Blair hadn't visited the blue jungle since Jim had moved to Phoenix, so at first he didn't realize he was in a dream. Even then, he didn't immediately recognize it as a Sentinel dream until he saw the cat's shadow darting through the trees.

Blair started walking, climbing over broken logs as he moved toward the familiar temple. The eroded carvings and stone blocks were as familiar to him as his own face in the mirror, but as he continued down the path, the familiar landscape and angles distorted. As he grew more and more and comfortable, Blair hurried towards his goal. The faster he walked, the more the jungle loomed unnaturally large over him.

Blair closed the last several feet and reached out to touch the cool stone which always felt so good in the uncomfortable jungle heat. That's when his hand slipped into the groove formed by the first carving, Blair realized his dream self had shrunk until his whole hand disappeared into one carved curve. This temple steps loomed over him, so tall that Blair couldn't reach the top of the first one even if he stood on tiptoe and pressed his body to the cold stone. Blair started to panic at the impossible task of climbing the gigantic structure. And yet, but he knew he had to.

Unwilling to give up, Blair turned around to look for a ladder or an elevator, a thought which seemed strangely logical in the dream state. Instead Blair found himself fascinated with the giant yellow moon that hung in the sky. It was so close Blair could see the various features of the beautiful orb: -- Cantor crater and Oceanus Procellarum.

Blair reached out toward that hanging globe, only slightly surprised to his fingers managed to touch the sandy surface. He used his fingers to rearrange mountains and carve new valleys in the stark landscape. Blair was still playing with the moon when the alarm woke him.

Blair sighed and hit snooze before rolling over and going back to sleep. He didn't have the energy to go for a run this morning. He needed to save his energy for the meeting with Roth.

"Cap--"

"No, don't say it. I swear if you say one word I will boot you off the force so fast your head will spin. I expect this shit from Russo or Ellison or even from Jeff in some lesser form, but *you*?!? What were you thinking?" Roth took a deep breath. "What were you *not* thinking?" Roth slammed his hand down on his desk, and Blair jumped. His eyes went to the door where the closed blinds kept him from seeing Jim although he had no doubt the Sentinel could hear every word of the current ass chewing.

"I know the others are aggressive sons of bitches who take their jobs too seriously and see every case as a challenge to their manhood or their honor or some other shit like that, but I trusted you to have more common sense than that," Blair looked back to his captain in order to see the open fury his inattentiveness had triggered. Blair rearranged his face with the same contrite mask he had used to survive so many rounds with Rainier administration. Roth sighed.

"Jim is a damn good officer, but he sees the rules as applying to other people and I trusted you to either keep him from walking too close to the edge or to at least letting me know when he was getting out of line," Roth said, and the disappointment bothered Blair more than the yelling or the hissing or the anger.

"Captain I really--"

"Really fucked up? Because unless that's what's about to come out of your mouth, you have missed the point."

"I know we should have--"

"You should have done a lot of things, but get that 'we' out of your sentence. You should be telling me that 'I should have' and the fact that you aren't tells me that you're still fucking up. Damn it Blair, you are one of the up and rising stars in the department." Roth's words made Blair duck his head. This man had taken a risk by hiring him, stuck by him through the investigation into the shooting, gone to the range to help Blair get over his new fear of firing his weapon. This man came closer to being a father than any other man in Blair's life ever had. Roth sighed again heavily. "You work well with people, you have a sharp mind, hell, you can talk an Eskimo out of his coat..."

"Inuit," Blair interrupted

"Isn't it what?" Roth's voice which a moment ago had been heavy with disappointment now just sounded confused.

"Eskimo isn't the name of the people, that's what white people call them. They're the Inuit people," Blair shrugged.

"Have I mentioned that you are able to talk your way out of trouble with frightening regularity?" Roth said dryly, and Blair decided that his captain definitely didn't fit into the category of most people. Roth continued after a brief moment of silent glare. "You are a damn good cop with damn good instincts, and yet your ex-partner walks in and you're suddenly Mr. Follow Along. Either you get yourself together or one of you is out of my department. Am I making myself clear?"

"Yes, sir."

"For God's sake, Sandburg, why didn't you say something?"

Blair had to really stop and think about that. "I thought Jim knew best."

"Damn it, Jim did think best when he was talking about the coverage at the drop. I can't fault the man's strategy, but Jim's judgment went right out the window when you two went rogue. You would have been better off turning that charm on the FBI idiot and getting him to listen to Jim. Or maybe you should have turned that charm on your partner to get him to work inside the system. Damn it, Blair. This is not going to look good on your record."

"I know sir."

"It's going to look worse on Ellison's since he has any number of violations of this nature."

Blair flinched at the idea that Jim could lose his job. In Cascade, that never felt like a real possibility, but here it did.

"So if you want to help your partner, stop assuming the man is always right."

"I just…"

"Blair, you better get your head on straight. Jim is damn good at what he does, but you're just as good at what you do. Funny enough, in that meeting with the FBI, I didn't see you do anything. You and your partner out there need to figure out why that happened."

Blair opened his mouth to protest, but really there wasn't anything he could say to that. Roth made a dismissive gesture toward the door while he sat down heavily. Blair left silently.

"Sandburg," Jim answered as he picked up his beer bottle from the end table before dropping onto the couch.

"It go that bad?"

"Simon yells louder," Jim shrugged as he focused on watching the Suns lose a basketball game.

"It go that bad?" Blair repeated, refusing to be thrown off the track this time. Jim's head fell back against the sofa so that the sentinel was staring up at the ceiling.

"I shouldn't have come. You had made a new life, and within a month or so you go from being the up and coming star to the maverick cop who can't be trusted."

"Oh man, it's not that bad," Blair paused as he silently reviewed his own ass-chewing. "Is it?" Blair sat on the arm of the couch farthest from Jim.

"I would say yes. Roth had me sign off on an agreement of 'do and don't's that if I don't do something on the do list or do do something on the don't list, I'm out of there."

"Shit."

"Yeah. He get that serious with you?" Jim rolled his head to the side, and now Blair could see the ache in Jim's heart shining out his eyes.

"Nah. He just yelled. It felt like being home; I haven't been yelled at like that for a while."

"And you wouldn't have been again if I hadn't come," Jim added.

"No, no, no. I made the decision to go along with your idiocy."

"Idiocy?"

"Yeah, well it was pretty idiotic, but I agreed so I'm just as big of an idiot as you are."

"At least you'll be an idiot with a secure job," Jim said, but Blair could hear the unfamiliar uncertainty in Jim's voice. He wondered if Jim was uncertain about his own future or worried for Blair's. Blair slid down so that he was sitting cross-legged on the couch, one of his legs pressed again Jim's outside thigh. If he needed proof that Jim was upset, the lack of complaints about shoes on the furniture was proof enough.

"Really? He's that mad?" Blair asked softly.

"Oh yeah, Chief. I'm just glad you didn't catch the worst of it."

"Yeah. He just ripped me a new one." Blair paused as he considered how to bring up the next part. Jim had been right when he'd said that neither of them really liked talking about things like feelings, at least not when it really counted. "Roth suggested that we needed to have a heart to heart," Blair finally announced.

"Another time, huh Chief? I'm really wiped out here."

"Oh man there's nothing more I would like to do than just let this drop. I'm just not sure we can afford to."

"I didn't say drop it, I just set another time, Chief." Jim's voice took on the brittle hardness that warned Blair that he wasn't kidding. This time, Blair refused to take that warning.

"Problem is if we don't talk about this now, it just gets easier and easier did not talk about it all."

"What you want? You want me to put on a hair shirt and beg forgiveness?" Jim snapped as he sat up and jerked away so that their legs no longer touched.

"Man I never said anything close to that."

"But what the hell do you want to talk about? I screwed up. I get it. Now drop it." Jim spit his words angrily, and Blair felt his own temper rising up to overshadow his good intentions. He took a deep breath to avoid snapping something he didn't really mean, or even worse, snapping something he did mean.

"I would drop it if that would fix anything!"

"Dammit, I shouldn't have moved down here at all." Jim pushed himself up and started pacing the room.

"And that's the kind of thinking that got us in trouble in the first place! Shit it's like were in this rut and we're not getting out of it."

"So I'll get us out of it," Jim shouted as he started walking toward the bedroom. Blair suddenly had a flash of what Jim meant.

"By leaving?" Blair demanded as he stood up to follow Jim.

"You did it."

"Yeah, and it didn't turn out particularly well either."

"I don't know, it seems to have worked out pretty well for you," Jim countered as he opened his closet door and started pulling shirt off hangers one at a time, folding them and then stacking them on the bed.

"It didn't work out at all. I spent every damn day missing you. Every time something happened I wanted to pick up the phone. I kept having those god damn blue dreams," Blair took a deep breath before he humiliated himself by crying, not that he hadn't done that in front of Jim before. "Nothing worked out," Blair practically whispered in his desperation.

"You've made a home here, a home I don't fit into."

"Shit. We just have to talk through this. We can't just go back to the old patterns where you tell me to stay in the truck while you go break every rule."

"We're guys. We're not supposed to talk things through," Jim pointed out, but at least he had stopped folding shirts. Instead he stood in the middle of the room with his arms hanging at his side as if he couldn’t figure out what to do. Blair understood the feeling.

"Yeah well Naomi raised me better than that. I'm not supposed to get caught up in the testosterone shit," Blair answered tiredly.

"Newsflash, Chief, you're a guy. You have testosterone issues."

"Yeah, I'm figuring that out."

The two of them stood in silence in Jim's bedroom. Blair knew this feeling -- this desperate empty feeling like things were sliding away and he couldn't do anything about it. "God, I can't… " Blair lost his words again. "I can't do it again. I can't lose you like this," he finally admitted in a harsh and ragged voice.

"Chief, you aren't losing me. I'll never stop being your friend." Blair had closed his eyes, so the strong arms wrapping around his shoulders and pulling him to Jim's chest were a surprise. He allowed himself to lean into the warmth as he tried to catch his breath. "We're both tired and wrung out. Look, we have a few days off to think about things. Let's take a little break and try this again."

"I'm starting to think we're helpless at the heart-felt talks," Blair said with a small laugh. He wished he could just stay right here, held in Jim's arms. Even without talking, this felt right.

"Yeah. I noticed." Jim answered, and Blair felt a weight rest against the top of his head. He realized it was Jim's cheek, and that made him struggle even harder against the tears. He wouldn't lose this, not again.

"So we don't talk," Blair said with sudden inspiration.

"I thought that's what got us in trouble in the first place," Jim said, pulling back just far enough to look Blair in the eye with suspicion without actually letting go.

"So we write it all out. We take the three day suspension to figure it all out and write it down," Blair suggested. He waited for Jim to protest having to write out feelings, but to Blair's surprise, Jim nodded slowly.

"I can do that, Chief." Jim's arms tightened for a brief moment, and then Jim let him go. Blair could have cried in relief when Jim started taking the shirts from the bed and putting them back in his closet.

Dear Jim,

I love you, man. Really! When I became a cop, I hoped I could join you in your world, but the longer I was in the academy, the more I doubted it myself. Yeah, a couple of the instructors were real assholes, but the bigger problem was that I didn't believe in myself enough to ignore their shit.

And then you got all distant. Looking back, I see that you only pulled away when I started to drive you away, but I couldn't see that back then. I never wanted to lose you, and I don't want to lose you now.

I love being a cop, but I'm afraid that when I'm around you, I go back to being the guide and observer, not that there's anything wrong with being the guide because I love that part of my life. I'll always be your guide, man. But I'm not an observer now. I can't go back to following your lead when it comes to police work and waiting in the truck while you go out and catch the bad guy. And yeah man, I know it's my fault too for falling back into the old patterns, but I can't seem to break free without some help. So I'm asking for help.

I figure if I smack you every time you treat me like the sidekick and you smack me every time I go and get insecure about not being half the cop you are, we can get through this. If not, one of us can transfer over the 29 because I don't want to lose you was a friend again -- it hurt too much last time.

Blair looked at his words and wondered if they would be enough. He felt so off-balance that he knew something had to change.

Blair took another gulp of the weak Denny's coffee and waved off the waitress who approached with a fresh pot in hand. He was nervous enough without adding more caffeine to his system.

By the time Jim appeared next to the gaily painted door announcing the $2.99 breakfast special, Blair was physically bouncing in his seat. His wide smile slowly faded as he considered Jim's grim expression. Jim walked past the hostess who tried to seat him without a word.

Blair fingered his letter while staring at the plain white envelope in Jim's hand. Jim put his envelope down in front of Blair and then stood there as if trying to decide whether or not he wanted to sit. Blair swallowed nervously before pushing his own envelope across the table and picking up Jim's. They stayed that way for several moments, Jim looking increasingly uncomfortable and Blair afraid to take his eyes off Jim as some deep instinct told him they were walking an invisible edge that neither one of them could risk falling over.

"Oh man, please," Blair whispered, and Jim jumped as if surprised. But at least it was movement, and Jim sat down across from Blair as he picked up Blair's envelope. Blair waited well Jim unfolded the lined paper before he pulled the neatly typed sheet from the envelope Jim had handed him.

Chief,

I never meant to make your life more difficult. You had a good life here, and these people respect you. I won't ruin that for you. I called Simon and it looks like I can get my old job back.

Blair felt his heart speed up and his eyes flew to Jim's emotionless face. Jim didn't give him any more than a glance before concentrating on Blair's writing again.

My apartment has a six-month lease. If you want, I will pay the difference in price between your apartment and mine until the end of the lease, and you can sign a new lease. I put you down as a tenant when I moved in, so there's no problem with you staying.

I'm sorry.

Blair read the words again in a state of shocked disbelief that made the the noises in the restaurant fade to a distant murmur.

"Jim, man?" Blair had so many questions and accusations and fears running through his head that he couldn't get out more than those two words.

"Chief, you don't want me to..." Jim's voice trailed off and confusion.

"Oh man, for an intelligent, college-educated man, you're a complete moron," Blair exclaimed.

"Maybe we're right for each other then because you have no reason to forgive me for screwing up your life over and over and over again."

"Hey, I'm perfectly capable of screwing up my own life, thanks! I've was doing it years before I ever met you. But this," Blair held up the letter, "sounds more like a divorce agreement that a heartfelt feeling"

"Give me a break chief. I don't do this sappy shit."

"Do you want to stay?" Blair blurted the words afraid of the answer and afraid he'd made too many assumptions. Jim stared at him with unblinking blue eyes that left Blair squirming uncomfortably.

"Yes," Jim finally answered.

"Then will be okay. After all, you know how the old saying goes... that which does not kill us makes us stronger."

"Chief, if that's true, as much pressure of we've been under in the past year, we've got to be pure diamond by now," Jim said with a familiar exasperated tone and a quick smile.

"Only if we were coal to start with."

"Well you're small enough for Santa to stuff you in a Christmas stocking," Jim pointed out in a tone that someone else might have mistaken for Jim being serious.

"Oh man, low blow! Besides I'm not the one who's all shiny on top like a diamond," Blair retorted. The joking was still a little stiff, but at least Blair could feel the rough edges of frustration and guilt start to smooth out. Blair laughed as a foot kicked his chair leg hard enough to scoot it back several feet.

"You know we're both going to keep screwing this up, don't you?" Jim suddenly asked in a more serious tone.

"Yep," Blair shrugged unconcerned. As long as they stayed together, he could handle the rest.