With a nod, Blair let himself out of the office and went to collect his backpack. The curious emptiness of the office only made the place seem more lonely, as though Blair were the sole object out of place in a neatly ordered curio collection. The loft would be empty, too, with its broken door and its broken furniture, and Jim wouldn't be there, and Blair knew he didn't want to be anyplace Jim wasn't, right at that moment.
"You heading home, Blair?" Taggart brushed off his tie and slid the remains of his sandwich - crust and lettuce - into the trash can.
"Simon's orders. When Jim gets done, will you tell him I'll see him at home?"
"He's done. I just saw him a few minutes ago."
Blair experienced a curious sensation of vertigo, not unlike the sensation of falling in a dream. His mind slipped sideways while the rest of him kept plummeting down. "Where'd you see him?"
"Outside the men's room."
With a growing feeling of urgency, Blair picked up his backpack. "Thanks," he called back, already out in the hall and moving, faster with each stride. No way he could have described it, or explained it, but that knot in his stomach was twisting, tightening, closing fast.
By the time he reached the restroom door, he was sure some sort of weird intuition was at work, and because of it, he pulled up short outside, staring at the gold letters marking the room.
He pushed the door open with one arm and went inside, assaulted immediately by two things: the stale, false scent of cleanser and air freshener; and the sight of Jim, standing at the mirror, arm outstretched against the sink, head tucked against his arm. His face was twisted with pain.
"Jim!" Blair dropped his backpack. He went through the room, checking each stall hurriedly, before returning to Jim's side, before placing a hand against Jim's cheek. "Jim, what is it?"
"My head is killing me." The words emerged almost as a moan, a gritty sound of agony pressed out through clenched teeth.
"Is it a sensory spike, or something else?"
Jim shook his head slightly, eyes screwed shut. Tension arched the lines of his body. "Headache. I'll be all right."
"Oh, man." Blair had heard Jim dismiss his own pain many times, but never so unconvincingly. "Listen, we have to get you out of here, get you home."
"I'm all for that." Jim straightened, wincing as though the slight movement hurt him. He opened his eyes and fixed Blair with a weary look. "The sooner, the better."
Blair scooped up his backpack and held the door open; Jim shouldered by him. They passed through the hallways and down to the parking garage in silence; Jim gave a tight, false smile of greeting to each person who spoke to them. Blair moved closer, closing the gap between them.
*****
Jim sank his head into his hands, trying desperately to block out the sounds of traffic and the other assorted noises of the city. Blair had hijacked his keys before he even got near the truck and he'd surrendered without protest. The presence of Blair beside him seemed to cast a circle around him, an invisible barrier pain couldn't cross.
"Almost there." He could feel Blair's eyes on him, feel the weight of the worry in that gaze. It pained him worse than the headache, and the tension at the back of his neck sprang back full force.
"I'm all right. It's probably just stress."
"I'm not so sure. You're not prone to headaches. Not like this. Maybe if we can figure out when this started and what triggered it, I can find some way to help."
"Can we just drop it for now?" Jim made an immense effort, picking up his head and smiling at Blair. "Really. It's better."
"Right." Blair's lips thinned into a straight line. "You know, this would be a *really* bad time for you to shut me out."
"I'm not shutting you out." The words escaped so quickly that Jim blinked with surprise. Almost automatic. The denial tumbled off his lips gracefully with the confidence of repetition.
Worst of all, he was doing the one thing he'd sworn to himself he wouldn't do. He could feel his heart shutting down, sense his emotions recoiling into a tight ball in the pit of his stomach, hidden underneath doubt and frustration and heavy regret. It made him cringe.
"Can this wait until we're home?" he asked.
Blair turned his head, looked at Jim, and Jim met that intense blue scrutiny with calm acceptance. "Sure," Blair said finally, nodding once for emphasis, returning his gaze to the road ahead. "Sure, Jim."
Jim closed his eyes again, letting the frown manifest itself, trying desperately not to allow his feelings to take control of his better judgment. He willed himself to stay still and quiet and not reach out and yank Blair into his arms.
It wouldn't serve any purpose. The damage was already done. It was in the set of Blair's jaw, the tilt of his head.
They were silent together for the rest of the journey, for lack of words or fear of them, Jim wasn't at all sure. Blair hustled out of the truck as soon as they were parked, sticking doggedly by Jim's side as they ascended the back stairs to the loft. Jim allowed it, permitting the businesslike tug at his shoulders as Blair pulled Jim's jacket right off his body and hung it up. "Go sit down," his partner directed, and Jim moved to obey.
It had come on them by degrees, this command-and-response scenario. Blair spoke, Jim listened, and his body acquiesced without so much as a muscle twinge in protest. Blair's voice was a smooth override to Jim's objections much of the time, enough to overcome reluctance and a host of other conflicting feelings. Hell, Blair had only been living there a few weeks, barely long enough to settle in, and already it seemed as though he'd been there forever, taking root and spreading out in every direction across Jim's life.
Jim tugged the blinds down over the long windows, filtering out the bright daylight until only pinstriped remnants could be seen along the edges. He gave himself permission to sink into the couch, sighing into the cushions like a man too tired to be bothered with breathing.
Blair was making tea in the kitchen. Jim closed his eyes and listened to the scratching of the spoon through the sugar bowl, the faint beginnings of a howl as steam pushed through the tiny hole at the top of the teakettle. It felt wrong to have Blair doing this for him, impossibly backwards and inside out, just like everything else that day.
Footsteps drew near. Through lowered lashes, Jim watched Blair move stiffly around the room, noticed the way Blair cast a momentary glance at the gaping hole where the door should be. Blair deliberately picked his way through the mess surrounding them without looking, without seeing. It made Jim crazy. It took him back to that place he'd been last night, that place of anger and fear and insane need.
"I'm going to call that place down the street. You know, the guys who patched up the windows of the laundromat when they had that break-in. Maybe they can get the door fixed on short notice." Blair handed Jim the hot mug of tea.
"It'll keep. I'm armed. Nobody's coming near this place without me hearing."
"I know." Defensive, and just a little fast.
Jim sipped the tea and looked at Blair, who was looking at the door again. "Come over here and sit down."
"Just let me-"
"Come on, Sandburg, sit. Rest a minute, all right?"
The soft request froze Blair in his tracks, held him in place. Blair lifted a dishtowel and twisted it between his hands like a talisman. Jim waited and tried not to give in to that same impulse, that need thrumming through him to capture, enfold, protect, deny.
Finally, Blair came closer and settled down on the opposite edge of the couch. "How's the tea?" he asked.
"The tea is perfect. What I can't figure out is how you knew I wanted tea, when I didn't know it myself." Jim sipped again; the ache in his brain was receding one sip at a time.
"Good question." Blair smiled. "A lucky guess."
Jim set down the mug and leaned forward. "How's your back?"
Blair hesitated. Jim sought his eyes but they had dropped down, gone somewhere distant. "Sore."
"I should be making you tea." Jim smiled.
"I can make my own tea." Blair folded the towel in neat rectangles, matching the lines of the linen with matching lines on the opposite side. "So, the review. Is it done with?"
Jim nodded. "I've been dissected, analyzed and grilled ten different ways. I don't think there are any other questions for them to ask me."
"Nothing you couldn't handle, right?"
Jim shifted sideways on the couch, moving back into the corner. "The usual. No big deal." He lifted his hand and covered his eyes, rubbing lightly. The tired ache was beginning, the one that always followed his monster headaches. He listened to Blair, catching the tiny exhalations of breath, sub-vocal grunts of pain, as his partner settled his unduly battered body against the pillows. The sound of it forced words from him. "You should be stretched out somewhere, resting."
"I'm resilient." Blair cracked a grin that didn't match his tone.
"I know." Jim lowered his head and locked his eyes to Blair's. "Indulge me, all right? Take a nap or something."
Blair's gaze shifted up for a fraction of a second, toward Jim's bedroom. Jim's eyes drifted closed as Blair stood, hovering beside the couch just a moment longer. Slow footfalls led away to Blair's bedroom, followed by the sound of the curtain pushed aside, then dropped.
Jim exhaled slowly. The wreck of his home nagged at him, exhorting him from the couch and to his feet. One item at a time, he straightened the furniture, settled displaced cushions into alignment. When Blair emerged, everything would be back to normal.
*****
Meditation wasn't helping. Nothing was helping, in fact, and that tiny ball of tension was forming again in Blair's stomach, churning and growing in size. He shifted restlessly in the bed, determined to ignore the thoughts keeping him alert, but his brain refused to turn off.
Shutting down his thoughts - acting with his body instead of his mind - was the source of the problem from the very beginning. He supposed if he were honest with himself, he would have to admit he didn't really want to think about it any more. Jim, however, wasn't going to make it easy on either of them.
He went through the scale of "if only", counting backward from the least important of the list. If only he hadn't given in to the need to be touched. If only it hadn't seemed more important than anything else, in that moment, to feel alive and whole and to belong. If only he had stopped, insisted they talk, insisted they sort things out before he'd let Jim kiss him, soothe him, devour him. If only he could muster up some sort of regret.
If only Jim didn't have enough regret for the two of them combined.
Two hours ticked by, marked by a check of the clock every few minutes. He dozed for a while in a kind of twilight awareness, comforted by the sounds of Jim rummaging in the living room, by the smells of coffee in the kitchen. Without much effort, he could picture Jim puttering around, cleaning up, putting things right. He could practically see him bent over the coffee table, tweaking the corners until it hit a perfect 90 degree angle, looking up in surprise as David Lash burst through the open doorway and shot him twice in the chest, killing him without effort.
Blair's shout was muffled by his pillow, mercifully; the half-awake hallucination burned in his mind like the afterimage of the sun. "Fuck," he muttered, flipping over on the bed and hurling his pillow across the room. It thumped against the wall as it landed.
He knew what would happen next, just as it had happened the night before; knew what would happen inside him, knew what his reaction would be. The curtain veiling his doorway was yanked open, revealing Jim on the other side.
"You all right?"
"Yeah, fine. Leave me alone." Blair hurled the other pillow; Jim caught it.
"Blair." Jim said his name, making Blair aware of ghosts from the darkness of fever dreams, evoked by the simple sound of the word. When Jim said it the night before in this place, the place that was both of theirs and no longer just Jim's, they had been so far across the threshold of belonging to each other that they had been lost.
Blair stood up, took a step toward Jim, and stopped with surprise when Jim backed away, a single step. Jim's arm curled up toward his chest, pressing the pillow against his body. "I...I heard you shout."
Blair's heart climbed into his throat, making a break for it, but he pushed it back and spoke with measured calm. "Just a dream, Jim. Really, it's cool."
"How about some dinner?" Jim tossed the pillow back and retreated gracefully from the small room. "We could order out, if you'd like."
"Better than your cooking," Blair grumbled. Jim said nothing and Blair could feel more words rushing to the surface, straining to be spoken, to fill the unaccustomed emptiness between them. "I mean, what is there in the fridge? Beer? Leftovers?"
"There's some kind of brown mold in a container, Chief, but I'm not sure what it was when you made it."
"Oh, man, what was that?" Blair grinned. "Can't remember. We can take the smell test, see if it rings any bells."
"I'll pass, thanks." Jim tossed Blair a bottle of water. "What are you in the mood for?"
Blair froze momentarily in the act of twisting off the cap to give Jim a startled look. The implications sorted themselves out instantly in his brain and he gave the first answer that came to mind. "A little conversation would be nice."
Something passed over Jim's eyes, a chilly, remote look of haunted desperation. "I'm talking about food here, Sandburg."
"I know, Jim. That's the problem."
Jim opened a drawer and took out a stack of take-out menus, crumpled and stained with soy sauce and ketchup. He set them on the counter without turning around. "So talk."
"That's not quite what I had in mind. Conversation. I talk, you talk, I talk, then you talk some more. Not me spilling my guts."
"Fine. We'll talk." Jim rested his hands on the counter and leaned forward, stretching tension out of his shoulders. "After dinner. All right?"
"Sure." Blair cast an eye toward the doorway. It drew his attention constantly, like a flash of something just at the edge of his vision. "I vote for Chinese."
"Egg rolls and curried chicken?"
"Works for me." Blair grabbed the water and wandered into the living room. "You cleaned up in here."
"Having things out of place was driving me crazy." Jim picked up the phone and dialed.
"Yeah, I can see how that might make you a little nuts," Blair said softly.
*****
The food arrived half an hour later. Blair picked through the boxes with feigned enthusiasm, eating two eggrolls and a little rice and finding he was full. He watched his partner eating and noted that Jim's appetite had vanished, no doubt chased away by the prospect of their little after-dinner chat.
The bruise on Blair's cheek was throbbing a bit. He poked at it experimentally, wondering if it was less noticeable than the day before. He looked up to ask Jim and found Jim staring at him, eyes unfocused and fixed on Blair's face. That look made Blair's throat go dry. It transported him to the bed upstairs, to the sensation of Jim's hands on him the night before, to his own soft, panting breaths as he succumbed to that touch.
"Hey, Jim." He said it quietly; Jim was very far inside his own private space, somewhere in memory.
With a start, Jim snapped back into the moment, face undergoing a swift and stunning transformation as he composed his expression. Blair watched him speculatively, but said nothing more.
"You done?" At Blair's nod, Jim picked up the paper plates and the boxes and carried them to the kitchen.
Blair's attention returned to the wide-open doorway almost without conscious awareness. His eyes roved the splintered wood around the lockplate; the image of the door bursting open was permanently imprinted in his mind like an unwanted tattoo. He rose off the couch and grabbed up the phone. "I'm going to call about the door. Where's that card for that construction company? Did I put it in the kitchen drawer?"
Jim's terse reply pulled Blair up short. "It's after five. Just leave it until tomorrow."
"I think...I don't know. Let's call tonight. I'll sleep better if we get the door hung."
"I told you it would keep. I'm here; no one is getting past me. Lash is dead. There's no threat." Jim paused. "I don't want anyone else in the loft right now. Not tonight."
Blair snorted softly. "No kidding. It doesn't even seem like *you* want to be here."
"What the fuck does that mean?"
"There's only so many things you can do to avoid me and you're doing a hell of a job."
"Christ, Sandburg. I'll call tomorrow about the door."
"It's not about the fucking door, Jim."
Jim looked away.
A small hiss of breath, drawn in on the heels of disbelief, and Blair was in motion. Jim backed into the kitchen, trapped, with no avenue of escape. Blair pulled up short just at the edge of the counter, his determination bleeding out of him in a rush. He felt pale, half-opened, vulnerable to what was coming next but unable to avoid the collision. "Don't do this. Don't shut me out."
With a shudder, Jim lurched forward, then stopped, hands clenched into fists. "You don't understand."
"Then talk to me. Tell me what's going on." Worry added palpable weight to Blair's plea.
Jim fastened a hand to the edge of the counter and dragged himself a step closer. He extended an arm, hesitant, reaching for Blair, but Blair stepped away, and it felt as though he'd been falling forever but hadn't noticed, hadn't been aware until just that moment, when he struck the ground. He caught Jim's gaze and held it, ready to confront the impossible, frightening thing that was spinning out of their control.
Jim leaned against the countertop, braced there like a battered tree in a storm. "I'm not sure I can put it into words."
"Try."
"All right." A muscle in Jim's cheek twitched, heralding his slow, deliberate answer. "Last night. I think...I think I was fucked up. Out of control."
"Meaning what?"
"Meaning..." Jim shook his head, frustrated. "I think it was more than just wanting you." His voice dropped low. "I wanted you too much to stop, too much to...to care."
"Are you saying it was a mistake? That last night shouldn't have happened?" Blair looked at him defiantly, hoping to be contradicted.
"You don't understand."
"I'm listening, I'm really right with you, I'm just waiting for the rest."
The shadows were deep inside Jim's eyes, turning them black. "It wasn't a mistake. I was just...I was afraid for you, that I couldn't get to you in time."
"Like I wasn't afraid?" Blair chuckled, a sound without joy. "Oh, man. Like I wasn't out of my *mind* with fear? Like I wasn't paranoid and freaked out and totally out of fucking control? Do you think that means what happened between us wasn't real?"
Jim's jaw tightened even further, clenching so hard it looked as though it might shatter at the slightest touch. "I don't know."
Blair closed his eyes. "Okay." He willed himself to take a deep breath, not to react, not to show the thousand gut-twisting emotions churning through him at just that moment. "I need a little more information, here."
"Goddammit, Sandburg, why the fuck do you have to analyze every fucking thing?" Jim's voice was low and exasperated, but tinged with desperation, a sound Blair understood all too well.
"Because you just told me that you aren't really sure why you wanted to fuck me, Jim, that you don't know *why* you did it, and I feel kind of compelled to ask you why the hell you did it *anyway*." Bitterness infested the explanation, but Blair didn't mind; it produced a satisfactory look of shock and dismay on Jim's face, and so it served its purpose.
"Something happened to me in the warehouse when I found you. I smelled Lash on your clothes, on your skin. I could almost taste him on you."
"So?"
Like the words were being forcibly dragged forth, Jim spit out the rest. "I had to...had to know you weren't...that he hadn't touched you, really touched you. I had to be *the only one*."
Blair stared at him. "So what you're saying is that it was your protective instincts, nothing else. It was primitive, right? It was out of your control." A flush of desire heated his skin; he was both repulsed and attracted by the thought of Jim's instincts in overdrive, all focused on him.
"No." Jim stressed the word, and it seemed to set him in motion, bringing him to Blair. He accentuated his point with his fingertips as they brushed over Blair's lips. "I think instinct triggered my reaction. I might not have acted on what I felt if I hadn't smelled his scent on you."
"I don't have to tell you how fucked up this is, do I?" Blair was still as a statue under Jim's hand. "How incredibly fucking wrong this feels now?"
"It's not wrong. But maybe it happened for the wrong reasons."
Blair rose from the chair and retreated a step. "So you're saying it had nothing to do with your feelings? It was all because of Lash, and not because-"
"That's not what I mean. I wanted to make things right again, but I couldn't. I just fucked it up." Jim sighed, an eloquent sound full of pent-up tension. "What I'm saying is that maybe we should back off, just...see what's happening. Maybe just...take it slow."
Somewhere inside, Blair could feel himself coming undone, losing definition. He shook it off, desperate to get beneath Jim's hooded look of self-protection. "We already crossed the line, man, there's no point in trying to go back from here. There isn't anyplace to go but forward."
Jim only looked at him, the strong muscle at the side of his jaw twitching lightly, lips pressed together, giving nothing away. Until subtly, softly, he closed his eyes and spoke.
"I can't do this. Not now."
Devastation swept through Blair's life in an instant, taking everything he'd begun to build on this new foundation and wiping it away, leaving only the smallest traces, faint indications of disaster. Blair nodded once, communicating an inner agreement reached and held to. "You'll still need help with your senses. I'll stay for a while, until we can get a handle on some of the things you're still having trouble with."
"Blair," Jim began, but Blair was stuffing things into his backpack, notes and stray pieces of clothing and a book here and there. "Where the fuck are you going?"
"My office. I need some time to think. I'll find a place as soon as I can and maybe we can keep going with the project once we've got some distance from what's happened."
"For Christ's sake, Sandburg. I don't want you to move out." Jim rubbed three fingers over his forehead. "Why the melodrama?"
"This means too much to me to fuck around any more." Unvarnished, with an edge of hurt, the truth slipped out at maximum velocity. Blair's feelings shattered against the barriers Jim had thrown up, keeping him at a distance. "I'll see you later."
It felt wrong to leave, strange to pass through the open doorway and into the night without Jim there, but it made sense to Blair that the feeling of emptiness was exactly why he should keep moving, keep going. Not running away, just gaining some distance.
He listened for footsteps behind him as he waited by the elevator, counted off the moments he'd been waiting with a sense of expectation that Jim would stop him.
It wasn't until the elevator doors closed behind him that he gave up that tiny bit of hope.
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