Blair Sandburg bounced into the precinct, drink in one hand and backpack over the other. When he got to the desk of his partner, Jim Ellison, the latter barely glanced up.

"Jim!" Blair said, waiting for a greeting. "Hi. What are you working on?" He walked around the desk, trying to peer at the open file. "The Galinkski case? Thought we had that wrapped up, man."

"Uhm," said Jim.

"Find something strange? What?" Blair moved to the side of the desk and pulled up the chair he usually snagged when he was there working with Jim.

Settling down with his drink, Blair glanced back up just in time to watch Jim purse his lips and say, "Sandburg, why aren't we sleeping together?"

It took some time for enough paper towels to be located to mop up the cola which had squirted out through Sandburg's nose at this question, and then Blair was on his feet, nice white tee drenched with a nice tan spot which a few helpful female officers were trying to dab at with more paper towels.

"Uh, thanks," he told them, staring blankly at the stain. "Thanks, really." He hurriedly waved them off with a rather stupid smile, then looked down to where the newly cleaned desk and floor glistened damp and shiny. "Sorry," he said to Jim.

"Sandburg! What the hell did you do now?" It was Simon, walking by toward his office, but he was merely blustering, making a frowning face with his big expressive eyes.

"Excuse me," said Jim, and he got up and walked away, the stunned Sandburg watching him go.

"You're in trouble now," said Simon helpfully. "Jim will be finding sticky spots for a week!"

"Uhm, yeah," said Sandburg. "Excuse me, Simon," and he hurried out of the bullpen after his partner, while Simon merely shook his head and walked away.

What in the fuck was going on? Blair thought, as he saw Jim slip into the men's restroom. Had Jim just said what he thought he said? Why weren't they sleeping together? Now, that had indeed been unexpected. And what the hell did that mean?

"Jim?" he called, slipping inside the restroom and checking under stalls to make sure they were alone. Jim was in front of a sink, staring at the mirror, his hands balanced on the edge of the white porcelain. He turned and glanced at Blair as if he was a bit surprised to see him.

"Jim?" Blair asked again, hurrying right over to him. "Are you okay, man?" He gave the same half-laugh he used when he was feeling uncertain about something. There was a reason for that.

"You're the one spewing Coke through your nose, Chief," Jim said, looking calmly in the mirror. He studied himself for a moment, then looked down at the tiny spatters on his blue shirt.

"Oh, sorry about those," said Blair. "It's just that…well, I wasn't exactly prepared for that question, man."

Jim said nothing, calmly taking some soap and trying to get out the cola before it spotted too badly.

"Well?" Blair demanded after a while.

"Well, what?" asked his imperturbable roommate and best friend.

"Well?" Blair glanced at the door, lowered his voice. "What in the world made you ask that, man?"

For the first time, Jim turned to Blair and gave him his full attention. It was a strange moment there for a minute. Two men regarding each other - one calmly, one half-warily.

"It was just a question, Sandburg," Jim said tiredly, turning back to the task at hand. His big hands took soap, squeezed it in his palms, rubbed them together as Blair watched, strangely fascinated. What a question! Why weren’t they sleeping together? And Blair suddenly imagined those big, manly (key word here) hands doing things totally unexpected of them. Like unbuttoning his pants.

Jesus!

"I know," said Blair, taking a step backward and bumping his rear end into the sink behind him. He glanced down automatically, moved away.

Jim finished washing, gave the rinsed spots another thoughtful look, dried his hands, then prepared to walk out.

"Wait!" said Blair, skittering along behind him.

Jim turned around, brows raised in askance.

"It's just that, well, hell, man, I was just not expecting that sort of thing," Blair tried to explain.

Jim shrugged, like, so?

"That's it?" asked Blair, his professor's mind on fire now. How could Jim do this to him? How could he, straight, Army Ranger cop Ellison dare ask him a question like that out of nowhere, and then walk right out without further elaborating? It was enough to drive his inquiring mind insane.

"Look, Sandburg, what are you asking here? I have a job to do, if you haven't noticed."

"If I haven't noticed?" the student shrieked. "I wasn't the one who calmly looked up and said right out of the blue, ‘Why aren't we sleeping together?’"

Jim was still looking at him like he didn't understand the point of the conversation.

"I mean," said Blair, "what…why did you ask that?" And he got out another little embarrassed laugh.

"It was just a question, Sandburg," Jim repeated, shrugging. "We live together, we work together, we eat together, we do laundry together."

"So?" said Blair, when it became obvious that Jim was finished speaking. That was hardly what Blair called elaboration. "I mean, I did that at college, too."

Jim looked at him for a long moment, as if he was seriously considering this answer, before saying, "Well, there you go, then," and turned and left the bathroom as if this conversation happened everyday.

Blair had been rather speechless the rest of the afternoon, his mind still puzzling over this incredible turn of events, even when Simon sent him and Jim out to a crime scene on the docks. This involved a lot of cop speak and short grunts of observations, and after they came back and finished the paperwork, Jim said, "What's for supper?" and threw Blair his jacket.

We eat together, thought Blair.

"I thought I'd try something new," he said, only half-aware of what he was saying. "I got the idea from that new vegetarian restaurant over on Harris. Something called Tofuna."

"Odd name for a restaurant," Jim remarked, squinting against the late afternoon sun.

"No, that's the name of the dish," Blair said patiently. "It's…" he hesitated, but thought he might as well get it over with. "Tofu made to taste like tuna. It's really good!" he said at the disapproving look in Jim's face.

"That sounds really grim, Sandburg."

Blair tapped a hand nervously on the door as he extolled the virtues of a curd-based fake fish dish.

Jim groaned and moaned for a while, but actually sat down and ate the big Tofuna sandwich Blair sat in front of him. "This isn't that bad," Jim said, after taking a small bite. "I just wish I didn't know what it was."

"You are so white bread, man," Blair said.

Jim said, "Hey, I resemble that remark."

There was a small, comfortable silence before Blair said, "Speaking of remarks…"

"You getting ready to spew coke again, Sandburg?"

"No," said Blair, laughing despite himself. "I am really sorry about that. I will take that shirt to the dry cleaners, if you want me to."

"So I can pick it up and pay for it?" Jim asked, but he was smiling.

We live together, thought Blair. We work together, we pay bills together, we eat together…

"I mean, college wasn't exactly like this, of course," Blair said out of the blue, waving an expressive hand.

"What? You never fix tofuna for anybody there, Chief?" Jim asked, wiping his mouth on a napkin.

"Well, I've actually only tried that today," Blair said automatically.

"Not bad," said Jim, standing up to take his plate to the sink. "Don't know that I'd want it again real soon, however," he warned.

"Okay, okay," said Blair.

They did the dishes together, like usual. (We live together). We're a real team, thought Blair, as they fell into the same easy routine they always did on a night like this. Afterwards, they kept following the pattern. Blair got out his papers to grade, and settled on his end of the sofa while Jim settled on the other.

We watch TV together.

Jim flipped around until he found something Blair said, "Whoa man," to, and then they watched it while Blair tried to grade papers. Jim made popcorn and caustic remarks about the movie, and Blair countered with the importance of urban legends in horror films today. Soon Blair stopped watching Jamie Lee Curtis (who looks sort of like Carolyn, he remarked to Jim, who looked to consider this matter seriously for a moment before grunting in apparent surprise, "Yeah, maybe."), turned to Jim and said, "So, do you want to sleep with me?" At Jim's startled face, he quickly added, "I mean, that was entirely a rhetorical question man, just like the one you asked this afternoon. That was rhetorical, right? I mean, why aren't we sleeping together as in…pondering that like one of the great mysteries of the universe?"

"Sandburg, how in the hell can, ‘So, do you want to sleep with me?’ be a rhetorical question?" Jim asked, raising one eyebrow in amusement.

"Well, it wasn't an invitation or anything!" Blair said hastily. "I mean…" He tried to study Jim's face, get a gist of what was really going on there. He could find nothing. Dammit. He was really up the creek without a clue here.

"Are we watching this or not?" asked Jim, and Blair glanced back at the TV.

"Whatever, man," he said, his voice slightly annoyed as he looked back at his papers.

"You're the one who wanted to watch it," Jim reminded him calmly. "You're the one getting off on explaining the importance of today's urban legends."

Blair gave him an exasperated look. "Okay, I surrender, jeez."

Jim turned back to Jamie Lee Curtis (maybe he could see a resemblance to Carolyn there, he thought), and Blair got back to alternating peeks at the screen and peeks at the dismal grades on the papers in his lap.

After the movie, Jim said, "Goodnight Sandburg," and Blair watched him walk up the stairs to the loft, more of an enigma at that moment then he had ever been during the past three years they had lived together.

Worked together.

Ate together.

Slept together.

God, Blair could not wrap his mind around that one. First of all, where would they sleep? He was sure Jim would not want to try and squeeze into his messy little room. Would they sleep upstairs? Blair could not imagine himself being welcomed there. And how strange it would be, sleeping in Jim's bed. With Jim.

But while his mind was there, picturing himself sitting uneasily in big Jim's big bed, he thought…what would happen then? What would he wear to sleep in? Boxers and a tee-shirt, as usual? What would Jim wear…God, surely not just boxers. That would be too…strange. Hell! As if slipping into bed with Jim wouldn't be strange enough!

And why on Earth had made Jim ask that question? Because now Blair would have to think about it.

The next day nothing was said, but Jim could feel Blair's eyes bouncing off him as the two men headed out of the station after lunch. The student had been at the university all morning, but had come in to help Jim do a rather tedious weapons sweep through three local gun stores. Those places were always strange, though interesting in their own way. Blair became lost for a moment in deciphering the psychological construct of grown men who still played army at heart.

Course some men were the real thing.

On the way back, errant gun problem solved, Blair said, "Okay, Jim, I'm sorry, but I just have to ask. What in the world made you ask that question yesterday?"

Jim frowned for a moment and Blair thought, if he says "What question?" I will punch him, so help me.

But instead, Jim shrugged. "I don't know," he said. "Just being rhetorical, I guess," he added with a dry gleam in his eyes. "You college professors don't have the market on free thinking, you know."

"Jim, if you're thinking about me and you sleeping together, that's some pretty free thinking indeed."

Jim looked annoyed. "I didn't say I was thinking about it," he said, watching the road as he did every day. (And I know this because we work together, Blair thought).

"So let me get this straight," Blair said, ignoring his rather poor choice of words. He had a theory here, one which had kept him up for most of the night, in fact. "You were just speaking rhetorically, like you said. You know, just sort of puzzling the whole matter out. I mean, you're right, we do live together, we work together, we eat together, we play together, do laundry, whatever. So, going along this line of thought, you were probably just musing aloud…why aren't we sleeping together? Really just saying…we do everything else together, and isn't it interesting to muse that…." He was getting no help from Jim here, and his theory was starting to sound rather incoherent.

"Probably," said Jim unhelpfully.

"Well, you know, Jim," said the student, getting a bit strident, "you're not like, really helping figure this out here."

"I didn't know I was supposed to be figuring something out," Jim replied.

"Well!" said Blair, glaring at him.

Jim's radio came alive then, and the rest of the afternoon was spent cornering rather minor criminals, at least on the scale of their usual catches. They got home late, and Jim decided to spring for pizza, since it was his turn to cook.

I do all that work putting together tofuna, thought Blair, and he gets to call out for pizza. But it wasn't any really big deal.

Blair got a phone call from a TA whom he thought had seemed to be interested in him, and after she talked for a while about nothing before asking if he was busy Friday night, he assumed he had been right. Strangely enough, he told her he'd have to get back to her before he went back into the living room and re-joined Jim on the sofa.

If you slept with Jim you couldn't be having phone calls like that, he thought, flopping back against the cushions. Then he remembered why he had put her off and said, "You got plans for Friday night?"

Jim hid a smile and said, "Are you asking me out, Sandburg?" And then couldn't resist laughing at the flabbergasted look on the younger man's face.

Blair used his best "oh you’re so funny" expression, but this just doubled Jim's mirth until Blair said, "Okay! That was Sheila on the phone and she wondered if I had anything to do Friday night. So I thought I would check with you first, okay?"

Jim stopped laughing.

"So there," said Blair, for no particular reason, and he settled back with the popcorn bowl. We eat a lot of popcorn around here, he mused.

Because we eat together.

"Chief," Jim said, "I hope you don't think I expect you to check with me before you make a date." He sounded sincerely concerned, and for some reason that made Blair mad and a bit….

"Do you think I think that, man? 'Cause if you do, well, then, whoa…" and Blair gave a self-satisfied little laugh before glancing back at the TV. Tonight the Discovery Channel was doing a preview of Shark Week, and Blair had to admit both he and Jim were suckers for that. "Seriously," he said, after a while. "Did you have plans? 'Cause…"

"What do you want to do?" Jim asked.

"Too bad we don’t have any extra money," Blair said speculatively, "'cause you're off this weekend, right? We could try out the new tent up in the mountains."

"That fella's an idiot," said a fervent Jim, regarding the diver on the program.

"Amen," said Blair, a piece of popcorn paused halfway to his mouth while they watched the part about the scars. He had seen this guy's scars on a half a dozen other programs, but it never failed to impress. Or set off comments.

"Camping's not that expensive," Jim remarked, settling back when the commercial came on.

Blair glanced over at him. "You wanna go?"

"You're free?"

"Oh yeah. I'll even skip out early on Friday if I can get away. I need a break."

"Chief, you always need a break."

"That's true," Blair agreed with a smile.

Friday at noon Blair joined Jim for lunch at the new Chinese place near the station, and spent a lot of time smiling at the blushing young woman behind the counter.

"I like women," Blair said, as they quickly ate their food. Jim had a lot of work to get behind him if they wanted to get out of town before dark.

"Yes," said Jim, spearing a piece of broccoli that had somehow gotten into his food. He put it on Blair's plate and Blair ate it and said, "Don't you think Chinese women are beautiful?"

"I think most women are beautiful," said Jim.

Blair glanced at him while he agreed whole-heartedly. "Oh, me, too," he said enthusiastically, "I mean, all shapes and sizes, all kinds of backgrounds and interests…there's just not enough time for all of them, you know?"

"You'll have to try harder," said Jim.

"Oh yeah," said Blair. "I plan to, because you know, I really like going out and spending time with the fairer sex," he added, shaking his head for emphasis.

Jim nodded and said, "What's not to like?"

"Exactly," said Blair. "And I've known some really special ladies, you know?"

"Yes, you have," said Jim. "Lots of them."

"Yes," echoed Blair, unseeingly swirling a chopstick around a noodle. "Lots of them."

Friday afternoon while they were loading the truck, the phone rang, and Blair could him Jim addressing it in soft, intimate tones. Not for the first time, Blair wished he had some of those Sentinel skills.

After Jim got in the truck, slamming the door with a satisfying thunk, Blair said, "Who was that?" not even bothering to pretend he wasn't nosy.

"Phyllis," said Jim. "You don't know her."

Blair beat his hand against the side of the truck and said happily, "See? That's why we aren't sleeping together, right there, man."

"She was one of our former housekeepers when I was little," said Jim, pulling the truck away from the curb. "She wanted to invite me to her granddaughter's wedding."

"Oh," said Blair.

The mountains were misty, fresh from the ever-present rain, small white puffs of clouds hanging in every valley.

"Beautiful," said Blair, pleased.

"Yes," Jim agreed fervently. Of course, he was looking elsewhere when he said it.

The tent was set up with minimal fuss, and Blair only raised his voice once when he thought Jim was deliberately not following his carefully read-out instructions.

'I don't like putting up a tent I've never put up before," Jim grumbled once or twice, and Blair knew that was tied up somewhere with always being prepared, because it was obvious Jim could probably figure out putting a tent up anywhere at any time. He had survived in the Peruvian jungle, for god's sake.

But he said, "There has to be a first time to put up the tent, so that really didn't make any sense, Jim."

Jim was eager to catch fresh fish for dinner, and Blair watched him, rugged and impenetrable as they stood beside each other in the stream and hoped for trout.

We fish together, Blair thought.

Later, over laughing about nothing in particular, just being their usual, comfortable selves, Blair thought, we laugh together, and put that on the growing list of litanies he was compiling in his head. Over the past day or so, that list had been growing absurdly long. We brush our teeth together, he had thought yesterday morning, as Jim had frowned when he found Blair in his way in the bathroom. The list was, in fact, getting down to the ridiculous, or what used to be ridiculous but was now somehow beginning to take on the tone of a minor miracle. Things like, we breathe together. We breathe the same air together. Now that was getting a little strange. Especially strange when the thought of he and Jim breathing the same air seemed a bit…exciting.

You have flipped, man.

The Thursday evening before they had left Blair had been so preoccupied with these new thoughts that he had almost been unable to get past that list, had found that every time he tried to speak to John Marshall, the student he was helping, he had wanted to say instead, "We do everything together."

Well, not quite, Sandburg. And that night in his bedroom, Blair had looked at his things and thought...Where would I put all this stuff? Would there be room for it up there?

That night in their new two-person tent, Blair said, "I think the obvious thing is, man, we aren't sleeping together because we're two men."

Jim thought about this for a moment, and said, "You're right, Chief."

"I mean, two men don't usually sleep together," Blair said, as if Jim hadn't spoken.

"Never," Jim agreed.

"Well, not never!" said Blair, rolling on his side to get a glimpse at his tent-mate. "C'mon Jim, this is the nineties. Plus, homosexuality has been with us since the beginning of time. Did you know that-" and by the time Blair finished this long historical allegory he said, "Jim?" only to find out that his Blessed Protector was snoozing away.

This left Blair to turn over on his back, curse slightly under his breath and say, "Man! This is ridiculous."

The next morning as soon as he was awake, Blair said, "Jim, I do know that men sometimes sleep together. I mean, I'm not dumb here."

And Jim, trying not to laugh, said, "I never said you were dumb, Darwin."

"Yeah," said his best friend, tumbling out of the tent behind him, "but you think I…." And he smoothed a restless hand through his curls, trying unsuccessfully to tame them just a bit.

"What do you want for breakfast?" asked Jim, turning all his attention to building a morning fire, and it was enough to drive Blair insane.

The next day they hiked to a very nice view of the surrounding mountains, and relaxed while they ate lunch and talked about a few environmental concerns which they shared. Neither wanted to see the waters polluted, for one, and at the end of that conversation they were so firmly aligned that Blair thought, this might really work. This might really work between us.

It's been working for three years, a small voice inside his head reminded him.

"Jim," said Blair after a while, as they both leaned comfortably against rocks and contemplated silent thoughts.

Jim glanced over at him, idly packing up the remnants of their food.

"Why aren't we sleeping together?" Blair asked, and his heart blipped as everything else around suddenly grew very, very silent. So quiet that he felt moved to immediately disclaim, "I'm not asking here, okay? I'm surely not saying we should, or that we'd want to. I just…."

"Rhetorical question," said Jim. "Right?" And he squinted out at something that turned out to be a bald eagle. He really liked those.

"Yeah, I mean…it was just a rhetorical question, right? Just a continuation of a train of thought…." Blair's voice trailed off as he watched the eagle, too, though obviously not with the same amount of detail that Jim was getting.

"Sure," Jim shrugged, and for some reason that didn't give Blair the satisfaction that he was starting to crave so desperately…the satisfaction of knowing exactly why Jim had asked that question.

"We couldn’t," Blair said, "because…" and he waved a hand about helplessly. "Oh, for god's sake, Jim," he finally said, "help me out, here."

"I don't know what you want me to say," said Jim, and stood up to resume their hike.

After dinner Blair was writing in his journal, and Jim said, "Figuring out the great rhetorical question, Chief?"

At the mirth in his voice Blair said, "No, I know the answer to that one." And at Jim's raised eyebrow, Blair said, frustrated and annoyed, "You're too aggravating to fuck. You would-"

And Jim raised both eyebrows and said, "I never said anything about fucking, Chief," leaving Blair to splutter with a very red face.

"I'm really sorry, Jim," he said later, as they got ready for bed. Blair slid into his sleeping bag, cast a glance Jim's way. "I am really sorry. I didn't mean to…presume," he finished.

"You don't think I could resist your charms?" Jim couldn't resist saying.

"Well, you've been resisting them for three years!" said Blair, and boy, that didn't come out like he had planned. There was a silence between them.

"That came out wrong," said Blair meekly.

"Let's see," said Jim, settling into his bag. "I've resisted your charms."

Blair turned to look over at him.

"I resisted you studying me as a Sentinel," Jim said. "I resisted you working with me as a partner. I resisted you moving in with me." Blair was smiling now. "I resisted kicking you out after just a week…." He looked over at Blair and said, "Stop me if I've missed something." And in the dim light their eyes met and held. So did their smiles.

God, it's so warm with him, Blair thought. So warm and so safe and so...right.

"Good night," said Jim softly, and he reached out a long arm to touch Blair gently on the shoulder.

"Good night," said Blair, also reaching out to touch him lightly in the ribs. Then they both curled up into their respective sleeping bags, still smiling.

We're sleeping together, thought Blair. And it feels great.

Sometime before dawn Blair woke up. He had had troubling dreams, including one of Jim lying at the bottom of some great ocean, shielding Blair, who was beside him, from the deathly blows sent their way from some sci-fi looking creature who bred there. The dream didn't really make much sense, of course, but one part had been horribly, painfully clear. And that was that Jim was dying, shielding Blair from the same fate with his own body even as Blair begged him to stop, not to die and leave him, until the tears running down his face in the dream became real as he woke to find he was sobbing.

Trying desperately to be quiet, he could only find heart-break as the remnant of the dream hung over him, the awful sadness, the horrible realization that he loved Jim, and that he would absolutely die if something happened to him.

He rolled over on his back, wiping the tears away with a shaking hand, and said, "Fuck!"

"What's wrong?" Jim asked quietly from beside him.

And Blair, still trying to banish the dream, said, "I can't think of a single reason why we're not sleeping together."

After a brief silence, Jim extended a long arm and said, "Come here, Chief."

Hesitantly, with more than a small feeling that his world was getting ready to fly out of control, Blair rolled over right into Jim. He lay there stiffly for a while, heart racing, smelling and feeling the strange yet oddly familiar scent of Jim. When the bigger man shifted and pulled Blair into him, Blair automatically splayed a hand across Jim's tight chest for balance. God! I'm lying here with Jim! This is so… But then one of Jim's hands went up into the loose curls of his hair, and he couldn't help but gasp. Something was happening here, something was definitely happening.

"The thing is," Blair said, trying to backpedal over the loud thump of his heartbeat, "I don't sleep with people I don't love."

"You don't?" asked Jim calmly, waiting. Like Blair didn't love him.

"Well, okay, but I always like them," and Blair immediately saw the flaw of his logic there. He took a deep breath, thought for a while. When he spoke, it sounded much needier than he had planned. "But you don't love me," he half-whispered, and even to him it sounded pitiful. But with Jim's big fingers caressing his scalp, Blair was lucky he could speak at all. All the blood in his brain was quickly flying South to someplace warmer.

There was small silence before Jim said, "Better find another reason, Blair."

And what the hell was that supposed to mean? Blair felt faint, tried to concentrate on breathing, staying conscious. "I had?" he asked, unsure.

"Yes," said Jim.

"Oh." Oh. That could only mean…"You love me, Jim?" he asked faintly, and the big fingers tightened for a moment in his hair before Jim said, "Yes."

"Well, I love you, too," said Blair, as if this were obvious, still trying to puzzle it out. Jim said nothing. "I mean, I love you more than I have anybody else I've ever dated, and I slept with them, right?"

"I have no idea," said Jim.

"Well, I have," Blair admitted. "I've slept with a few women, Jim," and he gave another nervous Sandburg laugh. "Not as many as you might have thought, though," and to forestall a long nervous rambling on past loves, Jim put both his arms around Blair and pulled him to him firmly. And Blair froze, knowing that Jim could now without a doubt feel the hard-on that was pressing against the bigger man's thigh.

"Jim?" Blair finally asked.

"What?" asked Jim, his hand back in Blair's hair, openly caressing the back of his scalp, trailing hot fingers along the back of his neck.

"Oh god," said Blair, and to that, Jim merely dipped his head and nuzzled Blair on the neck, closing his eyes and happily drinking his scent in before opening a gentle mouth and nipping him lightly on the neck.

"Oh my god," said Blair, ready to burst now, "Oh Jim, I can't," and he was arching into the strong warmth of Jim's arms as Jim slid a possessive hand up from his hip to his ribs and Blair shivered explosively.

Jim moved a rough thumb across Blair's cheekbones, and slid his mouth right over onto Blair's open one. Blair responded immediately, his own mouth open, wet, hot, as he leapt into Jim's kiss feet first so to speak, wrapping his arms around Jim's shoulders, ramming his whole body up against his new lover's.

There was no reason for hesitation now, and Jim sank into the embrace, exploring Blair's body with big hands as they kissed deeply, passionately, harder and harder. Jim grasped Blair's round ass, pulled it against him and Blair humped him frantically, unable to get enough of that cotton-covered leg until he gasped as if for air, threw his head back, said, "Oh my god, Jiiiiiiiiiimmmm," and came wildly into his sweatpants.

Holding him, Jim groaned, whispered, "Blair," into his ear and bucked his own way to climax with satisfying full-body jerks.

Afterwards they clung to each other, Jim wiping sweat-drenched sprigs of Blair's hair away from the younger man's face as Blair hung onto Jim's chest, his ear catching the wild pounding from the bigger man's heart. And suddenly Blair had a terrible, brow-furrowing suspicion.

"Jim," he said, pulling up just a little bit with his arms.

"Yeah, babe?" said Jim drowsily, lazily rubbing Blair's hair, and the word babe coming out of Jim's mouth and aimed in Blair's direction made the younger man stop for a moment.

"This wasn't like…some sort of seduction, was it?" Blair asked.

Jim looked surprised. "What do you mean?" he asked innocently.

"I mean, you didn't just ask me that to...."

"Yes," said Jim.

"What?" Blair's eyes widened.

"Yes," said Jim. "It's all just been one giant seduction, starting with the day I first saw you at that hospital. After you left I sat down and wrote out the whole plan, from going to the University and throwing you up against the wall to-"

"I hate you when you’re annoying," said Blair.

"I thought you loved me," said Jim, pulling Blair even closer, eyes smoldering.

"I do love you," said Blair. "I love you so much, Jim," and he buried his head in the bigger man's chest as Jim began rubbing his hair again. And then he looked up brightly and said, "Jim? I have a question. Why aren't we sleeping together?"

And Jim smiled and moved a hand down inside the front of Blair's sweatpants.

"Good question," he said, as Blair gasped. "Now let me answer it," and he rolled over and put his lips on Blair's bare stomach. "We are."

And Blair said, "Good," before Jim made speech darn near impossible. He was glad they finally got that straightened out.

Damn, thought Jim. That little question thing had really worked.

The End