*****

Down to the Woods
 

Blair leaned on the railing, squinting into the sun. Recent weather in Cascade had been overcast, wintry, eight days' worth of rain driven into a week. This far inland, he'd expected it to be at least as cool, if dryer, but today was autumnal and unclouded. The late afternoon sunlight on his face relaxed the muscles around his mouth nearly into a smile, and made his nose twitch as if to sneeze. For several long moments he stared out across the parking lot, watching a family struggle their way out of a compact car, the movement of their great bodies like the heaving shoves of seals. He looked down and touched his own belly in reflex. Under the dark blue cotton his flesh felt both drumlike and soft. He'd planned to tone up during these past few months. It had been one of several plans that hadn't come to pass. When he looked up again, the swing of his hair reminded him he'd meant to put a hair tie in earlier.

An aging, long-haired, soft-bellied hippie, he told himself with inward cruelty.

At some point along the way he should have grown up, and he wondered now if he'd missed the chance. Should have worked out, cut his hair, taken the. . .well, in short, should have made different decisions. Making those same decisions now seemed less meaningful. Too little, too late.

Instead of tying back his hair he stroked his fingers through the rough curls, which crackled with banked heat. He closed his eyes as the family approached the storefront. His eyelids reddened inwardly with sunlight as he channeled the chameleon in himself, not wanting to be noticed observing the natives. The family jawed amiably together, voices overlapping with enthusiasm.

Blair tuned in, cataloging tones, a snapshot already imprinted of their bright blonde hair, suburban clothes, peachy faces drooping above comfortable necks. The nearer they came, the more substance they amassed, displacing the present. Memories flew into Blair's mind of sun, laughter, sprinklers, cars glinting with light, bicycle spokes. The suburbs of Cascade in the seventies, Naomi inviting the neighborhood children into the backyard, handing out rolled-oat cookies that the kids tossed into the dirt when she returned inside. Naomi, eyes bright, smile trying too hard for her son's sake. The memory was a surprise, contradicting what he knew of his mother now. He opened his eyes, frowned, and tried to regain the certainty of his mother's blithe, jangling detachment.

Naomi. She led his thoughts elsewhere, like a merry pied piper drawing the rats along. Sometimes lately his thoughts slunk in sleek and low and grey, with Naomi at the periphery, and he wasn't sure whether she was driving them in or out of his head, or just leading his ratty thoughts around in circles. Whatever the trend of his thoughts, they carried with them questions equally dark and suspect. Too many questions.

"It'll be dark before we get there," Jim said, having silently arrived at his side.

Blair blinked, took a breath, and reined in his spooked heartbeat, hoping that Jim wouldn't notice his jumpiness. Lost cause. He could feel Jim's head swivel fractionally toward him, finding him out. A big cat, aware of its surroundings. Blair's features knitted together as he turned to his friend. Jim was just looking at him. On another man, that expression, unmoving and unmoved, might have signalled complete uninterest, but Blair knew the arts of camouflage and had become more adept at finding the face hidden in the leaves.

Jim handed over a bottle with a brightly decorated label. "Soba, soya, soda. Not too sure about that, but it looked like something you'd drink."

There was a smirk in the tone and Blair nodded thoughtfully, toting that one up for later retribution. "They didn't have green tea?"

Jim's eyes flashed a semaphore of patience and marvel.

Blair smiled and then aimed his smile out over the parking lot. He preferred being the first to turn away.

"I knew we should have left before ten," Jim murmured. He was genuinely disgruntled. Blair could always tell. He didn't indulge in the choleric frustration of a more demonstrative man, but he was definitely hell-bent on making his point. Blair anticipated a full display of alpha-male chest bumping when Simon came back from the restroom, and wondered if he could defuse Jim's irritability before then.

"Relax, Jim." Sowing the seeds of obfuscation. "Your problem is you think life is a straight track. You may not be a fan of the ponies, but you're in the race. Blinders on, neck down--you're driving ahead like there's a Fort Knox of sugar cubes waiting at the finish line."

Jim's hand sketched a wry question mark in the air. "How'd I become the horse in this little metaphor?"

Blair ignored the interruption. He knew Jim like his own face in the mirror, and long familiarity told him a crack about jockeys could be sprung at any moment. He forged on. "Life isn't a track; that'll just take you around and around in circles. Life is. . .life is like sex. Great when you arrive, but there's no arrival without a journey." Blair cocked his head, then amended, "Or if there is, you may want to brush up on your technique."

The distraction worked too well. Jim's blue eyes stopped their broad, casual scan of the local territory and focused on Blair. He seemed undecided between offense and amusement. "You got some pointers for me, Casanova?" His voice was mild, but its undertones could have been threat or challenge. The language of Jim had a complex structure.

Blair grinned. Despite all attempts to master the nuances of macho camaraderie which defined Jim's world, he usually succumbed to the pure joy of play. "Trade secrets, man. Sorry."

"Ah." Jim might have been trying not to smile. His eyes moved away again. "But you are willing to dispense the wisdom of the ages when it comes to life and horse racing. What is it, Sandburg, zen for dummies time again?"

The biting lightness pained Blair's heart. Rime on the glass between them.

"Come on, Jim." Shame stripped away humor fast enough to leave Blair wobbling on his axis. He hated when Jim was like this; hated the suspicion that Jim might be insecure on a level Blair could never reach and never mend. Jim Ellison should be built on bedrock. Blair searched for something to say. He could hear Rafe's and Henri's voices mingling behind the screen door as they rang up their purchases from a few feet within the store's cool interior. "You know, uh, don't tell anyone, Jim, but--" He paused to gather Jim's gaze once more. It slewed around to him, dark within rings of blue, waiting. "I'm not so bright as you like to think I am."

Jim studied Blair, his upright body half in and out of sun, his hand clasped around a bottle of water. He seemed bedrock again, or illusion. "This self-deprecation doesn't suit you."

Blair sucked in a soft, jagged breath, trying to let go the shock. Jim's stricken face--just a flash, then gone--told Blair the echo had been inadvertant but profound, a chance resonance of words signifying the hidden iceberg they didn't talk about.

"Well, I try to keep up the image. I'm supposed to know what I'm doing here, and. . ." Blair took another breath, drawn in through the pinched ache of his chest. There was suddenly so much more to say that he felt stifled for time and space. The past few weeks, the past few months, the past few years--something massed on the horizon, a cyclone of words heralded only by a breeze. He hadn't been talking lately, and he needed to talk. Given the right elements, he could master the whirlwind that demanded release from himself, orchestrate its sturm und drang so that it spent its force without hurting Jim and without blowing down his own house of cards. Except. . .it was blown and scattered already, wasn't it? His house lay in pieces; he'd never admitted how flimsy it had been. Yet just once he needed to vent, to say, Jim, I'm not that bright. Oh, I'm bright, but I haven't got the knack. You have your knack, so you think I must have mine. Clue in, Jim. My moment bloomed and faded early, and I cultivated a career from wilting laurels and panic. Books don't speak to me the way you think they do. I struggled in school. I struggle now. When I work hard it's because I have to. I don't know what I'm doing with you. I've never known. I'm a fraud, and I've revealed myself, but you still keep me around. You're smarter than I am, you're a hundred times smarter, and I never let you in on this secret, one of too many secrets, and how could you fall for all my anthrobabble--do you really think I knew what I was talking about, sentinels--but sometimes even now you look impressed with my bullshit, and it kills me when you look at me like that, and I can tell you think you need me, and you don't even know how fucking brilliant you are, because you're such an idiot. You embody every heroic quality, Jim; you manage ninety percent of your life effortlessly and the other ten percent you kill yourself to achieve, and you could do it without me if you tried, and I make analogies to horse-racing because it's been eight foggy years since my seminar in 'The Spiritual Journey as Metaphor' and my mind isn't a steel trap, it's more like a bug light where thoughts come and go and flicker and die, and I've died and returned and even that hasn't helped me push through to where I need to be with you.

Blair swallowed his words. He would never have a chance to say them here and now, because this speech was just a dark whirling smudge on the horizon, a momentary impression that died away as he watched Rafe bang out of the store with Henri behind him. And then there they were, Rafe and Henri, two big guys, cops, holding crinkling brown bags full of chips and beer and crowding the slatted wooden porch until Blair imagined he was about to fall backwards through the railing, buffeted out of the fold.

Jim was immediately absorbed into the collective though; he was peering into Henri's bag and sniffing out the aroma of stale chip oil and dusty beer bottles with a pained pinch between his brows, as if there had been no skirted brink of revelation between them. And maybe there hadn't been.

"What kind of beer'd you get?" Blair plucked at the nearest bag. His curiosity wasn't entirely feigned, but the gesture reinforced his role as kid brother in this clubby hierarchy. He'd found the pose useful in the past; doubted he'd have gone far without it. Being a police observer, even being Jim's roommate and friend, wouldn't have earned him membership in this autumn rite: the weekend retreat, masculine celebration not of harvesting but of devolution, from overworked urbanites into arboreal primitives who sustained themselves with fishing, drinking, and sociable card-sharping. For this, he needed to be the mascot, and he accepted his place more or less equably. Even now, after so much had changed, this was how he fit into their picture.

Rafe batted his hand away. "No drinking on the road," he joked. He yanked a plastic-covered stick from the bag, made an alternate offering. "Here, have some jerky."

"Uh, no thanks. You know me. Jerky for breakfast, jerky for lunch. I'm full." Blair rubbed his belly with mock tenderness. Henri, the least tempermental cop Blair had ever met, chuckled happily at this.

"What is this, a church social?" Simon came around the corner, projecting like a bullhorn. "Let's get back on the road. We're losing time."

"Well, if we'd left before ten," Jim began with pointed emphasis.

"Hey, look, a monarch butterfly," Blair said brightly, overriding him. It wasn't one of his better diversions, but his companions, perhaps stunned by the inanity, made a brief, unprecedented effort to look impressed by this sign of nature in the raw; then, buoyed by an air of tolerance for Sandburgian eccentricity, allowed themselves to be herded toward the minivan with only a few rote jibes. ("You bring your butterfly net, Hairboy?") Blair, walking behind them, let himself observe they way the cops chatted together but walked apart. Even as they converged on the vehicle, each man kept a radius of space around him as if readied to draw a gun, to turn with arms extended and fire.

They spent several minutes stowing provisions, a job that required an elaborate effort of unpacking, sorting, and repacking so that the coolers were filled with fresh ice and then stuffed with sodas, ham and cheese, bacon (without which life ceased to hold meaning), sausage, and steak (in case the trout were cagey). Just contemplating the utter meatiness of the supplies made Blair's gut flinch. A reluctant carnivore who'd spent half a lifetime gradually eliminating flesh from his diet, he'd outgrown most of his youthful eating habits until he hooked up with Jim. Now he ate meat more often, with companionable martyrdom. Yet he'd somehow never been able to alter his mother's mistaken conviction that he still liked cow's tongue.

This morning he'd packed a box of his own goods, ignoring Jim's assurances that they'd be picking up most of the food they needed on the way. He'd lived with Jim Ellison three years. The food they needed came from two different worlds. So he'd packed his pau d'arco tea, his Kashi cereal and figs, a box of quinoa soup mix, one bag of plain pistachios, another of lentils, these and a dozen other things that Jim made tiny faces at. But he'd also slipped in the buckwheat pancake mix they both liked. Even three hundred miles from home, a nod would be made to Sunday morning tradition.

While Blair leaned on the side of the van waiting for entry, there ensued a deeply serious debate about whether or not to force a six-pack into one of the coolers. For when we get there, Rafe said. Space was limited, and the vote divided, Rafe and Simon all for bumping the ham and cheese to make room, Jim and Henri coming down firmly against warm cheese and languishing pork.

"It's only two more hours," said Rafe.

"Two hours and that ham's going to be crawling with microbes," Jim said, in the tone of voice used to warn of impending invasion. "If it isn't already," he added darkly.

"Man, Jim, you have got a weird food thing," Simon said, as if confirming a rumor. He folded his arms and jutted his chin at Jim with musing study.

Jim looked startled, almost aghast at the charge. "I do not have a weird food thing."

Rafe was reading the ham package. "This thing is packed with preservatives and wrapped in air-tight plastic. It'll be safe for two hours."

Henri made a face of distaste. "You think there isn't already a swarm of bacteria inside--once it starts getting hot in there, that pork is gonna start to stew. Man, I do not wanna chow down on rancid pork. That's just nasty."

"I don't think this was even refrigerated," said Rafe. He looked over at Henri. "Didn't you see me get this off the shelf?"

"You got that off the shelf?" Jim's voice conveyed sincere dismay.

"Give me that," said Blair in exasperation. He grabbed the package from Rafe, scanned it while the others made eyebrows at one another. "This is dry-cured. It probably has enough salt in it to choke a gorilla. The salt sucks all the moisture out, and the smoke has antibacterial compounds, so microbes can't flourish. Add in the nitrites and nitrates and the fact that this could easily have been sitting on the shelf for the past year and I really think it's safe for two more hours, so just put the beer in the cooler and let's go." He thrust the ham back at Rafe and then made impatient jabbing motions with one hand.

As Blair wound up, Simon was making the small heh-heh sounds that always called Beavis and Butthead to mind. "You city boys," he said to Jim and Henri, "afraid of a little cured pork." He shook his head.

"Oh, right," said Jim, "take the word of the man who'll be eating algae for breakfast tomorrow. I'm sure that's wise." Underlying his dryness was an air of displeasure, as if 'city boy' were an unspoken euphemism for 'fairy'.

"Aren't we all city boys?" Henri asked, glancing around.

"Well, we're not sure what Sandburg is," Rafe said.

"Oh, he's a suburban white boy," said Simon, grinning widely.

"With jungle fever," Jim added.

Blair shot him a dirty look. "Thanks, man."

Rafe was grinning now, less obtrusively than Simon. "I'll bet you wanted to be a basketball player when you grew up, didn't you, Sandburg?"

"So what?"

"Classic," said Henri, nodding. "Student of African cultures, listens to rap, collects spears and drums--"

Henri's offhand jabs hit Blair in a raw place; his lips tightened. "You're about a continent and an ocean off when it comes to what I studied." He added, in pointless afterthought: "And I don't listen to rap." Blair's voice was even, but Jim's head snapped up. Blair could feel Jim's probing assessment, read my agitation, Jim, before the other man broke casually into the exchange.

"Haven't you stowed that ham yet? Come on, let's move out." With that Jim climbed into the front passenger seat. Simon followed suit, walking around the front of the minivan, jangling keys and whistling.

The cops' teasing dissipated in an instant, transient and ungraspable as smoke, and even as they climbed into the minivan, conversation was already moving on to other topics. Blair had his own tricks of forgetting, but a hook in his mind snagged and saved their comments to worry at later. He clambered into the van and slid the door shut. He was sharing the first backseat with Henri, while Rafe sprawled across the second seat by himself, comfortably situated between the window and a cooler. The van was a rental in Simon's name, and though it had come with a clean, neutral odor of rubber and vinyl, it had by now accumulated a vague miasma of men, unwrapped cigars, paper bags, hiking boots. Not unpleasant, but gathering in density.

Simon started the engine, pulled out of the parking lot. They bumped back onto the highway, past a drainage ditch and a pay-phone, a motor-oil sign, and a field fringed by thin, stiff sedge. Robin's egg blue sky overhead. Blair slid into the passive metrics of being driven, counting mile markers and minutes.

No one wore a seat belt except Simon and Jim. Henri's legs, thick in jeans, shifted to find room behind Simon's seat. An empty styrofoam coffee cup rolled around on the floor. The battle of the radio would begin again soon. The cops were talking about traffic, weather, Staties they had known, fishing prospects. Blair was looking out the window, into the distantly ridged treelines. The forests of Washington weren't much like those of Irian Jaya, where he'd taken his first undergraduate steps into fieldwork; but sometimes a flash of hidden similarity was enough to take him back and feel the lifetime that had passed between then and now. Johannes Bijlstra was the senior anthropologist who'd welcomed him that summer as a research assistant; the older man had been living on and off with the Kombai for five years by that time. That summer was ten years past, and they'd kept up correspondence by letter and then by email, until just a few months ago.

Baleamale, thought Blair, remembering. Wiry Baleamale climbing the chopped, narrow ladder to his house high in the trees, with his scrawny spotted dog clutched in one arm. Starred night in the tree tops, the wind of an alien world creating a terrifying creak and sway in the precarious dwelling where Blair had been hosted. The piglets nudging him from sleep in the morning. Roasted sago grubs, taste of another life. His first voyage off the edge of his own familiar map. The brilliance of memory threatened to leach color from the present, but this was the here and now, which had its own value, and he was here and he was now, deeply conscious of gravity's effect on his body and the movement of his eyes mapping the world. The new world he'd made for himself was volatile; its predators more dangerous than headhunters, its familiarity deceptive. Eggs for breakfast, a bullet graze by dinner. Some days, he thought his next breath might bring the end of the world, the end of decisions and history.

Blair breathed, fragmented memories tumbling by as quickly as the trees passed outside the window. Eggs, bullets, fountains, headhunters, cassowaries, term papers, laundry detergent, 10-33, 10-57, jaguars, grid maps, basketball, dissertation and defense, Maya, Sig Sauer, caffe latte, regio olfactoria, two bodies in a shallow grave, the pursuit of ecstasy, the forty-yard line, prosecution, myth, books and reality. And like a straight line cutting through all the erratically scattered points of his existence: Jim.

Jim's arm, clad in maroon flannel, cuff rolled up, his wristwatch tilting a moon of light off and on, the piano movements of his fingers. His hand reaching out, rising like a shark's fin through water. Don't even think about touching that radio. Jim's voice in reply, low and rolling, calm and dry, deriding the Motown falsetto. Informants have a right to remain anonymous. Rafe leaned over the seat, arms crossed. Horn honking up the road, whine of a passing truck, Simon's dry cadences. You drink another soda now, you'll be peeing in the can, 'cause I'm not stopping again til we get there. Anthropologists should not knowingly falsify or color their findings. There is an obligation to reflect on the foreseeable repercussions of research and publication on the general population being studied. Tied this new Baetis Nymph, pretty little thing, olive thread wraps on the underbody, peacock herl thorax, three ringneck pheasant tail barbs. The coffee cup rolling, back and forth, swept around in an arc like a clock's hand. Two, three, four o'clock rock. Jim's arm moved restlessly. Heard Tom Dawson's going to the National Academy next month. Sounds like he's being groomed for the hot seat. Nah, he's already risen to his level of incompetence. There should be no exploitation of individual informants for personal gain.

Tires, something clicking rythmically under the body, Henri stretching his legs.

Blair tried to remember if he'd called Amelia to say he couldn't make the party this weekend, a celebration of passing her oral. He could imagine the event: her tattooed friend with the long blonde hair; nachos and beer and ouzo; the strained conversational circumvention of Blair's disgrace; Tim's parodic guitar tributes; group exegesis of Evil Dead 3. No, he hadn't called, because they'd both known, at the time of her invitation, that he wouldn't go. He's lost in space. Earth to Sandburg. He'd meant to call her anyway this morning, forgotten. Packing his duffel, trying to break the habit of including ziplock bags, Bacitracin, a tape recorder, and failing. Jim downing the stairs, saying that Simon had pulled up below. Flex of his shoulders, the focused job of his moving body, the intent Jimness of his face. He would do anything for Jim. It must be so if he was here. The kid's daydreamin'. Chasin' foxes.

Blair gave and looked in, away from the window. "Yeah, yeah, I hear you." When he turned, Rafe's face was near him, giving him smirkish consideration that was not unfriendly. "Can't a guy do a little thinking?"

"Do that in private, Sandburg." And: "Who is she this week?"

"Uh, she's a Swedish gymnast with a Nobel for mathematics. You probably wouldn't know her." Blair kept it deadpan, accepted the dry looks. Henri's broad face pulled on a skeptical expression that utilized everything from his mobile brows to the thin ridge of mustache above his lips.

"Hairboy, you were built for bullshit. That's a God-given gift."

"Thanks, No-hair-man."

"Oh no you didn't," Henri breathed in disbelief, while Rafe cackled and fell back on his seat.

The remainder of the trip passed, while their strands of conversation wove in loose threads that began and broke and picked up other strands, and the pattern that formed was one of fat, jumping trout and curvaceous women and legal intricacies. Simon and Jim, Henri and Rafe, Henri and Simon, Jim and Blair. And then the lawyer jokes began, and Blair pulled Highlands of the Brazil out of his knapsack and read steadfastly until, much later, the cruch of tires on gravel signalled their turn-off. Then he put the book away again and watched the evergreens brush the windows.

"How much further is it?" Jim asked, glancing at Simon before turning his eyes back on the winding rutted road. Blair could tell that Jim was peering through the foliage ahead with sentinel attention, and he wondered how far Jim's line-of-sight might extend through the overlap of leaves and branches. Made a mental note to ask later.

"Cabin's about six miles in. This used to be a logging road, dates back to the twenties. Only road around for miles, except the one we came in on. Some local mountain man lived off the land here for decades, realtor said. Most recent owners bought it up, cut back the overgrowth on the road, graveled it." Simon paused, grimaced as they lurched in and out of a rut. "Such as it is."

"Coating a road for six miles must set you back some," Henri said. "Not surprised it's thin."

"Some and then some. I just graveled the worst patches. Wish I could afford to keep it up better. But the cabin was a steal, and as long as I don't try to come up in winter, shouldn't be any trouble."

"This cabin," said Blair. "You said it was pretty nice, right? We're not talking mountain man's tanning shed, are we?"

"No, we are not. Relax. It's cedar, only about five or six years old." Simon modulated to factual recitation. "No phone lines and it's not on the grid, but it has diesel and solar PV generators, shortwave radio, well water. Sitting pretty on a tributary of the Okanogan. Pinecone Creek. Realtor said the rainbow trout run about ten, twelve inches."

"Well, that's the important thing," Jim said with satisfaction, rubbing his hands together.

"On the other hand, Miami is playing Atlanta this weekend," Blair noted.

Jim half turned in his seat to give his guide the eye. "I put the tape in."

"Yeah, over my Discovery Channel specials."

Jim turned away again, waving a hand. "You never watch those."

"I was planning on watching those."

Simon shot them an inclusive, irritated look. "Do you mind, Ralph and Alice?"

Blair let Jim do the glaring for both of them, and let himself be distracted by the greenery outside. "Ahh, wow, look at those trees." He craned his head to get a better view of the wildlife that pressed close to their windows. The land through which they drove edged gradually into the Okanogan National Forest several miles to the east, and was still relatively thick with pine, fir and aspen. "You know, you got really lucky, Simon. This area right around here--well, not here, but just across the river--was slated for a slash-and-burn timber sale a few years back. There was a huge national protest, though, and they eventually called off the deal. My mom flew back to the states when she heard the news, got caught up in it for almost a year, along with a bunch of other wilderness issues. Remember Forest Fax week?" Blair laughed to himself. "Man, she must have sent five thousand faxes."

"Oh, Forest Fax week," said Simon, nodding with feigned reminiscence and then snorting none too gently. "Somehow I'm not surprised to learn you've got tree-hugger roots, Sandburg." He looked up and smirked into the rear-view mirror.

"Uh, funny, sir."

Simon winced at the address. "Don't starch my shirt, Sandburg. When I want to be called sir on the weekend, I'll go out for lobster."

"Your mom's one of those types who goes around spiking trees?" Rafe asked, disapproval implicit in the question. He'd met Naomi not too long ago, but she didn't seem to have registered on him.

"My mom's never spiked a tree in her life," Blair said. He refrained from mentioning Naomi's long-held belief that she could hear trees speak and cry out when in pain, and the conversation they'd once had on the subject, which had ended with her firmly irrefutable words, I'm sure it was the mushrooms, honey, but that doesn't make it any less real. Once while on a camping trip he'd asked Jim if he could hear the trees talking. Jim had scrutinized him across the fire with the same care he gave to head wounds and blood spatter patterns, then replied, Yeah, and they're saying, no more beer for Joyce Kilmer over there.

"Naomi's got a good heart," Jim said, and it was neither apology nor defense, simply a statement that brooked no debate.

Blair's own heart stretched happily in its cage, and he hid his pleasure by looking out the window again, into the tapestried spread of fir needles.

They hit another rut and rattled a spray of gravel. "This van is gonna make it, isn't it?" said Henri dubiously. A tree branch dragged heavily across the passenger-side windows as if to underscore his question.

Simon was growing aggravated with the effort of concentrating on the road while trying to avoid potential scratches to the rental. "Did I ask for backseat driving?" he wondered aloud. "Funny, I don't recall that. I've driven down here in a car. The van will make it, because it's actually an SUV, and it has four-wheel drive."

"What's this?" The question floated up from Rafe and accompanied rummaging sounds in the backseat. Henri and Blair looked back to where Rafe was holding up a wrapped package.

"That's spelt loaf," Blair said. "Careful, it's contagious." He glanced over the seat. "That's my food you're in, by the way. Feel free."

"Thanks, I don't think I'm that desperate yet," Rafe said, putting the bread back on top. "And besides, there's always cannibalism." Despite the derision, he continued to inspect the box. "Don't you have any cookies?"

"No. Well, I do have some papaya energy bars. What happened to your bag--I thought you guys got snacks."

"Forgot to get cookies."

"Huh. Maybe we should call the trip off." Though kidding, Blair was newly conscious that by  weekend's close he'd have spent over forty-eight manhours with the guys from the station--per man. It would either set a new record or end in mass homicide. He couldn't tell yet if their wisecracking would ease off or sustain itself for the duration. Already he'd been teased about his name, his race, his upbringing, his hair, his flightiness with women, his mother, his taste in food, and, somewhere along the line, his bootlaces, which were red. None of the banter was new, and Blair had grown used to the attention, but he'd never experienced the men's uninterrupted company for a seven hour car trip. It had been instructive. There was a reason these guys had trouble keeping girlfriends.

"Spelt," Henri mused aloud, on his own track. "Isn't that some sort of seaweed?"

"You're thinking of kelp," Blair said.

"Which is what he eats for breakfast," Jim tossed back helpfully.

"It's only a supplement," Blair said to the back of Jim's head. He turned to Henri and imparted confidingly, "The green color actually comes from the kiwi."

"Kiwi," said Rafe. "Isn't that a bird?"

*****

They pulled up in front of the cabin at last. Simon drove the van up close to the porch, spent a few minutes veering between drive and reverse as he positioned it for some undetermined purpose, then brought it to a stop at what seemed to Jim a haphazardly random angle. But Jim said nothing. He was the soul of saying nothing and was proud of his polite restraint, and yet Simon gave him a dirty look as he shut of the ignition. Some days you just couldn't win, thought Jim.

They all piled out with grunts, mutters, stretches. Jim scanned the terrain, flicking his vision out like a fishing cast and reeling back the catch of his eyes, over and over again at lightning speed, until he'd piled up a fullness of impressions. The cabin was one-story, cedar, porched, and was nestled within the surrounding forest in a picturesque way that could inspire even the dullest real estate agent to poetry. From a more practical perspective, the trees were too damn close. If Simon planned to keep the property for retirement, he was going to have to cut back or find himself on the business end of a sixty-foot pine tree someday. It was a tidy, neat little plot, though, Jim had to admit. There wasn't much clearance, maybe twenty yards around at the furthest point, more like ten in some places, the perimeter fringed by good-sized trees. Where the drive turned in was a tall outcropping of bare rock and tumbled stones. Sparse wildflowers and thicker weeds edged the trees, the rocks, and the cabin, but the verge itself had been recently mowed. He could see far enough into the trees to pinpoint the location of the trout stream, down a southerly path. Behind the cabin, to the west, was an opening in the trees that framed a few neighboring hills. Mountains, really, Jim supposed, but they were never going to be the high point of the North Cascades.

"Canada's about fifteen miles thataway," murmured Blair, at his shoulder.

Jim turned his direction north, shaded his eyes, and pretended to squint for scope. "Got it," he said.

"See any mounties?"

"Nah. Think we've got the place to ourselves."

"Not the wildest wilderness I've ever been in, but it's definitely remote." Blair slid his hands in his pockets, looked around. Wind like a flirting finger rearranged a curl on Blair's temple and like a lover Blair canted his face up to be kissed. The clouded light of the sky held it, milk and freckles, with photographic timelessness. The world was reflected across the gleaming arcs of Blair's eyes in such actue detail as to be hallucinatory to Jim. Rocking on the balls of his feet, charged with energy, Blair said, "There's supposed to be grizzlies out here. Lynx, moose. Wolves. Picking up anything on your radar?"

Jim looked around cautiously, but the others men were clumped on the far side of the van; Simon was pointing out the creek path. Yielding to his guide, he tilted his head, focused on sound. Sound wasn't too hard. Taste and smell took the most effort; vision was more intuitive; touch, the most intuitive of all, unless you counted decrypting melted plastic among its tasks. Now, ears tuning in, Jim began to collect the molecules that the world had shaken loose. The world was a rippling pond, and his ears blossomed into erogenous zones that vibrated with brushstrokes of air. Sound could be maddening or orgasmic, which was one of those tacit subjects Jim never brought up but which Sandburg seemed utterly aware of. Either his tests were that good, or he'd just clued in quickly to what Jim couldn't stand to discuss.

Sandburg had explained sound to him as a concept, years ago, describing things Jim already knew in words that restructured his understanding, so that at times like now he knew that he could focus directionally with barely perceptible adjustments of his head and amplify sound with the muscles of his inner ear--a process that for most people was purely reflexive. The wind engaged millions of pine needles on their branches, like clattering whispers. A rabbit careened through the forest, dashing through dry leaves. Fifty yards. A heavy shifting, possibly a bear. A hundred yards. Birds, too many to count, dotted among the trees, flying, swooping across waves of air. Water, plaiting through fallen tree limbs, slapping across rocks, fish, swish, the unique liquidity of a stream bed, so perfect that it traveled him back to his first childhood fishing trip and returned him to anticipation of tomorrow morning, and then he was listening again, immersed. Movement. Something clattering against wood, scratching, a squawk louder than expected, making him wince. His ear dialed down almost at once, and a touch on his arm realigned his concentration, oriented him. Then the touch gave pressure, drew him back, and he was conscious again, aware of the broken narrative he'd provided his guide, straining to balance the cacophony of the forest with the crunch of boots approaching, near and far, Blair's voice saying something innocuous about the population of grizzlies in North America.

"Okay, let's get this gear in," said Simon. He was all business, but obviously in his element. His khaki shirt strained across his body as he squared his shoulders and waited as Rafe and Henri began drawing out the closest bags from the van's open side door. He looked over at Jim and Blair. "This isn't valet service, gentlemen."

While everyone was chatting and unloading, Simon took a bag from Rafe and climbed the porch steps first to unlock the front door. With armfuls of bags and packs, the rest of them followed Simon's lead up onto the porch and then into the cabin. Once inside, Jim looked around the front room briefly, checking out the clean cedar paneling and floorboards. "Nice," he said with laconic approval.

"Wow, this is great, Simon." Blair stood in the center of the room and took stock. "You said furnished, but I was kinda worried. You've got it all, though."

"Well, it's not a shack, Sandburg."

"Yeah, I know, but 'fishing lodge'. When I heard that, I sort of pictured us sitting around on benches with our poles down an ice hole."

"Man, sounds like my last date," said Henri. He and Blair swatted each other and laughed like teenagers.

Jim shook his head to himself and ignored them, wandering to one side of the room to sniff surreptitiously at the couch upholstery. It was fairly fresh, which came as a pleasant surprise. He went to the side window, lifted the curtain to survey the treeline, then turned back to the room and, without thinking, blueprinted the floorplan onto his mind. There wasn't much to it, though Jim had seen some tract homes the same size or smaller. The front room ran the length of the cabin; a stone fireplace was set into the righthand wall; windows dominated the other walls, and were beginning to let in plenty of light as Simon went around opening the curtains. Opening off the living room to the left was the kitchen; a counter with overhanging cupboards divided the rooms. Down the hall would be the bathroom and the bedrooms; two, Simon had said. It was furnished with a style that didn't proclaim its ownership--large navajo patterned rugs, a thickly hewn dining table, a respectable couch and extra armchairs, small tables. The only discordant note was struck by the table lamps. All different and all stunningly ugly, even by the most rustic or masculine of standards, they included a converted whiskey jug, a stuffed otter, and something draped in chains.

Jim couldn't bite back the words. "Who did your decorating, Simon?"

Simon didn't appear to notice the tenor of his question. "Ladyfriend of mine helped me out. We got the furniture in Oroville, had a local guy deliver it. Went to a few antique shops, too."

"Who, ah, picked out the lamps?"

Simon finally caught the note of fascinated horror and turned to look at Jim with narrowed eyes. "That would be me, Jim." He showed a lot of teeth. "And I just know you appreciate my fine sense of taste and fashion."

"Oh, yes. The otter is particularly. . ." Jim groped for a word, failed, and nodded in vague conclusion. "I'll just finish unloading the van."

"You do that."

Within ten more minutes, they'd emptied the van. Bags, coolers and boxes covered the kitchen counters, fishing poles lay across the broad dining table, and the center of the living room was knee deep in luggage. With the unconscious organizing priorities of men, they'd moved the entire contents of the van inside to the nearest available surfaces; with the mannered reticence of men, they'd trespassed no further into Simon's abode than the front rooms. By unwritten law, you only went as far as you needed to, until the host gave explicit invitation otherwise; so now they stood, waiting for Simon to direct them.

Except for Blair. Rafe and Henri had popped open beers and were sprawled in two dining room chairs. Jim was standing in place, waiting for Simon to finish fiddling with the shortwave. But Blair had already visited the bathroom, both bedrooms, and the basement, ostensibly to check for vermin and varmints, but more likely because he couldn't keep from poking his nose into every corner.

Jim listened to him bounce back up the stairs. First his dark curls reappeared and then the rest of him, swinging a flashlight and brushing dust off his clothes. He paused at the end of the hall, absently shaking out his shirt and eyeing one of the bedroom interiors. Jim tried to communicate remonstrance and propriety down the length of the hall, but Blair's bright gaze was turned away, profile oblivious, and despite himself Jim's face softened and his own gaze lingered and lowered. Hunger was so habitual, so omnipresent, he hardly feared its bite any more.

Blair ambled back into the living room. He set the flashlight on the nearest table, did a double-take at the otter, and directed a pained but comical face at Jim. "Started the generator and primed the pump, Simon." He shot another hesitant look at the lamp. "But, I'll, uh, let you turn the lights on."

Simon didn't even turn. "It's a long walk back to Cascade, boys." With sharper annoyance, he added, "And did I ask you to mess around down there, Sandburg? You broke anything, you bought it."

"It's fine. I've done it a hundred times," Blair assured him.

"Sounds like a conservative estimate to me," Rafe said to Henri.

Henri laughed, then asked, "You bump into any relatives down there in the dark, Sandburg?"

"Prime my pump," Simon muttered to the radio.

Blair ignored Henri, cleared his throat in what passed for a general apology, and rocked from ball to heel on his feet. "So, uh--" He looked over his shoulder. "Does that couch fold out, Simon?"

Abandoning his check of the radio system with a sigh and scrape of his chair, Simon rejoined their group. "No. Two bedrooms, one couch."

"Three beds," Blair said in a mild voice. His face tucked itself in and his gaze dropped floorward,  a maneuver that Jim had long ago learned to interpret as a deferential diversion from the content of whatever he was actually saying, which was. . .wait a minute. Three beds?

There was a contemplative pause.

"Well, Simon should get the main bedroom," Rafe said at last, matter-of-factly. "It's his cabin."

"He does that, one of us'll be sleeping on the floor," said Henri. Disenthrallment with their accomodations wrote itself clearly on his face and he looked sideways at Simon, who held up his hands.

"Hey, I can lump it for a weekend."

"On the floor?" Rafe frowned.

"Well, I'd rather sleep in a bed," Simon agreed. "But that would mean someone--some ones--would have to double up."

There was another long pause, before Jim realized that three people were staring at him, or rather, staring at him and then staring speculatively at Blair. Jim bristled. "What?"

Simon raised his brows.

"Oh, please," said Blair to the room, bending down to grab his bag, dismissing the issue before it started. "Dibs on the window side."

"Why--" Jim began saying to Simon, then cut his sentence abruptly short as he recognized that there was no answer to that question he wanted to hear. "Fine." He caught up his own duffel and brushed past the other man. He couldn't decide whether to be pissed or resigned to the knowledge that he and Blair looked like the kind of roommates who probably didn't mind sharing a bed.

Jim heard Rafe volunteering to take the couch and Simon telling him where he could put his suitcase, but he was really focused on trying to relax his tense muscles, lower his heart-rate and keep his cheeks from heating to the point where his friends would notice when he returned. He entered the bedroom to find Blair unpacking his bag. Blair gave him a carefully neutral look. Jim swung the duffel onto the bed and began removing clothes. Blair started to say something, then Henri and Simon passed by the door on their way to the other bedroom, and he remained silent until they were out of earshot.

"Could have been worse. At least they didn't make kissy noises. . .you okay with this?"

Jim blinked down at the sweatshirt he was unfolding and refolding. He never knew what to say to the simple questions, could never tell if Blair wanted honesty, self-analysis, or equally simple replies. When silence didn't work, Jim usually settled for door number three. Or switched to tactical.

"I was trying the biofeedback," he said.

"Really?" Blair sounded keenly pleased. "Is it working?"

"No. . .sort of. . .I don't know."

"Did you have that ability to make instant, razor-sharp decisions when you were a Ranger?" Blair asked with respect.

Jim tossed a ball of socks at him.

Blair caught the socks and mimed a hoop shot, then tried to twirl the roll on one finger like a basketball. Failing that, he gave the bundle a nimble-handed inspection that was pure cat and curiosity. "Oh, yeah," he said, picking up bubbles and steam, "and I'll bet that folding socks into origami hedgehogs with like, such finesse, is one of those Ranger secrets, too."

Jim was provoked to unexpected laughter, and Blair chucked the socks back at him, grinning.

"Ah, it's the honeymoon suite," said Henri, coming to lean with folded arms against the door-jamb. He was grinning as widely as Blair, utterly without malice.

"Okay, okay, get it out of your system," Blair said. He made the sign of the talking hand. "Mock, mock, mock."

"Now, I'm not mocking," said Henri, striving to look innocent and failing like a lawyer in a leisure suit. "You guys make a real cute couple."

"Thanks, H." Jim moved toward the door and Henri straightened and stepped back with a single instinct. Jim smiled, fangs politely tucked behind the mild line of his lips. "You don't mind if we spend a little quality time, do you? Great. Thanks." He shut the door in Henri's face.

"Jeez, Jim." Blair resumed putting his clothes away. "I'm not really sure that's going to deter next week's water-cooler gossip."

"It's not water-cooler gossip." Jim tossed a stack of tee-shirts in a drawer. "Maybe pastry-cart gossip. And there's no way it could get any more lurid."

"Lurid?" Blair didn't seem unduly surprised, but a new note troubled his voice. They'd had a few off-the-cuff conversations on this subject before, but they'd been so ephemeral that neither of them remembered the details. It was an issue that rose perhaps once a year, skirted and plucked restlessly at their minds, and then diffused back into subtext. "Like, leather-bar lurid, or hearts-and-doves lurid?" He waggled his brows once, which conflicted with the subdued cast of his face. "What have you heard?"

"Oh. . ." Jim, who hadn't seriously intended to raise this topic of conversation, tried to shrug it off. "You know the sort of thing."

"Me? No, I don't know the sort of thing." Blair's minor-key amusement didn't conceal that he was also bothered enough to push. He came over to lean on Jim's dresser. "Come on," he said, lowering his voice. "You don't really think they think--"

"Them? No," Jim said immediately, with assurance. He worked at filling the upper two drawers of the dresser and didn't look at Blair, the observer, that blue gaze unwavering on him, didn't look at him for nearly an entire minute, until he cracked and sighed and met the other man's interested eyes. "There's nothing to tell." He tacked starboard into virtue. "I don't listen to that kind of thing. . .much. And it's just. . .it's not pastry-cart gossip. It's the usual locker-room crap, Blair, from cops who never pulled their head out of their jock. Never grew out of high school. And you don't want to know. There's no reason to go there."

"Wow." Blair looked down a moment, then raised a smoother face. "That bad?" After a pause, he said, "I'm glad you haven't punched anyone."

"I worked through that a long time ago." Long before he'd known Blair, but Jim could not push those extra words out. He spared a quick glance at the younger man to see if any clue was birthing, but Blair's face was just as usual, open and accepting and devoid of any sign that he'd heard the hint. So many hints dropped over the years, you'd think by now the water level would have risen, that the realization would have surfaced behind those eyes. Blair's eyes were always on him, reading him closely, usually with insight, and yet, in this area: nothing.

And he'd never asked. That was what exasperated and defeated Jim, and twisted his gut into a puzzle of indecision. The man with a thousand and one nosy, friendly questions had never asked him, casually, over beer maybe, or late at night, Hey, Jim, you ever slept with a guy? Jim had kept expecting this question or something like it, even as the years passed and they grew closer; he'd anticipated it long before now and had planned out his reply--his range of replies--like a man copying and recopying awkward, difficult love letters. He didn't think of love. Any feeling was in the work itself, the deliberate will to be prepared, ready to give; even if no more was asked of him than truth. Jim had played the permutations of that conversation in his head so many times that he'd worn the scene down to fuzz and white noise. But things were different now, weren't they. That conversation would never play out now the way it might have three years ago. Might have, might have been. . . .

White noise.

"That's why I admire you, man," Blair said, sincerely. You could tell when Blair was sincere: it looked effortful, as if it came from his chest with a labor of extra breathing, and his voice dropped to a register that always made Jim's ears shudder in their depths like perfectly rung bells. "You're so secure with yourself. I--"

"Yeah, well," Jim interrupted. Autopilot on. "No one's that secure, Chief." He closed the top dresser drawer that he'd been holding open for an unnoticed passage of time.

Blair shifted, straightened. For a few seconds he looked away, giving Jim the chance to steal a roving eyeful of him. Sturdy body, frown, messy hair, hands sliding to pockets until only the knobs of his wrists showed, up the swing and button-line of his shirt, to the chokered throat, beads on leather, wishbone angles summing up his body. Dust of stubble, scents both clean and grubby. His face was puppyish with traces of wolf in the blue eyes. Impossible.

"They're probably starting to worry," said Jim, returning to the joke of it. He had no humor in his body, but he had practice at making his words light, easy. Blair tipped up half a smile at him in response.

"Natives getting restless?" he asked.

Jim raised his hearing up a notch and listened. "Just hungry, I think."

They left the room to find the other men in the kitchen like buffalos at a watering hole. Simon was pulling food back out of the fridge that had just been put away, and Rafe was opening various drawers and cupboards without clear aim. Henri stood in the living room, leaning on the counter that bordered with the kitchen, skating a beer bottle around on its edge. He looked over at them as they approached.

"The lovebirds have left the nest," he observed.

"We decided to eat now," Simon said from half within the fridge. "We're doing the steaks."

Jim's stomach perked up at the thought. "Great. Grill?"

"In the front closet there. Not sure it's big enough for all of them at once, but guess we'll make do."

Jim found the grill and charcoal, then he and Henri dragged the works out onto the porch and fired it up. Blair joined them a few minutes later, bringing Jim a beer, which he took automatically while poking the charcoal gently with a long grilling fork.

"Nice fork," said Henri. "What's that got, a thermometer on the end? Huh. High tech."

"Yeah. Think it takes batteries," Jim noted.

Blair had moved to the end of the porch. "Hey, Henri --how far'd Simon say that creek was?"

"Not too far. 'Bout a quarter mile, maybe less."

"Cool. I think I'll walk down, take a look. Scout out a good spot for tomorrow morning." Rather than walking back to the steps, he swung himself over the porch railing and hopped down, a beer in hand.

Jim blinked at the disappearing Sandburg trick. "Don't scare away all the trout, Chief," he called out after him. Blair, ambling across the grass, raised a hand in reply without turning.

Henri turned to lean against the porch railing and watched the younger man go, then looked at Jim. "How's he doing?"

Jim continued to poke the charcoal for no good reason. "About as well as can be expected."

"Not so hot, huh?"

"He's. . ." Jim hesitated, unsure what to disclose. Not his territory; not exactly. "I think he's just bored, mainly."

"Where's he workin' again?"

"Some sort of Internet company. Answering phones. E-mail."

Henri grunted sympathetically. "Man, I hate riding a desk. Guess he'd be used to that, though."

"I think they just have cubicles."

"Even worse."

"Yeah." Jim forced himself to hang the fork back in its hoop, and watched the coals burn from black to grey. He held his beer in one hand, forgotten, then noticed it and took a long pull. It was cold and slid straight down his throat in a smooth ribbon, barely tasted.

Henri had dropped into thought, which he broke after a minute by saying, "Surprised me he didn't take the offer. Thought that was all set."

Jim had resisted getting dragged into this discussion with anyone at the station, including Henri or Rafe; the only exception had been Megan, who'd backed him into a corner, literally, and pestered him into giving her a grudging dole of news. He'd felt like he'd been reporting to his colonel.

"Like I said, he changed his mind. His choice." Jim's voice was quiet, flat. Then, surprising them both, he added, "I should never have let Simon do it." And I should never have gotten up my hopes.

Henri shifted closer, lowered his own voice. "So, uh, what did he do? We figured he must have pulled a few strings."

Jim frowned and made a quick negating gesture with his head. His eyes warned. "That's not for me to say. But the offer--we shouldn't have done it. He didn't want it."

Henri leaned back again. "Yeah, Hairboy as a cop. Not sure I could've seen that. Though he didn't do a bad job, for whatever it was he did."

"Yeah."

Simon banged out the door, a platter of steaks in his hand. "Okay!" he said with energy. "Here we go, boys. Toss a few of those on." He handed the tray to Jim, who began forking the strips onto the grill. "Huh. We may have room after all. Bigger than I thought. . .or maybe the steaks are smaller." Simon watched the process critically, some disappointment appearing on his broad face as he realized that the steaks would all fit.

"Well, we've got some potatoes, too," Simon sighed to himself. "Rafe's wrapping them up."

"Probably should have started them before," Jim said.

"Do you see this?" Affecting aggravation, Simon pointed to his hips, where he'd tied on a bright red apron that read 'A Man's Grill Is His Castle'.

"Yeah, but I'm holding the fork," said Jim.

"Who's grill is this?"

Jim pointed to the sizzling meat with the fork prongs. "Your grill, my fire."

"Our steaks," Henri broke in to remind them, then laughed comfortably.

"Okay, we'll let Jim wear the apron." Simon reached behind him and began to untie the garment.

Jim handed over the fork. "It's all yours, Simon."

"Ah, thank you." Simon smiled smugly and took over prodding the steaks, while Jim watched and tried not to comment too rudely about his technique. They traded some more banter, while Henri added his own easy remarks here and there. Rafe wasn't long with the potatoes, which were added to the coals.

Rafe wandered to the end of the porch. Dusk was falling and a pair of jackrabbits had appeared for play and were zig-zagging through the grass. "Where's Blair?"

Jim, without thinking, cocked his head and listened deeply for the other man, letting that sense open up into a world that was growing rich with the music of nightfall, trebled with crickets and rustling leaves. He could hear the dark. It was a grey, leafy sound, it was the motion of clouds, it was the expiration of day and the stirred respiration of evening. He could hear Blair walking back up the creek path, boots on dry pine needles, the scuff scuff of his soles and the skittering of rocks.

"He's just coming now," Jim said. By the time he caught himself, it was too late. Another thing he'd said without caution, letting too much show. Simon didn't look up from the grill, but the rigid, expressionless manner in which he concentrated on the steaks was more conspicuous than a look would have been. Henri and Rafe turned their gazes almost at the same time and gave Jim the intent, direct regard of familiarity, but with a newer element he'd come to recognize but couldn't quite put a name to. It made his stomach clench with a faint, shameful queasiness. He wasn't sure when he'd lost his instinct for self-protection, but he was getting more careless, and maybe more vulnerable.

"Funny, I don't hear anything," said Henri. His voice was uncharacteristically cool.

Jim turned his face away, looking into the dusked yard, trying to dial down his speeding heartbeat. The tightening ache of his stomach made him nearly breathless. The beer bottle in his hand was heating with the force of his grip.

There was an excruciatingly long silence, a waiting that seemed to drag on forever as they stood wordlessly on the porch. Jim's head throbbed in time to internal clock ticks. Moments passed, and then a full minute. And the beginning of another. And it was actually difficult to hear anything over the sizzle of the steaks and the whirr of the crickets, Jim noticed. And the silence was a heavy thing, filled with the mute rhythms of everyone counting off the moments and waiting to see how long it took for Blair to appear, and not failing to calculate that the longer it took, the farther away he must have been a minute ago. A minute, fifteen seconds, and counting.

At last, in release and what might have been relief, Henri said, "Maybe you--"

"Here he comes," said Rafe, who was watching the treeline.

They were silent again as Blair neared. When he caught sight of Rafe at the edge of the porch, he called out a mild, "Hey." He passed the railings in intermittent flashes of wood and body, and then bounded up the steps into their midst like one of the jackrabbits grown bold. "Oh, wow, those look great," he said, sniffing at the grill's smoky haze. He was bouncing from ball to heel on his feet, energized with the mountain air, enthused at the prospect of food. The knees of his jeans were damp and mud-stained, and his hair had nebulously expanded from his head; a crumbled leaf was caught in one thick strand.

"Simon, that creek has got to be one of the seven secret wonders of the North Cascades. The fish were just about popping out of the water like, like popcorn." He clapped his hands together hollowly to mime the sound, and laughed. "I can't wait to get started. Almost a shame to wait until morning. Up at five, right? I'm ready, I'm definitely ready." He bent in and poked his nose closer to the grill, oblivious to any residual tension surrounding him. "Mm, potatoes too. Good. I'm starving."

Blair straightened and finally looked around. His mood slipped down a peg. "Who's been pissing in the beer?" he asked, jokily dry.

"Well, we were just enjoying the peace and quiet, Sandburg," said Simon, arching his brows. "I'm not so sure we can count on you to keep it down when we hit the banks tomorrow."

"Uh-huh." Blair wasn't fooled, and showed it by continuing to eye them all.

Jim swallowed when those blue eyes hooked onto him. But Blair, his ally in all things, would never ask him anything in front of the others, would say nothing in case it touched on matters they still strove to keep secret. Poorly kept, this secret. When Jim had lived with the Chopec, the youths had worn no more than a thin cord tied from waist to the crown of their genitals; this was their clothing. It covered nothing, but without it they were naked and the swing of their privates was open for mocking. This was the extent of Jim's own coverage; his secret hung out for the world to see, but without the thin cord he'd wrapped around himself he would be exposed past endurance. Besides, now he had no longer had the choice. Loosing the truth onto the world again would render everything Blair had done for him worthless. And Jim still craved the uniform of being ordinary.

"I think I'll get another beer," Blair said.

"Where's the bottle you took with you?" Jim said, needing something to say to break the tightly clamped lock of his throat.

"Marked my spot with it." Blair grinned. "Found the perfect place to start off tomorrow. Nice flat rock shelf a few feet into the bed. I'm just going to stand there and reel in the fish."

"They're gonna be flingin' themselves out of the water for that Sandburg charm," said Henri.

"You know it," Blair said.

Rafe pushed up off the porch rail. "What's your bait, Sandburg?"

"Think I'm gonna tell you? Well, okay. But don't spread this far and wide. My patent here. The trick is: peanut butter."

There was a chorus of rude chortles from the cops; Jim pinched in the start of a smile. Their last trout-fishing trip, after trying every fly they'd brought with them and spending three hours without a bite, Blair had started experimenting with the various contents of their lunch-box, and hooked a huge twenty-five-inch cutthroat with a piece of peanut-butter smeared jerky, a catch that had nearly knocked him on his ass and had him beaming for the following two weeks. That had been a year ago now; hard to believe.

"Peanut butter? Oh man." Henri shook his head. "I knew you were crazy, but I didn't know how bad."

Blair shrugged, not put off by their heckling. "Hey, it works. Watch them flock."

"Wonder if he uses that on women, too?" said Rafe, jabbing his elbow at Henri.

"Don't make me picture that," said Simon, groaning.

Blair made little sounds of amusement and slipped away from them, through the screen door into the cabin.

Jim felt safe enough now to turn completely away from the others and stare out briefly into the verge, where a few out-of-season fireflies dragged luminescent bellies through the air in erratic paths. He eased his full-bodied cramp by bringing various elements of the darkness in and out of focus, and relaxed into that exercise long enough to rebuild a buffer of calm around himself.

The food was cooked and brought in, the wide dining table set in lackadaisical fashion with plates, napkins, and a spill of mismatched silverware. Within half an hour they were gathered around the table, everyone at a chair except for Blair. Minus a fifth chair for the setting, he'd voluntarily grabbed a stool and now sat with legs wound through the rungs, chewing alternately on steak, potato, and tahini-dipped chunks of spelt bread, the last of which had caused great consternation and comment among the other men.

Their attention had drifted from Jim, but he could feel tugging undercurrents, stronger than he was accustomed to when with his friends. The events of past months had changed things, all right. A single week in late May had rolled across his life like a storm, but the repercussions still continued to push and pull at his equilibrium, so that he couldn't sit at this table and eat steak and plot fishing strategy without his thoughts flashing on and off in the pattern of the past, so that without volition he found himself absently wondering what Naomi was up to, and then recalling the dwindling twist of Zeller's body, and then the press conference, the hobbling pain of his leg, now a ghostly twinge, fears and stupid self-delusions and the passing joy of thinking he'd found a partner in all things, and instead the laptop becoming a fixture on the kitchen table, a sense of accumulating dust from within Blair's more oftenly closed room. When they got back he should remind Blair about the boxes in the basement, because leaving them there too much longer was going to ruin with damp any papers he had stored inside.

And he looked up on the trailing end of this thought and there was Blair across from him, hair tied back so as not to swing into his mouth while he ate. His hair's ornate frame removed, the picture of his face was austerely redefined into that angular, serious, nearly-a-professor-mug which made Jim proud and respectful. Long smart forehead, brows like incomplete thumb daubs, full lips parting to nibble bread. A Jewish face, his father had said after first meeting Blair. Sandburg, you said? A Jew, huh. I hope you didn't tell him about your trust. He'd have that out of you in no time. Though it wouldn't hurt for you to start investing it better; he'd probably double your money for you without even trying. They always can.

His dad's compliments were always recognizable by their skew.

"This isn't bad steak for a little side-of-the-road store," said Simon, moderate in approval, but tucking into his plate with steady diligence.

"Not bad at all," agreed Henri.

"Sure you don't want some of this?" asked Blair, holding out a piece of tahini-smeared bread to Simon, who snorted and held up a hand, palm out, in refusal.

The inner door had been left ajar, and autumn chill was creeping across the floorboards by the time they finished eating. After the meal there was a badly coordinated attempt to clear the table, with more or less success. The dishes ended up clean in a drying rack, the silverware remained mostly on the table, some used, some not. Postprandial wandering began, Simon vanishing into the basement, Rafe into the bathroom, while Henri tromped in and out of the back bedroom a few times. Jim, restless, watched Blair go out onto the porch and thought of following. Instead, he ended up on the couch for half a minute before shoving up to check the fire place flue. Things looked promising, but there was no wood inside the cabin. He grabbed the hod and went out.

The air temperature had dropped at least ten degrees during the last hour, and the chill zipped up his shirt tails, straight to his nipples. He grimaced to himself and passed by Blair without a word, knowing that the other man would glide down the steps after him and fall into step.

"Woodpile's around the back," Blair said.

"Yeah, I saw it from the window earlier." The darkness was broken only by contained squares of light from inside the cabin. Blair stumbled as they moved past the grounded chimney stack, where the earth became rough with loose stone as it began to slope toward the rear of the building. "Watch your step," Jim said quietly, hand going out to catch Blair's arm in a firm grasp, steadying him and drawing him closer. He didn't remove his hand, and Blair let himself be guided.

The moon wasn't out yet, and Jim's vision and hearing were spiraling up, attuning him to the night. If it hadn't been for Blair's tethering presence, Jim would have been a man poured alone into a dark ocean of sensation. "Should have taken the flashlight," he said.

"You having any trouble with the dials?"

"No, just. . .there might be animals," Jim said vaguely. He was rewarded by Blair moving a few inches closer, though it might have just been the way their steps aligned together within a rut of broken earth.

They stopped at the woodpile and Jim began loading the hod. "So, what was that about earlier?" Blair murmured, voice drifting down from the dark air above Jim's head.

"Nothing, Chief."

"You know, I've never told you this, because I hate to bust your bubble, Jim, but you aren't very good at saying that like you mean it."

"I figure the more practice I get in, the better chance I'll have of getting it past you."

"Why try."

Jim slid a few more logs onto the hod, pausing to flick a spider off his hand. "Guess we all need a goal in life."

Blair sighed. It was a compressed, exasperated sound, small but weirdly isolated from the rather loud cricketing and settling and shifting of the night around them. When he spoke, his voice was almost a stranger's, dark as the dark itself, dry as Syrian sand. "I love you, Jim, but you work my nerves." The inflection was emotionless, its truth plain and smooth and flat like a stone, and the stone was being slid into the wall that was Jim's life and yet this quality was exactly as it should be, the stone fit the chinked heart of the wall as a sense of completion.

Jim stopped with his hand resting on a log; he felt small beetles rolling under his palm without quite noticing them. "Sorry," he said, and to him the word carried no more value than a penny, but he was unable to issue forth anything more from the stricken length of his throat.

Blair, though, seemed to accept the token as more significant. "I know," he said. Whatever he knew must have been good enough. And then Blair jiggled a bit in the dark and life clicked back into gear, and he said, "Hurry up, Jim. I think something's crawling across my shoe."

*****

Back inside, Jim started to lay the fire, but was forced to yield his place to Simon, whose trip to the basement had triggered homeowner instincts of fussy exactitude. Jim left Simon muttering about the flue liner, and went to the bathroom to check his face and see if he'd suddenly changed into an entirely different man, maybe one who was going to do something vital and new with his life. Discovering himself to be exactly the same, yeah, that's him, officer, he turned from the mirror, pissed, washed his face and hands, then inspected the shower for mildew while wondering how many gallons the hot water tank held. Five men up before five a.m. This weekend was bound to be unpretty.

Once the front door had been closed and the fire started, the cabin began to retain heat quickly, proving the soundness of its construction and making Simon beam with happy pride.

Beer drinking and desultory poker filled the next hour or so, but the drive had been long, the hour was late, and the ancient tradition of fishing demanded total dedication. Play began to taper off early. There was more quick folding than usual; Henri excused himself a few times to forage in the kitchen for snacks, while Rafe and Blair distracted themselves in a volley of opinions about the football season to come, a topic of such intricacy, weight and scope that it eventually sucked them all in, making concentration on the cards difficult.

"Fold," said Jim, sliding his cards away. He had two tens, but couldn't muster enough interest for a bluff.

"Too bad Joel couldn't make it," said Blair, frowning at his cards.

Jim read three eights in the reflection of Blair's eyes and took a swig of beer to hide his smile. The bottle ceded less than a mouthful, prompting a mental tally. Four beers. It wasn't much of a bender--hyperactive senses had proved a weak accelerant for inebriation--but Jim didn't drink much any more. Novelty, more than anything else, brought on a pleasant haze that wrapped him loosely in its clasp. I'm a cheap date these days, thought Jim, remembering a time in his reckless youth when he could toss down two six packs and a pint of vodka without puking. Much.
 
"Oh, I'm sure he much rather wanted to go to that wedding," said Simon, directing a heh-heh-heh into his fanned cards.

"Poor guy," said Rafe. His head drooped at a meditative angle and his dark hair slid from carefully styled perfection to create a messy forelock across one temple. He sounded earnestly grieved about Joel's absence, which meant he probably shouldn't have brought the whiskey bottle to the table.

"Willetta has a lot of cousins," said Simon. "I think the man goes to a wedding every other month." He mock shuddered. "Divorce has its benefits," he said.

Blair looked up from his cards. "Ah, you don't mean that, Simon."

Jim slid his chair back from the table, stretched and laughed. "Yes he does."

Blair ignored him. "I can't believe that things were that bad, Simon. Look at Daryl. If the two of you made him, you can't have done all wrong."

"That's very kind, Blair," said Simon in an unexpectedly gentle voice. "But do me a favor and let's not talk about my ex-wife, okay? I've spent enough lost time there, and this weekend is a wife-free zone."

"Hey, no problem, Simon."

Jim, unreasonably irked at the fuzzy warmth of his friends, rose from his chair and went to poke the fire and make sure it was settling down for the night. He shoved the poker vigorously into the crumbling logs and watched the sparks snap and lost himself gradually to the brilliant orange embers and their whitening surface of char. Minute shifts signalled the inexorable degredation of the wood, and the intense energy was hellish and mesmerizing, and he knelt there staring into the pit, sight opened wide, until a cinder struck his left eye, and he dropped the poker and swore wildly.

Blinded and in pain, it took him a minute to acknowledge the concerned voices hovering around him. Still kneeling, he waved them off, one eye tearing up, the other squeezed shut in sympathetic denial. "Fuck, fuck, fuck," he rasped out viciously.  "Fuck!" he added, helpless to articulate more.

Two square, strong hands gripped his shoulder and worked their way up to his head. Jim held the edge of one hand out diagonally in front of his face, against intrusion, and kept the other covering the stabbing fire of his eye.

"Come on, Jim. Come on, let me see." Blair's hands, steady and purposeful, worked through his barriers, and after a mulish tug-of-war Jim gave in and let his hands be drawn away, first one and then the other. His eyes remained tightly shut, then Blair was thumbing the sore one open. Jim hissed.

"I know, but let me see," Blair said in the sensible tone loathed by children and wounded men. Nonetheless, Jim relaxed into the command and let his left eye be pried open, at which it watered violently.

"Got something there," said Blair. His grave face was close and surprisingly pale in contrast to the red sun of Jim's inner eye. He wet his thumb abstractedly and before Jim could protest dragged it along Jim's lower eyelid, removing the gritted cinder. Jim blinked rapidly.

"I think you've got a little burn," Blair said. "It's near the corner and doesn't look too bad. But you should probably have Doctor Frege see it when we get back." Task done, he stood up and brushed his hand down his jeans.

Jim, his pleasant buzz thoroughly destroyed, stood up and reoriented himself, taking a moment to glare at Simon just for the hell of it. Rafe and Henri stood cautiously off to the side at the distance of idle spectators.

Simon removed his unlit cigar from his mouth. "You all right, Jim?"

"Yes," said Jim in a voice honed to slit throats.

Simon cleared his own throat lightly as if feeling the steel. "Well, okay then. Think I'll be turning in now."

They all made motions to retire. With the commiseration of drunkeness, Rafe clapped Jim on the shoulder as they passed one another by the end of the couch. Jim grunted once in return, then made himself say goodnight. He was pissed off and his eye hurt and he hated making a spectacle of himself and now he had to crawl into bed with Sandburg and try to sleep for five hours before rolling to wakefulness and going out into the cold to catch fish. The fish-catching prospect cheered him, though, and gave him an object to focus on while he undressed and slid under the covers.

Through the wall, Jim could hear Henri taking a shower. He was singing doo wah ditty and giving it some Ella scat that wasn't half bad. The man had hidden depths. Well hidden. Jim eased into the lyrics and the sound of water splashing off the shower walls, as Blair came in and shucked his clothes and shivered into a pair of red longjohns.

"Chillier back here," Blair said. His voice husked mellowly on the words, from beer or cold or sleepiness. He puttered through some drawers, then found a blanket in the closet and spread it out over the bed without asking. Jim lay and stared at the ceiling, cultivating his indifference as the spread settled across his body with an extra and not unwelcome weight.

. . . .doo wah ditty, ditty do ditty doo-wah-jah-jee-ju, deet-deet doo, jeepers-creepers ju-ju dit-dah-doo-dah, doo doo doo. . . .

"I'm closing the door," Blair said, shooting Jim a quick look. "I know it's going to cut down on air circulation, but--" He closed the door, came back to the bed as he spoke more quietly. "--you know how Henri snores. I just can't take it, man."

"I think it was just that one time," Jim said. "He had a cold and that tenament wasn't heated. Stakeouts can be a bitch."

"Yeah, maybe," Blair said. "But I'm taking no chances. The man hit the Richter scale on at least one of those rips. Can't believe the building survived. It wasn't in very good shape, you know."

"Very funny." Jim smiled at the ceiling, affection collecting in his cheeks.

"How's your eye?"

"Better."

"No trouble seeing?"

"Seems okay."

Blair bounced on his edge of the bed, leaned over, adjusting his thermal socks. Jim stole a look at the other man's back. "You look like a Christmas elf," he said, trying to come across mean and big brotherly and hoping he didn't sound as goofy as he felt.

"Ho ho ho."

"Elves don't ho,  Sparky."

"Hey, what--Sparky?"

"That's Santa's chief elf." Jim laughed.

"You are totally making that up."

"Then again, you could be Sparky the little red fireplug."

Blair gave him an evil look before his mouth rolled reluctantly into the shape of a smile. "You should really hope you don't fall asleep first, Jim. And besides, Santa was an elf."

Jim gave another soft bark of laughter. "What?"

"He was a jolly old elf. And he hoed."

"He hoed."

"Ahh, shut up," said Blair, turning back to his socks and checking again to make sure they were tucked up into his longjohns.

Unable to resist, Jim reached over, hooked an arm around Blair's waist, and hauled him into bed; Blair was tumbled onto his back making small, sharp sounds suspiciously like the giggling joy of a porpoise. Jim tickled him, until they were both squirming in a tangle of covers.

"Ho ho ho," Jim said, fingers digging for the soft spots.

"Oh man, stop, stop--"

"Hey!"

Both men were startled from their play, and looked up toward the door where Simon stood, one hand on knob, the other on the jamb. "If you both didn't have the mental age of eight-year olds, I would worry about this," he said. "Stop messing around and go to sleep. . .feel like I'm talking to my kid. . .damn friends. . .MTV all night. . . ." His mutters died out as he pulled the door shut after himself.

"Does that door lock?" wondered Blair.

"Never mind. We're going to sleep anyway. Get that light."

Blair burrowed under the covers first, then clicked off the light, mumbled some good nights, and was asleep in ten seconds.

Jim lay there, and after about ten minutes realized he was still smiling at the grey ceiling. His face ached in a good way, but it was time to stop smiling and he made himself stop, and then made himself breathe. He breathed for a long time, sliding deeper and deeper into the night, and toward the shores of sleep. His eye ached too, though, and drew him back from time to time. It was a while before his body began to undo the buttoned stress of its joints and unzip its clenched muscles; not long after this, he rolled over on his side and saw the outline of Blair's side in a cracked swathe of strange moonlight. He reached out and drew the blankets further up the companionable body, no thought disturbing the purity of his act, and then under the warmth of the covers he laid his hand on Blair's hip, and Jim's eyelids dropped, and he slept.

*****

What felt like another ten minutes later Jim woke to sudden alertness. It was dark and there had been a knock on the door, brief but firm. His hand went straight for his gun but didn't find it under the neighboring pillow. Where the hell was he? And then he knew, in the cabin, gun in the bedside table, five in the morning, time to fish.

"Hell th' fish," Jim muttered in disgust and broken grammar, closing his eyes again and snuffling into the pile of hair he'd found. He inhaled and pressed his nose into the soft mass until he bumped and rubbed the skull. Beneath their two heads was a cottony mound of pillow, impregnated with dust and feathers, and his next deep inhalation made his nose draw up and loose a dry, dust-tickled sneeze into the hair surrounding his face.

Reawakening, Jim blinked. "Get your hair outta my eyes, Sandburg," he said. Strands tangled in his lashes, redolent with the sage of his shampoo and clinging microscopic particles drawn in from the air of the loft, as if he were carrying the seeds of home around with him.

Jim propped himself up on one arm awkwardly. Oh great, he sighed subvocally, gazing down the sleeping stem of body, which was attached to the spilled corona of hair Jim couldn't seem to get free of. The body nestled back against him, and though matters could have been worse, they were pretty much as Jim had feared at the prospect of sharing a bed with Sandburg. This scenario was the grandaddy of barracks stories with which homophobic recruits hazed each other, stories he'd once thought completely apocryphal. He was too old to be finding himself here, dick prodding his roommate's ass. He'd disciplined himself to avoid all tempation years ago.

"Mmrrumph," Blair said, as Jim eased away.

"Shhh," Jim said. He brought his tripped heart-beat back down to a steady pulse. No need to panic. He stroked Blair's hip, hoping it would keep him soothed while he made his escape.

"Umm, that's good. . .Jim."

Jim's voice choked on itself, then he manged to grind out a soft, "What?"

"Uh huh. . . ."

It was a sort of yes, and it made Jim nervous. "Shh," he said again, and managed to slide to his side of the bed and then abruptly onto the floor in a tangle of bedclothes that left the bed and its occupant bare.

"Hey!" Blair sat up, awake at once. "Jim, Jesus, shit. It's cold!"

"Yeah, sorry, Chief," Jim said from the floor.

"What are you doing down there?"

"Lost my. . .blankets."

"No fucking duh," said Blair in his most savage morning voice. Sitting up in the semi-dark, in his red thermals, hair in disarray and face sleepily frowning, he looked about twelve years old. But this was misleading. This was the Sandburg of Death, A.M. "Hurry up and get back in bed."

"It's actually time to get up, buddy. Fish." The cold floor had shrunk Jim's ardor and restored him to relative equanimity, but Blair snarled at him in response, lunged across the bed to snap the covers out of Jim's hands and in one swift, skilled motion rolled back up in the blankets, cocooned himself, and was breathing audibly in moments.

Jim debated carrying the other man into the shower and blasting him awake, but it was too cruel. And too dangerous. Jim rubbed his hands over his face, gathered himself together, and found a pair of sweatpants. He left the room, and met the smell of brewing coffee with a sense of bliss.

The kitchen laid a geometry of light across the central floor, but the rest of the living room was dark; only the otter lamp had been turned on, providing a weak orange glow. Jim could see Rafe's sleeping form on the couch. When he entered the kitchen, he found Simon there waiting for the coffee to finish, leaning against the counter, his dark face heavy and scrubbed raw by the kitchen light, features downturned with the pull of sleep.

Jim dug a mug out of a cupboard and put some milk in the bottom, then as an afterthought grabbed another. He took his place at the other side of the coffee pot to wait, and when the coffee was done filled his mugs and left the kitchen, all without speaking or being spoken too. It was too early to be verbal.

Even so, he dredged out some speech when he returned to the room. He sat on the bed next to the lump that was Blair, set the coffees on the table, and turned on the light. "Okay, Chief, time to get up."

The lump made sounds. Jim laid a hand on its back and patted it. "The fish are waiting for us." Leaving Blair alone with coffee at hand, he hit the shower. He gave himself five minutes, lathering and sluicing off speedily, missing only the bounce of dog-tags against his chest to recall his mornings in basic. He came back, towel slung around his hips, to discover Blair sitting against the headboard and sipping from the mug. He gave Jim's entrance a squint then buried his face in the coffee again.

"Might be some hot water left if you hop in now," Jim said.

"Uh huh."

Jim slid off the towel and began getting dressed. "More coffee in the kitchen." When Blair didn't reply, Jim glanced his way. The other man's eyes were closed and the coffee mug was cradled tipsily in his lap. After four years, Jim was used to this; Blair was characteristically slow to start. Soon after they began sharing the loft and going into the station together a few days a week, there had been a period during which Jim built up a head of frustration every morning; he'd prod Blair into reluctant motion, and vent his spleen at having to do so. Blair had ignored his outbursts, and had never gotten any better at waking--or even tried. But somewhere along the line Jim's impatience slunk off and never reappeared. Maybe it was because at this time of the day only, Blair was capable of being far crankier than him, a bullying moppet who stalked around, slurped down algae shakes, gave Jim amazingly dirty looks, and left the bathroom a wet heated mess before banging out of the loft. As time had passed, Jim had been forced to yield his primacy with respect to the uncompromisingly prickly creature with whom he shared his mornings and to save any lecturing for later in the day, when Blair was malleable and conscientious again.

Jim fastened on his watch and looked at the time. He estimated Blair would join the ranks of homo sapiens in another ten minutes, but it would be closer to a hour before he deserved another sapiens tacked to his name. No problem; as long as the other man was ambulatory and dressed, sentient communication could wait. Jim even preferred silence; another reason why he'd stopped his harangues. He'd learned that if he just helped quietly, nudging Blair through his morning rituals, they could proceed faster and without fuss.

Of course, left entirely to himself, Blair would simply roll over and go back to sleep.

Jim went over and took the coffee cup from Blair's lap and drew back the covers. Blair's eyes opened, dark and glittering. Jim gave him an appeasing smile. "Fish," he reminded.

Blair grunted, leaned forward, then launched himself upright. He went straight for his dresser and began pulling on jeans and shirts over his thermals.

Oh well, thought Jim. The other man always smelled good to him, and now he'd developed that moist, musky cloak of scent that made Jim want to go over, nuzzle him, and bite deep. The others wouldn't even notice or care that he hadn't showered. It was that kind of weekend.

They left the room together this time, Blair carrying his hiking boots in one hand, Jim with the coffee cups. All the living room lamps were on now, and Rafe was nowhere to be seen, having commandeered the bathroom a few minutes earlier. Simon sat at the dining table, picking through his tackle box. Henri was in the kitchen cooking eggs and sausage, and looked frighteningly cheerful.

"Hey there, guys," he said when he caught sight of them. "Some eggs here."

"Looks good," Jim said. He handed Blair his coffee cup and gave him a tiny shove toward the pot before joining Henri to assist with the jumble of frying pans and bowls.

"Heya, Blair," said Henri, projecting heartily across the small kitchen. "How you doin' there? Sleep well?"

Jim, cracking eggs, leaned in conspiratorially. "Might want to be careful, H. He's cranky in the morning. People have been known to lose limbs. Even heard reports of small pets gone missing around our neighborhood." Henri looked over his shoulder and Jim followed suit.

Blair, hunched into double layers of flannel, peered owlishly at them over the edge of his refilled coffee cup and said nothing in a significant way.

Henri laughed and went back to arranging a panful of crackling bacon. "Once we get out in that fresh mountain air, we'll all wake right up. Nothin' like it."

More than an hour passed as they collected their gear and breakfasted, and then packed some food to minimize the necessity of returning to the cabin, but it was still dark when Jim stepped out onto the front porch to sniff the cold morning air. Late crickets creaked out of the grass, while a few early birds called out through the trees. The air had a sharp, mineral tang that rapidly filled his nose and lungs. As Jim's vision adjusted, he saw, across the verge by the tall outcropping of rock, two deer standing motionless and watching him in return. His left eye was aching again, and he blinked once and worked some sleep grit from the corner; when he focused again, the deer were gone.

The others soon joined him on the porch, fly-rods in hand, shoulders draped with vests and waders, creels and boxes, and they set out down the creek path with Simon in the lead, flashlight aimed at the ground. Companionable silence governed them until they reached the creek, where they began to break the pre-dawn spell with quiet chat, low enough to keep the fish lulled but increasingly genial as they grouped on the bank and scanned the creek under the lightening sky.

It was a view that would have inspired any angler, and it made Jim's heart glad. He estimated the creek at fifty feet wide--a good-sized stream, really. Its banks had a gentle slope, unusual for the mountains, and were overhung with trees, some of which had cast off their blowdowns into the stream bed. It was a rocky bed, dotted with sleepers and larger boulders that poked out above the water line, but the current was mozying along easily, and the water was low and clear in the shallows, with no sign of recent run-off. More exciting to his gaze was the stream's thalweg, a wandering heart which further downstream straightened and deepened to a perfect run in which the trout milled and rose.

Blair whacked him with his hat, and Jim caught his eye and grinned at the peeved expression on the other man's face; Blair hated it when Jim used his sentinel vision to scope out the fish, but in front of the others he couldn't vocally complain.

"This must be where anglers go to die," said Jim with rich contentment.

On their home bank, one of the previous owners had established a crude base camp in a clearing, marking its perimeter by fallen trees and dragging down a scarred picnic table whose surface bore evidence of gutted fish. They stopped here to don their waders and vests, and trade off-color badinage about rubber suits.

"Not sure I like these new waders," Blair complained.

Jim glanced over, then snagged Blair by the front of his waders and drew him closer to yank up the material and adjust the suspenders.

"Hey," Blair said, as Jim tightened the waders to his chest. "Why're you pulling them so high?"

"It's going to be cold out there, Chief. Why do you think I got you these?" Jim swatted Blair's hands as the other man tried to wriggle the material back down. "Hypothermia's a poor trade-off, no matter how fat the trout are." The air temperature was around fifty and climbing, but the stream temperature wasn't going to rise along with it. Simon swore it was spring-fed and stable, averaging about fifty-five degrees, but ideal as this was Jim had a stab of annoyance at himself as he gauged the conditions. "Damn. . .I probably should have gotten the neoprene instead," he said.

"Jim got you those?" said Simon.

Jim shot him a warning look over Blair's shoulder.

"Nice birthday gift," said Simon, ignoring Jim's piercing frown.

Blair squirmed as if to look over his shoulder at Simon, then capitulated to Jim's care. "You know my birthday's in January, Simon. . .don't you?"

"Oh yeah, that's right." Simon began unwrapping a cigar. "Expensive, those Gore-Tex waders. What do they go for, Jim. Three hundred? Four?"

"I got them on sale," said Jim curtly. But he was too close to Blair to avoid those deep blue eyes, and their clear regard. He turned away, face warm in the cool air.

"Help me seine, Jim?" Simon invited, sticking the cigar in his mouth.

Jim nodded. He unrolled a spread of cheesecloth and waded out into the shallows with Simon, leaving the others on the bank to assemble their fly-rods. They held the seine in for a few minutes, then returned to land to inspect what they'd collected. While the rest of the men joined Simon to prod their representatives of local bug life, Jim eased back out into the water to turn over a few rocks and poke around the grassy banks.

"Decent mix," said Simon to him when he climbed out of the water. The big man was stroking a finger through an array of winged critters. "Probably get an early hatch of October caddis later today. Bluewing olive, too. Looks like that nymph might come in handy, after all."

Everyone began digging out and trading flies, and tying their lines for business. Rafe and Henri weren't particularly experienced, and Jim let himself be drawn out to supply tips. Blair, though an unrepentant novice, appeared bent on doing his own thing today, and when Jim raised his head from explaining to Rafe the markings on an orange stimulator he saw that Blair had taken up his chosen perch a few dozen yards down the bank, where he was sitting cross-legged on a flat rock, intently wiping down his reel. Bulked up in flannel, vest and waders, hair ponytailed midway up his head, face grave and pure, he struck a nice, masculine figure and yet embodied a youthfulness it seemed he would never outgrow. Kid brother. Sidekick. Boy anthropologist. Jim didn't think there was any other man who could look so intelligent and quirky, yet stir this roiling heat in his balls.

Rafe waved a hand in front of his face. "Yo, Jim, you with me, man?"

Jim sighed and nodded to Rafe, and thought, I've got it bad.

*****

Blair could feel Jim's eyes on him, but he didn't look up from assembling his fishing rod. He was determined to make a good showing for himself today. Blair wasn't sure if the culturally mourned lack of male role models really influenced character development that much--before meeting Jim he certainly hadn't thought so. But the eager, generous way Jim set about teaching him fly-fishing had filled a small hollow need in Blair not previously acknowledged. Even though their first lesson had been cut short with unexpected violence, it ranked among the best days he'd had with Jim.

Blair preferred it when he and Jim fished alone, in perfect tandem, but this weekend's outlook was improving by the hour. It pleased him to make preparations as Jim had taught him, knowing that the other man's hands were echoing the same meticulous pattern, attaching reel to rod, winding on backing and flyline, knotting backing to line, leader to flyline, tippet to leader, then threading and fastening the rod's halves together. Every time he did this Blair remembered Jim's sure hands the first time he'd demonstrated the assembly, the rough and complex hues of his voice as he talked about his childhood fishing trips.

Four hundred dollar waders, thought Blair. He tried not to think of the waders; his own casual gripe about the gift now washed him with embarrassment.

Laying the rod down, he sat down on his rock and hunched over his tackle box to find a fly; half of the selection had been gifts from Jim. Jim's box had its own share of gifts. Despite Jim's affected disdain for all things festive, Blair had successfully initiated a loft tradition of hanging flies from the branches of their Christmas tree as presents. The cleverness of it had tickled Jim so much that both their collections had grown absurdly large over the last few years.

Blair tied his fly on, no peanut butter, and ventured out into the stream. He spent the next hour presenting his line to the trout from various attractive vantages, none of which earned him even a flash. There had to be a zen to fly-fishing, but though Jim had told him he had a natural aptitude for casting, Blair knew he was too inexperienced to tap into that force. Instead he kept trying to prioritize; in his head he juggled all the instructions Jim had ever given him, but they didn't quite gel. Find the slow zones in the stream, the fish will gravitate there. Approach them from downstream. Downstream, right. Okay. . .which way was downstream. Don't drop your backcast, stop it between twelve and one o'clock. One o'clock, got it, Jim. Your rod is an extension of your arm, Chief. Oh, yeah. Blair had ribbed him mercilessly about that particular axiom, until Jim's face turned red and he splashed off cursing. Keep your line taut. Stroke the water, float it toward the rise.

Blair obeyed all the commands in his head. He tried to read the water, looking for the curling slaps of water, and the ripples that signalled a rising trout. He kept himself well downstream, which incidentally kept him downstream and in sight of Jim, allowing him to emulate the other man's stance and technique as best he could. After watching Jim effortlessly reel in three energetic fish from the same spot, Blair realized he must have found a good run. He muttered irritably to himself, since he should have observed this earlier.

Placing himself along the stream's center, twenty yards down from Jim, Blair stood and watched for likely eddies until he pinpointed his spot. He eased into range, scratched his nose, then instead of letting himself think too hard he simply set his shoulder into a long backhaul and whipped the line out, feeling it cast arrow-straight from the snap of his wrist. It touched down gently as down on the water's surface and began to float toward the rise, where Blair could visualize a fat flashy trout waiting to be snagged. He watched his lucky fly, a gold-ribbed hare's ear that had been his first gift from Jim, swing around to catch the current, bristling body skating toward the trout with cocky aim. Yes, yes, yes. Ripples crossed one another in delicate webs, and Blair gave the fly some quivering movement in simulation of life, and then a swell of water bumped the surface. Though he'd been waiting, the flashing strike came like a shock and Blair's heart tripped with glee as he began to reel in the line.

"Yee-ahhh," he whooped to the wilderness, followed by "Shit, shit, shit," as the trout arced in a spray of water, went deep, and started zooming downstream toward him. He stripped the line in furiously, trying to keep pressure on the hook; the thing was zeroing for him like a bullet, and for a few moments Blair feared it would fin right between his legs and leave him tangled up in his own line looking like a fool, but he sidestepped and was able to keep reeling in the heavy body, closer and closer; he could feel it tiring, and then he saw it, flashing pink and silvery in the water. He reached behind him for his net and scooped it up, and straightened with his trophy to find Jim right at his side, smiling broadly at him, beautiful as a man could be. Blair felt that his heart might burst with pride and happiness. He made a fierce war fist, raising his fly-rod in the air and shaking it.

"Let's take a gander, Santiago," Jim said, laughing at him and wading closer. He tipped down the edge of the net. "Oh, yeah. Very nice."

"Very lunch," said Blair.

"Here, hold the net still--let me kill it." Jim took out a knife, grasped the flopping fish in one hand and delivered a quick hilt-first blow to its skull.

"Thanks, man. Think I'll go clean it now. We eatin' soon?"

Jim reached out to ruffle his hair with fraternal vigor. "We had breakfast two hours ago, though I'm not surprised you don't remember. I don't think you'd booted your brain yet. But you should have something to eat. You've been burning the calories."

Blair basked in the moment as Jim's hand lingered, cupping the side of his head. Jim seemed genuinely unaware of the gesture, and even when his fingers slid out and dropped away they did so comfortably. "Mmm, maybe I'll have a papaya bar," Blair said.

Jim nodded and headed back into the stream, leaving Blair thrumming with deep energies. He plashed across the rocks and cleaned the fish on the picnic table before storing it in a small cooler. Reverting to his sociable nature as the sun climbed overhead, he joined Rafe in midstream and kept him company while they fished opposite banks.

It was cool and wet and fine, and the caddis hatched early, drawing a seething glut of fish to the surface and making strategy superfluous. A coolerful of trout gave their lives to humanity to be gutted and pan-fried for lunch. Euphoric and triumphant from his own catches, Blair sat at the picnic table with his friends, waders and all, chatting animatedly as the trout spat juicily and grew fragrant.

Henri had thought ahead and lugged down a six-pack of beers, which had been cooling creekside in a shallow niche since before sunrise. Blair thought he'd never had a beer that tasted so good, and before eleven in the morning.

"We have enough for dinner," Simon said, counting through the rest of their catch.

"Seems almost too easy," said Henri.

"Bite your tongue," said Simon, looking down his nose at the other man. "This stream is God's gift and it's taken me twenty years to find this. Don't jinx my honey pot, Henri."

Blair leaned forward and folded his arms just short of a smear of drying fish blood. "How did you find this, Simon? Kinda out of your patch, isn't it?"

"Out of everyone's patch," said Jim.

Simon lit a new cigar. "Oh, I was looking for something west, but all the properties were out of my range. Tell the truth, I didn't start looking seriously until a few years ago, and I'd never saved up much so I didn't really figure I'd ever find something I could afford--and that I'd want to set foot in." He puffed his cigar to life. "Came across the listing for this by pure chance on the Internet. Was being offered for a song, never did find out just why."

"Built on a fault line? Haunted by ghosts?" suggested Jim.

Blair shushed him.

Simon took the questions almost seriously. "Huh, well you can be sure I looked at everything. I thought there must be a catch--other than the fish, that is."

"Toxic landfill," said Jim. "Mass murder."

Simon's eyelids lowered on a slanted, heavy angle and his lips pursed sourly. "Keep yanking my chain, Ellison, and you're not gettin' any of my fish."

"Your fish?"

"Okay, okay," said Blair, waving them both down and projecting a long-suffering air.

Henri half turned in his seat. "How are those coming along, Rafe?"

Rafe was sitting on a stump by the small brick fire-grill whose grill they'd been unable to find. He was monitoring the contents of a cast-iron skillet, a shirt wrapped around one hand like an oven mitt. His face, usually set into a rakish if somewhat cherubic facade, had drawn into lines of avid concentration. His sleek GQ haircut had grown unkempt, and it was hard to reconcile his frog-green waders with the sartorial style he inhabited at the station. "Looking good. Wish we had some paprika."

"Oooh, we've got a gourmet here," drawled Simon, who didn't pass up an opportunity to chaff one of his detectives. "Sounds like you know your way around a stove. Want us to get you some white wine for that? Pinch of tarragon, maybe?"

"Simon, that you even know the word tarragon is a disturbance to the natural order of the universe," said Blair.

Now it was Simon's turn to look miffed. "I'm not a barbarian, Sandburg. This is the nineties. It's not like knowing the word tarragon makes me a yuppie."

"I didn't think cops could be yuppies," said Jim.

"I think you're right," said Henri.

"Why can't cops be yuppies?" asked Blair. "Young urban professional. It's a profession. You're urban, young. . .some of you. Hey, Rafe, do you have a breadmaker?"

"That's a hell of a personal question, Sandburg."

"Easy now," said Simon. "Don't go asking a man about his kitchen appliances."

"Wait, now. You're saying that having a breadmaker makes you a yuppie?" Jim sounded on the defensive. "That's crazy."

"Yeah, but you have a breadmaker because you were married and it was a wedding gift. Wedding gifts don't count," Blair reassured him.

"Carolyn didn't take the breadmaker?" said Henri, turning to look at Jim in surprise.

"She had her own." Jim's stare was level.

"I think wedding gifts should count," said Rafe. "What else has he got, Blair?"

"Uh, sorry, guys, I don't cook and tell."

"That sounds serious," Simon said. "Pasta maker's my guess."

"Nah. Gotta be a juicer," said Henri.

"Espresso machine," Rafe chimed in.

"Espresso machines do not count," said Simon adamantly, giving Rafe the evil eye.

"Only if they cost over a thousand dollars," amended Blair.

Simon, who'd concluded last tax season with a boastful paean to his new Pasquini Livia--praising it at such length that the brand had burned itself onto Blair's cerebral cortex like the name of his first girlfriend--was silenced to an expression of disgruntlement by this.

"I'm not a yuppie," Jim said in a tone of finality.

"Yeah, but you've got yuppie trappings," said Blair, affecting an attitude of apology to cover for his mischief.

The look Jim aimed at him somehow suggested he wished he'd put a live trout down Blair's waders when he'd had the chance. "I'm not the one who insists on a restaurant with microbrews every time we go out to dinner."

"Hey, nothing wrong with being experimental. Besides--" Besides, I'm not a professional any more. Blair realized in time how pathetic that would sound, and bit off the words. "Um, you know. You can't be a yuppie and have long hair." It was a weak save, and the other men issued a barnyard chorus of skepticism.

"Nah," said Henri, "You can't get off that easy. I've seen plenty of yuppies with ponytails." He reached over and yanked Blair's.

Blair ducked his head and smiled.

Henri, with a guileless lack of tact, went on. "What would you have done if you'd gone on to the Academy, Blair? They would have gone snip, snip, buzzzzz." He accompanied his last few words with a palm glide across the top of Blair's head that didn't make contact. "You'd've ended up looking like Jim over there."

There was an awkward silence.

"Yeah, in my dreams," said Blair after a few beats, a riposte that didn't exactly restore the balance of masculine camaraderie.

"That fish done yet?" said Simon, turning impatience on Rafe.

Blair glanced at Jim, who was hunched over his beer bottle, tilting it as if reading the label. But his face had frozen into brooding, and the strong muscles of his shoulders had reformed into a subtle topography of tension.

"Sorry, Sandburg," said Henri. The apology was light, even a bit insincere, as apologies between men tended to be (so that you didn't take yourself too seriously, thought Blair); but Henri was considering him with thoughtfulness.

Years of studying Jim's friends and colleagues on their own turf had given Blair some insight into how cops' minds worked, yet he still wasn't sure what Henri's opinion of him was. After "Jim-the-sentinel" had been outed to the world and Blair had publicly declared himself and all things sentinel to be fraudulent, he hadn't seen much of Henri or Rafe, or anyone else in the Cascade PD for that matter. Busy salvaging the wreckage of his life, he'd stopped going to the station, and socializing had dried up for a few months. When Jim began towing him to poker games again, the other men had received Blair with a combination of perplexed politeness and stifled curiosity that let him know how little they understood what had occurred. The odd thing was, they gave Jim an equally wary regard that Jim didn't seem to notice. Blair had noticed, though, and it made him hurt inside. He'd taken the fall, but he'd taken part of Jim down with him. Nothing could restore their world to its previous, bounded privacy.

Sometimes Blair suspected that the cops still viewed him as an enduring species of student; that education was a defining lifestyle rather than a relinquished profession. Entire poker games passed without anyone touching on the subject of his disgrace. Avoidance tactics, mostly, but the cops also missed the ramifications. His transgression hadn't become a legal issue, so to them it was merely academic. If not for the bizarre publicity and Jim's starring role, Blair's suicide jump from the ivory tower would have been no more noteworthy than a new type of sandwich in the vending machine. A few sympathetic back slaps, a few rounds of how's the job hunt going. After all, Henri, Rafe, Joel, even Simon, had never spared much peripheral vision for the details of Blair's life.

Blair shrugged off Henri's apology, as he was expected to. "No big deal," he said, meaning the remark, the situation, his life. He was getting used to saying that. No big deal. Just burning off some karma, righting the balance. That's life. The words still tasted bitter, but it was a good and soothing bitter, like chewing aspirin. He was working off the ache of his loss.

He met Jim's eyes and they raged at him. Blair's heart stumbled over itself with a panicky reflex.

Jim swung around off the picnic bench, his movements jerky with anger. Even from the back, Blair could see the taut line of his jaw, the stiffened cords of his neck. He could tell, because he knew Jim, all his moods, all his kinetics, that Jim wanted to stalk off but was hampered by his waders and conflicted over whether to remove them and leave, or leave despite them, or stay and suffer the maddening itch of his temper like a soldier.

"Fish are done," said Rafe, coming up to the table and giving Jim's back a glance.

Jim, after an internal struggle that manifested in tiny twitches of shoulders, head, and arms, turned around and let himself be served with the rest of them.

Blair breathed again, with ragged hitching care, trying not to be heard by sentinel senses. But that was always a lost cause, and Jim's gaze rose and dropped, not missing any nuance, no, not any trick or aspect of Blair's life, not a single furtive fart, the rank scallions on his polenta, his two-day recycled socks, the hasty whacks he took in the shower. Why did I ever think it would be cool to have a pet sentinel, wondered Blair, looking at the hard, grim length of Jim's face across from him. I should have thought it through. When the alligator grows up, what will you feed it?

But Blair couldn't sustain resentment. Jim was not the danger. Jim was just Jim. Stubborn, touchy, suspicious; generous, easy, patient; he had all the normal human contradictions which bundled up to make a man, a mundane laundry basket of habits, pleasures and preferences, with strict rules about football watching, and a late-night sneakiness about eating ice cream, with weight-lifting and a dislike of yellow shirts, with his memories of Carolyn, his love of apples, his pickiness about spaghetti sauce; and how he bought only white socks or black, never considering any other colors; how he reread the novels of Dashiell Hammett and Tom Clancy; his unfulfilled yen for surfing, his critical opinions of the Clinton administration that Blair had learned not to provoke. And yet that was not all of him, there was no way to comprehend the compacted lifetime of days and thoughts Jim had worn, to know what he'd shed and what he'd kept; you lived with a man and he put on the same face every day when he greeted you, and what did that mean, except that he knew who he was.

Yeah, Jim knew who he was. He wasn't a sentinel. He'd existed before Blair came along and he wasn't Blair's invention; just a difficult, complicated man with a lot of surface and even more depth, a hard-working cop whose stressful senses Blair had elevated into myth, because I am a loser, thought Blair, a fraud, just another guy who went to school and never dared to leave, who hopped on the tenure track and started running like a frightened rabbit. Head down for the goal, no sense of the journey. That's not you, Jim, that's me.

Blair, whirling on the uneasy rapids of his thoughts, was having a hard time stringing more than a few words together, and Jim wasn't even trying. The other men saved lunch with unbothered, makeshift chit-chat that eddied around them both, and which drifted into a melancholy eulogy on Little Stogie, their sponsored racehorse whose champion prospects they'd finally abandoned as a fond dream. He'd been sold to a passionate thirteen-year-old girl whose family had acreage in Eatonville, and in the wake of this loss the Precinct Cigar Club was contemplating new enterprises that made Blair glad he had no savings to be wooed. Jim had once confided to him, Nothing chills my blood faster than the sound of cops discussing the restaurant business. Listening to the mens' optimistic predictions it was easy to see why.

The rest of the afternoon passed lazily. Blair caught and released one more fish, from a nice spot in the crook of a tree's roots, then retreated to land, wanting to quit before reaching his boredom threshold so that the morning would retain its gild of pleasure. He scouted out a sunny spot on the bank and peeled off his waders, spent some time scrupulously disassembling and cleaning his gear, then settled in. He had a book on his knee about Tungus shamanism, but it remained closed. The stream was warming up with afternoon life, midges drifting across the water, caddis smacking and bouncing off the surface, a late dragonfly hovering at the reeds. Ten yards out, Jim stood with enduring ease in the middle of the rushing water, flicking cast after splendid cast at the fish, his moves and form graceful, his face shaded by his baseball cap and hard to read from the distance. He caught a few fish that he brought to the cooler, and then caught and released a few more with painstaking respect. Blair saw him cut loose more than one fly to leave the hook in.

Blair sat and meditated and listened to the plashing energy of the water and the men's occasional voices calling out to one another, and thoughts skated through his mind like swarms of midges and left as little mark, but he felt mindful, he felt full, and when he rose a few hours later, cued by the convergence of the others that the outing was winding up, he decided it had been a good session, good enough that he was suddenly keen to sit zazen again, not erratically but as a daily practice. Walking toward his companions, his mind was busy with plans. He would start going to the zen center every morning, he would be a better person, calmer, like Jim; he'd take things as they came; he'd let go and move on, but in the most positive way; he'd bend with life's blows and grow stronger, and he'd impress Jim with how mature he could be.

He came up to Jim, who looked at them, and they smiled at one another, their connection restored and vital, and Jim's hand came to rest on the back of Blair's neck, broad and cool against his sun-warmed skin.

"I think you've been in the water too long, Jim. Your hands are like popsicles."

"We'll make a fire when we get back."

"Hey, did you see this monster?" Henri called out happily to Blair. He waved Blair to the cooler and showed off his pride of the day, a sixteen-inch rainbow nestled on top of the melting ice.

"Excellent," Blair said. "A little butter, some lemon, some breadcrumbs--"

"Oh, yeah," sighed Henri.

Tired but jubilant, they tramped back up to the cabin along a path thickly edged with rust-colored pine needles and striped with flickering late-afternoon sunlight. The cedar cabin looked homey to Blair's eyes, a clean and welcoming refuge to thaw the chill that had gradually seeped into him despite the sun. The porch boards shook under their clomping feet as they dumped their gear outside by the door, and then they were inside, a herd of male bodies jostling for the bathroom and heading for the fridge.

"What time is it?" Blair said, heading into the kitchen and looking around for a clock.

Jim gave his watch a look while drawing a bottle of water from the fridge. "A little after three."

"Wow. Feels later." Hunger had leapt into Blair's gut like a tiger, and with shaky hands he started pulling together the contents for a sandwich, working with slight clumsiness to undo the peanut butter lid.

Jim took a long swallow of water, stood off to his side for a minute (watching, Blair could tell when he was watching), then came to him and slid an unexpected hand down his wrist to take his pulse.

"Hey." Blair half-heartedly tried to pull away, not sure whether to be amused, touched or irked. "What's up with that, c'mon--"

"You're cold," Jim said. "You were sitting on that rock for hours, Chief."

"I wasn't the one in the water," Blair said, and though he made a grumble of it, Jim was putting down the bottle and coming behind him, untying his hair, shaking it out, firmly stroking his scalp and neck and shoulders.

"Take your sandwich," Jim said, folding the halves together and putting it in Blair's hands, nothing but peanut butter on spelt, but Blair obeyed and let Jim manhandle him over to the couch and drape a blanket around him. It felt embarrassingly good when Jim coddled him, when there was nothing he could do to stop him, so Blair let his shoes be removed, his feet briefly massaged to restore circulation, and he chewed slowly at his sandwich while Jim made a fire.

Feeling more sluggish than he wanted to admit, he curled catlike into the blanket. When done with the fire, Jim went to the kitchen and made kitcheny sounds that kept the surface waves of Blair's thoughts busy, while further down he sank into a pool of quiet reflection, in whose darkness hid the milling questions he'd spent the past month trying to grasp; questions that could not be separated from decisions, about his job, his future.

Jim in the kitchen evoked home; home was the loft. Sitting here now, Blair felt that his place with Jim might be more precarious than it seemed, that this weekend could be the knife's blunt, subtle edge separating past and future. And yet what could he do? He'd just return as expected to the loft's illusion of security and resume his so-called life, dragging through his workdays at CascadeSidewalk.com, coming home at night to the sense of Jim's watchful eyes, the feeling that Jim expected more ambition from him, and to the submerged fear that nothing bound them together except the past. A stack of musting notebooks, an observer's badge in a drawer.

"You all right, Sandburg?" said Simon, coming over to stand and look at him with mild concern.

"Chill," said Jim succinctly, passing by his captain to come sit next to Blair on the couch. He put a cup of tea in Blair's hand.

Blair sipped. "Ugh, Jim," he said in a fuzzy voice. "You aren't supposed to sugar this kind of tea."

"Who says? Drink it up."

Blair directed a sidelong look at Jim, who sat facing him, an arm slung over the back of the couch, waiting to make sure that he did as he'd been told.

"You should have some too," said Blair, hoping he'd take the hint.

"Drink," Jim said, and his fingers curled around to bunch in the loose hair on Blair's nape, and rested there like an imperative, and Blair heard Simon returning from the kitchen, and he sipped, and Simon came to join them by the fire with a cup of coffee in his hand, heaving his body with a rich sigh into one of the stuffed armchairs, and then Simon turned his head to say something to Jim and then he didn't say anything at all, and Blair felt a weird tightening in his chest, because Jim's hand was still in his hair, just sort of tangled there with no purpose, and Blair felt then that they'd somehow crossed a line, not in a bad way, and it must be time to recognize this, but he couldn't see how to go about saying so, and yeah, it was crystallizing, except that he'd had this sense of moment before and nothing had come of those times except vague disappointment, but maybe this would be different, you always lived in hope.

"Jim," Simon said, with a note of low urgency, mingling disbelief and exasperation and maybe distaste. His eyes were trying to magnetize Jim's attention, on a direct line of sight that passed less than a foot in front of Blair's face.

Blair's tongue moved hesitantly, his lips parted with the beginning of breath, and he longed to say, back off, Simon, but couldn't. He frowned into his tea, took an indifferent sip.

"Yo, Jim," said Simon, more loudly now. And then, "Sandburg, snap him out of it."

The others were in the back somewhere, changing, showering. Blair gave Simon a cool, detached look as he contemplated the command. Then he turned his head to Jim, who seemed to be zoning on his hair. . .his hair. Whoa. Bingo, jackpot, holy grail time. Blair's cheeks pinked, warmth flared through his body. Hypothermia wasn't a consideration now; he was thoroughly safe, blood zinging through him, nerves firing wildly like the coils and bells on a pinball machine, core temperature absolutely toasty, thanks.

"Jim, wake up." With effort, he dragged an arm up out of the swaddling blanket and shook Jim's knee.

Jim blinked, focused on him with conscious attention and a quizzical look in his blue eyes.

"Just a little zone," Blair reassured him quietly.

"Ah."

He watched Jim reflexively scout the territory, notice Simon. Jim's face remained bland, relaxed, finding no threat, but a few moments later his hand twitched to life in Blair's hair and slid away. Blair wanted to bitch his disappointment to the world, preferably with Simon as his main target, but there was no point.
 
"You done with that?" Jim asked, before taking his mug. "You could use some more."

"Mmm, coffee," said Blair.

"You got it, buddy."

Blair's lips curled at the edges. A few minutes later, Jim brought him back heavily sugared coffee and two papaya bars, still in their foil. His gesture, so civilized, resonated with jaguar motion. A big cat carrying a jawful of wild pig to its mate. And in the casual movement of looking up at Jim, the blanket slipped, and Blair's throat bared itself.

Simon eyed this exchange then said in a neutral tone, "Jim, can I speak with you?"

Jim didn't seem to suspect much; he got a wary expression, but this was no more than typical. If he'd intuited the topic, as Blair had, he'd have been digging in his heels. Jim hated serious personal chats and tended to greet such invitations as if he'd been asked to pound nails into his chest.

They went outside onto the porch. Blair didn't try to stop them. If Simon had something to say, he was going to say it. Besides, Blair's chances with Jim didn't hinge on a soft-core seduction. Or if they do, it's already a lost cause.

Blair sat with head cocked, trying to direct his hearing through the front wall, sentinel-fashion. They had to be talking, but for a while he could hear only what sounded like silence, and then he heard voices raised, Jim's angry and sharp, Simon's rather flat honk carrying further, neither of their words intelligible.

There it was, though. Circumstantial, but the argument couldn't have been about anything else, and it was confirmation that Blair had been right. He and Jim had crossed a line somewhere, at least by Simon's standards, and now Simon was shoving the issue right up under Jim's nose. By the sound of things he wasn't being very politic or encouraging, but at least Jim wouldn't be able to ignore this.

"Hey, Blair." Rafe came out into the living room, freshly showered, a small towel around his neck. He caught the rising tones from the porch. "What's going on out there?"

"Oh, um, probably hashing out the Washington Minnesota game again."

Rafe, not a strong football afficionado, made a face and began toweling his hair dry. "Thought we'd heard everything there was to hear already."

Jim banged in the front door, through the living room, and to the back bedroom, and shut its door, not violently, but with emphasis. Simon came in on his heels and closed the front door more quietly.

Rafe's brows slid up. "Damn, Simon. What'd you do, pull his tail?"

Simon sighed. "Something like that."

The back of Blair's head tingled with the intensity of Simon's stare, and then it dissipated. "I'm gonna go take a nap," said Simon. "Wake me when the new age is here."

Rafe nodded in puzzled agreement. "I think we missed something," he said to Blair. "What about you?"

*****

Blair's hand rested on the knob of the bedroom door. He thought about knocking, didn't. The room was evenly grey, curtains drawn against the remnant afternoon. Jim lay on top of the bed covers, one hand behind his head, the other on his stomach. He was looking at the door as Blair came in. His shirt lay across the end of the bed, and his white tee-shirt was luminescent in this interior twilight. His legs were crossed at the ankles, feet bare despite the coolness of the room.

"Hey," said Blair, closing the door behind himself and leaning against it. But he felt dumb, leaning against the door and not knowing what to do with his hands, so he moved to the bed.

"Hey," said Jim, his voice passably normal.

Do I ask or not, wondered Blair.

"Did you warm up?" asked Jim.

"Oh. . .yeah. I think so."

Jim sat up, reached out. Blair scooted closer on his hip, let Jim feel his skin, his pulse. Then Jim's hand was in his hair, gently combing.

Their gazes met and knew one another, ghosts in the machinery of their everyday bodies, as if they'd sustained a private dialogue and might be close to hashing out the last terms. At least, this was Blair's feeling: one of restlessness, recognition. It was familiar; they were two guys who'd been thinking about each other for a long time without doing much about it, harboring curiosity while they complained about each other's sink stubble and girlfriends; guys who'd given each other shit, traded frowns and smirks, who'd snuck peeks around their popcorn while watching Mystery Science Theater 3000. This was how it had to be, thought Blair.

And nothing else could explain that look in Jim's eyes right now, except this. They'd kept this thing between them quiet, and it had kept. There had been harder things to do; their existence had been larger, messier and more complicated than just this. But now for the first time their lives had synchronized to something flat and smooth and calm, and when they looked at each other nothing distracted their thoughts. This was how it had to be, surely. After four years they should know their moment.

Jim hauled Blair over with a hand against his neck, and Blair let himself be hauled.

"Hi, hi, hi," Blair said, stitching the words rapidly to the air between them, then managed to take a long, normal breath. More slowly from his depth-charged body, he added: "Hello." Jim lay back down on his side and placed Blair facing him, close enough to conspire.

"Hi," Jim said, in a soft particular tone that Blair had heard only once or twice. He knew Jim's whisper; this was Jim soft not because he had to be, but because he wanted to be. Jim Ellison, a big, lushly muscular man, who could issue this small delicate blossom of a whisper: the contrast made Blair weak. Jim was studying him, saying nothing more. Then he sat up again and drew the extra blanket over them both, and under its cover moved his hand, just the one, around Blair's body, warming him.

They stared at each other some more; Blair, absorbed in his thoughts but interested, sensed Jim to be the same. They'd been fenced apart by social convention and habit; had turned fence into light fencing. The sparring game had progressed for years without commentary. When you had mutual want in common, negotiations could be made entirely with eyes and bodies, with the way you bandaged and breakfasted each other, in irritations and tiny exhibitions of jealousy and the way you sometimes flaunted how well you knew each other. And even so, to move over the line took a kind of courage that stunned the breath right out of you.

Blair's eyelids dropped to half mast and he slid closer, and then, awkward with the deliberateness of his need, he worked his leg between Jim's, while Jim took a hitched, quiet breath and let him, helping him maneuver their limbs together, jeans against jeans. Their legs made a simple, heavy weave and Blair came home to a place where his legs tangled with Jim's and there was nothing more in the world he wanted except for this, their bodies in a beginner's knot.

Jim's hand clenched on his arm, and then slid down to his waist and to his back, following its own natural path. Fingers skimmed along the cleft of his spine, through too much flannel, then boldly slid under his shirts and palmed his back. Blair's hips pushed forward once, helplessly.

Jim gave him a startled, appreciative look as if Blair had just invented gun powder, civilization, the margarita. Blair pressed his face against Jim's, nosed him and rubbed their faint, bemused smiles together. Their hips had decided to start working together too, and the shifting and rubbing they contrived was a kind of sharp, dissonant music that unfurled down their spines and made them try harder. Blair's face filled with a hot, wild rush of blood and he grabbed a fistful of Jim's shirt and pushed his hips forward again, into the stiffening crux of their bodies, and it felt unbelievable, leverage and violin bows and crickets and sex.

"Chief," Jim said, and his tone made Blair think he was hesitant, maybe, or inexperienced, but this was their moment, so it didn't matter, nothing was an impediment.

Blair propped himself up on one arm and let the full glow of his eyes shine on Jim, and he liked the slightly new angle this gave his body, so he twisted his leg and shoved, driving himself across Jim's pelvis again, the cradle of all pleasure, and he watched Jim's face to make sure he'd done it well. Jim's face cracking open with need told him he had.

"Yeah," Jim choked out. His hand went to Blair's ass and cupped one cheek, a knowledgeable hand, not quite urging him on, but the splay of fingers was promising.

Blair wrapped himself around Jim and kissed him, distracting himself from the rest of his own wakening body. Jim seemed distracted too. Dazed, Blair communicated his amazement, mouth asking is this what you were expecting, Jim answering without words yes, no, better, and wordless they said other things, tongues careful for a while then rough and greedy, until Jim flipped Blair over on his back and struggled partly up and ripped open Blair's shirts, both of them, and rocked against him a moment, breathing harshly.

"Yeah," Blair said huskily, twisting and liquid at his core, "yeah." He whispered his pleasure and drew his tattered shirts away from his chest, hoping Jim had plans.

Jim hissed and leaned down and his teeth fastened on Blair's left nipple and Blair arched off the bed, his back trying to define itself in a bow under Jim's aggressive weight. "Oh man, oh God," he cried, far too loudly.

They both stopped cold, motionless, gasping for breath and then abruptly with laughter, Jim burying his face in Blair's armpit to stifle his noise, Blair shoving his hand in his mouth and trying not to make any sounds, the corners of his eyes trickling out tears.

"Shhh," Jim said. He torqued his body slightly to check the door, and cocked his head, listening.

Blair drew his attention back, and the strength he needed to exert on Jim's neck to do this made him shudder with arousal. Blair felt he'd been born waiting to feel that expanse of taut muscle stretched out over him.

"I don't think they heard," murmured Jim. Pinning his gaze on Blair again, Jim swooped in for an uninhibited kiss, a non sequitur that made Blair writhe. Jim's hands held his head still and his tongue fucked him over and over.

Frantically, mindlessly, Blair began to scrabble at Jim's jeans, trying to drag them down off his hips without undoing the fly. He drew up his legs and wound them around Jim's thighs, tying the bow tight to hold him in place. It was a clumsy move; he'd never been on the bottom before quite like this. But yoga had many benefits, he'd kept up his exercises for good reason.

Jim came up for air. "Easy, easy." He rubbed his face all over Blair's, ground his hips within the clamp of Blair's legs. "Man, you're strong. Like a little alligator."

"Ah. . .you like that?" Blair rolled his hips and squeezed with his legs.

Jim's eyelids slid into half-mooning surrender. "Just roll me down into the water, baby."

"Oh, wow." Blair breathed laughter. "I didn't know you could say 'baby' like that."

"Like what?" Jim said suspiciously.

"Mmm. Like some sort of sweet-talkin' white-trash dirty barfly. Stop shaving a few days, start in on the whiskey, stick a wrench in your back pocket. . . ."

"A wrench?" Jim dug his hips into Blair's. "How's this?"

"Oh. . .yeah."

Jim nuzzled Blair's left ear, tugged at his earrings with his teeth. Blair's eyes fell shut, and he rocked in place and stroked Jim's back. "D'you think we should lock the door?"

"I think we're insane," said Jim right in his ear, raspily and roughly low. "And you. . .you smell like sweat. River water. Bug spray." His voice was musing, lazy. "How'd you get that real deep voice, Chief?"

Bug spray. Was that good, Blair wondered. "Umm, puberty."

"Nice and deep," whispered Jim in his ear.

Blair's ear felt red-hot, a cauldron of boiling heat under Jim's tongue. Distracted, he just gasped again and again, tiny catches of breath like a trout drowning on dry land. He had a groove, though. They were rekindling, trapped cocks rubbing with an edge of painful friction between their bodies, when a knock came on the door.

"Shit," Blair choked out, while Jim rolled off him in haste. They sat on the bed, disheveled and struggling for breath, a tangled blanket threaded between them.

"What," said Jim, loudly and with rancor. He grabbed the blanket and roughly yanked it free as he spoke, to chuck it down toward the foot of the bed, as if there its rumpled state might appear more innocent.

Blair scooted away at the same time, yanking his curls down over his red ears, straightening his shirt, heart thumping goat-footedly through his chest.

"Thought we'd make some burgers," said Henri through the closed door. "You all want in?"

"Yeah, just a minute," said Jim.

Blair adjusted himself, groaned at the ache. "Son of a bitch," he muttered.

Jim turned on the lamp nearest him. "We knew it was a bad idea," he sighed, then twisted around quickly to add, "For here, I mean."

Blair, who'd tensed at the first part, relaxed back into a smile. "I would have gone all the way," he admitted.

Jim's gaze flicked up and down over his body, gleaming darts. "I heard you were easy," he said. "Not even our first date."

Jim's teasing voice was warm and low and rude, very much in character, which reassured Blair that the other man wasn't going to morph into a bowl of tapioca any time soon. He let himself answer seriously. "Yeah. . .but this didn't come out of nowhere, Jim."

Jim nodded, without argument. No way to know what he was thinking.

"I, boy, I could write a dissertation on this," said Blair, running a hand through his hair, then caught the appalled, believing expression on Jim's face. "Not. That. I. Would." He clipped off the words with deliberation.

"Uh huh."

"I'm just saying. Four years. Near death experiences. Terminal girlfriends. Hell, we even shared a sleeping bag once. . .could we have done this sooner?" Blair thumped his head back against the headboard, and looked at Jim.

"I don't know." Jim stood, tucked in the edges of his shirt. "I don't think so, Chief. I don't think these things happen on a schedule."

"Yeah. Guess we don't have to worry about moving too fast. Turtles pitch woo faster than this." Blair paused. "But you want this, right?" It was the only question to ask. Asking did that just happen? would have hit too incredulous a note.

Jim studied him as he had earlier, holding Blair's eyes. He offered that certainty he seemed able to summon at will. "I'm ready to take this where it leads." He pulled on his discarded flannel shirt, began buttoning it.

Blair kept his face schooled to its listening lines, feeling himself tighten underneath the mask. Just a little. Just habitual worry. Sandburg worry genes. He didn't know quite what to make of this yet, whether Jim's economical words rose from a confidence that things would tumble as they should, or from noncommital distance. The quick petting-to-dressing recovery time didn't in itself worry Blair. This was Jim. He was used to Jim, his restraint. But what was underneath? But then again, what was in himself? Blair acknowledged his own mix of sex and trepidation. He was ready to jump Jim's bones, but the daily stuff--the way he and Jim didn't talk cases to death like they used to, the way Blair's intellect seemed to be idling in neutral lately, the winter ahead--these things remained between them.

"You should probably--" Jim gestured at Blair's shirts, the flannel whose last few buttons hung by threads, the torn cotton underneath.

Blair looked down at his ripped clothing. "I dunno, I think maybe I should go out like this, let them know you were bent on having your way with me before you were distracted by the lure of beef, the other red meat."

Jim gave him a cockeyed look of respect for the lewdness, but simply said, "I think we can do without a parade."

"Yeah, suppose you're right." Blair went to dress. "Oversharing the details of our homosexual gropefest would probably trash the manly, chest-thumping, weekend-in-the-woods thing we've got going."

"Our ho--" Jim's shocked echo cut itself short with an audible snap of the jaw. He came to stand behind Blair and gazed over his shoulder into the dresser mirror. His hands went to Blair's tickle spots, and fingered them dangerously. "You yankin' my chain, Sandburg?" His lips were close to Blair's ear again.

Blair shivered and thought, hey, who's that sultry-looking hippie boy in the mirror? The hippie boy's little smile and heavily lidded eyes answered him.

"I was trying to get a few yanks in. Got interrupted."

"Do me a favor, try to keep it under wraps while we're with the others. I don't want to be sitting next to Henri and have to be smelling all those Sandburg pheromones wafting around." Jim gave a little hand wave on wafting.

"Oh, wow, can you pick up on my pheromones now?"

Jim was nosing his hair, and made a small snorting sound in its curls. "Now? Nothing new about that. You're like one of those--" He hesitated, and Blair was certain he'd been about to say something insulting, but Jim frowned and asked, "What are those things in churches that swing around, with the incense?"

"Censers."

Jim continued to frown. "No, I mean those things on chains that the priests swing around."

"Censers."

"No, that doesn't sound right. Come on, I thought you knew everything." Jim thumped him on the side of the head.

Blair looked at Jim's reflection through slitted eyes, becoming mildly irritated. "Thuribles?"

"Yeah, that's it," said Jim, looking satisfied and almost too damn peppy for Blair to endure. "Come on, my terrible little thurible. Let's get out there before the burgers are all gone."

*****

"I'm not even going to ask what's in that," said Simon, looking at Blair's sandwich.

Henri was more pitying of Blair's dinner choices. "Come on, Blair, we got one burger left over there. Won't be around long the way Jim's plowing through his."

"This is a burger." Blair removed the top bun and displayed its innards with a modest flourish of showmanship. "A veggie burger."

"An abomination to the noble self-sacrifice of cows everywhere," said Jim, picking up his own dripping burger.

"Do you really want my impromptu lecture on the history of bovine cannibalism in the American beef industry, the morphology of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, and the carcinogenic effects of estrogen?"

"No!" came the chorus from around the table.

Simon added dryly, "For a man who polished off a healthy-sized sirloin last night, you sure can say a mouthful."

Blair shrugged. "Hey, I'll eat beef once in a while, but I'd like to die with my prostate intact, thanks."

Jim choked on the bite he'd been taking, and had to abandon his feeding to hack a painful series of coughs into his napkin. The other men made a point of ignoring him.

"Hey, uh, no offense, Sandburg, but I'm trying to eat here." Rafe was wincing. "I don't want to be hearing about your. . .stuff."

"My stuff? Actually, this is just a place for my stuff, you know?" He said it to them seriously, with a straight face, as if it were a reasonable reply. "That's all, a little place for my stuff." But their confused expressions broke him up and he grinned at Jim, who liked classic Carlin.

Some part of Jim felt embarrassed, knowing his friends didn't get the joke, and at times they just didn't get Blair, but god, he loved this kid to pieces. He laughed, and then--to save Blair from appearing dorky, and himself from question--he berated his friends for not recognizing Carlin, what was the world coming to, who could appreciate comic genius these days, what did they think was funny? Which got Henri going about Chris Rock, Simon about Jeff Foxworthy, and Rafe about Monty Python, in a strange babble of impersonations, half-remembered riffs, and heated debate about the nature of comedy that lasted for the rest of dinner.

As they wound down, the evening lay ahead. Once upon a time, Blair would have had his laptop with him--he would have toted it with him to the moon--and would have been separating from the pack about now, to curl up somewhere and tap-tap-tap intently. Jim stole a glance at Blair, who looked aimless and contemplative, two moods that could only be reconciled in a face like his.

A girlfriend of Blair's from a few years back, who'd spent a few tense weeks skulking in and out of the loft at odd times, had liked to interrogate Jim about his roommate--she'd had a knack for catching Jim alone when Blair wasn't quite there yet. She'd been younger than Blair by the span of a first-grader, and inexplicably obsessed, as if Blair were some grunge-styling rock star instead of merely a grungy anthropologist whose five o'clock shadow started at four, who could spend an entire meal discoursing on 'proxemics', who clipped his toenails badly like the rest of humanity. She'd once said that Blair had a Botticelli face; Jim, who'd been burrowing in the fridge and trying hard not to listen, thought she'd meant to say 'botulism', until she started talking about Medicis and draperies and the Florentine school. And all he'd been able to think as she droned on was that nobody named 'Sandburg' could possibly have a 'Botticelli' face, whatever the hell that was, and he'd been right, because he'd found a book of the guy's paintings and found no traces of stray Sandburg in them. Spurred by critical disappointment and boredom, he'd disarrayed the shelves of the local Barnes & Noble, flipping through glossy pages until he hit upon the Pre-Raphaelites, and he didn't find Sandburg there either, but he did find the girlfriend's painted twin: a woman with long red hair, fishy hands, and a vacantly dissatisfied posture. He wished he could have found a way to work 'Pre-Raphaelite' into a conversation with the girlfriend, except by then she was gone, leaving behind only a ghastly-smelling floral scarf, which Blair did kinky things with when he thought Jim wasn't paying attention.

Jim liked Sandburg's face. It was likeable, and it was Blair's, not Botticelli's or anyone else's. His looks came and went in a series of bad hair days and semi-shaven-jaw days and ghostly days when he hadn't slept; but the essence of him was squirreled away in there, brooding and waiting, and then he'd tie his hair a certain way or let it fall, he'd wear an outfit not too appalling, he'd slip his glasses onto his funnily sloped nose, and Jim could only stare at him, sneakily, to try and define what it was that could transform this animal--dog-boy one day, monkey-boy the next--into a strong, maddeningly sensual man that Jim would let fuck him, no doubt about it.

Do not zone on Sandburg's face, thought Jim, as he tuned in to find himself sitting at the dining room table, staring off across the room where his friend was sitting yoga-tied in an armchair, a book in his lap.

The rest of them were playing cards again, and the game dragged on for hours in a forgettable way, hours that in other circumstances would have been uncomplicated and enjoyable, just cops and cards and beer and pretzels, but like a wolf among sheep he was sitting there thinking about his dick and his best friend's dick and how he hadn't gotten laid in four months. Too long stroking himself. It hadn't escaped his calculations that getting it on with a guy who shared your roof could open up a whole new calendar of opportunities for getting off. Maybe a day-planner, even.

He continued to have this trend of thought until it was time for bed, by which point he wanted to drill a knothole and call it Blair, and yet he was in a cedar-paneled cabin, an inescapable smell of fish and socks in the air, with a bunch of guys he had to work with come Monday. Concentrating on keeping his cool had given him the strained beginnings of a headache, aggravated by the cigars of his poker companions, the swelter of their near bodies, the bright bulb that hung three feet above the table, the fact that all the windows were closed.

Good night, g'night, night, they said to one another.

The lights were flicking off, Henri was hunting for a snack, and Jim nodded and grunted his way from the room, glad to get away from his friends, as they all diverged for bed, bath, and couch. He went into the back bedroom, closed the door and breathed.

Better.

Opening the windows was better still, and he stood, half-bent at the screen of the rear window, scenting the night air, exhaling the cigar smoke from his lungs. Crickets made reedy noise in the grass, and the night smelled like the chilled surface of rocks and the ground. Far off, he could hear the creek. The scents and sounds had a visceral pull, reminding him of his uncle's lakeside cabin where the family had vacationed in days when they were still a family.

Jim squatted down by the window and let his vision expand through the screen until it dissolved and he was deep in the forest, sliding through the tree trunks. But he didn't zone. He was aware of Blair showering, and then Blair stepping onto the bathmat, and sliding into his sweatpants, and brushing his teeth. And when Blair came back to the room and was inside, Jim was already behind the door, waiting. He pounced from his hiding place, quick and lethal as a panther, kicking the door shut after his prey was in.

"Oh, man," Blair gasped in the darkness, as Jim mauled his neck. "Yeah, oh yeah." His towel dropped from his hand, and his dopp kit followed with a thunk, as he reached up to wrap his arms around Jim.

Jim, excited by his own audacity, grabbed handfuls of wet hair and chewed around Blair's face and neck, trying not to mark him while longing for the freedom to do it. He pushed Blair against the door and greedily mouthed at his hair, his shoulders, then roughly sucked at one nipple, which crinkled up stiffly to meet his lips. He worried it with his teeth, heard stifled cries tremble in Blair's throat, rising and dying there as he tried to stay soundless.

They were wrestling like teenagers, and then Jim got a handful of Blair's ass through the plain grey sweatpants. That cup of soft muscle stunned them both. Stunned Jim, as tactile replaced a visual certainty, that his fingers had always wanted to dig in just so.

"God," murmured Blair, his body going lax with pleasure as if Jim's touch had been a signal to submit. Their bodies melded even closer, Blair suspended no longer by his own muscle but only by the wedged thigh Jim had pinned him with. Jim breathed like a freight train, cracking a wide grin at the same time. Blair's face was dreamy and when he bared his throat, lips parted, the gesture pierced Jim with feral, erotic happiness.

The sharp knock that came on the door nearly made him bellow with outrage. Blair, whose body had absorbed the knock, squeaked and leapt instinctively away from the wooden surface, shoving Jim back. Jim swore, grabbed Blair's fallen towel and reached to turn on the light, Blair ducked under his arm and flung himself at the bed, and then Jim opened the door to Simon's startled face. It was hard to tell if he'd heard their scuffling, or if he was just surprised to see Jim up close and personal and breathing a bit more deeply than usual--while he held a towel in an attemptedly casual manner at his hips and tried to look like a man who'd been toweling his hair. Dry hair.

"Uh, Jim, just wanted to see what time you were thinking of getting up tomorrow." Simon's brows were a careful quarter-inch above their bench-mark. "We thought no reason to make it an early morning, maybe get up at seven, get in a few more hours of fishing if anyone wants to bring some back for freezing." His eyes narrowed at something over Jim's shoulder. "Leave at nine, nine-thirty or so," he continued, somewhat put off his rhythm.

"Sounds great, Simon." Jim nodded and began to close the door.

Simon placed his hand on the jamb. "Chilly in here. You can leave the door open if you want to warm things up."

"I think we've got that covered," said Jim levelly.

Simon's face had a downturned, dissatisfied pull. "Yeah, I was afraid of that." He paused, pursed his lips slightly. "Don't make me have to wash those sheets," he said in mild tones, before turning away.

Jim closed the door on him, cheeks flushed. His trapped erection ached, and he wasn't entirely sure the towel had done its job as a shield. It dropped to the floor wet and unregarded as Jim tried to decide how much Simon had seen. He flicked off the light switch and closed the windows without a word, then moved to the bed. Blair was already there, under the covers, hair tendriled out across two pillows, one bare arm crooked on the center of Jim's pillow like a placeholder.

"Hurry up, come help me get warm," said Blair, but his voice was already warm.

Jim slid in under the covers and propped himself up next to Blair on one forearm. There was damp cool hair under his skin. "Blair, look"--guilty now--"I'm sorry I wound you up, I wasn't thinking. We can't. . .not here."

"Yeah, okay."

"Sorry, Chief."

"Oh, I know you're sorry," Blair said, rolling out the vowels like rich dark earth.

"Very sorry," Jim breathed with emphatic agreement, chuffing out his distress.

"Can I feel how sorry you are?"

"That's not a good idea."

"Mmmm. . .can I touch it just once?" Blair asked in a voice that snaked right through Jim's gut, smooth and  low.

"Jesus, Blair." A shudder of need wracked Jim's body. He'd meant to say several sensible things, but instead he blurted, "I don't have anything else to change into."

"I know a trick for that."

Jim swallowed, don't even think of it, Ellison, rolled away to sit up and turn on the lamp. Blair grumbled a bit, and when Jim went to his duffel and started rooting around in its depths, he gave a plaintive, nervous hey.

"Where are my handcuffs?" Jim mused aloud.

"No way!" said Blair, as if he would, he really would cuff the little troublemaker. The idea had its merits.

Jim grinned, and came back to bed; Blair looking suspiciously at his hands, and then recognizing the items with dismay.

"You can't just shut me out, Jim." Blair's lips set. "I'm completely willing to sympathize when your senses are freaky, but--"

Jim sat up against the headboard. "Blair, my senses are freaky," he said quietly. "My eye hurts, I've got a headache that's ripening on my brain-stem like a prize-winning tomato, and I've got this guy in my bed who's pretty distracting." He gave Blair's thigh a gentle squeeze at this last remark, trying to take out any sting.

"Yeah?" Blair, mollified by the compliment, gave him back a saucy smile.

Jim felt a pang of guilt; he'd exaggerated his woes just enough to be compelling. In truth, Blair was right, he wanted to try and block the sexy death rays that Blair emitted as unconsciously as breathing. He wedged the white-noise earplugs in, then began to draw on his sleep-mask. Blair's hand stopped him, and his voice reached Jim's ears filtered through the hiss of the plugs.

"Not the mask, Jim."

Jim looked at him blankly. "Why not the mask?"

"Jim. Seriously." Blair stared at him hard. "Trust me. As a friend."

"Yeah?" said Jim, a twitch of vexation in his jaw.

"Well, I'm just saying. What if one of the guys comes in?"

"Let me get this straight--you're not worried about anyone, say, coming in to find us snuggled up with our dicks in each other's pockets, but if I have my mask on--"

"It's not very Lone Ranger, Jim. More like Lana Turner."

Jim issued a tiny breath-puff of affronted disbelief. "You're the one who wanted me to wear a mask for, what, two hundred dollars--more than that--with the little gizmos that were supposed to make me dream and conquer my fears of whatever."

"It was designed to trigger lucid dreaming. Yeah, wow, I'd forgotten all about that. . .I shouldn't have returned it," Blair said with thoughtful regret. "I still think you would have gotten a lot out of it."

"I don't like to work while I sleep." Jim, a bit self-conscious and cross now, put the mask on the bedside table.

"Well, it's supposed to be fun--flying around, taking control of the dreamscape--"

"Blair, please. Not now." Jim turned the light back off.

"Mmm. . .hey. Simon's not too happy, is he?"

Hearing the question beneath the question, Jim's shoulders tightened. Then, unshackled from his doubts by the darkness, he leaned over and kissed Blair's mouth, drew back and smoothed the fine hairs along one tense brow. Strange doing this, but natural. "He's not happy with me, that's all."

"Right. What'd you two argue about?"

Jim sighed. "Why I never told him I had a letch for my partner, what else was I hiding."

"What, he thinks you're a closet case now?"

Jim grimaced uncomfortably. "Let's just say that 'don't ask, don't tell' was my motto long before things started heating up."

After a long pause, Blair said, "You've had plenty of women." Notes of admiration, envy and uncertainty mingled in Blair's praise.

"I've had. . .men, too," Jim said. It felt odd saying that out loud to someone at last, even in a low voice in the dark. His hand aligned to Blair's jaw; thumb stroking the other man's lips. Copping a feel. "And then I just. . .stopped. I thought I had to choose."

"Jeez, Jim. I know bisexuality's a six-syllable word, but so's 'twentieth century'."

Jim slapped his face, so lightly that it became a caress. "That's two words, like 'smart ass'."

"Mmm." Blair's hum became a purr. "You know, if we--"

Jim removed his hand and lay on his back. "Go to sleep."

"Crap." There was a disgruntled pause, then Blair's breathing evened and his voice picked back up dreamily, sliding into Jim's ears past the furry white noise: "The cool thing is though, that we can continue this conversation later. Home. In your bed. I can grill you, poke you, tenderize you. Maybe use those handcuffs. . . ." He trailed off, humming again to himself.

Jim resolutely closed his eyes, thinking how much he appreciated a man who accepted him, whose masculinity was off-center; thinking it funny they'd managed to start kissing without first beating the subject to death, which he'd half feared. Blair was a relief, more often than not, and not like other people. Jim had brooded over a lot of scenarios, but this was easier than he'd thought it would be. Action always was. And, now that it was happening, he could admit that he'd seen the signs from day one, though it had been only a year now, maybe, since the signs started arranging themselves into something he could read. Little things, words, looks, shared coffees; other things so large, so all-encompassing, that they couldn't be seen--one's perspective didn't take them in. Not even sentinel vision could manage it. Sea changes. That's what his grandfather would have called them, in a completely different context, of course. Jim had never dared add everything up, but now the sum of need and want was being figured. It felt logical. Right. The way he felt about solving a case, but broader and deeper.

He heard Blair say good night, kemosabe, roll over on his side, facing away from Jim to butt up against his flank. This wasn't too bad, Jim decided; he could handle this. If he didn't breathe too deeply. If he didn't touch his dick inadvertantly. If he didn't feel the warm curved rump that pressed against his thigh.

Fuck, Jim thought tiredly, and then he had some more thoughts, and then he was driving along a highway at night, grey-green trees flashing by at the periphery of his vision, his vehicle pushing into a dark tunnel, white lines sliding beneath his truck, and at the end of the tunnel was a pinpoint of light that danced crazily along the truck's windshield, in and out of the air around his face. He could not quite focus on it, but he tried until his head was aching with the strain, and then he was falling, it was not a tunnel but a hole in the earth, and as he fell he zoned, thinking, this is lucid dreaming, this is lucid zoning, I wonder if I can overcome this fear.

*****

The overhead lights came on without warning and Jim's eyes snapped open reflexively. His first waking thought was, shit, busted. Blair was tucked into his side, one damp hand on Jim's chest, transmitting a pulse restless with dreams into the chambers of Jim's own heart.

"Do you mind," Jim began to say roughly, shoving up onto one hand, and then he froze at the gun pointed toward his chest. Blair's hand slid down off his chest as Jim sat up, as if in some horrible way leaving him more vulnerable, giving the signal that here was the target. Blair began coughing to life, and shifting and muttering in the covers next to him. Without thinking, Jim slid out one inadequate arm to shield him.

"Get up," the man in the door said, gesturing with the gun. "Get your boyfriend up too."

Jim raised his free hand palm out, then withdrew his other from across Blair's form. "I can't hear you," he said carefully, raising his hands slowly to his head. "I have earplugs in." He held his hands next to his ears a moment, until he was sure that the impatient jerk of the man's gun was a signal of permission, then he removed the devices and dropped them on his blanketed lap. He'd been taken off guard. He'd grown less accustomed to this, but when it did happen, it made him feel disgusted, even enraged with his limitations, as if super-sentinel-powers were only worth having if they were infallible.

Now he felt only the gutting edge of fear. He was far from a superman or a blessed protector or anything else that Blair deserved.

"Jim. . .lights are on," said Blair, the words muffled into his pillow.

"Get your buddy moving, Jim," said the man. He was a stranger and his brown eyes were rock-steady on him. "And if you're thinking about going for your gun--don't."

Jim's heart skipped up once, sharply, before returning to its frenetic baseline. "I don't have a gun," he said calmly. Voices rose from the back bedroom. Simon's. Henri's. The unrecognized voices of other strangers.

"Uh huh, don't worry about that now, Five-O. We're just going to take a walk into the other room, and then we can worry about where you've put your piece, capisce?"

Jim's face remained inexpressive, but in the interior of his skull chambers had flared to bright sharp life and machinery breaking from disuse with terrible suddeness. His entire body was flooding itself with the acidic tide of instinct, in which training struggled to remain operative. He nudged Blair with his leg, then cautiously--aware of the gunman's power, a single trigger, the end of his world--he touched Blair's back. When that contact was made, he made a wedge of his fingers and jabbed them into a sensitive spot on Blair's side.

"Sonuva. . . ."

With urgency and relief, Jim heard Blair's heart jumpstart itself. The younger man gasped, pushed up unevenly onto one arm, and then rolled onto his side to blink at Jim.

"Wha--"

Jim cut him short. "Get up. Now." Jim flicked a glance at the man in the doorway and slid out of bed. On his feet, he felt more in command of himself, though he made a larger target. He saw Simon and Henri stumble through the hall past the open door, followed by two more men. He smelled blood.

Blair sat up, cross-legging himself in the process, which caused a flutter of panic and frustration in Jim's belly. He wanted Blair on his feet, too, and preferably behind him; not tangled up in his own limbs, a sitting duck. And Blair was facing away from the door, still half-awake and completely unaware, eyes dormered, body lax.

"If he's not off that bed in two seconds, I'm putting him back to sleep for good."

Jim grabbed Blair's shoulder and hauled him off the bed with one powerful wrench, bringing home a heavy and stumbling armful of his friend, whose head had been whipping around toward the intruder's voice. Jim steadied him, then eased himself in front of Blair.

The gunman edged further inside the room, well out of range of the door, and gestured them out it.

Behind Jim, Blair was tensed, heart speeding, breath filing the air with sharp uneven rasps. Blair's hands were clutching Jim's waist as if to keep him from moving forward. When Jim stepped toward the door, Blair stumbled after him, then his hands dropped away, a precursor of loss so powerful that Jim almost stopped to regain that touch, heedless of the cost. What had happened before must happen again someday, and if it was going to be today he would not make it easy. He'd grab and hold on.

But he kept moving, letting sound and scent take the place of touch. By the time he reached the front room, his ears were so full of Blair's breathing that he'd filtered out almost everything else; his ears were cupped to an otherwise muted world. This gave the scene in the front room an eerie soundlessness, not dreamlike, but subaqueous. The silence was stripping away at his nerves, until they were gestured to stop, and Blair bumped into him. Sound cut back in with force, as on a badly wired pair of speakers. His hands clenched at the spike.

The others, Henri, Rafe, Simon, had been lined up and forced to sit along the front wall. Simon, minus his glasses and clad only in flannel boxers, hunkered there scowling until he was ordered down, butt on the floor. Rafe, dressed as Jim and Blair were, in tee-shirt and sweat-pants, dangled his hands off his knees, bare feet tucked half under him. Henri was wearing thermals that clung to his dark skin and to the tensed muscles beneath; fresh blood spattered the white cloth. Both Henri and Rafe had blood running down their faces; Rafe from a long gash on his temple, Henri from his nose, which was broken. Simon wasn't bleeding, but looked to be in some kind of pain. All three, woken from sleep into brutal attack, already appeared the worse for wear, and Jim's heart sank at their rapidly dwindling prospects.

Back online, Jim counted gunmen. Four in the front room with them, all carrying Heckler & Koch submachine guns. No one remaining in the back rooms. His hearing, turned up and as functional as radar, caught no indications of any other living bodies inside or outside the cabin.

The men in the front room were spread out and had placed themselves carefully. One had his gun unswervingly trained on Jim's friends, the others aimed their weapons at Jim and Blair on entry and then used them to wave Jim and Blair in the direction of the others, like ramp agents guiding in a plane.

"Come on down, boys, have a seat," said one of the men in a thickly unpleasant drawl.

As he moved, Jim surreptitiously eyed the row of his friends and the wall's strategic advantages--Henri sat on the end closest to the front door, but there was no space left there. Simon sat under the window, Rafe next to him. This was an area bare of furniture; only the corner remained, and a yard of space that began the next wall. Jim maneuvered Blair into the corner, and took for himself the spot slightly closer to the table where the shortwave radio sat. Unlikely he'd have a chance to use it, but at least he knew how.

The man closest to the front door lowered his gun. Not quite six feet, he had a mastiff's strong torso and legs, a short blond beard, and incongruously rustic but expensive clothes--artistic, even, Jim thought. Something about his heavy Aran sweater and corduroy trousers hinted at foreign origin, but when he spoke, his accent was blandly American, a voice of Quaker oats and weak beer. The playground bully grown up.

"Cover them. They twitch, shoot 'em. They talk, shoot 'em." The bearded man disappeared into the back of the cabin, followed by a dark, muscular associate.

Jim, one knee bent, one hand resting on the floor, kept himself in practiced readiness, but had no plans to move. He panned a blank gaze around the room, letting it drift across the remaining two gunmen without lingering, so as not to incite them. He formed an impression of each man. The one marginally nearer to them was solidly built, older, his hair greying, his gun-grip calm and professional on his gun. He wore black gloves, and a black leather jacket that was styled for a younger man, and Jim had glimpsed a curve of wide gold watchband just above one cuff. He was worth worrying about.

The other man was also worth worrying about, but in a different way. He wore no gloves, no jacket, just a thin blue windbreaker zipped up against the cold September night. His skin had a chafed and ruddy hue, but he was young, lanky, his hands pale white. He swayed a bit from foot to foot, the way a man dances in place to music, except there was none. Even from across the room, Jim could smell cigarette smoke on him, and sweat, and gimcrack cologne, and staleness in the crotch of his jeans, all a disturbing contrast to the well-soaped, Old Spice scent of the older man. These were two very different animals, and the bearded man another. They didn't quite fit together as a team, and Jim put one part of his mind to work on the puzzle.

A second part of his mind gave attention to the sounds from the back bedrooms, busy sounds of rummaging, contents of luggage being dumped, drawers opened. Jim tried to remember whether the others had brought their guns. He realized only now that he didn't know; he'd simply assumed they had. His own gun was in the bedside table drawer; he knew the moment it was discovered, its clip removed. He could even hear his wallet being slid off the table top, flipped open, then pocketed. It was at this point Jim had to admit to himself they were in serious trouble.

"Can't get these anchovies outta my mouth," the man in the windbreaker said. He hawked deep in his throat and spat on the cedar-planked floor.

The grey-haired man didn't remove his eyes from the grouped men at the wall, but said, "You spit like that in your mother's house?"

"This look like my mother's house to you?"

"I never seen your mother's house," the grey-haired man said phlegmatically, uninterested. His throat sounded dry, as if he hadn't had a drink in a while. "I don't want to. Your mother could live in a kennel, for what I care. Don't spit on the floor again. The boss, he isn't going to appreciate it, you know what I mean?"

"Oh, man." Windbreaker laughed with hyena spookiness, pointing his gun toward the ceiling for no apparent reason. "Forgot."

"Forgot," muttered Grey. "Keep your fuckin' piece on them, gavone."

Jim spared a quick look at Simon. Their eyes questioned one another, shared ignorance.

The other two men came out of the back. The bearded man, who had oringally rousted them from the bedroom and was provisional leader in Jim's mind, carried a small duffel--Henri's--that he tossed with a heavy clunk on the dining room table.

"What we got here?" said Windbreaker, cackling again.

"Lookin' like four cops and a punk," said the bearded man. He gave the sitting men a measuring look that was not cold, was not emotional enough to be cold. Nothing had been frozen in his gaze that could ever be thawed. His eyes had the dirty, light brown color of permafrost and one could sense that this was the shelf on which his personality rested.

Windbreaker leaned over the duffel and poked through its contents. He pulled out a thick wallet, laughed, and stuck it in his jeans pocket, badge flashing its tin. Jim read the number. Simon's.

"Jesus," said the dark-haired man, who had not spoken before now. He stared at Windbreaker's assumed badge, and his voice was curt. "Take that thing off. You're walkin' over my grave."

The man's eyes, also dark, moved their gaze to Jim; they were human and direct, and their vitality startled Jim and gave him wary hope that this one might be more reachable than the rest of the crew. The man's gaze slid on, passing down the line of Jim's friends. He was frowning, his body stiffly attentive. He was young but not puppyishly young, and he might as well have had 'Young Turk' tattooed on his forehead. The remainder of his face was plain, heavily curved in the jowls, cheeks scarred from adolescent acne. Like Grey, he wore black leather. Side by side, their affiliation surfaced in similarities of attitude and carriage.

"This is seriously fucked up," said the bearded man. He made a fist and placed it knuckles-down on the table top, as if to rap a meeting to order. He had a small, crude tattoo above the knuckles, PAT.

It was probably a wife's name or a girlfriend's, but it stuck in Jim's mind as a moniker. He was doing his best to figure out these men, what the association here was, but since he didn't know any of them--that he could yet tell--he wasn't sure how much it mattered. You were lucky as a cop these days if you could tie criminal relationships together by the blood oaths of gangs or goodfellas. To him, Grey and Turk had the bearing of Cosa Nostra, Pat had some hard time behind him, and Windbreaker. . .well, he was obviously eating with only one chopstick.

"Take care of them now," said Grey with the unflinching judgment of a career man.

Windbreaker raised his gun, grinning. Jim tensed to push himself off into a roll.

"We can't," said Turk irritably. "The boss ain't here yet." He shot a dark look at Windbreaker, while still speaking to his companion. "Try not to get his kite flyin', willya?"

Pat scraped back a dining room chair, and sat heavily down, laying his gun so that it pointed at the front wall, about a foot above Simon's head. "We should take care of it now. Boss'll say the same thing, that we should've done it. You think he's going to want to wait around while we finish up business?"

Windbreaker snorted, shook his head several times. "Not digging any more pits, is all I can say. No way, noooo way. I ain't diggin' no pit. Why? Why dig a pit? No point to that. Just leave 'em. Shoot 'em and leave 'em."

The other men said nothing to him, their consensus of contempt needing no voice.

Jim felt Blair shudder next to him, and was recalled to the other man's heart and scent again, his stuttering pulse and fear. Jim had his right hand firmly on one upraised knee. Impossible to reach over and touch Blair, to soothe. And even it had been possible, he would not have dared.

Turk shifted, sighed. "C'mere," he said to Pat. The two men got up and walked to the far end of the room, standing by the fireplace to confer.

Look, Jim heard Turk say in a low voice. Mr Righetti, maybe he'd have other ideas here. I don't wanna anticipate the man, y'know what I'm sayin'? He's in a difficult position right now. We kill a bunch a' cops in his cabin, how's that gonna look? Not a family, even. It was a family, I'd say, whatever. Let some sheep-shaggin' psycho take the rap for that. But a bunch a' cops. You'd see that splashed on USA Today, CNN. That's not good for him, definitely not now, not no time.

Pat looked across the room at Jim's group. Yeah. You've got a point. . .shit.

I do got a point, Turk said emphatically. Nothin' else, we put them in that van and drive them somewhere. Take their stuff with us, crash the van someplace--I'm not sayin' we got to take it all the way back to Jersey, but we don't got to do it here, either. No one knows where they disappear, no connection to Mr Righetti.

Shit, said Pat again. We shouldn't even have to be dealing with this. I thought the cabin was empty. Didn't GiGi say it was empty?

Yeah, he did. Turk sounded just as displeased. I'm thinkin' they musta sold it. Mr Righetti--I dunno. How would he know? Julius handled all a' that--and he was too clever for his own good. Him and all those little MBA fuckers he had workin' for him.

Dead men are never around when you got a question for them, said Pat. From another man, it might have been a joke. Pat sounded as if he'd dig up a grave and interrogate a jellied corpse if he'd thought it would be useful. Jim couldn't get a sure take on him. The heavy white cable-knit of his expensive sweater, his bully-boy face and gut, his dead eyes: nothing added up. Some men just evaded the logic of math.

We could move them in the van now, take care of them there, Pat went on to muse. Even better, just do it clean here, load them up.

We don't know when Mr Righetti's gonna get here, Turk objected. You wanna sit around with a buncha pork rotting in a van? What if some county mountie decides to roll up and check things out?

No one knows we're here, Pat said.

Someone might know they're here. Turk gestured briefly their way. And if not, just as much risk. These county cops are always hittin' empty cabins, lookin' for vagrants, keepin' an eye on things.

I don't like this, said Pat.

Nothin' to like. It's just a job.

The two men returned from their conference, guns still in hand, pointing toward the floor but firmly held.

"So, I guess we're going to get cozy," said Pat. He looked at his watch.

"Oh man," said Windbreaker. He began zipping and unzipping his jacket with restless energy, just a few inches up and down, near his belt buckle. "How long we gonna wait here?"

"Until he comes," said Grey flatly.

"At least they got food," mumbled Windbreaker.

"Know what else they got?" Pat laughed, an unexpected sound that smacked the air once like a speedboat hitting a wave. He reached into the duffel, pulled out dangling metal. "Got some pretty bracelets here, fellas. Who wants to wear them?"

Jim's face tightened with suppressed anger. He hadn't brought his own cuffs, but if all the others had, they were going to be well fucked. Rope, duct tape--a man might have a chance with those, but with cuffs he'd be laboring under a significant handicap.

"How many pairs we got?" asked Turk, echoing Jim's thoughts. He slung his gun over one shoulder and inspected the duffel's contents, then pulled out another pair of cuffs. "Might be more stashed away somewhere."

Windbreaker was sent into the basement to find rope. When he returned empty-handed, the men's mutters grew concerned.

"Whose place is this?" asked Turk, looking Jim and his group over. When no one answered, he slid his gun off his shoulder and pointed it Jim's chest.

"Mine," said Simon grudgingly, angrily.

"Got rope?"

"Got rope," laughed Windbreaker. He swayed from foot to foot. "Get it? 'Got rope?'"

"Sta zitto," said Grey, voice edging into exasperation. "Shut up."
 
"No," said Simon, who was still the focus of Turk's steady, inquisitive stare.

"Got some duct tape here," said Pat, who'd been searching through the front closet. "Couple a' rolls." He tossed one roll to Windbreaker, who caught it with exaggerated, gleeful pantomime just before it hit the floor.

Jim knew that now was their last chance to resist. They were slated for certain death, and he'd seen too many crime scenes where entire families were found passively tied up, throats cut or brains on the walls, no signs of resistance. It was bad enough when civilians naively trusted their own murderers. We just want to tie you up. We won't hurt you. Cops shouldn't go down like that.

"Turn to the wall," said Grey, his face bored but watchful, his tone almost polite.

No one moved. The crew looked at each other, and at their captives, and raised their guns higher.

"C'mon," said Pat, aggression creeping into his stance.

"Why should we," said Jim, speaking for all of them. "You're going to kill us anyway." He grimly contemplated them, the yards of cabin floor that separated him from their pointed weapons. Hopeless.

"Better later than now," said Turk earnestly. His dark eyes met Jim's, as if to force an urgent message through the barrier of their positions. "And maybe things will change, hey? You never know."

Simon emitted a subdued snort; bleak rebuttal of this spurious optimism.

"Live a few more hours, or die now," Pat said bluntly. "Makes no difference to me."

Jim kept his eyes on Turk, who was standing a bit behind his companions. The man's hands were welded to his gun, but then he raised one with odd deliberateness, scratched his jaw, not taking his concentration from Jim. It was a brief gesture, perhaps devoid of significance, but the man's eyes telegraphed. . .something.

"All right," said Jim, for himself, but knowing the others would have to go along. It knifed him with fear to make a decision. Could there be any right choice, though? He'd let himself be cuffed to a pipe on a rig wired to blow, and survived that. Sometimes you played low odds, when you had a gun to your head. The others didn't say anything. Bleeding, sullen, unable to express disagreement as they would have liked, they shifted in place and breathed with varying degrees of stress. The pressure in the room squeezed at Jim from every direction.

"Turn around," said Grey again.

The next several minutes were bone-snappingly tense, and Jim could feel that same wired, maybe-I'll-die-now crackle from his friends' bodies as they faced the wall, then were ordered to lie belly-down on the floor, and then to lace their hands in the smalls of their backs. The commands came sequentially from Grey, with slow, deliberate pacing to give them time to comply. None of the crew had yet approached their group, and this only confirmed Jim's suspicions of their basic professionalism, despite the loose cannon they were carting around.

The crew waited until they were laid out flat and warnings had been issued; then, with no rebellion forthcoming, Turk methodically began working his way down the line, cuffing and taping wrists, winding tape around bare ankles. The other men stood at a distance with guns raised, covering the business. When Turk had secured all of them, he began flipping them over, giving them rough, shoving aid until they were all sitting upright again. Jim had not been cuffed. If the evidence of his ears was true, Simon and Henri had been given the cuffs. Jim couldn't tell if this signified racism or if Turk gauged Simon and Henri the greatest physical risks. If neither, it might mean that his nebulous hope had some merit. Whatever the case, none of the men watching had appeared to notice--or at least, had not objected--and it relieved him. He felt very little guilt as he began rubbing his wrists back and forth with miniscule flexion.

"In my day, we woulda had rope in the car," said Grey dourly, letting his gun lower a notch at last.

"They had cars in your day?" Windbreaker cracked himself up.

"Dio aiutami," breathed Grey, glaring, a plowhorse chivvied by a fly. He gave Turk an imploring look. "Lascia' spararlo."

"Take it easy," said Turk, clapping him on the shoulder.

Pat came to loom over Jim's group. "Anyone know you're here?" he asked them.

"Plenty of people," said Simon clearly, dignity and strength in his voice even though he had to crane his neck to look up.

"Local pork?" asked Pat, his focus pinned on Simon now.

There was silence down the row. Pat squatted, aimed his gun between Simon's legs. "You got friends out here? Local connections?" He made no explicit threat; the gun's target was enough.

"No," Simon grated out, after only a brief hesitation.

Jim heard the swallow before that answer, the ratcheting of Simon's heart, of everyone's; could smell acrid sweat, blood, and the edgy desperation of life. Pat let the gun remain in place while he examined Simon's eyes for veracity, then stood up and moved away.

Pat gathered up the handles of the duffel and swung it off the table, onto the floor. Jim's gaze followed its path. There was an air of details being attended to. Turk removed a gun from his pocket--Rafe's, Jim thought--and tossed it with the others into the bag, then made a circuit of the windows. Pat placed a compact, hand-held two-way radio on the table, switched it on and fiddled a bit setting a frequency, before he returned to checking bedrooms. Windbreaker turned out the kitchen in search of something to eat. Only Grey remained to guard them, now seated in a chair but still watchful, his gun laid across his knees. He scratched his thigh, checked his watch, but the disciplined patience of his body signalled that he was ready to sit there a long while.

"Got us some fish," said Windbreaker from the kitchen. "Gonna have us a fish fry, brother."

"You talk like a nigger," said Grey. His gaze was on no one in particular, and his grating voice held no spirit. "White boy like yourself talkin' like a nigger. This is what the world's come to."

Jim sensed Blair's indignation, heard the subtle upwelling of breath behind his ribs as if he might speak. He closed his eyes, shook his head minutely, knowing that Blair wasn't looking at him but hoping it would register.

The silence continued.

Turk came back to their side of the room, drew a sliver between two curtains. "Be light out pretty soon," he observed. He drew a chair over to Grey and began talking with him, sotto voce, in casually slurred Italian, a dialog Jim could hear but couldn't understand.

The hiss and smell of frying fish began to emanate from the kitchen, and then a rattling rub of iron on iron as the skillet was jiggled impatiently across the burner. The man in the kitchen sang to himself as he cooked. It sounded like nonsense to Jim. It sounded bad.

Pat returned, went to the fridge and looked in, then took a beer. He wandered up to the counter, leaned on it, stared at Jim and then Jim's group. His eyes had a bored, empty aspect that Jim had seen before in other men who'd just killed their families.

"That's a pretty little bitch you got there, Jim," he said.

The shock of hearing his name on those lips whited out Jim's comprehension; he'd forgotten the man knew it and it took a few moments for him to remember how, and then to process what else had been said, and for his mind to jump a few steps back and realize, they also have our wallets, then that thought too disappeared in the wake of his speeding mind and he focused on the danger ahead with jarring sickness.

Next to him, Blair had begun to shake in a jittery way, but with a restraint that meant he was striving to hold himself together, to minimize his display. Only a single sentence, but it was enough to send chills down any man's spine. Jim didn't know if Blair was falling back into dark memories or ahead into horrible anticipation, but his panic was palpable, a raw chemical signature that could not be mistaken for anything else.

Jim swallowed the first words that rose in his throat. "He's a friend." It was a meaningless thing to say in the circumstances, but no more meaningless than anything else would have been. And unresponsiveness might have been read as resistance, antagonism, disrespect. All of which he felt but couldn't show.

"Yeah, you looked real close," Pat said conversationally. "Found them in bed together," he said to the other men.

Turk frowned. Grey's expression did not alter, but he made a brief tch-ing sound of perfunctory disapproval. Engaged at the stove, Windbreaker did not seem to have heard.

"Real tight," said Pat, perhaps meaning their closeness, but he went on to ask, "He real tight there, Jim?"

Fuck off, Jim longed to say. He struggled with it, jaw clenching against the words.

"That's okay." Pat straightened up. "I'd rather find out for myself anyway."

"No." Jim knew how hopeless it was, how beyond debate or petition, but the terror swept away his inhibitions and loosened his tongue. "You don't want to do that." He heard Blair's breath begin to saw the air even more audibly, loud enough to be heard by most of them in the room.

Turk and Grey were exchanging looks, but no words.

"Now there you're just plain wrong," Pat said, before finishing off his beer. He moved around the counter.

Turk came to life in his chair, swinging around to catch Pat with one hand and halt his progress. "Why you wanna do' somethin' like that, huh?" he asked, voice heavy with disgust. "C'mon. You ain't no pansy, and I know you got yourself a woman."

Pat pushed his mouth into the cursory lines of a smile. "You ain't even been in the joint, you green wop cugine," he said, mocking the other's parlance and stressing the last word. "But all you young bloods hit the Village for action as soon as you can walk. I bet you had your dick sucked by a she-male when you were sixteen and didn't even know it."

Turk stood up angrily, knocking his chair back. "You're a sick fuck," he said, booming. He rolled out a string of curses in Italian, then repeated, "A sick fuck!"

Grey rose and stood, and did nothing more, waiting to be needed.

The wall was chilly against Jim's back, but his skin burned and his clothes adhered to him clammily. Overly bright and overly loud, the scene before him was like a poor but mesmerizing scene in a play at which he'd been forced to take front row center, a vantage point that illuminated every rivulet of sweat and every histrionic artifice.

Less than a foot from Jim's side, Blair sat wordlessly, his shaking already abating into lesser, more erratic tremors. But his heart-rate would have made a monitor shrill with warnings. Jim wanted to turn his head, to drink in the familiar sight of him, curls and morning stubble and the young, delicate facial map hiding under the surface of accrued years, and he wanted to reassure him.

Jim could not turn his head. His neck ached with the strain of achoring his skull, now a black hole, its mass immovable, a force drawing in the fabric of the universe and unraveling it as it did. This must be what they called event horizon, for the moment seemed to have gone on forever and he hoped it would not end, because when time resumed its normal flow--

"All right, all right," said Pat, holding up his hands to Turk in a conciliatory fashion. "We through here?"

Turk said nothing. Grey patted the man's back a few times with avuncular support. "You do whatever," he said over Turk's shoulder to Pat. "What does it matter." His accent sank back to a self-comfortable depth, dismissal. "Doesn't matta. That's the way a' the world these days."

Pat shrugged. "Yeah, sure, pops."

Turk swung around to Grey and spat out a stream of rapid Italian that richocheted back from the other man. The argument was forceful but short. Turk pushed by Grey, strode to the front door and out to the porch. Cold air swirled in, then the door shut. Jim, too late, thought if he could only rewind that course of action, he could find a way to. . .his imagination stalled, died. He'd been wrong, a fool; he should not have placed hope in a captor. He'd bought into a victim's mindset and it was galling. Worse than that. Worse.

"He'll cool off," said Grey, replacing one chair at the table, and sitting back down at his own. He planted his feet squarely on the floor, laid his gun back across his knees, and studied Blair the way a man might watch an uninteresting animal in the zoo.

"God damn it!" came a high-pitched complaint from the kitchen. A bang drew everyone's attention, and was followed by a loud clatter. Windbreaker had thrown the frying pan across the kitchen. "Fish is never going to fuckin' cook," he yelled. "To hell with it." He laughed wildly, his hair staticky and whitened by the kitchen's overhead light. He went to the fridge, or Jim thought he did, but he no longer could spare him the attention because Pat had finally come close, was squatting down by Blair, giving him a thorough once-over.

"Leave him alone," said Rafe.

"You trying to get my attention, handsome?" Pat looked Rafe's way. Rafe went completely still, the way a clock stops ticking, his face pale where it was not streaked with drying blood. "Maybe I'll give you a whirl later."

They were all, all of them, waxen helpless men. Jim's wrists chafed relentlessly at the duct tape, but the job had been good, heavy and tight, and as far as he could tell not bound high enough to be ripped by the strength of his arms. He was close enough to lunge and tear open Pat's jugular with his teeth, but even if he could have made a success of it, such an attack would have cost more than it gained them.

Pat reached out and stroked the inside of Blair's thighs. "No," said Blair, hardly a whisper. His shoulders hunched and rose as if trying to press him back through the wall, away from the touch.

The man patted his cheek, held it while Blair began to twist himself away more urgently. "You're going to be good," he said.

There was no rule book for something like this. They weren't hostages, they didn't have that much value; they were witnesses, law enforcement agents in the middle of nowhere, no help on its way. This crew had no incentive to let them live. Cleverness and conversation could back-fire in an instant--on Blair, and on the rest of them. But Jim could not keep prudent silence.

"Look," said Jim. "Your friend is right--"

Pat stopped, stared at him. "Did I say you could talk, tough guy?"

"I'm. . .sorry," said Jim with difficulty. He tried easing into smoother cadences, going for the only tack open to him. "I just thought that your woman, would she like it if--"

Pat backhanded him, putting the force of the blow into the soft part of his cheek. Jim tasted blood in his mouth, smelled dust and gun oil and smudged chocolate on the other man's thick fingers.

"You're one word away from some extra duct tape, Jim," Pat said, then tilted his head with affected consideration. "Or maybe not. You go ahead and talk. And for every word out of your mouth, that's an extra pump I'm going to give your boyfriend here."

Jim, staggered, gave up his voice. Anguish crushed at his chest, and he made himself look at Blair, who looked back. His eyes reflected shock; they weren't blinking much, and had the glazed scrim that signalled the other man had begun trying to filter the world, so as not to take in everything that was happening; an instinct of self-preservation. But Blair's eyes knew him clearly and asked for help.

Jim couldn't give it.

Pat grabbed a handful of Blair's hair, pulled him to his feet. When Blair, ankles taped and without balance, began to fall over, Pat slung him over his shoulder. His gun, hanging loosely on the same shoulder, was rotated like a machine belt on its strap until it pressed up along the length of Blair's body in an obscene way. Blair gasped out Jim's name, and Jim swallowed blood and a bitterly uspoken reply. A groan pressed for release at the walls of his throat as he watched their captor move away with Blair.

"Jesus fuck," said Rafe a bit wildly, then ground his teeth together, a noise audible to Jim, whose hearing was sliding up and down the scale. The other men breathed heavily, with distress, as if they too would speak but didn't dare the consequences for Blair.

Across from them, the man Jim thought of as Grey watched the proceedings, while Windbreaker, still in the kitchen, had begun breaking plates against the counter edge. Just to watch them break, thought Jim, dazed at the irrelevance. He had an unsliced block of cheese in one hand, and was gnawing at it, while breaking plates with his other hand. There were only six plates. When he finished the stack, he ambled out, leaving the kitchen strewn with his depredations.

"Rudy getting some action, huh?" he said, sitting down in a chair, arms and legs akimbo. He rested the cheese on the table top.

Grey looked at him, and swore at length, winding up with, "An imbecile, that's what you are." He fingered the gun across his lap. "Imbecile."

The man in the windbreaker laughed. "Have some cheese," he offered. He hummed to himself. "Got some beer, some fish." He leaned back in his chair, nodding in time to no beat. "I'll have me some of that too."

*****

There had been nothing like this before in Blair's experience. He'd been alone before, he'd been attacked. Years ago with Lash he'd suffered through a wild uncertainty about what might be done to him, but most of his fears had never been given the chance to materialize. He'd become inured to the hazing of cops and criminals alike, but he'd never backed down or changed who he was because of it. He'd imagined himself dead, but he hadn't imagined this. He'd seen a few case files, heard the graphic stories from station raconteurs, casually imparted, so this perp gets this faggot down on the ground and he's got this pipe with him. But the incidents had seemed freakish and impossible, the victims as faceless as their attackers.

Jim had taught him to fight. No. Jim had tried to teach him to fight, and failed, because Blair had refused to accept the discipline of routine, he'd resisted the idea of training three times a week, when he had so much else to do, when it wasn't his thing, because he knew when to run away, because he had Jim to look after him. And he'd been right, because training would have made no difference in the course of events. Everything still would have happened just as it was happening now.

"You're heavier than I thought," said the man, reaching the bedroom and dumping Blair across the bed, back onto the strewn blankets where he and Jim had nestled earlier.

Blair looked up at him through the stunning arctic light of the room, whose confines were not quite recognizable. He hadn't hadn't looked at the room before from this angle, noticed how the cedar paneling fitted above the door; knotted wood, syrupy in color, glossed with electric light, stitched to the ceiling with tiny spiderwebs. The man's face loomed above him, pale and bearded. Blair met his eyes, and his insides roiled and spiked with dread. He was lying on his hands; his wrists were an uncomfortable twist beneath him, raising his body in a slight arch that would have made him cringe with shame except that he could not muster enough concentration to recognize what he was feeling, to feel it.

He was certain something bad was going to happen, and when the man drew him up by his shirt collar to sit on the edge of the bed, and unzipped himself and released his turgid organ, Blair knew that this was the beginning of a descent from bad to worse. The moment was grotesque, amateur pornography brought back to life, and in Blair were rising waves of fright and disgust and anger.

"When I put this in your mouth you're going to behave," said the man. His fingers wound tightly into Blair's hair and tilted his head up. "Aren't you?"

Blair nodded, needing to strain to do so against the tension of the man's grip. His hair was pulled tighter.

"Yeah, you look like you know what to do. But if you start thinking you want to bite, you think about your buddies out there, and how they're going to feel when I cut off your head and toss it in your boyfriend's lap and then go to work on them."

Blair slid under a surface of ice, trapped. He had no bravery, the only shield he had was shock. But this was not the worst thing that could happen; it was difficult to do something this unwanted, except that it was necessary. The obligatory threats reminded him that his friends were in the other room, that it would take only one bullet for each of them and he wasn't going to be the one who tripped this guy's trigger.

It was just a dick, and it was in his mouth, and he could do this.

The man kept his gun on, strap hooked over his shoulder. His wool sweater had a strong smell, and the unzipped vee of his trousers gave off a dank private heat. His hands were large and like a dentist's hands. His dick was unexceptional, a stranger's, but full of a violent unnatural energy that Blair could almost taste. The man tried out different ways of holding Blair's head until he found a rhythm he enjoyed, then his strength bore down on the back of Blair's neck and his dick jabbed into his mouth steadily and then unsteadily and then sharply until he came. Blair gagged, coughed, and spit as much of the contents out as he could.

The man zipped up without speaking, but Blair could feel him looking down.

"Stay here," he said, then left.

Now might have been a good time for a dramatic escape, but the door was wide open, the sound of voices audible from the front room, a tiny sliver of its interior just visible, a few inches of table on which the stuffed-otter lamp sat. Blair stared out into the darkness which was broken only by the orange filter of the lampshade, the brighter white light below its edge, the old fur of the otter's back. He'd stayed in a cabin like this once, but couldn't remember when or where. East coast. By water. The smell of cedar and tides, shaggy trees ringing the house, a jar of wooden marbles on the coffee table, a stack of orange life-preservers on a chair, grey rocks outside the window, a seal on the rocks and a sea-gull next to it. Hard to believe there was a time when he lived in a child's body. The world had been his quilt. A giant, flying patchwork quilt of oceans and hills, the sliding green fringe of bus windows, the surreal clouded empire that lay outside airplanes. . . .

Another man came in, the crazy one, breaking Blair's focus and field of vision with the length of his slack carelessly-dressed body. The badge he'd hooked onto his pocket earlier still remained, hanging askew with misappropriated authority. He smelled unpleasant even from a few feet's distance, and gave off a thick reek of cologne. He was eating cheese and humming. Now that Blair knew what to expect, he was more terrified of the repetition and the variations that might be ahead. He felt a panicky shoot of adrenaline and his chest hitched as he began to hyperventilate lightly.
 
He forced himself to meet this man's eyes too, but they held no sign of response, offered nothing, and under the whitish cap of the man's hair, at his temples, Blair saw two pointed lumps in the skin, like horns. They might have been boils, symmetrical boils. Recent blows to the head. Unusual scar tissue. Can forceps do that? But forceps couldn't be responsible for the rest of the man's face, which had a more definite goat-like aspect the longer Blair looked at it. The man's small chin moved as he chewed, and his eyes shrank. Blair reeled in and out of his vision, seeing the ordinary human mask and the elongated animal bones beneath it.

"Cheese?" he asked, waving the gnawed stick near Blair's face.

Blair shook his head, turning aside with a touch of terror, not wanting to see any more.

The man set the cheese aside, on the dresser, and unzipped his jacket. The sound it made in the room was preternaturally loud, and Blair flinched. This man's fingers would smell like cheese; it did not bear thinking about. The man undid his belt, so that the buckle hung heavy and loose. The buckle was silver, with a rattlesnake design. He slid the belt out from its loops; it slithered out like a snake, hissed. Blair watched it coil in the man's hands, tranced by the infernal figure it made. The man came to him, slid the belt around his neck and tightened it, then undid his jeans. He began to stroke his own organ, making it rise weakly and slowly. He spoke to himself as he stroked, in a broken sort of personal language.

The man stank of piss and poison. Blair turned his head away as the man pushed his dick toward him, so that it rubbed across his cheek instead.

"Fucker," the man said, tightening the belt.

"Wait," rasped Blair, swallowing convulsively. He avoided another stab of the man's organ. "I have. . .condoms. If you, I could--"

The man cuffed him hard enough to make Blair's head ring. His lips parted to draw breath, and the man drove his cock inside. Blair wrenched his head away, felt the belt tighten further still. His mouth fell open, panting for breath, and the man began using him with rough, irregular pokes. It was a snake in his mouth. Blair thrashed to try and escape its bite. The snake moved in him, and the man's goat face hung above him, covered all over in coarse hair, teeth bared, large and uneven. The boned fingers on his face had not been jointed rightly, and there were spirits of fire trying to get inside him. Blair knew if he let them enter his body he'd burn from the inside out. The man's fingers were doing strange things to him, fumbling, then probing into the pocket of his cheek, spreading his saliva around. Grey mist gathered at the edge of his sight as he struggled for oxygen and lost the struggle.

He slid into an unconsciousness that brought no relief.

*****

As Jim watched Blair being carried from the room, he strained so hard for hope that the universe had to give. Things broke. Synapses of control that he'd built up over the years snapped apart and rerouted, one by one. He tried not to show the bunched effort of his shoulders and arms as he twisted his wrists behind him; he was beginning to breathe heavily, mouth partly open as he drew in air. He could hear Pat--Rudy--saying, you're heavier than I thought, the sound of Blair's body cramping the mattress springs as he was dropped. Jim breathed in a panic, not knowing what he could do, as the world threatened to change and darken and chill, irreversibly. If he could get his hands loose. If he had a gun.

"Stop movin' there," said Grey, adjusting his gun on his knees so that it pointed at Jim.

Jim stared back, chest heaving, becoming aware that he'd lost his subtlety, he was losing it, and so much more, as in the other room, Rudy's voice filtered through to him, saying, you think about your buddies out there, and how they're going to feel when I cut off your head and toss it in your boyfriend's lap and then go to work on them.

And the sound of Blair's breathing, interrupted, muffled.

Jim closed his eyes. He could hear everything, magnified, in surround sound, and it hurt, it hurt, the way it would hurt to be at the center of the loudest sound in the world, the way an ice pick in each ear would hurt. His body slid with damp sweat and the heat of revulsion, but the entire focus of his person was locked between the reverberating pain of his ears, inside the buoy of his head, which could not stay level in the deep cold water he inhabited and which was sinking in a way that it shouldn't, but as bodies inevitably sink.

He heard sounds of physicality detached from touch, of a strange body taking a familiar one, and the loudness of the act was overwhelming, and underneath it a low steady thumping, the whump of bass in speakers reaching through several floors of a building, distracting and painful and at last the fever of crude song reached its highest pitch and broke and Jim's tightened chest gave a spasm and relaxed, his ears rang with silence, in which he heard a zipper's teeth stripping the air, a man's voice, stay here, Blair's heart, and he could open his eyes again, blinking. His head ached; his throat was a vise that could be clamped no tighter.

Rudy came back, adjusting his sweater and his gun, and looked around. "Where the hell's--" He paused, glanced at the wall of men and grunted in exasperation to himself. "He still outside?" he said to Grey.

"Yeah."

"Shit." Rudy strode to the door, reached it just as Turk opened it and came in.

"What the hell you been doing out there?"

Turk brushed off his jacket. "Communin' with fuckin' nature," he said, in a tense half-snarl.

Rudy gave him a once-over. "Raining, huh?"

"What's it fuckin' look like?"

They stared at each other, mutual dislike emanating between them.

"Probably cut down on you-know-who's travel time," said Rudy.

"Fuckin' great," said Turk, with no pleasure.

"What's up you gotta 'fuck' this and that every other fuckin' word?" said Rudy.

"Fuck off and fuck your mother in her fuckin' pisshole," said Turk belligerently, shouldering away from him toward the fireplace, where he knelt and roughly began banging together a fire.

"Jesus," Rudy said, shaking his head.

Windbreaker was rocking in his chair and snickering.

Rudy went to the kitchen and got a beer. He returned, snapping off the cap and letting it fall to the floor, then taking a swallow.  He belched, a deliberate noise, and gave Jim the business with his cold eyes. "Good stuff," he said. He might have meant the beer, but he was smiling thinly. "That boyfriend of yours gives good head. Pretty boys, they always give the best head, don't they, Jim?"

Jim's gaze burned across the room, reaching for him.

"Don' know if you wanna make this guy too pissed at ya, Rudy," said Grey, eyes glinting in a sly, private joke.

Rudy spit back a mouthful of beer. "What the hell you want to say my name for, man?" His face tightened, and he swung around to glower at Grey.

Grey shrugged. "Hey, don' thank me, thank your jello-brained pal."

Rudy glared at Windbreaker. "That's just great. Remind me again why I let you come along."

Windbreaker appeared, for the first time, nervous. "Hey, Rudy, we're killing them, huh? What are they gonna say? No problem, right? No problem."

Rudy continued to glare, then flexed some of the anger out of his shoulders and suggested more coolly, "Why don't you go grab a piece of that action, Donnie. Bet it's been a while since you had some."

Jim's hatred scalded him. Donnie, Donnie, Donnie. He watched Donnie rise from the table, a gangly unattractive man, not right in the head, standing up and grinning and preparing to rape Blair, and it occurred to Jim, suddenly and like seeing a clear blueprint of what had just been tangled pipes and wires, that if they could just get the upper hand, they'd have twenty acres on which to bury the bodies. Scattered, even. And not one of his friends would object. He firmly believed that and he held onto his belief as Donnie out of the room, the goddamn cheese still in his hand.

Jim was stalking Donnie with senses attuned, when Grey drew him back by saying in a low voice, "Hey, good idea we check boyfriend's tape job. He like to have thrown a fit when you were back there bangin' his sister."

"No kidding?" said Rudy. His gaze raked across Jim. "You been a bad boy, Jim?" He slid his gun down his arm, held it loosely but accurately in his hand. "Let's see what you've been up to. Scoot yourself down, then roll over. Face to the floor. We'll have a look."

Jim gritted his teeth but obeyed awkwardly, and lay still while Rudy came up and knelt behind him. "Looks a bit loose," he said, forcing Jim's arms apart and noting the widened gap where the tape's hold had eased. "Damn. We really need some fucking rope. . .give me more tape."

Jim's concentration swung unevenly back and forth between Rudy's attentions and the sounds from the back bedroom. He heard Blair try to offer condoms, and the pathetic effort in his friend's shaky voice made Jim's eyes sting. He ground his cheek into the gritty floorboards, heard Rudy say something close to his ear that didn't register, felt hands touch him in a casually offensive way, but he was distracted and in two rooms of sense. Then Blair began to choke on Donnie's belt, and Jim realized that he'd been hearing all the clues, the sound of a belt clinking, leather tightening.

Coming to life, Jim wrestled against the hands on him, yelled, "Do something, he's killing him, he's going to kill him!" Even from his position, Jim could feel the electricity in the room jump like a needle into the red. Wild panic tore at him. "Go, will you fucking go! Son of a bitch--" Strength poured through him and he would have rolled out from under Rudy, if not for the muzzle of a gun pushed into his neck. Even that couldn't silence him now.

"He's choking him," said Jim savagely. "If you let him die I'll rip your fucking guts out!"

"Tough guy," Rudy said. He was wired and his grip was taut.

But Jim could hear only what he needed to hear, footsteps moving toward the bedroom; Turk's boots, Turk, who'd apparently gauged Jim's pleas to be genuine and left his place by the fire. Jim went completely motionless and listened as the man entered the back room and swore. There was a scuffle, angry berating, and as this interference dropped away into a distant drone, there was no sound left at all but a faltering heart, beating drumlike against lungs in which nothing moved, and this was the center of silence.

A drum waning, silence growing more full.

Silence Jim would fall into.

Silence.

And from silence, the trick of Blair's breath. Drawn from his body, starting from what a moment earlier had been nothingness. The origin of magic.

Jim quieted, deeply spent in relief. He could not sustain his body's sensational surge of fear; he needed to harbor his reserves, keep steady and keep ready. Negotiations were taking place in the back room. Threats, barter, allowances. He had to accept there would be more, it would be bad. And then, regardless, they would probably die.

Rudy drew back from him at last, and the cold mouth of the gun disappeared from Jim's neck. He heard Turk return.

"Your friend's a sick puppy," Turk said. His words floated, disembodied and dark, yet seemed aimed Jim's way. For a brief moment, Jim thought he must mean Blair, and wanted to move his head, see Turk's face and target it for elimination, then understood the remark was directed elsewhere.

"Yeah, and that's a real drawback in our line of work," said Rudy with thick sarcasm.

There was a pause, then: "You finished with him?"

"Leave him like that," said Rudy. His voice changed direction as he turned to look at something. "He's too frisky."

Jim realized they meant him, could think only, shit.

He was left on his stomach, facing into the corner. He had no view at all, but didn't dare move his head. But sight was irrelevant. All he needed, all he wanted, was the sound of Blair's breath and beating heart. If he'd had that and nothing else he would have been almost content.

Clashing with that soft music were the movements of their captors. Boots on the floorboards. Tiny jingling sounds of pocket change. Donnie swaggering back in, hitching his jeans. Lamps being knocked over, cords ripped out. Blair's body being shifted, tied, undressed and handled. Mattress springs again, footsteps as he was let alone. Neither man went back right away for another round, for which Jim was thankful. The more time passed, the more chance there was of. . . .

He lost track, the minutes dragging on his interior clock. Half an hour, perhaps, passed, while Jim listened closely to Blair's quiescent body, tracked the desultory conversations of the crew, and periodically checked in with Simon and Rafe and Henri, as they breathed and shifted and sighed behind and above him. Into this aural canvas gradually wove an eerie thread, thin and soft. It took Jim a few moments to recognize Blair in the plaintive notes of a chant. It chilled him, worried him, and he longed to get up and offer comfort. One of many wishes. He wished his arms and legs were free. He wished he had a gun in his hand. He wished he'd killed the four men who'd broken into their lives and their cabin, that they were already corpses and he could make his way to Blair and release him. A part of him even wished he was the one being tortured instead of Blair. He hadn't known he could crave pain, until now. He wanted simple physical pain, his own, and the knowledge that Blair was untouched.

Jim had not known he could witness something like this happening to a friend, and be powerless in the course of irremediable hurt. He'd seen injury and death, but to fellow soldiers, fellow officers, who'd lived with risk. He'd seen innocent victims of horrible crimes and most of the time he'd cared, he was a good cop. And he'd seen Blair hurt, but he'd never been in this place and time, on this floor, terrified that the man he loved most in the world would be used again like some pale, nameless kid picked up off the street and turned into a victim, a corpse, a case file.

And, waiting for this, Jim finally heard the scrape of chair legs across the floor, and instinctively knew that Rudy was rising to pay another visit, and wanted him to know it. The existence of him was an offense against nature to be struck down, yet no lightning fell, and he walked back to the bedroom, knelt on the bed and knifed the tape on Blair's ankles, unzipped himself and took what he chose, and in a different room on what might as well have been the other side of the earth, Jim pressed his head into the cold floor and despite immobility, leapt into madness. The pressure inside his skull gave. Dark shapes and intentions sprung loose from his mind and paced and roared, tails whipping, fangs bared.

He rolled over and sat up, still bound, and when he did Grey and Turk both rose rapidly from their chairs, guns in hand, startled but miraculously not shooting. Donnie just sat, a pretzel raised halfway to his mouth, watching agape.

"Easy," said Turk, to Jim and to the room at large, while looking at Jim with amazed eyes.

Jim had no immediate plans, no recourse at hand. He'd simply been unable to remain still any longer, and if he didn't roar aloud it was only because this might earn Blair's body further punishment. He gave back a dark steady stare until a muscle in Turk's face finally twitched in nervous reponse. "Okay, you wanna sit up? Sit up."

"He's comin' unwrapped," said Grey, eyes narrowed. "I don't like it."

"He'll be fine. He's got a fuckin' pound of tape on his arms. He's not goin' anywhere."

"That's not the kind of unwrapped I mean," said Grey grimly. "Shoulda done 'em all right at the beginning, like I said."

"Chill, would you?" said Turk. "Stick to the plan." He glanced from Jim down the line of bound men, as if to assure himself that everything was in order.

Grey copied his scan. "Natives are gettin' restless."

"I need to use the bathroom," said Henri, hostility clouding his tone.

Jim blinked and turned his head, bumped off-track by the unexpected voice. From the bedroom he could still hear Rudy's grunts and the strange, syllabic cries from Blair, which seemed to be annoying his rapist. There came the loud crack of a hand striking flesh. It was hard to ignore, but Jim wrenched his focus to the men around him, trying to figure out if a play was being made and if he was supposed to be a part of it.

"Piss yourself if you got to," said Grey bluntly, uncaring.

"You can't hope to get away with this," said Simon.

"Tape their mouths," said Grey, kicking Donnie's chair as a command. "I got no patience for yap."

 So much for that, thought Jim.

Donnie went down the row, ripping tape off the roll and covering their mouths with obvious relish; when he got to Jim, he started to cover Jim's nose with tape also, and laughed as Jim tried to jerk away.

"Cut it out and hurry up," said Turk.

Donnie taped Jim's mouth and shoved him back against the wall; he was stronger than Jim had estimated. He gave Jim's forehead a smack with the heel of his hand as he finished, then another and another, ignoring Turk's expostulations and scrutinizing Jim's face as if Jim were one of many in a long line of cats he'd tortured.

Time crawled forward. Light brightened at the curtain edges and the crew, one by one, gave into hunger and made more serious inroads on the kitchen stores. Grey, having eaten, took on a semi-sedated attitude. Turk remained mobile and tense and made a regular check of the windows, while Donnie and Rudy, unfortunately, showed no signs of tiring.

It was the nature of these sons-of-bitches that they would alternate their brutality with the most mundane diversions. They'd come out from the bedroom, meeting Jim's wild, enraged eyes with a smirk, zipping themselves up--then they'd go get beers from the fridge. They ate pretzels, chips, pickles, they played a few hands of cards.

Donnie made another round of their personal belongings and found a handful of cigars, which he handed out to his companions. He put on Simon's fishing hat and vest and assembled a rod, more or less, then in travesty went out onto the porch and tried to cast lines. Having no room to do so, he quickly gave up--with one ear, Jim caught his loony, half-hearted attempts, the note of childish frustration in his voice, the disarticulated conversation he carried on with himself. Then a barrage of shots rang out.

"Fuck, now what," said Rudy. He rushed to the edge of the door with Grey flanking him carefully. Turk hung back, gaze darting to the windows. He moved to a wall and took a rigid, waiting pose with his gun aimed at the door.

When Donnie pushed in, triumphant laughter on his lips, he was grabbed and flung down. He gave a bark of surprise; his gun clattered as Rudy kicked it aside.

"What the fuck are you doin'? What the fuck are you doin'?" bellowed Grey, kicking him none too gently.

"Shot a deer," said Donnie from the floor, his face cortorted and canting upwards in a sulky, thunderous expression.

The two men closest stood over him for several long moments, radiating speechless disbelief, then Rudy reached down and pulled him upright.

"You are nuts, man," he said, chuckling in appreciation. He clapped Donnie on the arm. "Grade-A nuts."

Jim's gaze slid to Turk, who had not moved. He had the rest of the crew gathered in tight target range, and something told Jim he was thinking in exactly that vein. His patience had clearly been whittled down over the course of the night. But he lowered his gun, pinched the bridge of his nose for a few seconds, and then instead of shooting his friends in a helpful way, went to the kitchen, where he began making a fresh pot of coffee.

The smell of coffee drifted through the cabin. Daylight cut through the curtains, sharp enough now that the lamps grew wan in comparison. Henri was shifting against the wall, breathing with greater distress through his broken nose. Jim, allowing a fraction of his concern to ease from Blair, turned his head slightly and attempted to determine how well his other friends were holding up. Cold. Tired. Stiff. In various states of pain, dry-mouthed, suffering the relatively small but nagging need for something to drink and eat. They weren't at their best, but they were fit enough to get by for a while longer. Barring more acute exigencies, that is. Jim didn't know if Henri had been faking his need to piss, but if not, he had to be suffering.

There was suffering, and there was suffering.

Donnie, once he'd finished bragging about his deer, became sullen and made a show of rubbing his ribs where he'd been kicked. He pressed a blunt knuckle against his nostril, sniffed, wandered around the front room in his borrowed vest and hat, and then went to the kitchen, where he picked up a piece of broken plate. He was fingering it in one hand, not obviously. But Jim, who'd been keeping an eye on his restive movements, saw what he held and felt his gut tingle with foreboding.

Rudy finished a panful of eggs and toast and pushed it away. He rose and stretched. "Can't be much longer," he said, checking his watch.

"Could be a while," opined Grey.

Rudy grimaced at what was either pessimism or realism, and waved it off. "Yeah, fine. I can amuse myself."

"I can amuse myself," echoed Donnie, grinning.

Rudy cocked his head at the other man. "You a funny guy?"

"I'm a funny guy," assented Donnie, the sides of his mouth cracking wider.

Jim's dread rose. The thick spittle at the sides of Donnie's mouth, the knobbed rough lines of his face, the way his body hung, a bad suit badly draped on the unequal line of his shoulders, contributed to a sense of malevolence that had found its host. Wordless behind his taped mouth, Jim hunted for strength, for a plan, for a belief in cosmic justice.

Rudy and Donnie went into the back room together.

Blair's low chanting stopped, so abruptly that Jim only then understood how near constant it had been for the last few hours. He heard Blair say no in a quiet, cracked voice. Jim rolled his head back and forth on the wall behind him, agreeing, no, this should not be happening. Soft, desperate moans rose from Blair's throat, and Jim groaned with him. This would not happen, this would not. Hold him down, said Rudy. He's getting feisty.

He's gonna get a lot more feisty, Donnie laughed. Give you a good ride. This is good, this is real good. You shoulda come with me that time in Pittsburgh. But you'll like this, you gonna like this a lot. I'll show you some of my tricks. You hold on tight. . .you watch what he does when I give him this. . . .

*****

"Jesus, we gotta stop that howlin'," said Enzo. "I need a Tylenol."

Mike paced, lifted a hand and ran it through his hair. "I told them. . .I told them to put a gag in it," he said, voice uneven. He lifted his hand again, stopped himself, and cast a glance at Ellison. The man's eyes were open but he was totally out to lunch, staring at nothing, his face slack. The other cops wore horrified expressions, through which depthless hostility leaked at the edges. Mike turned away from their gazes. Unless one of them spoke Italian, they couldn't know exactly what was being said, but they could certainly guess the topic of discussion.

"Like a fuckin' wolf," said Enzo. Mike didn't reply and Enzo went on. "Coupla sick fucks. We shoulda kept this in with family."

"Rudy's family," Mike said automatically, with no animation.

"He ain't of the blood. You wouldn't be seein' this shit if he was. One of us goes sick in the fuckin' head he still keeps it together on the job."

Mike went distractedly to the window, looked out. "I heard when Rico whacked Gagliardi he cut off his pecker and fed it to his dog."

"Where'd you hear that?" Enzo grumbled. "Stories. There are always stories. They get that stuff off a' the TV. Rico's a good man. Upstanding. It was a clean hit, business. Man didn't even get outta the car to get his shoes dirty."

Wails of pain rose from the back room, through the closed door. Mike stared out the window, felt fresh queasiness grip his belly. He couldn't take much more of this. This had gone far past the boundaries of his job. There was no way this could be passed off as business as usual.

"I gotta get some air," he muttered, turning and heading for the cabin's front door.

"You gotta get some nerve," said Enzo shrewdly. "In my day, you knew you might hafta put a guy through a meat grinder. We expected it, didn't shirk. Just a job, my friend. Just a job." If there was any contradiction in his own attitudes, Enzo didn't appear to notice it.

Mike paused at the door, managed to force a quick, tight smile at the older man. "I got nerve. But I don't like that unnatural stuff. Makes me sick, ya know?"

Enzo shrugged. "Next time, we don't work with animals."

Mike nodded, shoved out the door and drew it closed behind him. He stood on the porch, zipped up his jacket and breathed white into the air. The brief rain had stopped and the morning was clear and still. The deer Donnie had shot lay brokenly on the frost-covered grass, its neck and body a mass of congealed blood. Mike raised one hand to his hair, carefully this time, stroked it back, then stepped down off the porch and headed into the trees. When he was out of site of the cabin, he slowed and came to rest against a tree.

Footsteps crunched softly through the underbrush to meet him. Mike looked up from lighting a cigarette, a complex job given the trembling of his hands. Samson was approaching. He looked like a walking hair-trigger.

"I told you not to come back out here," he said in his hard, toneless voice. "You're risking the operation. Bad enough your cover's blown full of holes when this goes down."

"Excuse the fuck outta me, sir. You know what's going on in there--and it's only gettin' worse. How do you expect me to sit there and let that go down?" Mike said, voice rising dangerously. Samson's ice blue eyes held his without forgiveness, communicating both his understanding and his disapproval. One madman to another, thought Mike.

"We can't compromise this. We've waited two years for Righetti to re-enter the country."

"Four cops, Samson. Four cops are in there listenin' to a friend get fucked in the ass--and now tortured." He watched Samson's right eyelid flinch at the news, the only sign of human response. "I got my nose in the room once, nearly got it bit off. I don't know what the fuck they're doin'. If they kill him, Justice is gonna be all over this fiasco. God, what am I sayin'." He pressed a single chilled hand to his face, a hapless gesture of prayer. "This is already too fuckin' late to be saved."

Samson opened his mouth in the shape of denial, then closed it again on nothing.

"It's fucked. It's fucked. It's totally fucked," breathed Mike, shocked to read the concurring truth in Samson's face. He'd expected that Samson would sustain denial, that Samson could. If the SAC couldn't, then it had to be bad. He'd known it was, but he'd been trying not to think it through. "We gotta get them outta there," Mike said urgently. "We can take this down easy if we do it now. Then we wrap it up tight and quiet and wait for Righetti."

Samson's own voice was hushed but forceful. "We can't. Christ, Mike. We're in a holding pattern now. We've had no prep time for this. We've been dogging your heels since the call and we're lucky to even make it here when we did. I've got no immediate back up, no heavy ordinance. I've got twelve guys on the dirt and that's it until HRT arrives. Righetti could be a quarter mile off, for all we know. We can't spook him with gunfire."

"The man's walking across the border. He's a certifiable loony-tunes. What's he gonna do, turn and sprint off like a fuckin' deer if he sees us?" Mike snarled.

"You know his profile. He'll probably radio ahead to check in. And he could have contingency." Samson's cheeks were patched red with suppressed feeling. "Now if you have intel I can use, give it to me. If you don't, then get the hell back inside before you compromise what little we have left going for us."

"Intel. Here's some intel for you: I'm listenin' to a man get crucified," Mike said, dropping his cigarette to the ground, staring at Samson with frantically pleading eyes. "And you're letting it happen. And if that kid dies, the roastin' we get's gonna make Ruby Ridge look like a birthday party."

"So go make sure he doesn't die."

*****

Mike re-entered the cabin, meeting Enzo's gaze as steadily as he could. The older man had dark narrow eyes that watched ever move, tracking neutrally, logging every detail for consideration and possible report. In another life Enzo would have made a good cop, Mike had sometimes thought. But at this moment, knowing Enzo had even a shred of decency in him made Mike hate him all the more. The same way he hated himself.

Ragged sounds of torment continued through the bedroom door, studded with sobs that rose and fell.

"Cold out?" asked Enzo.

"Cold enough," said Mike, head swiveling toward the back bedroom, an automatic orientation that he disguised in nervous arcs of eyes, head, body. He unzipped his coat. A cry spiked keenly into screams, hoarse and wild and begging, no, no, no, then was muted.

That's it, Mike thought, the last strands of his tether unraveling from the strain. He hadn't realized until now, when he'd actually returned to the cabin, that he simply could not accept another minute of its stale, claustrophobic interior, Enzo's near motionless body, the helplessly bound men, and the nightmarish scene playing in the back--not without losing his self-respect and possibly his mind. No more. He looked at the men along the wall, said to Enzo, "I'm gonna check, cuffs, tape. See they're still tied good."

Enzo nodded minimally, slid something from one side of his jaw to the other, repositioned the gun on his knees.

Mike started at the end of the row, at the dark-skinned man with the broken nose. He tilted him forward by the shoulder with one hand, not gently, pretending to check his bonds with the other. He let the handcuff key slide from his jacket sleeve into the man's cuffed hands, which flexed clumsily to grasp it. Mike hoped it was a match; he'd taken one of the two keys from the men's rings and had no idea whose was whose. Hoped, too, the man could make use of it. Not every law-enforcement agent practiced to be Houdini.

Into the next man's hands he let slide his pocket-knife. He felt the man stiffen as their fingers nudged one another. Mike didn't linger; he moved to the one he knew to the be police captain and tugged at his cuffs with no real interest,  not able to help him. At the last man he stopped. That's a pretty little bitch you got there, Jim. Mike's skin crawled. Jim was glassy-eyed, sightless, beyond assistance. Mike pulled him forward, glanced at his taped arms, hesitated, then slammed him back into the wall with all the force he could put into the movement. Jim's head cracked against the wooden paneling, lolled, and then he blinked. The shape of his mouth, limned under duct tape, moved as if he were trying to speak.

"Easy, Mikey," said Enzo sharply.

Mike straightened and turned, dusting off his trousers and hands. "Spider on the wall," he said with a terrible facade of casualness. He laughed.

Enzo snorted, the set of his shoulders relaxing a notch.

Mike went to the kitchen to buy himself time to think. He opened the fridge, stared at the mess there. An unopened beer bottle lay on its side, thick foam visible at the neck. He plucked around the contents of the fridge door, found a soda, popped it, drank; his brain dancing from one reckless plan to another. He stared at the back of Enzo's grey head, then into two pairs of eyes watching him; the men he'd given key and knife to, whom he'd given himself away to. They were zeroed in on him. Mike swallowed, throat dry despite the soda. He could take Enzo out now, from behind. It was that simple. The others were in the back room, could be taken unawares. As long as Enzo went down without a struggle, without a shot. Mike could feel what the men were thinking, could read the desperate imperative in their eyes, eyes that had become focused and fanatical, the dilated orbs of terrorists who'd been pushed to the edge. They weren't going to tarry while Mike got himself into gear.

Samson was going to have his badge.

And to hell with it.

Mike put the soda down, wiped his mouth. His hand was shaking again. He cast his gaze around the kitchen, fastened on a large cast-iron skillet. Jesus. He picked it up, moved quietly around the counter. If he thought about this he would stop himself, so he didn't think, he just swung. The pan made a dull thonk against the back of Enzo's head, and the man started sliding off his chair. He was grabbing for the table though, and still held onto the gun with his other hand. Mike swung again, in what felt like slow motion, certain that the angle was wrong, that no angle would create the impact needed, that this heavy awkward act, like a thousand others in his life, was a grotesque miscalculation destined for failure. The gun would go off. Enzo would shout. The others would run into the room, and they'd all die.

The pan slammed into the other man's skull again, thonk. Enzo groaned a little, went down on his knees, and sagged forward onto his face. His gun lay nicely on the floor, an inch from his slack hand, unfired.

Mike's knees weakened. I could've done that an hour ago. He gripped the back of the chair, knuckles white. The men were making muffled noises of urgency. Mike debated, heart pumping fast but unevenly, then left them there. Not enough time, too much risk to stop and release them. Two shots were all he needed. They might bring Samson running, but it couldn't be helped.

He went to the bedroom, gently tried the door. It opened with a tiny click. He nudged in, quiet as possible. His caution was unecessary. The men on the bed, their backs to him, were completely absorbed in their business. A lot of blood had been spilled. Mike fired twice, and spilled more.

*****

The blow rocked Jim to a semblance of life. He gasped, inhaling against the tape that covered his mouth, sought words that he didn't have. Something had happened, and he fought to understand, blinking against the painful light. His eyes were sore, dry. He focused on the man who was rising. He smelled like fresh air; it was swirling off his jacket, circulating in his clothes. What would have been invisible to others was a whitish-grey mist to Jim, around which other colors edged and expanded crazily.

He coughed into the tape, tried to take a deep breath from his mouth and then from his nose. The men, Grey and Turk, were laughing. . .not quite. Amused grunts. Jim's ears collected and released the sounds, then began ringing with the frequency of Blair.

Oh, God, thought Jim, waking up fully. Blair. Being hurt and touched wrongly and. . .blood. He smelled blood.

The smell was so visceral that Jim nearly vomited, but he choked down the bile before it reached his windpipe. He shifted, arms rubbing together, instincts resuming and compelling him to move, to do something. He could not keep still. I zoned, I zoned, he thought, sick and horror-filled. Blair, God, I'm going to get you out of this, I swear it.

Grey's inspection narrowed. Jim closed his eyes and forced his muscles to ease into a more innocent shape. When he opened them again, Turk was coming back from the kitchen, scarred face solemn and intent. The younger man was looking at Grey's head, and something of fixed purpose in that look made Jim immediately catch Grey's bleak gaze and hold it, commanding a distraction. He rocked in place, groaning loudly. The grey-haired man scratched his thigh with one spatulate fingernail; his new, faintly interested expression didn't waver, even when Turk brought the skillet down on his head. Then he slowly began to deflate, folding down; the second blow put him out cold, gun relinquished. The entire process occurred almost noiselessly.

Jim's heart blazed and leapt. He began fighting his restraints with full force, wrenching his ankles from one another in an attempt to break the tape. Next to him, Simon and the others groaned and made similar struggles. Turk left the room, heading toward the bedroom. Frustrated to wildness, Jim's body entered into spasms of mad escapism. There was no heart in him for trust, no reason left, he didn't know what the fuck the man intended, with the gun in his hand, heading toward the bedroom, where Blair was trapped at the center of chaos. He had to reach him, had to forestall any risk, get loose, get in there, get to him.

Jim ripped, and the tape ripped at last, and he rolled and pulled at himself, snarling, as the gunshots rang out. He staggered upright only to fall back down to his knees. His stiff muscles would have enraged him further, but he was mindless of anything but his mission. He grabbed the gun on the floor and used Grey's body, then the chair, to drag himself up. He lurched unsteadily toward the bedroom, bumping heavily into a table, a wall, letting the pain jar loose his cramped limbs.

Things were clattering and falling, someone, Rafe, was shouting, but Jim's senses were filled with blood, its scent and taste, its drumming and surge, and he spun his dizzied body into the doorway, gun raised. A man's back was turned to him as he leaned over Blair, who lay sprawled across the bed, his body cradled by a carnage of bloodied sheets. Jim didn't dare fire. He made it to the bed in three disjointed strides, jerked the man away from Blair with an arm around his throat and held his thrashing body in that grip until it was unconscious. If he'd had enough strength, he would have made it quick and lethal. Maybe it had been. Jim let the body drop with complete indifference. It fell across another unmoving form. He was unaware of them.

Jim placed the gun on the bedside table, carefully, because to be careless would have put Blair at risk, but then collapsed onto the bed, crawled into the ring of blood.

"Blair," he croaked, his voice soft in the burgeoning silence. Blair's blue eyes gazed into his with short-circuited serenity. Shock. Jim nodded, not sure why, except to reassure. Reassure. "Hey, ki--" He cleared the broken word from his throat. "Hey kiddo."

"Hey," whispered Blair.

With care, Jim undid the cords binding his wrists, then lowered Blair's arms to his sides. He hoped that his face didn't show his horror. He was a cop. He had practice in schooling his face to stone. But with Blair in his eyes, Jim could not make the raw surface of his face harden; he felt he must be showing everything. There were fish-hooks embedded in the other man's fingers. Jim's first impulse to remove them; he knew they must hurt like hell, and he could not stand to leave them in.

"I'm going to take these out," he said quietly. His own fingers were shaking. But when he tried to dislodge one, the barb remained fast, tugging at the deep pad of flesh. Blair sucked in air, and the tiny sound of pain he made utterly unmanned Jim.

"Okay, shhh. Easy, Chief. I wasn't thinking. Leave that for now. Just don't--don't go scratching anything." He stroked both his hands along the sides of Blair's face, cradling its shape, palms easing through red streaks.

Jim blinked, clearing away a fog of vision that had briefly descended. He didn't know where to start, couldn't judge how bad it was, couldn't focus anywhere but those blue eyes, so perfectly living and untouched.

"Oh, oh fucking. . .shit," said a raw voice from the doorway.

Jim drew his fractured attention together. "We need to get him out of here," he rasped. "Some guy's coming to meet them here. May have reinforcements." Incredible he could remember this. He might as well have been reciting facts of ancient history. "We'll just go. Take the van."

"Can we--can we move him?"

Someone was speaking to Jim, but now he was being drawn into Blair's ragged breathing, the stretched rack of his skin, his pulse and his hurting.

"Jim!" Simon edged his name with panic.

Snapping back, Jim swallowed. He could hear the implied command, pull it together. Words were rusty nails in his throat. "Yeah. We'll move him."

Instincts warred with rationality, but he did pull it together. He made himself take stock, running his hands lightly along Blair's body and trying to discern the extent of his injuries. Most of the blood came from marks across his chest and abdomen, but the cuts seemed shallow. The blood on his face came from similar wounds around his eyes and cheeks. There were two cigar burns on one shoulder. He couldn't tell if there were more, and he didn't dare roll Blair over to see what other injuries he might have. The flesh under his examining hands was cool and damaged, but Blair's body as a whole felt intact. No broken bones. Relatively little bruising that Jim could see or feel. When he pressed gently in key areas Blair didn't react as if suffering from internal trauma. If he'd been seriously hurt elsewhere, there was no way to know yet.

He couldn't take it in easily, seeing Blair like this. Of all the times Blair had been hurt, this was by far the most challenging to Jim's composure. He'd once seen a soldier torn apart by a mine, had helped rescue a child rendered feral by abuse and neglect, but the wrongness of Blair's injuries hit home as nothing had before. Bodies should not be desecrated like this. This body was in his charge; Blair deserved to be protected, kept safe at Jim's side. A day ago he'd been untouched, everything about him blessedly ordinary. It was terrifying how quickly flesh could be altered.

Jim returned one hand to cup Blair's face and began tucking the blanket up around him with his free hand. The task grew difficult but he couldn't abandon all touch. It was his only anchor. He moved his hand from Blair's head to arm to ribs, maintaining a warm point of contact as he wrapped his abused body.

"Don't worry, Jim," Blair said suddenly, voice thin but clear. "I'm just going to sleep. . .a while."

"Try to stay awake, Blair. Blair, come on." Jim laid his palm across Blair's damp curls, then thumbed up his eyelids, but the other man was out. He was breathing steadily, pupils almost normal, pulse weak but also a river running that would not be stopped. Jim decided there was no point in trying to force him back to consciousness yet.

He sat on the bed, one hand twined with Blair's through a crease in the swaddled comforter. He was equally tired, but his eyes felt sandblasted open, eyeballs soldered into their sockets and unable to shut out the glaring white light. All his senses were dialed up. Over-dialed. Blair had invented a phrase for this, a question, so innocuous that he'd even taken to asking it when others were around. You on eleven today, Jim? Yes, he was. Dialed into the red.

"Oh, man."

The speech was thick and distorted with emotion, but Jim identified Henri without turning.

"Simon got the van ready yet?"

"He. . . he went to get it started," said Henri.

There was no reason to linger and every reason not to. Jim stood, avoiding the bodies by his feet. He slung the borrowed gun over his arm and then bent and slid his arms under Blair, easing him off the bed, comforter and all.

"Jim--that guy." Henri stared at Turk's fallen body. "He dead?"

"I don't know," Jim said. Arms weighted with Blair, he began moving from the room. "Leave him. We don't have time."

Henri didn't argue, and Jim heard him following. The cabin's front room looked unrecognizable from this angle, from a normal six-foot elevation, with the door widely ajar and sunlight spangled on the frost-covered grass of the yard outside. Outside. Something did exist beyond this room, and leaving the cabin was like stepping from a week's storm-tossed ship onto newly discovered land, like emerging from the profane into the sacred.

The van was idling, exhausting billowing into the air. Simon was stepping down from the front seat as Jim arrived. He was still wearing only his boxers, but appeared unaware of his state.

"Put him across the back seat," he said, and slid the door open along its hinges.

Jim climbed in, dropped to one knee more heavily than he'd intended, and laid Blair down. When he'd arranged the other man, he sat down next to him on the floor, the rubber mat ridged beneath his backside, the van's wall cold to his back. This was where he'd wait. He wasn't leaving Blair's side again.

The chugging and throbbing of the van buffered most other sounds, but dialed up, Jim could hear the other men in the cabin, grabbing things quickly, whatever was at hand and would get them through--clothes, guns, badges. Even so, he heard the rustle of grass as someone maneuvered around the van, someone he didn't count among his friends.

Jim shrugged the gun off his shoulder and down his arm, tracked the person's approach, the crunch of grass and slither of jacket material. His nostrils flared for scent of prey, but he didn't move. He waited.

"FBI," said a crisp voice around the van door.

Jim didn't respond.

"I know you're armed." A gloved hand appeared; a badge flashed, then was held steady.

Alert and silent, Jim examined it without moving.

"Agent Mulroney. I'm going to show myself, sir." Another gloved hand appeared next to its mate, flattened out and displaying its emptiness.

Jim allowed the man to come into full view, crouching next to the van. He was neatly mustached, dressed in black kevlar, cap, dark trousers and jacket, wearing a radio headset and a gun on his hip. He smelled of FBI, the son of a bitch, but Jim did not lower his gun.

"We want to escort you men out of here." Mulroney was looking him squarely in the eye, the way a cop will when he's striving for snap rapport with a gun-toting psycho. "But we need to know the status of our agent."

Jim's skull blazed with fire. His mouth tightened and a muscle jerked in his cheek. "Which one of your agents raped my friend?"

Mulroney's neck and shoulders tensed, though he did an admirable job of remaining otherwise motionless. "Sir," he said. He stopped, tried again. "Sir, we need to get you out of here, and--"

"Uh huh," Jim said. He heard the others exiting the cabin. "Stay down and don't move," he said. "Keep your hands on the step."

Simon, clambering back into the front seat, spotted Mulroney right away. His breath hissed. Rafe and Henri came up the other side and stopped with shocked, crude exclamations.

"What the fuck is this?" said Rafe angrily. "What the fuck?" He loomed behind Mulroney, who was not looking happy about his position. Rafe was staring at the man's back, and in the reflection of his eyes Jim could see that Mulroney's standard-issue field-jacket was currently flap down, its white FBI logo stark against the navy blue. "You fucking rotten bastards--how long have you been out here?"

Mulroney shook his head, but didn't turn to confront Rafe. He met Jim's eyes instead. "Their van's blocking the road about fifty yards down. We need to get the keys, get it moved so you can get through."

"Shit," said Simon.

"Fucking agency bastards!" spat Rafe furiously, and without further warning slammed Mulroney against the edge of the van.

Henri pulled him back, Mulroney half-spun, Rafe kicked, and every one of Jim's muscle groups clenched with the fear that there was going to be gunfire. He heard the rustling and voices around the perimeter now, headsets yelping thinly to one another with reports on the action.

"Enough," he said, then realized he'd only breathed it. "Enough!" he shouted, breaking into their tussle. "Do what you have to do and get us out of here."

Mulroney drew himself up, warily ascertained his own safety, then hardened into professional demeanor and sprinted away for the cabin. Henri and Rafe got into the van, Rafe yanking the slide-door closed behind him and then taking the very rear seat.

No one said anything.

Jim closed his eyes, absorbing metal's chill; the van was a freezer. He'd let the gun go, placing it on the floor. One arm lay encircling Blair's head, fingers tangled in the other's curls, thumb stroking back and forth across a one-inch spot on his smooth brow. He listened to Mulroney's progress, heard him stop in the front room briefly, then slide toward the back. He was taking it in standard entry form, zigging from one vantage point to the next, probably with gun up and ready. Then he clearly found the bodies in the bedroom. He spoke into the radio then, examined them. Someone named DeLillo was alive. That must be the agent. Turk. Good thing he hadn't killed him, Jim supposed. He could hear no heartbeats, couldn't filter that much nuance through the chugging van, but he did hear the clink of keys.

There was sunlight on the inner door of the van, washing out the color of metal. His eyes could make a trick of anything. A square of light, a horizon, a square of dark. It's a Rothko, Jim. I wanted you to see this. It's only on loan to the art history department for one semester. I suppose you call that art. Give it a look, Jim--dial it high. I've seen better artwork on cereal boxes. You're not seeing it, Jim. You're not even looking.

Jim turned, gazed at Blair's closed eyes. He wished he could clean the blood from his friend's face.  He should have brought a towel. Should have thought ahead.

*****

The crew's van was driven by one of the FBI agents, and Simon followed it on the narrow road, through the heavy dark canopy of forest, twisting and turning, bumping over ruts. Jim kept a close watch on Blair, and made sure he stayed on the seat. The FBI agent was driving at a crawl, keeping it quiet so that the sound didn't carry too far through the woods, but the road was rough even so.

Rafe hung over the back of the seat, as if trying to guard Blair himself. His eyes were bloodshot, the side of his face crusted with dried blood, and his hair stuck up in tufts. He was no longer wearing a gun, but he'd had it on his shoulder when he entered the van. It occurred to Jim then that they were toting the crew's guns, had carried evidentiary weapons away with them. Not that it mattered. He'd been ready to bury the bodies.

Jim's mind skated from one point to the next. He loathed how everything had gone down, and he couldn't help but wonder what the FBI team was doing back at the cabin, just who was out there, and what sort of operation they had going. If he found out they'd recorded any part of Blair's torture he was going to. . .God, what could he do. Where could he even begin.

*****

"Where do we go from here?" asked Henri.

Jim could feel the rotation of the wheels slowing further. They must have reached the main road. His hand remained twined in Blair's curls. Some strands were soft between his fingers; some stiff with blood. He'd found a temple pulse and his thumb rested lightly on its music. It felt like a guitar string thrumming under his touch.

"They're stopping." Simon drew the van to a halt. "I'll be damned if I'm going to sit here and answer a lot of questions." He rolled down the window nonetheless. "What?"

"We've been on the radio to our SAC," said a clipped, edgy voice. Cool air poured in across the side of Jim's face, his neck as he listened. "We've got back-up coming, but things are still tied up. We can't drive their van out. Evidence. We're parked back a ways, but we can't get a vehicle out now."

"Whatever you're doing, hurry it up," said Simon. "I'm heading for the hospital in Omak."

"You got someone injured in there?"

"Someone injured?" Simon repeated angrily. "You're damn right I have someone injured! Now get your vehicle out of my way or I'm going to drive through you!"

"I'll have to send someone with you."

"Make it now or not at all."

The agent left the window. As he crunched away across the gravel, he spoke into his radio, and received in turn its quiet, staticky rasp. There was the sound of door opening and shutting, and low conversation.

"I'm not driving with that son of a bitch," said Rafe, looking through the window.

Jim could see nothing from his vantage point, but assumed it to be Mulroney. What did it matter which of them came along--they were all equally culpable, to the extent they were responsible for failing to cut short the ordeal.

"Jim," Blair whispered.

Jim pushed himself up to kneel and show himself to Blair. "Right here." He slid a hand through the folds of the comforter and found one of Blair's own, then winced to feel the curved, cold metal of the fish-hooks still affixed into his fingers. He grasped his partner's hand loosely, higher up, and hoped that the pain wasn't too excruciating.

"Hurts."

"I know." Guiltily, Jim began go withdraw his hand, but Blair made a sound of protest and Jim stopped. Instead, he moved his touch higher, stroked the inside of the wrist, finding Blair's pulse again. "Just hang in there. You're doing great." His other hand cradled the side of Blair's head. "You cold?" The window was closed again and heat was blasting from the vents, but a draft remained.

"No. Just hurt. Fingers."

"We'll be at the hospital pretty soon."

"Really hurts," said Blair, and Jim could see him waking into fuller awareness of the pain. "Son of a bitch," he mumbled. Pain tears slid from the corners of Blair's eyes, unsynchronized with any emotion. "Can't you take them out?"

The door to the van rolled open, bringing in another wash of cold air. Jim squeezed the curve of Blair's hand and turned his head briefly. "Get in and close the door."

Mulroney pushed the door shut and took the seat next to Rafe, who moved aside with distaste. Simon was pulling the van out onto the road even as the door closed; he outlined directions and trip time with Henri, his words filtering back to the rest of them.

Hunching forward, the agent assessed matters over the edge of the seat, while sidelong Rafe looked daggers at him, hiding nothing of his animosity. Mulroney's own face was taut, his neutral expression carefully constructed. "How is he?"

Jim didn't answer. Blair was staring distractedly up at Mulroney, and Jim didn't know whether he needed reassurance or not. He leaned in, unconsciously maneuvering his body to try and shoulder out Blair's view. "He's FBI." He spent another brief look for Mulroney, said curtly to the agent, "Lean back."

"I want to sit up," said Blair.

"Better if you stay down, Chief--"

"No." Blair shifted, his movements threatening to dislodge the comforter; Jim doubted his hands could get purchase.

"Shhh. Easy." Jim helped the other man sit up, aware of the turned heads, the scrutiny in the rear-view mirror, wishing he could wrap himself around Blair as thoroughly as a blanket without giving more hurt. "Don't try and hold anything. I've got you." Jim's hands slid across the material; it was as if Blair's body were padded with a layer of down, but he could feel the bones within, could smell blood and the distress of unwanted sex. Abruptly, he could have cried, could have placed his head in Blair's lap, a supplicant for comfort.

He didn't. He got Blair upright, wondering how safe it was, and he knelt there a moment, cradling Blair's cool feet, rubbing life into them as he had in front of the fire, just yesterday. The younger man slumped on the seat; goosebumps formed on his calves when Jim stroked them.

"Sucks," said Blair, slurring the word.

"I know." Jim pushed up on his knees and drew the comforter up behind his neck. His hand rested against the warming nape. "This doesn't hurt? Sitting up?"

"Hurts up and down."

Jim palmed his hair. "You want to lean against me?" he asked softly, throat husking on the simple question.

"Yeah," Blair said, equally soft.

Jim gave up his place on the floor and settled on the seat next to Blair, turning his body to enfold the younger man against his side. Blair shifted around, as if trying to find a position that didn't pain him. Jim gave him an arm to rest his head against, steadying him within its crook, and letting their heads rest close.

"Mmm, Jim."

"Yeah."

"Did you see the snakes?"

Jim hesitated, not sure he'd heard that right despite sentinel ears. He kept his voice low in reply. "I didn't see any snakes, Chief." He tilted to get a look in Blair's eyes, which were unfocused but clear.

Blair blinked and his pupils dilated slightly as he gazed off darkly into trance or memory. Jim had rarely held such an intimate vantage on Blair's face. Beyond the van window the blurred green shadows of forest swept by but the trees let through light in flickering touches. There was sunlight caught in his eyelashes, on the curve of his cheek, and in the topography of one eye. Jim could see the feathery sweep of shadow in its orbit, soft freckles, the thin lines of coming age radiating from the canthus, all within a streaked mask of dark, dried blood that Jim should have cleaned off. Warpaint.

Should have cleaned off his face before we left. His mind skipped in place on that thought.

Mulroney's radio crackled loudly and Jim winced before dashing a glare back at the agent. "Turn that down."

The other man did so, but raised the unit to his ear and listened with absorption.

The granular, distant noise from the radio trickled through to Jim. A professional dial clicked on and automatically attuned itself to the urgent tones, the tersely coded communications. Righetti had shown up, walking into the net of agents. Jim listened dispassionately to pops of exchanged gunfire and faint shouts from the field. The transmission seemed to come from far away, a frantic but diminishing plane that he could almost make believe was not connected to how Blair's head lolled tiredly against Jim's arm, the warm weight of his guide's body.

The rhythm of the van subtly changed, picking up a gradually increasing shudder. Only when Rafe touched his shoulder did Jim realize he was shaking and breathing in loud gasps. He nodded jerkily and the hand drew away. Jim tried to align his racing heartbeat with Blair's steadier thump, and thought distractedly that he'd lost something. There'd been a time when he knew how to handle himself; he'd been more resilient, once. Conditioned. Even when touched by chaos, he'd always reverted quickly to a well-worn groove, methodically constructing a case, piecing together events for testimony, evidence for prosecution. That was how he'd coped with aftermath, with any personal involvement in a situation; when Danny had died, and Lila, and Veronica, when his father had been kidnapped.

And now he knew he was finished. Scared. Because he couldn't cope with this much, wouldn't be able to stretch himself out of the wreck and resume form as he usually did. It was like coming to the limit of physical endurance, a long journey.

What do we do now, Jim thought. Blair's head moved as if he heard the question. Jim closed his eyes, felt Blair push closer; the crown of his head slid against Jim's chin and Jim tucked it deeper, feeling warmth and a heavy drag of hair across his own swallowing throat. He could smell blood in the strands. But it felt like life, it felt heavy and good.
 
 
*****
 
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