The Sentinel is owned etc. by Pet Fly, Inc.
Written for the Sentinel Thursday LJ community. The challenge was to include 852 Prospect in the story.
Many, many thanks to Audra Rose for her outstanding beta. As always, she rocks.
Any and all feedback is welcomed and appreciated.

The first time Blair brought home a paycheck, he handed the money to Jim and said he could pay half the mortgage. Jim shook his head, said, "It's good, Chief," and then went back to drinking his beer. Blair started to say, this is my home, too, but Jim held up his hand and walked over to the couch before Blair could finish the sentence. Jim felt he owed Blair - a career, a home, a friendship - and Blair got that. He let it slide, because he figured maybe Jim owed him some of those things as well.

The next day, Blair took the check to the bank and deposited the money.

The second time Blair brought home a paycheck, he was long past feeling Jim owed him anything. Maybe Jim had cost him one career, but Jim was the reason he found another. While months ago he'd have had a hard time imagining being a cop, lately he had a hard time imagining being anything else. He pulled out his new checkbook and carefully wrote Jim a check for half the mortgage. He left it sitting on the counter under Jim's favorite dark blue coffee mug. When Jim went to pick up his coffee cup he glanced at the check, looked over at Blair and then poured his morning brew in Blair's Anthropologists Do It Best mug.

Blair tore up the check and rebalanced his checkbook. For the first time in a decade he had more money than he had bills.

By the third month Blair didn't offer Jim half the mortgage. He deposited the check and made sure he got to the mailbox before Jim. That night he wrote out the electric, gas, telephone and cable bills and put them in the mailbox the next morning. He left the bill stubs marked with `paid' on the corner of the island where Jim kept his small bill filing box. Jim had a system for the bills, and everything else really, and Blair thought that maybe it could become their system.

When Jim walked in the door, he picked up the mail, rifled through the bills. Blair could tell the moment he saw the new stubs, messily torn along the serrated edges and written in Blair's academic scrawl that he hadn't lost in his 6 months as a cop. Blair could feel Jim's eyes on him, watching him where he sprawled on the couch not quite engrossed in the Discovery channel. Jim sighed and walked slowly up the stairs. Blair closed his eyes, letting his head fall back on the cushion.

Blair arrived at the loft the next day and found a bill stub from his student loan marked `paid in advance.'

The fourth month, Blair walked into the loft and took a good look around. Home, but not home, his place but not his space. There was something strange and weird about a grown man living in a closet; even weirder and stranger was a grown man living in a closet and feeling like that was almost enough. Almost enough, but not quite enough, because it wasn't okay and Blair wanted something more. He wanted a home in his own right, not just a home on squatter's rights.

When Jim arrived, Blair handed him a beer, sat across from him on the couch and said, "I found an apartment over on Drewberry. I'm moving in on the 5th." Blair couldn't look away from Jim, Jim couldn't look at Blair.

That night Blair packed.

The last box had been carried up the stairs; the last suitcase had been set inside the one bedroom. Jim looked around the place - a small one bedroom with dingy walls, a tiny galley kitchen and a view of Cascade's finest industrial area - and said, "Not too bad, Chief. Not too bad." His face was smiling, in that half-tilted up, almost-smile that Jim usually reserved for interviewing witnesses, but his fists were clenched, his knuckles white. Blair realized that while Jim was saying, "We'll have to get together and catch a game next week, Sandburg," Jim's body was screaming something else entirely.

Blair looked around the cluttered apartment and thought it looked a little empty despite the piles of boxes that he hadn't yet unpacked. He longed for the colors of the loft, the warmth of the wood stove, the comfort of possibility. Before he could change his mind, Blair said, "Stay for dinner," and Jim said, "Okay."

The two men sat down at Blair's cheap $40 Walmart folding table and had a dinner of delivered Moo-Shu Pork and Vegetable Chow Mien. They talked about the Jags' playoff chances and Simon's latest girlfriend, Daryl's first semester at college and whether the trout were running at their favorite stream. When Blair casually mentioned a party he was attending for a few of his old university friends, Jim smiled and for once, didn't look guilty.

Blair was happy.

Their days became a blur of work and dinner, work and dinner. Jim decided that Blair's apartment wasn't too bad, and had claimed Blair's one little couch as his own. He'd stretch out, in an uncomfortable looking sprawl and watch TV while Blair sat in the ugly green plaid hand me down chair that Mrs. Pulaksi from upstairs had given to him. Those moments when Jim took up the entire couch - and annoyed Blair with his newly discovered tendency to channel surf - Blair would feel like maybe the apartment was almost a home.

He wondered if Jim ever looked around the loft and saw Blair in all the little places he had once lived. The extra bookcases in the living room, the sugar bowl on the counter, the colorful placemats on the table - all the little things that Blair had brought into Jim's life, brought into Jim's house. Little things that Blair had taken with him when he had left.

Jim was on the couch, as always, spread out, his khakis wrinkled and his tight tee shirt stretched across his chest. His holster and weapon had been abandoned at the door, hanging beside Blair's on the small coat hook. Blair sat at his small table filling out an application for a new credit card - platinum elite - since having a career with a steady paycheck and full benefits made him a preferred credit risk.

The first time he'd filled in the application he'd been distracted, paying attention not to Jim's running commentary on some random military history program, but to Jim's face and hands. He'd been caught wondering if Jim was losing a few more hairs on top of his head and when he looked down he'd filled in `852 Prospect Place' as his address. The second time he filled in the wrong address, he tossed the pen aside in disgust. It was one of those moments when Blair was reminded of all the things he'd lost and all the things he'd never had. He got up to get a beer and joined Jim in front of the TV.

"Hey, man, this is my couch. Slide." Blair shoved at Jim's leg with his knee before rolling his eyes and reaching down to shove Jim's feet off the end of the couch.

"Sandburg," you're being a pain in the ass, and Blair laughed because he could almost hear Jim's words in his expression. "Yeah. Your couch," Jim said but he didn't move, just let his legs fall to floor giving Blair an ass-width spot to sit.

The show wasn't so bad, and Blair found himself lulled into the boredom of the WW II historical references. The beer was settling nicely in his belly, his leg was warm where Jim was flopped out next to him. It felt for a minute like home - quiet and comfortable, Jim and Blair, give and take.

"Sandburg, are you watching this?" And just like that Blair was back, and the whimsy of the moment was gone.

"No, Jim. I'm sitting on the couch and not watching this."

"Right. Your couch is lousy." Jim put truth in his words with a loud crack of stiff neck muscles. "How do you stand to lay on it?"

"I don't lay on it. You lay on it. All the time. Every damn night, Jim. If you don't like it, then go home. To your couch." Blair didn't move, just pushed his body over a bit, reclaiming part of the couch, part of what was rightly his.

"No." Jim shoved his legs and after a twist and a turn he landed his legs in Blair's lap, ankles crossed, expression on his face smug in the moment of victory. His pants were stretched, his shirt was hiked up and Blair flashed to visions of a bare chest revealed by a gaping robe. He shivered and shoved Jim's feet off his lap, bracing his hands to get up.

"Sandburg," and if Blair wasn't mistaken there was pleading in Jim's tone. That alone was enough to stop Blair's movements. "Blair, just...," Jim's words seemed to get lost in the moment. His hands were tightly clenched and Blair wondered if he was trying to keep from touching, from communicating, from saying whatever he wanted to say with his hands.

Blair leaned back and had to smile at Jim's slightly annoyed look. He shook his head and almost reached out, grin in place because this moment was all about Jim and Blair, giving and taking as always. Jim was uncomfortable and Blair was uncomfortably aware of this. For a split second he feared that Jim would get up and leave, and he'd be left alone in this little apartment that was only really his when Jim was around to share.

But Jim surprised him, because he leaned up and softly wound his fingers through Blair's hair and said, "Jesus, Sandburg, if you wanted to be alone with your couch, you could have just said so." Before Blair could do something, anything - to either wrap his hand around Jim's or to pull Jim's hand away, and Blair so wanted to know what he would have done - Jim had carefully removed his hand, stroking down along Blair's shoulder before standing up. "I'm going to hit the road, Chief."

Jim stood and adjusted his trousers just a bit - and Blair's breath caught for a second at the possible implications - before Jim smiled a little ruefully and headed for his holster. Blair sat on the couch and thought of his empty apartment and the picture that sat on top of the TV of the two of them at his Academy graduation; he remembered Jim's Cascade PD sweater that he had not-quite stolen from the loft when he left. Small things that were such a part of Blair's everyday life he couldn't imagine not having them. He knew that he could let Jim leave, and that tomorrow they would spend the day together working, talking and saving the city. Tonight, and this oh-so-close-but-not-quite-there moment would be set aside, another odd, un-talked about piece in the Ellison/Sandburg saga.

Life for them would continue; yet the mostly-give and mostly-take that once was good enough would feel hollow to Blair. He didn't want just enough, he wanted it all: all the give, all the take, all the moments. All of Jim.

Blair got up from his seat and said, "Wait," and Jim stopped, hand on the front door, jacket over his shoulder. He didn't turn around but instead waited, maybe as patiently as Blair had ever seen him wait for anything. It was Blair who took the first step and Jim, by turning around and stepping away from the door, took the second. Then they were there, together, facing each other, inches apart with nothing between.

Jim's eyes were blazing with an emotion that had Blair's skin tingling, his heart racing. He though that Jim -still caught up in guilt over so much of what had happened between them - would wait, letting Blair take this last final step. But maybe Jim knew that Blair needed him to be the one to reach out, or maybe Jim had been so busy trying to not touch, to not reach, that when given the chance he could no longer resist.

He lowered his head, until his lips were there - right there - hovering over Blair's mouth, so close that Blair could smell the tang of beer on Jim's breath, could see his own reflection in Jim's eyes. Jim reached down and took Blair's hand in his own, raising them both up to rest carefully on Jim's chest, directly over his heart. He let his lips whisper softly along Blair's mouth and cheek, up to his temples and through the soft hair near his ear, never touching, just close enough to feel.

Blair shivered, tipped his head back, looked right into Jim's eyes and said "Man, you are an ass."

Jim just chuckled, a deep rumbling sound that Blair could feel the entire length of his body. His ear tingled and his world stopped when, right before Jim kissed him, he softly whispered, "Sandburg, you owe me some serious back mortgage."

End Finding Home by Sori: sori1773@comcast.net
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