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Gavin Seymour, failed armed robber and reluctant hostage taker, looked at his equally reluctant hostage and wondered whether people who had been snatched at gun point and forced into a car for a crazy, high speed chase across town with half the police department in tow habitually looked as halfway pissed as this one did. And the weirdest thing was that the hostage wasn't even pissed at Gavin, the guy that was currently holding him against his will in a tin shed down by the docks while police sharp shooters got into position outside.
"Seriously, how hard is it to run your assignment through a spell checker before you print it off?" Blair Sandburg, not the least bit deterred from wielding a red pen over the paper on his lap despite the ropes binding his wrists and the wild-eyed maniac with a gun preventing him from going home, shook his head in disgust and made another violent slash mark across the white paper. "If they're taking Anthropology 101 then they should at least be able to spell it, right?" His curls bobbed and weaved around his head as he shook his head again. "And I know that this dick did not misspell my name twice at the top of this paper. Fucking idiot." Not even bothering to glance through the rest of the paper, Blair took great satisfaction in scrawling a big red F at the top of the page and threw the assignment aside as he rooted in his backpack for the next one. "Idiot can't be bothered to learn to spell then I can't be bothered to read it."
Gavin felt bound and determined to point out a few facts that the short, curly-haired man sitting cross-legged on the floor in jeans and a flannel shirt seemed to be missing in his mindless academic fury. "I have a gun." He stuck out his chin as two blue eyes lifted to stare at him for a few seconds before going back to the new paper in his lap. "I might have to shoot you."
Blair deigned to look up again. "I know. You kinda brought it to my attention when you dragged my ass out of the store and forced me into your car." He tilted his head. "I may not look it, but I'm scared shitless. I hate it when this happens, man." Weary shoulders rose and fell as he sighed. "But if I'm gonna be held hostage then I'm gonna have to take advantage of the downtime and get this marking done. I've been putting it off for, like, way too long, man. Trust me, I'm terrified here; I've just learned how to multi-task really well these last few years."
"The police might decide to storm the hut and shoot you along with me." Gavin couldn't help but feel that his hostage wasn't treating the situation with the due seriousness he felt it warranted. "You could die!" Another thought occurred belatedly. "And what do you mean you hate it when this happens? How often does this kind of shit happen to someone like you?"
Blair sighed again and pulled his glasses off his tired face and sighed reproachfully, "I'm trying to work here, man." He peered up at the guy looming over him and took note of the nervous tick in the clenched jaw. Big, buff and wild-eyed: your standard issue crazy for Cascade in the spring. Blair also privately thought that the livid scar bisecting the right cheek was a particularly nice touch. "Don't worry, the cops aren't going to storm the place, I know these things. And this is the fifth time this year so far I've been snatched and held hostage." Blair shrugged and grinned half-heartedly at his captor. "As gun-toting kidnappers go, you seem okay. There's been no punching or kicking, you tied my hands in front so I could do my marking and there haven't been any thinly veiled hints about wanting to get inside my pants. In fact, this may be the most pleasant abduction I've ever taken part in." A slightly hysterical chuckle escaped the slumped anthropologist. "I'll recommend you to all my friends."
"Oh shit." Gavin's heart, already working double-time thanks to his current situation, nearly exploded when he took a closer look at his hostage. "I know you, you're that fucking cop. Sandbar."
"Sandburg. SANDBURG!" Blair managed a very creditable glare. "And I am not a fucking cop, I'm a fucking anthropologist."
"Oh Christ." Gavin, a man that thirty seconds ago had assumed his life couldn't possibly get any worse, realized that he had committed the worst mistake it was possible to make when you were a professional criminal in Cascade, Washington. "Oh Christ, he's gonna get me and he's gonna kill me."
"No, no man, he's not going to kill you." Blair, faced with similar reactions all the time when people made the link between himself and his partner Detective Jim Ellison, patted the air soothingly with his bound hands and tried to look reassuring. "He's not here. He's out of town at a cop convention; won't be home till tonight."
"Really?" The expression of hope on the gun-toting man's face was almost pathetic. "You're not just saying that? 'Cause the last guy that snatched you got blown up when that maniac caught up with him. It was in all the papers."
Blair nodded emphatically. "Trust me, man. Jim's not even in town at the moment, you don't have to worry about him."
"SANDBURG!"
The occupants of the hut both jumped at the sound of Captain Simon Banks' angry bellow from outside and Blair smiled weakly at his abductor. "Of course, I can't promise that you shouldn't worry about the rest of them." He cautiously rolled up onto his knees and peered through a split in the tin wall at the outside wall and felt his heart sink as he saw all his friends from Major Crimes grouped around a positively livid Simon and pointing their guns in his direction. "Oh man, they do not look happy." He glanced up as the man holding him hostage peeked out of the one tiny window in the hut and wasn't entirely surprised to hear a whimper of fright when the man saw all the firepower pointed their way. "It's okay; Megan's nowhere near as scary as she looks."
Amazingly, Gavin failed to look reassured. "I just wanted to grab some quick cash, that's all. If that girl hadn't got all heroic then we wouldn't be in this mess."
Blair sank back down onto his butt and warily eyed the gun waving through the air. "I know, man." He couldn't stop the shameless words of self-preservation that next fell from his lips. "When this is over could you be sure to tell them that? 'Cause I gotta tell you there's no way Simon's gonna believe that I didn't bring this on myself."
Gavin opened his mouth with an indignant expression on his face but was interrupted before he could reply.
"YOU HAVE FIVE MINUTES TO RELEASE MY MAN UNHARMED OR WE WILL OPEN FIRE!" Simon's voice sounded, incredibly, even more pissed off. "YOUR TIME STARTS NOW."
"I thought you said you weren't a cop!" Gavin stared accusingly at Blair and pointed his gun between the alarmed man's eyes. "You fucking lied to me!"
"No, man, I swear." Blair felt the familiar tingle of fear-induced sweat spring out all over his body and slammed back against the wall in a futile effort to get away from the gun. "I'm not a cop, I'm an observer. I'm a grad student working on a thesis on closed societies and I do ride-alongs with the guys at Major Crimes." He swallowed heavily as the gun barrel pressed closer. "I'm not a cop!"
Then, unbelievably, things went from bad to catastrophic. "SANDBURG!"
Blair, already pale, went almost snow white and closed his eyes as he recognized the new voice yelling his name. "Oh shit."
"What? What is it?" Gavin took a step back as the younger man he was menacing with his gun slumped bonelessly before him and sunk his face into his bound hands. "What's happened?"
Blair looked up and swallowed again. "He's here. He must have come home early." He wiped suddenly shaking hands over his dry lips. "Oh man, I am so screwed."
Jim Ellison had been cruising peacefully back into Cascade after spending two days away at a conference on police procedure and idly contemplating dinner and a quiet evening with his Guide when he got the call from Joel Taggert that said Guide had been kidnapped at gun point, again, and was currently holed up with his abductor in a tin hut down by the docks. Swearing fluently in a variety of languages, Jim spun the wheel of his truck and peeled off in the direction of his abducted partner and vowed that the next time he had to spend more than three hours away from his city, Blair was damn well going with him.
Arriving at the scene, Jim was just in time to catch the tail end of Simon's ultimatum as he leapt from the truck and then he was dialing up his hearing to home in on Blair and make sure he was okay. He could hear the frantic thump of his partner's heart, going double-time but steady, and then he could hear his Guide's voice and the voice of his captor as Blair tried frantically to explain his status and just why nearly every member of Major Crimes was outside the shabby looking hut to rescue him. Jim didn't need Simon's loud-hailer to magnify his voice when he caught the terror making Blair's voice shake; he just filled his lungs and bellowed at the top of his lungs. "SANDBURG!"
With eyes fixed on the hut, he didn't see Simon and the others jump in surprise as they realized he was there, but he did catch the quiet "Oh shit!" from Rafe that perfectly echoed the one from Blair in the hut. Then he scowled as he listened to Blair's next comment on the presence of his partner. "Simon, what the hell is going on?"
Simon Banks, reluctant third in the great Sentinel conspiracy, turned to his enraged detective and subtly gestured Joel and Henri into position to grab Jim and stop him storming the hut if it became necessary. "Jim, Blair's fine." Two ice-cold eyes stared at him furiously and Simon equally subtly nudged Megan and Rafe into grabbing position as well. "Blair was in the food market down the block from the loft when a guy burst in and tried to rob the place. The girl at the checkout managed to trip the silent alarm. When the uniforms showed up, the gunman grabbed Blair as a body shield to make his escape. One of the uniforms recognized Blair and called it in while they were chasing the getaway vehicle. When they were cornered and the guy holed them up in the hut we got down here and surrounded the place. Blair's fine." Simon felt his heart sink as Jim's face became even more rigid and he repeated himself weakly. "Blair's fine."
"You said you were going to keep an eye on him." Jim was trying to decide who to be more pissed at and, as the guy holding a gun on Blair was -- fortunately for him -- momentarily out of reach he decided to take his anger out on the more convenient targets of his colleagues and boss. "You swore to me that you'd make sure nothing happened to him while I was out of town."
Simon nodded reluctantly. They had all made that promise to Jim, dammit. What the hell had possessed them? "I know, Jim, and I'm sorry. He's a grown man though, he doesn't need a babysitter." The normally fearless Simon Banks actually took a step back from the sudden narrowing of Jim's eyes and reminded himself that the man who stood before him bulging with muscle and his short brown hair almost quivering in his agitation was known to be less than reasonable where his errant partner was concerned. "Shit, Jim, he shouldn't need a babysitter!"
Jim pointed a finger toward the hut. "If there is so much as a scratch on him when I get him back then I'll be taking it out of all your asses personally." He glared pointedly at Megan. "ALL of you." Satisfied that he'd put the fear of Ellison into the unhappy group, Jim turned back towards the hut and listened intently for a moment before pulling his gun out and aiming it at the hut. "They're coming out."
~*~*~*~*~
Blair stared from the gun directly in front of his face and then back to the face of the man holding it. "You want to what? Are you crazy?"
Gavin, very much afraid that he was heading toward crazy at the speed of light, gestured again with the gun and licked his suddenly dry lips. "I said, get up. We're going out there and I'm gonna demand a fast car and if they don't give me one I'll shoot you until they do."
Blair remembered what happened to last guy that had made a threat like that in the presence of Jim (they still hadn't gotten all the spilled brains out of the carpet in the station lobby) and shook his head. "You do not want to do that, man." He was also man enough to admit to himself that he didn't want to spend the rest of the night washing blood and bone out of his hair when Jim blew the guy's head clean off. "Trust me, Jim will be way pissed."
Gavin waved the gun again. "Right at this minute, who do you think you should be more scared off, me or your partner?"
Blair gaped incredulously and didn't even hesitate. "Jim!"
The firm answer did nothing to alleviate the pressing need Gavin had to relieve his panicking bladder and bowels. "I've got a gun!"
Blair nodded, unable to spare any sympathy for the perp as he morosely considered his own predicament. "Uh-huh. And when we get out of here, you get to be handcuffed and taken to a nice safe holding cell. I, on the other hand, get to go home with Jim Ellison and I don't have a gun. I just have me and a bag of books." He glared darkly at his captor. "Thanks a lot, man, this is just beautiful."
"Oh please, he won't hurt you, he's your partner." Gavin risked a look out of the window, just in time to see Jim turn a ferocious glare on his colleagues and the big, tough cops all flinch and huddle together for protection. He swallowed and repeated less convincingly. "He won't hurt you."
"Well of course he won't hurt me, what kind of a guy do you think he is?" Blair rallied himself enough to look outraged on his roommate's behalf for a moment as he ignored all of Jim's well-documented history as an overly protective gun-toting maniac before sinking back into his funk. "He'll just follow me around for weeks and be really nasty to everyone that speaks to me and he'll get antsy when I stay up too late and make me lots of hot drinks that I won't be able to finish and then he'll get upset and worry even more and then he'll talk to Simon and the next thing you know I'll find my ass down at the lake fishing when I should be marking papers or studying and all of this is because you needed some quick cash." Blair's chin sank despondently onto his chest as he sucked in much needed oxygen. "I'm looking at a month's worth of Blessed Protector overdrive at least, you big jerk."
"I don't care!" Gavin bent down and grabbed Blair's flannel-clad arm and yanked him to his feet. "I'm getting out of here and you're coming with me." He started pulling the unwilling student towards the door. "I'll let you go outside Cascade and give you a few bucks for the bus; it's up to you if you decide to come back here or not."
Blair choked as a hard arm came around his throat and propelled him out the door as a human shield. "I don't have a choice, you asshole; he'll track me down wherever I go and then I'll end up on bedrest for the rest of the damned semester!" He blinked in the light of the sun and took a few moments to let his eyes adjust before smiling warily at his partner. "Hi, Jim." His heart sank as Jim took in his bound hands, the arm clamped around his throat and then the gun pressed tightly to his sweating temple. "Oh hell."
Jim glared over the top of his gun at the large, unkempt man that was pressing a gun to Blair's head and holding the smaller man so tightly around the throat that he was balanced precariously on his tiptoes. Curling his lip, he snarled, “You okay, Chief?"
Blair ignored the tremble of the gun against his head at Jim's growl and tried to swallow. "I'm okay." He blinked cold sweat out of his eyes. "You?"
"Sandburg, this isn't a damn tea party." Simon's voice, harsh with fear for his friend and not a little worry for his own person if there was a mark on the observer, made Blair jump. "Shut up and let us deal with this."
"Okay." Blair blinked apologetically at his friends all pointing guns in his direction and tried to think happy thoughts. "Sorry, guys."
"Got nothing to apologize for, Chief." Jim's heart was pounding in his chest with adrenaline and sheer fury as he took in Blair's white face. "It's not like you asked for this."
Blair blinked again. Uh-oh!
Gavin, by now on his way to a spectacular nervous breakdown thanks to all the guns and dirty looks directed at him, snatched happily at this unexpected lifeline. "Yes, yes he did!" Blair whimpered. "I wanted to take the girl but he wouldn't let me. He definitely asked for this."
The assorted cops and onlookers watched in silence as Blair, the hostage, groaned and tried to hide behind Gavin, the gun toting hostage taker. Jim narrowed his eyes again. "Sandburg?"
"It's not like it sounds." Blair tried to wriggle free once more and wished fervently he were back in the little tin hut. "I swear to God, Jim." He batted in annoyance at Gavin's arm still clamped around the base of his throat. "Are you trying to get me shot, you asshole? Jesus!"
"Chief!" Jim listened to Blair's pounding heart and stared into his fear-dilated eyes. "What happened?"
Blair took a deep breath and prepared to, figuratively he hoped, sign his own death warrant. "I went to the market down the street from the loft because I wanted to pick up some fresh chicken for dinner and I was talking to Jenny, you know the little redheaded clerk? And then this guy comes in and starts waving his gun around and Jen managed to trip the alarm but the response car didn't use the silent approach so he started panicking when he heard the siren and tried to grab Jenny. But she's pregnant, Jim; I couldn't let him take her, so I said I'd be a hostage because I didn't want him to start shooting and it's not like I haven't been snatched before and I thought you wouldn't be home for hours and Simon would have gotten me back by then and now you've showed up and you're mad at me and I'm really sorry, Jim." Blair sucked in a huge breath, shut his eyes and prepared to be shouted at or possibly fired upon when his friends decided he just wasn't worth the bother to save.
Jim digested his friend's words in silence, shook his head and then stared over the top of Blair's head at the perp. "I'm going to count to three and then I'm going to shoot you. LET. HIM. GO!" He sighted along the barrel of his gun. "One." He clicked the safety off. "Two."
Blair scrunched his eyes closed even tighter and braced himself for the gunshot. "Oh God, just aim for the side away from my hair, man. It took me half an hour to wash all the blood out last time." He shouted with surprise as he was suddenly shoved to his knees when the last of Gavin's nerve gave out and he abruptly surrendered and then bodies, all scrambling to get to the perp and away from Jim Ellison, surrounded him. "Um, is it over?" He grunted as a hand yanked him to his feet and he found himself staring up at Jim's familiar face. "Hey, Jim."
Jim Ellison grinned and gave silent thanks that his partner had been returned to him unharmed. "Hey, Chief." He lifted Blair's bound hands and eyed the dirty ropes cutting into the skin grimly as Simon and the others hustled the disarmed criminal, and themselves, away. "Let's get these off you and get you checked out, okay?"
Blair, deeply wary of going anywhere alone with his roommate after Gavin's oh so helpful revelations, took a prudent step back and eyed his friend. "Why?" His suspicious blue eyes hastily reconnoitered the immediate area looking for viable escape routes in case they were needed and then looked up at Jim once more. "I'm fine."
Jim had already performed a hasty scan of Blair with his senses and was very aware of that fact, but he was also mildly concerned that his Guide might have opened the skin on his wrists when he had tested the strength of the ropes binding him and dirt from the material might have gone into the abraded flesh. "Yeah, I know, Chief. I just want to make sure, okay?" He smiled fondly down at Blair's uneasy expression and patted a tense shoulder. "Then we can get your statement and go home." Blair didn't look any happier. "We can get takeout. My treat." Blair looked positively panic-stricken. "Then I can kick your ass for getting snatched the minute I turn my back on you and go out of town."
Blair blinked, heaved a deep sigh of relief and relaxed at the familiar sound of Jim threatening to kick his ass for being in danger when he shouldn't. "Okay, I could eat. Can we get Chinese?"
~*~*~*~*~
Jim eyed his partner as Blair lay curled under a blanket in their armchair and munched his way happily through the box of noodles on his lap as he watched a college football game on TV. The student seemed completely unaffected by his ordeal earlier in the day and now, after taking a shower and climbing into his warmest and rattiest sweats while Jim ordered dinner, was relaxed and cozy. Jim smiled to himself as he watched the man he was quietly head over heels in love with snort when a player fumbled a catch and wondered if Blair had missed him as much as he had missed Blair. And Jim being Jim, naturally figured that now was the perfect time to find out, while his Guide was too warm and stuffed with food to rally any kind of effective defense against unwanted questions. "Don't you want to know why I was coming home early today?"
Blair blinked sleepy blue eyes at his partner and missed his mouth with his chopsticks as he tried to work out where the question had come from. "Uh, I just figured you lit out early to avoid the traffic, buddy."
"Nope." Jim set his own dinner aside and leaned comfortably back into the sofa he was seated on as he charitably ignored the limp noodle now staining the side of his armchair. This was exactly why he had rules about eating on the furniture in the first place but in the interests of keeping Blair off-guard, and hopefully both of them getting lucky later, he decided to forget that particular house rule for one night. "Try again."
Blair tucked a slightly damp curl behind his ear and snuggled a little further under his blanket, reveling in the glow of contentment inside him at the warmth, food and having Jim back where he belonged. "You wanted to check up on me and make sure I hadn't thrown any wild parties while you were gone?"
"Close." Jim smiled disarmingly and listened to Blair's heart as it suddenly started to beat double time. "One more time."
Blair eyed Jim warily, suddenly at lot more awake as he caught the almost flirting tone of Jim's voice. "You wanted to beat me home so you could scan the loft and make a list of all the house rules I broke so you could get kicking my ass out of the way the minute I stepped through the door?"
The grin fell off Jim's face and he changed the subject as he remembered something he had heard when Blair had been held hostage that afternoon. "Shit, you really are scared of me." Blair looked totally surprised as the conversation veered off on its new tangent and Jim scowled. "I heard what you said to that freak this afternoon when he was threatening you."
Blair frowned in puzzlement and then his face cleared in sudden understanding and he chuckled. "Oh that." He tilted his head as he looked at Jim questioningly. "I was just trying to connect with him, Jim. He knew who I was and who you were and was, like, totally freaked that you were gonna come busting through the door in a tank or something so I thought that we could build on a common bond and maybe he'd let me go."
Jim's scowl deepened. "The common bond of you both being shit scared of me. Great, that makes me feel like King of the World."
Blair hastily set his carton of food on the floor and jumped up from his chair to cross to Jim and flop down by his side. "Hey, man, don't be stupid." He nudged Jim's thigh playfully with his elbow. "Since when have I ever been scared of you?"
"The day we met." Jim made himself look directly into Blair's open, smiling face. "And…"
"That's the one and only time, man; you do recall trying to shove me straight through a wall, right? I was entitled to feel a little antsy, but since then, not so much." Blair's whole face was creased with mirth as he nudged his roommate again. "Sorry, man, you just don't cut it in the terror stakes when I spend so much of my time getting threatened and beaten up by the rest of the population." He eyed Jim's rigid face and sank back against the sofa with a sigh. "Seriously, Jim, the only thing I know I have to worry about with you is being smothered under the whole Blessed Protector thing."
Jim turned his head to watch his friend and then leaned back himself so they sat side by side with shoulders touching. "You know I only do that because I worry about you."
Blair snorted. "And I'll be sure to remember that the next time you're bawling me out for not staying in the truck or you're making a spirited attempt to bury me under every spare blanket in the state when I sneeze more than twice in a row." He cut his eyes up to Jim and his mouth twisted in a teasing smirk. "Mom."
Jim smirked back, evilly. "I can't wait to tell Naomi about your latest adventure." He tipped his head back and considered the ceiling. "Might just give her a call tomorrow and clue her in on just what her precious baby boy's been up to since she last saw him."
"That is harsh, Jim." Blair shifted position slightly and brought his thigh closer to Jim's until the fabric of their sweats touched, both men tensing and then relaxing into the touch with deep sighs. "And if you rat me out to Naomi, then I'll tell Simon you're having trouble with your senses and have you riding a desk for the next week."
Jim grinned, moved until he was propped more comfortably against the corner of the sofa and then stretched his arm along the top behind Blair's head. "I'll tell the guys you need to review the department's case histories for the last five years as research for your diss." His arm slipped on the fabric of the couch and ended up resting comfortably on the back of Blair's warm neck. He held his breath waiting for Blair's reaction. "Or that you've volunteered to proofread all our reports before we turn them into Simon."
Blair sighed at the welcome heat of Jim's skin against his and turned until his back was resting against the side of Jim's torso, wriggling a little to get comfortable and communicate to Jim that he might appreciate a tighter hold. "I'll go into your computer's hard drive and reset the default language to Portuguese." He curled his legs up on the couch and closed his eyes in pleasure as Jim's arm slipped around him and pulled him closer. "And I'll tell Megan you thought she looked like she was gaining weight."
Jim laughed and his chest shook enough with the motion to dislodge Blair's head slightly and tuck it into the comfortable hollow beneath his shoulder. He tilted his own head to the side and rested his cheek on top of the springy curls. "That comes under the heading of cruel and unusual punishment, Chief." He brought his other arm around Blair and began to lightly skim his fingers up and down the other man's exposed forearm, delight streaking through him that his secret love was finally allowing the more intimate touches he had wanted to give for so long. "How about I promise not to breathe a word to Naomi and we forget all about this afternoon?"
"Deal." Blair opened his eyes and watched Jim's fingers scrape over the smooth skin of his inside wrist and smiled to himself. "Jim, I think I know why you came home early today."
Jim rubbed his cheek against Blair's hair and listened with satisfaction to the steady beat of Blair's heart. "Yeah, Chief?"
"Uh-huh." Blair raised the arm not being stroked and covered Jim's hand with his own to twine their fingers together. "You missed us."
Jim grinned, rubbed his face against Blair again and wondered why they'd spent so long pretending that they couldn't be this for each other when it was proving so easy to slip into their next incarnation as just 'us' and leave behind the two separate entities known as 'them'. "That's pretty much it, Chief."
Blair yawned, snuggled closer and pressed a light kiss to Jim's bicep as it curled against his face. "Me too." He shut his eyes and let himself drift away. "We got there eventually though, man."
"We always do, Chief." Jim closed his own eyes and let his lips brush Blair's temple before following his Guide into sleep. "We always do."