Disclaimers: Pet Fly owns them, I’m just borrowing them. This story contains graphic homosexual situations, so if that squicks you, stop here. Thanks to Sheila, Marion Sherringham and Margie for betaing.
I’ve only had a handful of real lovers over the years, lovers I stayed with long enough to learn all the dirt. That’s the best part to me, even better because it has nothing to do with the damn senses. Don’t get me wrong, the senses can be damn useful, even feel great, as Sandburg does his level best to pound into my head (not to mention other parts of my body), but most days the senses either gross me out, zone me out, or make me feel like a damn peeping tom. Learning a lover has nothing to do with listening in on their phone conversations, or even the exact scent of their arousal.
I love it that there are bits of Sandburg that only I know, that I didn’t even know after years of living together as roommates, that he only lets me see now. The running commentary shuts down during sex. I love that, that he trusts me with his silence, doesn’t try to deflect me with chatter or stroke my ego with porn-flick moans. That when he’s riding my cock, or my ass, he feels safe. His brain, however, does not shut down, and that pisses me off at times, when I can see the clockwork whirling at lightspeed behind those blue eyes, off on some tangent even as he bites his lower lip in ecstasy.
I love the way Blair eats honey, or anything gloppy, but especially honey. He licks all the drips off his fingers, then sucks each one into his mouth and pulls it out with a satisfied snapping sound. It’s so fucking sexy because he’s not even doing it to arouse, he’s just totally into the experience. Can’t do it too much though, more than a quarter cup of honey and he goes off on a sugar high so frightening it makes me nostalgic for talking him down from Golden. Blair is sexiest when he’s not trying to be sexy; when he is trying, he comes on like a used car salesman. Blair is sexiest when he loses himself completely in something, anything, even chattering with Rafe about the significance of yams to the Trobrianders. I watch him light up like that from across the bullpen and I have to duck behind a desk to hide what that thrilled face and eager voice do to me.
I love the way Sandburg sucks cock, because I’m not sure if it’s the best head I’ve ever gotten or just the funniest. It’s like he has ADD where my cock is concerned, can’t suck it or stroke it for more than five seconds before he needs to change the rhythm or bite my inner thighs, or lick cross hatches up my belly, or twist my cockhead like an Oreo. It takes forever to come, but when I do, it’s like that powerful, scary orgasm I had the first time I jacked off, like my body shoves me off a fucking cliff. And then he looks up, still gently slurping the dregs of my come, checking my face just to make sure it was good enough, and then the little bastard sees my shaking awe and he smirks around my cock like he knew he was perfect the whole time.
And I know not-so-easy things about Blair too, like he really needs the room downstairs to be his study, complete with the futon. He needs a line of retreat, has panic attacks at the thought of turning it into a storeroom, even though he sleeps up here and works at the kitchen table and doesn’t really need a study. I know after a lifetime of defending her to social workers and schoolyard bullies that he’s now completely incapable of admitting Naomi wasn’t a perfect mother. I know he’ll always be the one to say he’s sorry after a fight, that I can just wait him out and it’ll all be his fault, so I have to keep myself from abusing that privilege by turning my cell phone off until I’m ready to apologize too.
But most of all, I love the way he sees in me all the things that are strongest in himself. He pushes me to use my senses because he takes such pleasure in using his own. He supports my need to protect people because his own honor and compassion are so strong. And sometimes, when he looks up from talking with Rafe and smiles softly back at me, I wonder what secrets he knows about me.
Because, you see, he wrote the book on Jim Ellison. Literally. Or he’s writing it, anyway. And unlike my private thoughts, which stay private, what Sandburg knows is going to be discussed by a committee someday soon, and then sent off to be published. So stupid me, I decide to open Pandora’s box, get a little glimpse of myself through his eyes. Territorially threatened to the point of paranoia. Fear of intimacy. Hell, fear-based responses up and down the line, while we’re at it. Is that where he goes in his head when he’s balls-deep inside me?
And before we even hash that out, before I get a chance to ask him what the hell he was seeing in me while I was watching him lick honey off his fingers, I find out he’s got a whole other Sentinel lined up, chortling over the thought of ‘introducing us in a controlled environment.’ How the hell do you let someone back into your home, into your bed, when they betray you so despicably? Yeah my senses were going crazy, yeah I was off-balance, but I had a right to be, after he threw me in the deep end like that.
Well, he may have thrown me in the deep end, but he was the one who drowned. Nothing in my life has ever been half as devastating as seeing that precious body face-down in the water. He was cold and still and I knew, despite all the horrible things we’d said and done, all the broken trust, that I loved him too much to survive without him. So here we are a week later at the airport long-term parking lot, and he’s still pale and coughing and I can’t stop listening to the crackle of his breathing, but I don’t want him in my home just yet. I’d die without him, but I can’t live with someone who’d treat me like some kind of lab animal.
I just start driving. “Where are you staying,” I ask when I can trust my voice.
He flinches. I guess he assumed we were going home. “With Simon, actually. I probably should have caught a ride with him, I just thought...”
My knuckles whiten on the steering wheel. “I’ll drop you.”
He looks at me, all hurt and confused, and says, “Come on, man, I thought we were over this.”
I can’t look at him. “I obviously don’t know you, Sandburg, not if I didn’t see this coming -- this thing with Alex, and what you wrote. You treated me like a guinea pig. I can’t have you in my bed if you’re going to jack me off with one hand and write the fucking dissertation with the other.”
“Jim, I didn’t--” He runs his hands through his hair, stares out the window for a second. “That shit I pulled with Alex was, believe it or not, my attempt to get closer to you, to really see you for who you were for the first time. I thought if I could see the ways you were like and unlike her, I’d know how much of who you are is you, your choice, and how much is the senses.”
I’m just about ready to tear the steering wheel out, my arms are shaking with the tension. The only thing worse than Sandburg manipulating me is the senses manipulating me.
“We became friends right off, you let me live with you when you barely knew me, and then we became lovers. How much of that was you actually caring about me and how much was just the Sentinel needing to possess the Guide?”
I’m going to kill him. I’m going to fucking kill him.
He slips into professor mode, reaching for something safe, familiar. “I wasn’t too surprised when it turned out you repressed memories; you’ve always been easy to hypnotize, that’s why the dials work so well. Turns out that’s hardwired; just the way Sentinels cope with information they can’t handle. That means it’s something we work with, not something we try to ‘cure’ or plow through. You come from a wealthy, cold family, but instead of going into business or using your senses to get the most out of being a playboy, you became a cop. Alex didn’t; she never felt the loyalty or compassion that your dad and Peru couldn’t burn out of you. That’s you, Jim, your choice, not Burton’s primal imperatives. And I wanted to know all that, really see you for the first time. Don’t you get it? I did it to stop treating you like a guinea pig.”
“And the sex,” I snarl, “Did you test that out on her, too?”
“Well, you’d know that better than I would, Jim,” he snaps. “I can’t believe you kissed her. You two are exactly alike there, let me tell you. When I’m useful to you, you can’t get enough of me, but the second I stop towing the line, you shut me out completely, every time.”
“Well, maybe you deserve it! Telling someone you promised to be there for, that you’re leaving the country for six months? Telling your board that, as an interesting footnote, the man you’re fucking has a fear of intimacy? You want to talk about betrayal, maybe you should take a good long look at yourself before you start pointing fingers.”
“I screwed up, okay? I’m sorry! I’ve said I’m sorry! I’ve never done this before, Jim, I’ve never loved someone like this and I’m scared to death. No, scratch that. I died. And I thought when I came back that it meant no doubts anymore, that we were forever, but after Mexico it’s pretty clear we’re just going to keep hurting each other. This is never going to be a sure thing. And I’m always going to wonder if you’re going to kick me out again the next time I don’t do what you want, or whether you’re just with me because of the bond.”
I stop the truck. “Then I guess you never really knew me at all, Sandburg. I loved Blair, not the Guide. And I’m scared too, but I never dealt with it by turning you into a thing and writing you up. Just get out of here before one of us does something we’ll both regret.”
He gets out and slams the door, and I peel away, but not before I hear him mutter, “Too late for that, man. Three years too late for that.”
The following week redefines hell. I can’t stand the thought of being around him, I’m terrified he’s going to have a relapse, and if one more person asks me when Sandburg’s coming back to Major Crimes I’m going to put their face through a wall. And then an email pops into my inbox: Meet me tonight, 85 Chester Street, 6:30. Promises to keep. Chester is in midtown, right where the clubs meet the artsy district. He’s taking me clubbing? Does he really think that’s going to make everything okay? I show up anyway, right on time and ready to tell the little punk what I think of him, but 85 Chester is not a club. It’s a tattoo and piercing parlor. Oh, this is getting better and better. I push the door open, seeing red, but Sandburg lights up like a kicked puppy hoping for a change of heart. “You came,” he says.
“Sandburg,” I snarl.
“I know you’re probably thinking this is a really bad idea, man, but hear me out, okay? I love you. I miss you. And you’re right, I’ve spent the past three years with one foot out the door and one eye on my notes. So I spent the whole week processing what went wrong, thinking about what I’m scared of, how to build something permanent for once, how to break down all the defenses I use to keep from putting down roots, keep from getting hurt. And it came to me; it’s been staring me in the face all along.” He pulled off his shirt, right there in the store, completely unselfconscious for the first time in three years. “I’m tattooing it right here, on my heart, right underneath the nipple ring, just like I promised you three years ago. I’m going to mark myself as yours, go native, and screw the data.”
“Since you were already screwing the research subject,” I croak. “Chief, this is crazy.”
“I know it’s not your thing, Jim. But this will get it through my thick skull once and for all, I’m yours. No going back.”
But he’s wrong, he’s so wrong, because some deep, dark part of me is really getting off on the idea of marking him, and he moves to the back of the shop and sits down in the vinyl chair and waits for me to stand beside him before turning to the artist and saying, “I’m ready.”
I’m expecting something tribal, maybe one of the jaguars that roam the sample sheets on the walls, but the design shocks me: a little Cascade PD badge, complete with my badge number. Sandburg’s asked for the most expensive tribal inks and detailing to prevent blurring, and he clenches my hand in pain as the needles punch through his olive skin over and over. I’m staring at the stains of blood and ink as the mark emerges, and I realize, he never takes his shirt off, he even switches teams if he’s picked for the 'skins' team in a shirts-and-skins game of basketball. No one is going to see this. No one is going to know Sandburg has a tattoo. No one but us. His legs are squirming and he’s alternately looking at me and closing his eyes, but I only have eyes for that needle and the droplets of blood rising right over his poor, abused lungs. “You don’t have to do this,” I say, though it’s too late to back out now.
Those dazzling blue eyes open, catch my gaze. “Don’t you get it, man? I love you. I love how you clean up like James Bond in a tux. I love knowing to order you a Cobb salad when you’re late for dinner. I love the fact that you worried about bed head when you were still sporting that crew cut. I love it when you smell and taste and touch your way across my body, the way that little muscle in your jaw finally relaxes when you sniff my armpit. I love how safe you make me feel when we’re curled up on the couch watching the Jags. I love it that you thought topping meant I wanted to add whipped cream to the proceedings. I even love the fact that you think you can get away with hiding Ghirardelli chocolates behind the two dozen bags of frozen vegetable scraps I save for making stock, and the fact that you will still be making scrambled eggs with the grease from the bacon when we’re a hundred years old, if you don’t die of a heart attack first. And it’s hard enough knowing Carolyn knows all that stuff; I can’t stand the thought of anyone else loving you this deep in their bones and knowing all the things that only I should know. This is it, man, you’re it for me.”
I’m not tearing up, damn it, Sandburg just decided to be blurry for a second. Probably another test. “I’ll let you in on a little secret,” I manage hoarsely: “Carolyn never figured out the Cobb salad.”
End.