Archive of Our Own

Author's disclaimer: I own nothing.

>Oops III: I Hear Alaska's Nice This Time of Year

Rafe was awakened by a soft, mellifluous humming, deep and rich, easing him out of sleep with the gentleness of a caress. He smiled, eyes still closed, and sighed--stretching, rolling over and slinging his arm around his bedmate all in one motion. He snuggled close and sighed, getting comfortable, nuzzling against a very softly furry thigh...

Hold it.

Oh God, not again.

He shot upright, his brilliant hazel eyes the size of hubcaps.

Blair, sitting propped comfortably against the railing, set his book on the bedside table, removed the Discman phones from his ears, and smirked. "The party you are attempting to feel up is not currently available," he said in a one-ringy-dingy voice.

Brian collapsed on his pillow again, groaning and covering his face with both hands, partially to hide a relieved grin. "I'm gonna get you for that, Sandburg."

"Hey, man, don't blame me. You oughtta look before you grope, you know?"

Brian grinned again. "Where's Jim?"

"He got called into the station. I'm his note. He says he shouldn't be more than a couple of hours, and to make yourself at home. He'll be back to take you home way before your and H's meeting with what's-his-face--the guy you're trying to bust."

"Did Jim say 'what's-his-face'?"

"No, I forget the name. This is my first note gig; cut me some slack." He rubbed Brian's shoulder in a friendly fashion. "But I'm one up on most notes--I even made you breakfast. It's keeping warm in the oven."

"Mm?" Food? Brian, still muzzy with sleep, decided he could get over briefly believing he'd just screwed some other poor unwitting drugged bastard, as long as the perpetrator of the falsehood was providing breakfast. "Coffee?"

"Jamaican Blue Mountain."

"Marry me."

"I'd love to, but Jim might be a little miffed. I can hear him now. 'Sandburg! I just asked you to keep him entertained, for God's sake!'"

Brian chuckled and sat up, then suddenly clutched at the covers. "Oops."

"Shy?" Blair smiled as Brian retucked the comforter. "Nothing I haven't seen, remember."

"Well, yeah, but that was kind of an emergency situation and it's not just being naked, it's being kinda disgusting and oh, the hell with it." He shoved off the covers and got up. "Will breakfast keep warm while I shower?"

"Sure, man. Go for it. I'll bring you some consciousness-inspiring coffee so you can shave without slicing your own throat." He was staring unapologetically, smiling.

Brian blushed, the color traveling down his chest, as usual. "What?" he nevertheless demanded archly. "I've got something you haven't seen before?"

"Not the way you mean. But then, if we were talking artifacts instead of human bodies, well, let's put it this way--there are clay potsherds, and then there are silver-alloy hand-chased Himalayan singing bowls, man," Blair grinned. He did the little fingertip-kissing gesture with a "Mwa!" sound.

Brian blushed harder and scuttled down the stairs. Blair had been wearing only boxers and an old tank undershirt, and the shorter man had felt warm and nice and he smelled good, and Rafe had been half-hard by the time that deep, purring voice had woken him up. He wasn't sure whether he could still control his rebellious anatomy via a frigid blast of water in the shower prior to actually washing, or if it was already too late for that.

Faintly to his ears floated the murmur "Damn, he's hot."

Too late. Sterner measures would have to be taken. Brian could only hope there were no weird acoustics in the loft that broadcast the sounds of action taking place in the shower, because he was going to have to take care of more than hygienic business.

"What about you?"

"I ate. I had early class."

"The last time anybody made me blueberry waffles...hell, I can't remember." Brian forked in another big syrup-laden piece. "Thanks for the shorts."

"You really need to start keeping some things over here, man, if last night means that things are, in fact, sailing right along for you guys. My underwear supply only goes so far, and I'm willing to bet you had to ask me because Jim's shorts fall off you."

"Well, not quite, but they ride around pretty bad over the course of the day. And they bunch. I don't work so hard on my wardrobe just to wind up with unsightly panty lines. Anyway, it just...I don't know, it's not the kind of thing that's easy to bring up this early on. Sailing or no sailing. 'Why, no, Jim, I didn't know blue was your favorite color, and by the way, can I keep some underwear in your dresser?' I mean, I've already got a toothbrush in the bathroom, since Jim said he kept a couple of spares."

Blair snickered. "Then maybe you should make him stay over at your place instead--no skin off his nose. He packs a thirty-second overnight bag."

"Oh, sorry--the noise bothering you? We can--"

"No, Rafe, the noise isn't bothering me. Not the way you mean." Blair smiled. "Some reason you guys like it here better? You came back here after your first real date, too, without, uh, you know, having..."

"I have the double bed from hell. Two six-foot-guys thrashing around on it, and it wouldn't be long for this world. I think we might actually have gone for it that first night, instead of talking until dawn and then coming back here for breakfast, if it hadn't been for that. Not a problem I've ever had before."

"Not seeing much action for a while before Jim?"

"Wouldn't say that, though I'm no Horndog Sandburg. I meant that nobody I've ever brought home for that has been anywhere near as big as Jim."

"Brian...you know I'm not really that much of a horndog, either."

Brian looked up; Blair--sitting on the other side of the table from him, his chin resting in one palm, steam from his coffee cup floating gently up between them--had kind of a distant, melancholy expression.

"I didn't mean anything by that, Blair," Brian said quietly.

"I know. And it's not like I don't ask for it, God knows. But sometimes it just gets a little...old, you know?"

Brian shook his head slowly and nibbled at a strip of bacon. "How do you mean?"

"I do have some friends who like the occasional no-strings fun night. And some of them really are friends--I mean, we do things together besides sex, and nobody feels like they have to wonder whether this is a date or anything like that. No tap-dancing; if anybody wants it, they just say 'Up for it tonight? Pooped, eh? Well, maybe sometime soon.' Or whatever."

"Then what's with all the sexual conquest stories?"

Blair sighed. "I don't know. Sexual Napoleon complex or something. Ah, screw it, I do too know why. I don't want Jim to think I'm pathetic."

Brian nearly spurted coffee. He swallowed and asked "How do you mean? Jim thinks the world of you, though I'm aware he's a big sullen prick most of the time, so it might be hard to see."

"I know Jim cares for me, Brian. If he didn't I'd be out on my ass, but he likes having me here, even though he bitches constantly about housebreaking me and shit like that. I've even offered to leave if he was feeling crowded, and he told me outright he didn't want me to. But he's not...we don't..." Blair shook his head. "Hard to explain."

"You have a thing for him?" Brian asked.

Surprisingly, even though Brian had spoken softly and tentatively, in case Blair would be embarrassed or angered by anyone implying he had an unrequited longing for anybody, let alone his roommate--that could be seen as pretty pathetic, all right--Blair didn't look discomfited, just quietly resigned. He smiled a little and said "I don't guess I'd really know what to do with him if I had him that way, though I could live with having the chance to find out. No, I just don't want...any pressure on him. He wouldn't tell me to fuck off and die if he knew, but if he felt like he had to be careful around me--well, that, I don't think I could take."

"I understand," Brian said softly. "Everybody's got to keep a little pride in situations like that. But as far as Jim goes, I've only just...only recently..."

"Brian, I've been here for all of it, I know what's going on with you and Jim."

"I know, but what I was going to say was that I've seen things about him I never have before--such as that Jim is...fragile inside. I know, I know, I'd never have believed it either. He's...really obnoxious sometimes in the interpersonal department. But part of his problem is that he knows that. He slaps people away before he can do something that hurts them by accident. He'd rather be known as a jerk than an inept clod. And he'd rather have being alone at least be seen as being his choice, rather than...well, you get the idea."

"Yeah, I knew that. I know everything else about the guy, after all. Which is why I've always been pretty sure he couldn't want me that way. But then, I'd have said the same thing about you--whether he'd get into you, I mean. Not just that you're a guy, but...well, you two are different. He doesn't blow you off the way he does me, of course--oh, you know what I mean--" they both grinned. Blair continued "But you're at least some younger, and you act a lot younger. And you look a lot younger. The only reason he doesn't call you kid and stuff like that is that you're actually a cop. A detective, like him. That gives you an automatic measure of credit with him. "

"You've been thinking about this a lot?"

"I'm an anthropologist with a psych minor, Brian, I think about stuff like that all the time. Besides, thinking about what's going on with you two helps keep my mind off what Megan and I just went through."

Brian's half-smile vanished as he asked "How is she?"

"She's coming back in to work tomorrow. The pill regimen doesn't really require her to take time off work, but she said she had the time to take, and she needed to get her head together."

"I don't blame her. After all, she...well, all of us, really--" he sighed and put his fork down, thinking, gazing into the distance. "Being drugged without your consent is a violation in itself, but when it then causes you to do things you would never have done otherwise, its...well, Megan basically went through all the hell over unprotected sex that she would have had to if she'd been raped."

Blair winced.

"Oh, God--" Rafe reached across the table to grab Blair's wrist. "You know I didn't mean it like that, sorry. Of course it wasn't rape, on either of your parts. Like Jim said, it was a crime was committed against us all, not by any of us. I just meant she wasn't given the opportunity to use her usual contraceptive methods--the choice was taken from her. She had to go through that at no fault of hers."

"I know. It's not like getting drunk and having sex that you regret the next day, because when you choose to get drunk, you're taking your chances. This was...forced on us," Blair finished quietly. "I'm just glad it turned out so well for you and Jim. Megan and I are pretty wrecked."

Brian shifted his grip to Blair's hand and squeezed. "Yeah, I know, and I'm sorry. It's...not all sweetness and light for me and Jim, either. Yeah, okay, it probably can't be beat as a jump start into a dating thing--for me and Jim, at least, but that just happened to be the way it worked out. Like I said when you came home and found us, we're really lucky all we did was glom on each other. We carry guns, Jim drove under the influence...we have no way of knowing what else it might have made us do. That thought is creepy as hell. Not being able to trust your own perceptions is about the scariest thing I can imagine."

Blair squeezed back on Brian's hand. "I know, man. We've all got near-terminal creeps, here... hey, your waffles are getting soggy, man, eat, I didn't make them so they could liquefy on the plate." They smiled a little at each other, let go of the handclasp, and there was a quiet few minutes as Brian mopped up the last of the waffles and munched the rest of the bacon. He picked up his orange juice, sat back from the table, and managed to smile. "That was great, Blair. Thanks. How do you and Jim stay so slim?"

"Me, I'm hyper. Jim, I run around after him slapping Wonderburgers and doughnuts out of his hands," Blair grinned, getting up to clear the table. "He doesn't have the Cholesterol Plate for breakfast every morning if my sniping at him will make a difference."

"Hey, wait--" Brian got up. "You made me breakfast. I can clean up."

"You're still a guest. But if things keep going the way they're going, you're going to have to be considered an unofficial resident soon, so enjoy it while you can. I won't be cooking and cleaning up for you after that."

Brian grinned back at him. "Okay, then, feel free." He located the paper, which was over on the coffee table, and brought it back to the kitchen; he was paging through it when Blair said "Brian..."

"Hm?" Brian looked up.

Blair was standing contemplatively at the sink, the water swishing smoothly down the drain, unheeded. He said "There was this thing, when you were offering to be around if I needed anything...um...you said 'He loves you, you know.'"

Brian nodded. "Yeah."

"How did you mean it? Do you know anything I don't?"

Brian shook his head. "If you mean has he come out and said anything to me about it, no. I just meant he...well, anybody can see it."

"You meant as a friend, then."

"I..." Rafe paused and leaned against the chair back a moment. "When I kissed you and said it was from him, too, I'm not totally sure what I was getting at, but it seemed like something Jim would have done, if he could have. That's...what I meant. Clear as mud, I know, but it's the best I can do, I'm afraid. There were a lot of emotions running high right at that moment."

Blair nodded slowly, then kept washing dishes.

Rafe stayed quiet, watching him, for a moment, before essaying carefully "Blair, is this thing with Jim and me...is it...if we're rubbing your nose in anything--"

"No." Blair cut that off with a shake of his head. "Like I said, he's so far out of reach that it's never really an immediate pain. I just get a little moony and wistful occasionally. No big sturm-und-drang. Hell, Jim would be able--" he broke off suddenly, was quiet a moment, then finished "I think Jim would know if he was living with someone who was actively agonizing over him, which seems to have put a pretty effective barrier on whether or not I let myself do it. Don't worry about that. Besides, I'd one hell of a lot rather see Jim with you than one of his usual psychofelons. You think I ever made breakfast for any of them?"

"Or got in bed with them to wait for them to wake up, then gave them a bravissimo when they got up to shower?"

Blair cracked up. "No, not that either--I value my life, thanks very much."

Brian smiled, regarding Blair with head slightly atilt, considering. "You flirt with me."

Blair looked around and smiled back. "You don't seem to mind."

"You know I don't. But what I meant was, if you will with me...why not with Jim? You don't seem too worried about the possibility of causing any trouble between us."

"I'm not." He opened his mouth to continue, then shut it, looking thoughtful almost to the point of troubled, but not quite. "And you know...I'm not sure why."

"Why you're not worried, or why you don't flirt with Jim?"

Blair considered. "Either. As for Jim...well, partly I guess I don't flirt with him because we have such an established dynamic. It'd probably just go right over his head. Or end up just a big question mark over his head, if he noticed at all. I'd feel like a moron if that happened. Or worse..." Blair curled in on himself at the very notion, leaning against the kitchen counter and making a face as he wrung out the dish sponge, "if he pretended that it had gone over his head. God, that'd be worse than the time I asked Jenna Coleman to the after-game dance while we were both doing the student aide thing in the high school office, and she laughed in my face...and it turned out the PA mike was on."

Brian winced feelingly and gave an "ouch"-sounding whistle.

"But I think I'm over the worst of the shock," Blair admitted.

"Blair, listen...I wouldn't be too sure it would happen like you think. Like any of those possibilities you just mentioned, I mean. He does love you."

"I know," Blair sighed softly, and returned to the dishes.

Brian considered him a moment, maybe trying to weigh the impact of his words, then went back to reading the paper.

A few minutes later, the door opened and Jim came in. He tossed his keys on the basket table and plopped down in one of the other kitchen chairs, his expression not one of untarnished joy.

"Jim?" Brian said, worried. "Why'd Simon call you in?"

"The stakeout stalker's hit again."

"Ah, shit," Blair sighed. "Who this time?"

"Joel."

"Oh, man, not poor Joel...who was he with?" Blair wondered.

"Nobody. He was on his own. He ended up taking off on a little drive up the coast. He'd nearly made it to the border when he decided he was too sleepy to keep driving, pulled over at a camper lot and went to sleep in the car."

Brian slumped in relief. "That's not so bad," he sighed. "Not as bad as I was afraid of, anyway."

"Did he say why he decided to head for Vancouver?" Blair wondered.

"He wasn't heading for Vancouver. He'd always wanted to see Alaska."

Brian and Blair both gulped.

"Oh wow," Brian muttered. "Thank God he hadn't always wanted to, I dunno, get naked and sing show tunes in the middle of Puget Square."

"What was he staking out?" Blair wanted to know.

"That's the thing. He wasn't waiting for a specific operation to come down, like Brian and me, or you and Connor. He was just working on establishing a courier's route, that's why he was alone. It was even only supposed to be for a few hours--two guys from vice were supposed to relieve him. He was just filling in."

"Why'd Simon want you?" Blair wondered.

"He wanted someone who'd been hit by this stuff to talk to Joel, find out if that was what really happened. And it sure sounds like that's what happened. Joel was panicked. He thought he'd had some kind of weird neurological episode, was going on about turning in his shield and gun before he got someone hurt."

"Well, I hope you reassured him?" Blair wondered, eyebrows rising.

"Simon and I together got him calmed down. His lab work's still being run."

Brian said grimly "Like Connor said, once could be an accident, twice could be coincidence--but three times is a pattern. Joel wasn't even on the lookout for a verified operation; he was just filling in on a recon tail. Which means this likely isn't just someone picking up cash for eliminating surveillance; somebody's actively targeting Major Crimes."

Blair, giving Jim a cup of coffee, to murmured thanks from the older man, wondered "Like who? Well, somebody you guys busted, obviously, but do you have any idea who might be able to pull off something like this?"

"Not off the top of my head," Jim said. "Like you say, it's the MC department being targeted here, rather than a specific cop; any of us could have been on the case, or none of us--this might be from before any of our time in Major Crimes. Campion's been there longer than me, and H came in about the same time I did. As far as everybody on active duty right now, though, she and I have been there the longest. Even Simon came in a few months after I did..." he shook his head. "We have a lot more questions than answers right now. We'll check and find out who's just been released from prison recently that might have any ties at all to Major Crimes, of course. Then Simon wants to get everybody together and go over what we have, get some more specific assignments down."

"He taking us off the case?" Brian wanted to know.

"Not exactly." Jim took a deep breath. "When he booted me out of his office last Saturday morning, he told me he had to try to think of the best way to present this situation to the chief; but he hasn't, yet."

"Why not?" Blair frowned.

"My guess would be he's coming up with the least threatening way to tell the chief that some wacko is targeting the best detectives in the city--while they're on duty--with a drug that makes them get loose and do whatever comes naturally," Jim growled. "Simon was hoping against hope to get somewhere on this before presenting it to the chief as what you might call a clear and present danger to the detectives in question, to anyone they might come in contact with while affected, and to the cases all of them are working on."

"What could he do? Shut down Major Crimes?" Blair wondered incredulously, shaking his head.

Brian said softly "His first priority has to be public safety. For that matter, so does ours--but it would be up to the chief to examine the evidence to determine whether it would be more of a danger to the public to leave us up and running, with some kind of precautions in effect--or shut us down and precipitate one hell of a panic. He can't afford to give in to this kind of thing--I mean, really, shutting down Major Crimes because of something like this is tantamount to giving in to terrorist demands, in principle, at least. He can't afford to let it be known that he will react immediately with that kind of unilateral tail-tucking to this threat, or we'll be let in for God-knows-what kind of copycatting. And yet, he can't just ignore it. Now, no one's been hurt so far through our, uh, intoxication--unless you count the five people immediately affected, and it's nothing we won't get over--so shutting down the department would not be the first move on the list; but our casework has been affected. You and Jim still don't know exactly what he and I missed due to our bliss-out; Megan does know, and it's just about blown her case. She was really relying on the arrest she expected to make that night to sew up what she's put together against Panteras, and now she's back to square one."

"Okay, so...?" Blair wondered. "What's the worst case scenario?"

"Worst case? Well, for starters, the handling of the...matter would be removed from Major Crimes," Jim said. "What the chief would probably do--as a compromise between shutting down the department and piling us into a bus to be taken to a safehouse in another state or something, and leaving us up and running as we are--is distribute our cases among the other departments."

"So...you'd be kind of a dummy department. Going through the motions, without any real effect on anything," Blair said dubiously.

"That's one possibility," Jim said. "If you're talking worst case."

"Well, it's a flaked idea, Jim. You have a better chance than anyone else of figuring out just what this nutcase's beef could be, and who exactly he is--you're the ones with exposure to all the information you'd need to figure it out, old and current cases, all the--"

"That may be true, but it's also true that when a cop is personally involved with a case, he's usually removed from it or never assigned to it," Brian reminded him.

"This is different," Blair insisted.

"You're right," Brian said, "and there are precedents in our favor there. But when a single cop is being stalked, he is not assigned the case. He assists, yes, but he's not the official name on it. Whether the chief would decide to stick with that policy is an open question at this point."

"Well, who the hell would it go to?" Blair wondered. "You guys are the ones who get the cases nobody else can solve, or for half a dozen other reasons, from all the more specific departments, like Narcotics and Homicide."

"Simon thinks there's a chance the chief could call in the Feds to take over," Jim sighed. "It could be considered Federal jurisdiction, depending on what the crime finally gets classified as. And our other cases would likely just go back to the departments they originally came from. As for the cases that came straight to us, that's up in the air. Also, needless to say, IA would be all over the place."

Blair frowned. "IA?" he wondered.

"It's kind of standard," Rafe explained. "If a cop is being stalked, there's always an IA investigation; threats against a cop or group of cops, too. It's pro forma, to establish that the cops in question haven't done anything against regs to cause a criminal vendetta. In this case...Jesus. I don't know, I've never been involved with the targeting of a whole department, though I've heard of it. Well, of some maniac going on a cop-killing spree and having a certain set of parameters for the intended victims. at least. Everybody involved in a certain bust, their families, that kind of thing."

"Are we sure it's the whole department?" Blair said.

"That's the smallest division we can break it down to at the moment," Jim said. "The three cases the stakeouts were involved with have absolutely nothing to do with each other that anybody's been able to fathom so far; but as yet, we don't know of any cases of this stuff hitting anybody outside MC. It's not the individuals involved--if it is, I doubt our ability to find a connection that esoteric any time soon. Me and Rafe, you and Megan, Joel...you and I are partners, so if it's connected with us, then it's conceivable that Rafe and Megan were hit purely as collateral damage--but that still wouldn't explain Joel."

"And he hasn't even been in the department long," Blair conceded. "We don't all have enough history together, professional or personal, for there to be a discernable connection there."

Brian added "At least, like he said, no connection we're going to be able to find with no more information than we have. For all we know it's something like all of us having stopped at the same convenience store six months ago before poker night, and if it is something like that..."

"...then not even a top-level profiler is going to be able to figure it out any time soon," Blair agreed grimly. "Not soon enough, at least, not before some kind of preventative action has to be taken. So what is it Simon does plan to do, or has he told you?"

"Like I said, he's planning to hold a briefing for Major Crimes, warning everyone of the potential threat, giving them all the information we have so far--well, barring certain details; it should be possible to warn everyone that this drug lowers general inhibitions of all kinds, without alerting the vic to the fact he's being affected by anything, and that unpredictable but so far nonviolent behavior has been the result--without spreading details about just what happened to the four of us. This isn't so different in the basics from other occasions when a particular section of the PD or particular cops have been targeted."

"And Simon thinks the chief will settle for that?" Blair considered, leaning back in his chair and taking a sip of coffee.

Jim drummed his fingers on the table, thinking, then said "No civilians have been harmed, and no one else has been irretrievably hurt. If the report to the chief...eases up on the extrapolation of the potential dangers--without actually withholding information--then he probably won't have to cover his ass with any of the more drastic preventive action we've been talking about. We could wind up with it relegated to the status of 'prank'. Granted a very dangerous prank--a lot of things classified 'pranks' wind up prosecuted as felonies--but still not enough reason to--"

"Prank!" Blair expostulated. "Fucking tell that to Megan!"

"Easy, Chief. Like I said, we know better, but so far, it isn't going to look like a Federal case to the chief as long as Simon's careful in the report. Like you said, we've got the best chance--and the most reason--to find this guy; but blowing up the potential danger right now with the speculation we've all been doing would only end up with the case being yanked out from under us."

"I know, I know..." Blair sighed. "It still grates."

"Yeah," Brian muttered, passing part of the paper to Jim. Then he leaned over and kissed his cheek. "Blair made me breakfast, you know," he added, in a small mood-lightening attempt.

"He likes you," Jim shrugged, having another sip of his coffee as he opened his part of the paper.

"At least, better than the total wastes of standing room you ordinarily--" Blair dodged in a single graceful motion, not even spilling his coffee, as Jim tried to swat him. Rafe laughed as Blair slid smoothly around the table and took refuge behind him. "See? This one will protect me."

"For blueberry waffles, I'd protect Jesse Helms."

Blair made a raspberry. "Gee, thanks."

"But I'm really glad it's you instead." Rafe tilted his head to look back up at Blair, upside down, and grinned.

"And I'm glad it's you instead of some homicidal well hey I gotta go get dressed, got a meeting at the U," Blair said, inside his room with the doors slammed before Jim could get more than halfway out of his chair.

As Jim sat back down, smirking, he and Rafe considered each other.

"You know," Brian wondered, folding his part of the paper closed and tapping his lower lip with a forefinger pensively, "I wonder why you and I didn't screw our brains out a long time ago. I don't know about you, but drug-related circumstances aside, this is turning out to be a lot of fun."

"I thought I was straight and you thought you were just a little curious," Jim shrugged, leaned over and kissed Rafe's nose.

"Oh. Yeah. I forgot."

Jim's faced pinked up a little as he continued examining his section of the paper, fighting a smile, and Rafe needled "Come on, Jim. You're not too old to act silly on occasion."

"No, he's just too anal," Blair yelled from behind the French doors.

Rafe cracked up as Jim grinned and yelled, in a tone totally at odds with his expression, "You've gotta come out of there sometime, you smelly little furball."

"He is cute," Rafe murmured.

"Yeah," Jim smiled, trying to take a sip from his cup, which he thereby discovered was empty. He got up to refill it as he wondered "You and H think your bust'll come down tonight?"

"Unless one of us fucks up so bad the other one will be forced to kill him."

"So, barring Simon interfering, you'll be free tomorrow night?"

"As you say, unless the signs and auspices indicate that the mighty Simon will stretch forth his superpowers to make us all tremble, yeah, I'm cool. What do you want to do?"

Jim smirked.

So did Rafe. "Besides that."

"Sandburg and I have an extra ticket to the game."

Rafe raised his brows. "I don't wanna cut in on your--I mean, when the date starts getting dragged along to things the guy usually does with the best friend--"

"Shut up and say yes, Rafe," Blair yelled from behind the doors. There was the sound of a dresser drawer hitting the floor with a thump. "Damn it."

"How can I shut up and say anything at the same--"

"Say yes! Ouch."

"Okay, yes. What did you do to yourself in there?"

"Looking for a fresh set of underwear and dropped the drawer on myself."

"What's wrong with what you were wearing? You did wear it to teach a class earlier, you said."

"I don't wanna have to explain why I smell like expensive European cologne. It's not exactly my style."

Jim looked at Brian, eyebrows on the rise. "Sandburg's shorts smell like expensive European cologne?"

"He climbed in bed with me, with a book and some tunes, to wait for me to wake up," Rafe explained sheepishly. "I rolled over and grabbed him, before I woke up all the way."

Jim just rolled his eyes and slurped more coffee. "Figures. Look up the word 'laid-back' in the dictionary and there's a picture of Blair Sandburg. Say--" Jim raised his voice a little. "Chief, how many people at the U have you got sniffing your shorts on a regular basis?"

Brian and Jim both broke up laughing at the sound of something else hitting the floor in Blair's room, Gods knew what, and a yell of "Fuck you, you balding, overtestosteroned--ouch, dammit...if you don't mind smelling like the sticker price of your cologne equals the gross national product of at least a small first-world country, so be it, but I've got a reputation to maintain. And my bottle of cedar oil just rolled under the bed."

Jim wondered "Brian? Do I smell like your cologne? I mean--I've got a really sensitive nose, and to me you barely smell like your cologne." He of course didn't mention, even as it occurred to him, the probability that--as Blair had taught him to do--he was augmenting the natural human olfactory tendency to tune out constant smells in order to more easily pick out unusual ones.

"When you've been all over me? Probably."

"I wonder why no one's said anything."

"Because they want to live?"

"Could be it."

"Or maybe they think you smell better this way."

"Watch it, pretty boy." Jim grinned, but didn't look up from his paper.

Jim knew that "pretty boy" was the one phrase--even over and above "fancy Dan" or "Let's see your ID, kid" guaranteed to get a rise. But this time Rafe only grinned at him and flipped a page of his part of the paper.

Jim cocked an eyebrow at him after a brief pause. "What? No 'Let's hit the mats, Mighty Joe Young, and I'll show you who's a fucking pretty boy'?"

"No." Rafe smiled in a complacent fashion. "When you say it, I know you mean it in a good way."

"No I didn't," Jim grumped.

"But you mean it," Rafe insisted, and reached over to touch Jim's cheek gently. "And you can't help meaning it...like you mean it. Even when you're trying to be an asshole."

Jim turned slightly pink, and Rafe smiled.

"I guess I can't help it, at that," Jim muttered.

Blair, eavesdropping on the other side of his bedroom door, finished tying his shoes, smiling, glad he'd managed to grab that third ticket to the sold-out game off a scalper.