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

Author's disclaimer: Jim and Blair belong to the ages. And also to PetFly. Not to me. Alas!

Author's notes: Fear not! The angst isn't over yet. Blair wanted to tell this in first-person; I tried for third and it simply didn't work that way. Apologies to those who dislike the first person voice.

All day long Jim's hands are steady, competently handling the phone, the pen, the keyboard of his computer. His knuckles might be a little too white when he handles a doorknob or pulls out a drawer; he might spend a few seconds too long looking into the steam rising from his coffee cup. The crease in his brow may be just a little deeper. But he looks like he's coping.

I wonder what another Sentinel might sense, looking at him. Heightened heartbeat, respiration? A little more sweat, maybe? Or maybe even... desire. The same things Jim can pick up from me, if he's paying attention.

At the very least, if he's freaking out, it isn't showing. People know when Jim freaks out, and they steer clear. All except me: I can't steer clear. I come in to work with him most mornings and leave in the truck with him most evenings and sometimes a lot of sympathetic looks go with me at the end of the day. Usually when he freaks out, work is an armed camp and home is a war zone. Today it's like somebody called a cease-fire.

I'm not quite sure what kind of looks I deserve this afternoon as I pick my jacket up and follow Jim to the elevator.

It was Jim's first day at work after the shooting, it was Jim's first day after the stitches came out. It was Jim's first day after a whole shitload of things, even if you wouldn't know that to look at him. His first day to eat eggs and bacon and toast and jelly for breakfast after the first blowjob he ever gave a man. --Me.

He's spent the half-day at his desk not looking at me, not touching me, not talking to me any more than the job demands. I thought we'd made the critical breakthrough when he came to me in the night, I even prayed we'd made it, but it's hard to keep the lines of communication open here at work. Too easy for us to pretend nothing happened, too easy for him to close down again. Close down, freeze up, lock it all in tight.

The elevator is crowded; the truck isn't. It doesn't seem to make any difference. He's pensive, thoughtful. He's watching the traffic like a hawk, big sure hands calm on the steering wheel. Meanwhile I'm about to jitter my way through the floorboard and fall right out on the highway. I've turned the radio on and spent most of the ride flipping through stations looking for something I want to hear. Usually that drives him crazy but today he's just quiet.

I can't stand it; something's got to break free. As I mount the steps at his side I need to scream, need to hit something, need to fly back out and get into my car and see how far and how fast I can drive before I go out of control and just... wipe out. The tension's too much. It's got to go somewhere.

We enter the upper hall and his hand falls lightly on the small of my back... and suddenly I know I'm going to explode; my heart surges in my chest and he's waiting behind me quietly as I fumble my keys and struggle with the latch and throw the door open. He's walking in quietly as I heave my pack onto its hook and struggle out of my jacket.

He's waiting, and I look up, holding my breath. His eyes are bright blue, his smile a little nervous, but he's warming up, I can see the ice melting and dripping away-- no, it's not. It's skipping the middle step, it's evaporating, steam right off the cube, fucking sublimation going on here, and I'm in his arms without touching the floor between us.

Time freezes as his head tilts toward me, and I can't move or breathe, waiting for his lips. Gentle, velvet, and so hot I don't see how the ice ever survived the day. It's gone, barely a memory, and I'm boiling away. Dizzy and spinning, every part of me vaporized and drawn up and out and into him through the kiss-- God, to sink into him... I'll never survive till he's ready.

It's hard to demand a talk when you don't remember how to speak.

He pulls back and examines me minutely, an inexorable, self-conscious grin dawning on his face when he sees what he's done to me. I think it probably helps him to know he isn't the only one who's blown away by all this. He obviously likes seeing he's not the only one who's needy and uncertain and horny as hell. I like seeing how wet and swollen his lips are. I like knowing I was the one who made it happen.

I'm so hard I'm about to convert my button fly jeans into a deadly weapon; pretty soon they're going to explode and rain buttons like a hail of gunfire. "Jim..." That's a word, yeah, it qualifies. And it's a damn good one, because it works. He's back, his tongue pushing into me, and I sway a little, and the circle of his arms tightens. Oh, yeah.

Cease-fires were made to be broken.