Written 07/02/03

Disclaimer: I don't own these guys. You know this, I know this. Why do we keep having to go over the same tired ground?

Summary: Wherein Jim has gas, there's nothing on TV, promises are made, and Blair proves he's an astute analyst of the human condition. Otherwise, just your average week at the loft.

SUNDAY

Blair opened the door to the loft and was immediately hit by a stench so horrific it caused his eyes to water. Manfully, he supressed the urge to gag -- knowing it would only bring more of the putrid air into his lungs -- , clamped his hand across his nose and screwed up his courage to brave the vile atmosphere.

"Oh, good God!" His hand proved insufficient protection, so he yanked up his shirt to use as an impromtu air filter.

"Sandburg? That you?" Jim's voice wavered weakly from the direction of the bathroom.

"Oh, man," Blair winced. "Fuck. Turn on a fan; open a window; pull out the freakin' gas masks! Jesus, Jim!" He made his way across the open living room. "What the hell crawled up your ass and died?"

Jim moaned pathetically. "Joel's chili."

One handed, the other occupied with keeping him conscious by way of screening his breaths, Blair struggled to force the patio doors to open as wide as they could go. Finally they swung loose, and Blair lunged gratefully out into the cool but blessedly fresh air.

"That's it, man!" He declared from the safety of the balcony. "I don't care how much you beg. I don't care how pathetically you whine or how fiercely you glare. You are never ever getting near a pot of Joel's secret family recipe five-alarm chili again!"

"Don't worry, I won't ever want to eat any more myself."

Blair rolled his eyes. "Sure Jim. That's what you said last time, too."

"Yeah, but I mean it this time."

"Yeah, right."

"No, ughn," Jim grunted then groaned. "Really. I can't take much more of this."

"Well don't expect me to feel sorry for you, you big doofus. You got yourself into this mess all on your own."

Despite himself, Blair winced sympathically when some indescribable but undeniably pain-filled noises issued from the bathroom, followed by the woosh of the toilet flushing. He moved to poke his head into the loft, but leaned back hastily as a new wave of foulness floated over him.

"Bla-air," his partner whined, soundingly less like a competent detective and Sentinel of the Great City and more like a six-foot-two five year old with a tummy ache. Which, incidently, he had.

"What?" Blair wheezed, reeling from the smell.

"Make it stop!"

Blair sighed. Regretfully, he drew in several deep breaths of clean air, relishing the scent of freedom. He sucked in one last lungful, holding it captive to support him in his upcoming duties. Then, chin up and head held high, the Guide charged into the fray to go rescue his Sentinel from the man's own bunged up digestive system.

Later that night...

"So what are you doing next month?"

"No, Jim."

"But..."

"No."

"But I've almost figure out which spices Joel uses! Just one more taste, and I'm sure I can crack his secret family recipe."

"No."

"Aww, Chief!"

"Don't whine, Jim. It's undignified."

.....

"And don't bother with the sad puppy-dog eyes either. I'm not falling for it."

MONDAY

Jim slouched down into the couch, a bowl of popcorn on his lap and a bottle of beer pressed against his forehead.

"Tough day?" Blair commiserated, flopping down beside him.

"Waited in court all morning, only to have the case dismissed on a technical. Chased a suspect through Chinatown's open market, then got covered in rice when I finally managed to tackle the guy. Simon got a new batch of cigars. Connor's new beau sent her flowers. And to top it all off, the donut girl ran out of the powdered jelly ones in Homicide, so all we got were the plain dough kind."

"Aww, poor baby." Blair flicked on the TV.

Jim contemplated glaring at his unsympathic partner for a few minutes, then gave up the idea as taking too much effort. He cracked an eye open to look at the channels flipping by on the 27'' screen.

"Anything on?"

"Don't know yet, but it doesn't look like much."

"Isn't there a game on ESPN?"

"Nope, show jumping."

"Show jumping?"

"Yeah, you know. The thing you do with horses, making them run in circles and jump little fences."

They watched in silence for a few minutes.

"Those fences aren't little," Jim commented mildly.

"Yeah." Click.

.....

"You play golf, Sandburg, you don't watch it."

"Hell, I never understood why anyone plays it either. Damn boring if you ask me. You just hit the little ball and try and watch where it lands. What challenge is there in that?"

"I'm too tired to explain it to you. Maybe we'll go sometime and I'll teach you, okay?"

Blair turned to him, surprised. "You play golf?"

Jim just *looked* at him. "Country club," was all he said.

"Ah, gotcha." Click.

.....

"What the hell is he building? A torture chamber?"

"I think it's a play area."

"For who? Sado-masochists?"

"Children."

"Same diff."

Click.

"She's hot."

"She's blue."

"She's an alien, Jim. Blue is her species' skin colour. It makes her look exotic."

"She looks like a giant smurf, Sandburg."

"She does not!"

.....

"Okay, maybe she does. Just a little."

Jim smiled smugly. "I rest my case."

"Asshole," Blair said affectionately, then flicked to the next channel.

***

TUESDAY

"You coming in to the station today, Chief?" Jim called from the kitchen.

"Yeah. I got a cla--shit!" Blair stumbled from his room, still trying to do up his shirt buttons. "I got a class this morning, then I'm free for the rest of the afternoon. So I'm all yours after 11:40."

Jim handed him a mug of coffee, prepared just the way the grad student liked it.

"Thanks, Jim." Bliar took a sip, his eyes seeming to shine briefly as the blessed caffiene jolted his system into wakefulness. "Got anything exciting planned for today?"

"Not especially, no." Jim buttered up his toast, ignoring the standard Sandburg glare at his use of unnecessary cholesterol. "Mostly paperwork, a couple of depositions. Maybe some legwork on the Patterson case, but nothing too much."

"In that case, I'll meet you for lunch at noon. Say 'Rawlins'? I wanna try their new focaccia sandwhich."

"Sounds good. They make a good beef stew."

Blair shook his head. "You can have the vegetable stew, Jim. You've had your quota of red meats already this week. Don't think I don't know about that trip you and Henri made to Wonderburger last Thursday. You're nowhere near as circumspect as you think, Ranger-boy."

Jim snorted. "If the Army had as many dedicated and loyal spies as you do, Sandburg, Covert Ops would be a thing of the past."

Blair grinned. "Never underestimate the powers of the Sandburg charm."

"The powers of the Sandburg Zone, you mean."

"That too."

***

WEDNESDAY

Ellison stomped into the loft, threw his keys at the basket beside the door and stalked into the kitchen. He was furious.

"Damnit, Sandburg! I told you stay put!"

"Fuck you, Jim." Blair growled back, just as angry. "I'm not a dog you can order around. You needed me, man. I was there. That's all there is to it."

"Like hell it is! You're not a cop, Sandburg! You shouldn't have even been in that building. What if Reid had seen you? You could have been killed!"

"Well, I wasn't! And I was there to back you up, you ungrateful SOB. Which I did, by the way! Because you zoned on who knows what and let that scumbag almost get the drop on you!"

"I was fine! I was coming out of it one my own!"

"Only because I was talking you out of it all along!"

"Well fine then! You could have talked me out of it from the truck, instead of going into the building and risking your damn fool neck!"

"I didn't even know you were zoned until I went inside, Jim!" Blair yelled in exasperation.

"Aha!" Jim pounced, sensing a weakness in the other man's argument. "Then why the hell did you go in in the first place?"

"You needed me!"

"But that's just *it*! You didn't *know* I needed you!"

Blair pulled his hair in frustration. "Yes I *did*!"

Jim froze with his mouth open, looking flabbergasted down at his partner.

"I did, Jim." Blair repeated, quietly, stunned himself as he just realized the truth of it. He looked up at the bigger man. "I knew, Jim. I knew you needed me. I just *knew*, man."

"Chief," Jim said softly, putting his hands on Blair's shoulders. "I know you want to help me, I know you need to be there for me. But sometimes, *I* need you to look after yourself first. I can't lose you, buddy. You know that, don't you?"

Blair smiled tremulously up at him. "I--I know, Jim. Me too."

Jim pulled the smaller man into a hug, gratified when his partner didn't hesitate to return the embrace. He lowered his head, nuzzling into the soft curls on his Guide's head, breathing in his partner's scent.

"Just--Just try to be more careful, okay? Please, Chief. I can't lose you. I can't."

"I... I--"

"Promise me, Blair," Jim whispered, "promise me."

Blair's answer was whispered in turn, whispered so low only a Sentinel could have heard it. Only Jim could have heard it.

"i promise."

***

THURSDAY

"It's a stereotypical case of bonding among homogeneous members of a closed society, Jim."

"Uh huh." Jim flipped through his file, knowing there was a piece of evidence in there somewhere he needed if he could only find the damn thing.

"No, Jim, really. It's a proven relationship factor among many cultures, dating back even beyond the historical record. Some animal research has even suggested it might be instinctive behavior, possibly genetic in origin, and therefore a hold-over left from our Neolithic evolution."

"That's nice," Jim answered absently. Did it come before or after the forensic report?

"I'm just saying it makes sense from an anthropological position, is all," Blair continued. "The repeated close contact with a fellow member of the tribe under diverse and often harrowing conditions; the lack of a steady counter-influence from the opposing gender and thus the biological drive to mate and reproduce, resulting in sublimated needs expressed as harmless non-sexual physical contact."

"Right. 'Harmless non-sexual physical contact.' Got ya." Was that an 'i' or an 'l'? No, no, it was a 't'. Damnit, why couldn't Sergeant Fredrickson have normal writing like every other cop. This tiny penmanship script shit was impossible to read -- even with heightened Sentinel vision.

"Exactly. But current societal dictates of modern civilizations decree that such non-sexual physical contact between males should be reserved specifically for familial members, and that event then there is an age of maturity which acts as an unspoken but universally adhered to cut-off point for when the acceptability of such actions is arrested."

Jim nodded, making a mental note to go back and double check the witness' statement against the security camera. Something just wasn't adding up here.

"So it's really not that hard to understand that some of the detectives around here, men and women trained to observe the minutiae of human communication -- including subtle cues of body language, working either in conjunction with or conversely to, normal use of verbal language -- should come to such a conclusion."

"What conclusion is that, Chief?" So if the perp left the bank at 10:52pm and the witness has him at the bus stop down the street at 10:58pm, what the hell took him six minutes to walk fifty meters?

"Why, that we're sleeping together of course."

"Oh, right. Sleeping together." Jim agreed, automatically. Maybe he stopped to talk to someone or check his loot? Wait a minute… 'sleeping together'?! His head shot up to stare in shock at his slyly grinning partner.

"What the hell are you talking about, Sandburg?" he demanded.

"Our supposedly wild and lusty sex life, Jim. Haven't you been listening?"

Glaring, knowing the grad student knew full well he hadn't been, Jim said nothing.

Blair decided to relent, a little, and give Jim a hint. The man was a detective after all, he could figure the rest out for himself. "The guys have been talking again, man. And this time it doesn't look like it's gonna die anytime soon."

Jim just looked confused. "Why? I mean, we've gone through this before -- it always blows over."

"Not this time, man. The situational variables have altered."

"What?"

Blair rolled his eyes. Jim couldn't be this obtuse, really he couldn't. "Think, Jim," he prompted, "when was the last time either of us went on a date? Separate vacations? Hell, even spent a night not together in the last six months?"

Jim opened his mouth to answer, but Blair beat him to it.

"And not time in the hospital!" he clarified. "It doesn't count anyway, because it was only hospital regulations that kept us apart and even then you didn't leave the waiting room until I was released."

Jim searched for a time, but after a few minutes had to give it up as a lost cause. "Okay, so we've been hanging out a lot lately. So what? We're friends and we live together. It's only natural, right?"

"That's what I've been saying, Jim. Our relationship may be 'natural' in that it complies with certain biological needs for companionship and physical contact, but because we aren't close blood relatives it isn't statistically normal behavior for men of our age bracket and societal establishment."

"What the fuck does that *mean*, anyway?"

"It means, Jim," Blair said in his best 'professor-explaining-simple-concepts-to-dumb-students' voice. "That based on the rules of our society today, we should be having sex. We exhibit all the behaviors of life-mated male pairs, and to the modern person's mind, that means we must be lovers. Because they can't *know* that we really aren't having sex, can they? They can only infer an assumption based upon all the available data. And all the available data points to us boinkin' each other like rabbits."

Jim shook his head, amused despite himself. "How do you come up with this shit?"

"It's my job, Jim. I'm an anthropologist, I study human cultures and behaviors. I am," he added cheekily, "an astute analyst of the human condition."

Jim snorted. Grinning, he reached out to ruffle Sandburg's hair. "C'mon then, my little analyst, and on the way home I'll treat you to one of Miss Betty's homemade ice creams if you're good."

"But, Jim," Blair protested coyly, getting up and reaching for his coat. "I'm *always* good."

***

FRIDAY

"Hey Sandburg?"

"Hm?"

"You wanna fuck?"

Blair spluttered, choking on his spagetti. "Jesus, man! Don't say shit like that while I'm trying to eat!"

"Was that a 'no'?"

Blair shook his head, still coughing. Jim got up and passed him a glass of water. Blair drank, working to get his breathing back under control.

"Man, Jim," he said finally, smiling. "No wonder you have problems getting dates if that's your idea of romantic."

"I can do romantic. I just didn't think it was required with you, Chief. You want romance? Flowers, wine, candles -- that kinda stuff?"

"Not necessarily that kinda stuff, but maybe something a little more subtle than just ' you wanna fuck'."

"Oh. Okay."

.....

"So, you wanna fuck or not?" Jim asked again a moment later.

Blair blinked, then shrugged. "Yeah, okay, sure. Why not?"

Jim nodded, satisfied.

"Dork," Blair grinned, laughing.

****

SATURDAY

Sunlight streamed in through the skylight, lancing down into Jim's eyes and bringing him to an instant, if reluctant, wakefulness.

Sighing, he stretched out his toes and made to stretch out his arms when he remembered the presence of his bed partner. Careful not to shift the weight of the curly head on his bicep, he turned to use the quiet break of dawn to look at his new lover unobserved.

Blair lay sleeping face down on the bed's right side, the side farthest from the stairs. His head was turned at an awkward angle toward Jim, his own arms shoved somewhere under his body. With his eyes closed and his lips parted just that slightest little bit, he looked all of sixteen years old.

If it weren't the dark growth of bristles already shadowing his chin, that is.

Jim grinned and raised a finger to trace along that deepening shadow, amazed all over again at the feel of rough hairs over soft skin. He gloried for a moment in the pleasure of that touch, his senses spinning happily in still sated wonder. Then he leaned over to put his mouth on that spot on Blair's throat where his Guide's life force beat.

Giving a low groan of pleasure, Blair surfaced from the depths of his sleep. Eyes still closed, he lazily basked in the pleasant feather-soft touch that skimmed over his face and down his neck onto his chest. Only when that ephemeral hand slid lower down his belly to settle around his awakening cock did he open his eyes to see his Sentinel smiling lovingly down at him.

"Ooh, Jim," he breathed, arching into that delicious touch. "Gods, you're good at that. How'd you get to be so good at that?"

"Practice, Sandburg, practice."

"Practic-- What?" Blair leaned up on his elbows to stare incredulously at his grinning lover. "But you said--?"

"On myself, Sandburg." Jim shook his head fondly, still smiling. "I've got one too, you know."

Blair huffed a laugh, letting himself fall back to the bed as groaned in remembrance. "Oh, *yeah*, man. Do you *ever*!" And he shivered all over, almost feeling that strong hot length sliding up inside him once again.

Jim moaned roughly, flattening himself across the smaller and all but diving into his mouth. His hand squeezed where it gripped, dragging another groan out his partner, and inflaming Jim's own need. He ground hips against the leg pressed up against him and swept his tongue around Blair's teeth.

Blair responded with equal passion, his hands digging like claws into Jim's shoulders and back as he urged the bigger man on. "Oh, yes, please! Do it, Jim, take us over. Oh, yeah!"

Jim groaned helplessly, his hips speeding up to match the rhythm Blair set within his tightly clenched hand.

"Oh, yeah, Jim. Just a little more, man, come on. So close, Jim, so close… ooh!"

Blair's gasp of completion was cut off as Jim shoved his tongue down his throat, his own release spilling out over both of them in a warm sticky mess.

Blair lay back, staring out at the bright blue sky above, feeling Jim's body squishing him slightly into the mattress as a comfortable lassitude enveloped them both.

"This," he decided some minutes later, "has been a *great* week."

Jim lifted his head and stared into the glazed blue eyes just shades darker than his own. "Nah, Chief," he corrected. "This has been just another average week in the Ellison-Sandburg existence."

"Oh," Blair said. "Okay."

And that was that.

~*~*~*~*

The End.