Honesty was good.  Most of the time, anyway.  Policy-wise, it was infamously good.  So, to be honest – and thereby good – it wasn't the coffee he was so happy with this morning, although it was great coffee.  Or the sunlight, warm though it was, pouring in through the balcony windows and skylights.  Blair smiled as he sat at the kitchen table, waiting for Jim and sipping his second cup from a really nice blend of beans.  Being here – yeah, he was really savoring that.

Which was fine, honesty and all, as long as he kept it in perspective.  And for as long as he could convince Jim that Jim didn't mind having him around.

Blair swallowed more coffee.  Hey, maybe Jim liked having him here.  If you factored Larry out of the equation, it hadn't been too bad, right?  They joked around a lot, Blair cooked a lot, it was working out great for a short-term kind of home-sharing thing.  They could just let it ride for a while, right?  Blair certainly intended to.  It could work.

He looked up at Jim with – he hoped – a winning smile, as the other man pulled out a chair at the table and sat down in front of his plateful of eggs and bacon.  Jim had the morning paper with him and he laid it on the table, a little closer to Blair's plate than to his own.  Blair's stomach sank; it was folded so that the classifieds were visible.  The For Rent section of the classifieds.

"How's the apartment search going, Chief?"  Jim sounded friendly, but Blair had the impression he wouldn't be satisfied with the wrong answer.

Okay, this is awkward.  Considering that no apartment search has even been actually, like, seriously considered.  Up till two seconds ago.  Blair grabbed a piece of toast and started chewing.

Time to start working on the convincing-Jim-to-let-him-stay thing.  He could do it.  Cajoling housing from the unwilling was a tradition in the Sandburg family.  Maybe he wasn't as good as it as Naomi – and he was not going there – but talking people into things they didn't want to do was a specialty of his.

Still….  Crap.  He'd already talked Jim into more than Jim wanted to be talked into.  Jim had paid his dues, and then some, considering Larry's unfortunate lapses.  Which, truthfully, were more Blair's lapses than Larry's; Blair being, in theory, the higher primate.  If Jim really wanted Blair to go….

Crap.  Blair didn't want to leave.  Everything else aside,  it was just so damn perfect, living with his research subject.  You sure as hell couldn't get much more convenient for observation purposes, and actually living with Jim – man, the insight from having a front-row seat for a Sentinel's home life was invaluable.

A patient silence seemed to surround the sound of Blair's toast-chewing and he looked up to see Jim's raised eyebrow. 

Waiting.

Damn.

"Um, I've got leads on a couple of places," Blair mumbled around his toast.  Well, not exactly.  But that wasn't what Jim wanted to hear, obviously.  And yeah, as far as Blair knew, Phil was still looking for a roommate.  Not that he'd checked with Phil or anything, this week.  This week, which was, like, up.  Crap.

"Should be easier now that the chimp's back in the zoo."  Jim's comment was mild enough, but he still had an eyebrow raised.  Blair wasn't sure if that was because Jim had detected a certain lack of enthusiasm in his response, or because thoughts of Larry still tended to make Jim a little nuts. 

"Barbary ape, primate lab, Jim.  Not chimp, not zoo.  Look, I swear I'm gonna replace the sheets and your pillows, I just haven't had a chance to get to a mall yet, man."

The faintly skeptical expression on Jim's face made Blair a shade nervous.  What? – Jim knew he hadn't really been looking for a place?  Figured he'd bail on making good for Larry's destructo sprees?  Figured he'd just kind of leech himself into Jim's loft and life, like some kind of hopeless…leech?

Ouch.

Ouch, ouch, ouch.

Well, he'd intended to pay for Larry's felonies, anyway.  One out of three. 

Ouch.

Blair started on a second piece of – Jim's bought-and-paid-for – toast.  At least Blair had bought the eggs.  And money, even when he was being honest with himself, wasn't the reason he hadn't started looking for a place.  Which didn't mean that his current financial situation didn't suck.  Several unpleasant karmic points were obviously being made, unpleasantly.  For the sake of expediency – putting spiritual enlightenment on hold temporarily – Blair was willing to boil them down to: Don't live next to a drug lab.  There was probably a corollary to that, something like: Especially if you're a chronically  underpaid TA who can't afford to replace anything.

Blair sighed around his toast.  It wasn't going to help that his usual emergency gigs were out, since he couldn't take on any part-time jobs while he needed to be available to work with Jim.  This was not going to be easy.  Especially because Phil – if he ended up having to move in with Phil – had a great place.  Almost as nice as the loft.  Splitting Phil's rent would be a bitch.

"Good." 

Blair chewed more toast defensively.  What did Jim mean, "Good" ?

"I like blue sheets, Darwin.  And don't forget Larry's inroads on the rest of my household supplies."

Ah.  Okay, he owed it to Jim.  What the hell – it was only money.  Since he didn't have it in the first place, he couldn't miss it, right?  Blair swallowed his overly-chewed toast.  "Not forgetting, man.  I made a list, I'll take care of it.  No problem."

Jim finally seemed to loosen up after that, and Blair relaxed a little.  He hadn't really intended to be a moocher or anything – well, okay he had, in a way, in a time and space kind of way, not an actual money way, but only because it seemed like such a good plan.  Convenient.  Affordable.  Handy.  Resource-focused.  All that.

Okay, and kind of cool.  Jim was a cool guy.

A cool guy who had a decent income and wasn't exactly in the Sure, dude, bring on the roomies behavioral bracket, anyway.  Who wanted his home and his privacy back.

Crap.  He had to call Phil.

Blair cringed as he wrote out the check to Phil.  Man, he should have looked harder, sooner; instead of hoping Jim would be so beguiled by having his own personal Sentinel expert in residence that he would want said expert to remain in residence indefinitely.

That had worked out so well.

Well, he was out of Jim's space.  Moving into Phil's had been the fast fix; but now he could look around, find somebody else besides Phil who needed a roommate – somebody who needed a third roommate, or a fourth.  Or who rented a cheaper place to begin with.

He was out of Jim's space.  And no question about it, Jim was relieved.  Jim had even helped him move his boxes of salvaged stuff.  And when he dumped the final box onto the floor in Blair's new bedroom he'd looked around with what was, clearly, satisfaction.  And relief.

Yeah, well, more than one person had had that same reaction over the years.  It was no big deal.  Even this time, when it was Jim.

"Geezus, Sandburg."  Jim had a disgusted expression on his face as Blair slammed the truck door shut and buckled his seat belt.

"What?  I said I was sorry about being late, man."

"If you have to roll around in the sack with somebody who smokes cheap cigarettes, can you at least try to keep the smell out of my truck?  It's bad enough that Simon is a walking cigar, but at least he goes for quality tobacco.  You just smell like crap."

"Shit.  You can smell that?  Okay, of course you can, what am I thinking?  Hey, I didn't know about Phil's girlfriend – Phil's, man, not mine – she was in the Cyclades studying Greek civilization for  three months, and she just got back like, yesterday, and she's a compulsive smoker, which I didn't know, like I said, and she actually kind of almost lives there with Phil which I also didn't know, because Phil didn't mention it, not that he had any reason to, I guess, except second-hand smoke and all, you'd think he would have – I tried to stay out of the living room and kitchen for my own sake, man, it was like dense in there, but shit, I can't believe I didn't even think about it bothering your senses, but it's gotta be in my clothes, and man, is it in my hair?  – even after I washed it this morning? – God, is this going to be a problem? – Annette is like so not into Nicorette or the patch or hypnosis or anything –"

Jim was shaking his head.  "Just roll your window down.  And stay downwind when we get out of the truck."  It was clear to Blair that Jim hadn't been shaking his head as in no-this-isn't-a-problem, but shaking his head as in man-you-get-on-my-nerves-and-hell-yes-this-is-gonna-be-a-problem.

Well, I really couldn't afford to room with Phil, anyway.  The air from the open window was whipping his hair into his eyes and Blair pulled it back into a ponytail, sighing.  He wanted to move.  He just hoped he could find another place, fast.  And that Phil would give him a refund for nearly a month's worth of unused rent.

Jim was already parked in front of the apartment building, leaning against the side of his truck, when Blair pulled up.  That wasn't actually a surprise, considering how Jim drove.  Sheesh, Jim had probably been sitting there for twenty minutes, even though they'd both left Phil's at the same time.  Blair just hoped Jim hadn't chased a perp or two on the way and scattered his boxes all over the back of the F-150.  Not that he had that much breakable stuff left.  Explosions and fires tended to weed out anything flimsy.  Possibly in more ways than one. 

Okay, cheap philosophy wasn't going to help here.  Sure, he didn't have much breakable stuff left, and he didn't even have much unbreakable stuff left.  It was still about to seem like a lot of stuff, breakable or otherwise.  Blair got out of the Corvair and joined Jim, hoping he was pulling off a believably calm and cheerful expression.  Jim probably wasn't going to take this well.  "Hope you had your Wheaties this morning, man.  Did I mention it's the fifth floor?" 

Jim gave Blair a hard look.  Then he sighed, and Blair began to feel even worse about concealing the fifth-floor part of the helping-Blair-move volunteer opportunity.

"Look, you don't have to do this."

Well, that wasn't exactly what Blair was expecting Jim to say.  And Jim sounded uncomfortable, more than he did annoyed.  Blair looked at him in surprise.  Jim wasn't pissed about being ambushed with a way upstairs apartment to carry a bunch of cigarette-smoke-infused boxes to?  Jim was…what – saying he hadn't had to move out of Phil's in the first place?  Huh?

Okay – in addition to the fact that it was a little late to offer that opinion now that Blair had actually moved out of Phil's – this was weird; was Jim some kind of closet guilt junkie?  Nah.  No way.  That hardly seemed like vintage Ellison.  Not that Blair could actually say he knew vintage Ellison yet, but Jim was together, and why would he feel guilty about this in the first place?  Not something like this.  Blair had to be imagining that inflection of guilt. 

"Hey, rooming with Raj and Blu is more in line with my budget.  It's not just you and the smoke thing, okay?  I didn't much like the smoke thing, myself.  And you're helping me move, up five flights of stairs."  Blair grinned.  "That alone would make up for it."

Jim seemed to shake himself, and gave a sardonic smile.  "Five flights.  Concealing evidence, Junior.  You'd better hope you're concealing a large Antonio's pepperoni-and-double-cheese and a pitcher of draft after all those stairs."

"Sure thing, Jim.  Hey, triple cheese if you want."  Blair hoped his flinch was invisible.  Hell, pizza and beer was the least he could do in exchange for Jim helping him move.  It wasn't Jim's fault that Blair had kind of been hoping to hit Domino's or Godfather's.  Antonio's didn't put pizza coupons in the Sunday paper.

"How's the new place, Chief?"

"Huh?"  Blair was busy trying to wedge his extra books against the backpack next to his feet.  It would have been safer to leave them anywhere else, but with the Corvair acting up he didn't have much choice but to expose them to Jim's driving.  Of course, it wasn't so much that he was worried about the books; he was worried about the books' potential to become missiles.  The odds of the F-150 not going insanely airborne during a routine ride around Cascade weren't encouraging.

The silence from Jim's half of the cab had that peculiar quality that meant Blair had forgotten to finish answering something – what had…  Oh.  "The apartment's fine."  Raj and Blu, on the other hand, seriously need help.

Jim was looking at him with narrowed eyes, like he was picking up leftover vibes from last night's fight.  Blair was not going there.  Jim already thought he was more than halfway incompetent; he was not going to admit two days into his second housing situation of the week that he was batting 0-for-2.  "What's on the agenda for today, man?  I'm hoping we can work on fine-tuning your sight a little, if you have time; I've got some ideas I think will help."

It was a relief when Jim answered the words, not his thoughts.  Blair succeeded in losing himself in the conversation, pushing aside the nagging worry that he just might have to look up L.L.  Even if Lloyd currently had a roommate, history foretold that he wouldn't have one for long.  The truly desperate could almost always find a haven at the Goom's.  Although haven wasn't exactly the right word.  Or exactly even close to being the right word.

Shit.  Blair kept his head dropped into his hands.  Okay, just his right hand.  The left side of his face really wasn't in the mood to be propped up by a hand.  This was one of those moments in life that were like waiting for the dentist to come – wanting him to be indefinitely delayed yet wanting it just be over with. 

He had to wait for Jim.  It wasn't like he could bail out on the man until the bruise went completely away, that would be days, and Jim needed him.

And even if he could bail on Jim, which he couldn't, Jim would probably hear about it anyway.  Blair cautiously peered out at the bullpen through his fingers.  He'd tried to be unobtrusive when he walked in, but he'd gotten a few stares, and he was sure some of those faces belonged to people who worked closely enough with Jim to mention that his strung-out student observer looked like the loser in a bar brawl.

Worse, he was down to having to live with L.L.  He'd already called Lloyd and made arrangements to move in, so, officially, his home life was now totally in the toilet.  No one emerged from rooming with the Goom unscarred.  Not that he was exactly unscarred now, thanks to Blu's uppercut.  But at least that had been straightforward.  And his own fault, in a way, for trying to stop those two bozos from killing each other.  However, hanging around with L.L. was, always…complex, if not physically dangerous.

"Chief, you've got to watch out for the boyfriends."  Great, Jim was here.  Well, at least the waiting was over.  Jim didn't sound too critical, either, which was reassuring, if unexpected.  And which was good - apparently he wasn't yet ready to wash his hands of Sandburg the Embarrassment.

"Funny, Ellison."

"Yeah."  Jim had plunked a mug of coffee down in front of him and was now pulling Blair's hand away from his head and examining the scenery.  "You should press charges, you know.  And you need a better class of roommate, kid.  This isn't the first time those two have gotten into it, or involved somebody else."

"You know about it already?  Geez."  Blair went for the coffee, gratefully.

Jim had propped his butt against his desk and was looking down at Blair with what could only be – bafflingly – guilt.  "Should have run their records, saved you the shiner."  Jim grinned suddenly.  "Not to mention saved both of us carrying your shit up five flights of stairs."

"Yeah, well, you got pizza out of it."  Blair knew that came out as a grumble, and felt more annoyed when Jim's grin widened.  "So, what, you're saying it's a normal thing for you to go around running people's records just for the hell of it, being one of Cascade's finest and all?"

"Sandburg, you rented a warehouse next to a drug lab.  That's enough probable cause right there for me to screen all your potential roommates for the foreseeable future."  Jim's grin vanished, almost like he thought he should have been screening Blair's roommates; and Blair felt both crowded and, weirdly, moved.  "Speaking of which," Jim continued after a moment, "you're not planning on staying there, are you?  Those two are trouble."

"So I've discovered.  I already have another place lined up."  Blair focused back on his coffee, which wasn't particularly good but had the virtue of being hot.  And free.  Moving for the third – fourth – time in less than three weeks was playing merry hell with everything, especially his dead-and-departed checking account.

"Chief!"

Blair looked up blankly from his coffee cup to see an annoyed Jim sitting across from him, impatiently tapping a pen against a notebook.  Jim sighed.  "Your new address, and the names of everybody involved, Sandburg."  It sounded like a command – probably one that Jim had already issued at least once while Blair was staring at his coffee – and Blair bristled.  But hey – it couldn't hurt, right?  L.L. was way on the far side of eccentric, and it would be helpful to be sure he didn't have any actual violent or criminal tendencies.

"Yeah, okay, what the hell, man.  Check away.  463 Columbus, apartment 2-C.  Lloyd Lewis.  Also known as Goomer, or the Goom, as in Legume.  You know – L.L.?"  Blair buried his face back in his coffee cup as Jim started typing into his computer, after a disbelieving snort.  Doomed to room with the Goom.  But what if Jim found something?  Not that Blair wouldn't want to know, but L.L. was pretty much his last resort, short of camping out with a sleeping bag and his boxes in his office, and Edwards was way unsympathetic about that kind of thing regardless of the emergency.  Blair couldn't really risk doing that for any length of time – again – until he had a chance to schmooze the new hires in Security into complicity.

Not like he could fling himself on Jim's mouse and yell, "Stop!", though.  Jim was going to check out L.L. now, no matter what Blair said.  Jim couldn't actually keep him from moving in with Goomer, of course, even if the Goom had a record, but Blair needed at least a little respect from Jim, or none of this was going to work.  And Jim hadn't had much respect for him in the first place.

Not that staying with somebody known as the Goom would be helping with that, of course.

God.  Blair propped his head back against his hand.  He needed more of this crappy coffee.

"You're supposed to be smart, Sandburg.  Giving the Tyson twins another shot at you is pretty stupid for somebody who's supposed to be a smart guy."  Jim was ignoring his hot dog and frowning stubbornly.  Blair didn't care; he could be stubborn, too.  And geez, it was just one more day.

"I already told you, I'll get some students to help me move tomorrow.  Heck, I'll give them extra credit for it, they'll be lining up in the streets to help.  I appreciate your offer, but you're not helping me move again, man.  You already know my boxes way too well."

"Look, I just don't want to pick you up from the ER tomorrow morning after you've had an earlobe stitched back on."

"Jim."  Blair stopped pacing around the park bench.  "I'll be fine.  I'll be out of there tomorrow.  It's no big deal.  If I hear Raj and Blu starting up, I'll just leave them to it, lock my bedroom door, stuff my head under the pillow, and sleep through it.  Don't worry about it."  Blair put all the assurance he could muster into that speech.  Jim was not lugging his stupid boxes around again.  He hadn't even wanted to do it the first time, hadn't wanted Blair on his turf even temporarily, and yet here he still was, only a few weeks later, lugging Blair all around town like unclaimed luggage.  Okay, Jim didn't seem to mind helping now, but still – Blair wanted to keep Jim's goodwill, not give him a hernia.  He didn't particularly want Jim to meet L.L., either.

"I still don't like it.  Eat your lunch."  It was almost a growl; Jim didn't like to lose.  Blair bit into his hot dog gratefully.  Success.  And lunch – a.k.a. dinner, probably.  God, his financial biorhythms were in a bad phase.

Goomer.

L.L. 

Lloyd "I Need Brain Surgery" Lewis.  If there had ever been a candidate for a lobotomy, it was definitely the Goom. 

It was only his third night rooming with L.L. and Blair was already deeply regretting the hours of volunteer time he'd logged throughout Cascade's network of homeless shelters.  With his current luck, if he tried to wander in anywhere and borrow a bed for a night, whoever was on duty would know him, and they'd want a three-hour run-down on just why he needed a bed, and hell, he'd end up not getting any sleep there, either.

The voices droned on from the living room, through the irritatingly thin bedroom door.  And the giggles.  The giggles, half of which were coming from L.L., were beyond the scope of human ability to sleep through, and Blair turned on the lamp with a groan.  He might as well get some work done.  Again.  Sleeping seemed to be way out of fashion in the Lewis establishment.

Blair figured he was basically a tolerant guy.  He'd pretty much had to be, growing up the way he had, with Naomi as his mother and much of the free world as his babysitter; and you couldn't be a decent anthropologist if you weren't at least reasonably open-minded.  But that strange cadre of people L.L. was assembling every night in his living room was…murky.  The occasional howl that came, unnervingly, from that group wasn't anything like the earthier – and far less unnerving – animal noises Phil and Annette had kept Blair awake with.

Grabbing a notebook, Blair began to write.  Firmly.  Think about the diss.  It was certainly better not to think about what he would find out there in Lloyd's living room in the morning.  Maybe he could tie his sheets together and lower himself out of the bedroom window.  Or jump.  They were only on the second floor.

"Jim – God – are you okay?"  Blair skidded to a halt and dropped down beside Jim in the alley.  Oh, man, there was blood everywhere –

"Yeah, I'm okay, Chief.  Take it easy."

"You're bleeding –"

"Not mine, buddy.  I'm fine.  You called for backup, right?"

Blair took in a shuddering breath and nodded.  There was so damn much blood.  "What happened?"

"He pulled a knife."  Jim kept his eyes on the cuffed man lying next to him.  He had his jacket wadded up, pressing it against the blood welling from the man's side, but Blair could see it wasn't enough.  He pulled his own jacket off and crouched down beside Jim, adding his own makeshift pressure bandage, and Jim looked up for a moment with something that seemed to be both appreciation and unhappiness.  After a moment, Blair got it.  Jim didn't like him being so close to the guy who'd had the knife, even though he was currently unconscious and bleeding like a stuck pig.  Yeah, well, I don't like it either, Jim.  But this guy needs the extra help.

Jim lifted his head a little.  "I hear the sirens.  Good.  Sandburg, you need to listen up here – you keep your eyes open all the time, you hear me?  This creep was heading out of the alley – toward you – with that knife, and he was in the frame of mind to separate body parts first and ask questions later.  Even if you're sitting in the truck, you keep your eyes open.  Got that?" 

There was no avoiding the intensity of that gaze – not that he didn't agree with the sentiment one hundred percent, anyway – and Blair nodded compulsively half a dozen times.  "Totally, man.  I am way ahead of you there.  Eyes in the back of my head."  Jim held his eyes for a moment, then nodded once himself, as the sirens wailed to a halt at the end of the alley and reinforcements started arriving in a rush of noisy activity.

While Jim was busy talking with one of the patrol officers, Blair leaned against a cinder-block wall, working on controlling his breathing.  God, it had looked like that was Jim's – so much blood – it could have been –

Stop it.  Jim's okay.  You're okay.  Let the energy go.  He almost gave a snort of wholly inappropriate laughter at that thought, because he was leaning against some pretty angry energy at the moment, if the mothafucka graffiti on the wall behind his shoulders was symbolic.  Blair looked down at the bloody jacket in his hand – the paramedics must have handed it to him? he didn't remember – and headed down the alley to sit in the truck. 

Eyes in the back of my head. 

Jim. 

So much blood.

"Will you give it a rest, Jim?  I am pretty much betting – okay, I'm pretty much hoping, but it's all I have to work with here – that nobody else in Cascade can smell the Listerine in my hair.  Anyway, man, if you hadn't knocked me into the oral hygiene shelf I wouldn't have Listerine in my hair.  You could have just yelled 'get down' or something.  Believe me, I would have gotten down all on my own."

"Sandburg," Jim sounded utterly unrepentant, "the clown had a gun.  He was about to pull the trigger on his gun.  I wasn't taking any chances."

Well, Blair couldn't argue with the intention, even if the execution had sucked.  Still, this was getting a little spooky.  He grabbed Jim's arm and pulled him to a halt.  "Jim, are you, like, cursed, or something?  I had no idea there was this much crime in Cascade.  You must have some kind of vibe that just hoovers in the criminals, which I guess is useful for a cop, but man, doesn't it play hell with your social life?  And hey, the next time we go into a drugstore and somebody decides to rob it while we're there, throw me into the candy aisle, okay?  I'd rather walk around shaking M & M's out of my hair and smelling like Twizzlers than have my scalp smell like mouthwash.  Which it doesn't, does it?  Jim?"

"Smells pretty strong to me, Chief.  Like your hair went on a three-day bender and you're trying to cover it up.  And, you notice, a lot of people seem to be sticking to the other side of the sidewalk this morning, for which I can't blame them.  Why didn't you wash your hair, for Pete's sake?"

"Shut up, Jim.  And if you really want to know, I didn't wash my hair because I didn't take a shower because last night there were strange people in the living room I didn't particularly care to get naked anywhere near and there were a pair of fucking electric eels swimming around in the bathtub this morning.  Satisfied?"

"Eels.  In your bathtub.  You're not serious."

Blair nodded, emphatically.  Hey, he hadn't planned on sharing any of the weirder details of Life With Lloyd – which meant he hadn't planned on sharing any details of Life With Lloyd – but since it had slipped out, he wasn't about to put up with the standard shit about Sandburg's fiction being stranger than truth.

"Only you, Sandburg."  Jim was laughing, which Blair did not find funny.  No matter how ridiculous the concept of eels swimming in your bathtub might be, the reality of finding them there – by nearly stepping on them, and invoking whatever the heck kind of electric charge they happened to be in the mood for at the moment – before you'd even had a fucking cup of coffee, at 6 a.m., after a night of listening to Lloyd's Loonies weirding it up three yards from your mattress, when your bedroom door doesn't even lock – hey, the reality of it deserved a little sympathy.

"No, Jim," Blair said, with all the ice of a man who'd nearly had his toes electrically fused a few paltry hours earlier.  "No, not me.  Lloyd.  Lloyd does things like this.  It is merely my misfortune to have moved in while he's in a highly individuated Goth-Wiccan-animal-energy experimentation phase.  Last month he was into mime.  I would have preferred that, Jim, hard as you may find that to believe.  Mime.  Silence.  People hanging around silently with painted-on faces.  I wouldn't have to listen to "The MacBethian Witches Meet Lassie and Goldie Hawn" every night while I was trying to sleep, and I wouldn't have to pick my way across the living room floor every morning across a litter of small animal bones and potting soil and dying and exploded balloons, which as far as I can figure don't fit in with his current theme at all, but they're there anyway, along with other stuff I refuse to look at closely enough to identify.  Before mime, it was Punch and Judy, although that would have probably been hell, too; although, of course, for that I could have brought Raj and Blu along, they would have fit right in.  Goomer's Betty Crocker phase last spring would have been doable; though, with my luck, if I'd been there, he'd have combined it with nuclear chemistry, which, since he has a doctorate in nuclear chemistry, would have been all too entirely possible, and Betty would have learned a few new recipes like glow-in-the-dark chocolate cake, and I personally would probably never need to buy flashlight batteries again.  I am not making any of this up, Jim."  Blair punched Jim's arm.  "This is not funny."

Jim kept laughing, anyway and Blair felt like kicking him.   People who had to live with Lloyd deserved condolences, not heartless laughter.

And damn, people were sort of staying on the other side of the sidewalk.

"I don't believe this."  Blair buried his head in his hands, then looked up at Jim hopelessly.  "I swear, man, I had nothing to do with this.  I didn't know the stuff was there, Jim.  I don't know where it came from.  I don't know how it got there.  Honest to God."

This was it.  It was over.  Jailbird Sandburg.  And not even for a cause Blair could get behind, like protesting clear-cutting or the energy lobby's influence on Washington.  He totally hated what street drugs did to people.  Well, Blair thought, although it wasn't even much of a hope, or anything that would make him feel better,  maybe Jim will only book me for possession, instead of dealing.  For old time's sake.

Jim was looking through him and Blair felt like curling up in a huddle on the floorboards under the glove compartment.  He also felt like finding whoever had done this and punching them out, which was not gonna happen any time soon, because any minute now Jim was going to whip out his cuffs and start reading Blair his rights.

Then Jim was sighing.  "This wasn't in your backpack last night.  I would have smelled it.  You didn't go anywhere after I dropped you off here?"

"No, man.  I just went upstairs and crashed."  Blair was glad the Corvair was still at Hargrove, where Jim had picked him up for the stakeout.  Not like any D.A. in the world would give a crap, but at least Jim hadn't pulled out his cuffs.  Yet.

Of course, it was just a matter of time.  Jim didn't have any choice, even if by some miracle he didn't totally disbelieve Blair.

"Come on, Sandburg.  I want to check upstairs in the apartment."  Before I arrest you, Blair supplied silently.  By the expression in Jim's eyes, he wasn't far wrong.  But it didn't look like Jim was very happy about it.  Which was something, anyway.

"You're not staying there, Sandburg.  Lewis and his cohorts will be out on bail by tomorrow, and You. Are. Not. Staying. There."

Blair stirred more sugar into his coffee.  It was impossible to spoil such bad coffee, anyway, and he needed the rush from the sucrose.  "You are absolutely right, man.  I'm not.  Staying there, I mean.  While you were in with Simon I found a room to rent.  The guy who was L.L.'s previous roomie has a pickup and he's helping me move my stuff tonight.  I think he feels guilty for not telling me the Goom had escalated from loony to druggie."

Jim opened his mouth and Blair tiredly held up a hand.  "Before you even start, Jim, I'm renting this room on my own.  No roommates from hell, or Sing-Sing.  Just me and my boxes.  Stand down, okay?"

There seemed to be a lot of frustration on Jim's face, which Blair didn't understand, unless Jim was still mad about the stupidity of Blair's rooming with a guy who would absentmindedly store a stash of drugs in his roommate's backpack.  At least Lloyd had also had the decency to talk about stashing the shit there, loudly, with a couple of his energy-seeking buddies.  Jim – and Blair, with ordinary ears – hadn't had the least bit of trouble overhearing that conversation from the hallway.  And Lloyd and company had had the unparalleledly dumb decency to keep talking, to a whole bunch of official people, until everybody and their aunt was clear on the fact that one Blair Sandburg was an innocent, if stupid, bystander.  Dupe.

Dope.

Duh.

Blair could hear Simon yelling about something in the bullpen and Jim got up from the table, shooting a final look of frustration toward Blair, who flapped a hand at him to shoo him out.

At least the break-room was relatively quiet.  Blair untied his hair and massaged his pounding head.  God, after he finally got out of here, he still had to move out of Lloyd's place into his latest digs.  And he had to keep Jim out of the loop on that entirely.  Blair had taken the place sight unseen, but he knew what Redfern Avenue looked like.  It wasn't likely that he was even moving sideways in the world.  This was going to be, like, five steps down.  But the no roommates part was good, like he'd told Jim.  Something to focus on.  And he'd probably lived in worse places.

There was a dime lying on the floor under the table, next to his shoe.  Okay, so maybe that was an omen; things were looking up.  Forty cents of his own, plus a dime thrown in from the PD – peanuts.  Vending machines were good for more than accidentally flattening crazy white supremacists with guns.  Blair opened the cellophane protecting his feast and shook two peanuts into his hand, popping one of them into his mouth.  Might as well make them last.

…Jim believed me.

Jim had believed him.  Jim had believed he hadn't known anything about the drugs in his backpack.

The peanuts, all twenty-eight of them, tasted wonderful.

Blair winced as he handed over Jim's twenty, for Jim's super-sized Philly Cheese Steak and hand-made crinkle-cut potato chips.  The whole deli smelled like he wanted to grab the nearest salami and stick it in his pocket like a damn big revolver and yell, "Everybody give me your food now and you won't get hurt."  Jim had had to pick the Empire, the priciest deli downtown, of course.  If he'd picked something cheaper, Blair could have justified a grilled cheese or something.  But the Empire prided itself on serving absolutely nothing ordinary or affordable.  He loaded up Jim's change and his hearty and blissful-smelling meal with a sigh, and headed outside towards the truck double-parked near the corner.

"Where's your food, Chief?"

"My stomach's kind of jumping around, I'm gonna make some tea when we get to the station.  Maybe I'll feel like eating later."

Jim gave him a sharp look, but pulled back into traffic and headed towards the PD without saying anything.

The lunch – Jim's – sitting in its bulging white bag on the truck seat between them smelled so distracting that it took a moment for Blair to realize that Jim hadn't said anything else.  That was kind of weird.  Jim seemed like the kind of guy who would have said something more about him not feeling well.  Even if it was just "Don't throw up in my truck, Sandburg."

This was close to the worst dump he had ever stayed in, in a somewhat embarrassingly long Life List of substandard housing.  Blair ate his peanut-butter dinner and contemplated his home glumly.

At least it was temporary – although how temporary was yet to be determined.  And next week, after he got paid, he could spring for a hot plate, and add rice and beans and similar useful staples to his at-home menus.  He could deal; this part was no worse than it had been at other times.  Expeditions, traveling, inauspicious phases of the moon – you planned, watched your pennies, waited it out.  Things always worked out.

Still, the Redfern Rooms' furnishings left a lot to be desired. 

And he did have roommates.  I didn't know, Jim.  Honest.  Of course, the new roomies weren't really a surprise.  Or human.  And four-legged and six-legged and eight-legged roommates were, in point of fact, not as bad as the most recent examples of the two-legged variety.

And – this part really sucked –Redfern Avenue was a scary place.  The street outside seemed to be jumping all night long, although not in a neighborhood-block-party kind of way, more in an oh-God-where-the-hell-are-the-cops? kind of way.  Blair was relieved – sort of – that he didn't have a phone, because he had the feeling he'd pretty soon be on the local precinct's shit list for calling every five minutes when something new and alarming happened. 

Lloyd's, in spite of all the stoned – which, in retrospect, Blair was incredibly embarrassed not to have recognized – giggling, and misplaced poorly sealed baggies, and wildlife, and wild life, had been – as advertised – a haven, compared to here.  Lying awake here most of the night in anticipation of the need to hide under the bed in a hurry wasn't restful.  If the territory under there hadn't already been so thoroughly staked out by his roomies, he might have just considered sleeping there on general principles, like the principle of actually getting some sleep.

And – man, he hated to admit this, but he was terrified that he might have to go out there some night.  Outside.  If somebody needed help – Jesus.  Being a Redfern Roomer was fraught with suspense.

Not to mention – not to whine about it – frigid.  Blair longed for his fire-hosed space heaters from the warehouse, fruitlessly.  And hot water.  Kev, who had the room across the hall, said the water heater had been broken for a week already.  Blair had been warmer the month he'd spent in Barrow, watching polar bears and talking with the Inupiat. 

And he'd felt a hell of a lot safer.  Polar bears were pussycats compared to Redfern's fauna.

Blair roused from a half-doze as the truck went past his car without slowing.  "Jim, stop, my car's back there."  By the time he got the words out of his mouth, they were already two blocks away.

"I'm making spaghetti," Jim growled.

"Well, if you're so pissed off at the idea, just don't do it, man.  Stop and get a Wonderburger or something.  But whatever's got you ticked off, don't take it out on my legs, okay?  Drive me back to my car before you go postal."

"I'm making us spaghetti," Jim clarified, still at a growl.  "I'll take you back to your car after we eat."

"Jim, it's late already.  You're tired, man.  Just let me off and go home and relax, okay?  You're just tired, right?  Nothing wonky in the senses department – you'd tell me, right?"

"No, Darwin, nothing is 'wonky' with the senses.  I'm making us dinner.  That's all."

Blair sighed and shut up.  He didn't have the energy to deal with a growling Jim tonight.

Okay, it was good spaghetti.  Not, like, gourmet or anything, but hey, it was good, and hot, and Jim made enough for a dozen hollow-legged teenage boys, and kept piling it on Blair's plate.  The growl had subsided after Blair emptied his first plateful, and Jim actually began to mellow after the second.

Blair offered to wash the dishes, and he had a weird flash of nostalgia, scrubbing plates in hot soapy water and rinsing them for Jim to dry.  They were arguing the relative merits of John Wayne's finest flicks against the Mad Max movies and Blair was winning, even though he couldn't make his points freely with his hands tied up in the dishwater.  Okay, so he'd forgotten once, and there was a big wet soapy splotch on Jim's t-shirt.

He put the final nails in his winning argument just as he finished wiping up the sink and hanging up the dishcloth, which was just about the time he realized Jim had smiled when the soapsuds had decorated his chest.  Which meant…what?  Jim was sick?  Revenge was a dish best eaten cold?  Jim actually had retaliated in some subtle fashion that Blair was too tired to notice?

Well, whatever.  It was time to go…home.  And he was not going to stand here in Jim's kitchen and feel anything other than a mild regret that the current manifestation of home wasn't here.

A mild scientific regret. 

He wasn't going to.

Nope. 

"Thanks for dinner, man.  I'll take a bus back to my car.  See you tomorrow afternoon around two?"  Blair headed for the door where his battered corduroy coat hung beside Jim's spiffy leather jacket.  "Shit…my coat doesn't still smell like cigarette smoke, does it?  I forgot to ask you earlier and I've been wearing it for days – man, I should have left it out in the hallway, shouldn't I? –  I just haven't had a chance to get it cleaned or anything, I wasn't going to wear it till I got it cleaned but my other jacket still has…uh…blood…"  Blair trailed off, still looking at his undoubtedly smoke-laden corduroy coat, thinking about the dark stains on his absent jacket.

"Don't worry about your coat, it's okay."  Jim didn't sound at all like he had in the truck, the day after Blair's first night with Annette's cigarettes.  "And tell you what, why don't you bring your jacket along tomorrow and I'll drop it off at my cleaners the next time I go.  He's good at removing the evidence of police work."

Blair smiled at Jim, hoping he didn't look like somebody who was attempting to not be backed into a corner.  "I'm guessing you've given him enough practice, Jim.  But there's this place near the U, I like to take stuff there, practice my Tagalog, not that I really speak Tagalog, but I roomed with a guy from Manila once and I picked up a little, and hey, if you don't use it you lose it, right?"  Okay, Jim says he's okay with the coat now, so I don't need the jacket, I can wait until I get some more money in.  Blair sighed without meaning to.  Face it, the jacket's trash.  By the time you can afford to get it cleaned the…blood…will have, like, mated with the leather, or something.  Become inseparable.  Which was a pretty sick thought, blood inseparable from his jacket. 

Man, I must be tired.  Blair turned again towards his coat.  He hadn't exactly lived his life in an ivory tower; he'd seen blood plenty of times, been up close and personal with it more than once, even before Kincaid, and Jim's friend Danny.  There was just something different about the blood on his jacket, though; it was too weirdly intimate.  Too likely.  Too likely for it to have been his blood.  Jim's blood.

"Chief, why don't you crash here tonight?  I'll drop you by your car in the morning.  If you want, we can run you by your place first so you can change clothes, and I'll drop you off at your car afterwards."

Blair paused with his hand on his coat.  Why would Jim want him to stay?  That was carrying hosting a little far for somebody like Jim, who was so into privacy and personal space.  Especially when Jim looked tired, and not relaxed anymore, like he had been while they were having dinner and doing the dishes.  Of course, the not relaxed was probably coming from apprehension that Blair might actually take Jim up on his offer. 

Which Blair still didn't get, anyway.  Why would Jim want him to crash at his place instead of going home?  Okay, maybe he'd figure it out some other time.  After he got out of Jim's hair, and got back to his own…appealing…place, and did the closest thing he could to crashing for the time being.   

"Nice thought, man, but I'm just gonna catch a bus and go home.  You can sleep in a little in the morning instead of chauffeuring me around."

"Sandburg."  Blair dropped the coat he'd just lifted from its hook; Jim was growling again.  Big-time.  "Hang up your coat, hit the bathroom and go to bed.  There are clean sheets on the futon."

"Jim, it's – " Blair stopped himself from finishing that sentence when he saw the expression on Jim's face, which kind of went along with the growl.  But kind of didn't. 

Okay, letting Jim make spaghetti had appeased the growl before.  Apparently, a sleepover was needed to appease the growl now.

Which was weird.  Jim didn't like sharing his digs with flaky twenty-something anthropologists-cum-police observers whose outlook on life had been fundamentally influenced by Naomi Sandburg.  Not that Jim knew about Naomi.  Or that Naomi knew about Jim.  God, never the twain shall meet, okay?  The very thought of that had a sort of Rocky Horror Picture Show quality that made Blair twitch.

"Sandburg, will you stop staring at your damn coat and go the hell to bed."

Blair jumped.  "Uh – you sure you don't –"  Okay, Jim was definitely into growling tonight.  "All right, all right.  Thanks."  Blair wasn't sure anymore if he was thanking Jim for the offer of a bed to crash in – although it wasn't so much an offer as it was an order –or for not grabbing him and slamming him into the wall by the door.

Twenty minutes later he sat cross-legged on the futon in Jim's spare room, wearing over-sized borrowed sweats.  The room seemed larger without his boxes piled haphazardly around.  Smelled better, too, without the leftover smoke from his warehouse salvage – how had Jim handled that?  Man, he'd asked more of Jim than he'd realized that night; he'd been so desperate he hadn't thought beyond Larry, and getting a roof over their heads.  A free roof.  Geez.

Blair tucked his hands into the sweatshirt sleeves more from habit than necessity.  The loft was warm, and he'd just had his first blessedly hot shower in days.  And there were two blankets piled at the foot of the futon.  This was very nearly heaven. 

He could hear Jim puttering around in the loft, and it was peaceful.  Funny how Raj or Blu puttering around hadn't been peaceful.  Okay, not so funny, nothing about Raj and Blu had been remotely peaceful.  But Phil and Annette puttering around hadn't been peaceful, either.  Well, okay, they hadn't actually puttered, unless you wanted to use that in an excessively euphemistic sense; they'd been too busy making up for three months apart.  Noisily making up.  And Lloyd – when L.L. puttered around, it was the stuff of horror movies.

But it wasn't that. 

It wasn't peaceful because Jim was normal and not a menace to the physical and mental well-being of the greater Cascade area, like the Goom; nor titillating the neighbors with mingled soprano and baritone howls like the Love Couple; nor endlessly, viciously arguing like Raj and Blu.  It wasn't peaceful because Jim wasn't – literally, as well as figuratively – a rat.  Or because there were no other rats in residence, or roaches.  Or spiders.  Or mildew. 

It was just peaceful because it was Jim. 

Somehow, that was peaceful.

And that was really, really weird.  Jim was a dangerous guy, the most dangerous guy Blair had ever met, which was actually saying more than Jim would probably ever realize.  And Jim had a temper that made Raj and Blu seem like pitiful amateurs, not to mention a pretty big chip on his shoulder, and only variable tolerance for practically everything Blair was about.  And Jim's life obviously was far from peaceful.  Blair tugged on the sweatshirt sleeves some more.  None of this added up to sitting here, feeling so oddly – unusually – peaceful himself.

"Lie down and go to sleep, Chief."  Blair looked up from his sweatshirt-covered hands with a start, but the curtain was still pulled across the doorway.  Could Jim actually see through the fabric?  Or was it hearing, not sight?  Could he hear whether Blair was breathing sitting up instead of lying down?  This was cool –  "Sleep, Darwin."  Jim's voice sounded amused, like he'd been following along, but it also had a strange quality, kind of like a growl in reserve.  Okay, Blair had to admit he was tired.  In fact, he couldn't remember the last time he hadn't been tired, except when he'd stayed here before – was that the last time he'd actually slept well?  Man….

Man, why couldn't Cascade be in Arizona?  Parts of Arizona were puddle-free for days at a time.  Weeks.  Months. 

Western Washington, on the other hand, was wet.  All the time.  Blair glared at the expensively obscure library book he'd dropped into a puddle, the expensively obscure – and, in fact, poorly researched and misleadingly written – expensively obscure, very muddy book which was going to postpone his hot plate for another month.  Which maybe didn't matter so much, since the rice and beans weren't a lock, either, the way things were going.

Worse, his two classes hadn't gone well.  Okay, the discussions had been lively, and there had been some excellent questions, but Blair had the suspicion he hadn't been entirely there.  Hopefully, he'd been there enough so that none of his students had noticed, but he was irritated with himself, anyway.

It wasn't helping at all to think about the other night at the loft.

Maybe if he rearranged his office he could make room for a couch.  Okay, like he could afford a couch right now.  Maybe someone would leave a dead one on a curb.  Or maybe he could find one at a yard sale for peanuts.

Which would be good, because basically that was what he had.  Peanuts.

And the only place where he'd likely be able to count on any decent sleep, for the foreseeable future – as long as he was living large as a Redfern Roomer, anyway – would be his office.  On a couch.  That he didn't have.

Yeah, okay.  But he was still working with Jim, and that was worth just about anything Blair could think of.  Money, sleep, hot plates…all that kind of stuff had its cycles, anyway.  When it was around, you enjoyed the hell out of it; when it wasn't, you dealt.  And you focused on what really counted.  Right now, that was working with Jim, for as long as Jim would let him.  Blair would sleep in the gutter and eat out of the Wonderburger dumpster if he had to. 

And maybe Jim would have some kind of wacko murderous impulse about spaghetti again some time and  feel compelled to cook it into submission, for anthropological company.  Blair could deal with that, too.  He wouldn't mind that at all.

The F-150 was parked in front of the fire hydrant, just in front of the exploded garbage bags.

This was not good.

This was especially not good, because Jim wasn't in the truck.  Boxes appeared to be in the truck, which was uncharacteristically short-sighted of Jim.  You didn't park your truck in a neighborhood like this when you were toting around a load of boxes.  At least not if you expected the boxes to still be there when you returned to your truck.

Of course, you were being pretty optimistic to expect the truck to still be there, when you returned to the truck.

All of which was beside the immediate point.  Jim wasn't in the truck.  Which meant Jim was inside Blair's Redfern Room, no doubt having flashed a badge at the soi-disant manager.  Which meant Jim was standing inside Blair's Redfern Room, appalled to the bottom of his boots and wondering just how fast he could respectably ditch Sandburg-the-Loser-Punk.

God damn it.  Blair was tempted to just drive on by, not that that would help.  He pulled up behind the garbage bags.  God.  He might as well go in and be, like, dismissed.  Or whatever the hell would happen.  Jim really didn't suffer fools gladly, and the downward spiral of Blair's housing choices had probably destroyed any confidence Jim had begun to have in Blair's judgment.  Man, Jim had hated the warehouse, thought it was stupid, thought all of Blair's subsequent roomie choices were increasingly stupid – not that he didn't have a point there – thought, no doubt, that Blair couldn't handle his own life, much less help out with Jim's.  The Redfern Rooming House was so scrape-it-off-the-sole-of-your-shoes that Jim was probably now unalterably convinced that Blair belonged at Conover without visitor privileges.

Okay.  Jim can try to ditch me.  But I'm not giving up the diss.  And I'm still going to help him, no matter what kind of a leper he figures I am.  Blair took in as much oxygen as he could – not as much as he would have liked – and unlocked his disreputable door.

What the – ?

"What are you doing, man?"

"Sandburg, you wouldn't have to ask that if you weren't running on fumes.  I'm almost done with this box, and that's the last of it.  It'll make sense tomorrow, after you get a good night's sleep and have a decent breakfast."

"What'll make sense?  You're boxing up my stuff?  You're moving it out?  And I'm supposed to get a good night's sleep out of that?  Yeah, I can see that, I'll sleep much better without my stuff here, I mean hey, it was just in my way and everything, and if you haul it off somewhere else it'll probably be safer than here, anyway, so sure, if you say so, this'll all make sense after a good night's sleep, but you better not have boxed up all my sweats, man, I need them to sleep in, there's not too much heat in here."  Blair hadn't intended to say quite all of that, and certainly not without stopping to breathe at least once, but it was pretty obvious, anyway, that this wasn't a gated full-security community with up-to-code insulation and central heating.  Obfuscation was pretty much out, under the circumstances.

Jim applied a last strip of tape – where had that come from? Blair hadn't had any tape left – and picked up the box.  "Turn around, Darwin.  Hit the sidewalk."

"Jim – "

"Move it."

Blair moved it, out of befuddlement more than active cooperation.

"You okay to drive, Chief?  I don't want to leave your car here overnight if we don't have to."  Jim was looking at him assessingly and Blair seemed to be caught on some kind of internal stutter – What the hell is going on?  What the hell is going on?  What the hell…

"Drive – huh, where?"

"The loft," Jim said patiently, as if to a brain-damaged puppy.

Blair shook his head in confusion.  "Sure, whatever."  None of this made sense.  Maybe it did actually make sense, and he was just too tired to see it.  Maybe Jim was springing for another night in his spare room, which was pretty nice of him, but didn't make sense, since he already had a place to stay.  Well, he'd had a place.  Now he had a place, and he had his stuff, but they weren't together anymore.  What the hell?

Maybe Jim would explain after they got to the loft.  The hell with trying to figure it out.

Jim was already in the truck, engine idling.  A double stack of boxes sat beside him, piled on the passenger side of the cab; more boxes were spread out across the bed of the truck.  "Somebody could have stolen my stuff," Blair said, more to himself than to Jim, but Jim answered anyway, as Blair walked by.

"I was watching and listening, Chief.  Sentinel, remember?"

Blair scowled at Jim.  "Don't patronize me, Ellison."  He had an urge to jump on the truck and start tossing his stuff back out onto the sidewalk but he didn't have the energy to do it, although he certainly had no desire to cooperate with whatever gonzo high-handed plan Jim was carrying out at the moment. 

Blair's baffled anger slid away to simple bafflement when he sat down in the Corvair; it just took too much energy to maintain anger.  Perplexity, on the other hand, he could manage even on ultra-low wattage.  The Corvair started, with its usual reluctance, and Jim waved for Blair to go first.  Blair pulled away from the trash in the curb more confused than ever. 

Jim was following him.

The F-150 was moseying along behind the Corvair.  One of Naomi's more sedate friends used to insist that life was stranger than drugs.  Blair had agreed back then, and it didn't look like he'd be changing his opinion any time soon.  Yep, Gladys, life is still weirder than drugs.  If Jim actually followed him all the way to Prospect, that was going to go beyond weird into, like, way weird.

Blair pulled his attention back to the street, away from the rear-view mirror, with a major effort.  Jim was still back there.  Blair wasn't speeding, and Jim was still back there.  Observing the speed limit was really hard for Jim.  And he was still back there.  Way weird.

"Jim, are you feeling okay, man?  You're acting kind of weird, you know?"  Blair asked the rear-view mirror.  The headlights behind him flashed once, and Blair had to smile.  He wondered if Jim could see the smile, reflected in the mirror, or maybe the windshield.

God, it was so amazing what Jim could see and hear and do.

Okay, whatever weirdness was going on with Jim, Blair could work with it.  He could move his stuff back home in the morning, after he figured out what military or police or sentinel – or just plain Ellison – quirk had caused Jim to break into Blair's place and kidnap all his boxes.  Well, and kidnap him.  Sort of.  He could figure it out, and find a way to deal.  Whatever it took, as long as he could keep working with Jim.

By the time he pulled into the parking lot in front of Jim's loft, Blair was seriously beginning to wonder if he would have the cojones to deal.  Jim was still behind him.  Which meant Jim had probably ground his teeth down to the jawbone, since Blair had sort of slowed down – downer? – more? – or was it less?  Man, he was tired.  Anyway, he had the impression he'd kind of been driving, like, fifty times slower than Jim normally drove. 

Jim had colorful and less than heartwarming names for people who drove that slowly. 

Maybe I should just sleep in the car.  His car didn't have rats, or bugs, or growling jaw-clenching ex-Rangers…

There was a loud rap on the window and Blair jumped a little.  Oh, yeah.  He sent an apologetic smile up at Jim and opened the door reluctantly.  "I have a plan, man.  Sleeping right here.  Unless somebody arrests me.  Which would be okay, as long as they don't wake me up to do it."

"Yeah, that's a great plan, Einstein.  Right up there with me letting you drive home, now that I see exactly how far gone you are.  Watch your head."  Jim sounded exasperated and patient, all at the same time, and Blair was trying to figure that out when he realized he was standing up, leaning against his car, and Jim was slamming the car door shut.  How had that happened?  Had Jim done that?  One of Jim's hands seemed to be attached to one of Blair's arms, so maybe he had.  Maybe I am really tired.  Blair closed his eyes.

"Walk, Chief."

Blair walked, but he didn't bother to open his eyes.  This was all Jim's idea.   Jim could drive.

Was it summer?  Or maybe, he was, like, dead, or something, his own personal heaven, because these were warm blankets.  And better yet, the air was warm – well, not tropical, maybe, but not cold enough to see his breath, either.  Not like yesterday morning.  And there was coffee – good coffee – he could smell it, and eggs, maybe.  Bacon.  Okay, not his personal heaven, then.  But not too shabby, anyway.

Jim's spare room.

Again.

Crap, how many times is Jim going to put up with this, me flaking out in his loft?  Blair felt guilty, although he wasn't entirely sure why.  As far as he could remember, it hadn't been his idea to sleep here last night.  He had a place; Jim was the one who had shanghaied him and brought him here.  As far as he could remember, anyway.

"Breakfast's on in five, Chief." 

Yeah, okay, Blair remembered this part, the part where Jim knew basically everything about all his bodily functions, whether he was asleep or awake and everything else in between.   Blair sent a silent thanks to Naomi and anthropology; communes and tribal societies were pretty good prep for the no-privacy aspects of spending time with a Sentinel.

"Mmmh."  Well, not eloquent, but Jim could deal.  He already knew Blair was awake, anyway. 

Breakfast seemed like a primo plan, but the bed was so warm… and probably in about thirty seconds Jim would appear and pull all the covers off.  The man was a sadist.  Maybe it was because he'd gone through boot camp, or whatever Rangers went through to be turned into Rangers.  Blair crawled out from under the blankets reluctantly and sent a vague good-morning wave toward the kitchen as he headed out through the curtain to the bathroom.

He splashed water on his face, luxuriating in having a decent – clean – bathroom to do so in, one that maybe was shared, but was shared with Jim, the world's tidiest person, not shared with the other three downstairs renters at 212 Redfern, who were not the world's tidiest persons.  Which brought to mind, unfortunately, that he was going to have to lug all his boxes back to his sucky little room this morning.  Why the hell had Jim moved his stuff out?

Well, okay, apparently he was getting breakfast out of this, but it wasn't really much of a trade.  Carrying boxes around burned up a fair number of calories.  Blair threw his used towel into the hamper.  At least he could be neat, for a change, even if he was confused.

Blair wanted to start in on the whole What-the-hell thing before he even sat down at the kitchen table; his hands had already started waving around in interrogation, but before he could get his mouth in gear Jim pointed at a chair and brought out the growl again.  This time it was, "Sit.  We'll talk after you eat."

Blair swallowed the first five things that came into his mind to say, and sat.  What the hell.  So he'd eat.  Not that he was intimidated.  But he was hungry.  And whatever weird-ass shit was going on with Jim would probably make him lose focus on the food.  And he was hungry.  Jim sat down across from him, with his own plate of food – which had, Blair noticed in bemusement, only half as much food as the plate in front of Blair had on it, which was piled up with enough food for an entire, if small, third world country.

He didn't make it all the way through the mountain of food Jim had so thoughtfully provided, but at least Jim appeared to be more relaxed after he'd eaten his own breakfast and watched Blair make visible inroads on the eggs and toast. 

And since Jim had relaxed it was past time to find out what the hell he thought he was doing.  Blair finished his orange juice and looked across at Jim as noncommittally as he could.  "Okay, Jim.  What's up?  What was with the unconstitutional moving-van scene last night?  I still know people in the ACLU, man.  And I am not looking forward to dragging all my stuff back to my place.  What the hell is going on?"

Jim morphed from relaxed to feral with impressive speed.  "You're not dragging your stuff back to that…place, Sandburg.  You're not living in that place.  Period."

Yep, weird-ass shit.  And instantly infuriating.  "Uh huh."  Blair had to stop for a breath, which wasn't a good sign, since he'd only gotten two syllables out so far.   "Not your business, man.  I am not rolling in green right now, it's a place I can afford, and it's my business.  End of discussion.  Period."

"Christ – will you pull your head out of your ass?  You'd be safer sleeping in Starkville.  I don't want you living there."

"Geez, Jim, you can't have it both ways, you know?  You want me out of your hair, that's fine, but you don't get to bitch about where I can afford to end up, okay?  Man, I stood outside my place the night it exploded and you sure as shit didn't want to loan me a roof for a lousy week, I had to beg, man, so where do you get off now, hijacking what I have left and telling me basically I can't live fucking anywhere, since the only place I can float right now isn't up to the Ellison standards of hygiene and propriety?  Shit, Jim." 

Shit.  Blair ran his hands through his hair, trading glares with Jim.  Where was all this coming from?  Sure, Jim was being an arbitrary jerk; body-and-box snatching as if Blair had a dozen more appealing housing alternatives currently within his reach and had picked Redfern Rooms out of mere absentminded oversight.  Gee, Jim, thanks for pointing that out, I meant to move into that condo in Redwood Heights overlooking the harbor, silly of me, I hadn't noticed my mistake, thanks again for your help.  And yeah, it made sense to be pissed at that, but why was he so unreasonably mad all of a sudden that Jim had held him to his week, hadn't even wanted to give him and his temporary monkey – okay, Barbary ape – a week, to start with?  What right did Blair have to be mad at Jim about that?

"Shut up, Einstein.  I already got all that.  You're moving in with me, haven't you figured that out yet?"

What?  "Oh for the love of – you didn't want me here in the first place, Jim, I'm not going to –"

"I didn't then, but I do now, and yes, you are."

"Like hell."  What the fuck am I saying?  Only a lunatic wouldn't trade up from Redfern to Prospect, and besides that, he'd wanted to keep staying with Jim in the first place after the week he'd inveigled was up; why the fuck was he jumping down Jim's throat about this now? 

"Like, hell yes."  Jim was growling for about the fortieth time in the past week, which should have made Blair angrier, but suddenly Blair realized it sounded protective, and yeah, that was annoying as all get out, Blair didn't need looking after, but…okay, it felt kind of nice, too, if Jim really cared a little.  Unlikely, maybe, but nice.

Blair took a deep breath.  And another.  Cleansing.  Let the anger go and figure this out.  "Are you sure, man?"  Okay, that wasn't the probingly analytical why Blair had intended to ask, but on the other hand, if Jim really, actually, did want Blair to stay, then…it didn't really matter why.

Jim's voice softened.  "Yeah, Chief.  I'm sure.  We'll probably drive each other crazy, but I'm sure."

Blair stood, hoping he didn't look as shaky as he felt.  Being really pissed off and then, blammo, being totally not ticked off at all really screwed with his adrenaline levels.  He picked up their plates and headed carefully toward the sink.  This was – yeah, this was weird.  Good – hell, great – but weird.  Unexpected.  "Jim."  Blair kept walking toward the sink; he didn't want to look at Jim.  I can't believe I'm saying this.  "If this is pity, or some kind of misplaced sense of duty, this isn't going to work."  He put the dishes down and tried a centering breath, staring at the plates – round, decorated with leftover eggs and Jim's sparse bacon crumbs, they made passable emergency pseudo-mandalas to focus on.  Breathe.

"Nobody's ever accused me of being a sentimental sap before, Sandburg."  Okay, Jim sounded amused.  Maybe it was okay.  Real.  "Pity isn't part of this.  And I'm not doing anything here I don't want to do."  Jim's voice roughened a little.  "I've got to admit it bugs me, though; you spending time helping me, then not having enough money to live on.  That's not right, and you should have told me."

It was okay.  At least for now.  Blair kept his eyes on the plates for another moment.  It was okay.  "Hey, don't worry about it.  I'm used to the edge.  It's the life of a T.A., man.  Feast or famine.  We roll with the punches."

"See, that's where you're wrong."  Jim sounded confident now.  And a lot closer.  Yeah, that was Jim's hand, warm on the back of his neck.  Blair couldn't seem to lift his eyes from the stupid plates, even when Jim's hand moved to tap the fading bruise on his cheek, even when Jim said,  "Avoiding the punches, that's the thing, Chief.  I'd kind of prefer it if you'd work on avoiding the punches.  And tell me if things get tough.  We're helping each other out, remember that."

Jim really meant that?  Reciprocity?  But they'd had that already, hadn't they?  This was, like, more.  Like a friend would do.

This was – okay, this was new.  This was….

Man, this was – something landed on the counter beside the sink and skidded a little, falling to the floor with a small metallic clink.  Blair looked down at the shiny key on the braided leather key-chain lying on Jim's polished hardwood.  New.  Both were obviously new.

Blair looked over toward Jim with a widening grin.  Be part of Jim's tribe for awhile.  Jim, who was standing by the couch, looking amazingly relaxed about acquiring a financially-impaired, incorrigibly neo-hippie, witch doctor punk as a roommate.

Blair bent and picked up the gleaming key.  Okay – even if he couldn't stop grinning – he needed to keep some perspective here.  He needed to remember to get that couch for his office; keep his options open.  Every offer had an expiration date.

But for now – oh, yeah.  For now, new was all he needed.  Jim wanted him here.

New was good.