Chapters 6-10
Rated: Adult
Warning: Puppy Play, Dom/sub, bondage

Written for the Moonridge Auction, Beta'ed by Kitty_Poker1 and Slashpuppy and Jane Davitt (Thanks ladies!)

CHAPTER SIX
***
Jim opened the door to the loft and dropped his keys into the basket. "Let me put my military records back upstairs," Jim said to Blair before he headed up the stairs. By the time he came back down, Blair was sitting awkwardly on the edge of the couch.

"Hey, I know you're still all pissed over the whole scene at the post office, but I need to talk about limits here," Blair said quickly before Jim could say anything. "And before you even start in on me, yes, I do have limits. Yeah, I crossed some line in that head of yours, but I am not into the discipline scene. That is totally not a turn-on for me, so don't think I'm just going to bend over and take it like a man, because a man does not bend over and take it. Well, men bend over and take it all the time, and in terms of sex, I'm happy to bend over and take it, more than happy, and lots of men bend over and take a spanking, but not this man. Except for when you do the sexy spankings, but you know full well there's a difference between fun spanking and discipline."

Jim waited through the babble, his earlier aggravation quickly turning to amusement as Blair verbally flailed.

"You done?" Jim asked.

"I don't know. Am I helping or hurting my case here because I really don't want to ruin this relationship."

"You done now?"

"You're enjoying this," Blair accused him.

"I always enjoy torturing you," Jim nodded, "but watching you torture yourself is a new experience."

"Har, har. Look, if this is the big breakup speech, you really suck at it."

Jim blinked, completely caught off guard as the conversation darted left. "Blair, this is not the breakup speech. If it makes you feel better, I could chain you to the railing to prove it." Jim could imagine Blair's cock hardening under that threat, so Blair's moan wasn't a surprise.

"Man, you're giving me emotional whiplash here."

"Okay, let's lay things out in a straight line," Jim said. "One, we are not breaking up. Two, other cops will learn to deal with you. You do not change just because they're arrogant assholes. You haven't in the past, and you won't because of me."

"But..."

"No," Jim said tersely. "I saw how you reacted at the Espinoza scene, so if you're acting like pod-Sandburg, it's because you're trying to cover for me, and I am big enough to handle my own shit."

"Hey, your shit, fine. But you shouldn't have to take shit because of me."

"So, if someone calls me gay, it's all your fault?" Jim asked, confused.

"Okay, Jim, I am awed by your learning curve, but that first time, that was really your first time, wasn't it? I mean, I know my ass is awe-inspiring, but you almost killed me with how much time you took prepping me. I came twice before you actually got in me, and while I am not complaining at all, and that night will always rank right up there with Susan Carmelli letting me touch her breasts for the first time and Frank teaching me the joys of leather, you were not gay before we got together, so if you're getting shit on this front, it is so my fault."

Jim sighed. He couldn't win with words, that was for sure. The kid had him outgunned on that front, and his time in the military had taught him to choose his terrain before engaging.

"Strip," he said as he headed toward the bathroom.

"Hey, did you hear what I said about not being into discipline?" Blair called after him.

"I heard you, Blair. Now don't make me repeat myself," Jim called back before he shut the bathroom door and bought himself a few minutes of privacy to gather his thoughts. Shit, the kid could carry the guilt of ten men, but Jim wasn't about to let him keep carrying that weight. He just needed to shift the debate a little, find a way to really reach Sandburg, who clearly had stopped listening a few exits back.

And the worst thing was that Blair wasn't totally in the wrong. The days of taking a cop out back and beating the gay out of him were gone, but reactions like Simon's, or, even worse, like the asshole on night shift that talked shit about Blair whenever the man walked in the room.... yeah, they weren't uncommon. This wasn't Pollyanna world. Jim sighed as he washed his face and gathered his thoughts.

Jim gave Blair enough time to hesitate, strip, and then worry a bit before he came back out. Sure enough, Blair stood in the middle of the dim living room, his arms crossed awkwardly over his chest as he stood there naked.

"Have I told you lately how much I love the way you follow orders?" Jim said as he closed the distance. Blair was already half hard.

"I think we were working on the way you didn't love the way I didn't," Blair said. Then he bit his lip. Jim could almost taste Blair's need to repeat the limits speech.

"Trust me, Chief," Jim whispered.

Blair froze, his blue eyes focusing on Jim for a half second before he spoke. "Always," he said softly.

Jim went to the toy chest and pulled out a set of padded cuffs with a long center chain. Behind him, Blair breathed harder. Jim climbed halfway up the stairs and draped the cuffs around the stair-railing. Wordlessly, Blair held his hands up, and Jim reached down through the bars to lock the cuffs in place. Only once he had the restraints in place did Jim pull up on the center chain, shortening it until Blair had to stretch and then using a padlock to keep the chain short.

Jim came back downstairs, and Blair was breathing hard, his cock full and needy as he flexed his arms.

"Much better," Jim said.

"Oh man, fuck," Blair breathed, his words stolen by the chains, just like Jim knew they would be.

"So beautiful," Jim said as he considered the sight. He returned to the toy chest and pulled out a large vibrator. He kept his back to Blair as he lubed it up. "Turn around, Chief." Jim listened as Blair shuffled around to face the stairs. "Legs apart."

Jim turned and Blair was facing the stairs, his shoulders corded and his legs spread so far that he stood on his toes. "So very beautiful," Jim murmured.

"This isn't actually solving anything, and as punishment goes, it's not really your best effort. I mean, if this is how you punish me, I'm not really likely to change. In operant conditioning, the punishment should actually be something that the subject..." Blair's words ended with a gasp when Jim pressed the toy to his entrance, slowly pushing as the tip of the toy opened him. "Fuck, yeah."

"It's not punishment, Blair. If I were punishing you, I wouldn't touch you for a week. I'd chain you up and bring myself off as you watched, hard and aching. I'd buy you one of those chastity devices, and lock up that cock of yours until you learned your lesson."

Blair groaned, his head falling back and resting against Jim's shoulder. Interesting. Well, that obviously wouldn't be very good as punishment either. Blair was so hard now that he danced on his toes, trembling as Jim pushed the vibrator in until it slipped into place, the thick bulb buried in Blair's body.

Jim stepped away and considered the sight. "I think that backside of yours needs warming," Jim said softly. He ran a finger up Blair's spine and tangled his fingers in the long hair. Blair made a happy little grunt, so Jim took that as permission.

Going back to the toy chest, Jim pulled out a flogger, running the soft leather tails over his hand before he returned to Blair.

"Such a beautiful body. You'll be even more beautiful with a little color in those cheeks." Jim ran the flogger over Blair's hip and then he slipped his hand around Blair and feathered the flogger over Blair's cock and then up his stomach to his hard nipples. Blair panted.

Backing away, Jim flipped the remote for the vibrator now buried in Blair. Blair squealed and jerked on the chain, and Jim brought the flogger down against his skin before he could catch his breath. Blair rocked forward, gasping.

"Fuck, yeah," he mewled. Jim brought the flogger down a little harder, watching lines of rosy skin pinken under his touch. With a groan, Blair rocked forward with the force of the blow and then pressed back, thrusting his hips helplessly in the air. Jim brought the flogger down twice, matching marks on the right and left hips.

Blair jerked, dancing on his toes and nearly lifting his own body as he fisted the chains that held him in place. Jim draped the flogger over his own shoulder and stepped close, pulling Blair's squirming body to his own.

"Lovely," Jim muttered as he nibbled on Blair's neck. Blair flopped his head to the side, but he couldn't control the squirming, so Jim just held him tighter.

"Man, come on. Just a little more, fuck, please."

Jim reached around and traced the hard cock that bobbed needily in the air.

"Maybe I don't want you to come yet. Maybe I like hearing those noises you make when you're desperate," Jim whispered into Blair's skin as he tasted up the side of Blair's neck and then ran teeth over the sensitive skin. Blair trembled. Feeling the orgasm building, Jim reached in his pocket and turned off the vibrator.

"Fuck. If this is punishment, I'll never do it again. I promise to be annoying. Fuck, I'll be outright obnoxious to every cop I meet. Please, just come on, finish me," Blair begged.

"I like hearing you beg," Jim admitted as he stepped back. With a single movement, he pulled the flogger from his shoulder and swung it in lazy arcs. Right-left. Left-right. He crisscrossed the strokes so that they fell across Blair's back in a lattice pattern of pink flesh against white.

"So very beautiful, and so very mine. If you ever want to leave, you'll have to move out, not give me your address, because I will never willingly give this up. I would follow you and promise you anything to keep this beautiful body under me." Jim admitted his weakness in a whisper that made Blair tremble. Then he brought the flogger down on the warm skin just a little harder.

Blair lost all words now as he groaned and mewled with each hit, rocking with the motion of the flogger. Switching arms without breaking the pattern, Jim reached in his pocket for the vibrator controls, and he thumbed it to high. Blair made a keening sound and broke the rhythm of the flogger as he nearly pulled himself off the ground by the chains.

Jim paused, letting his hand rest on Blair's warm back, and the man just sagged, a half sob escaping when Jim trailed fingers down to the round of his ass. Blair's head hung down, his hair a curtain hiding his face, and Jim pressed himself to Blair's back. Immediately, Blair's head came up and flopped back to rest on Jim's shoulder.

Jim tossed the flogger to the couch and let his hands skim Blair's body: chest, stomach, hips, nipples. He ghosted his fingers over every part but the one demanding attention, but Blair only closed his eyes and trembled and waited with his mouth open and gasping.

Jim reached up and ran a thumb over Blair's lower lip, and blue eyes lazily blinked at him. Oh yeah, Blair was in that place where his body was Jim's, pliant and warm and totally submissive.

"I love torturing you until you bliss out. I love seeing your cock fill with need. I love slipping into you. I love physically overpowering you and watching you just yield." Jim pulled the plug out as he whispered the words. The angle was awkward, but Jim just bent at the knees some as he unzipped his pants.

As quickly as he could, he slipped on a lubed condom and then slid into Blair. Slowly, Blair's eyes drifted closed again, but his fists stayed wrapped around the chain, and his arm muscles strained as Jim slowly angled his hips and moved in and out in small thrusts. He wrapped an arm around Blair's waist, and braced his other hand on the staircase as he continued the slow torture.

"I love that you want to protect me," Jim admitted roughly. That one hurt to admit, but Blair deserved the truth. He leaned forward to get better leverage and thrust harder. Blair gasped and arched his back, one bare foot landing on top of Jim's shoe.

"But more than that, I love being strong enough to protect both of us," Jim said as he finally gave up on words and focused on driving into that warm, willing body. He shifted one arm so that his hand spread over Blair's stomach and then slid down until he could stroke the hard cock. Blair muttered something that might be curse words or Sanskrit and then his whole body tightened.

Jim held on, his own cock screaming for release as Blair tightened and jerked until Jim couldn't control his orgasm and he came. Breathing heavily, Jim now leaned forward on Blair, letting his chin rest on Blair's shoulder as he held the base of the condom and slowly pulled out.

"Fuck. You're going to kill me. Of course, I'll die happy, and lots of tribes believe that how you feel when you die determines your afterlife, and in that case, just go on and kill me because an afterlife of that.... whoa."

"I think you'll survive," Jim said as he took the condom to the garbage. Disarming Blair of his words obviously had only limited success.

"So, are we just going for the delay and distract method here?" Blair finally asked as Jim climbed the stairs to unlock Blair's wrists. Jim paused.

"I think I made my point."

"Okay, if you did, I lost it somewhere between mind-blowing and fucking amazing."

"You don't think I'm gay," Jim said as he reached down and unlocked Blair's wrist from the padded cuff.

"Oh, I think you've proved that you're down with your bad, gay self. You're ready to go out and start earning your own toaster," Blair joked. Jim sat down on the step and looked through the railing as Blair rubbed his wrists and leaned against the stairs.

"That's it," Jim said. "You think you earned your toaster by converting me. And because of that, you think you have to somehow protect me from it."

"Not to brag..."

"You didn't," Jim interrupted. Blair blinked up at him.

"I had more than one hand job in a bunk in the army. Had one guy go on his knees for me, and I think that was the first time I realized that having power over someone was a huge turn on. When he sobered up, he looked at me with these wide, fearful eyes because I knew something that would cost him his career. The army might overlook a drunk guy getting a blow job, but they aren't going to overlook an officer going on his knees to give one and orgasming just from the pleasure of a cock in his mouth. I had the power to hurt him, and when he realized that I would protect him, when he looked at me with this worshipful expression, I seriously considered putting him on his knees again."

"Oh man, but I thought--"

"Before you, there weren't any men who interested me enough to try them out, but I noticed men. Blair." Jim stopped and sighed. "If they give me shit because I'm gay, it's because I am. It's not your fault or your responsibility."

Blair ducked his head, his expression disappearing behind a veil of hair.

"I've seen how the cops down there treat gays."

Jim headed down the stairs and dropped onto the couch. "Yeah, I know. I know some of them have been shitty to you. I know what those cops at the Espinoza scene did was so far beyond reasonable you could have sued their asses off." Blair wandered by, and Jim caught his wrist, pulling the naked man down on top of him.

"No naked butts on the couch or carpet, Sandburg," he play-growled as he held Blair on his lap. Blair rolled his eyes.

"You and your house rules, Ellison. You only have that one so I'll have to kneel on the damn floor."

"Yep," Jim agreed. "That and because I don't want shit on my shit." Blair twisted around and poked at Jim.

"Blair, seriously. If someone has a problem with me being gay, that is for me to deal with."

"Man, you accuse me of being naive?" Blair asked incredulously.

Jim tightened his jaw. "Sandburg," he warned.

"Hey, just because you can sit on me or gag me, and I am well aware that you are very capable of doing both, that doesn't change the facts of life, man."

"But it's not your responsibility."

"I know. But if I can do something to stop the rumors from spreading..."

Jim shook his head. "I'm not saying we should make out in the break room, but I'm not willing to have you act like a pod-person. If someone has a problem with you or me, it's my work, and I'll handle it."

"It'd be easier for me to just do my ride-along time and then fade away, man. I mean, they'll forget about me, and then no one has to wonder why you have the gay hippy riding along, not that I'm actually gay because Susan Carmelli's breasts still occasionally come bobbing through the dreamscape. And I do mean bobbing." Blair mimicked the motion of large, jiggly breasts.

"Should I be jealous?" Jim asked with a smile.

"No way, but we do not have to share that fact at the office. And that means we do not have to go making it all obvious. Hell, I'm sure Simon would give birth to kittens or something if he ever found out, and that would so not be a pretty sight."

"Simon knows," Jim answered. That made Blair stop, his hands frozen in air as he stared down at Jim. Silence dragged out the seconds.

"No fucking way," Blair finally breathed in shock.

"I told him we were together before your house even burned down. I'd be surprised if Brown and Rafe didn't know. And yeah, some of the patrol officers are going to act like assholes, but their opinions don't matter to me."

"But your job--"

"Blair," Jim tried again. This talking business was so much more tiring than just chaining Blair up and tormenting him until he agreed to anything. "Some people don't like me because I was in the army. During my time in Vice, there was this one asshole who lost every requisition I ever filed. It turned out, he'd gotten booted out of the special forces. There's always going to be someone who doesn't like me because of who I am. I'm not going to change, and the idea of you changing drives me crazy."

"I don't want to make your life harder. Oh man, I just..." Blair's words trailed off, but Jim waited. "I just feel like I'm going to end up being more trouble than I'm worth. I mean, yeah, I have all these needs, but what am I doing for you?"

"Blair, you do a lot for me. I don't know anyone else who would trust me to play with their body the way you do."

"Funny," Blair snorted. "I could give you a list of a dozen guys who would pay money to do for you exactly what I do for you."

"People would pay money to annoy me?" Jim fended off the finger that poked him.

"Fucking with me when I'm sated is not fair," Blair complained lazily.

"The military taught me to press the advantage," Jim admitted. "And let's get one thing settled. You do not protect me."

"So, I should go fairying around your desk asking if you're going to give me a good flogging tonight?" Blair blinked innocently, his tone dripping sweetness.

"You really are a little shit," Jim sighed.

"I don't--"

"You should be yourself," Jim cut him off. "Your same old pushy, arrogant, spouting weird shit self. No more pod-person impersonations."

"Jim--"

"And trust me to be able to take care of myself. The one thing here that is really making me angry is the idea that you're acting like I can't take care of myself. I can. And I don't give a shit what assholes down at work do or say; and I don't like that you're trying to change how we act toward each other," Jim said as he curled his hands around Blair's stomach and pulled him close. "I like resting a hand on your shoulder or watching you rip into some case. And I do not handle change well."

Blair sighed, and Jim could feel the slight movements in the body that now leaned back into him. "You really are an alpha dog. Man, you can't let this go, even if I'm right, can you?"

"You're not right," Jim countered.

"Of course I'm not," Blair answered flatly. He took a deep breath. "Right, so tomorrow Mutt and Jeff get the full Sandburg treatment. Yeah, that's going to be interesting."

"After the shit you gave that idiot at the front desk, harassing them should be easy."

"Man, he started it."

"Yeah, but I came in and finished it for both of you," Jim pointed out.

"You're going to choke on your own alpha one of these days, Ellison. Man, I would love to do a testosterone study on you. I bet your numbers are like... whoa." Blair held up his hands to show just how much testosterone Blair expected to find.

"Yeah, yeah. Right now, I just want to get some dinner and watch a little television."

"Dinner sounds good; I'll do the salad," Blair said as he tried to stand. Jim held on for a second, making Blair surrender and lean back into him before Jim let go and gave Blair a little swat on the hip.

"Go on then, get that salad started, and I'll throw on some stir-fry beef."

"Bully," Blair laughed. Somehow, when he said it, Jim really didn't mind the insult. He stood up and followed Blair's naked ass into the kitchen, admiring the view when he bent down to grab the lettuce. Blair might not believe he did all that much, but Jim couldn't imagine his life without Blair anymore. As Jim watched, Blair wiggled his naked ass in the air.

"And don't even think about sitting on the kitchen chairs without pants," Jim threatened.

"Yes, oh great Lord Ellison," Blair snorted.

"Smartass."

"You're the one staring at it, so you'd know," Blair shot back.

CHAPTER SEVEN
***
"Simon didn't give you any clue?" Blair asked again. Jim turned the corner and pulled into the precinct garage.

"It hasn't changed since ten minutes ago when I didn't know why Collins and Shay were coming here."

"Come on--you have to be just a little curious. I mean, why trek all the way up here?"

"I am curious, Chief. That's why we're here... to find out why they came."

"So, any speculation?"

Jim rolled his eyes. He remembered the recruits back from his army days doing this same thing: endlessly guessing about orders, and they never guessed anything right. "I speculate that I'll find out when we get up there," he said dryly.

Blair didn't answer. "So, we have an agreement?" Jim asked as he pulled the truck into his parking space and switched it off.

"I'm going to be obnoxious to everyone I meet, and if anyone tries to bring that back on you, I'm just stepping back and letting them. Whereupon, you will defeat the entire station, if need be, with your super seekret, one-handed, special ops karate-chop." Blair paused before dramatically adding, "With your other hand tied behind your back." He then nodded wisely.

Jim pursed his lips thoughtfully. "Works for me," he agreed as he got out of the truck.

"That was sarcasm, asshole."

"I recognized it. After living with you for two weeks, I'm pretty damn familiar with it. However, if it gets you to back off the pod-person impression, I'm okay with that. I don't need defending."

"Hey, I am just trying to deal with this whole alpha dog thing you have going on. I mean, what you say does not always make a whole lot of sense to me, and this is me accepting that you have this really weird view on the world."

"*I* have a weird view?" Jim demanded. "I'm not the one who drinks algae for breakfast." Jim rested his hand on Blair's back and steered him around a group of patrol officers leaning against the wall near the elevator. Blair punched the button.

"Yeah, but I'm going to be alive and kicking long after your arteries have clogged and cracked."

"But you'll still be drinking algae, and I'll go out with a smile on my face." The elevator doors opened, and Jim nudged Blair inside. Just as he was following, he could hear one of the patrol officers whisper something about a freak. Jim gritted his teeth.

"Whatever," Blair answered lightly, obviously not hearing the snide comment.

"Face it, Chief, on the weird scale, you're off the chart." Jim hit the button for the sixth floor, his shoulders now tight as he restrained an urge to go back and give the officers a little life lesson.

Blair made a hand puppet of his fingers, rolling his eyes and making the universal gesture for 'talk talk talk.' "Just because I'm not into alpha games and eating enough junk food to corrupt my body and public belching..."

"I've heard you belch," Jim interrupted.

"In my own home. Have you even heard Henri? I mean, why is it that making obnoxious noises in public and scratching makes a male more male?"

"I thought you were the student of human nature, Chief," Jim teased. "Men belch and hit each other and fight for status--alpha dog games, as you like to call it."

"Hey, I am just as much into status as the next guy. I mean, give me a competition and I'm there. I just don't want to be top dog all the time because way too many mutts bite at your tail. But I play a mean game of basketball, and I cheer for my Jags -- and look at my office." The elevator doors opened, and they headed for Major Crimes.

"Okay, I'm not even touching the basketball comment, Shorty, but let's talk about your office. Your office is a storeroom with your name written on a piece of paper and taped under the room number."

"You totally missed the point. Jim, grad students do not get offices. Not even associate professors get an office. Nope, they're all sharing one big, sterile communal space where they have one cubbyhole, access to the copier, and a desk they share with a half dozen others. But me? Oh man, I have my own space with a lock on the door."

"What?"

"You thought all the TA's got their own offices? They'd need a dozen new buildings for that. It's just me. Just because I'm not all alpha does not mean that I don't do things my own way, which in this case means getting a key from the department chair to do inventory, setting up shop, and then just sort of announcing to everyone from campus mail to the phone directory people that I'm installed in that office. By the time anyone figured out what I had done, they didn't have the time or energy to try and undo it."

"Okay, this actually explains a lot," Jim said as he stopped in the middle of the hall to consider Blair through narrowed eyes. "So, that chair that has gravitated to the side of my desk?"

"Give it up, man. I'm already moving in on you, and I'll be entrenched like crabgrass before you even notice me. I'm telling you, big guy, you gotta watch out for us betas. We're tricky little shits."

The conversation had taken them into the bullpen and Henri stood by his desk, openly smiling at Blair's announcement.

"You better watch out there, Ellison. Sounds like you got some weeds moving in on you. I hear they make a spray for that."

Jim raised one eyebrow and glared at Brown long enough that the other detective at least pretended to hide his smile as he retreated behind his desk.

"Ellison," Simon bellowed from inside his office. Jim glanced over to where Collins and Shay stood by Simon's window and paused as Blair dumped his backpack by the desk and came trotting back.

"Into the valley of death rode the six hundred," Blair muttered under his breath. Jim rested a hand on Blair's shoulder, pushing him gently as Blair hesitated.

"No pod-people or that chastity device is going on the credit card," Jim whispered.

"Someone really needs to explain the concept of punishment to you," Blair whispered right back. Then he smiled and walked into Simon's office with his head held high.

"Jim," Simon offered a brief greeting.

"Ellison, Sandburg," Collins nodded.

"Hey. So, what brings you guys to town other than the wonderful weather we're having?" Blair flicked a glance toward the windows where rain slithered down in sheets.

"It's not any better back in Tacoma," Collins pointed out. "And that's a problem because we have another crime scene, or we did before this rain."

"Where?" Jim demanded as he stepped closer to Simon's desk. Simon handed him a paper, and Jim tilted it to one side as Blair moved close and started reading it over Jim's shoulder.

"Roy, south of the Fort Lewis," Collins answered.

"The sheriff over in Roy is refusing to admit that this is the same bomber," Simon said, "and since the train would have ended up in either Fort Lewis or McChord Air Force Base, the FBI is coming in on this one."

"And no one wants to admit that this is the same signature as the Switchman," Collins added. "I figure we'll get another note eventually or the forensics will come back with the same type of explosives. That should be enough to get us into the Roy crime scene, but until then, we're officially uninvited to the party."

"And when they do link the bombings, we're looking at an official task force, Jim. I'm sorry," Simon added. "I'll pull a couple of strings and see if we can't get you on the task force rather than letting them treat you like a witness."

"Great," Jim said sarcastically.

"Yeah, but we have one advantage they don't," Shay pointed out as he leaned against the windows. "They're all out there sifting through train wreckage, and we have the kid."

"The kid?" Simon asked. Jim looked up sharply at Shay, trying to decide just how to take that comment.

"Me?" Blair asked.

"Hey, you called it. You said it'd be at the fort, and if the bomber hadn't had a stroke of really bad luck, that bomb would have gone off in soldier-boy central instead of taking out a whole lot of trees and peppering some houses over in Roy with shrapnel."

"The engineer died," Jim said as he reached that part in the report. The engine wasn't hauling any cars; no one knew why it was on the tracks at all. However, it was heading straight for Fort Lewis with enough explosives to make a real mess. It seemed wrong to describe it as lucky that the train prematurely exploded just past Roy, Washington. One dead and three injured.

"Man, that doesn't sound very professional. Maybe this isn't an expert," Blair said softly. "Maybe we just assumed that too quickly. I mean, maybe we're making all kinds of assumptions here."

Jim shook his head. "Explosives are tricky. Even an experienced munitions office can get caught by materials that are old or have impurities, and buying on the black market means he's not getting the best quality."

"So maybe the engineer was the Switchman," Simon suggested.

"That'd be handy. Unfortunately, I think it'd be a little too handy. More like wishful thinking," Shay said as he stared out the window.

"I think we should run with the assumption that the bomber wasn't on the train until the FBI can track down the body's identity, and given the shape the body was in, that may take a while. A long while," Collins added. "Which is why we came back to the only lead that has been of any help--Sandburg."

"Sandburg was a lead?" Simon asked.

"He came up with the whole transformation theory, and that predicted the bombing at Roy. If he did it once, he can do it again," Collins explained. Jim could feel Blair press into him for a second, and he could imagine the blind panic rolling through Blair. Before he could open his mouth, Blair had slipped into character and shook his head.

"But the transformation ends at that fort, man. Jim becomes an officer. He's changed, and if the Switchman is focusing on movement or change, that should be the end of the line." Blair started pacing the small space, shoving his hair back away from his face absentmindedly.

"So, it's over? This nutjob is done?" Shay asked, and he didn't even try to hide his disbelief of that one.

Blair shook his head. "No way. I mean, yeah, it's harder to predict now. Where could he go from here? Maybe he doesn't consider the job at the fort done since he missed it, but man, no way is he getting near there now. And he's still fixated on Jim. Focused on Jim's military service, so the next big transformation was Jim's time in Peru. I mean, abandoned in the jungle by your own superiors and going native? That's, like, huge. Transformation central."

"So, you want us to contact the Peruvian embassy?" Simon asked dryly. The tone made Jim glare at his boss, but Blair just shook his head, a frown of concentration on his face.

"He wants to. He wants to go to Peru, but that's too far. He's too into control, and he can't control conditions in Peru like he can here. He's comfortable here. And after the last bomb went off prematurely, he's totally feeling insecure in his manhood."

"Premature going off does that to a man," Shay pointed out.

"So, he can't stop," Blair kept going, ignoring the interruption and the innuendo. "If he does, this is the last thing he does... this is the thing that gets remembered. So, he has to find a new target, and one close enough that everyone who saw him fuck up sees that he can do it right."

"So, something big," Jim said quietly. "Something big, and something connected to me."

"Yeah," Blair agreed softly.

"Maybe we should get a profiler in on this," Simon suggested.

Blair nodded. "Totally. We should totally get a profiler in because this is way over my head."

"We brought everything we have. If we could get a room set up..." Collins suggested. Jim noticed the box at his feet.

"The FBI is going to set up in Tacoma," Simon answered, not exactly denying them working space, but not inviting anyone to unpack and stay, either.

"The transformation is done there. He followed Jim from Tacoma to the fort, but Jim disappeared into covert ops land after that," Blair said quietly. He didn't say more, but Jim could follow that train of thought rather easily.

"If he can't follow my trail to covert ops, he'll have to pick up my trail when I come back. He'll focus on when I changed from a soldier into a cop." Jim's guts tightened at the new targets: this station, the Two-Nine where he'd worked Vice before transferring to Vice at Central Precinct, the loft, the police academy.

"Which would take the nutjob right here to Cascade," Shay concluded. "That sounds like a lead I can work with. So, let's get the stuff set up before the FBI figures out they're all chasing the wrong tail."

"Simon, can we use the blue conference room?" Jim turned to Simon. The man had a slightly bewildered expression, but that vanished under the cold facade of a slightly annoyed captain.

"Don't let me stop you." He rolled his eyes.

"Chief, you mind showing them the blue conference room?"

"The one right next to Sam's office?"

"That's the one."

"Man, you guys better watch out for her unless you enjoy having limbs verbally amputated, because Sam is one seriously scary lady," Blair laughed.

"Some woman cop don't scare me," Shay snorted as he watched Collins pick up the box.

"Oh man, she isn't even a cop. If she had a gun, I would so hide because that forensics lab with all its explosives is plenty scary enough." Blair was still telling the story of Sam and the flash powder and the new officer from Traffic when Blair led them out of the office. Jim watched while Blair grabbed his backpack from Jim's desk. When they headed out the Major Crimes doors, Jim turned back to Simon.

"Sir?" he asked.

"The kid is not a profiler. If you're basing your investigation on his crackpot theories, might I remind you that he is the one who suggested that some people grind bones and ingest them in order to gain the strength of the animal? If you'd believed him then, you would have been running around underground health food stores looking for someone selling ground dinosaur-bone tea."

"It was an idea."

"It was a bad idea."

"Yes," Jim agreed. "It was." Simon stared at him for a second. "It was one of a hundred bad ideas Blair comes up with in an average day. He doesn't have an edit button, so crazy ideas fall out his mouth as fast as he can think them. But he also has some good ideas in there."

"And how exactly do you plan to tell one from the other?"

Jim sighed. "Simon, I'm a detective. If I can't figure out a legitimate lead from just one of Blair's weird ideas, I don't deserve my badge. And this time, he does seem to be onto something."

"Something," Simon repeated.

"Simon," Jim said. God he hated this; he hated not knowing the words that would make Simon understand Blair. "He's helping."

"God, Jim. I just wish I could trust your judgment on that."

Jim stared at Simon for a second. Even in his worst time, right after he'd transferred in from Vice, right after his partner and a ransom had gone missing, right after his divorce from Caro, Simon had always trusted him. Now Jim felt the cold rock in his stomach at the idea that he had lost that trust for a reason that had nothing to do with his judgment.

"If you don't trust my judgment, maybe it's time for me to transfer to another department."

"Fuck. Where the hell did that come from?" Simon demanded.

"If you can't trust me..." Jim stared out into the bullpen, shutting down his feelings.

"I trust you, Ellison. I just think you're thinking with your dick. You did that with Plummer, too. Everyone in this department knew that you two were a disaster waiting to happen, but you went walking right into it with a smile on your face."

"This isn't about Caro," Jim said. He turned to face Simon. "This is about Blair. If you want me to work here, you need to understand that Blair is part of the package."

"Four weeks, Jim. Blair is part of the package for four weeks."

Jim looked at Simon for a second, for some reason surprised by a fact he already knew quite well.

"Then for the next four weeks, he deserves a little respect."

"That's funny, Ellison. I thought you were the one who always said respect had to be earned."

Jim looked at Simon for a second. "He stuck in there with the gay-bashing case, and ever since then, he's done a lot more than observe."

"And he comes up with ideas like grinding dinosaur bones for tea. Jim, you need to consider how much trust you're putting in the kid. If you want to sleep with him, that's your choice. But you keep trying to get him to fit in down here, and he's the proverbial square peg in a round hole. He doesn't fit, Jim." Simon turned away and focused on his computer, the conversation clearly over. Jim couldn't even come up with a response to that, so he just turned and walked away.

CHAPTER EIGHT
***
The minute the truck door slammed shut, Blair started.

"Okay, who pissed in your cornflakes?" he asked as he pulled the seatbelt across his shoulder.

"Drop it."

"Yep, that's a mature response," Blair said as he crossed his arms, but at least he did, in fact, drop it.

"Jesus, Sandburg. How much aftershave did you put on this morning?" Jim demanded as he rolled the window down. He coughed as he caught car fumes from the garage.

"How much... what?"

"Next time, use less if you plan to ride in the truck," Jim said as he started the engine and backed up a little faster than he needed to. They were meeting Collins and Shay at Pat's Cafe for lunch, but right now Jim just wanted to go home and nurse his headache.

"What are you doing?" Jim demanded as he steered out into traffic. Blair just stared at him.

"Oh, I'm observing," Blair said after a second of silence where he seemed to be at a loss for words. Jim looked over suspiciously.

"What exactly are you observing?"

"You losing your mind," Blair huffed. "Well, that and your arms. When you get frustrated, you flex your muscles. Man, you have seriously impressive arms."

"You're leering at my arms?" Jim asked as he glanced towards Blair, confused at the sudden turn in tone; Blair had gone from aggravation to sly lust in under one second. Even now, Jim found himself occasionally speechless over some of the things that fell out of Blair's mouth.

"Oh hell, yeah," Blair agreed enthusiastically. "I take any opportunity to ogle your arms. Your arms and your back," Blair corrected himself after a heartbeat. "Man, when you pick something up, those muscles ripple under your skin and that is seriously sexy. It's like a courtship display, like with a Sage Grouse, only instead of ruffling your feathers and puffing out your neck to show how white it is, you're flexing those muscles to show your strength. Very dominant. Very, very sexy."

"Sandburg, I don't even have an answer for that, but if you're comparing me to a bird, you might want to consider that I haven't tried out that new paddle yet," Jim threatened.

"And we're back to the fact that someone needs to explain the purpose of punishment to you because you're obviously a little confused." Blair smiled impishly. He gave his body a little shimmy of invitation before the abandoned topic caught his attention again. "Of course, lots of the guys do it. For Rafe, it's all about his clothes. He's showing off that family money of his. And Simon. Oh man. Do not get me started on Simon."

"Not a topic I want to discuss right now," Jim warned.

"All that shouting? Stereotypical dominant behavior. Like a bull elephant defining his territory by trumpeting. That whole bull pen is like one giant lek."

"Blair," Jim sighed. He'd long ago given up even pretending that he knew half as much trivia as Blair. Jim usually found it amusing how many rare and esoteric ideas the man had floating around in his head, especially when he could be so incredibly naive about other things. But right now, he was just too tired; too tired and too damn cranky.

"A lek: a courtship ground where male birds establish territories and then try to lure girl birds to them with their impressive dances and displays." Blair pushed ahead, ignoring Jim's frustration. "That bull pen is all about you guys showing off your big, bad, dominant selves. Even the name. Bull pen. Man, you could not find a name with more testosterone than 'bull.' Ever since Hemmingway did his whole male-centric writings with all those images of bull-fighters and the running of the bulls, American society has associated bulls with strength and virility. Although, to be fair, the imagery of the bull as strength does go back to Greek times."

"I don't think I'm trying to attract a girl," Jim pointed out dryly. Blair gave him a wicked grin.

"You're not, huh?"

"No, Chief, I can honestly say that I'm not at all interested in any of the girls."

"Not even Sam? Beautiful, strong, intelligent," Blair teased. Jim raised his eyebrows.

"Temperamental, aggressive, and potentially psychotic," Jim finished the list. He had to admit that he was more than a little amused watching Sam make a play for Blair. The man had flirted and smiled and then danced away from her and right back to Jim's side.

"Not your type?" Blair asked.

Jim shook his head. Clearly, he was not getting out of this conversation. "No. I go more for the strong, intelligent, submissive types."

"Really? I never would have guessed," Blair said with a twist of his hips.

"Strong, submissive, silent types," Jim amended himself.

"Whatever," Blair dismissed as he reached down and casually ran a hand over his own thigh.

"I'm driving here, Junior."

"Yeah, and you've got a headache, too."

"What?"

"You have got to learn to process this anger. I have no idea who pissed in your cornflakes, but you can't keep pushing yourself, ignoring the pain." Blair took another conversation detour, ending up exactly where Jim did not want to be.

Jim narrowed his eyes and turned into the parking lot of the cafe. "I'm fine," he insisted tersely.

"Sure you are, but, man, you would be so much better if we just took a little break. Let's tell the guys that we need to head back to the loft for a bit." Blair reached over and let his hand rest on Jim's arm.

"Sandburg, I have a case to work here, so if you want to get your rocks off, I can drop you off at the loft and give you and your right hand some quality time together." Jim watched as Blair's face flashed with indecisiveness, an emotion he didn't often see on his lover, but then Blair set his face and tightened his hand.

"From the way you're wrinkling your forehead, you have a killer headache that is pounding away behind your eyes, and you aren't going to be worth spit if you don't take care of yourself."

"I'm fine," Jim snapped as he opened the truck door.

"Just keep pushing yourself. Just push until you drop from an aneurysm. See if I care when you're dead," Blair muttered sarcastically.

"You're nagging like a wife, Sandburg," Jim warned. "And since you are definitely not my wife, I might do something about it that I wouldn't have done to Caro." Jim got out and slammed the door. The cafe was crowded, a line out the door, and Collins and Shay stood near the end. Jim took a deep breath and tried to push away the frustration and general unease that had followed him all day.

"Hey, I'm not Carolyn. Whatever you want to do, I'm game for it," Blair said as he followed, obviously not willing to back down, even in the face of threats.

"I do not play when I'm angry, and right now, I'm angry," Jim said as he closed his eyes for a second.

"I've seen you angry, Ellison. This ain't it," Blair said with confidence as he leaned against the truck next to Jim. "This is more like frustrated or maybe you doing the macho stoic thing. Being much saner than all you alpha guys, I'm not really sure why you would hide pain. Or actually, I intellectually get it in a one-upmanship, power-dynamics kind of way; I just don't emotionally get why you would hide the fact that you're hurting."

"Sandburg," Jim said quietly.

"No way, man. You've seen me in so much pain that I'm totally out of control."

Jim closed his eyes and listened to the air, and had one of those strange flashes where he could swear he heard Sandburg's heartbeat just slightly out of tempo with his own. Control. It was fine for Blair to be out of control, but not for him. Jim tightened his jaw as his heartbeat pounded so loudly in his head that he couldn't hear past the rhythm.

Blair fell silent, but a warm hand touched Jim's arm. Blair's hand rubbed a small circle and slowly moved up, tracing a bicep and then stroking Jim's shoulder.

When Blair's hand disappeared, Jim opened his eyes to see Blair staring at the line. Jim glanced up to see Collins and Shay both looking at them. He stood up and put his hand on Blair's back, reestablishing the touch.

"Subtle, Jim," Blair said softly, but at least he didn't pull away from the touch as Jim pushed him toward the cafe.

"I don't believe in subtle; I'm an alpha dog." Jim set his jaw and braced himself for an interesting lunch with the Tacoma detectives.

Despite Jim's fears, which sounded suspiciously like Blair's fears, neither Tacoma cop mentioned the touching as they got their table. The conversation focused on the lack of a pattern, the fact that none of the Tacoma sites were significant to Jim, and their inability to connect the Tacoma sites in any other way.

Blair picked up a piece of fried cheese from the basket. "The city is about Jim, but the places have to be connected to someone else. Maybe we could get the post office's employment records from the time Jim was living in Tacoma."

"You obviously haven't been riding long," Shay dismissed that idea as he shoved an entire potato skin in his mouth.

Jim watched the other diners as he let the case-talk float by him. An overweight, middle-aged woman in a T-shirt with a picture of a bulldog on it kept darting looks towards Shay. Two businessmen sat at a table, each on a cell phone to someone else. Their waitress was hitting on a college kid who had a book on feminist literature strategically placed on his table. Jim had played that trick more than once during his undergraduate days.

"What?" Blair asked Shay.

"The federal government is not good at sharing with us lowly peons," Collins filled in.

Two kids played swords with French fries while their mother cut up food for their little sister. A dark-haired businesswoman in a tan jacket read the menu. Two Indian men laughed far too loudly for the public setting, and the older couple sitting next to them kept looking over disapprovingly.

"But if the FBI is involved, they're the federal government too, so maybe this task force thing could work out."

"You really haven't been riding long," Shay laughed. Jim gave up watching the crowd for a second to focus on the other detective.

"The FBI would have a better chance with the records than we would," Jim sided with Blair.

"Better than ours, sure, but they're still about as likely to get them as I am to make third base with Sister Mary Margaret who feeds the homeless down on South 72nd."

"Even thinking about making out with a nun is like hugely bad karma," Blair complained softly and Shay laughed.

"Not as bad as actually doing it," he shot back. Jim reached over Blair and grabbed one of his fried cheese sticks as he now divided his attention between the room and Shay.

"If it's a task force, we can ask them to look for those records." Jim narrowed his eyes and dared Shay to contradict him.

"Ask away," Shay shrugged. "I just don't think you're getting them."

"Maybe we're asking the wrong people," Blair said quietly. "I mean, people file lawsuits all the time. The post office has, like, hundreds of them filed each year: equal opportunity cases, wrongful termination, sexual harassment."

"Good for them; your point?" Shay asked.

"So, we look for a public record. If there were lawsuits filed against that courthouse, the list of witnesses should give us a pretty good idea of who might have worked there," Blair pointed out triumphantly.

The table fell silent. Jim ignored the trucker ordering a hamburger and focused on the Tacoma detectives. Collins was smiling, and Shay just looked stunned.

"Shit," Shay finally announced to the table. "When I get a ride-along, I get stuck with some snot-nosed kid with acne who wants to play with my handcuffs. You got a good one, Ellison."

Jim nearly choked on his coffee when his imagination provided him with an image of Sandburg and his handcuffs.

"Yeah, laugh away, Ellison, but you have no idea. One asked where we locked up the hookers. He just wanted to have a quick look, and maybe a little privacy."

"I remember him," Collins nodded sympathetically. "That kid was a sex offender in training. Even the hooker in booking demanded that I get him away or make him pay her fee after he ogled her until he was damn near coming in his pants."

"Yeah, exactly. The captain hates me."

"Hate's a little strong. Maybe just... dislikes," Collins suggested to his partner.

"Next time, I'm demanding that I get the ride-along with the college degree who actually has something intelligent to say on the case."

"I could do a search through the legal database on campus," Blair suggested, smiling under the praise. "I know the database pretty well since I did some work on legal access and the poor. Besides, sometimes I just read the Supreme Court transcripts because those guys are incredibly mean for judges."

"If you want to trade," Shay joked to Jim, "I have a good bottle of whiskey and a season ticket to the Mariners I'll trade you for Sandburg."

The wave of emotion that crashed into Jim left him unable to answer the joke. He'd never been jealous, and the feeling now wasn't exactly jealousy, but Jim knew he'd cut off his right arm before he'd trade Blair. He knew a small part of him wanted to cut off Shay's right arm for even suggesting it.

"No deal." Jim frowned as he scanned the room again.

"Okay, I have to ask," Collins said. "What has you so twitchy? When the special-ops trained veteran starts looking at a lunch crowd like he expects to find a terrorist plot in the middle of the room, I get a little nervous."

"It's nothing," Jim said as he forced himself to stop focusing on the other tables. The waitress appeared with their meals.

"Jim?" Blair asked quietly.

"Just a headache," Jim answered as he focused on his hamburger. The talk disappeared as everyone ate, but Jim couldn't keep himself from watching the crowd. Something teased at the edge of his awareness and his headache was getting worse. Eating as fast as he could, Jim waited impatiently for Blair to finish.

"We'll meet you back at the station," Jim said the moment Blair put the last bite of chicken in his mouth. Blair blinked at him in surprise as Jim stood up and dropped a couple of twenties on the table.

"We're on an expense account here; lunch is on us," Collins argued, but Jim just got a hand under Blair's elbow and started pulling him away.

"We'll... um... see you at the station," Blair excused himself as Jim pulled him away from the table.

"What is your problem, Ellison? I mean, yeah, I've accused you of being a caveman a time or two, but this is a little too caveman for even you."

Jim tightened his jaw as he pulled Blair out into the daylight and started a fast walk toward the truck that left Blair trotting to keep up.

"Man, what is UP with you?"

Jim stopped at the passenger side of the truck. "I don't know. I just have this feeling, and it's the kind of feeling I used to get right before someone started shooting at my unit."

"Sixth sense?" Blair asked, irritation vanishing under the fascination that now lit his eyes.

"No." Jim glared. "When you have a lot of training, sometimes the environment will have some danger signals that are too subtle to actually identify."

"So, you're picking up danger?" Blair asked. He looked around the parking lot as though he expected to find whatever had Jim's guard up.

"I don't know. I just know I want you out of here. We'll call the station from the loft, but right now, I want you somewhere secure." Jim opened the passenger side door and started physically pushing Blair to get in.

"Oh, wait, I need to tell the guys that I'm teaching class tomorrow morning. I'll check the legal database right after class."

"Sandburg," Jim threatened when Blair started struggling to get past him.

"There they are," Blair said as he gestured toward the cafe door. "I won't even be out of sight. I'll walk over there, tell them, and come right back."

"I'll tell them when I go back to the station after getting you home safe."

"Man, you are being a completely unreasonable prick. And they're watching you manhandle me, so if you expect me to have any credibility at all, please, just let me say two sentences to them, and then you can do your weird alpha dog thing and drag me away to the loft."

Jim sighed as he glanced over. Collins and Shay were talking near their car, and both men were glancing over curiously.

"You're probably just doing some strange territorial thing because Shay tried to buy me."

"Blair," Jim sighed and then backed up a step, letting him slip by. Blair jogged over to the Tacoma cops, and Jim walked to the back of the truck to watch. A breeze blew, and Jim sniffed the air. He trotted towards Collin's car, toward the sharp smell.

"--get you that tomorrow," Blair was saying as Jim drifted closer.

"Do you smell that?" Jim asked as he walked parallel to the Tacoma car.

"Smell what?" Collins asked as he exchanged a look with his partner.

"Jim?"

Jim knelt down and looked under the back of the car. Red numbers clicked off. Nine... eight... seven... Jim stood up and grabbed Blair's arm.

"Bomb!" he yelled as he took off for the truck, practically dragging Blair along with him. Shoving his partner to the ground behind the truck, Jim threw his own body over Blair and waited the half second before the car exploded in a deafening blast.

"Shit," Blair breathed, and Jim could feel him tremble even as pieces of the car fell back to the ground with clangs and thuds. Jim sat up with his weapon drawn as he tried to identify any threat in the area. Blair's heartbeat pounded in his ears, and he could hear the wail as the fire made the metal stretch and bend.

"Jim?" Blair asked, his voice booming in Jim's head. "Collins and Shay?"

Jim pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and dropped it on Blair's stomach as he continued to cover the growing crowd.

"Call it in to Major Crimes," he said tersely. Cars had braked on the road, and people stood by their doors staring at the fireball. Jim could hear car radios and cursing and people using cell phones to call 911. He could hear the cracking of glass from the fire. He could hear Shay cursing up a blue streak.

Nowhere could he find any danger. Slowly, Blair's voice went from a bellow in his head to the normal, if slightly panicked tones, of his observer.

"--haven't seen Collins and Shay.... I don't know.... He's right here." Blair held the phone out, and Jim lowered his weapon without putting it away.

"Yeah?"

"Jim, what the hell is going on?" Simon demanded.

"I think we're getting close," Jim answered as he finally looked back toward the explosion. The side of the cafe was scorched black, and the car was an unrecognizable pile of burning scrap. In the distance, sirens screamed. Looking past the smoke, Jim could see Collins and Shay near the cafe door. Collins was bare-chested, and he was holding his shirt to Shay's side. Blood was soaking into the blue fabric. "I think we're getting way too close for the Switchman."

CHAPTER NINE
***
"It's NOT part of the pattern," Blair practically growled. "I'm not trying to say it is."

Jim sat next to Blair in the waiting room of Emergency.

"Exactly. Your pattern doesn't hold up." Simon declared as though winning some victory. "Jim, the FBI is sending an investigator down. The connection between this and the other Switchman cases isn't strong enough to get them to release information on the Roy bombing, but they are interested in looking over our information on this one."

"Great," Jim answered dryly.

Simon took his unlit cigar out of his mouth and tucked it into his jacket. "Some parts of this just don't make sense, though. How did you know the bomb was there?"

"I could smell it," Jim answered for the third time.

"You smelled odorless explosives?"

"Oh man, you were complaining about my aftershave."

"Your hygiene is not the point here, Sandburg." Simon glared for a second. "Jim, this is going to sound strange to the investigators. Too strange."

"It's not strange. It's heightened smell. Man, I study heightened senses, or at least I did before your cops pissed me off so that I insisted on riding along on the gay-bashing case, and smell is the most common manifestation. A lot of people have smell combined with taste, but if Jim had heightened taste, I think I would have noticed something. I mean, we had Thai the other day, and someone with heightened taste would have scraped his own taste buds off."

"Sandburg. Another time," Simon insisted, his jaw clenched.

"If you're right, how do we get this to go away?" Jim asked as he leaned back and really studied Blair. He was almost bouncing, the energy winding him up about as tightly as Jim had ever seen him. For a second, he had a nice little fantasy about taking out his cuffs and restraining Blair until some of the energy drained off. No wonder the guy could constantly eat, not work out, and still stay in relatively good shape. He just bounced.

"Go away?" Blair demanded incredulously. He blinked at Jim in clear horror. "No way. This is important. I mean, imagine a cop with a heightened sense of smell. That could be amazing in the field. And some people have multiple heightened senses, like taste and smell or touch and hearing; that's another fairly common pairing. Probably because hearing basically is a form of touch, it's just the feeling of the sound vibrations moving the structures of the ear, but it's still feeling."

"I could hear things on scene," Jim admitted. Simon had been glaring at Blair, but now he turned that glare to Jim even as Blair's face lit with enthusiasm.

"Really? Oh man, is this the first time? I mean, you must have been in high-risk situations before. Oh man, you said you sometimes got feelings without knowing where the danger was coming from. I bet that was you at least partially processing your heightened senses. Oh, man."

"Stop saying that, Sandburg," Simon interrupted. "Jim, maybe we should get you checked out."

"Maybe we should," Jim agreed tiredly. "I felt like I could hear Blair's heartbeat and hear the metal shrieking in that fire. This isn't normal."

"It's completely normal. Medicine isn't going to help you. Heightened senses are a perfectly normal phenomenon. In the perfume industry, they call people with an enhanced sense of scent 'noses.' You have tasters in the food industry, and some musicians have a fine enough ear to identify one out of tune instrument in an entire orchestra."

"Jim is not a musician."

"Of course he's not, but in Vietnam, the Vietnamese scouts could smell the enemy--"

"The Americans had to change their diet in order to hide their scent," Jim finished. "In the army, they talk about not underestimating an enemy that doesn't have advanced weaponry. Some of them can do some amazing things."

"Yeah, exactly, and you can do some amazing things too. Oh man, Jim, you have to let me do some tests for my dissertation. I mean, I've interviewed thousands of people, but none of them had just figured out that they had heightened senses. This could be really big. I mean, you repressed having heightened senses, or maybe you had them and you just thought everyone else had them too. We have to test now, to see if you're more sensitive than normal or if this is normal for you, and you just didn't know that you weren't normal-normal."

"Chief, not now," Jim said as he stood up. The doctor came walking into the room. Collins had been sitting to one side, his shirt back on, but covered in Shay's blood. When Jim had offered him another shirt, Collins just shook his head and stared at the far wall. Now Collins stood up and closed in on the doctor.

"How's Shay?"

"Detective Shay has a good chance. He's in surgery for a perforated bowel, but the damage appears minimal, and the shrapnel exited without touching any other organs. His vitals are strong. He'll be here for a while, but he has a good chance for a full recovery."

Collins listened to the doctor with a tense alertness, but at the end of the speech, he sank back down into the chair. Jim felt some sympathy. If it had been Blair caught by a piece of flying metal, Jim would have shoved his way right into the exam room.

"My captain wants a report. I should..." Collins just stopped.

"Why don't you go to the precinct? You can use one of the Major Crimes computers to write up what you need to," Simon suggested.

"I'll drive you," Jim quickly added. The man didn't look able to navigate the room, much less drive across the city.

"Jim, I think you need to get checked out first."

"I can drive," Blair offered.

"I'm heading back to the precinct anyway," Jim headed off that suggestion. Right now, he just wanted Blair close enough to keep an eye on. "I'll make an appointment with my own doctor, Simon, but this is not something for the emergency room."

"Are you okay?" Collins asked as he suddenly studied Jim much more closely.

"I'm fine," Jim said as he slipped his hand to Blair's back and started pushing him toward the exit.

"He's more than fine. There's nothing wrong with him," Blair seconded that. Before Simon could answer, Jim held up a hand to stop him.

"I will make the appointment, but right now, I need to write up my report before the FBI descends on us with this task force." Jim hated the fact that the FBI would take over the case and most likely treat him like just another witness. "Simon, just make sure I end up on this task force."

"It won't be easy since none of the bombings were here, but I'll do my best," Simon nodded. Not waiting for Simon to voice any other complaints, Jim headed for the door. Behind him, Collins' footsteps echoed against the walls, and clearly his hearing was still a little sensitive.

Jim used his hand to guide Blair around to the driver's side of the truck, opening the F150's door and waiting as Blair slid into the back.

"Thanks," Collins said as he got in the passenger side. Jim wasn't sure if the detective meant the ride or the incident with the car bomb, but he nodded.

"Shay's too mean to let a little metal keep him down long," Jim told the man as he started the truck.

"No joke. He'll be fine." Collins stared out the front window for a second. The smell of blood was thick in the truck, and Jim cracked the window open and turned on the vents. "So, you're going to look up any lawsuits tomorrow?" Collins asked as he looked into the back seat.

"Yeah, no problem," Blair agreed. "The post office was the deadliest bombing, so there has to be something there. I mean, the bridge could have gone at rush hour and gotten a lot more casualties, but the Switchman set it off in the middle of the night instead. The post office was the first bomb that was really designed to kill. I suppose he could just be escalating, but if that's the case, why bomb just one car just now? It just really feels like the post office was special somehow."

"Obviously, he's okay with killing now," Collins said quietly. He took a deep breath, and even Blair seemed to know that it was a good time to be quiet. Eventually Collins added, "That bomb would have taken us both out."

"And that might have been the point," Blair said quietly. "It's the break in the pattern that I couldn't figure, but the pattern is Jim."

"What are you talking about, Chief?" Jim encouraged him when Blair fell silent. Looking in the rear view mirror, he could see Blair chewing on his lip as he stared out into the street.

"Think about it. He's been slowly building up to bringing this home to you, Jim. From the letter, he clearly thinks you should be in charge of this. Only now he's ready for the grand finale, and you go and bring in these other guys. He wants this to be man to man, but Collins and Shay are in the middle, and because this is technically their case and not yours, he isn't even really engaging you."

"So he wanted us out of the way," Collins said softly. "Maybe. It's an odd logic, but it makes sense."

"In that case, we need to get a guard on Shay at the hospital," Jim realized as he grabbed the radio. A quick call to dispatch had a uniform with a message heading to the hospital. "This still doesn't make it my case," Jim pointed out.

"Yeah, which is why he needs to do something here," Blair mused. "Something big. Something that trumps Tacoma and their casualties and Roy with the dead engineer. The bomb on the train might not have even been a mistake. Maybe he knew that if he blew up the train in the fort the FBI would have crowded you right out of the case."

"Which would imply that he understands interdepartmental politics," Jim said softly. That wasn't a good sign.

"Ah fuck," Collins swore just as quietly. "Something we kept out of the report... the Switchman wrote 10-95-020 (6) at the bottom of that first email he sent."

"What?!" Jim's hands tightened on the steering wheel. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"It was our hold back. Our captain didn't even want it in the internal reports, for the obvious reason. And when the Switchman started showing so much interest in you..." Collins let his words trail off.

"You thought it might be me," Jim finished. Anger swept through him when he realized what Collins and Shay had been thinking. Fuck. No wonder they were so quick to share. The whole time they had been feeling him out, trying to decide if he was the kind of sicko who would blow people up to grab a little of the spotlight.

"Hey, someone want to let me in on the secret code, or is this one of those things where you would have to kill me if you told me?" Blair leaned forward so that Jim could practically feel the man's breath on the back of his neck.

"It's the code for a capital crime... specifically the law defining it a capital crime to commit a murder in order to advance your position in a group. It's the gang-killing law. But not many people go looking up criminal codes."

"So it's probably someone who knows criminal code... and who understands department politics. Oh fuck," Blair whispered as he put the pieces together. "But man, you have got to know that no way does Jim fit the profile."

"Yeah, we had our doubts, but sometimes you have to play even the long odds, Sandburg. However, you two didn't have any time to set the bomb in the car, and Jim saved our asses. Even more convincingly, he saved our asses and then ducked all the press who came flocking to the scene like vultures after rotting meat."

Jim snorted. "The day I stick around for the press, someone needs to arrest me."

"Wait, what emails?" Blair suddenly asked before Jim had a chance to ask the same question.

"We have a number of emails that came into our tip line. They were addressed to Detective Ellison, but they were sent to us in Tacoma."

"Okay, this officially doesn't make any sense," Blair complained. "Jim wasn't in Tacoma. And if he wrote a letter to us in Cascade, why email you in Tacoma?"

"Yeah, that's why he's a crackpot. I mean, right now he's building a pretty good case for an insanity plea."

"No joke." Blair fell silent. Jim focused on the road. This was incredibly fucked-up. Jim hadn't been part of anything this fucked-up since leaving the army. In the silence, the normal police chatter on the radio suddenly demanded attention. Immediately, Jim turned the radio up.

"All cars, explosion off 9th and Coastal, slip 198. Ferry sinking in Puget Sound. Multiple casualties. Ambulances en route. All cars west of Madison report."

"Ah fuck! Geez, Sandburg, can't you be wrong just one fucking time?" Collins demanded as he slammed his fist into the dash of Jim's truck. Jim flipped on the lights and did an illegal and dangerous U-turn in the middle of the street. Horns blared, and he drove two wheels up on the curb before getting turned around.

"Oh man, I'm wrong all the time. I blither crackpot ideas. I suggested Jim look for dinosaur bones in tea shops. Ask Simon--I am so not the one to listen to when I get to brainstorming out loud. This being right thing is really starting to freak me out," Blair said helplessly from the backseat.

"Just keep being right until we catch this guy, Chief. A ferry going up in the middle of the Sound? We aren't talking about just property damage or one or two dead, not on something like this."

"Well, this asshole got what he wanted. He brought it home to you, Ellison." Collins' face was devoid of all emotion.

"And I'm going to make him sorry he ever stepped foot in Cascade," Jim growled through clenched teeth.

CHAPTER TEN
***

Jim walked in the loft and dropped the keys on the table without breaking stride.

"You want one?" he asked as he headed for the refrigerator and the beer.

"Yeah. Man, I never want to see something like that again," Blair whispered. Jim pulled the two bottles out and twisted the caps off, tossing them at the sink before heading for the living room. Blair was already perched on the end of the couch, his arms wrapped around his stomach.

"It could have been worse," Jim pointed out, but even as he said it, he remembered the wide eyes of a kid no older than Simon's boy. He'd been staring at the place where his leg ended in a bloody stump wrapped in someone's ruined jacket. He held the second beer out for Blair.

"Okay, this is me not thinking of what worse would have looked like. I feel like I just visited a war zone."

Jim sat next to Blair and reached out to pull the man into a one-handed hug. Blair sprang up and started pacing, the beer dangling from one hand. Giving Blair a chance to run off some of his energy, Jim took a deep drink and stared at the wall. For whatever the reason, this killer had come to Cascade because of Jim. He scratched at his arm as he considered his next move. He had to get ahead of the nutcase.

"I feel like I should be doing something," Blair said as he made a pass from the balcony to the table.

"There's nothing to do right now. Tomorrow morning I'll hit the marinas. If I go in person, I can ask people on the docks if they've seen the boat, and the marina workers may be more willing to take the questions more seriously than they would if I just called on the phone."

"You think that boat that was following them..." Blair let his words trail off.

"It makes sense. Tourists would have stuck around to either grab survivors out of the water or take pictures. That guy took off the minute the fireworks went off."

"How can you do that?" Blair demanded angrily. He was still on the kitchen side, and he planted a fist into the pillar hard enough that Jim could hear the thunk. "How can you just kill people like that? I mean, I've studied killings. The Aztecs took the strength of the enemy and sent their own children to the afterlife to live with the gods. The South African manhood ceremony includes circumcision with an un-sterilized knife, and more boys than I care to think about have died from the infection. And war. Okay, that's big on the senseless scale, but each side clings to this moral certainty. But this?" Blair stopped, his air gone as he breathed heavily.

"Did you see that girl? Did you see her?" he whispered.

"Chief," Jim said softly as he got up to intercept Blair on his next round of pacing. "You have to learn to check the emotions at the door. You can't get this worked up."

"Check the emotions?" Blair demanded. "How the hell do I check my emotions? I'm not some fucking machine," he shouted. Then he shoved Jim away and headed for the balcony where he stared out at the dark city.

"Blair," Jim warned. He wasn't a machine; he had just learned to control those emotions that threatened to rip through him.

"I can't do this. I can't keep the image of that little girl out of my head. How do you do this?" Blair asked, his voice so small and broken that Jim couldn't resist the urge to offer comfort. He walked up behind Blair and wrapped his arms around him. For a second, Blair stood stiff in his embrace, and then he sagged. Jim tightened his hold.

"You can do this. Focus on what you can do, not on what happened," Jim whispered.

"No matter what I do, another bomb is going to go off. If it's another one like this.... How do you do this? What do you say to yourself that keeps you from flying out of your own skin?"

Jim took both beer bottles and reached behind him with one hand to set them on the end table without letting go of Blair. "I focus on what I have to do. I'll track down every marina. I'll find every boat that matches the witness description. I'll have Brian and Henri track down any rejects from the police academy who might have been in the service. I'll do everything I can to make sure I catch him before the next bomb goes off."

"And I'm teaching Anthro 105 tomorrow morning. Not exactly helpful," Blair snorted derisively.

Jim pulled Blair back toward the couch, refusing to let go even as he sat so that Blair ended up on top of him.

"Everyone who goes on the next day is doing something... they're not letting this asshole control their lives."

"I just..." Blair stopped again and shifted awkwardly, but Jim didn't let go.

"I'm not good with words, Chief. I know what you're feeling because I'm feeling the same thing, but all I can do is focus on what needs to be done, and I can't do that if I don't check my emotions."

"Man, I'd suck as a cop then."

Jim could hear the ragged breaths and smell the salt in the air. He loosened his hold, and Blair wiggled around so that he lay with his cheek on Jim's chest.

"I'm not normally this weak. I'm really not. I mean, yeah, I play a mean game of sub, but I've been taking care of myself since I was sixteen."

"You aren't weak," Jim muttered as he reached up and stroked the curly hair. "You were in there with the wounded. You held that little girl and comforted her."

"I lied to her, man."

"You said what you had to. You made her feel safe."

"When she wasn't," Blair argued.

"Every cop at that scene saw how strong you were, Chief. Every single one of them. And crying now doesn't change the fact that you kept it together at the scene."

"Man, for someone who isn't good with words, you have this speech down. I know you're right. I do. But man, I just wish I could..." Blair shivered. "Hey, I could do that search for lawsuits now," Blair suddenly said as he pushed against Jim's chest. "My laptop connects with the school server."

Jim held on for a second as Blair struggled against the embrace. He considered holding the man, forcing the energy and panic from him the way he had in the past. If he got out the chains, Blair would sink into that place where he didn't have to fight. But unless Jim planned to keep Blair chained all the time, the kid would have to deal with the world Jim lived in. After entertaining a brief fantasy of a universe where he could keep Blair on a leash and protect him forever from all the pain the man seemed to feel so intimately, Jim let go.

Blair bounced up and grabbed his bag from next to the door. Faster than Jim could pick up his beer, Blair had his laptop set up on the kitchen table, a cord draping across to the phone jack and the machine clicking away as it started up.

"I'll pull as many names as I can. Maybe you or Collins will recognize someone. Or, we could have Henri and Brian check my list against the background checks you're going to do. He's in here somewhere," Blair said as he anxiously tapped the side of the computer, waiting for the programs to load.

"Until midnight," Jim said firmly. "You have until midnight and then your laptop turns into a pumpkin."

"I should be finished by then, no problem. This isn't even a particularly difficult search. I don't know the legal database that well, but after doing my searches for Sentinels, this has to be a piece of cake. I mean, Burton wrote the one book on the topic, but other than that, I've had to track down a dozen one-line references in a half-dozen different languages. Man, that is a challenge, but this is a piece of cake."

Jim leaned against the table as he watched Blair's hands nervously pick at the edge of a paper as he waited.

"These senses, they're pretty normal then?"

"The senses? Oh," Blair said, his attention suddenly focused all on Jim. "Yeah, man. They're not common, not by a long shot, but they're normal. Some insurance companies will even insure them. You know, if you're a 'nose' for the perfume industry, they'll give you insurance on your ability to smell. So, have you noticed heightened senses before?"

"Not really," Jim said as he scratched his arm. "In the service, I had a reputation for knowing when to duck, but I wasn't the only guy who could do that."

"And the others may have had heightened senses too. An acute sense of hearing could make you a better soldier. Man, that would be a fascinating study: getting the military to allow for sensory testing on officers with a proven track record in active combat."

"I don't think they'd be very interested in letting you add the data to your dissertation," Jim pointed out. "The military isn't good at sharing."

"Yeah, like you cops aren't good at sharing and the FBI isn't good at sharing. You guys just have this whole non-sharing cultural norm going on. Very bad for your karma," Blair huffed as he logged into the university system. "It'd still be interesting."

"Dream on. Besides, I'm having this really funny mental image of you trying to test a bunch of marines," Jim smiled.

"Yeah, yeah. I'll have you know that I had more than my share of guys in uniform." Blair wiggled his eyebrows as he glanced up from the computer screen. Jim grinned back. Obviously, actually doing something was allowing Blair to let go of some of the pain and bounce back to his old self. Blair grabbed a floppy disk and shoved it in the machine before clicking on a number of links.

"There was this one mailman. He wore his uniform the whole evening when he bought time."

"A mailman. You think I'm going to be impressed with a mailman?"

"No?" Blair asked innocently, with that butter-wouldn't-melt-in-his-mouth expression that Jim had grown to know and distrust so well. "Neither rain, nor sleet, nor snow, nor wind, nor dead of night," he intoned in his sexiest voice, which Jim could admit was pretty damn sexy.

"A mailman, Chief."

"Hey, a uniform's a uniform."

"You really believe that?" Jim asked with a smile. "I had been thinking about getting the old dress blues out, but if one uniform is like any other, what's the point?" Jim smirked when Blair's fingers froze in place over the keyboard.

"I wouldn't say a uniform's a uniform," Blair contradicted himself.

"Funny, I thought that was exactly what you said."

Blair shrugged as he returned to typing, his gaze still on the computer screen, but his expression definitely turning lustful. "If you want to try on the uniform, I'm always happy to indulge a kink. A little role play or fantasy is healthy in a relationship. Maybe we could play the captain and the recruit," Blair suggested.

"Got it!" Blair suddenly exclaimed with glee as he clicked the mouse. "Aw, fuck, only six witnesses listed. That's okay, plenty more cases here to go through, and why couldn't they list them by address instead of just by jurisdiction?" Blair frowned at the computer as though it were to blame for the lack of cross-referencing before he started clicking again.

"Captain Ellison in his dress blues taking charge of the raw, new recruit, oh yeah, I'm there for that fantasy."

"Giving him a military haircut," Jim teased. That brought Blair's eyes up from the screen. He studied Jim for a second before going back to focusing on the computer. "Har, har, Mr. doesn't have enough hair to grow it long."

"Oh, you are just itching to get put in a chastity device, Sandburg," Jim warned. Blair's fingers hesitated over the keys again. Jim remembered a day not so long ago when Blair had done the same thing to him. He'd struggled to type up reports on the gay-bashing case while Blair had teased him to a state where his control had been ready to snap. He'd had fantasies about tossing the kid on the desk and having him right there. Turnabout was not only fair but a hell of a lot of fun.

"You know, for a bright guy, you really aren't figuring out this punishment thing very well," Blair teased back. "Knowing that you held the key, knowing that your locks were on me, that you were controlling me, not really feeling like punishment."

"Oh, I think you'd crack," Jim said confidently. "I'd come over and over. I'd slip the plug out of you and use you, and never take the sheath off so that you couldn't even get hard. Then I'd lock it back in place, turn you over and go to sleep. Or maybe I'd lie there while you sucked me off, your hands helplessly groping at your cock and feeling only the hard plastic. How many days of that could you take?"

This time Blair's hands left the computer altogether, gripping the edge of the table. "Oh man, I have no idea, but I've always said that testing and research is the best cure for ignorance." Blair hesitated, and Jim could feel the mood shift in the room.

"Blair?"

"Man, I'm joking like nothing happened. Shouldn't someone's death, I don't know, leave more of an impression than that? She was just a kid." Blair's hands fell limply to his lap as he stared at the computer.

"It left an impression. That's why you're working so hard, Chief," Jim pointed out. He reached out and let his hand rest on Blair's shoulder. "Life goes on, but you can't let it destroy you, or all the good you could do in the world is going to be lost."

"Okay, my head knows that," Blair looked up with a crooked grin, but then his eyes darted over to Jim's arm. "My god, what happened?" Blair demanded.

Jim looked down in confusion, but Blair was already out of the chair, tugging him towards the kitchen light. "Oh man, that must hurt like hell," Blair said as he ran a finger over Jim's upper arm. Jim flinched as he looked down at the angry red welts.

"Yeah, it kinda does. It's been itching ever since the paramedics took my blood pressure at the scene." Jim angled his body so that his shoulder was in the light. It looked like a series of bee stings, the skin actually stretched and shiny from the swelling.

"Hold on a sec," Blair said as he turned to the freezer and pulled out a bag of peas. Jim held it to the arm as he watched Blair hustle around the kitchen. "I need to try something. These aren't exactly perfect conditions for a test, but just turn around for a second and don't look. Better yet, close your eyes."

"What?" Jim asked, one eyebrow raised. The whole conversation was making him more than a little uncomfortable.

"Humor me." Blair gave his best pleading expression, and with a sigh, Jim turned around and closed his eyes while still holding the peas to his arm. The microwave dinged.

"Okay, just tell me if you feel hot, cold, or nothing."

"Nothing. Are we done now?" Jim asked.

"Wait until I tell you when. Geez, you're cranky." Blair did something, and Jim resisted the urge to look.

"Now."

"Nothing."

"Okay, how about now?"

"Cold," Jim answered as he felt the cool drift toward the back of his neck.

"Now."

"Cold."

"Now."

"Still cold."

"Now."

"Okay, this is getting old now. Cold, Sandburg. You're holding something cold near my neck, and it's more than a little annoying. So do whatever you're going to do back there before my patience runs out."

"Right, right. I'm getting there. Now."

"Hot," Jim answered as the same place on his neck felt the warmth soak in.

"Now."

"Still hot." Jim turned around and Blair was standing a couple of feet behind him with a cooked potato speared on a fork in one hand and an ice cube in the other.

"Okay, even for you this is strange," Jim said as he waved toward the two objects. Blair dropped them on the counter.

"Man, you have heightened touch. I wouldn't have felt any of those; that gives you three enhanced senses. I only found two other people with three senses after years of testing, and here I am living with you and you have three."

"What?" Jim struggled to catch up with the conversation, but it was just too damn weird for him to process. "Look, Darwin, a potato and an ice cube don't prove anything."

"It was a temperature test. I couldn't have told what I had behind me, but you were off the charts. I've never tested anyone who could feel the stimulus so far away. That's what's wrong with your arm. Your skin is more sensitive, and something on the blood pressure cuff must be irritating the skin, like an allergy. Maybe something transferred from the last patient's skin. I mean, druggies can have all sorts of toxins leak out their pores. Or maybe it's the cleaner they used between patients. Some cleaners are irritants, and in small doses, the rest of us wouldn't even notice, but if you have heightened senses, that would exaggerate the effect. Oh man, have you ever noticed allergies or rashes before?" Blair asked, finally taking a breath.

"I had a few rashes when I was in the Middle East." Jim shrugged. "The doctors said it was environmental and gave me lotion."

"Quacks," Blair muttered. "Okay, we have to get that arm washed because whatever irritant was on the cuff is still on there. Hold on a sec," Blair said as he headed for the room under the stairs where his boxes were stored. Jim could hear him rattling around, tape tearing and paper dragging against paper.

"Blair," Jim called. "If you were standing here, would you be able to hear the masking tape ripping from the box?"

All sound stopped. Then something tiny, like a fly buzzing in his ear, annoyed him into motion. He walked to the room and pushed the curtain back. Blair was pulling a piece of tape from the cardboard one slow millimeter at a time.

"That's an annoying sound of you just tearing the tape. I didn't mean for you to try and be more quiet," Jim said.

"Whoa," Blair breathed. "Jim, I might have heard a faint sound from the tearing masking tape, but I couldn't hear anything when I pulled slow, and I'm sitting right here."

Jim scrubbed his hand over his face. This conversation was going past mildly annoying into outright disturbing. Before he could say anything, Blair held up a box wrapped in white paper.

"Woodsprite organic soap. Naomi sent me some for Hanukkah last year. Let's get that arm washed."

"I can wash myself," Jim pointed out as he held out his hand for the soap. Blair looked at him in confusion, and Jim sighed. "I would love you washing me just because you wanted to, but I don't need a nursemaid." Jim softened his voice. "You have work you want to do on the computer, and I can clean up whatever gunk those morons left on my skin."

"Yeah, I did want to do the search tonight," Blair said uncertainly.

"Exactly. I'm going to wash up and then head to bed, but remember, that computer turns into a pumpkin at midnight," Jim warned with a dire expression.

"Midnight, right, I got it," Blair agreed. "I'll even set my alarm." Blair picked up an old-fashioned alarm clock from the top of a stack of boxes.

"Blair," Jim said, struggling with a feeling of unease that slid around in his stomach. "Thanks for...." He raised the soap.

"The senses are normal, you know," Blair said softly, and Jim knew that his lover understood what he was trying to say. "They saved Collins and Shay today, and probably me too. Hell, they've probably been saving you your whole life."

Jim blinked as Blair's words mutated into foreign, but familiar tones. Someone saying something similar to him, telling him to find his Guide. He shook away the fragmented memory.

"I know," he answered, suddenly very tired. "I'll see you when you come upstairs, okay, Chief?"

"Yeah," Blair agreed. Jim turned and headed for the shower. This was getting just too weird for him. Too damn weird.

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