Hospital Discharge Hell.

Okay – relatively speaking, it was Heck, not Hell.  Hell was last night.  A night in Actual Hell, even if it was a Hell Blair had walked away from.  Of course, walked away from was a misnomer.  Been carted away from like a semi-cognizant sack of piss-in-their-pants-terrified turnips was closer to the truth.

Man, working with Jim was turning out to be a truly strange and dangerous trip.

Blair finished another circuit of the room, making about the two-thousandth or something.  Okay, Jim hadn't been gone long enough for two thousand round trips of the room.  Maybe one thousand.  Blair impatiently circumnavigated the unfortunately plastic chair next to the bed.  It would have been a lot more linear, if less private, to pace in the hallway.  Surely Jim would be back soon. 

Geez, it was amazing that Jim had been able to stand up and leave in the first place after spending the night in that plastically unfortunate chair.  Of course, what was really amazing was that Jim wasn't in a body cast after last night's series of swan dives through way too much glass and decaying wood and psycho-space.  Who needed a guy in tights and a cape when you had Jim in a watch cap, dropping his gun?

It was time to get out of here.  He ought to just go in search of Jim and the stupid discharge paperwork.  Except if he did, he'd probably end up slowing the whole tortoise-like process down further; and anyway, Blair was pretty sure he didn't need any more of the "Oh My God You Can Be On Jerry Springer Now" looks he'd been getting.  Or the Excessively Soothing looks, the ones implying that actual humiliating hysteria was de rigueur after such an Unthinkable Ordeal.  Shit.

Thank God for Jim, running interference.  Making things okay.

Jim.  Calm-as-a-rock Jim.  Maybe Jim did this kind of thing all the time, sat up calmly all night beside loopy half-drugged half-concussed half-freaked people whom he'd rescued from after-hours non-con Chains-And-Gags-And-Psychic-Ingestion scenes.  Jim was good at it, anyway.  The being-calm thing.

Not to mention the rescue thing.

It was weird, though.  Jim, somewhere around the fifth time Blair had woken up – the time, anyway, when things were a lot less blurry and the whole hospital-not-murdering-wackjob's-lair ambiance was really beginning to register – had apologized.  Like it was his fault.  Geez.  Jim – albeit calmly – was apparently prepared to feel guilty about this.

Which was not okay.  If it weren't for Jim, Blair wouldn't be okay, unless you were talking about the Ultimate Okay, the Other Side of Okayness, the Great Okay in the Sky.  Jim didn't need to feel guilty.  Jim had pretty much earned a free lifetime pass from feeling guilty.

Which, if Blair had needed incentive – not that he did – to just get over this, provided plenty.  So, Hell Night or not, he was going to handle this weirdness.  Invisibly.  No PTSD, no suddenly appearing nervous tics, no roommate-rousing nightmares, no unnecessary-guilt-exacerbating personal dysfunctions. 

No weirding out.

Anyway, and not entirely beside the point, Jim – and Simon – would hardly allow an unglued police observer to hang around.  Blair was already pushing the limits, as least as far as Simon was concerned; weirding out about this would get him kicked entirely out of the PD.  Jim had said that himself; you couldn't hang out with cops if you couldn't keep it together.

So, no weirding out.  Just a balanced, blasé, cop-like reaction.

Totally doable; the somewhat unflattering you'll-probably-suck-at-coping insinuations from Dr. So Not Into Positive Thinking and the rest of the Excessively Soothing brigade notwithstanding.  Shit, these people wouldn't have said a lot of that stuff to Jim.

It was probably the hair.  Jim's hair inspired confidence.  Jim's hair had balls.  My hair, on the other hand, has fucking curls.  Or frizz.  And it inspired – and it was really not necessary to think about this right now – impersonation, by the selected and sicko few; not confidence.

What was taking Jim so long?  Another reason to hate hospitals.  It wasn't like Blair didn't have a healthy respect for the value of the stupid paperwork, but man, it was like being a prisoner, or something.  You couldn't just leave.

"What?"  Jim's eyebrows were up as he slid behind the steering wheel.

Blair suspected he was beaming at Jim like an idiot.  He buckled his seat belt and surveyed the coldly drizzling sky through the windshield, still beaming.  "Nothing.  Just…it's a nice morning."

"Yeah, it is."

Idiocy was underrated.  He beamed more brightly – more idiotically? – at Jim, at the smile in Jim's voice   Life.  It was an incredibly nice thing to be sharing at the moment.  A beautiful thing.

The seat belt tugged a little across some of his bruises; Blair didn't mind at all.  Jim had to be in the same boat, wince-wise, and Jim wasn't wincing either, just pulling out of the hospital parking lot with an amazingly warm smile on his face.

Life.  Man, Jim did this kind of stuff all the time.  Saved people.  Gave them their lives back.

Hero stuff.

The beautiful world moved by more quickly as Jim fed gas to the beautiful truck.  Everything they passed was absolutely, ridiculously, beautiful;  even the section of newspaper lying in a soggy huddle at the edge of the Federal Building's steps, and the contents of the wire trash can overturned right next to the bus stop – which wasn't supposed to be possible, the city bolted those suckers down – and the guy a block further along who wasn't curbing his dog.  The rain was beautiful. 

Jim's windshield wipers were a work of art.  Blair wondered how Jim managed that, the perfect arcs of perfectly clear glass being perfectly cleared of the drizzle.  No matter how often he changed the windshield wipers on the Corvair – which, admittedly, wasn't often at all – the Corvair's windshield doggedly followed the Impressionist school of forward visibility.  Jim's forward visibility was pure Realism.

Of course, Jim's perfectly clear windshield made sense.  Jim took care of stuff.  He probably actually checked his wipers, examining them for nicks or wear or uneven edges.  He – obviously – took care of his windshield wipers the way he took care of everything else.

The way he saved lives.

…Shit.

Jim's stuff.  Jim's carefully cared-for stuff.  Jim's home.   Jim probably didn't usually sacrifice his home – his carefully cared-for stuff – while saving people's lives.

"Hey, I have to give a statement, right?  Can we do that now?"  Right, like another couple of hours are going to make a difference, give whatever got destroyed time to mulch into the floor, maybe re-seed and re-grow or something.  Blair had no idea how much of Jim's stuff had bought the farm last night, that part of the evening's entertainment was pretty much a loud and lumpy and panicked blur, but he had the feeling it was a lot much.

"Later.  Maybe this afternoon."

"Okay, I guess.  But why not now?"  He'd been such an idiot, running to the loft.

"Because, Einstein."  Jim turned off Millhouse onto Carver, which was definitely not the way to the station.  "House rule – you get out of the hospital, you take it easy afterwards."

Blair snorted.  "We're in the truck, Jim; which would be out of the jurisdiction even if you did get to have rules about stuff like this in the first place.  Anyway, I'm okay.  And you've got as many bruises as I have and you got less sleep than I did."

"So we both take it easy."  Jim gave him a half-smile, the kind of smile Blair could recognize by now as the Ellison We Do It My Way smile – much subtler than the We Do It My Way glare.  Crap.  Jim was manipulating him.  Blair didn't want to go back to the loft right now, or possibly ever – okay, that was hyperbole – but yeah, he had to face it sooner or later, and Jim's bruises could undoubtedly use a hot shower and a couple of hours sleep on a bed. 

If that hadn't gotten torn up last night.

Crap.  He was making this a problem, when it probably wasn't a problem, at least not the kind of problem he was making it, because he was pretty sure that Jim was going to retain his calm everything-is-okay-it's-nice-you're-alive attitude no matter what the loft looked like.  Want people to cut you a little slack?  Let a sociopath kill you. 

Okay.  Not kill you.  Thanks to Jim.  But let – Blair had done an admirable job with the let part.

Not according to Jim.  Jim didn't tend to toss compliments his way, but Blair wasn't sure how he felt about that one.  "Good job there, chatting with the crazy serial killer.  Way to talk him into not murdering you, Blair."  Which wasn't what Jim had said, of course.  But maybe Jim had just been trying to make him feel better. 

Or maybe Jim had meant it.  It was hard to tell.

He'd been looking out the truck window again at the beautiful gray wet world and it took a moment for Blair's brain to register what his eyes had just skipped away from. 

Smooth empty faces in the big display windows.  Friends.  Dead fiberglass faces.  Meet my friends.

The Outfit was a hip place to rev up your wardrobe if you had quality plastic.

"Chief?  You're being pretty quiet, you okay?"

Okay, this shouldn't be surprising, this little mannequin moment.  Basic Psych.  Basic flashback.  Been there, done that.  Well, not that – this – exactly.  But he could deal.  No weirding out.  Anyway, if you made it through the main event, you could absolutely keep it together through the aftershocks.  Pure logic.  Not to mention necessity.  Which was the mother of –

Blair let out a careful breath and put the smile back on his face before he turned away from the passing store windows, toward Jim.  "Sure, man, I'm fine.  Just doing a little morning after not-taking-anything-for-granted, you know?

There was a tiny line between Jim's eyebrows but Jim smiled back, calm and steady; and reached over to squeeze Blair's shoulder gently.  "Yeah."  His hand stayed there, warm and calm and steady, until they had to turn the corner at Hampstead; and the wipers kept making their perfectly clear arcs on the windshield.

Jim was still rolling his eyes as the elevator doors closed and the car started down towards the garage, and Blair smiled more widely; mostly about the earring and Jim's tattoo veto, but it didn't hurt that the trip to the station had been easier than he'd thought it might be.  Cops were used to all kinds of tabloid shit – big surprise, right? – and nobody hovered.  Nobody had given him any of those disturbing looks.  Well, Simon had looked at Blair like he belonged in a zoo, but that was the way Simon usually looked at him, anyway.  Banks hadn't gone much further than growling, "You all right, Sandburg?" and staring at Blair hard for a minute.  Simon's look – whatever it was, exactly – was a  lot easier to field than the hospital looks from last night and this morning.

And hey, even talking about last night again, giving his statement, hadn't been as –

"Chief."  Jim had stopped rolling his eyes.  He looked serious.  "As your newly appointed blessed protector, I've got a bone to pick with you."

Crap.  Sometimes Blair really regretted the way things just came out of his mouth before he considered the implications.  The disaster with Chris was a perfect example.  God knew – a multitude of deities across the globe knew – there were plenty more examples, including Jim, who – thanks to another fine illustration of the Sandburg mouth being connected to the stupidest part of the Sandburg brain – was probably never going to forget being referred to as "pre-civilized."  Yeah, on the surface "blessed protector" sounded harmless enough, but hell, the guy had been Covert Ops.  Anything could be a weapon.  Blair groaned.

"Oh, geez, forget I said that, all right?  I mean, I have absolutely no problem with you saving my life – any time the need arises, man, I am totally cool with that – but let's not get carried away with the whole concept, okay?"

The expression on Jim's face said he wasn't buying – yet, anyway – but the elevator jolted to a halt on the fifth floor and half a dozen people and a chair got on.  Blair grinned at Jim as they got jostled toward the back of the elevator.  It wasn't likely Jim would forget whatever it was he was thinking about, but hey, a guy could hope, right? 

Jim rolled his eyes again, apparently following Blair's thoughts.  Okay, so Jim wasn't going to forget whatever he wanted to bitch about – like that would ever happen;  sheesh, Sandburg, you've known the guy long enough to know that, anyway – the least Blair could do was listen to whatever it was Jim intended to be serious about.  You kind of owed that to somebody who had just saved your life.

Blair shifted sideways.  The swivel chair that had him cornered swiveled a little closer.  Well, at least Jim and his Bone To Pick would be postponed as long as Blair was being crowded by people and furniture, sorry-looking though the furniture might be.  Actually, it looked like his kind of furniture, the kind where upholstery status and ergonomic design took a back seat to whether it had been at the Salvation Army store long enough to have a reduced-price sticker slapped on it.  Surely the CPD didn't shop where Sandburgs shopped?

Blair studied the beefy guy shepherding the chair.  Chair-abductor or chair-reclaimer?  Reclaimer, Blair decided; Beefy Cop had a self-righteous air.  Or maybe abductor who believed the chair should have belonged to him in the first place.  Obviously the PD was no more immune to office-furniture maneuvers than Rainer was, although who actually  would want this particular chair was problematical.  Maybe Beefy Cop was chair-executioner, escorting the prisoner to dumpster doom.

Hey, the chair guy was starting to look a little steamed.  At me?  Huh?

Mystified, Blair looked across at Jim in the opposite corner of the elevator and raised his eyebrows.  Jim seemed distinctly amused and turned his attention to Beefy Cop.  "Don't worry, Jacoby.  Sandburg doesn't have any designs on Bessie."

Bessie?  Uh oh.  Beefy Cop was old enough, he could have a daughter in her twenties, although surely Blair would have remembered a Bessie, unless it was Beth or Elisabeth or – but he didn't remember meeting a Beth or a Elisabeth at the PD, but maybe it wasn't at the PD, and maybe, shit, she wasn't his daughter, she was his girlfriend, or, fuck, his wife, it was stupid to make age-based assumptions about that kind of thing, and it never seemed to matter that he was totally not interested in hitting on other people's girlfriends or wives or –

"Chief, why don't you take your hand off Bessie."

Okay, Jim was trying not to grin.  And looking down at Blair's hand, which was… "Um.  Sorry."  Blair lifted his hand from the back of the chair.

The Happy Couple didn't get off until the second floor, and the Jacoby and Bessie anecdotes Blair cajoled out of Jim lasted the rest of the way down to the parking garage and all the way over to Jim's truck.

Which was still wet from the afternoon's continuing drizzle.  The perfect arcs of the wipers weren't perfect at the moment; leftover raindrops had given in to gravity and slid down the windshield in long thin blurs, but as soon as Jim started the truck again, the perfect wipers would do their thing again.  Forward visibility.

Jim, taking care.

"Hey, Jim."  Blair paused as they came up to the F-150.  "I was wrong.  The CPD tattoo, I mean.  To be accurate, if I get a tattoo it should be 'Sentinels Rock'.  Or – hey, I've got it – 'Ellison 4eva'."  Truth.  Jim – Sentinel, Cop, Ex-Ranger – was the sole reason Blair wasn't going to be known as Pathetic Corpse Number Five in somebody's future Capote-esque bestseller.  None of the other guys in blue could have – would have – succeeded.

Blair grinned at Jim across the hood of the truck.  Cool.  Jim was looking a little…well, it was hard to describe. 

Ah.  The corner of Jim's mouth twitched.  "I don't think I want to know what kind of social life you'd be expecting with that tattoo, Chief."

Blair opened the passenger door.  "Wasn't planning on telling you, man."

"Thank God for that."  Jim got behind the wheel but turned toward Blair instead of putting the key in the ignition.  Serious again.  Oh, great.  "Okay, Hot Stuff, listen up for a minute.  You and the tattoo you're not going to get need to get something straight here.  I'm the cop.  You're not the cop.  I tell you not to do cop stuff, you don't do cop stuff.  Simple.  Got that?"

"What are you – oh, the club?  You're mad about me going to the club?  Jim, it was just a club, my kind of scene anyway, I was just talking with people, no big deal.  And hey, I owed it to you, if I hadn't screwed up at the church –"

"Sandburg – you work with me, I'm responsible for you.  It is a big deal.  And if you think the way to make up for a mistake is to make a bigger mistake by ignoring what I tell you to do about a case, for your own safety, then we have a big problem here."

"Okay, man, sure.  Accountability.  I get it.  I'm cool with the you-cop me-safe-bystander thing."  Except going to the club worked, Jim.  And backing up Jim while they were still figuring out his senses wasn't turning out to a spectator sport.  Jim knew that.  And even if it got really insane – which, clearly, it did – Blair was doing this.  Somehow.  Situational catatonic terror notwithstanding.  "Same page, man.  Same paragraph."

"Why do I not believe that," Jim muttered as he started the truck.  On the whole, Blair figured it was a good idea to pretend he hadn't heard.

"Hmm?"  Warm, lemony smell…lemon verbena?  Tea?  When did I make tea?  Blair looked up from his notebook in surprise.  Tea, steaming companionably on the table beside the pile of books and journals.  Okay… "Jim, when you were smelling the water sample, how did you realize it was duck waste, specifically?  Were you picking up any correlation between the scent of the water and the scent of the duck down you found in the drain?"

"Yeah.  I think so."  Jim's voice came from the living room and Blair twisted around in his chair to find Jim standing where the end table would have been, if last night's frivolities hadn't turned it into a pile of only vaguely-related pieces of wood.  "I think that was part of it.  But it was also logic, Sandburg, it wasn't only the senses."

"It's never just the senses, Jim.  That's what makes the whole sentinel-as-cop thing totally perfect.  It's a step beyond sentinel protecting the tribe – you're not just using your senses to anticipate and protect, you're using them retroactively, as it were, and directing them as a detective.  Perfect marriage, man."

"Yeah, well, I'm not arguing with the results, Chief."  Which meant that, as usual, Jim wished his senses would go take a flying leap somewhere.  Life-saving and crime-solving aside.  Blair sighed.

Well, he had the basics in his notes, he could expand on them later.  He turned back to the table and closed his notebook.  Lemon verbena.  Still hot.  He really didn't remember getting up to make the tea.  "Hey…thanks for the tea?"

A half-snort came from behind him.  "Tea, Sandburg?  I don't make tea."

But… Blair twisted again to look at Jim, who was now sitting calmly on the couch.  Before.  You never made me tea before.  Jim made coffee, Jim thought tea was… not macho or mainstream enough, or something.  "Thanks," he repeated, smiling.

Jim smiled back.  Calm and steady.  "Any time, Chief."

Meditation – without candles, for the foreseeable future.  It would work.  It usually worked, for stuff like this.

Okay, this wasn't the ordinary "Trank the brain so you don't accidentally wake up your hosts during the middle of the night" scene.

But it should still work.  Of course, Jim wouldn't kick him out if his subconscious went wacko during a REM cycle.  But that was beside the point.  No weirding out.

Good thing I was so wired when I was a kid.  Even the most willing hosts hadn't appreciated kids with nightmares, so meditating like this – shutting your mind down, or your memory, or whatever it took – had been one of the first survival skills Naomi had taught him.  It had come in handy more than once.

Tonight was going to be another time it came in handy.

Blair listened to the night sounds of the loft, wondering if Jim was lying awake upstairs listening to him lying awake.

He hoped not.  Jim needed some sleep. 

It had been totally uncool of Jim to sneak around and clean up the ruins behind his back.  "Don't worry about it;  we'll clean it up later."   That couldn't even be classed as obfuscation on Jim's part; there had been absolutely no "we" involved, unless Simon had stopped by, or Carolyn, or a clandestine Merry Maid or somebody.

Uncool.  The place was trashed because of him, the least Blair could have done was help clean it up.

The least Blair's turncoat body could have done was not vindicate Jim and jump on the whole take it easy bandwagon so enthusiastically when they'd gotten back to the loft.  Man, that had been embarrassing.  Ten minutes of pacing in a two by four hospital cell, an unusually sedate ride in Jim's truck, and two flights of stairs; and he'd ended up taking a  juvenilely embarrassing nap.  Yeah, okay – drugs, stress, adrenaline exhaustion.  Still, he'd been in here sleeping like a baby – a dream-free baby, fortunately – this morning while Jim had been shoveling out the Blair-induced wreckage of his stuff.  It wasn't right.

It wasn't right that Jim was just brushing the whole thing off, either, like it didn't matter.  Jim cared about practical stuff, his stuff.  He had rules about his stuff.  Now he had a bunch of dead stuff. 

Taking in a Sandburg was turning out to be a less than prudent move on Jim's part.

Okay.  He was going to have to relax about Jim's stuff.  Jim was still in a Having You Alive Is More Important Than My Santana Collection frame of mind.  It couldn't last, but Blair might as well try to enjoy it while it did.  And obsessing obsessively about Jim's dead stuff was probably not the best way to convince the man that he was having absolutely no problem keeping things together.

So no obsessing about Jim's dead stuff.  Blair could be dead stuff now himself, which, by most value scales – including his own – was infinitely more important than some trashed CDs and a defunct television or lamp or two.  Jim was right. 

I'd be a day dead by now if it weren't for Jim.  The thought was oddly comforting in the quiet dark room, because it had been for Jim.  Jim, upstairs, protecting the tribe.  Taking care.

Everybody should have a Jim.

"You'll love this place – okay, you'll probably think it's a dive, but give it a chance, man.  They have great Moroccan food; you could be in Marrakech –"  Blair stopped short.

New You Wig Shoppe.

"I don't want spicy weird food, Sandburg.  I told you that."

Jim was still heading down the sidewalk and Blair ripped his eyes away from the storefront across the street and followed, fast.

"Kefta, Jim." God.  The acrylic cheapness of the wigs in that window looked like someone had scalped a dozen early-model Barbies and their non-blonde friends, all of whom had led regrettably hard lives, and stuck the hair harvest under a bank of grow lights; and the god-awful results totally, completely, looked like the embarrassing piece-of-shit wig that had been – was supposed to have been – him.  The Blair Sandburg model. 

Chuckles the Clown meets Midge on a bad hair day.  It really sucked to be ridiculed by your own serial-psycho-killer-victimhood flashbacks.

Jim had stopped and turned, waiting for him.  Blair willed Jim's glance back down the street not to have noticed the New You.  Or not to have noticed it.  It wasn't anything to notice, anyway.

Jim's eyes were narrowed a little, but maybe that was the sun.  Or the kefta.  "Relax, Jim.  It's beef – or you can get lamb if you want, or chicken – and this place makes great kefta, they have this unusually subtle version, not spicy, man, you're really going to like it."

Both of them were walking toward the restaurant again, but at least Jim was walking more slowly now, staying close enough that their jacket sleeves kept brushing together.  Even facing this direction, though, Jim's eyes were still narrowed.  Okay, it wasn't the sun.

"I'd better like it, Chief, or it's Wonderburgers for lunch for a month and not a word from you about it."

Good, it was the kefta.  Not the – not that he'd done that or anything – not the almost wigging out. 

Wigging out.

Christ.  What planet was he living on?  Like he could hide the physiological signs of freaking out from Jim.  Like a sentinel couldn't tell if your heart stopped for a couple of minutes or your deodorant suddenly went belly-up.

Jim's arm brushed his again; Jim was saying something about some place Henri had talked him into eating at, months ago, and how he'd never trust Brown again in anything involving food; and Jim seemed perfectly calm.  Not like calm down calm.  Just calm.  Undisturbed.  If Jim had noticed any weirding out a minute ago, he didn't seem worried about it.

Okay.  That worked.  Blair would take unworried, although he wasn't going to abandon all hope of oblivious, yet. 

Anyway, Jim was going to like his kefta.  And they could walk back to the truck on Second after lunch, they didn't have to walk back on this street.  He needed to stop at Ludo's, anyway, for some red pens.  Ludo's on Second Street. 

Jim probably wouldn't mind.

Wig shops.  Okay, no problem, Blair could avoid wig shops.  Mannequins were a little tougher, he'd never paid attention before to how many fiberglass approximations of the human form were on public display in Cascade.

But really, this whole not weirding out thing, despite the unexpected frequency of artificially fabricated people, was actually going pretty well.  The New You notwithstanding.

Or it would be going pretty well, if not for the problem that wasn't a problem.  Man, this was irony at its least helpful.  Jim wasn't in a hurry.  Mr. Material wasn't bothered – it wasn't a problem for him.  Blair, live-out-of-a-backpack Blair, materially-unpossessed Sandburg, was dying here.

Not that he was about to clue Jim in on that.

Clouds had buried the sun while they were at lunch, and the grayness of the day and the lights inside the gas station were in perfect sync; Blair could see into the building, see the counter and the cash register and Jim, without any reflections getting in the way.

He was getting a better grip on the whole reflections thing, even the ones in car windows.  That was good.  That was really good, because car windows outnumbered mannequins three or four billion to one.  You could pretty much just not look at mannequins.  If you wanted to not look at car windows – okay, window reflections in general – you'd have to walk around blindfolded all the time.  Jim would probably notice that.

Blair watched through the non-reflecting window as Jim finished paying for his gas.  Rational, balanced, calm Jim. 

Who didn't need a head-case as a ride-along or a roommate. 

You can't hang out with cops if you can't keep it together.

He was so not telling Jim about The Problem.

Jim would be home any minute.  It didn't matter that Jim wasn't home yet.  Blair climbed the stairs to the loft with a reluctance which would be pretty embarrassing if he admitted it to anyone.  Just another flashback.  He hadn't seen this one coming, although he should have, this was the first time he was coming back to an empty loft alone, the first time since taking the stairs three at a time, trying to remember how to breathe, repeating that delusional mantra "relax it's okay," and being halfway convinced – delusionally – that the fiasco with Christine had tipped him over into unfounded paranoia as an avoidance behavior or something.

So, logically, locking the loft door behind himself now wasn't going to make him feel better, since it hadn't helped that night.

But he was really doing okay with this, if you didn't count the past five minutes.  Or The Problem; which would be staring Blair in the face, except that he was standing in the kitchen, focusing on the refrigerator.

Hey, it was an interesting refrigerator.  An anomalous choice in kitchen appliances – especially an appliance that was so intimately involved in food safety and storage – for a man like Jim.  Geez, the thing was so old it had to be manually defrosted. 

It didn't make sense.  Unless, of course, Jim had rushed out and bought the damn thing from some way second-hand store right after having been alluded to as a caveman, with the Machiavellian intention of luring the offending caveman-alluder into living in his loft so that he could put defrosting the refrigerator onto caveman-alluder-Blair's chore list.

…God, no –

Something – somebody – knocked at the door, again.

No.  God.

Breathe, man.  It's okay.  He's dead. 

Anyway, psychopaths don't knock politely at the door, right?  God, that was a stupid thought.  They were psychopaths, who the fuck knew what they would do?

Okay.  This is nuts.  This was not dealing.  Blair grabbed the nearest heavy object – a jar, from the kitchen counter – and took a step towards the door.

"Sandburg, it's me.  Get the door, will you, my hands are full."

Jim.  Thank God.  Blair put the jar down and worked on not passing out.  Maybe the old "Hair Length Is Diametrically Opposed To Ball Size" camp had a point.    But hey, if Jim had his hands full, maybe that meant –

"You okay there, Chief?"

– he had his hands full with takeout and a stack of file folders from the station.  Damn.  Blair grabbed the folders that were beginning to slip from Jim's overloaded grasp.

"Sure, Jim.  What's with the files?"

"We're getting a couple of related cases kicked up from Burglary, I wanted to get a heads-up before starting on them in the morning.  Figured I could do it here just as well as in the bullpen."  Jim was spreading out cartons of Hunan Shrimp and Moo Shu Beef on the table, and looking at Blair, who was still standing by the door, cradling the files in both arms and – he knew – gasping like a dying fish.  "Sesame noodles, Chief.  Patty said you like those.  Hey, you know you made quite an impression on her the last time you picked up our order?"  Now Jim had pulled the folders out of his arms and was steering Blair over to the table and pushing him down into a chair.

Facing the stupid living room, of course.

And okay, not weirding out wasn't going so well this evening.  And Jim knew it. 

Crap.

A night's sleep and the morning coffee hadn't changed the view any.  Blair turned away from the living room and watched Jim rummage in the refrigerator.  "Jim, you know I don't get paid for a couple more weeks, but we can still –"

"Will you relax about it, already?  I told you my insurance is covering it."  Okay, so Jim had eyes in the back of his head.  If he knew Blair was talking about The Problem, why didn't he understand what The Problem was?

"Of course, I'm thinking it may be wise to add a Sandburg rider to my policy.  You're a little hard on your accommodations, Chief."  Jim emerged from the fridge bearing OJ and a serious expression that his teasing eyes didn't match. 

Thank God.  Blair preferred to be the only person in the room who currently thought Jim had been somewhat rash in his choice of roommates.  "Geez, just your basic run-of-the-mill explosions and primate frenzies and psycho-stalker house-wreckers, Jim.  I wouldn't want you to get bored or anything.  Boredom is so uninteresting, man."

Jim set the orange juice glasses on the table and paused beside Blair to pat his cheek.  "I'm not worried."

Nope, Jim wasn't worried.  Not about The Problem. Jim didn't have a clue.  Blair switched from coffee to orange juice, when what he really wanted to do was whack Jim over the head with one of the remaining lamps that Blair carefully wasn't looking at, and drag him the hell off to the nearest mall and goddamn buy the new TV, and the new everything else to replace every single thing that was currently lying in dysfunctional pieces in the dumpster in the alley, even if they had to stop off at a dozen blood banks on the way for Blair to sell enough red stuff to raise the necessary funds. 

Jim obviously didn't have a fucking clue.  Which was a good thing, right? if Blair didn't want Jim to see him not handling this? but man, the empty cart where the TV used to live might as well have been some kind of black hole or something – well, okay, the loft was filled with black holes, places where things had been and weren't any more, and he had this stupid notion that if he looked into any of the black holes very long he was going to be trapped in an event horizon, but like the totally wrong event, not the kind of event you wanted to be trapped in, even for a moment –

Okay, that was Jim clearing his throat, as he put down plates of scrambled eggs.

"Seriously, man.  I'm sorry –"

"Stop right there.  Eat your breakfast."  Jim had a warning look on his face, a silent Apologize one more time and I'll fry your ass like bacon.  Blair sat down and picked up his fork.  Shit.  Jim wasn't going to let him get off a decent apology about any of this, which really sucked.  He couldn't ever get past "sorry" before Jim got pissed.  Like he still didn't mind Blair being such an idiot.

But Jim really looked like the only thing he minded was that Blair minded.  So either Jim really was okay that his place had been broken into and trashed, or he was putting up a hell of an acting job.  So, basically, it was just Blair who wasn't okay with it – but yeah, okay, he was pretending it was okay, too, in a way, or trying to, so maybe they were both pretending?  Or maybe they both weren't.  Maybe Jim wasn't pretending.

Just him?  Geez.  But hey – idiotically luring a madman to your friend's home, then totally panicking and being too idiotically panicked to do anything, like ambush said psycho with a handful of pepper, or throw a sheet over him and slow him down long enough to hit him over the head with a skillet, or hell, grab a jug of Clorox and toss it in his face – shit, he'd had enough goddamn time to think of something that might have helped.

Well, okay, the Clorox – if he'd done the Clorox thing, Jim probably wouldn't be quite so forgiving about the state of his loft, not if half a gallon of bleach had soaked into his hardwood floor.

"Hey, Rhonda.  Where is everybody?  Have you seen Jim?"  Blair smiled hopefully as Rhonda looked up from her computer.  Rhonda was cool.  Really nice.

Rhonda's face – which was also really nice – smoothed a little, the kind of professional smoothing that seldom augured well, and Blair rocked on his heels nervously.  The bullpen was emptier than usual.  And Jim wasn't at his desk.  Was he in with Simon?  And Simon was forcing the issue of dumping the hippie punk who'd fucked up, and he was gonna have to help Jim convince Simon not to –

"Blair, I'm sorry, but there's a situation at the downtown Cascade B & T –"

Blair didn't hear the rest of it.

Stupid. You're a totally stupid idiot.  Blair hoped he wasn't saying that out loud.  Even though there wasn't anybody else in the elevator there might be security cameras, maybe with voice pickups, and okay, that was paranoid, and Kincaid had already proven that the CPD security sucked, but maybe they'd begun to beef it up, and Jim would probably prefer not to have to explain his partner – um, associate – losing it on an empty elevator.

The smart thing, of course, would be to go back up to MCU right now and let Rhonda actually finish her sentence.  She hadn't said that Jim was at the bank, handling a "situation" – maybe Jim wasn't there at all, maybe he was out doing something else, or maybe he was somewhere else in the building, geez, maybe the guy was in the men's room, why the hell did Blair feel this totally childish and illogical need to make tracks over to Third and Clark and just make sure that Jim – if  Jim was there, and not in the break-room, or at the Courthouse, or anywhere else – was okay?

But when the elevator hit the ground floor Blair got off and headed towards the Clark Street exit.  Totally stupid.  He should call Jim's cell phone.  He should stop, now, at the front desk; he had his ID, they'd let him borrow a phone.  Or there were a couple of pay phones near the doors; he had change. 

He should just call Jim.

Like that had worked so well before.

And okay, he wasn't going to run or anything, because this was totally fucking stupid, like some kind of reversion to childhood or something, but walking fast – hey, that was aerobically sound, and if he walked fast enough he'd be at the bank branch before he could have driven there, not that he would have found a parking place anyway. 

God, he was a wuss.  Jim was okay.  Everything was fine.  Jim wasn't going to be at the bank.  And even if he was at the bank, it was totally okay.  This was Jim's job, and he was good at it, so there wasn't any reason for Blair to keep walking so fast, because he was getting out of breath and this was just totally stupid.

Jim was okay.

"Simon, is Jim here?"  Blair was still breathing a little quickly.  Getting close enough to Simon to ask about Jim had been a total bear; ID or not, it had taken all the Sandburg silver-tongue skills, which Blair had had a harder time deploying than usual since he kept looking everywhere and couldn't see any sign of Jim.

"What the hell are you doing here, Sandburg?"

Crap, Simon looked worried.  Pissed, too; but it was the worried that wasn't much helping Blair get an adequate oxygen intake stabilized.  Of course, Simon could be worried about hundreds of un-Jim-related things.  That would be good.  Well, it wouldn't be good, but it would be good, as far as Jim went.  And Blair.

"Is Jim here?"  Blair repeated.  He didn't mind the glare Simon was leveling at him; he only minded when Simon looked away, toward the bank across the street, with an even grimmer expression.

"He's in the bank.  One of the hostages."

Shit.  Shit.  Okay, Jim dealt with this kind of stuff all the time, he could take care of himself – hey, nobody was better at that – except if he had any problems, like a spike, or zoning, or anything, but he wouldn't, Jim would be careful.  It would be okay.

Shit.

"Do you know if he's okay?  How long has he been in there?  Tell me what's going on, Simon – you're not going to let the SWAT guys loose on the bank, are you –"

"Shut up, Sandburg.  You shouldn't be here."  Pissed was momentarily back at the forefront.  Blair didn't give a hoot, even though Simon probably truly had more to do than to answer his questions about Jim.  Simon held the pissed glare for another moment, then motioned impatiently off to the side to someone.  "Brown, fill Sandburg in on what we know then get him out of here.  I don't have time to deal with him."

Blair turned toward the big detective.  H was pretty easygoing, a good guy, and Blair didn't think he'd be as pissy as Simon about talking to him right now.  "Henri –"  Blair let himself be towed a few yards away but didn't relinquish his own hold on Brown's jacket sleeve.

"Easy, babe; as far as we know, Ellison's all right."  Henri patted Blair's hand and Blair loosened his grip.  Jim was probably okay.  At least possibly. 

Okay, good.  That was good.

Shit.  Jim could be –

No.  Fine.  Jim could be perfectly fine. 

They were supposed to be having lunch, goddammit.  Jim wasn't supposed to be anybody's hostage.  Jim wasn't supposed to be anybody's hostage somewhere Blair couldn't even help if he had a problem. 

This being a bystander thing more than sucked.

Henri was staring at him.  Great.  But Blair didn't really care what Henri thought.  At least his ranting hadn't made it out into aural space – for a change – although that may not have been a plus, because that meant Blair had undoubtedly just spent the last twenty seconds waving his hands around in silent fury, looking like he'd shipped his brain off to Manitoba yesterday and wasn't expecting it back any time soon. 

Not that it mattered.  H. could just get over it.

Stupid idiot.  Blair was talking about himself – under his breath – but he was just about ready to lump Simon under the same description.  He wasn't any too fond of Henri at the moment, either, or the jackasses tending the police barrier who were taking all too seriously the order to keep him on the wrong side of the action.  God, didn't they have better things to do than to keep a harmless and legitimately-credentialed police observer from observing?

If he had just thought about this before he found himself on the wrong side of the sawhorses, he could have convinced H to take him back to Simon.  Of course, he hadn't even realized Henri was steering him to the outer limits, he'd been so busy pulling details out of the detective he hadn't paid enough attention to the backward locational drift of the conversation, and now, fuck, he was out here and Simon was over there.  And Jim was – God, please – still here, even if there, and too far.

The note had better work.  And the patrol cop he'd handed it to better deliver it to Simon, like yesterday.

"This damn well better be important, Sandburg.  Make it fast."  Simon had sent Brown away after he'd had him escort Blair back to the command post, and now he'd pulled Blair aside and away from the increasingly tense ears of all the waiting Serve-and-Protectors.

"If you need Jim to know what's going on out here, like what SWAT's gonna do, um –" Blair swallowed, "if Jim's okay, he should be able to hear – have you been telling him what's happening?"

"Don't be stupid, kid.  I'm not putting Jim in a potentially more dangerous situation by attempting to call his cell phone."

"Simon."  Blair looked around cautiously.  "You don't need a phone.  He can hear this far, okay?  But I'm thinking he might have a hard time following what the plan is, with so many different voices talking at cross purposes, and the crowd back there, and everything.  It would be easier for him to focus in on a voice he knows really well, one that's speaking directly to him."

Okay, latching on to Simon's lapel probably isn't the best idea.  Blair forced himself to step back and put his hands into pockets, watching Simon's face.  The captain was more resistant about Jim's hyperactive senses than even Jim was. 

Maybe it was a cop thing.  If Blair had had any attention to spare at the moment, he would have hauled off into an – internal, considering the circumstances – diatribe about cop-types who were plenty happy about Sentinel results but were childishly unwilling to accept the process or anything that accepting the process might entail.  Christ.  In his admittedly small sample universe of people in the know – two – one hundred percent of the population would prefer to sweep the entire subject under the rug.

Well, except for a couple of nights ago. 

He's okay.  He's got to be okay.

"Look, Sandburg, I can hardly stand here and have a one-sided conversation with one of my men who's known to be a hostage inside a building across the street.  I don't even know that he would hear me, anyway."  Skeptical.  Pure Banks.

"I get that, Simon, but let me do it – just tell me what he needs to know, okay?  About what's going to happen?  I mean, nobody's going to pay any attention to me, I can just kind of sneak off to the side, and just sort of talk, and hey, Jim heard me the other night, right?  I was pretty far away, then.  Let me try, okay?"

Blair couldn't make himself sit down or even stand still, and H was beginning to look a little worn out.  From a distance.  Just watching.

This was so not going to improve his standing at the station.  As if that mattered. 

Henri wasn't close enough to hear what Blair was very quietly saying, over and over, apparently to himself; but he still had to be chalking the whole scene up to drugs or mental instability or to Blair having a terminal inability to deal, or something equally unflattering. 

H could make a case for quite a lot of that, actually. 

Not the drugs thing, unless you wanted to count some lousy aspirin Jim had pushed, for the leftover lousy bruises, although they couldn't be any worse than Jim's bruises, not that Jim would ever admit that or anything. 

But the other things – yeah, H could make a pretty good case.  It wasn't physically possible to stop pacing – even if he looked like a psych ward escapee, pacing and mumbling and running his hands through his schizo hair – while he talked to Jim; and he couldn't pace very far, he had to stay behind this particular tall SWAT truck, out of the line of fire, and a little away from the rest of the police action, and pretty much out of everybody's sight; and actually, while he was grateful that H was there to let him know about any developments right away – which Simon sure hadn't bothered to finesse much, but apparently Henri was chalking up to "keeping the kid informed so he doesn't completely crack up" – he was also pissed, because H was also there to keep Blair where he was. 

Hey, out of the way was good, but he didn't need a warden. 

So anyway, he was pacing back and forth in a short tight line and having a quiet conversation with somebody who wasn't there; and Henri had already brought him five cups of coffee which he couldn't drink, and a bottle of water which he'd had a little of; and most of the public crowd had gone home, were probably watching the stand-off on the news, relaxing on the couch with their feet up, petting the dog and having beer and pretzels; and it had been dark forever, the afternoon was ancient history, and god, how many hours – it felt like days – had they been there, waiting?

"Jim.  Man, I'm hoping they're letting you guys take a leak, at least.  I mean, that would really screw with your concentration after a while, if you really had to piss and they wouldn't let you go to the john, and you're trying to stay alert and be ready to do hero shit when your bladder's about to blow, right?  I really hope they're not doing that to you, buddy, although I guess there isn't some kind of Geneva Convention that bank robbers actually respect or anything."

Blair tucked his hair behind his ears again.  At least the wind was finally dying down.  Maybe it would make it easier for Jim to listen to him.

"Okay.  Tune me out anytime you need to, man.  I'm going to keep repeating what we know, and what's going on with the negotiations, and what Simon and the SWAT guys have planned, every few minutes, just in case you've been…out…or anything, or couldn't hear me, or weren't listening.  Simon's keeping me updated so I can give you the latest scoop, but I know you might be tuning me out because I'm being, like, the ever-popular Chinese water torture.  Just keep a little bit of attention out here with me for when I tell you there's something new for you to know, okay?"

It was so weird to not be able to drink the coffee Henri kept bringing.  There couldn't be anything wrong with it, everybody else was drinking it, but the smell of it, and the thought of it sloshing around in his stomach…no.  Blair wondered if he could pour it over his hands since he wasn't drinking it, warm his fingers up.  Probably bring H running with a straitjacket. 

Next segment.  "Be careful, okay?  This would so not be a good time to zone.  And I hate that if you're listening to me your hearing has to be fairly wide open, and something could just happen, something loud, I mean, out of nowhere, it's been quiet for so long, but maybe those guys in there with you aren't reading the right script, you know the one where they just fucking come out now with their hands behind their heads and just let everybody go, nobody gets hurt. Be careful, man."

Next.  "Okay, here's the story.  Nothing new since last time, so you can tune me out for a few, if you want, but Hoskins – the negotiator, Henri finally told me his name – is still saying…"

"Take him back to Headquarters and make sure he waits in my bullpen."

"Simon –"

"Sandburg, the point team reports that Ellison is all right.  We've got a major clean-up operation on our hands and I'm not having you underfoot right now.  If I thought I had a chance in hell of making it stick, I'd get Cordoba to take you home instead of the bullpen."

"But I need to see Jim, to make sure – what if –"

"Cordoba, sit on the kid if need be and do not, I repeat do not, let him talk his way past you.  I've got enough civilians on the scene to deal with as it is."

Funny, he still couldn't drink the coffee. Not that he particularly liked the coffee from the MCU break-room.  But he liked coffee.  Hell, he lived on coffee, sometimes.  Well, tea, too.  Except when he needed the kick.

Not like he needed the kick now.  Cordoba kept telling him to sit down, but that was just totally not happening.  Not till he saw Jim, anyway.

Which was, totally, stupid.  Right?

Simon wouldn't have said Jim was okay if Jim wasn't okay.  So it was stupid to pace around Jim's desk and just…okay, worry, or something.

Man, he should just leave.  Ditching Luis would be totally easy.  He should head back over to the bank.  Except what if Simon called after he left?  Or Jim.  What if they – this was ridiculous.  Jim was okay.  Blair could wait.  Waiting, here, under the circumstances, was the logical thing to do.

Although possibly not for much longer.

But it was all okay.  It was all going to be okay.  Jim wasn't hurt.  Jim wasn't dead.  Nobody was dead.  Everything was fine.

Everything was okay.

Maybe we can stop at Wal-Mart on the way home and pick up a TV. 

Right. 

Even if Blair could suggest that to Jim as a plausibly rational suggestion, in a plausibly rational manner, of which – there was really no point in deluding himself here – there was a fine fat chance in hell, it was almost midnight; and if Jim had to fill out reports and things after he got here it could be hours before they could leave the station, and the nearest 24-hour Wal-Mart was a thirty-minute drive heading away from the loft, and Jim was probably totally not going to be into doing that, even if he bought the whole rational plausibility thing. 

Not that Jim would buy the whole rational plausibility thing.

Okay, the Corvair was here.  Blair could go on his own.  After Jim got here, and he could see that Jim was okay and everything, Blair could just drive over to Wal-Mart and pick something out, they had an electronics department, and –

Yeah, right.  Pick something out that Jim would hate, Jim was probably one of those people who studied Consumers Reports and had actual opinions about what to buy aside from "Hey, does it work?  Cool!" and besides, the blood banks weren't open at this time of night, so where exactly was he going to get the cash for this TV-shopping spree?

And the elevator at the loft would probably be out again, so he'd have to schlep the box up two flights of stairs, and of course Jim hadn't had a portable or anything.  No 14-incher for Jim.  Big box to schlep.  At four a.m.  Two flights of stairs.

Although he would. 

If it weren't for having to explain the whole stupid thing to Jim. 

Sure, it was a problem, but it was a really stupid problem.  A You're Not Handling This, Sandburg problem.  If he showed up at the loft with a new Magnavox at four a.m. it might be a little hard to convince Jim that there wasn't a problem. 

That Blair was – or wasn't – handling.

Man, would they ever get here?  Was something wrong?  What if something was wrong?  Shit, if I call Simon he won't even talk to me, he'll just demote Luis for not handcuffing me to the coat rack or something. 

Blair ran his hands through his hair again, then shoved them in his pockets.  Jim's cell phone was out of service, which meant absolutely nothing except that the battery had run down or Jim had the phone turned off.  If something was wrong, Simon would call, right?

Luis was sitting there with his coffee, watching Blair pace.  Not one minute of this fuckingly depressing day was going to go over well when it got back to Jim.  My associate, the wind-up fruitcake.  The unglued observer.  The can't-cut-it ride-along.  Fuck.

Okay, he hadn't actually freaked.  But he sure as hell hadn't won any points with Simon or Henri or Luis, which meant he was making things harder for Jim.  Way to repay the man for saving your life, Sandburg.

Maybe he would feel better, marginally, if he hadn't gone to the restroom.

At least he hadn't had any coffee, which had worked out well, since the coffee wouldn't still be hanging around in his stomach after that one quick look at the mirror in the men's room. 

Stupid.  Flashback, you-can-deal-better-than-this-Sandburg stupid. 

So what if he looked a little wired – okay, a little nuts – and his hair looked – well, not exactly like Chuckles' hair, but more like it belonged to a demented person with a fetish for teasing – which, of course, shit, wasn't that bad a description, even if it seriously underplayed the whole sick time-to-die, dude aspect – except taunting was more accurate than teasing, but you couldn't taunt hair, right?  Unless that fucking Midge-on-steroids wig was – okay, of course you could taunt hair.  No question.  Absolutely.

At least this time there wasn't any writing on the mirror.

…Not that any of this actually mattered. 

If Simon would just call.  Or Jim. 

If Jim would just walk through the door.

It would be okay.

Oh, man, the phone – Jim's phone – maybe it was –

// "Hey, Chief.  I've been trying to call you, but I thought you were at the loft; I didn't know you were still downtown.  Sorry –" //

"Jim – shit, are you okay?"

// "– you're still at the station.  Simon was going to have somebody send you home.  I guess he forgot, things were a little hectic for a while." //

"Jim, are you –"

// "I'm fine, Sandburg.  Just tired." //

"Okay.  Okay, that's good."  Blair took in a deep breath, which felt odd, like maybe he hadn't been remembering to do that for a while.  "I mean, not good that you're tired or anything, but good that you're okay.  You're not just saying that, right?  Where are you, anyway?  Simon said everybody was coming back here but this place is like post-plague or something, ghost-town city.  Hey, except for Luis, and I guess –" 

There was a soft huff of something that was possibly laughter.  // "Stop talking a minute, will you, Junior?  I'm at the loft.  You want me to come get you?  Or let me talk to Cordoba, I'll get him to run you home." //

"Hey, no, I've got my car here, I'm fine.  I'll be home in a few, soon as you talk to – hey Luis, come here for a sec? – to Luis and tell him I can actually, like, leave, like a free person with civil rights, and everything."

"I thought you said you weren't hurt, man."  Blair looked – somewhat accusingly, he had to admit – at the ugly bruise on Jim's forehead.

"I said I'm fine; I am fine.  Just got a little extra nap this afternoon when the perps found out I was a cop."  Jim had that look on his face that Blair was getting a little too familiar with, that air of faint amusement combined with bland denial; macho, but the whole thing low key enough to just slide right under any radar going.  Blair sighed.

"Did it screw anything up with your senses?  And you got checked out for concussion, right?  Do we do the thing where you have to stay awake, or I should wake you up every so often, or –

"– what?"  Blair looked down at his hands, which were now holding a mug of tea.  Chamomile, by the way it smelled.  With lemon?

"Drink it.  Your voice sounds like crap."

Yeah, lemon.  And honey.  " 's nice, man.  Thanks."  It tasted a lot better than the coffee he hadn't been able to drink had smelled.  And it also tasted like it was a lot more likely to hang around all the way through the normal digestive processes.  "Your head?"

"Stop worrying, Chief.  Simon made me get checked out; no concussion.  Not even a headache anymore.  And it's been long enough now we don't have to do the head-injury drill, we can both just get some sleep."

"Yeah, okay."  The tea was great.  Jim must have had the water boiling and put the chamomile in to steep when he heard the Corvair drive up.  Jim making me tea.  Surreal.  "Tell me what happened first."

"Tomorrow.  I'm beat, and you look like you're asleep on your feet.  Go to bed."

Not a bad plan, on the whole.  Jim was okay.  Everything else could wait, except his tea.  And Blair could finish the tea on the way to his room, unless he fell asleep before he got there. But that would be okay, since Jim was okay.  Everything was fine.

Even the black holes in the living room were fine.  Well, that they were still there wasn't so good.  But being falling-down tired pretty much took the edge off the whole annoying phenomenon. 

Jim squeezed Blair's shoulder gently for a moment and Blair pulled his eyes away from the black holes that he wasn't really looking at.  "You did good today, Blair." 

Man, where had all the adrenaline gone?  And what had Jim said?  Something was good?   Blair found himself outside his room, not entirely sure whether Jim had pushed him there or not.  But there was Jim, standing by the front door, with one eyebrow up, staring at him oddly. 

"What?" 

Jim didn't answer right away; he was looking at Blair's head, well, sort of all around his head, apparently finally taking in the full effect of the Sandburg Chuckle-head coiffure.

"Shut up, Jim."

Great.  The Ellison Sardonic Smile special.  Blair went into his room and pulled the curtain shut.

"Okay, I have a solution."  Blair put the omelet down in front of Jim and moved over towards his own breakfast.

"Do I want to know what the problem is?"

The bruise that ran up into Jim's hairline looked much more colorful this morning and Blair wondered exactly how long Jim's "nap" had been yesterday.  Of course Jim was okay, it wasn't like he'd spent any time recently wrestling with psychopaths or falling through seven or eight collapsing floors in a couple of falling-down death-trap warehouses or anything, anyway.  Macho was, like, such a crap attitude.

"Blair?"

"Oh – um, one question first.  Why were you in that bank yesterday?"  Of course, maybe macho wasn't all that far removed from keeping it together, so maybe he couldn't exactly get all more-upfront-than-thou with Jim, unless he was willing to discuss wigs and car-window reflections and clothing-store displays and black holes and… Yeah, okay.  Macho had its place. 

"Sandburg, are you with me here?"

"Oh – yeah, man.  What'd you say?"

A sigh.  "I said I wanted to find out if one of my checks had cleared yet.  I also said, Don't you think you ought to have more than that green crap –"

"Hey, online, man.  The solution.  Do everything you can online – banks are getting into it, tons of businesses – and you are gonna majorly cut down the risk factors.  Yeah, I know, walking down the street is like a risk factor for you, but seriously, the fewer banks you go into – the fewer buildings that have any money in them, for any reason – the less likely you are to – Hey, your head okay?"

Jim had his hand over his eyes and was shaking his head slowly.

"Jim, if your head still hurts I've got some tea –"

"Yo, Hairboy, how's it hanging?"

"Hey, H."  Okay, just because Jim wasn't at his desk, it didn't mean he was out playing hostage again.  "Do you know where Jim is?  He wanted me to meet him for lunch.  Crap –" Blair looked at the clock hanging behind Rhonda's desk. "– I'm late." 

"I don't think it's a problem; Ellison's still in with the Captain."

Blair slung his backpack onto the floor beneath Jim's desk with a stupidly relieved sigh, and a smile for Brown, and headed toward Simon's office.

"Hey, Sandburg –"  Blair turned.  H sounded tentative.  Weird. "Yesterday was kind of rough, you doing okay?"

Oh.  Okay.  Checking on the crazy man.  But Henri didn't seem to look like he thought Blair was mentally deficient so much as he looked like he thought Blair had done something right or something.  Definitely weird.

"Sure, man, I'm fine."  Blair flashed Brown a puzzled grin and went on toward Simon's office.

"Sandburg –"

"I know, Simon, I didn't knock, mea culpa, man."  Blair dropped into the chair next to Jim without waiting for an invitation.  Simon didn't seem mollified by Blair's smile, no surprise there, but that was okay.  Jim was here, Jim wasn't off in a bank somewhere taking a nap with gun-toting desperadoes, with Blair not even knowing if he was still goddamn alive.  Everything was cool.

Well, everything was cool as long as Simon hadn't been telling Jim he was pulling Blair's pass.  Shit.  Surely he wouldn't get the axe just for pacing?  Even if – at times – it had been a little in-your-face pacing?  Visibly-crazy-person pacing?  But he hadn't really talked to Jim about yesterday yet – shit.

Simon was rubbing the bridge of his nose under his glasses.  He looked annoyed and tired. 

Great.

Jim looked…amused.

"Hey, Chief.  We're just wrapping up here."  Blair couldn't help smiling in return, although he had no idea why Jim seemed so pleased; the pleased look vanished, anyway, as Jim turned back to the captain.  "Sir, so next time…?"

Blair glanced at Simon to find a pair of intently speculative brown eyes examining him.  He opened his mouth and then shut it, trying to read Simon's expression.  Resignation?  Not exactly, and it wasn't approval.  But then, it wasn't disapproval, either.  At least not as blatant a disapproval as Simon usually chose to display. 

Okay, this was interesting.

"Are you attempting to denigrate the, uh, hearing ability of yours that we've been discussing, Detective?  Or merely my memory?"   Simon was back to appearing irritated as he glared at Jim.  "I suggest the two of you remove yourselves from my office."

Jim looked amused again.  Around the eyes, anyway.  "Ready for lunch, Chief?"

"Um, yeah, Jim."  Blair had the feeling he had missed something important.  Maybe he should agree to a Wonderburger lunch after all.  Jim wasn't above an occasional bribe.

Okay, so Jim sometimes was above an occasional bribe.  He didn't seem to want to share the details of his chat with Simon, anyway.

It was frustrating.  "Jim, you don't like this place, remember?"

"Sure I do, Chief.  Couldn't wait to come back."  Not only was Jim, unbelievably, not falling for the Wonderburger tactic; he was upping the ante by picking a totally vegetarian place for lunch?  This was bad.  Really not good. 

And not going to happen, either.

"Oh, like hell, Ellison.  We're not having lunch here just so you can grouse about rabbits and sprouts and food that is actually healthy, even though it would be good for your aging body – stop that, I've got this system worked out, for every ten times you call me "Kid" or every five "Juniors" I get to ride your ass about the fact that you couldn't call me Kid or Junior unless you were significantly further along in – hey, you have no sense of humor at all, Jim.  Come on, man, there's this great place two blocks south, you can have actual meat and I can have real food – wait, you're going in the wrong direction –"

"I'm heading south, Nanook.  You, on the other hand, are heading north."

"Okay, north, all right?  Sheesh.  Two blocks north.  God, I wish you people who have internal Global Positioning Systems wouldn't be so fucking smug about it.  Hey, you know, we ought to test that, see if you can sense magnetic fields, I know it's probably – Jim, wait up!"

"So Simon actually said he was sorry about shuffling me off to the station like a perp – with a keeper, man – and forgetting me?  I don't believe it."

"Not in those words, no.  But he knows he shouldn't have done it.  You did a good job yesterday, Chief.  And he knows that, too.  He'll just never admit it to you.  And you'd better not let him know that I told you about this."

Shit.  Jim seemed to be saying "you did good" a lot lately.  Not that Blair minded.  Jesus.  It was just… surprising.  Sentinel Jim wasn't all that confident of Blair's ability as a scientist; it was pretty unreal if Cop Jim had any confidence in him as a… whatever he actually was. 

Associate.

Jim was working his way through his burger with apparent satisfaction.  Blair refrained, with difficulty, from pointing out how much healthier Susunn's version was than Jim's usual grease-feast.  After all, the guy deserved a little temporary food-choice peace if he was going to hand out unexpected compliments like this.

Time for answers.  "Hey, you haven't told me everything yet about yesterday.  What happened, man?  And the unplanned nap, what happened with that?  How'd they find out you're a cop? – How long were you out, anyway?   Did your senses behave normally while you were waking up after they knocked you out?  This is important, Jim, I need details.  Oh, man – touch – did that fuck with the headache?  And I know you said the talking thing was good, right, but I need to know –"

"Chief!  See that?"

"My pita?  Um, yes?" 

"Eat it."

"Huh?  I am.   Or I was going to.  Who made you my Jewish mother?  Not that I'm trying to perpetuate a stereotype or anything here – okay, I guess I am, which is so not PC – or  valid – but anyway, I suppose technically my mother is Jewish, although not in a religious or even cultural sense, which means that she isn't really, in most people's eyes, but my point is – you'd better be following this, man – that even my own actual mother, who is, at least, Jewish in a genealogical sense, wouldn't be sitting here pointing her finger at my lunch kvetching at me to eat."

Jim put the meager remnants of his burger down.  "Sandburg, I don't kvetch.  My point is, I've heard plenty about what your day was like yesterday, and all you had for breakfast was that repulsive green crap, and I think you can use some lunch.  So eat."

Right.  Blair narrowed his eyes, watching Jim, who was glaring at the yet-to-be-eaten pita.  Getting Jim to give up details about anything to do with his senses was usually a crap-shoot…  "Okay, so while I'm eating, I'm assuming you're actually gonna be answering the questions I've already asked."  Bribery was one of the most effective techniques.  Maybe Blair hadn't been exploiting it to the max.

"Hey, I think I freaked Henri out yesterday, I kind of expected him to be avoiding me today or something."  They'd finally finished lunch, at least to Blair's satisfaction, and apparently to Jim's, and were heading north – south? – back to the truck.

Jim laughed.  "What you did, Sandburg, is spoil him for his next partner."

"Huh?"

"Chief, as far as H knew, there wasn't anything you could do to help, but you stuck it out anyway.  He told me he got blisters on his feet just from watching you pace."

"Great.  He thinks I'm a freak."

"Nah, if you ever go for a badge, Brown says he'll be first in line to snag you as a partner.  Loyalty's a big thing for cops."

Loyalty.  Hey, that was pretty cool of Henri to say that.

"Me a cop?  Yeah, in H's dreams, man.  I don't do regimentation well."  Of course, if he ever went out of his mind and did go for a badge, H wasn't the partner Blair would want.  Not that Henri wasn't a good guy and a good cop.

"Sandburg, you don't do regimentation at all."

Jim didn't work with a partner, though.  So it didn't matter, not wanting to be a cop.

"A vile canard, Jim.  I follow your anal rules, don't I?"

Blair was quite pleased when the roar from a passing truck with a shitty muffler swallowed Jim's response to that.

Man, he'd been sitting out here in the sun for twenty minutes and he still couldn't get warm at all.  Not the sun's fault; or the courtyard's, which was doing a good job of blocking the afternoon breeze.  His own fault.

Considering that Headquarters was only a block away, this was a surprisingly peaceful place.  It evidently had lousy feng shui, however.  Nobody ever seemed to come here and sit on the bench tucked between the two over-trimmed evergreen shrubs.  Blair had never even seen anybody sitting here having lunch, not even on nice days.  Totally strange.

He really shouldn't be sitting here himself.  No way could it be auspicious, feng-shui-wise; especially since Jim's meeting with the A.D.A. would probably be over soon, and if Blair didn't go back now he would lose his chance to try to make sure Henri didn't tell Jim.

What if Henri told Jim anyway?  That would so not be a high point in the not weirding out campaign.  Man, if the file had just been at Jim's desk, Blair wouldn't have had to ask Henri in the first place.  Or if Blair hadn't temporarily lost his mind – or had at least had a little self-control with whatever pitiful excuse for a mind he'd actually had at the time – he wouldn't have needed to look at the photos.  At least not out of the blue like that, not gotta-do-it-now like that.

Of course, looking at the photos was better than going to the morgue would have been.

Christ.

"Blair."  Crap.  Somehow it wasn't even startling that Jim was just here, appearing out of nowhere and sitting down on the bench beside him.  Sounding concerned.  Naturally.  Shit.  Blair glanced up into pale blue eyes that looked concerned.  This is so not helpful.  Thanks for ratting me out, H.

"Hey.  Guess H told you, huh?"  His knees, even if the right one was twitching, were a safer place to look than Jim's eyes.  He could still see Jim's nod, anyway.  Peripheral vision; useful, because it was not going to help to look at Jim, if Jim was going to be so…concerned.

"Loose end in my head, man.  That's all."  Blair waited a moment, but Jim didn't offer an insult.  Crap. 

Well, he could explain this.  Maybe it would even sound reasonable.  "It was…Okay, see, um, the last really clear picture I've had in my head was the way his face looked right before you got there, you know?  His face was inches away from my face, man.  It was all I could see.  And he'd just… he'd just gotten what he wanted, the drug and everything, and the way he looked… I guess I needed to replace that picture with something else, something more positive.  Guess that sounds sick, huh?  Positive."  Blair snorted in disgust.  "God.  Looking at a photo of a corpse is not supposed to be a positive experience."

"It's human and it's understandable.  Trust me, you haven't turned into a ghoul."  Jim sighed and put his arm across the back of the bench, his hand coming up to rest against the side of Blair's neck.  "There aren't any rules about handling this, Chief.  It's okay.  Whatever you need."

This was not good.  I am not going to lose it.  Not now. 

But this was Jim, calm and steady, and maybe… maybe it wouldn't hurt to just…

He didn't have to tell Jim why. 

"Um – twenty-six inch picture-in-picture?"  And a VCR.  A lamp, like the one that got broken.  Picture frames, for both of the –  He had the list in his backpack.  What I need.  Blair looked up to smile at Jim, but he had the feeling it wasn't one of his more successful smiles.

"Picture-in-picture, huh?"  Okay, Jim's smile seemed a little off, too.  Probably still bemused by his wussy associate's newly revealed jones for looking at Polaroids of cadavers.

"Yeah, well, build on the foundations of adversity, man.  It's just…"  Blair swallowed hard.  He wasn't going to talk about this.  It was stupid enough, talking about the TV, even if he hadn't actually said anything, just the surface thing, just "Hey, we need a TV," which was no big deal, and they did, anyway, they were missing Jags' games, but he hadn't said it right, not no-big-deal enough.  Jim had been a total rock, and he didn't need this… this… fucking irrational neediness.

Blair clenched his fists against his thighs and God, there went the fucking Sandburg mouth again, man, his mouth never listened to him, shit –  "…He can't have it, okay?  Any of it.  He can't have your TV or your lamp or your end table or my life or who I am.  He can't have who I am."  Blair glared at Jim.  It wasn't goddamn fair to feel something so intensely and not even know if it was anger or anguish or something else entirely.  "He can't have anything, man."

"He doesn't.  You didn't let him."  Calm… Jim was so calm.  His hand was still cradling the side of Blair's neck, the thumb stroking gently up and down.  How could Jim be so –

"Jim, I couldn't even –"

"You didn't let him have anything.  Listen to me."  Jim's voice was utterly sure and his hand was warm and sure against Blair's neck.  "Yeah, I took him out, but if I hadn't," Jim squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, "even if I hadn't, you'd already screwed up his mind games.  You took away the…satisfaction.  I heard it.  He wasn't going to be able to make it work inside his head like he'd made it work with the others.  You didn't let him have you."

That wasn't – there wasn't any way to know that, of course.  Jim was just being kind.  Probably as soon as Blair had lost control of his bodily functions thanks to a little fun drowning – Christ, and certain aspects of that would have played right into little Davy's seminal memories – Mr. Personalities would have been just fine, happy as a clam in his New You wig and hip-but-nerdy new Blair life  And anyway –

"I'm right about this."  Jim still had that absolute certainty in his voice.  Like he really believed this.  "C'mon, Chief, let's get out of here."  Jim tapped Blair's cheek lightly and stood, pulling Blair to his feet.  "Hey, you know what I'm in the mood for?"

"Uh…" Blair uncurled his hands, consciously trying to relax.  Jim believed what he'd said, anyway.  Jim was a rock.  "Um, Wonderburger, Jim.  The truck show at the convention center.  A tall redhead with a cop fetish, the house draft at Kelly's, polishing the shower curtain rings, vacuuming the hall outside the loft – hey, man, I know you do that –"

"Shopping, Sandburg.  You with me?"

Every Psycho-Killer-Victim's Best Friend.

"Totally, man…picture-in-picture, right?"

Jim's hand came up to rest again on Blair's shoulder.  "Yep.  Building on adversity, Chief."

Maybe it wasn't such a big problem.  Okay, a problem, but not as much of as problem as he'd thought it was. 

Not according to Jim, anyway.

Jim.  Walking calmly beside him and talking about picture-quality ratings.  Taking care.

Yeah.  Ellison 4eva.

There was a place near the campus that had an excellent rep.  Even if Jim happened to notice the smell of the ink afterwards, it'd be too late, right?  A done deal. 

Not that it could say "Ellison 4eva" – Jesus, Jim would go intercontinental, totally ICBM.  With reason.  For a lot of highly valid reasons.  But something really discreet – pure, personal symbolism that nobody else would have a clue about.  And small.  Hidden.  That would work.  No reason for Jim to know what it meant, if he ever saw it.

And hey, anthropologically speaking, it was a time-honored tradition.  A sign of respect.  So if Jim did notice, and he'd actually meant – even in a metaphorical sense – what he'd said about kicking Blair's ass down to the PD lobby, he wouldn't have a leg to stand on.  Blessed Protector or not.

Jim.

Loyalty.   

Yeah.  It was a big thing.