Ending 1 (gen)
Blair barely acknowledged his return, hunched over crumpled maps, smudged and dog-eared reports, and his own copious notes in deep concentration, glasses sliding down his nose as he frowned, chewing on the end of his pen thoughtfully. He removed his coat and hung it, then wandered into the kitchen to get himself a drink. He considered it a moment, and took out another bottle for Blair.
"Any luck?" he asked, more to make conversation than in any serious expectation that there had been any breakthrough; had there been, he would have been enthusiastically updated on the developments as soon as he walked in the door.
"No more than you, it seems," shot back his partner, still halfway distracted by the shifting reams of paper. For a moment, he flashed back to an image, much like this one; Blair, surrounded by term papers, scowling at them through the glasses perched precariously on the end of his nose as he nibbled on the end of his red pen. Only a moment, as the other continued, still poring over his work. "You're back early. Date didn't go well?"
"Much as might be expected, Chief," he said, setting the extra bottle in front of Blair. "She wasn't our killer," he added, to see if Blair would take notice. The younger man did look up then, and flashed a quick grin at the reference to his checkered history with women.
"That's supposed to be a good thing, you know. You sound disappointed."
He only shrugged, absently running the beer through a brief sensory test just for the sake of having something to do, finding no unusual substances that did not belong in a beer. Safe, or as safe as it could get.
"What did happen?" Blair asked after a moment, pushing aside the papers to gaze up at him in genuine concern.
"She thought I was planning to use her as cover for our relationship," he answered honestly.
Blair laughed then, the sound quicksilver and brittle. "Weren't you?" He had nothing to say to that, and smiled back, reassured somewhat by the show of good humor.
"Need any help with those?" he asked, settling down beside Blair, drawing comfort from the one certainty in his life. Blair moved to one end of the couch to make room for him. They continued studying the mess in companionable silence, broken only by the rustle of paper, and the occasional bathroom break. There was progress; not much, but enough that they would have something to show for the efforts of the night, and a few new leads to chase down.
"Have you ever thought about marrying, starting a family?" he asked, during a lull in the turning of papers. Blair spared him a brief look of surprise, blinking owlishly at the non-sequitur, then that naked expression was quickly shuttered, turned into a wicked grin, like he used to wear so long ago.
"Taking care of you is already a full time job, man," he chuckled and returned to flipping through his notes, clearly dismissing the topic. "Where would I find the time for a wife and kids?"
He considered the sober, still form bent over the papers strewn over the coffee table, muttering imprecations about the probable ancestry of the perpetrator, thought, 'This is a full-time job too.' And the Sentinel resumed his post.