From one pile to another, and yet another - Blair's research refused to organize itself neatly, and instead became a fluttering, confused group of stacks in the middle of the floor. Blair absently shuffled a small batch of clipped and stapled loose-leaf papers from the top of one heap to the next, not caring where it should go.

He'd managed to kill approximately four hours, give or take a few centuries, and was no closer to cataloguing his research than the moment he'd walked in the door of his makeshift office and locked it firmly behind him. There wasn't much comfort to be found in the empty rattle of paper, the scratchy sighs of crumpled notes sliding to the floor when the stacks grew too high. Clutter was apparently his natural state of being, and there was order in the particular chaos that infested the office.

Meanwhile, his roving and active mind craved distraction, and he found himself triangulating between the phone, the door and the window. Hand on the phone - not too long, just long enough to play over the possible conversation, which wouldn't go well, and to remind himself that self-torture of the emotional sort had dubious benefits at best. Wander to the door, check the lock. Head for the window, glance out at the street below, looking for any sign on Jim's truck, or Jim in the flesh, staring up at the window like a troll hot for Rapunzel's hair.

The street was always deserted, and that brought him right back to the middle of the floor and the circle of research, and the dismal knowledge that it all seemed theoretical and impossible without Jim.

And the project really wasn't all that important, anyway. It still held the sparkle of the unknown, the attraction of something so big it was almost beyond belief, but that shine had waned. It had taken on specific dimensions, lost its polish, and grown into something so much more necessary. There would never be a place for a dissertation on the subtext Blair had been studying.

He crawled over to the filing cabinet in the corner, yanked out the bottom drawer and heaped the closest bunch of papers in, cramming them together until the sharp corners stuck out in protest. One hard shove and the drawer was back in place, evidence safely concealed until the next go-round of sorting mania overtook him.

Which left him free to wander.

Blair sighted in on his first target, settling his hand around the phone. Jim was probably asleep. Nothing could be accomplished by raising the subject again. Maybe it would be best to -

The first ring startled him into batting the phone away. He retrieved it with a grin, chuckling at himself. "Blair Sandburg."

"Come home." Jim's hoarse command was the best sound Blair had heard all day, although possibly the worst idea.

"We should probably take a little time to-"

"Dammit, Sandburg, get in the car and come home. I don't want you sleeping in that fucking desk chair."

"It lacks a certain appeal. Comparatively speaking." Blair let the remark drop, then moved on smoothly. "You going to be awake when I get home?"

"Depends. You going to interrogate me?"

"Probably."

A long moment passed, then, "Yeah. I'll be up. You forgot your keys."

"I guess I did. Don't need them, anyway."

"Right." Jim cleared his throat. "Well, see you."

"Yeah." Blair hung up and wondered vaguely, as he was banging at the lock in his impatience to get out, how much he could shorten the ten minute drive home without killing anyone on the way.

Apprehension didn't set in until he was around the corner from the loft, getting ready to look for a parking place. As had been the pattern with most of his relationships, his common sense hadn't begun to scream at him until his heart had already taken ten giant leaps forward. He gripped the steering wheel a little harder and took an extra lap around the block, slower this time, knowing Jim was probably listening for his car.

There were going to have to be compromises. Someone would have to bend or step away. Blair knew he could do it. He was an expert at it; he'd known what he was getting into. Jim was the most difficult research subject he'd ever had, and the most cooperative, and the strange paradox only made him more attractive. He wasn't a talker. And the man couldn't change his nature, could he? Even if he wanted to.

Maybe he wanted to.

Blair snorted to himself and parked the car half a block from the loft. The wind kicked at him wildly as he entered the building and headed straight into the elevator. It would be drafty upstairs. Yet another reason for Jim to get the front door put back on its hinges, but Blair resolutely frowned the thought away. He was going to let that go. A few drafts were nothing, really, compared with the potential for misunderstanding. It was still Jim's home, Jim's call. And he couldn't have articulated *why* he needed that door put back up, or what he felt when he looked at it, or why it had nothing to do with Jim's presence, or-

He stopped, tilted his head, and stared.

The door was back in place, solid as ever.

His heart jumped a beat, keeping time with the small smile of astonishment he felt creeping up on him.

Of course the door would be unlocked; he didn't have his keys, as Jim had pointed out, in a whopping verbal clue he'd completely missed. So he let himself in, not really surprised to find Jim just inside the door, stationed like a greeter in a reception line, ready to take his jacket and backpack and make him feel welcome.

Door-hanging by way of apology, by way of explanation - yep, that was the way to go, all right. Blair ducked his head down and tried not to grin as Jim finished hanging up his things and left him standing there, back against the door, while he retrieved a beer from the kitchen.

"How's your headache?" Blair asked in a relatively normal tone of voice.

"Gone."

"You've been busy."

"I started to see your point."

"I'm sorry." Blair followed Jim into the kitchen, maintaining a respectful distance. It would be easier to cope, all the way around, if he could just manage to hover at the outside edges for a while. Safer, for them both. "Taking it slow isn't a bad idea. To sort of get things straight."

Jim took a long sip of his beer. "When I said I can't do this, I didn't mean this - us. I meant, all this talking. Analyzing. I don't want to think that hard about it."

"Thinking about this is what's getting you into trouble, y'know."

"Yeah. But I don't see that I'm going to be able to talk my way through it, either." Jim took another swallow from the bottle and offered it to Blair, who declined with a wave of his hand. "I should have been thinking last night instead."

"What's bothering me is that you seem to feel it would never have happened if you'd been thinking. As if we wouldn't have ended up in bed if you'd been operating your brain instead of your body."

"Maybe." Jim looked almost deliberately relaxed, a stark contrast to his earlier posture. No longer caught off guard, no longer wary.

"I don't think it matters what triggered things. All that matters is that there was still something left at the end when that first impulse passed." Blair paused, stopped by a thought, and he hurried to put it into words when Jim's questioning gaze landed on his face. "It did pass, didn't it? That impulse?"

Jim nodded, looking just past Blair as though seeing a phantom, an afterimage of some remembered moment. "I just don't know how much of it I could have controlled."

"Control isn't the issue. You couldn't have touched me if I didn't want it. And I did." Blair took a deep breath, making up for the moments in between Jim's words when he kept forgetting to draw in air. "The issue is what you felt today, when you saw me at the station. What you feel now."

"Come on, Sandburg. You know I'm not good at this."

"'This' is not about you protecting me, Jim, and being thrown off by that. 'This' is about you protecting yourself." As soon as the observation was spoken aloud, Blair realized he'd only just figured it out. Some researcher he was. Too caught up in his own pain to have a clue about the real issue.

"You think I don't care?" Jim asked softly, as though it were a revelation.

"I think you don't know *how* to admit you *do* care."

Jim's eyes sought his and the shutters fell, exposing the most vulnerable parts of his soul. "I care. And I know you don't need protecting."

"Bullshit. I needed rescuing. Needed it pretty seriously, in fact. I didn't page you 911 for no reason. So that's all just you, trying to make me feel better."

"You did everything right," Jim said. "You managed to keep him off balance long enough for me to get there and that's what saved your life."

"Sure, okay. But what made it worthwhile was what happened after, what happened *here*. You gave me back something he tried to take away - a sense of identity, a sense of *belonging*."

"You don't need me for that."

"No, but I wanted it with *you*. As much as you wanted it. I need for you to see that." Jim shook his head again. In the space of a second Blair had Jim by the arms, shaking him. "This isn't you the Sentinel and me your little jungle prize, Jim. This is you the man, wanting another man, and some other confusing stuff that you're avoiding by getting into that whole primal headspace."

Exasperated, Jim said, "Will you please stop being a fucking anthropologist for ten seconds?"

"As soon as you hear what I'm saying."

Jim processed the information slowly, weeding through guilt and desire to get at the central points. Blair could almost see the gears turning in his head. "I felt like I had used you," Jim said.

"More like I used you." Blair reached out, grabbed a handful of Jim's t-shirt, hauled him close. "But it wasn't because of some instinct, Jim. Don't let Lash into this. This belongs to us. Like I belong to you...like you belong to *me*."

Blair was touching him now; his hands were underneath Jim's t-shirt and they were moving across his back. The muscles in Jim's arms strained against him, wanting release, needing permission.

"Blair..."

"How complicated do you want this to be?" Blair searched Jim's skin with his fingertips, mapping muscle, feeling the fine tremors of restraint beneath. "I'm trying to make it easy for you."

"It's not easy. It won't be. Not with me." Jim closed his eyes, and Blair felt a surge of protective denial, fierce and unexpected.

"I don't need it easy. I just need it. We can work on the rest of it as we go along."

Arms lifted, folded around Blair's body, and he sighed with relief as his reluctant partner gave in just an inch, just enough to open a pathway for them.

"It'll take a lot of work. More work than you think."

"Shut up, Jim, and put that mouth to work."

"First you want me to talk, and now you want me to shut up."

Blair was pressed against him, stretched out across his body, and their lips touched. "Mostly I want you to kiss me," Blair breathed, punctuating his words with touches, providing an illustration of craving and gentle persuasion.

Jim held him there, so close they were almost one person, and opened Blair's lips with his own, pushing them apart with subtle, insistent pressure. He invaded Blair with a kiss, just as Blair had invaded Jim's life, his loft, his entire world. Blair yielded under the exploration just for a moment, long enough to capture Jim's face between his hands and guide the kiss, the slow exploration of one another, the quick chase of tongues and breath between them.

Blair heard Jim's soft, desperate moan, and his own immediate response as he arched against Jim. "You don't think this is too fast?" Blair murmured against his lips, producing a low sound from Jim. "Okay, never mind...sorry I brought it up..."

Blair found he was walking backward, propelled by the push of hands at his hips and the subtle sub-vocal commands his body was absorbing without hesitation. His heels found the stairs and levered up, one at a time, until he was overpowered by the larger frame hurrying him along and fell, sprawled across the stairs, grinning into a kiss that seemed unhurried. Jim seemed entirely too pleased to find him there for the taking.

"Off...me," he panted, knocking Jim's insistent hands away.

"Make up your mind." Jim was biting him, not at all subtly, pushing Blair's shirt aside and sinking his teeth in time after time down Blair's bared chest, worrying a nipple with gentle precision.

"Let me up!"

Jim immediately pulled back and Blair scrambled out from beneath him, snatching a fistful of shirt and yanking it like a leash. "Come on," Blair panted, crawling up the next few steps, hauling Jim up after him on hands and knees.

They landed on the floor, tangled together on the hard wood, breathing into each other with frantic intensity, entirely focused on the world created by their need. Blair ripped through the remaining buttons on Jim's trousers, freeing him to hands and eyes and quiet adoration, and found himself subject to the same kind of loving scrutiny as his own clothes were stripped away.

Somehow they managed to fight their way onto the bed, throwing coverlet and blankets aside in their haste and making room for their urgency amongst the pillows and sheets.

Blair was lifted, prepared, filled so deep he could feel it inside his soul, taken in a way that made him say Jim's name again and again as though he could make the ecstasy last by simply evoking the cause of it. He dimly heard Jim's voice, hoarse and rough and entirely out of control, saying things to him, agreeing to anything he might need just to keep him there, just to make it official, to give what they had done a permanence beyond this transitory moment of bliss.

And when fatigue made it impossible to continue without sleep, Blair sighed and stretched out, marking his half of their territory, smiling when Jim curled around him, marking his territory as well.

*****

Moonlight streamed in through the downstairs windows, vanquishing darkness with gentle illumination. Pale light filtered across the loft, highlighting the shadows in the corners, coloring the edges of a space procured for one and shared by two.

Jim sprawled across his half of what was now their bed - his and Blair's - and propped his head up on one elbow. Blair stirred underneath his hand but quickly settled in silent contentment, soothed by the possessive touch against his skin, by the gentle patterns of devotion he would someday take for granted.

It had been a long night full of stops and starts and momentary lapses, but they had reached their compromise, found the balance of taking and giving. Jim was certain nothing would be as difficult, or as easy, ever again.

With one finger, Jim traced the bruise beneath Blair's eye, defining the edges, memorizing the strangely diffuse pattern where the boundaries broke and spread into the larger expanse of skin.

Sometimes the destination was worth the journey. Not always, but in this case, Jim thought he might just have a case for making a map of Blair's heart. It certainly seemed worth it just to know his territory, to understand his responsibilities, what he was protecting.

He was familiar with the concept, but it had never been so personal before.

A soft sound drew his attention; his name drifted out among the expressions of Blair's dreams like a prayer. He leaned down, pressing his lips to Blair's temple, leaving a gentle kiss to ease the path into peaceful sleep.

He where he was meant to be, and that was all that mattered.

End

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