution, when he felt soft fingers sliding along his buttocks and into the cleft. Startled, Jim stiffened, then forcibly willed his body to relax.

Blair's fingers ghosted over the sensitive area, then came to rest on Jim's thigh, pushing on it, asking Jim to open up. Jim complied, and Blair's hand curled around his balls, massaging gently, then the fingers opened up to trace the soft skin of the perineum, while Blair shifted up, covering Jim's mouth with his own. The kiss stretched out leisurely between them as Blair's fingers continued their exploration.

Jim relaxed, letting Blair take control. Blair understood what he needed, knew when to push, and when to pull back. Before long, Blair had worked his way down Jim's body, letting his mouth follow where his fingers had been, tasting the most intimate parts of Jim's body as Jim had done to him the night before.

Jim sighed as he felt a finger enter him. He could give this to Blair. He could. He would take Blair, and Blair would take him. Which act would be the more ultimate surrender, the one that tore his soul from his self forever, to be given into the care of the other? He couldn't tell. And even as Blair twisted the orgasm out of his body, swallowing the essence of his release, he wondered whether this would be a source of mutual strength, or mutual destruction, and whether it was Blair, or himself, he trusted less.

The PD was the same. The garage, the elevator, the hallways, the people, desks, chairs, files, pencils, keyboard, monitor. Same old round of pointless and depressing crimes attesting to the depravity of the human condition.

Jim glared at the computer screen, willing some machine god knew how many thousands of miles away to finish with the search and transmit it through god knew how many millions of miles of data cable and spit it out in front of him, and suspected that he himself probably looked no different. The world wasn't going to screech to a halt and stop spinning on its axis just because he and Sandburg had gotten together and decided to get horizontal with each other. In the relative scheme of things, they were pretty much insignificant, even if they were the Sentinel and Guide of the Great City of Cascade, Washington. Yeah, right.

Beep. No results matched your query. Great.

Jim leaned back and crossed his arms across his chest, trying to think of how else he could phrase the query. Where was Blair when he needed him?

"Jim! Where's Blair?"

Jim looked up into the grinning face of Joel Taggert.

"You know, you are a detective, Joel. Don't you think you could figure that one out on your own?"

"Well, I'll say, if he's not somewhere in the station running your errands, he's off doing his thing at the U." Joel grinned even wider. "So, which is it?"

"He's at the U," Jim admitted.

"Ellison, Taggert, My office!" Simon bellowed.

Jim and Joel looked at each other. "Well," Jim shrugged as he got up, "the master calls."

"Have a seat, gentleman," said Simon as Joel and Jim walked into his office. "I just got a call from the mayor. We have a case being transferred over from Homicide. Apparently, this is a case of gay-bashing."

Jim clenched his teeth, but otherwise managed to suppress any reaction.

"The victim was openly gay, and he was found beaten up in an alley within walking distance from several well-known gay bars. He died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. The mayor is concerned over how this will reflect on his civil rights record, and he wants to show that he is doing everything possible to solve this crime. That means assigning this case to Major Crimes and specifically to its two highest ranking detectives, namely, you two."

Simon glared at the two men to make sure they properly appreciated the significance of his statement. "Jim. Where's Sandburg?"

"At the U, Simon. He was going to come over in the afternoon."

"You guys recovered from last Friday?"

"Spent a relaxing weekend running around forests and beaches," Jim said, grimacing as he recalled all the tests that Blair had put him through. Well, some of them had had their upsides, but still.

Simon looked sharply at Jim.

"Do you always make it a habit of looking disgusted when recalling a 'relaxing weekend,' Detective?"

"Well, I was with Blair the entire time."

That drew a sympathetic chuckle from both Simon and Joel.

"Well," said Simon, as he picked up a folder from his desk, "I trust that the two of you, or shall I say, the three of you, will have no problems working together on this case?"

"Sure thing, Simon," said Joel, moving to take the folder from Simon at a gesture from Jim.

"So how do you want to do this, Jim?" said Joel when they finished going through the file.

"Well," said Jim, glancing at the clock, "first, I'm calling Blair."

He picked up the phone and dialed. Blair picked up on the second ring.

"Sandburg."

"Hey, Chief. Miss me?"

Blair's bright laugh filled his ear. "Oh, yes," he said, emphatically.

"Good to hear that. Listen. We got a case. What time can you get out?"

"I'm teaching a class that ends at one. I have office hours afterwards, but..."

"Well, if you could reschedule that, I could use your help. Just wait for me out on the driveway, will you? I'll be out interviewing people so I might not be exactly on time, but I'll pick you up as close to one as I can."

"Sure thing, Jim."

"Great. See you then. Bye."

Jim hang up and turned toward Taggert. "Blair's free at one. We'll swing by the U to pick him up then. I want to wait until we have Blair before we hit the crime scene and the bars."

"Well, that would leave interviewing family and associates."

"Exactly. So which ones should we start with?"

"Hate crime? Gay bashing?" said Blair. He was squeezed in between Jim and Joel in the cab of Jim's truck. "How do you know it's not a simple mugging?"

"His wallet and all his valuables were still on him," said Joel.

"Oh," said Blair, crestfallen.

One, Jim counted silently. Two. Three...

"I hate it! I just hate it when things like this happen!" Blair burst out.

Bingo, thought Jim.

"It's just disgusting how some people never learn to tolerate differences. You would think we would have moved past such things by now, and yet..."

"Isn't there some fancy anthropological theory to explain such things? Like why people can come to hate a particular group, even though in reality, they have little or no contact, positive or negative, with individuals in the other group?"

"Yeah, that's it exactly. See, Jim..."

And Blair was off and running on his lecture. Jim and Joel exchanged an affectionately tolerant glance over his head. Blair rambled on all the way to the crime scene, with Jim inserting appropriate comments where required.

"You know Jim," said Joel as they walked a few feet behind Blair toward the alley, "I do believe you enjoy getting the kid going. And you even actually listen to him!"

"You tell anybody and nobody'll find your body, Joel," Jim told him amicably.

"Who, me? Tell?" laughed Joel. "It's our secret, buddy."

In the alley, Jim found a pin behind a dumpster that looked like some kind of an insignia.

Several workers at a nearby bar recalled seeing a group they usually didn't see in the area. From the descriptions, Blair identified them as belonging to a white supremacist group. A search of their website turned up the insignia from the alley. From there it was a matter of time before the members responsible for the attack were identified, rounded up for questioning, and cowered into confessing.

"Great work, people," smiled Simon.

"Our secret weapon strikes again," said Joel, nodding towards Blair. "He just recognized that group right off the bat, you know."

Jim grinned.

"And it was damn lucky that Jim spotted that pin," Joel continued. "That really nailed the bastards. No wonder you two have the best arrest record around here. It's an unbeatable combination, guys."

"Yeah, we are lucky to have them," Simon agreed, throwing a significant glance, first at Jim and then Blair.

An unbeatable combination. Jim thought. Is that true? How would they react, he wondered, if they knew?

But nobody knew, of course. Jim took Blair and Blair took Jim and both times it wrenched Jim, in different ways, but still. They both scrupulously avoided saying the g-word, and more and more of Blair's stuff wound their way into Jim's room, and some of Jim's stuff got shifted into the room downstairs in the process, and the room looked more and more like a storage space, the bed all but buried under Blair's books and junk.

It was a joy to come home from a grueling day at work and bury himself in Blair, to be able to just reach out and lose himself in the simple comforts of another warm body, to have it offered for the asking, without fuss, without argument, without rancor or recrimination, just given freely and willingly because Blair was Blair and Jim was Jim. It was a pleasure he had barely experienced during his brief marriage.

Jim was surprised, also, to find that Blair all of a sudden had an enormous amount of time to spend with him. He showed up at the PD more often and stayed longer. The evenings and weekends, which had been often spent with one or both of them out on dates, were now reserved mostly for the two of them, with Blair occasionally taking off for a gathering of his university friends.

At first, Jim worried that spending all that time together might become stifling, after a while. But time passed, and Blair seemed content, and they didn't get on each other's nerves more often than usual, and eventually he stopped worrying.

They did date, after a fashion. Mostly doing stuff they'd done together before, like going to games, catching a movie, going to exhibits or performances that caught Blair's attention, and so forth. Sometimes they had dinner at the kind of fancy restaurants to which they might have taken a date. They carefully avoided bars and dance halls. Blair dragged Jim to University functions, and there was a subtly different inflection in Blair's voice when he introduced Jim as his "roommate," and if the other person looked at them with a certain understanding in their eyes, they did nothing to diffuse it.

Loving Blair was easy. Living with Blair was easy. Working with Blair was a challenge to be relished. Watching Blair tackle a roomful of people, charming his way through the masses, was sheer entertainment. Even seeing him flirt was okay, because when the evening was over, he always came back to Jim's side, slipped into his bed, and stayed in his arms.

Jim started to forget why he'd been worried.

"We need to protect him, Jim." Blair was saying. "He could very well be a target. We can't just leave him on his own, here."

"I know," said Jim. "But the only alternative we have is..."

"I can clear out my room," said Blair. "Take me ten minutes, tops."

Jim eyed him skeptically.

"Fifteen minutes," Blair corrected.

Jim sighed exaggeratedly and walked over to talk to Vince Deal.

"Oh, man!" Blair exclaimed, just as the three of them were walking out of 852 Prospect. "I forgot to bring my book."

Jim turned and glared.

"Sorry, man," Blair said, already beginning to scoot away, "Sorry, sorry, but I really need it, I promised Liz I'll have it for her today. I'll be right back." And he was gone.

"Come on, Vince," Jim said, walking over to his truck, "Might as well wait inside the car."

"Nice young man," Vince remarked.

"Yeah, he is."

"Is he always that enthusiastic about everything?"

"Pretty much."

"He's devoted to you."

Jim yanked open the passenger door. Turning, he looked Vince in the eye. Vince met the gaze squarely.

"I'll appreciate it if you keep what you see to yourself," Jim said.

"Certainly," Vince said.

Jim watched the uniforms taking the security company executive into custody, then walked back to his truck, where Vince and Blair were waiting for him.

"Well," said Jim, eyeing Vince, "seems it's safe for you to go home, now."

"I appreciate everything you've done, Detective," said Vince.

"And we appreciate your cooperation," returned Jim, "though I can't say I approve of all the stunts you pulled on me. You're almost as bad as Sandburg, here."

"I'm not that bad," Blair screeched indignantly.

Jim frowned. "What happened to your lip, Chief?" he asked.

"My lip?" Blair parroted. "Oh, yes, my lip. Uh, well, um, see, itwasmegan," he mumbled.

"Megan?" Jim sniffed, suddenly recognizing the un-Blair like smell he had been sensing from Blair ever since he found him at the shooting range. "My god, Chief, what were you two doing?"

"Nothing, really," said Blair. "Just pretending, really."

"Pretending?"

"You know, to..." Blair made a significant hand gesture. "I mean, after all," he added hastily, noting Jim's murderous expression, "we were supposed to be lovers, remember?"

"Calm down, Detective," Vince putted in, "He belongs to you, everyone knows that. Nobody will take him away from you, except, of course, yourself. Understand that?" he waggled his fingers at Jim. "Now, can we get back to your place so I can pack up my things and get out of your hair?"

And Jim remembered those words when the whole dissertation thing came crashing down around them, but it still did absolutely no good, because the only thing he could think of to remedy the situation was, well, unthinkable, and he pushed Blair with a vengeance, telling him to grab the brass ring and telling Simon Sandburg's ride was over, because, really, he was a selfish bastard, he couldn't stand being by Blair while he blazed his way to fame and success over the tattered fragments of his life, but how could he even wish for the alternative? He hated himself for even thinking of it, he really did.

The agony was not in being hounded by the press, or having IA on his tail, or even, god forgive him, that Simon's career was also on the line, but that he was losing Blair, Blair was slipping away from him, swept away, not only by the frenzy and hype and the promise of instant fame and success, but also by the recognition and the respect of his peers and the social standing that will remain his after all the excitement had worn away, and he couldn't see a way to stop that. Well, he could, but that...

And then Blair discovered the alternative all by himself, and, dear god, he went ahead and did it. And as he stood, stunned, watching Blair stand up in front of the whole damn world and shred his life to pieces so he could protect him, protect them, he understood the depth of Blair's belief and trust and love, and how by virtue of that, Blair had drawn belief and trust and love out of him, and he finally saw the truth of Vince's words, that the only one who could push Blair away from him was himself, because Blair was certainly not going anywhere, no way. He flirted with fame and success, like he flirted with the women, felt the pull of their siren calls, but in the end, he came back.

In the end, he will always come back.

Jim closed his eyes and cursed that knowledge, cursed the bitter thrill that the certainty sent pulsing through his veins. He desperately wished for a lifetime of uncertainty than to have paid the price of its cost.

Later, when Zeller was dead and the bullpen was shot up and everyone who could be patched up had been patched up and he had been sent home from the hospital with a cane and a bandage around his leg and Naomi was asleep in the bed downstairs, he buried his face in Blair's hair, clutching him close.

"you are a fool," he said.

"yeah, but I'm your fool," Blair said.

And Jim felt the tears well up, and he let it flow, let it mingle into Blair's hair, let the silky strands be mangled with salt and bitterness and regret.

"I didn't want this," he said.

"We didn't have that many options," said Blair. "This was the only one that wouldn't make me lose you."

"I still didn't want this," he repeated.

"I know, Jim. You love me," Blair said.

"How can you say that," he said.

"You hate living without me," Blair said, "You hate seeing me hurt. You couldn't really choose."

"So you did," he said.

Blair nodded. And there was nothing else to be said, really. He wished he were different, that he could bend, that he could play the crown in the circus, juggling his senses in front of the world like any third-rate performer, but it really wasn't him, and for that matter, it didn't really suit Blair to play the ring master in this or any other freak show. Blair actually had too much integrity for that, and without that integrity, he wouldn't be Blair.

Just as without his pride, he wouldn't be Jim Ellison.

So when Simon was out of the ICU he went and told him the whole sordid tale, beginning with Larry.

Simon grunted and admitted that they'd all suspected something was up when Sandburg suddenly stopped dating. "Most of us couldn't believe that you two would switch teams just like that," Simon mused, "but then nobody could come up with any other plausible explanation, either."

So after admonishing Jim to keep his private life strictly private, Simon started pulling strings and calling in favors. It helped that Blair's contributions could actually be documented, unlike his senses, which had been chalked up to "luck" and "coincidence" whenever possible.

And as he threw the gold shield at Blair, threw his love, faith, and trust, Jim knew, that whatever happened, Blair would always catch it, catch him.

Note, cont:

The basic plot of this story is based heavily on "Seemingly Impermeable" by Helen, to whom I would like to express my sincerest appreciation, for her great stories, her acerbic wit, and her unflappable frankness. I love all of Helen's stories, and I especially like the way she manages to make her dialogue sound like real people talking. If you haven't read them yet, you really should go and see what you are missing.

Just to be clear, the following are the major elements I have borrowed from Helen's story:

1. The concept of "Jim and Blair locked in together in a small, tight space."
2. As a consequence, they end up kissing, and Jim turns down his senses to avoid feeling Blair dying in his arms. Then he zones.
3. Use of references to Blair's drowning in "Sentinel Too."
4. Use of events from the episode "The Real Deal."