Blair walked past Jim and back into the loft they had shared for so long. This was the first place he had ever called home, and now, looking around, the pieces that made it home were gone.

"Bobby moved out about a month ago, and Simon closed the place up for me," Jim said. As he hung his keys over a hook and then added his jacket over it. Somehow Blair found himself missing the basket that had once caught their keys, even though the last time he had seen it, he had been dropping his keys to Jim's life into it one at a time as he pulled them off the key ring. But now the very fact that the basket with the mail scattered around it was gone, heck the whole table was gone, it just didn't feel right.

"It's a little empty," Blair commented. The baskets and giant pots that lived on top of the kitchen cupboards, the jar of spatulas and skewers that stood next to the stove, the collection of magazines that normally lived on the coffee table, the bills that Jim would jam between the phone of the wall, the red and black blanket that was normally folded over the back of one chair: it was all gone. Only the major furniture was left, draped in sheets as though dressed up for Halloween.

"Yeah, Chief, but we can fill it up again." Jim dropped their suitcases inside the door and went over to the couch where a white sheet was draped over it. He started pulling the fabric from the couch, and even Blair could smell the dust rising in the air. He couldn't even imagine how much the smell had to be annoying Jim, but the Sentinel just kept going from one piece of the furniture to another ripping off the sheets. Before long, the television and chair, and the couch in the kitchen table had all reappeared.

"Right, I'll get the broom and dustpan." Blair headed for the kitchen automatically before it dawned on him that there probably wasn't a broom in there anymore. Yeah, Jim had been with him in Phoenix, but he still couldn't imagine someone else walking around their home, moving the things that Blair remembered. Blair stopped without warning and Jim bumped into him from behind.

"I'm going to buy you brake lights, Chief," Jim complained.

"Hardy har har, man." Blair covered his moment of confusion with a complaint of his own, but Jim stopped with one hand on Blair’s shoulder. When Blair turned to look at him, he saw from the expression that Jim understood. Jim had a slightly panicked, confused expression that matched what Blair felt. Blair opened his mouth to say something, anything that would fill this awkward silence.

"Simon left cleaning supplies right where they used to be, so don't think you're getting out of your half of the chores," Jim said quickly.

"Oh man, we've been driving for 6 hours today, and your first thought when you get home is to clean. There is something seriously wrong with you."

"I just like a clean place, Chief." Jim walked past him and opened the cupboard under the sink. The allergy-sensitive cleaners in their white labels stood lined up neatly.

By the time the loft had reached Sentinel-approved cleanliness levels, the sun had faded and Blair lay sprawled across the couch in exhaustion. He eyed the stairs that led up to the loft and wondered whether he would even make it to the top. Of course, Jim was currently putting the only clean sheets in the apartment on his bed. Jim's bed. Blair glanced at the stairs again and then at the small room under the stairs. The futon had a plain brown cover and a couple of couch pillows sitting on it, but it was clear the room wasn't a bedroom anymore. But then again, Blair wasn't exactly comfortable inviting himself upstairs.

White curtains that Bobby must have added lazily flopped in the breeze that drifted into the windows, and Blair turned his head toward the fresh air. The air in Phoenix had smelled of dust... nothing else, just dust. Now Blair could smell the salt of the ocean and the tangy scent of fresh cut grass. Of course he could also smell car exhaust, but no place was perfect.

"You about ready for bed, Chief?"

"Man, I think I might already be asleep." Blair emphasized his words by closing his eyes and letting his head flop back against the couch. Jim chuckled.

"I thought I was supposed to be the old man here. Aren't you supposed to be the young pup with all the energy?"

"Don't you dare start, Jim Ellison," Blair threatened as he opened one eye. "You don't exactly qualify for Social Security." Blair let his eye fall closed again. Part of him wanted to talk about this sudden strangeness, this sudden feeling that the home he had longed for over the last several months suddenly wasn't his home… the feeling like everything was a half a centimeter off and he didn't fit. Part of him wanted to meditate and talk and discuss until this feeling of wrongness passed. Another part of him was just too damn tired to care. And if he was going to be absolutely honest, a big part of him was quickly getting in touch with a huge reservoir of fear and panic.

"No, Chief, I guess I don't." The silence of the room grew heavy, and if he'd been with anyone else, Blair would have faked sleep. Unfortunately, he was with a Sentinel who wasn't likely to be fooled. Jim had been leaning against the railing, but now Blair heard him walk over to the chair, and Blair assumed that the man sat down. However, Blair was too tired to look.

"You okay, Chief?"

Blair silently cursed Sentinel senses that would allow Jim to know how Blair's heart was pounding, and how shallow his breathing had become.

"Just trying to get used to being back here."

"Yeah," Jim answered quietly. Blair squirmed a bit as the awkwardness from the continuing silence and the feeling that he just didn't belong grew, clinging to him like the rising humidity from the breeze blowing in the open window. In the distance he could hear thunder. Not the loud distinct cracks of a desert thunderstorm, but the low rolling rumbling sound of a storm blowing in from over the ocean.

Blair turned his head and looked at the lights out of the loft windows. Blair knew that the loft hadn't changed, or least it hadn't changed much, and the view definitely hadn't changed at all. Logically, he knew that he was the one who had changed, but that didn't stop him from feeling irrationally disappointed that he couldn't be a new person and still seamlessly slide back into his old life.

"Are you sorry?" Jim asked in the silence. Blair didn't ask for clarification; he knew it his partner meant.

"Never, man!" The rolling thunder came closer and Blair could see flashes illuminating the undersides of the gray clouds that hovered over the city. "Beautiful," Blair commented.

"What?"

"This storm," Blair clarified as he nodded toward the open windows. Jim turned and looked just as another flash of lightning traveled across the sky, its branches reaching out from that central streak of brilliant light.

"Guess so."

Blair pushed himself up so that he was leaning forward with his elbows braced on his knees as he watched the storm roll in. The air that drifted in through the open windows had the weight that announced a coming rain. Blair wasn't sure when it had happened, but sometime during his stay in Phoenix, he'd grown to miss the way the air felt before a storm. It was heavy against his skin and as the rain approached the temperature dropped. Blair shivered even though he was wearing two flannel shirts.

"Want me to close the window?" Jim asked. Blair looked over in surprise.

"No way, man. I can't believe I'm saying this, and I will deny it if you ever tell anyone, but I missed being cold." Blair stood up and walked over to the windows. Leaning against the rough and cool brick, he let the wind ruffle his hair. The first few drops of rain struck like ice against his face and hands.

"Now I know you aren't Sandburg," Jim snorted. Before Blair even realized that Jim had gotten up, the man's arms closed around his waist and Jim's cheek rested against the side of Blair's head.

"Some days I don't feel like I am," Blair admitted. "Some days... some days I just don't know who I am."

Jim didn't answer, and Blair really didn't expect him to. It was enough that Jim was there holding him, and Blair thought that Jim probably did understand since the man had reinvented himself several times.

The wind picked up again, and Blair stepped back from the window as the rain began in earnest, pushing himself into Jim's chest. Jim moved with him so that now they stood leaning against each other several feet back from the window as the rain fell on the floor and tapped on the windows and beat on the roof.

"Okay, I'm now officially over missing the cold," Blair complained as a full body shiver ran through him.

Jim let go and walked around Blair to close the windows as the storm intensified.

"I have to say though, it does make the loft smell a lot better," Blair said as he realized that the smell of dust and disuse and orange cleaner had been replaced with the fresh scent of rain and ocean.

"You mean you wouldn't trade it in for the smell of night-blooming flowers and desert?" Jim stepped close, the two of them standing face-to-face well inside each other’s personal space.

"Hell no! Cascade is home, even when I'm running away from it." They both smiled at that.

"No more running, huh Chief? I'm getting too old for it." Blair opened his mouth to once again tell Jim to drop the old man routine, but Jim reached up and ran a single finger from the outside of Blair’s eye over his cheek and down to his chin, just below his lower lip. Blair suddenly lost all ability to form coherent thought.

Oh yeah, he was home.

Blair brought his hand up and braced it on Jim's forearm, as much to keep from falling over as anything else. Standing with his hand wrapped around Jim's arm, Blair looked into Jim's blue eyes and realized that he had no idea what he was doing. Every other time he'd felt like this, his partner had curves. Not that Jim didn't have curves, because he did, but not in the same places.

"Oh man, do you have any idea what to do?" Blair quietly asked. Yeah, he might be attracted to powerful people, but never before had a powerful man left him breathless and hungry and completely unsure about what to do next.

"I might have one or two ideas," Jim said, and Blair watched with a strange feeling of floating as Jim bent down. Jim's lips pressed against his own softly, moving slowly as Jim's hand slid around Blair's shoulder. The tenderness surprised Blair; the motion was so gentle that it tickled. Blair opened his mouth a little as he moaned, and Jim's lips pressed more firmly against his. Blair groaned louder as his cock hardened. Oh yeah, the angle might be different, but he knew this.

Blair opened his mouth farther and sucked Jim's lower lip into his mouth as he ran dull teeth over it. Jim waited until Blair released his lower lip, and then Blair felt his mouth invaded as the kiss grew more aggressive. Blair has always been careful with his dates, which was a little ironic since they were generally aggressive women who rarely showed the same concern, but now Blair let himself go. He tilted his head a little to the side to get a better angle and attacked Jim's mouth hungrily. Breathing heavily through his nose, he pressed forward and ground his erection into Jim's hip. The feeling of Jim's own bulge caused only a second of hesitation and then Blair pushed his weight into Jim. Strong hands pulled him even tighter as Jim made a strangled sound into Blair's mouth. Jim pulled back, and Blair gasped for breath as he tried to not come in his pants.

"That work?" Jim asked with a chuckle, and Blair realized that the Sentinel could probably smell the pheromones pouring off Blair. Right, Sentinel stuff later, sex now, Blair decided.

"Oh hell, yeah," Blair agreed.

"Upstairs," Jim said.

"Yeah," Blair agreed and then the two of them stood motionless in the living room looking at one another.

"Upstairs," Blair repeated as he stepped back. Jim's arms opened, and the awkwardness returned. "Um... I'll just go upstairs," he said as he took a step backwards. Jim just watched with those dark eyes, so Blair turned and started climbing the stairs.

"So…" Blair said as he reached the top and looked around.

"We don't have to do anything tonight," Jim promised as he reached the top of the stairs.

"Fuck, yes we do," Blair insisted as he considered the idea of going all night with an erection that was already straining his pants and aching with need.

"Which is also fine with me," Jim agreed as he closed the distance between them, and then Blair was lost in another kiss that made him forget all his nervousness. He liked Jim kisses, he decided as he felt Jim's large body press into his. When Blair's knees hit the edge of the bed, Blair fell backwards without even trying to catch himself, and Jim fell on top.

"Never dared do that to Carolyn," Jim whispered before moving on to nibbling on Blair's ear.

"Fuck yeah," Blair encouraged his lover while he pulled at the bottom of Jim's shirt. He had gotten the fabric bunched up under Jim's armpits before Jim stopped and yanked his shirt off before returning to the task of tasting and nipping and kissing the skin from Blair's ear down to the collar bone. Blair fumbled with the buttons on his own shirt. When the last button gave, Jim slipped his hands between their bodies and put them palm down on Blair's chest so that Blair could feel the heat of them. Blair watched as Jim pushed himself up to his knees, his legs straddling Blair's body.

As Jim gazed down with wide, dark eyes, Blair wondered what his Sentinel could see with his pupils dilated so much. He decided he didn't care any more when Jim's weight pressed down on his cock. Jim gave a small smile that made it clear that it wasn't an accident.

"Fuck. Oh man. Move or this is going to be over," Blair hissed, and Jim shifted his weight onto Blair's thighs as Blair pressed his eyes closed and struggled to stop his orgasm. Warm hands returned to his chest, running through his chest hair and over his nipples before pressing up toward his shoulders, pushing the shirt out of their way as they went. Blair cooperated by half sitting up and shimmying out of the thing.

"Oh, Chief," Jim whispered, and then Blair found himself under Jim's weight again. For one moment, he was so distracted by the flurry of kisses across his neck that he didn't notice the hands deftly working his jeans. When Jim tugged at the waist, Blair pushed his hips up as the jeans disappeared. But pushing up had brought his cock up against Jim's stomach, and Blair could feel the heat from Jim's body soak into him.

The urge was too great to deny, and Blair began thrusting up into that heat. When Jim sat up to unfasten his own pants, Blair groaned with loss and need and an overwhelming desire for that heat.

"Patience, Sandburg," Jim said smugly.

"Fuck patience," Blair shot back, and he would have had more to say except that Jim was pushing down his own pants. Blair had never been cock-shy in the various locker room of his youth, but he'd never before had access to any cock but his own. He reached out and took Jim's cock in his own hand feeling it twitch as he squeezed a little. For purely scientific reasons, he closed his other hand around his own cock, feeling the similarities in their girth and their hardness and their twitching. However, Jim's cock was longer and more pale, which left the vein far more visible. The head was rounder and Blair ran his thumb over the end. Their two cocks leaked just the same, and Jim groaned loudly as he threw his head back, his mouth falling open even though Jim didn't make any more noise.

Blair let go of his prize, especially since he wasn't entirely sure what he wanted to do with it. Almost immediately, Jim dropped back down, his weight pinning Blair, and the pressure on Blair's cock demanded that he move. He thrust up into Jim's body, and almost felt guilty about using Jim like the table leg Jim used to tease him about. Well, he would have felt guilty except that Jim was thrusting down into him just as enthusiastically. Blair grabbed Jim's shoulders and pulled Jim's full weight down onto him as he angled his hips and lunged upward.

Blair bit his lip as the need started building to a critical mass. When Jim's whole body shuddered and jerked, Blair opened his eyes to find Jim's face twisted into an expression of ecstasy. A feeling of warmth spread on Blair's stomach and his cock now slid smoothly between as Blair thrust up even more vigorously two or three more times before he felt himself stiffen as his balls drew up. On last thrust and Blair fell over the edge into orgasm as he gave several more thrusts up into his now-lover's body.

Blair lay gasping for air, Jim now half on him and half on the bed.

"Not how I imagined the first time," Jim said, and Blair felt a softness run across his stomach. He looked down to see Jim slowly wiping the mess they had both formed with a white towel.

"How did you imagine it?" Blair asked curiously. It wasn't his most elegant experience, but he wasn't going to complain about any evening where he got off. He really wasn't going to complain when the evening ended in Jim's bed. Blair smiled as he realized that the fact it was Jim made it the perfect evening even though he had sort of bumbled his way through it. Next time he would just have to make it better. He smiled even wider at the thought of a next time.

"I wanted to taste every inch of you. I wanted to know what every centimeter of your body feels like and tastes like and smells like," Jim whispered, and the towel was replaced with Jim's hand rubbing circles on Blair's stomach.

"Oh shit, man. Just give me some time to recover and I am totally there with that," Blair agreed. The mind was willing, but the body needed some time to recoup.

"We have all the time in the world, Chief," Jim said, and then he moved his hand up to Blair's face where his thumb traced the edge of Blair's upper lip. Blair reached over to Jim who lay next to him and traced the edge of one of the muscles in Jim's arm. He didn't have any idea which muscle it was, but he had been admiring those arms for years. He thought he'd admired them in a 'god I wish I had those' type way, but looking back he had to question his own feelings over the past several years.

"Look," Jim suddenly said in a far more conversational tone. "It's snowing." Blair craned his neck to look at the dark windows, and he could only vaguely see lighter and darker shadows passing over the glass. However, he didn't doubt that Jim could see every single snowflake that touched the window.

"Never would have seen that in the desert," Blair said.

"Nope," Jim agreed before lying all the way down on his side, looking at Blair. Blair shifted so that he could see the window, and that put Jim at his back. Blair smiled as he felt Jim move forward to fit himself against Blair's back.

"If we don't get up and put on some sort of night clothes, we're going to freeze," Blair pointed out.

"I'll keep you warm," Jim muttered. Blair smiled at the tone; Jim was already half asleep. And that was a new benefit to his newly discovered gayness: Rolling over and going to sleep was definitely okay. Blair used his foot to grab the blue sheet and brown comforter folded down to the foot of the bed. Dragging it up to where he could reach it, Blair pulled the covers over both of them as sleep sucked him under.

Even in sleep, Jim had a strong, chiseled face. Beard stubble shaded his cheeks and his eyes twitched, proof of some dream. Blair let his eyes wander down to Jim's chest, which was a tribute to the wonders of weightlifting even when a man ate as much junk food as Jim Ellison did.

Funny, last night Blair hadn't know how to touch Jim, but now his mind supplied any number of possibilities. He smiled as he thought about having a chance to try them all. A little nagging voice whispered that Blair had never been good at keeping relationships going, but he viciously shoved that thought to the back of his mind as he considered the sleeping body next to him. Blair wanted to touch those curves and angles. He wanted to kiss the inside of Jim's thigh and see if it would tickle the man or drive him wild with lust. However, he wasn't ready to wake him. So instead he slipped out of bed as quietly as possible.

Blair had no idea where his robe had ended up in his packing, so he didn't bother digging through the various suitcases and boxes in order to find it. Instead he snagged his boxer shorts from last night off the floor and went to his still unpacked suitcase and pulled a t-shirt from a side pocket. Then he padded downstairs. The living room was quiet and still seemed strangely empty without all the bits and pieces of the life that he and Jim had shared there.

"Chief?" Blair's heart almost pounded through his chest as he spun around to find a Jim standing at the top of the stairs.

"Oh man, you almost gave me a heart attack," Blair complained.

"You okay?"

"Yeah, I guess I'm just trying to figure out what to do next."

"It's a little early for big life-changing decisions, so are you talking about what to do next in terms of breakfast or what to do next in terms of life?" Jim's tone of voice made Blair stop and really think about what his partner meant. He could hear the defensiveness, and he'd known Jim long enough to know that that hid fear.

"Breakfast would be a good start," Blair quickly assured Jim. "Of course, that again, I wouldn't mind knowing what the hell I'm going to do about work."

"I told you Simon offered us both jobs," Jim said with a confused look as he started coming down the stairs rubbing his hair.

"Yeah, man, I know that. I guess I'm just getting those first-day jitters, you know? I used to get those before the first day of class, even if I was the one teaching and even if I had taught the class a dozen times. I just..." Blair stopped as he struggled for the words that would explain his problem without making Jim think that he regretted his decision.

"I know, Chief. Let's get dressed and I'll take you out for breakfast.

"Is this going to be breakfast with actual food, or breakfast with grease disguised as food?" Blair asked, trying to lighten the mood.

"Would I feed you grease for breakfast?" Jim asked as he headed for the bathroom.

"Yes," Blair answered to Jim's back as he started up the stairs. If they were going out for breakfast, he probably needed to get dressed.

The restaurant Jim picked did in fact have a few breakfast items that didn't feature grease as the first ingredient. Blair worked on his omelet and whole-grain bagel as he considered which of the questions currently rattling around in his brain Jim might be able to answer.

"So," Blair began as he tore off another piece of bagel and spread cream cheese on it. "How exactly was Simon able to get us both back into major crimes after we quit?"

"Technically, I never really quit." Jim quickly took an enormous bite of Belgian waffle which precluded any further conversation. Blair found himself sitting with bagel half way to his mouth in utter and complete shock.

"You never quit!?"

Jim shrugged even though his mouth was still full.

"Oh man, no no no. You do not get to say something like that and then shove food in your mouth." Blair put his bagel down and glared at his partner who gave him a wry smile even as he continued chewing. Determined to get some sort of explanation, Blair leaned back and waited. Jim had to swallow eventually.

"I tried to quit, but Simon wouldn't accept my resignation," Jim said once he finished swallowing.

"For four months?"

"I had a lot of leave saved up," Jim shrugged.

"You didn't think it would work with us." Blair realized he was right the minute Jim blushed, and he had no idea how he felt about Jim having an escape plan for all those months in Phoenix.

"I didn't know," Jim admitted. "When you left, I thought it was the right thing for you. I didn't want to be the one who dragged you back into this again if you finally managed to get yourself free."

"Into this?" Blair asked incredulously.

"You know what I mean, Chief."

"Being a cop. You didn't think I'd stick with it."

"I didn't know if you wanted to, Chief. I knew that if you put your heart into it, you'd do well. I just didn't know where your heart was."

"Okay, I guess that explains why your job is still open," Blair said slowly. "It doesn't really explain how Simon can just hire me back without any sort of explanation to the Commissioner."

"Oh, I figure the Commissioner is feeling rather generous toward you lately," Jim said uneasily.

"Oh man, what did you do?"

"Me? Nothing." Jim had that self-satisfied look that suggested that Jim had done a whole lot more than nothing.

"Man, you are a seriously bad liar." Jim's smirk grew a little wider as he shrugged. "Come on, you can't just leave it at that. Spill!" Blair ordered.

"I know they gave you shit, Chief."

"Yeah? So? I mean, I told you they hassled me some, but the real problem was that *I* wasn't so sure I could do the job."

"Well, I just had a discussion with Simon and the Commissioner and a couple of the instructors from the Academy about professional ethics."

Blair's eyes went wide as he started to put pieces together in his mind. He could only hope that he was putting them together wrong because this wasn't a pretty picture.

"You didn't," Blair said with a growing heaviness as he watched Jim's expression.

Jim shrugged noncommittally. "I wasn't going to let them get away with it."

"Oh man, I'm never going to live this down." Blair groaned as he considered just how screwed he was.

"Nothing to live down, Chief. I might have mentioned that you felt a little harassed by some of their sexist and small-minded comments. I also might have mentioned that you left town to avoid suing the department that you felt so much loyalty toward. I made it very clear that if you pushed things, you could make sure that everyone in the state looked at the Cascade police department differently. I pointed out that one word in the wrong ear and certain instructors would be working from a street corner as they directed traffic. Then I pointed out that you chose not to do that." Blair sat looking at his partner in shock. Suddenly had a mental image of Jim in full out Blessed Protector mode with his jaw twitching and his blue eyes pinning the Commissioner to his seat. Blair felt the giggle starting to form in his chest, and he couldn't help it. He started laughing.

"Chief?"

"Oh man, you did it, didn't you? Shit, I can't believe you bluffed like that."

"It wasn't a bluff, Sandburg," Jim said fiercely. "A couple times I came early to pick you up thinking I might get to see you working on the obstacle course, and I heard what they said. It was everything I could do not come across that field and break their fucking necks. Some of those cops out there became trainers because they couldn't handle it on the streets, and they still thought they had a right to judge you. They saw you with your long hair and your earrings and your strange attitudes, and they never even took into consideration that you have more guts than all of them put together."

Blair sat at the table in utter shock. Yeah, on the surface Jim looked angry -- Jim looked downright enraged, but under that anger Blair heard more.

"Oh man..." Blair looked at Jim and had no words to answer him. Jim shrugged and the fury seemed to drain from his face.

"I couldn't let them get away with that. In Phoenix, they weren't willing to bend rules that were on the books, but they didn't try and drive you away because of who you were."

"That wasn't what drove me away," Blair said softly. "I couldn't find myself here," he tried to explain.

"I know that now, and maybe it would have happened anyway... maybe we would have needed time away from each other no matter what happened."

"I know what I want now," Blair said confidently.

"Me too," Jim said quietly before he turned his full attention back to his waffles. As Jim devoured his breakfast with singular devotion, Blair knew the time for sharing had passed. But he couldn't help feeling that some great weight had been taken off his shoulders and suddenly he had the feeling that everything was going to be all right.