Present in Body
Fortuita JamesJim was completely absorbed by the repetitive action of cracking peanut shells and popping the meat into his mouth. It was strangely soothing, even though the half a bag he had eaten was starting to make him feel a little sick. Nothing short of outside interference or an unprecedented improvement in the television viewing was going to break his rhythm.
Expecting neither, it came as a surprise when something stopped him before he was scrabbling among the broken pieces in the bottom of the bag. Blair. And hours earlier than Jim could have possibly hoped to expect him.
Jim could tell he was upset. Not bemused, as he'd been when his dates had unexpectedly gone pear-shaped in the past. Certainly not excited, as he'd been after his previous dates with this Lauren. Those reactions required no response. This was new. It was far different to any Blair he had seen before. There was confusion and slightly bewildered anger in his countenance.
"Chief?" With a single word, Jim made it clear that he was prepared to listen. Not to inanities, but to this, Blair's hurt.
"She lied to me, man."
"What about?"
Jim sat motionless, watchful, and his partner for once was equally still.
"Nothing." Blair hesitated after what he clearly felt was an inadequate answer, dropping his keys and joining Jim on the couch while he thought it out. "She didn't lie, really. But I feel like she did."
"Why?"
For some reason Jim could not fathom, Blair was blushing slightly as he mumbled out, "She slept with someone else."
"That's too bad, buddy." He made vague sympathetic grimaces, but Blair barrelled on as if he hadn't heard him.
"I wouldn't be upset, only I think she expects it of me, and that's what makes it so bad, y'know? It's like I'd given myself over to her, and she betrayed her own self-image. Then she dropped it one me, as if I can make her do penance or something. Just so she can feel better about her own choices. Get me?"
"Yeah, Chief," Jim said warmly, "I've got you." He had no idea, but the little guy was obviously deeply unsettled by the situation, so he tried to project understanding.
"Yeah." Blair slumped a little. "So, the whole thing totally sucks, and I'm going to bed, okay?"
"Okay." Jim absorbed the rather abrupt end to the period of confession. As Blair's bedroom doors snicked to, he wondered whether it had been a mistake to evince comprehension so soon. It had certainly been misleading. He still had no idea what was wrong.
"Geez, can't be angry with her for the normal reasons," he grumbled, rolling another peanut between forefinger and thumb.
Jim brought water, about the only thing readily available with which Blair was prepared to pollute his body.
"Water?"
"Thanks, Jim."
Jim sat down with his own cup of tar and faced again that most enjoyable part of his job, the paperwork.
One of Sandburg's acquaintances walked in. Another of the unnumbered multitude who worked in Jim's building whose name he did not know. Another face that Jim wouldn't recognise if it was perched over off-duty clothes. And another person who automatically threw out a casual, "How're you going, Blair?" every time they had to walk through Major Crimes. That did not bother him one whit. It was a daily, even hourly occurrence. What bothered him was the resounding silence that greeted this sally. No, "Great. Yourself?" Not even, "Not so hot," which was probably closer to the truth. Merely a cool nod of acknowledgment such as Jim himself might give when handed a file.
Jim noticed more. They went to Simon's office, called over there, but not for anything urgent.
"Update, Jim?"
"Things are progressing smoothly on the Halligan case. Looks like a fairly standard insurance arson. Lab results indicate an incendiary agent, but I'm not sure the circumstantial evidence will be enough to nail the owner. Still, that's not my problem."
"Only in that you were responsible for gathering that evidence," Simon commented dryly. "Do go on."
"Lee's 'fessed up to the harassment and damage, so I guess all you need to know about that is that my report is almost finished." He smiled beguilingly, but the captain only snorted. "Oddly, the Tans withdrew their civil suit." He pushed away his slight uneasiness about that development and continued with the run-down on his current cases in all their varying degrees of activity.
"And the case from this morning?"
He shrugged broadly. "Well, you know where we are on that. Not far."
But there was absolutely no 'we' involved. Blair had not said a word the entire time they had been in the office, and he didn't react to Simon's mutterings about actually getting somewhere. He had observed the conversation as if he had absolutely no stake in it. There had been nothing even approaching his normal vibrancy.
Nobody was touching him. Blair was travelling cold, leaving nothing behind him. Jim was used to an almost visible swathe of warmed and enlivened people in the space through which his guide passed. Now, there was emptiness. Or worse, people hardened by one more stranger treating them with suspicion and disregard.
Jim could live without that. He was not dependent on the way Blair touched the world. He had no vital need to see other people affected by his partner's worldview. What he could not survive was a change between them, and he had not realised before that this was possible. The realisation that the younger man could turn it off at will, could deliberate his interactions, was terrifying. Between himself and Blair, Jim would not be able to handle any distancing or falsity.
The younger man's increasingly distracted smiles were acceptable. Blair was having a rough time. Jim could understand that. He wasn't talking so much. Jim could understand that too. What he could not understand was the exclusion. Blair wasn't revealing anything and he wasn't sharing anything. Trust, and the routines of long friendship, these things were still in force, but there was nothing testing them, because nothing was passing from Blair to Jim.
Jim was the one person who would be destroyed without that natural intimacy. Blair could devastate him.
He shuffled through some of his work, not really engaged despite one or two threatening looks from Simon. This was far more important than any ultimately transitory case. This was his life. There had to be something he could do.
Having stumbled through the day, Jim drove them home, although he might as well have been in the truck alone for all the difference it made. Just as he might as well have been alone at the station.
He grappled with the problem as they settled back into the routine of domesticity, Blair doing some reading and note taking in businesslike silence. It was unbearable. If Blair couldn't hold them together, there was only one option. Jim sat gingerly on the couch and watched the student at work. It was an action the old Blair would have called him on instantly. Anything so uncharacteristic would normally be immediately scrutinised. Eventually, he reached out a hand to disturb the picture, to put himself inside it.
Blair's head whipped up with a speed and lack of surprise that indicated he had been intensely aware of Jim's actions the entire time. "The mood I'm in right now... Only touch me if you mean it, Jim. Only if you really mean it." He was absolutely serious, and Jim could see the warning in his eyes. His hand dropped back to rest on his thigh.
There was a long pause. Jim pushed down the last of his hesitation. "I mean it, Chief."
Blair searched his face. "If you do this to me, there won't be any going back." And they both knew that that 'this' had nothing to do with these first touches, or what might come after. It had everything to do with reciprocity, and the fact that Blair couldn't handle one more person changing the stakes. Jim was demanding faith, something Blair could easily deliver, but only would in return for everything of Jim.
"I don't want to go back. I never have." Jim raised his hand again and touched, holding Blair's face with his body and holding Blair's gaze with his love. "I won't lie to you. I'll try not to hurt you. It's the very last thing I want."
"Okay. Yes." He ducked his head a little so his lips were grazing Jim's palm when he whispered, "I trust you."
His lips followed his fingers as Jim explored Blair's face, ending, as that first touch had, with his guide's signal of acceptance; his head turning incrementally so that his mouth brushed against Jim's skin.
Blair was suddenly with him, body, mind and soul. The difference was amazing. He could sense nothing but Blair. Little murmurs took him with voice and strokes with touch. Each contact that added to the clarity of Blair tight against his side drugged him further. He began to doubt his own perceptions, certain that the scorching intensity of potential exactly equalled the heat of air and hand against him.
When this encompassing spirit finally popped the button on his pants that lightest of touches, three layers removed from his skin, felt like something amazing. What followed was even more extraordinary. Blair dropped down his body to the floor, and Jim's world focus immediately shift about a foot in a southerly direction. The slide of his zipper and the first hint of warm breath on cotton were entirely intoxicating. Blair's ministrations were annihilating fire, and the delicate movements of his hands as he pulled away the last layer of clothes were seduction incarnate.
Then he stopped. Filling the gaping hole were only words, but the tension behind them was almost as great.
"I know you. I know what you expect. Tell me that won't change."
"It won't change," Jim gasped out.
"Tell me you expect exactly what I want to give." With each demand, Blair licked or sucked, and then pulled away to wait for the answer. Each delay nudged control a little further out of Jim's reach.
"I want what you give." He thrust towards the mouth he knew would be waiting, simultaneously craving and dreading the tantalising touches.
"Good."
That sudden conclusion of the inquisition shocked him. The mere seconds of denial had seemed interminable but suddenly there were no more words, only sharp movements, moist and intimate caresses, and finally the tensing of his body as Blair took from him, enclosed him and consumed him. Took, and gave everything in return. The warmth imparted to passing strangers was as nothing to the heat of all Blair's energy and affection.
"Tell me you love me."
"I love you." This time, there was no delay at all. Jim meant it.
Blair climbed up to kneel over him on the couch, hard as hell, but still for the moment. Jim let the weight of that first congress settle into his bones even as the expectation of more built between them.
He waited for movement. It came as a slight stirring and that cream-dipped voice. "Apart isn't enough, is it?"
"No." Jim willed the energy to open his eyes, Blair's knowledge a stinging in the distance between them. "It never was for me." He closed that distance, silencing knowledge for something else they shared.