Ad Libitum 6/7
Oct. 13th, 2008 05:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lit_galAd Libitum 6/7
An alternative look at what happened when Alex showed up
Rated: Adult
Warning: Angst alert
The boys are a long way from united on this front, and with Alex out there stalking them, that's never safe.
Previous parts here: ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR, FIVE
Blair sat on the edge of the brick planter in front of the bank and waited. A man with a long ponytail and a leather jacket stopped at the nearby phones, and he leaned against the silver shell as he looked Blair over. Normally Blair would be either complimented at the attention or wary. Right now, he was too tired for either emotion, so he just let his eyes slide past the guy and watch the traffic flow past.
A brown sedan pulled up to the curb, and Jim was out of the passenger side before the car even stopped rolling. "Blair!" Jim called as he hurried across the plaza, his hand hovering near his weapon as he looked around suspiciously. One look and the guy with the ponytail hung up and headed down the street.
"Sandburg, what the hell were you thinking?" Simon bellowed as he got out of the driver's side.
Blair had no idea what to say to Jim anymore, so he focused on Simon. "Simon! Hey! I so did not expect you."
Jim was standing in front of him, arms crossed over his chest in a pose that Jim normally reserved for murderers. "I asked him to drive me over. I thought it would make it easier for me to strangle you in the backseat.
"Har, har," Blair joked tightly. God this hurt. He didn't know how to even react to Jim anymore, and the minute he found out that Alex was well and truly out of the picture, well, Blair wasn't sure what would happen, but he wasn't expecting to enjoy it. Oh, Jim would be polite and accommodating and make noises about remaining friends, but it was Blair's voice he was avoiding. It was hard to be friends without occasionally talking to each other.
Jim glared at him. "I'm not joking."
Obviously Simon figured something was wrong because he stepped closer. "I was at the apartment because Jim reported you missing. Sandburg, the FBI, Major Crimes and the entire department mobilized under the theory that Alex Barnes somehow got you out of that apartment. Then you call and announce you just took a drive with your mother?"
Blair cringed as he realized how stupid that sounded. "It was her last day here," he offered lamely.
"I don’t care if it was her last day on Earth. A psychopath with superhuman powers is trying to kill you." Simon's fists were clenched.
"Oh, that." Now Blair wasn't sure which of them to avoid eye contact with. Maybe he should have just gone with Alex and Naomi, even if they were getting way too comfortable in their bonding over all things female with a good side dish of male bashing.
"Oh that? Oh that?!" Simon turned an incredulous look toward Jim. "Ellison, talk to your partner before I arrest him for felony aggravation of a police captain."
Jim moved close enough to rest a hand on Blair's shoulder. "Chief..."
"I know, I know." Blair stood up fast, sliding to the side so that Jim's hand fell off. "So, if I told you not to worry, would you believe me?" he asked cheerfully.
Jim just stared at him, but Simon gave a huge sigh. "I'm not going to like this, am I?" he asked as he got that blank expression that he usually got whenever Blair brought up anything related to Sentinels.
"Probably not." Blair considered that for a second. "Okay, definitely not. In fact, you may want to go get some coffee or something... just for a couple of minutes," Blair told him. Simon's expression went from emotionally constipated to outright horror.
Jim hadn't followed Blair, and now he stood next to the brick planter, his hands hanging awkwardly at his sides. "Blair, does this have anything to do with my nightmare last night?"
Blair cast a quick look over at Simon who really didn't look like he could take too much more without resorting to his cigars. "I don't know... probably... what was your nightmare?"
"I dreamed that I was the jaguar and a giant spider kept trying to catch me in his web." Jim crossed his arms over his chest and stared at Blair through long, pregnant silences. Even the pedestrians on the sidewalk gave them a wide berth.
Eventually, Blair sighed and admitted defeat. Yeah, he had the Guide voice, but Jim had that Ellison glare. "Oh yeah, that would have been the shaman Alex hired to keep you distracted," he admitted. With Alex now firmly aligned with his mother, admitting that she had hired someone to attack Jim just felt... wrong. It felt nearly as wrong as Alex doing the hiring. She should not be trying to attack them, and they should not be saying things to the police that might get her in trouble. Only Jim was the police, and Blair really doubted that he was going to feel the same way.
"A shaman?" Simon demanded as he pulled a cigar out of his pocket. "She hired a shaman? Do none of you remember that we are living in the 20th century? I truly miss simple assault and murder cases... cases involving weapons and hired assassins."
"I defeated the spider, Simon," Jim offered soothingly, but Simon just gave him a seriously dirty look.
"Good to know. We won't have to put out that spectral ABP now."
Blair was surprised. Yeah, Simon didn't exactly love it when mystical stuff tumbled out into the middle of an investigation, but he wasn't normally this stick-up-his-ass about it. "Man, you are totally closed-minded today. What is with that?"
"What is... ?" Simon almost choked on his words. "Sandburg, I had FBI ripping down my office door wanting to know how my officer fell asleep on duty and how I managed to lose their expert witness. I'm not sure exactly when you became *their* expert witness, but apparently, as the only known expert on Sentinels, the federal government has decided that you're valuable. And since I lost you, I've had everyone from the commissioner to the director chewing on my ass." Simon was red faced, and Blair kept backing up as he poked his cigar at Blair.
"Oh."
"Oh? Oh? That's all you have to say?"
Blair nodded. "Totally. Because to be perfectly honest, the idea of the federal government even noticing me is making me a little uneasy."
Simon narrowed his eyes. "I know how you feel. So, either you explain to me what the hell made you take off with Naomi or you can go explain to the FBI."
"Simon," Jim offered softly, still playing Blessed Protector.
Then a new fear hit Blair. It hit him so hard that he stumbled back a step and nearly ended up falling on his ass. "Oh man, Jim, you don't think that they'll connect the dots, do you? I know we have everything covered, but if someone really..."
"Calm down, Chief," Jim interrupted him. He moved close, so close that Blair could smell his aftershave, but this time, Jim didn't try to touch him. "Brackett figured out I was a Sentinel long before you wrote anything, so I think there are parts of the government that have always known."
Blair's heart started pounding even harder at that thought. "You are not really comforting me here."
Jim sighed and put his hand on Blair's shoulder, but this time, Blair was freaked out enough to want even that pale imitation of the intimacy they used to share. "Simon, can you give us a couple of minutes here?"
"I should haul both of you down to the station and make you give official statements," Simon growled, but then he shook his head. As he turned away and started walking north, he called over his shoulder, "Fine, just hurry up."
Once Simon had reached the end of the block, he lit his cigar and stood on the corner watching traffic. Blair stared at Simon's back. If he didn't work at the station, would Simon want him to keep in touch?
Jim's fingers tightened slightly on his shoulder. "Blair, what happened?" Jim asked in his best soothe-the-freaking-out-victim voice.
Blair shrugged. "Alex is no longer a problem."
"Is she dead?"
"No, no way." Blair backed up a step and looked at the seriously pissed expression on Jim's face. "Do you really think I could...." He waved his hand in lieu of finishing that thought.
Instead of answering right away, Jim scrubbed his face with his hand. "I think people do what they have to do, Chief. However, short of being dead, what would keep Alex away from you?"
"Finding her real Guide." Blair walked past Jim and sat on the edge of the brick planter again. He still wasn't sure how he felt about Naomi taking Alex with her. They'd been like giggling schoolgirls when they called the reporter. Before Blair had even gotten dropped off at the bank, Alex had confessed to the nerve gas job and told Naomi where to find the gas. And his mother... his mother had been as delighted as she could be. It'd been years since he'd seen her so animated, her hands flying as she catalogued a world of human suffering all caused by corporate greed. And Alex had watched with such intensity, her eyes following Naomi's every gesture. He supposed he should be grateful they hadn't started planning their next raid right there in the car in front of him.
Jim tilted his head at Blair as though he was using his sense to check for lies. "She found her real Guide? How can you be sure?"
"This is going to be the part you don't like."
Jim sat down next to him. "I don't like any of this, and you haven't told me anything yet."
"Trust me, you're going to like this a whole lot less."
"Sandburg," Jim growled.
"Okay, okay. Geez," Blair rolled his eyes. "Alex was outside the loft, down in the street."
"And you left the loft? You didn't get me?" Jim's voice had a dangerous edge now. His body was unnaturally still, and Blair couldn't help but offer some reassurance. He reached out and rested his hand on Jim's thigh.
"She was with Mom. You weren't waking up, and I didn't have time to really..." Blair struggled to find a way to say this without implicating Alex in a kidnapping, which was odd because last night he would have been thrilled to have actual evidence that would have sent Alex to prison. "I didn't have time to think things through," Blair finished weakly.
"She kidnapped Naomi? Shit." Jim reached for his cell phone. "Knowing Sandburg luck, I should have driven Naomi to the airport last night. We'll get an APB..."
"Whoa, hey, you are running off the rails here." Blair plucked the cell phone out of Jim's hand. "Just... just let me finish."
Jim's body was tight with the need to fight, and he glared at Blair. A lesser man might have run for the hills under that withering stare. "There's more?"
"Way more than you want to know," Blair agreed. "I went down to talk to Alex, and she insisted on us going for a little ride."
"Which would explain the bruising around your wrist." Jim picked up the hand that Blair had laid on his thigh and turned it over. Thumbs gently brushed over his pulsepoint. Blair couldn't see anything, but Jim's fingers traced the path of Alex's hand where it had held him when she wrenched his arm up behind his back. The touch felt good, as if Jim was erasing Alex's violence. When Blair shivered, Jim dropped his hand, and Blair let his gaze fall to the sidewalk. The old cliché about them being friends obviously wasn't going to work because even now, even in the middle of their whole damn breakup, Blair still wanted Jim. It took every ounce of self-control to not use the Guide voice, to not order Jim to forgive him, to take him home, to make love to him. A wave of self-loathing crashed through Blair when he admitted to himself how much he wanted to do exactly that.
"She bruised you," Jim repeated.
Blair shrugged. "Probably. Okay, here's the thing—Mom came with us, and Mom and Alex started talking, and Mom started remembering her old days of protesting "the man" and how many times she broke the law, and the next thing I know, she's using the Guide voice on Alex, and Alex is following after Naomi with this starstruck expression." Blair kept his voice as professional as he could. The need to use the Guide voice was an itch he had to resist scratching.
"Naomi?" Jim sounded confused now.
"Yeah, hey, I think we have evidence that being a Guide might be genetic because Alex definitely honed right in on my mother, and that's where it gets a little sticky because I don't really want my mom getting dragged into the middle of this, but trust me, she is not just going to walk away and let someone arrest Alex. As far as mom's concerned, Alex is her Sentinel."
"Fuck."
"Not yet, they haven't, but trust me, from the looks they were giving each other, I'm guessing that is not far down the line," Blair laughed darkly, but when he glanced over, and Jim had an absolutely stricken expression. "Geez, it was a joke."
"That's your mother, Sandburg. You once went after me for even looking at her and now you're telling me to back off an international thief because she's planning on bedding your mother?"
Blair blinked as the implication of that sank in. He'd totally forgotten how Jim had reacted when Naomi first showed up. She'd rearranged his furniture, accidentally called him a pig, stunk up the house with food Jim declared toxic waste, and the two of them had still ended up laughing and sitting on a bed together. "Oh shit," he breathed. "That's right, you were interested in her, and Alex was interested in me. You were both probably picking up that the genes were compatible. Of course, obviously you weren't totally compatible with Naomi or else you wouldn't have paired up with me...."
"Chief, hold on there," Jim interrupted as he held up a hand to stop Blair. "I paired up with you because I wanted to, not because of some uncontrollable instinct."
"I know, I know," Blair quickly assured him. He did not want to get into Jim's control issues right here in the middle of the street.
"No, Chief, I don't think you do." Jim caught one of Blair's hands in his own and pulled it close.
Blair chewed on his lower lip, caught between wanting to just press into the contact and wanting to face reality. He couldn't survive many more days of the Ellison coldfront at home. "Maybe this can wait until we finish with the FBI interrogations. I really don't think I have the energy to deal with you and the FBI on the same day," Blair said softly.
"Deal with? I'm someone you have to deal with?"
"You're taking this all wrong," Blair said as he jerked his hand back from Jim.
"Chief—"
"No, look, I totally understand that this is hard on you. Like the song says, there ain't no good guy and there ain't no bad guy." Blair leaped up and started pacing. On the corner, Simon turned to fact them, his expression still closed as he puffed on his cigar.
Jim stood up. "Are you trying to break up with me?"
Blair stopped pacing long enough to glare at Jim. "Are you just trying to be thick?"
"This morning, it seems to be coming naturally," Jim said with a wry grin.
That just confused Blair even more. He stared at Jim, not even sure anymore what he was supposed to say. He tried reaching out to Jim only to get shut out. He tried to back off, only to get Jim trying to pull him back in. At this point, Blair truly didn't know what Jim expected from him.
After a few seconds of silence, Jim sighed. "Blair, I know this has been difficult."
"Which part?" Blair snorted.
"No offense, Chief, but we aren't getting anywhere here. Can we deal with one question at a time, please?"
For a second, Blair felt an almost overwhelming urge to run away because getting somewhere meant getting to a place that he didn't want to get to. But he didn't have a car or anyplace to go where Jim couldn't find him. He might as well get it over with. He sat down on the brick wall and buried his face in his hands, waiting for the bad news.
Jim asked quietly, "Are you trying to break up? Do you want to leave me?"
Blair shrugged. "Want isn't exactly the word, but I understand why you put it that way."
Blair didn't bother looking up when Jim sat next to him so close that their shoulders brushed. "That makes one of us because I'm not understanding anything here, Chief."
Blair swallowed around the lump in his throat. "I understand why you need me to leave."
"Why I...?" Jim stopped, and Blair struggled to hold in his emotions. Sometimes he really wished that his mother had just taught him to be emotionally constipated like all the other men. Jim's hand came to rest on his shoulder, and a tear escaped. "Oh Chief," Jim whispered.
"Hey, I'm a big boy. I'll land on my feet," Blair said without moving. He wanted to spring up and run away, but he wasn't strong enough to give up the feeling of Jim's hand on his arm.
"Chief, you are an idiot," Jim said in a voice that almost sounded amused.
Blair tilted his head and looked at Jim who was smiling.
Jim patted his shoulder. "I already told you that I never wanted to let you go, that I wasn't sure I was a good enough man to let you walk away without a fight if you ever did want to leave, so where did you get the harebrained idea that I wanted you gone?"
"Oh man, ever since that idiotic test you did... you haven't wanted me anywhere near you," Blair said with a frown.
"We live in the same house, we've slept in the same bed every night."
"That's just it--we've slept. And man, you are a fucking expert on not being there when you're there, if you know what I mean."
That made Jim flinch, and the amusement vanished under something that looked a whole lot more like guilt. "Shit. Chief, it's not that I don't want—"
"Hey, I totally get it," Blair said, holding up a hand to prevent Jim from going off on a good case of self-flagellation.
"No, you don't. However, if you'd shut up for a minute or two, you might." Jim caught his hand and pushed it down to where their legs touched. "I'll admit that this revelation about the Guide voice threw me a little."
"A little?" Blair snorted.
"Okay, maybe more than a little. But Blair, I just needed to think through a few things, and I needed to do it on my own."
If this was Jim's breakup speech, he definitely needed a whole lot more practice. "Define thinking through."
Now it was time for Jim to sigh heavily. "I don't suppose you're willing to just believe me when I say I'm okay with this and let this drop." Obviously the expression on Blair's face answered that for him. "You're going to worry this to death, aren't you, Chief?"
"Totally."
"Blair, I needed to use my senses to remember when we first met. I had to know how much of our relationship was real and how much was this Sentinel shit." Jim looked guilty.
Blair thought about all the hours Jim had spent alone in the semi-dark in their bedroom. "Oh man. You're doing sensory recall of our relationship? Our whole relationship?"
"And I needed to do it on my own," Jim agreed.
"I hear you," Blair said with a pained grimace. "I know I pushed things, Jim. I swear I didn't mean to, and I didn't know what I was doing, but I was pushing things from the first time we met. Oh man, there I was in a doctor's coat telling you to go see Blair Sandburg. And I know I can't take any of that back." Blair swallowed, his emotions threatening to spill out if he said one more words.
"You think you were using the voice on me back that far?"
"I was ordering you around pretty much from day one. I feel like a schmuck about it, but I totally understand why that makes it really hard to forget how I've manipulated—"
"Not really," Jim laughed, and the humor in his voice stopped Blair dead. "Chief, I went to see you because I knew something was wrong with that doctor act. I slammed you up against the wall, and as I remember it, you couldn't get me to let you go. If you had the power of the Guide voice back then, don't you think you would have used it to make me let you go?"
"Well... um...." Blair could feel his face warm with a blush.
"Oh."
"Uh, yeah."
Jim shook his head, and the small smile had grown into a pretty wide smirk. "Let's leave your kinks for another day. My point is that you didn't have a Guide voice then. When we were on that train protecting Derek Wilson, you definitely didn't have the voice."
"You put me up against a wall that time, too," Blair pointed out. Back then, Jim's hands holding him against a wall was the most intimate contact between them. The sex hadn't come for almost a full year.
"You have a one-track mind, Sandburg," Jim laughed as he reached over and ruffled Blair's hair. "But you didn't have the voice from the beginning. You had to do a whole lot of begging to get an invitation into my house because you didn't have the voice. You didn't start influencing my decisions until Laura McCarthy. I didn't want to believe that my hormones would lead me that far off track, but when you told me that I was losing perspective, I believed you. I would have told anyone else to take a flying fuck, so I know the voice was an influence, but I still made the decisions in that case. You didn't actually push me into anything until you made me trade in a fishing weekend for a monastery."
Blair considered the timeline. According to Jim, he hadn't been using the Guide voice as long as he thought, but he'd still been using it long enough to damn their relationship. "Still, oh man, that means that I was using the Guide voice when we got together.
"You didn't use it that night," Jim said firmly.
"How can you be—"
"I'm sure, Chief. You were so drunk that night that you couldn't have gotten the tone right if you tried all night. But my point is that I thought you were cute and flaky long before the Guide voice. What we have is built on trust and attraction, not the voice."
Hope curled in Blair's stomach, whispering promises that maybe he hadn't lost the only home he ever loved enough to make permanent. "But with Alex, it worked right away," Blair said before his skeptical common sense could check in with that gut-level feeling of hope. "And maybe you should ignore me because I really don't want to question you on this," Blair hurried to add.
"Chief, are you sure that Alex wasn't faking it? If she thought Naomi was willing to guide her maybe she played along."
Blair was shaking his head before Jim even finished. "Man, you did not see it. Alex was looking at her like she was the last chocolate in a room full of menopausal women. Naomi talked her into giving the nerve gas to a reporter in order to get him to write some big piece about how corporations are endangering human beings by producing poison and then cost-cutting on security. It was seriously freaky. They were bonding over how much they hated the system. Sister Amazons against the world, and as someone who owns a penis, I was feeling a need to cross my legs and keep my genitals covered."
Jim slowly smirked. "Ah," he said with a nod.
"Ah? Would you care to share with the class?"
"Either your mother is more persuasive than you are or I'm a closed off, suspicious bastard. We may actually have evidence that the second is pretty damn possible." Jim slung an arm over Blair's shoulder, and hope glowed warmly in the pit of Blair's stomach.
"That doesn't actually make sense."
"The Guide voice—it only started influencing me after Lee Brackett. You took the fall for me with Carolyn when you claimed you had tasted that trace evidence we found. You followed me into that restaurant to meet Brackett, and you kept your head when we found the bomb in the trunk."
Jim pulled him up, and Blair fell into place next to Jim. He might not understand what had changed, but the hand resting at the small of his back told him that he had his friend and lover at his side again. Yeah, the whole business with Alex and Naomi was messy as hell, but they'd survived messy before. "I'm still not getting the connection with the Guide voice," Blair objected as Jim steered him toward Simon. Seeing them coming, Simon crushed his cigar on the side of an ashcan and dropped it in the sand.
"That's when I trusted you, Sandburg. Before you got to use the Guide voice on me, I had to decide that I trusted you. It was my choice to turn that power over to you because you're a man I can trust at my back."
Blair lost his step and nearly stumbled. He looked up in shocked awe, and Jim was smiling at him. "Uh..."
"Eloquent as ever," Jim said with a small smirk. "I guess I haven't said that to you often enough. However, if you're right about Alex, that means she trusts Naomi." Jim thought about that for a second before shrugging. "Well, criminals aren't generally known for their great intelligence."
"Hey, that's my mom," Blair objected. Jim smiled at him.
"That would be the point, Chief. She's trusting Naomi. Naomi!"
"What about Naomi?" Simon asked as he came up to them.
"Oh man, you do not want to know," Blair said as he wondered how they were going to get out of this one with the FBI. Jim laughed before pulling Blair close to his side.
"You know what," Simon said as he headed for his car in long loping strides that Blair couldn't hope to keep up with, "For once, you can annoy someone else with your stories. Whatever it is that I don't want to know—don't tell me. You can explain it to the FBI."
Blair looked up at Jim and smiled.
"Don't look at me, Chief. She's your mother, and you get to talk your way out of this one," Jim teased, and suddenly things seemed a whole lot better than they had this morning... than they had for many mornings in fact.
"Traitor," Blair teased back. "You could at least pretend to have my back."
"With Naomi around?" Jim asked with mock horror as he open the car door. "Simon, can I crash at your place until we're sure Naomi's cleared out?"
"No!" Simon yelled a little louder than he really needed to.
"Cowards. Both of you are cowards," Blair said as he got into the back of Simon's car and shut the door.
"Sandburg, sometimes the wise man knows when to retreat from the field. And sometimes the wise man better spend his time thinking up something really clever to say to a half-dozen pissed off FBI agents."
"Don't worry about Sandburg. He'll come up with something that won't smell of bullshit until three days after the FBI leaves," Jim said with confidence as he turned to give Blair a smile. Blair smiled back and decided that as long as he had Jim to go home with, he could handle the whole fucking J. Edgar Hoover building single-handedly.
Simon just snorted as he steered them into morning traffic.
An alternative look at what happened when Alex showed up
Rated: Adult
Warning: Angst alert
The boys are a long way from united on this front, and with Alex out there stalking them, that's never safe.
Previous parts here: ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR, FIVE
Blair sat on the edge of the brick planter in front of the bank and waited. A man with a long ponytail and a leather jacket stopped at the nearby phones, and he leaned against the silver shell as he looked Blair over. Normally Blair would be either complimented at the attention or wary. Right now, he was too tired for either emotion, so he just let his eyes slide past the guy and watch the traffic flow past.
A brown sedan pulled up to the curb, and Jim was out of the passenger side before the car even stopped rolling. "Blair!" Jim called as he hurried across the plaza, his hand hovering near his weapon as he looked around suspiciously. One look and the guy with the ponytail hung up and headed down the street.
"Sandburg, what the hell were you thinking?" Simon bellowed as he got out of the driver's side.
Blair had no idea what to say to Jim anymore, so he focused on Simon. "Simon! Hey! I so did not expect you."
Jim was standing in front of him, arms crossed over his chest in a pose that Jim normally reserved for murderers. "I asked him to drive me over. I thought it would make it easier for me to strangle you in the backseat.
"Har, har," Blair joked tightly. God this hurt. He didn't know how to even react to Jim anymore, and the minute he found out that Alex was well and truly out of the picture, well, Blair wasn't sure what would happen, but he wasn't expecting to enjoy it. Oh, Jim would be polite and accommodating and make noises about remaining friends, but it was Blair's voice he was avoiding. It was hard to be friends without occasionally talking to each other.
Jim glared at him. "I'm not joking."
Obviously Simon figured something was wrong because he stepped closer. "I was at the apartment because Jim reported you missing. Sandburg, the FBI, Major Crimes and the entire department mobilized under the theory that Alex Barnes somehow got you out of that apartment. Then you call and announce you just took a drive with your mother?"
Blair cringed as he realized how stupid that sounded. "It was her last day here," he offered lamely.
"I don’t care if it was her last day on Earth. A psychopath with superhuman powers is trying to kill you." Simon's fists were clenched.
"Oh, that." Now Blair wasn't sure which of them to avoid eye contact with. Maybe he should have just gone with Alex and Naomi, even if they were getting way too comfortable in their bonding over all things female with a good side dish of male bashing.
"Oh that? Oh that?!" Simon turned an incredulous look toward Jim. "Ellison, talk to your partner before I arrest him for felony aggravation of a police captain."
Jim moved close enough to rest a hand on Blair's shoulder. "Chief..."
"I know, I know." Blair stood up fast, sliding to the side so that Jim's hand fell off. "So, if I told you not to worry, would you believe me?" he asked cheerfully.
Jim just stared at him, but Simon gave a huge sigh. "I'm not going to like this, am I?" he asked as he got that blank expression that he usually got whenever Blair brought up anything related to Sentinels.
"Probably not." Blair considered that for a second. "Okay, definitely not. In fact, you may want to go get some coffee or something... just for a couple of minutes," Blair told him. Simon's expression went from emotionally constipated to outright horror.
Jim hadn't followed Blair, and now he stood next to the brick planter, his hands hanging awkwardly at his sides. "Blair, does this have anything to do with my nightmare last night?"
Blair cast a quick look over at Simon who really didn't look like he could take too much more without resorting to his cigars. "I don't know... probably... what was your nightmare?"
"I dreamed that I was the jaguar and a giant spider kept trying to catch me in his web." Jim crossed his arms over his chest and stared at Blair through long, pregnant silences. Even the pedestrians on the sidewalk gave them a wide berth.
Eventually, Blair sighed and admitted defeat. Yeah, he had the Guide voice, but Jim had that Ellison glare. "Oh yeah, that would have been the shaman Alex hired to keep you distracted," he admitted. With Alex now firmly aligned with his mother, admitting that she had hired someone to attack Jim just felt... wrong. It felt nearly as wrong as Alex doing the hiring. She should not be trying to attack them, and they should not be saying things to the police that might get her in trouble. Only Jim was the police, and Blair really doubted that he was going to feel the same way.
"A shaman?" Simon demanded as he pulled a cigar out of his pocket. "She hired a shaman? Do none of you remember that we are living in the 20th century? I truly miss simple assault and murder cases... cases involving weapons and hired assassins."
"I defeated the spider, Simon," Jim offered soothingly, but Simon just gave him a seriously dirty look.
"Good to know. We won't have to put out that spectral ABP now."
Blair was surprised. Yeah, Simon didn't exactly love it when mystical stuff tumbled out into the middle of an investigation, but he wasn't normally this stick-up-his-ass about it. "Man, you are totally closed-minded today. What is with that?"
"What is... ?" Simon almost choked on his words. "Sandburg, I had FBI ripping down my office door wanting to know how my officer fell asleep on duty and how I managed to lose their expert witness. I'm not sure exactly when you became *their* expert witness, but apparently, as the only known expert on Sentinels, the federal government has decided that you're valuable. And since I lost you, I've had everyone from the commissioner to the director chewing on my ass." Simon was red faced, and Blair kept backing up as he poked his cigar at Blair.
"Oh."
"Oh? Oh? That's all you have to say?"
Blair nodded. "Totally. Because to be perfectly honest, the idea of the federal government even noticing me is making me a little uneasy."
Simon narrowed his eyes. "I know how you feel. So, either you explain to me what the hell made you take off with Naomi or you can go explain to the FBI."
"Simon," Jim offered softly, still playing Blessed Protector.
Then a new fear hit Blair. It hit him so hard that he stumbled back a step and nearly ended up falling on his ass. "Oh man, Jim, you don't think that they'll connect the dots, do you? I know we have everything covered, but if someone really..."
"Calm down, Chief," Jim interrupted him. He moved close, so close that Blair could smell his aftershave, but this time, Jim didn't try to touch him. "Brackett figured out I was a Sentinel long before you wrote anything, so I think there are parts of the government that have always known."
Blair's heart started pounding even harder at that thought. "You are not really comforting me here."
Jim sighed and put his hand on Blair's shoulder, but this time, Blair was freaked out enough to want even that pale imitation of the intimacy they used to share. "Simon, can you give us a couple of minutes here?"
"I should haul both of you down to the station and make you give official statements," Simon growled, but then he shook his head. As he turned away and started walking north, he called over his shoulder, "Fine, just hurry up."
Once Simon had reached the end of the block, he lit his cigar and stood on the corner watching traffic. Blair stared at Simon's back. If he didn't work at the station, would Simon want him to keep in touch?
Jim's fingers tightened slightly on his shoulder. "Blair, what happened?" Jim asked in his best soothe-the-freaking-out-victim voice.
Blair shrugged. "Alex is no longer a problem."
"Is she dead?"
"No, no way." Blair backed up a step and looked at the seriously pissed expression on Jim's face. "Do you really think I could...." He waved his hand in lieu of finishing that thought.
Instead of answering right away, Jim scrubbed his face with his hand. "I think people do what they have to do, Chief. However, short of being dead, what would keep Alex away from you?"
"Finding her real Guide." Blair walked past Jim and sat on the edge of the brick planter again. He still wasn't sure how he felt about Naomi taking Alex with her. They'd been like giggling schoolgirls when they called the reporter. Before Blair had even gotten dropped off at the bank, Alex had confessed to the nerve gas job and told Naomi where to find the gas. And his mother... his mother had been as delighted as she could be. It'd been years since he'd seen her so animated, her hands flying as she catalogued a world of human suffering all caused by corporate greed. And Alex had watched with such intensity, her eyes following Naomi's every gesture. He supposed he should be grateful they hadn't started planning their next raid right there in the car in front of him.
Jim tilted his head at Blair as though he was using his sense to check for lies. "She found her real Guide? How can you be sure?"
"This is going to be the part you don't like."
Jim sat down next to him. "I don't like any of this, and you haven't told me anything yet."
"Trust me, you're going to like this a whole lot less."
"Sandburg," Jim growled.
"Okay, okay. Geez," Blair rolled his eyes. "Alex was outside the loft, down in the street."
"And you left the loft? You didn't get me?" Jim's voice had a dangerous edge now. His body was unnaturally still, and Blair couldn't help but offer some reassurance. He reached out and rested his hand on Jim's thigh.
"She was with Mom. You weren't waking up, and I didn't have time to really..." Blair struggled to find a way to say this without implicating Alex in a kidnapping, which was odd because last night he would have been thrilled to have actual evidence that would have sent Alex to prison. "I didn't have time to think things through," Blair finished weakly.
"She kidnapped Naomi? Shit." Jim reached for his cell phone. "Knowing Sandburg luck, I should have driven Naomi to the airport last night. We'll get an APB..."
"Whoa, hey, you are running off the rails here." Blair plucked the cell phone out of Jim's hand. "Just... just let me finish."
Jim's body was tight with the need to fight, and he glared at Blair. A lesser man might have run for the hills under that withering stare. "There's more?"
"Way more than you want to know," Blair agreed. "I went down to talk to Alex, and she insisted on us going for a little ride."
"Which would explain the bruising around your wrist." Jim picked up the hand that Blair had laid on his thigh and turned it over. Thumbs gently brushed over his pulsepoint. Blair couldn't see anything, but Jim's fingers traced the path of Alex's hand where it had held him when she wrenched his arm up behind his back. The touch felt good, as if Jim was erasing Alex's violence. When Blair shivered, Jim dropped his hand, and Blair let his gaze fall to the sidewalk. The old cliché about them being friends obviously wasn't going to work because even now, even in the middle of their whole damn breakup, Blair still wanted Jim. It took every ounce of self-control to not use the Guide voice, to not order Jim to forgive him, to take him home, to make love to him. A wave of self-loathing crashed through Blair when he admitted to himself how much he wanted to do exactly that.
"She bruised you," Jim repeated.
Blair shrugged. "Probably. Okay, here's the thing—Mom came with us, and Mom and Alex started talking, and Mom started remembering her old days of protesting "the man" and how many times she broke the law, and the next thing I know, she's using the Guide voice on Alex, and Alex is following after Naomi with this starstruck expression." Blair kept his voice as professional as he could. The need to use the Guide voice was an itch he had to resist scratching.
"Naomi?" Jim sounded confused now.
"Yeah, hey, I think we have evidence that being a Guide might be genetic because Alex definitely honed right in on my mother, and that's where it gets a little sticky because I don't really want my mom getting dragged into the middle of this, but trust me, she is not just going to walk away and let someone arrest Alex. As far as mom's concerned, Alex is her Sentinel."
"Fuck."
"Not yet, they haven't, but trust me, from the looks they were giving each other, I'm guessing that is not far down the line," Blair laughed darkly, but when he glanced over, and Jim had an absolutely stricken expression. "Geez, it was a joke."
"That's your mother, Sandburg. You once went after me for even looking at her and now you're telling me to back off an international thief because she's planning on bedding your mother?"
Blair blinked as the implication of that sank in. He'd totally forgotten how Jim had reacted when Naomi first showed up. She'd rearranged his furniture, accidentally called him a pig, stunk up the house with food Jim declared toxic waste, and the two of them had still ended up laughing and sitting on a bed together. "Oh shit," he breathed. "That's right, you were interested in her, and Alex was interested in me. You were both probably picking up that the genes were compatible. Of course, obviously you weren't totally compatible with Naomi or else you wouldn't have paired up with me...."
"Chief, hold on there," Jim interrupted as he held up a hand to stop Blair. "I paired up with you because I wanted to, not because of some uncontrollable instinct."
"I know, I know," Blair quickly assured him. He did not want to get into Jim's control issues right here in the middle of the street.
"No, Chief, I don't think you do." Jim caught one of Blair's hands in his own and pulled it close.
Blair chewed on his lower lip, caught between wanting to just press into the contact and wanting to face reality. He couldn't survive many more days of the Ellison coldfront at home. "Maybe this can wait until we finish with the FBI interrogations. I really don't think I have the energy to deal with you and the FBI on the same day," Blair said softly.
"Deal with? I'm someone you have to deal with?"
"You're taking this all wrong," Blair said as he jerked his hand back from Jim.
"Chief—"
"No, look, I totally understand that this is hard on you. Like the song says, there ain't no good guy and there ain't no bad guy." Blair leaped up and started pacing. On the corner, Simon turned to fact them, his expression still closed as he puffed on his cigar.
Jim stood up. "Are you trying to break up with me?"
Blair stopped pacing long enough to glare at Jim. "Are you just trying to be thick?"
"This morning, it seems to be coming naturally," Jim said with a wry grin.
That just confused Blair even more. He stared at Jim, not even sure anymore what he was supposed to say. He tried reaching out to Jim only to get shut out. He tried to back off, only to get Jim trying to pull him back in. At this point, Blair truly didn't know what Jim expected from him.
After a few seconds of silence, Jim sighed. "Blair, I know this has been difficult."
"Which part?" Blair snorted.
"No offense, Chief, but we aren't getting anywhere here. Can we deal with one question at a time, please?"
For a second, Blair felt an almost overwhelming urge to run away because getting somewhere meant getting to a place that he didn't want to get to. But he didn't have a car or anyplace to go where Jim couldn't find him. He might as well get it over with. He sat down on the brick wall and buried his face in his hands, waiting for the bad news.
Jim asked quietly, "Are you trying to break up? Do you want to leave me?"
Blair shrugged. "Want isn't exactly the word, but I understand why you put it that way."
Blair didn't bother looking up when Jim sat next to him so close that their shoulders brushed. "That makes one of us because I'm not understanding anything here, Chief."
Blair swallowed around the lump in his throat. "I understand why you need me to leave."
"Why I...?" Jim stopped, and Blair struggled to hold in his emotions. Sometimes he really wished that his mother had just taught him to be emotionally constipated like all the other men. Jim's hand came to rest on his shoulder, and a tear escaped. "Oh Chief," Jim whispered.
"Hey, I'm a big boy. I'll land on my feet," Blair said without moving. He wanted to spring up and run away, but he wasn't strong enough to give up the feeling of Jim's hand on his arm.
"Chief, you are an idiot," Jim said in a voice that almost sounded amused.
Blair tilted his head and looked at Jim who was smiling.
Jim patted his shoulder. "I already told you that I never wanted to let you go, that I wasn't sure I was a good enough man to let you walk away without a fight if you ever did want to leave, so where did you get the harebrained idea that I wanted you gone?"
"Oh man, ever since that idiotic test you did... you haven't wanted me anywhere near you," Blair said with a frown.
"We live in the same house, we've slept in the same bed every night."
"That's just it--we've slept. And man, you are a fucking expert on not being there when you're there, if you know what I mean."
That made Jim flinch, and the amusement vanished under something that looked a whole lot more like guilt. "Shit. Chief, it's not that I don't want—"
"Hey, I totally get it," Blair said, holding up a hand to prevent Jim from going off on a good case of self-flagellation.
"No, you don't. However, if you'd shut up for a minute or two, you might." Jim caught his hand and pushed it down to where their legs touched. "I'll admit that this revelation about the Guide voice threw me a little."
"A little?" Blair snorted.
"Okay, maybe more than a little. But Blair, I just needed to think through a few things, and I needed to do it on my own."
If this was Jim's breakup speech, he definitely needed a whole lot more practice. "Define thinking through."
Now it was time for Jim to sigh heavily. "I don't suppose you're willing to just believe me when I say I'm okay with this and let this drop." Obviously the expression on Blair's face answered that for him. "You're going to worry this to death, aren't you, Chief?"
"Totally."
"Blair, I needed to use my senses to remember when we first met. I had to know how much of our relationship was real and how much was this Sentinel shit." Jim looked guilty.
Blair thought about all the hours Jim had spent alone in the semi-dark in their bedroom. "Oh man. You're doing sensory recall of our relationship? Our whole relationship?"
"And I needed to do it on my own," Jim agreed.
"I hear you," Blair said with a pained grimace. "I know I pushed things, Jim. I swear I didn't mean to, and I didn't know what I was doing, but I was pushing things from the first time we met. Oh man, there I was in a doctor's coat telling you to go see Blair Sandburg. And I know I can't take any of that back." Blair swallowed, his emotions threatening to spill out if he said one more words.
"You think you were using the voice on me back that far?"
"I was ordering you around pretty much from day one. I feel like a schmuck about it, but I totally understand why that makes it really hard to forget how I've manipulated—"
"Not really," Jim laughed, and the humor in his voice stopped Blair dead. "Chief, I went to see you because I knew something was wrong with that doctor act. I slammed you up against the wall, and as I remember it, you couldn't get me to let you go. If you had the power of the Guide voice back then, don't you think you would have used it to make me let you go?"
"Well... um...." Blair could feel his face warm with a blush.
"Oh."
"Uh, yeah."
Jim shook his head, and the small smile had grown into a pretty wide smirk. "Let's leave your kinks for another day. My point is that you didn't have a Guide voice then. When we were on that train protecting Derek Wilson, you definitely didn't have the voice."
"You put me up against a wall that time, too," Blair pointed out. Back then, Jim's hands holding him against a wall was the most intimate contact between them. The sex hadn't come for almost a full year.
"You have a one-track mind, Sandburg," Jim laughed as he reached over and ruffled Blair's hair. "But you didn't have the voice from the beginning. You had to do a whole lot of begging to get an invitation into my house because you didn't have the voice. You didn't start influencing my decisions until Laura McCarthy. I didn't want to believe that my hormones would lead me that far off track, but when you told me that I was losing perspective, I believed you. I would have told anyone else to take a flying fuck, so I know the voice was an influence, but I still made the decisions in that case. You didn't actually push me into anything until you made me trade in a fishing weekend for a monastery."
Blair considered the timeline. According to Jim, he hadn't been using the Guide voice as long as he thought, but he'd still been using it long enough to damn their relationship. "Still, oh man, that means that I was using the Guide voice when we got together.
"You didn't use it that night," Jim said firmly.
"How can you be—"
"I'm sure, Chief. You were so drunk that night that you couldn't have gotten the tone right if you tried all night. But my point is that I thought you were cute and flaky long before the Guide voice. What we have is built on trust and attraction, not the voice."
Hope curled in Blair's stomach, whispering promises that maybe he hadn't lost the only home he ever loved enough to make permanent. "But with Alex, it worked right away," Blair said before his skeptical common sense could check in with that gut-level feeling of hope. "And maybe you should ignore me because I really don't want to question you on this," Blair hurried to add.
"Chief, are you sure that Alex wasn't faking it? If she thought Naomi was willing to guide her maybe she played along."
Blair was shaking his head before Jim even finished. "Man, you did not see it. Alex was looking at her like she was the last chocolate in a room full of menopausal women. Naomi talked her into giving the nerve gas to a reporter in order to get him to write some big piece about how corporations are endangering human beings by producing poison and then cost-cutting on security. It was seriously freaky. They were bonding over how much they hated the system. Sister Amazons against the world, and as someone who owns a penis, I was feeling a need to cross my legs and keep my genitals covered."
Jim slowly smirked. "Ah," he said with a nod.
"Ah? Would you care to share with the class?"
"Either your mother is more persuasive than you are or I'm a closed off, suspicious bastard. We may actually have evidence that the second is pretty damn possible." Jim slung an arm over Blair's shoulder, and hope glowed warmly in the pit of Blair's stomach.
"That doesn't actually make sense."
"The Guide voice—it only started influencing me after Lee Brackett. You took the fall for me with Carolyn when you claimed you had tasted that trace evidence we found. You followed me into that restaurant to meet Brackett, and you kept your head when we found the bomb in the trunk."
Jim pulled him up, and Blair fell into place next to Jim. He might not understand what had changed, but the hand resting at the small of his back told him that he had his friend and lover at his side again. Yeah, the whole business with Alex and Naomi was messy as hell, but they'd survived messy before. "I'm still not getting the connection with the Guide voice," Blair objected as Jim steered him toward Simon. Seeing them coming, Simon crushed his cigar on the side of an ashcan and dropped it in the sand.
"That's when I trusted you, Sandburg. Before you got to use the Guide voice on me, I had to decide that I trusted you. It was my choice to turn that power over to you because you're a man I can trust at my back."
Blair lost his step and nearly stumbled. He looked up in shocked awe, and Jim was smiling at him. "Uh..."
"Eloquent as ever," Jim said with a small smirk. "I guess I haven't said that to you often enough. However, if you're right about Alex, that means she trusts Naomi." Jim thought about that for a second before shrugging. "Well, criminals aren't generally known for their great intelligence."
"Hey, that's my mom," Blair objected. Jim smiled at him.
"That would be the point, Chief. She's trusting Naomi. Naomi!"
"What about Naomi?" Simon asked as he came up to them.
"Oh man, you do not want to know," Blair said as he wondered how they were going to get out of this one with the FBI. Jim laughed before pulling Blair close to his side.
"You know what," Simon said as he headed for his car in long loping strides that Blair couldn't hope to keep up with, "For once, you can annoy someone else with your stories. Whatever it is that I don't want to know—don't tell me. You can explain it to the FBI."
Blair looked up at Jim and smiled.
"Don't look at me, Chief. She's your mother, and you get to talk your way out of this one," Jim teased, and suddenly things seemed a whole lot better than they had this morning... than they had for many mornings in fact.
"Traitor," Blair teased back. "You could at least pretend to have my back."
"With Naomi around?" Jim asked with mock horror as he open the car door. "Simon, can I crash at your place until we're sure Naomi's cleared out?"
"No!" Simon yelled a little louder than he really needed to.
"Cowards. Both of you are cowards," Blair said as he got into the back of Simon's car and shut the door.
"Sandburg, sometimes the wise man knows when to retreat from the field. And sometimes the wise man better spend his time thinking up something really clever to say to a half-dozen pissed off FBI agents."
"Don't worry about Sandburg. He'll come up with something that won't smell of bullshit until three days after the FBI leaves," Jim said with confidence as he turned to give Blair a smile. Blair smiled back and decided that as long as he had Jim to go home with, he could handle the whole fucking J. Edgar Hoover building single-handedly.
Simon just snorted as he steered them into morning traffic.
