Morning After the Night Before
D. C. Black

Sandburg was out of it. Completely and totally dead to the world.

Jim Ellison cast a glance at his sleeping partner, curled up against the truck's door, barely held upright by the tension on the seat belt Jim had fastened around him. The kid had been too drunk to snap the belt himself. Too drunk to stand on his own for that matter, and far too wasted to drive home from Professor Buckner's wake. The professor had been Sandburg's mentor and friend for eight years, almost a third of his young life, despite their less than auspicious beginning. When they'd met, Sandburg had considered Hal Buckner pompous and out-moded and Buckner had defined sixteen-year-old Blair as a young punk who thought, no, knew he knew it all. Still they had become friends, had stuck together through Sandburg's years in academia, teaching and learning from each other, helping each other out in their divergent researches, supporting each other against the politics inherent in any large university.

And now the professor was dead, murdered by an insane extortionist using him and the University's experimental agriculture program to import dangerous insects that could have destroyed America's food crops. The creative madman had the "cure" and planned to ransom it for millions. He'd thought he'd found the perfect murder weapon, as well-imported funnel-web spiders-to eliminate anyone who stood in his way, and that had included his accomplice, Hal Buckner. They had solved that case, Jim and Sandburg and Tomaki from campus security, but that hadn't given Sandburg any emotional relief. Buckner had been the first person to be murdered whom he'd known personally. Blair had seen countless dead bodies since the Lash murders, but this one had haunted him. He'd been angry, confused, guilt-ridden, grieving, and a hundred other un-Sandburg-like things over the past nine days. Not that anyone had noticed. From the way Blair had talked, life at the University was painfully normal. Certainly, no one in the squad room had realized the turmoil in Sandburg, not even Simon.

But Jim had. He'd seen the tightness in the set of Sandburg's mouth when he wasn't forcing a smile. He'd seen those moments when Blair's mind would drift off and his eyes would cloud with loss of his mentor, or with betrayal that Buckner had been a part of something so wrong. Jim had noticed Sandburg's uncharacteristic impatience and short temper, and had given him every opportunity to talk about his feelings. The very fact that Sandburg did talk was a dead give-away of how deeply upset he was. Normally, no matter how much his partner said, he revealed very little; Jim had learned more about Sandburg in the past week than he had in all the months they had lived and worked together.

Jim pulled the truck into the parking spaces behind the loft, straddling the white line since the Corvair was still in the shop, and the rental downtown at the bar. When he killed the engine, Sandburg stirred, blinking his eyes open with effort and trying to focus on where he was.

"Home, Chief," Jim provided, pushing the button to release the seat belt. Blair stared at it as if he'd never seen one before, then with great concentration, disentangled himself from it. Ellison smiled, fondness and amusement mixing in the shake of his head, when the door lock proved to be too much for the smashed anthropologist.

Jim got out and swung around the truck to the passenger side, unlocking and opening the door before Blair even seemed to realize he was there. Without the door to lean on, Sandburg tilted and nearly fell out of the truck, keeping his feet only because Jim had expected the tumble and gotten an arm around him in time. Ellison propped his partner against the side of the truck while he locked up, then gave the man his full attention.

"Can you walk, or do you want me to carry you up?"

Sandburg pushed some of the hair out of his face and gave him a fuzzy version of his dirtiest look. "I c' walk," he declared and pushed off from the truck toward the stairs.

The smile came back to Ellison's face as he watched the intense concentration required by Sandburg to slowly weave the few steps from the truck to the entrance. Blair stopped at the door, thought for a long few seconds before the next step made it through the fog, then started searching his pockets for his keys. Ellison strode up behind him, reached around to unlock and open the door, and urged his faithful companion up ahead of him. He kept a hand on Blair's back the whole way up the stairs to the loft, using the contact to sense when Blair was losing his balance and to compensate for it. A half-dozen times, he expected to have to catch the smaller man when he leaned back too far or missed the next step. Jim was exhausted by the time they made it into the loft, just from anticipation. Inside, Ellison gave Blair a little push toward his bedroom.

"Bed," he said because Sandburg didn't seem to understand the suggestion. "Go sleep it off."

Jim waited until Blair nodded and shuffled toward his room, then turned to secure the front door. He really needed to talk to the kid about trying to drown his sorrows in that much liquor. Pain and problems just learned to swim, and brain cells were the only thing you had less of once the buzz passed. Assuming, of course, one survived the hangover.

Thinking fond thoughts of his own bed, Jim turned from the door, stunned to find himself pinned back against it by Sandburg's weight. Blair's hands held his face, his lips claiming his mouth, his tongue gaining entry when Jim gasped in surprise. He put his hands on the smaller man's shoulders, trying gently to push him away, to back out of the kiss before the taste of whisky and Sandburg and pretzels consumed him. But Sandburg was determined, concentrating everything he had into kissing his Sentinel, the hip grinding against Jim's groin making sure there was absolutely no way to misread the action. The pressure, the whisky, the twisting and sucking on his tongue wiped out his vision, his hearing until nothing but the taste and the touch survived to fill him. Zoned on the sensations, he felt possessed, on the verge of surrender to a perfect woman, until the scratch of Sandburg's stubble against his chin and growing erection against his leg shattered the spell. Sound and sight flooded the other sensations, forcibly restoring perspective, and Jim realized how heavily he was leaning against the door, how heavily he was breathing, how tightly Sandburg held him, panting, too.

"Life's too short for secrets, Jim," Sandburg whispered, all but a trace of the drunken slur erased from his voice by his passion. He looked into Jim's eyes, his own dark and smoldering with desire, with need. "We could die tonight. Any minute. I had to tell you, I love you. I had to tell you you're the best friend I've had in my life. And you're so beautiful. In Peru, watching you ... Man, I want you. Say yes, and I'll be in love with you, too. Say yes. Say yes..."

Ellison could only stare for what seemed an eternity, trying to reconcile the passionate, would-be lover holding him with the partner he'd thought he'd known. Slowly, he straightened against the door, telling himself that Sandburg was drunk, that he belonged to a different generation with different boundaries, that maybe sex was his only way of seeking comfort. It even occurred to him that Blair might have been so badly hurt by the betrayalof one friend that he wanted to drive him away, to spare himself a future hurt by someone even closer. It was so hard to read Blair at the best of times; now drunk and whispering, "Say yes, Jim," against his throat, it was impossible. As impossible as Jim ever giving him the answer he wanted.

Ellison backed them away from the door and pried Sandburg's arms from around him. Hurt flickered in the grad student's alcohol-glazed eyes and he keened, "Nooo ..." just loud enough for a Sentinel to hear. All the pain and disillusionment in the sound cut through Ellison like a knife.

"I'm sorry, Sandburg," Jim said just as quietly. "I can't. We'll talk in the morning."

Head tilted, lips parted, wanting more, Sandburg just looked at him, past a long curl that had fallen across his eyes. He looked so young, so vulnerable, that Ellison couldn't just leave him standing there, though he knew that was the most prudent thing to do. With a sigh of surrender, he put his arm around his Guide's shoulders and steered him to his bedroom. He waited at the door while Sandburg striped to his briefs and fell into bed. He listened for Blair's breathing to settle into the rhythms of sleep, then stepped to the bed and arranged the blankets over him. He stood there and watched his partner sleep for a long time, wondering at how complicated and emotional the world was for Sandburg. It was hard for Ellison, who had always seen his life in terms of black and white, to comprehend. What he did understand was how hard it was for either of them to trust, himself or any one else, and how much they had come to depend on trusting each other. Ellison flashed to a battlefield from his memory, quiet and dark, featureless shadows concealing the devastation, the casualties, until the sun rose.

*****

Blair awoke to the pounding drums of the Jack Daniels tribe trying to shatter his skull, and knives of light trying to pierce his eyelids. He groaned and pulled a pillow over his head, trying vainly to shut the sound out, knowing, rationally, that it was his own pulse he was hearing. But the darkness under the pillow kept the light at bay, and slowly the pain receded to something around agony on the tolerance scale. He hated hangovers. He always believed that the pain was from the millions of brain cells dying awful, suffocating deaths trying to swim through the booze. There was no telling what brilliant thoughts he'd had yesterday that were gone forever because he'd drowned the one cell that had held them.

The air under the pillow was getting hot and stale, and started to smell nauseatingly of old shampoo and his own bad breath. Slowly, eyes squeezed tightly shut, he pushed the pillow away, wincing at the soft thud it made as it slipped off the bed and hit the floor. Oh, this was going to be a wonderful day, he thought, sparing himself none of the boundless sarcasm he felt. A perfect day to follow a perfect night of saying good-bye to the bastard who'd mentored him and lied to him and saying-

"Oh, shit."

The quiet groan escaped him on the heels of the memory. He'd told Jim he loved him, admitted that he wanted his sex/his body, kissed him long and deep and pressed him against the door, pleading with him to say yes, like something out of a bad Harlequin romance. He flailed for the lost pillow to cover his face, but couldn't find it, so he rolled over instead. What the hell had he been thinking? Had he wanted to test Jim out of projected anger, daring him to end their relationship, to prove Blair had always been right not to trust? He knew Jim was straight and as compulsive about it as he was about everything else. Coming on to him would be the one thing Jim couldn't forget, probably couldn't forgive. Blair groaned against the mattress. Maybe, if he was really, really lucky, he'd just die from the hangover and never have to face the cop again.

"Sandburg, I know you're awake."

Blair grimaced at the sound, Jim's voice setting off little darts of torment along every nerve in his body. He had never been lucky. Never. Well, once... He had found Jim.

"Get out here. Breakfast is waiting and we need to talk."

"Go away and let me die in peace," he grumbled into the sheets, knowing Ellison would be listening, taking the one in a million chance that the Sentinel would obey. Instead, he heard Jim cross the apartment, each step another drumbeat inside his head. The door opening ripped his eardrums, and the smell of something grassy and hot slipped right to his gut and flipped it over. The bed rolled like a ship on a stormy sea as Ellison sat on it, and it took all his concentration for Blair not to puke over the side.

"Feel as bad as you look?" Ellison asked.

Sandburg cracked one eye open to look at him, hoping to see that mocking half-grin on his friend's face. No such luck. Those ice-blue eyes were serious as death. He let his eyelid slam shut. "Worse."

"Good." Ellison slapped his rump-leaving him with the annoying image of being spanked for getting wasted-and sat the hot, grassy stuff on the floor under his nose. "Maybe next time you'll stop at a couple of gallons."

"Won't be a next time."

"Yeah, right." The bed rolled again as Jim got up and left the room.

After a long time of breathing and trying not to smell the hot vapors from the floor, Sandburg finally pushed himself up on one elbow to look over the side of the bed. A mug full of steaming green liquid sat on the rug, tugging at his surviving brain cells with familiarity. He knew what it smelled like, the feverfew tea many cultures used to counter the effects of too much alcohol. He frowned. But that would mean Jim had actually paid attention to one of his monologues on herbal remedies. Gingerly, he reached out and lifted the cup from the floor, tasting the brew. It hit his tongue like a mouthful of paint, but settled comfortably into his stomach. So, Jim had been listening. Maybe there was hope for the world after all.

An hour later, Blair emerged from the bathroom able to walk without having his head roll off his shoulders and across the floor. He'd taken a long, cold shower, gently washed the stink of the bar out of his hair, and dressed in a sweatshirt and jeans. He'd skipped shaving, knowing from experience that putting a blade in his unsteady hand would not be a good idea for hours. He looked over the dining table, appreciating the bland corn flakes and black coffee Jim had set out for him. His stomach protested the sight, but Sandburg knew he had to eat or the B complex and aspirin he'd gulped would burn straight through his gut, and his headache would only get worse from low blood sugar. He sat down and poured milk into the bowl, trying to ignore the sounds of Jim putting down the newspaper and walking up to the table. He pulled the chair opposite Sandburg around and straddled it. For what seemed an eternity to Blair, Jim just sat and watched him eat.

"I, uh, don't suppose coming on to you last night was just a dream," Blair said at last, just to break the silence closing in on him.

"No."

Blair waited for more, but nothing came. He hated when Jim retreated to neanderthal grunts when real dialogue was called for. When he was in a good mood, a monosyllable could annoy him. And right now, Sandburg was so far from a good mood that annoyance wasn't even an option. He flared right past it to pissed. He dropped his spoon, loudly, and managed not to flinch when the clatter stabbed through his head.

"Fine," he said. "How fast do you want me out of here?"

Jim reached for Blair's coffee and took a swallow, considering his answer. Sandburg's anger was already fading, a victim of the hangover. Suddenly, he wished he hadn't come straight to that particular point. He didn't want to move out. He didn't want to lose his research subject. Hell, he didn't want to lose his best friend either, but it was already too late for that, too.

But Jim surprised him.

"I don't want you out of here at all." He put the cup in front of Blair. "Drink."

Sandburg ignored it, frustrated when his thoughts tumbled out incoherently. "No... wait ... what...? You're not kicking me out?"

Ellison's mouth turned down in the frown that passed for a no-big-deal shrug. "Why should I?"

"Because I ... I mean ... I... shit, I came onto you like a dog in heat-"

Finally, Jim laughed, the expression melting the ice in his eyes and the dread in Blair's heart at the same time. "I know what you did, Chief. I also know you've had a particularly bad week, you were drunk as a skunk and you had less than your usual low level of self-control. I think, under the circumstances, I can let it pass."

Blair stared at him, vividly remembering the long, hot, demanding kiss, the way he'd taken possession of Jim's mouth with his tongue, the purposeful grinding of Jim's groin with his own. Blair felt the heat just thinking about it, and straight-arrow Jim was sitting across from him acting like he'd done something as inconsequential as locking himself out of the loft.

"I don't understand," he started, then switched gears as an explanation occurred to him. "Jim, I was serious. I wasn't playing around. You're number one on my fantasy sex partners list. You have been for a long time."

"Since Peru."

"Yeah, since-" Blair cut himself off, realizing he didn't remember telling Jim that. He looked down at his cereal, picked up the spoon, and pushed the sagging flakes around in the milk. What else had he said that he didn't remember? He almost jumped when Jim closed a hand around his arm and gently shook him. Automatically, he looked up. Ellison's eyes were laying in wait and captured his at once.

"Look, Sandburg, I don't know what you were expecting, but I'm not going to freak out over this. I trust you. I trust you with my sanity, my life, my home. Why wouldn't I trust you to respect my limits?"

Blair laughed, a brief huff of sound that was all his hangover would allow. It all sounded so simple when Ellison explained it like that. "Maybe because I'm a sex-crazed neo-hippie still at my hormonal peak?"

Jim frowned, considering. "And this is news because..?"

"Okay, okay!" Sandburg threw up his hands in surrender. "You're fine with it. I believe you."

Smiling, Jim got up, took the mug from the table and splashed the cold coffee down the kitchen drain. He refilled the cup from the carafe, resumed his seat, and set the hot drink in front of his partner. "So, what about you?"

Blair had to drag his attention back from the smell of the hot coffee as he lifted the cup to his lips. If he'd been a Sentinel, he could have easily zoned on the strong, bitter aroma. A piece of his mind wondered at the parallels between being hung-over and being a Sentinel and filed it away for later investigation. "What about me?"

"Can you deal with knowing I'll never fulfill your fantasies?"

That had been one of the first conclusions Blair had drawn about his subject and partner, but now that he knew he hadn't triggered World War Three, he couldn't resist teasing the cop. "Never?" he asked coyly.

"Sandburg, even if you were a woman, you wouldn't be my type."

Blair grinned over the mug. "Truer words were never spoken." A random thought lit his eyes with mischief and he had to share that as well. "Still, it wouldn't have to be exclusive. A couple of hours once in a while... Just intense, mindless, reptilian-brain lust-"

"Sandburg."

"Right." Blair wiped the grin off his face, knowing a warning when he heard it. Jim had been straight-so to speak-with him about his feelings and decisions. He might be tolerant of Blair's fantasies, but he wouldn't tolerate any less than the truth from Blair in return. Emotional truth, about himself, wasn't something Sandburg enjoyed talking about, but this time he'd left himself no other option. He took a gulp of coffee, stalling while he arranged his thoughts into some kind of order. It was harder than it should have been, or maybe easier, because of the distraction of the hangover.

"I had decided in Peru that I was never going to tell you I wanted you. That didn't last, obviously. But it gave me time to think about us, about what I couldn't have, but more importantly, about what I did have. I have a partner, a blessed protector, a friend beyond anything I'd ever imagined in my life. Sex would make it different, but, man, nothing could make it better. So, when it came to a choice between insisting on sex and all that I'd be losing, sex just didn't seem that important."

"What?" Ellison said at once, cupping a hand to his ear as if he'd gone deaf. "Did I just hear Blair Sandburg say sex isn't important?"

Blair laughed, taking the teasing with his usual surly grace. "No. I said sex with you isn't important. Not that I'm going to stop fantasizing."

Jim laughed, too, accepting that he'd left himself wide-open for that, but accepting the rest of what Blair had said as well. He waited for his partner to down the last of the coffee, then took the mug and went to the kitchen to refill it. Blair watched him, for the first time openly admiring the way his partner moved, wondering how long he could stretch this nurturing mood of Jim's. He would like having the big, ripped ex-commando-turned-cop fetching coffee for him for a while.

Handing him the full mug, Ellison swung the chair back to its position facing the table. He leaned on the back of it, deciding if he wanted to say anything more. "So, we're okay here?" he asked at last.

"Fine."

"Good," Jim breathed, surprising Blair with the depths of his relief, as if he had just survived a major fire fight. Still leaning against the chair back, Ellison let his gaze drift around the room. "There aren't any more little surprises I should prepare myself for? Bodies in the closet? Millions in the bank? Birth certificate from Alpha Centauri?"

Blair laughed into the mug, nearly choking on the coffee in his mouth before he could swallow it. "No," he managed past the laughter and a protest from the re-awakened hangover. "Nothing like that." Blair watched Jim straighten and accept that with a thoughtful and all-too-complacent nod. Unable to resist, Sandburg leaned back and grinned up at his best friend. "But none at all would be sooo boring."