Author's webpage: http://www.squidge.org/~pumpkin/cara/caraindex.html

Author's disclaimer: Petfly is King. All hail Petfly. And UPN. I'm just borrowing these boys, not turning them into a business.

Author's notes: Originally appeared in the zine "Thinker, Tyler, Soldier, Spy from Zortified and Fredicated Prod.

I don't know how long it took me before I really started noticing Sandburg constantly, keeping an eye on him above and beyond the call of duty, but I can tell you one thing-- the kid repays inspection. He's an enigma, shedding skins constantly, slipping in and out of roles more frequently and easily than he changes his underwear. The first time I saw him I thought he was a freak: a headcase with an attitude problem and maybe a drug problem and a definite need to find a different tailor.

Well, he still needs a better tailor, but the freakshow is all an act, and some time not long after I started... well, I guess I have to admit it, I'm monitoring him more or less constantly now. Anyway. Not long after I started that, I realized he was up to something. Hiding something. Maybe a lot of stuff. He's a confirmed con man.

Now don't get me wrong-- when it comes to a crisis, he's *solid.* But that's part of it, see? You wouldn't ever suspect that on the first glance, and maybe not even on the seventeenth. Not till you're standing in front of a speeding garbage truck and he pushes you down on the pavement to keep you from being flattened. Not till you see him lay some crook out with a lug wrench, or till you realize that a respectable number of people owe their lives to his cool clear thinking.

After the shock wore off, I thought that was the extent of the hidden depths you could find inside Sandburg. Intellect constantly clicking over like a finely tuned engine, complemented by moments of swift decisive action. Oh, and a healthy libido, too. Coming on to almost every woman he sees like he just can't help himself-- and most of them eat it up; whatever they see after they get over their first reaction to being chatted up so blatantly... well, it has to be pretty good. They usually forgive him for his lame-assed pickup lines and for his wide-eyed and ridiculously overt goggling at their finer attributes. More often than not they wind up in his bed. I should say he winds up in theirs-- ever since I walked in on him with Christine Hong, he doesn't bring his dates back to the loft very often.

I think maybe that's part of why I started watching him closer: the women. I'm not sure if I wanted pointers-- hell, I couldn't pull off his act if you paid me-- or if I was jealous and afraid he'd steal any woman I might decide I wanted for myself. I was pretty confused at the time, what with Carolyn giving me all those mixed signals before she finally just got sick of me fumbling them and took off for San Francisco. Maybe I envied him the freedom to play the field without a jealous ex breathing down his neck and watching his every move.

The first time I saw him get kissed, though, was a surprise. I saw a new Blair Sandburg that day, a level of him I'd never suspected might exist. I don't even remember who she was-- hell, what do you expect? Sometimes it seems like he has a new flame burning every day. His candle burns 'on both ends, across the sides, around the middle, and up the back.' I heard Redd Foxx say that on TV once, and I've never seen anybody it held true for as much as it does for Sandburg.

That kiss hit him like a ton of bricks. It wasn't somebody he cared about the way he cared about Maya, though she hit him pretty fucking hard in her own right. But after that kiss... he looked pole-axed, looked like he'd never been kissed before, looked like he'd gone from hanging nice and loose almost to orgasm in about two seconds flat. It was funny, seeing him swallow and stand there for a moment, swaying, his eyes shut and his face filled with... longing, naked emotion and need like I'd never seen before. And then... then it wasn't funny at all. It was a little embarrassing and a little frightening to see that level of need on his face and to realize some woman could lay him out so easily, with just a gentle peck on the lips delivered right there in the middle of the bullpen.

I shrugged it away, put my nose in a file, and he pulled himself together almost as fast as he'd fallen apart. I thought maybe it was just a hormonal thing, an unexpected spike of lust that caught him off-guard. Or I thought maybe he was just a sensualist, and he'd closed down for a minute to savor every nuance of what had been a fairly brief encounter.

But somewhere deep down, I knew better, and so I watched him. I saw him kiss more women, watched him get lost for a moment-- a day-- a week-- in each successive one. It was in his eyes even when it didn't show on his face. In his eyes and in his voice and in the way he touched them so gently, with a consistent, passionate reverence that I found more than a little surprising. Maybe his response is why they flock to him the way they do. Hell, it has to be nice knowing that you can do that to a lover.

But if it's nice knowing that, why don't they stick around? Maybe they just can't handle it, can't handle the responsibility of that intensity he gives them. Or maybe they can't handle knowing that he gives it to every woman he takes to bed, hell, every woman who gets close enough to kiss him. Or maybe he can't handle the intensity; maybe he has to break it off or sabotage it or find some excuse to wander on in search of the next pleasant armful who can stagger him to the soles of his feet with just a kiss. The next pretty girl--or boy, I've smelled both on him-- who might be willing to take him to that place behind his eyelids that he goes whenever he gets that sweet, sweet, vulnerable look.

I saw it again and again, and I couldn't stop thinking about it. I caught myself thinking about it in bed at night, wondering how he could keep it together when he came, if just kissing a woman put that blissed-out look on his face. He would probably make a lot of noise in bed, too-- he always makes a lot of noise, talking or playing music or tapping away at his laptop keyboard or scratching notes with his felt-tip pen. But in bed, he'd probably make noises that sound like he looks when he kisses a woman; he wouldn't close down around all that emotion. There's just no way he could stay contained, no way he could keep it reined in the way he always does when I'm watching. He'd let it out, just throw back his head with his curls tumbled around his face and cry out the passion that shudders so visibly inside him, meld emotion to sensation and just fucking *explode...*

Well, *shit.* So much for these sheets.

That was stupid, to say the least. I mean, he made a pretty picture, but I didn't really want to go there, did I?

On second thought, maybe I did. Maybe I want to know whether I could do that to Blair, whether I could make him look that way, whether he'd make those sounds for *me.*

Honestly, this isn't the first time my body's made its interest known. Blair's been under my skin for a long time, and it's time I admitted it to myself, because my body's just made it obvious just how much it really wants him. But the rest of me... that's the problem. It isn't just my body that wants him. My heart wants to go along for the ride.

And now I just can't stop thinking about that moment when the ticket expires and it's time to get off the merry-go-round....

We've been together for a long time now, Sandburg and me. Seen a lot of nasty shit go down, even waded through some of our own making. And in spite of everything, I still think he's about the biggest con man I've ever seen. I still think he's up to something, I still think he's hiding something big from me. Because now that I have a secret of my own, when I look in the mirror after cleaning myself up, I recognize what I see. It's another look of Sandburg's, one that I guess I'll be sharing with him from now on.

It's a quiet look, guarded. Sober and thoughtful. It's a look that's seen too much; it's the look of a man who isn't about to tell everything he knows. And believe me, its owner just learned that he knows a *lot:* Sandburg could take me to that place of perfect bliss where all those women take him. What's bad is that I figure he'd do the same thing to me that he does to them. Use me for a moment, a night, a week-- then let me go, usher me out of his life, move on to the next body, to the next bed... with hardly a hiccup.

That's not going to happen to James Ellison, my friend. Not this cop. Not even if it means I'll never know his secret.

Not even if it means I'll never get to tell him mine.