Archive of Our Own ^beta

Author's homepage: http://www.fortunecity.com/lavendar/brett/283/index.html

I was watching Love and Guns, and well, it seemed to me that Jim was a little cold towards Maya, a little mad she was taking his guppy away...one thing led to another...so here's the next part of Silent Seduction. A little plotting, a little Smarm, and a whole lotta sexual frustration. MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!

It wasn't working.

The rationalisation, trying to ignore it...nothing was working. He still wanted Sandburg. Wanted him so much that he almost popped a boner at the way they squabbled about lunch the other day. Domesticity.

And now, he was about to hand the kid to another person on a silver platter.

Maya Carausco.

If he could convince him, that was. Some part of him wondered what the fuck he was doing, trying to get the kid onto a woman, the daughter of a suspected felon for christ sakes. But, here he was, talking away...

"Is that her?!"

One look at the kid's face convinced him it was a bad idea. B.A.D - capital letters. Jim got to his feet. "I can get somebody else..."

"Nononononono..." the kid looked eager enough to jump the Carausco woman in the middle of the grass. He hurriedly stood and headed off in the direction of his latest quarry, mouth going overdrive. Jim watched him, something in his stomach feeling wrong. "Can't let my partner down, can I?" Blair tossed happily over his shoulder.

Jim watched the rapidly retreating back and shook his head. You just did, he thought mournfully.

It had been one shit of a day. Jim had been lumbered with a Fed, who's first act had been to off - admittedly indirectly - his prize snitch, the mob were stirring up with the Yakuza, the vending machine had eaten his lunch, and it looked like Maya Carausco and Blair Sandburg were falling for each other. Big time.

They were kissing. Right there on the grass where anyone could see them. Tender, loving, teasing little contacts, once twice...

Jim considered throwing himself in the ocean. Then he straightened his spine. Time to go over there and mark his territory - so to speak. He headed across the grass, noticing to his disgust they were at it again. "Sandburg."

He listened with half an ear to the standard BS drivel his partner was spinning to explain his presence, trying to fry the woman with his eyeballs. Much to his disgust she didn't shrivel up and piff into nothing, but smiled at him.

"Nice to meet you, Jim."

"Yeah." Blah blah blah, burn in hell, bitch.

Blair turned and gave Jim a dopey, lustsick grin. He refused to see it as love.

Jim glared at him.

"It's not what you think," Sandburg offered.

Jim glared at him.

"Ok, it is what you think."

It got worse. Late nights at the University, Blair would come home, looking radiant, smelling of her. He would happily putter around in his small room, the tinny scratching of his earphones playing sappy piano lovesongs while Jim frantically jerked off in his upper bedroom, wishing it was him that had Blair so lovestruck, wishing that it was him that had the music playing, was putting the smile on the angelic face, the twinkle in his eyes...

They started seeing less and less of each other. Blair was spending time with her and Jim was burying himself in the case. He tried to avoid the annoying Fed sticking her nose in everywhere, then considered her presence.

She was here to wrap up the case with Carausco. Working towards the same end as Jim, although she wasn't trying to do it before her partner started picking out engagement rings for the wrong person.

So he endured her, tolerated her, played along a little...

And then he hit upon the perfect plan.

"Hey Jim, you're on the TV, man." The call from Brown sent him scurrying across the bullpen to the little colour screen.

//...joint operation between the Cascade Police and the Federal Bureau of alcohol, tobacco and firearms....//

Jim looked at the bright lights all over his face, the reporters shoving cameras up his nose and remembered all over again why he hated news crews. He had no idea why he agreed to the on-the-spot interview.

Yes he did.

But it was so dark, so rotten, he didn't want to admit to it.

He knew Maya would see it.

Knew? Hell, begged, hoped, prayed that she would. One more strike against what was shaping up to be one hell of a romance|between his partner and the houri from hell. He watched it replayed half a dozen times during the day, over nearly all the channels. Should be a good enough coverage to get her attention.

After he was sure that he had give the bitch enough time to see and break with Sandburg, he rang up to offer his condolences.

"Maya?" The eager hopefulness in the kid's voice made Jim's lips tighten in a white line.

"It's Ellison."

"Hey, Jim, I really don't feel like talking right now."

Jim suppressed a grin. Bingo. "You told Maya?" he asked innocently.

"She found out." Blair muttered back despondently.

"I'm sorry." Ding dong the witch is dead... Spinning his little glass paperweight victoriously in his hand, Jim filled his partner in on the case. Blair's reply stopped him cold.

"I think I'm falling in love with her, Jim."

Ellison stopped spinning the cube on his fingers and clenched it in his fist, hearing the dial tone in his ear as fine cracks appeared in the glass.

Where is he? Jim paced unobtrusively up and down the breakroom, pausing to tap at his reflection on the microwave door, then moving again, listening with half an ear to what Drennan was droning on about and making grunts at the appropriate junctures.

The Fed had decided it was time to break down a few walls between them, expand their horizons, whatever, and had started with yet another I-lost-my-partner-in-tragic-circumstances tale. Jim wasn't really that cold hearted, but he had heard it all a million times, lived through it nearly as many.

And he was as worried as hell about Sandburg.

He let his senses tendril out, looking, hearing, smelling, while a lesser part of his brain dealt with the woman yammering at him. Ever since he started working - no living, he liked the sound of living better -with Sandburg, he had found within himself an untapped talent at doing a wide range of tasks on autopilot. So he gave Drennan some old sob story, pouring a cup of coffee, looking out to see if Sandburg was in yet.

He wasn't.

Jim ran through the kids schedule in his head. No classes to sit, no classes to hold, no major papers due - usually a free day he spent with Jim.

So where the hell was he?

All of a sudden, Jim knew where his errant partner was.

Fucking stupid little....

Carausco's.

The phone rang and he snatched it up. ~Maya. She sounded...frantic. Jim put his plans on telling the little harpie where to go on the backburner and grilled her. She gave him names, dates, the entire case, right there in his lap - but that wasn't what he wanted to know. Something was wrong, gnawing at his instincts, and he had the horrible feeling it had to do with Sandburg.

And she confirmed it.

Jim hung up the phone and sprang into action.

Drennan was down. Not that he cared. The smashes and screams from the greenhouse caught him, and after a cursory examination, he left the Fed on the ground.

Hang on Blair, I'm coming.

Senses running overdrive, he smashed through a glass panel. The brief glimpse of his partner, bound and gagged, lying limply on the cold ground snapped his already tenuous control and he made short work of the behemoth that had dared>to hurt his Blair. Straight through the glass, bullet to the chest.

Owww.....fuck that hurt... Jim rolled to one side, shaking his head, and then wishing he hadn't.

"blair?" The begging little whisper from inside forced his bruised and battered body to its feet. The silence in reply to the call propelled his movements through the new greenhouse door.

Maya was bending over his unconscious partner, tears streaming down her face as she pulled ineffectually at the gag, a heartbeat away from hysterics. "Blair?" she sobbed again.

Instinct taking over, Jim gently cradled the smaller man's head in one hand, the other arm extending to rudely shove the woman away. He wasn't aware of the movement, or her strangled cry as she slid sideways into a bag of fertiliser, all senses trained on the limp figure in front of him.

Gently, reverently, he laid the curly head against his shoulder, holding his partner against his chest as he worked at the knots binding his hands behind him. They came free and the expressive hands flopped back, Jim carefully placing them in his lap as he worked at the gag, hearing nothing but the soft serration of the anthropologist's breath, the gentle rhythm of his heart.

Blair began to stir as the cloth came free, and Jim used it to wipe the sweat and blood from his face. The high forehead creased, fine eyebrows coming together, then separating as cerulean blue eyes slid dazedly open. "Jim.....?"

"Right here, buddy," Jim ghosted the cloth across the growing bruise on the side of his partner's mouth, each touch gentle, solicitous, so as not to cause any more pain. Blair snuggled sideways into his chest for a moment, eyes closing, and let loose a sigh that reverberated the length of the Sentinel's body. Then he was struggling to sit up, heart and breathing increasing as he clambered out of the strong embrace.

"Maya?"

"Blair...." Jim watched with a clenched jaw as Maya crawled into his partner's arms. He got stiffly to his feet and limped out of the glasshouse, not wanting to see the protective way Blair cradled the sobbing woman in his arms, or the way he gently kissed the top of her head.

In the end, it was Jim who took him home. (Jim who ended up carrying the dazed Grad student, doped up with painkillers up to the loft and tucked him into bed. Jim who spent the night watching his partner's sleep, checking it didn't slip unnaturally deep, Jim who smelled the faint tang of tears in the early morning air, Jim who was too afraid to go down and comfort his partner...

And later that day, it was Jim who put up with the annoying Fed for one last time, at an impromptu lunch, hoping somehow the company would pull the anthropologist out of his depressed slump.

It didn't work. Blair remained sequestered in his room, and Drennan kept messing with his pans.

There was a knock at the door, and Jim moved to answer it.

She was at the door. Maya.

"Hi," he granted graciously. He'd heard the news, she was leaving, so what did it matter? It might even help Blair. Closure and all that. He stood back and let her make her way into Blair's room, a little angry at the fact she already knew the way.

She was in there only briefly, and Jim refused to listen - for Blair's sake. When Maya came back, eyes a little moist, Jim saw her out, gladly closing the door on that little piece of garbage. Things were back to normal. As they should be. He gave Drennan a wolfish grin when she tried to hide the MSG from him.

A soft catch of breath - not quite a sob - caught his attention. Then another, and he headed to the curtain, standing there with his bowl of noodles, peering in. The kid was broken up.

Really broken up.

And Jim felt like the worst kind of heel.

No, lower, because he knew he'd do it again in a heartbeat.

He tried to make nice, some sort of apology without acknowledging guilt, the words sounding more and more inept, until he finally reached new heights of inanity by proffering noodles to the grieving man, like a cat laying a bird on its owners doorst}p in a peace offering.

Blair looked up at him, destroyed. "Not right now, ok Jim?" he said quietly, and Ellison had to resist the urge to throw his arms around the smaller man, hold him, rock him, and soothe away the pain.

But he couldn't.

Because he caused it.

Jim finally turned and left Blair to his pain, feeling ever inch the rotten bastard he suspected he was.

End Silent Seduction #8 - Love and Guns.