Margaret and the Golden Buttermilk Zone

Jim told me he loved me before he ever said the words. I don’t mean buddy love, or partner love, or brotherly love, or any of that. That sort of thing we were both fine with expressing; jokes, back-slaps, teasing, not to mention saving each other’s asses more times than I can count (and hey, I’ve almost got my doctorate, believe me, I can count pretty high!) 

Of course, if Jim was King of the Repressed Homo Tribe, I was definitely the Major-domo. I think I was a little in love with Jim right from day one. I mean, hello! Holy Grail and all that. The lust, however, I was way less sure of. That particular revelation—which, incidentally involved me falling asleep on the couch watching TV with Larry, and waking to a gentle shake to my shoulder; waking and looking up at this huge guy wearing nothing but boxer shorts and a smile—that one took a bit more processing—okay, a lot of bits. But in the end, I just wound up tagging myself “bi-curious”, which the ladies seemed to love. I never acted on it, though. Just kept watching Jim while he watched me, neither one of catching the cluebus. 

Then I ate that damned pizza. 

I don’t even like pizza! 

Anyone else in Major Crimes would have been suspicious, but of course, I was thinking backwards, as Jim would say. ‘Think with your head,’ he’d tell me, ‘then your heart, then the rest of it.’ I was thinking with my stomach; “mmm, lunchtime!” my heart; “nice of the chief; the guys all work so hard.” And not my head at all, beyond “hm, does this pizza taste funny?” 

And then I wasn’t thinking at all. I was too busy shooting up the parking garage and crying over hallucinations. And Jim! Poor, blind Jim—he just moved in and did what needed to be done to save my ass *again*. 

I was pretty out of it for a few days after that, but every time, and I mean *every* time I managed to find my way up out of the golden quicksand in my head, he was there. He rarely said anything beyond “hey, buddy” and “you’re okay”. At least, I don’t remember anything else. But that was plenty. That was enough. 

Cut to a few days after that, and I was out of the hospital and in love with my partner, with absolutely no idea what to do. 

Jim still seemed to be obsessing over Margaret, and I didn’t know what to do about that, either. 

Deciding I should be the noble one (well, except for my dick, of course; it didn’t know from noble, it just wanted a piece of Jim Ellison), I invited Margaret to the loft for drinks, and already had my jacket on when she got there. I tried to ignore the residual golden glow around everything (the doctor told Jim and I that we might have to put up with that shiny side effect for up to a month—I was sure I’d be certifiable by then!) and wished I could ignore the knock on the door as well. 

Jim was all panicky about me leaving, but I didn’t get it; I figured he just didn’t want Maggie to be too poor a specimen. When she smiled at him and he smiled back, I resisted the urge to lick his smiling lips, or punch him in the head, packed up my formerly man-proof heart and my golden vision and scurried out the door. 

Three glazed buttermilk donuts and four cups of nasty black coffee later, the coffee shop was pretty much deserted, all that processed sugar was making my head ache worse than the Golden had, and the coffee was banging at my bladder. I checked the golden donut clock above the counter again and decided that either Margaret would be gone, like the last time, or she and Jim would be spent and sated for the night and I wouldn’t have to hear it. I hit the bathroom, then came back to the counter, ordered two more glazed buttermilk for the schtuppy couple, just in case, bought a dozen assorted bagels ‘cos they were on sale, and heaved a martyr-like sigh. 

I had no game plan beyond going home. The only thing I’d managed to decide was I wasn’t going to tell. I’d take it on the chin for love of my friend, and let him have his wild way with Margaret. We’d still be friends, and there was no doubt in my mind that friendship trumped everything. 

I quietly entered the loft, kicked my shoes off and set my breakfast treats on the counter. It wasn’t until I was hanging up my jacket and wondering if one small lamp would be noticed by my Sentinel that said Sentinel spoke: 

“Hey, Chief, you bought donuts.” 

I pretended that he couldn’t see me jump, pretended that he couldn’t hear my heartbeat speed up (although I was already working out the white sugar obfuscation for that one in my head), and mostly pretended that I wasn’t selfishly happy that there was no Margaret echo behind Jim’s voice. 

I moved into the kitchen, feeling some sort of sneaky relief at putting the counter and table between us. 

“Thought you and Margaret might like a treat,” I replied. 

“Guess that means I get twice as many,” he said. I didn’t know what to say to that. I couldn’t tell if he was happy or sad about this unexpected (at least to me) turn of events. 

“No Margaret?” I asked the obvious. 

“No Margaret,” he agreed, still sounding unreadably neutral. 

Even if I thought I wasn’t sure what to do or say, apparently the more primal me knew just what to do. My feet knew to walk me into the living room, and my legs knew to collapse under me in just such a way that I wound up perching on the arm of the couch. 

Ambient city lights from the half open blinds picked out the lines of Jim’s body, reclining on the couch, his head propped up on a pillow and the other arm of the couch. It wasn’t enough, though—the darkness kept the expression on his face inscrutable. 

“Uh, sorry?” I wondered how Margaret would be at school after this. 

“Are you?” 

‘Oh, sure, Jim,’ I thought, ‘ask me something easy.’ 

He was sitting up now, drawing his legs up and an arm emerged from the gloomy half-light to wave airily at the space he’d just made. I didn’t so much fall into it as got sucked into it by something that only a few minutes ago I swore I wasn’t going to think about, let alone act on. 

“Are you?” I shot back. 

“Not really.” 

I had no idea what I had expected him to say, but it wasn’t that. 

“Nice lady, though,” he continued, sounding thoughtful. “Pretty, too.” 

I didn’t have an answer for that. 

“Thinks the world of you,” he added. I wondered if she really did, or if she still did, since it was growing pretty apparent that Jim had shot her down. 

“What can I say, Jim, the ladies love me.” I tried for easy banter, but didn’t know if I was pulling it off. 

“She said something like that.” His tone was dry, but it sounded like there was a smile behind it. Then suddenly, he sounded less smiley. “How are you doing, Chief?” 

I recognized that tone of voice—I’d heard it enough in the hospital. The sudden change in both the timbre of his voice and the topic caught me off guard but only for a moment. 

“Oh, hey, all systems go, Jim. No worries. What about you, man? Your eyes—“ 

“Just the same,” he replied. “Glowy.” 

He’d moved along the length of the couch without me even realizing it, and I think I might have jumped a little when I felt his large hand touch my shoulder. The next jolt was nastier and involved more of my balls when he closed the last inch between us and I could feel the brush of his thigh next to mine. 

“I’m glad you’re okay,” he said, and my dick was perking up at his proximity. 

“Me, too—uh, you, I mean. Y’know?” Wow! I hadn’t fumbled like that since high school football. 

“I do worry, Blair.” 

Yikes, first names. I was in trouble now. 

“I worry about you.” 

His hand was in my hair before I knew what was happening, and I was arching into his touch like a cat a moment later, an inadvertent groan slipping out of me. 

My hair is definitely a hot spot; anyone who thought I was keeping it long as some sort of sixties-radical-social-statement had obviously never experienced hours of brushing, petting or carding; had never experienced the feeling of someone clutching thick fistfuls of your hair in exquisite agony as you were bringing them off, again…. 

Another groan escaped me. 

Jim’s hand tightened around a clump of curls and I froze, stifling another needy sound while my dick twitched almost frantically in my pants. He didn’t seem to notice the effect he was having on me, but after a few tense moments, his fist suddenly opened and I let go a sigh of relief— 

--which turned into a stuttering moan—‘Oh, Jesus, Ja-a-ames….,’ when the death grip he had originally had on my hair turned into the soft caress of just his thumb and forefinger tugging on a single curl. Tug. Stroke. Release. Tug. Stroke. Release. 

The same strand of hair, the same repetitive behavior. 

Tug. Stroke. Release. 

I was shivering from the sensation and wondered idly if I was actually going to shoot in my pants like some horny sixteen year old. 

Tug. Stroke. Release. 

He was zoning. 

Shit. My Sentinel was God dammed zoned out! On my hair, of all things. What the hell? 

“Jim.” 

Tug. Stroke. Release. 

“Hey, Jim. C’mon, buddy…” Even I could hear the hesitation in my voice, and I knew a part of me wanted to just stay like this forever…and a day. 

Tug. Stroke. Release. 

‘Don’t be such an asshole, Blair,’ I swore angrily at myself and turned just enough that the next tug hurt a little. 

“Jim, man, come on; come on out of it…” 

Each time I shifted, he had less grip on my hair, and I had less grip on my feelings. If it was taking longer for me to pull Jim out of his zone out than it usually did, well, that was going to have to be my dirty little secret. 

At last I saw a brief headshake, and then a fine tremor ran up Jim’s frame and he closed his eyes. A last tug on my no-worse-for-wear hair and a shudder and he blinked rapidly and then he was back. 

“Jim?” I tried to cram about a thousand questions into that one syllable. He was looking at me with a confused frown, and I didn’t know if he was trying to sort out his senses, or if he was trying to ignore my flushed face and still achingly hard dick. 

He sniffed, tentatively, and then with something more certain. I was pretty proud of myself for not flinching, or fleeing to the bathroom. Hell, I thought, he was the one who’d caused my pheromones to start dancing the Macarena, so he could damn well live with the results. 

“Jim,” I tried again, just as he said, “Blair?” and then we both said, “Go ahead,” and then we both said “No, you,” and just as he was about to open his mouth again, I put a finger to his lips. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” I asked him, leaning forward. His gaze flicked back and forth from my eyes to my hair and back to my eyes. 

“I,” he said. Eyes on my hair again, and I shook my head a little, which I knew wasn’t fair, hell, it might have been a bit mean, even, but I just couldn’t help myself. 

His head shook when mine did, and then he was standing so abruptly, I thought he would fall, and I reached out but he danced away from me and only then did I see the outline of his cock through his pants, just as dammed hard as mine. 

“I can’t, Chief…” he backed away towards the stairs. “I mean, I just can’t talk about this—not right now.” He turned and took the stairs two at a time. 

I sighed and lied back on the couch, shifting my uncomfortable dick and cursing fear-based responses in my head. First in English, then Niktabi, and then Latin, and Cyrillic. 

“Blair?” 

And I had just calmed myself enough that my dick wasn’t actually drilling a hole in the couch when he called down from the bedroom. Damn. I sat up again. 

“Yeah?” 

“Not never,” he said. I had to strain to hear him, and I thought, rather churlishly, “Hey, dude, Guide ears here. Speak up.’ 

“Not never, Blair,” he said again, a little louder. “Just, not yet…okay?” He sounded a little worried coupled with a gulpy noise that I recognized all too well as self-doubt. 

But he’d said ‘yet’. 

“Sure, Jim.” I replied softly, not looking up at him, knowing he’d hear me anyway. 

“Well, all right. Good night, Chief.” 

I waited, listening to his stripping noises, and his bedding down noises. My happy hard on loved it, and apparently was here for the duration. I felt no inclination to do anything with it…yet…So I just sat listening until Jim was long past his ability to make any more noise beyond an occasion snore, and I thought about Golden, and Margaret, and Jim and donuts and Sentinels and their Zones. 

I smiled and decided suddenly that my bed was just a little too far away tonight. Closing my eyes, I turned on my side and sniffed the pillow under my head, pretending I was a Sentinel, pretending I could smell Jim’s pheromones. 

Well, maybe not yet… 

“I love you too,” I whispered, not knowing if Jim was awake, but knowing if he was he’d hear me. That was okay. 

We’d talk again.