From time to time, as he laughed and spoke with the others, Blair would steal quick glances at the badge, and something indefinable would flicker briefly in his dark eyes, so swiftly Jim could not have said that he had seen it with any degree of certainty. He could have been projecting his own emotions on Blair and looking for, anticipating problems almost from the instant Blair had failed to live up to his foremost fear and not thrown the badge in his face.

Don't go finding trouble where there's none, Sally had told him once, and now he made a living of looking for it where everything seemed most innocuous - the grieving widow who hadn't realized her husband was about to divorce her, the innocent, anxious neighbors with the constantly vandalized car who'd had no idea where the missing child could be...

His strangely acquiescent partner and friend, smiling and shaking hands, patiently accepting the inevitable ragging and friendly slaps on the back.

It felt almost like a party, this convivial gathering of friends, colleagues, friendly colleagues, and relatives. Or at least one relative. All that was needed to make it complete was the supportive and accepting presence of his father and brother, and perhaps Daryl as well. He wasn't sure he wanted to know just what occasion those gathered here thought they were celebrating. He was entirely certain, however, that he did not want to know what Blair thought they were celebrating. These were the people who'd - he'd -

"- do whatever you want." It was a hissed aside, but lacking in conviction for all that, as if Blair was too tired to even be angry. It's not like I can stop you anyway, hung unsaid in the air, and yet for all the festive atmosphere surrounding Blair no one seemed to have noticed the almost-altercation with his mother.

"Sweetie," Naomi began, and Jim began limping away, trying to avoid overhearing an obviously private, a confidential conversation, focusing his hearing on the flushing of a toilet two floors below.

"Blair, I-"

"Mom, please."

"Enough."

Blair caught up to him, a minute later, just before the elevator doors closed on him, and they rode down together in relative silence.

"Want a hot dog?" asked Blair. "-gonna kill you, you son of a-" "I'm hungry." More voices murmured in his ear, then faded as Blair looked up at him expectantly, awaiting his answer.

"Sure, why not?" he said. And everything seemed normal again.

"Detective Ellison, can you tell me about your friend -" When he heard the insistent, annoying voice again, he switched off his cellphone and jammed it back in his pocket with a little more force than was strictly necessary, trying to adjust his armful of grocery bags without spilling their contents. He was glad he'd thought to stock up enough supplies to allow them to hide from the world for a few days while the furor died down, but he didn't really seem to be having many problems in that respect. Most of the people he'd encountered seemed not to remember or know him, much less care, and the rest averted their eyes in embarrassment, perhaps that they'd actually believed the Sentinel story. He avoided their eyes too, embarrassed that they did not believe.

Somehow he found his way back to the apartment building in spite of the distractions and the persistent ache in his leg, and swore breathlessly at the 'Out of Order' sign on the elevator. It hadn't been there when he left. He glared at the steps, grudgingly set his foot on the first one, and pulled himself up. A telephone rang above.

Three more flights to go. He stopped, trying to rub away a growing cramp in his uninjured leg. A telephone receiver was slammed down. Two more. The telephone shrilled again. So did his cell-phone. He turned it off, and wished he'd thought to disconnect the loft phone before he'd left.

Two more flights. Blair's voice, low and calm, the calm of resignation, drifted downwards through the slurry of humming electronics and more organic noises - a resonant snort as a sleeper turned over and the harsh snoring eased, a soft voice humming a lullaby to quiet a petulant child.

And a sudden flare of terror surged through him, clamping down painfully on his heart and lungs as he swayed dangerously between one step and the next, clutching at the railings in reaction. Blair, he thought, when he could reason again, Blair had panicked for a moment, and infected him before he understood that there was no immediate physical danger to either of them, close though the stricken voice seemed.

"No, I wasn't lying." Blair's voice, more composed now with shaky insistence. "None of it was true. Jim is not a sentinel. I am not lying. I'm sorry."

He hesitated. The other voice, an unfamiliar, indistinct buzzing he could make out if he tried... He should not be listening to this, but he could not move, whether to leave or continue his ascent.

It wasn't like he was deliberately eavesdropping. Anyone would have been able to hear Blair's side of the conversation in any case, had they been in the loft, and he wasn't listening to the other speaker. He was too conditioned to listening to Blair's voice to be able to tune him out with ease, and he needed to get back and put away his purchases, already growing rather wet with condensation. Put up his throbbing leg. Still he stood, vacillating. Move, he thought. And did not move.

He didn't either. And he couldn't walk in now and pretend he hadn't heard the broken voice and harsh breaths, so he eased himself painfully down to sit on the stairs, and wait as the phone was replaced, as their vital signs evened out again.

He smelled the blood as he opened the door, a faint tang of iron and salt, but hesitated only for an instant before dropping his keys into the basket, and turning to look. Blair was scowling, glaring at the bag of groceries he carried as if somehow offended, and he suffered a pang of sudden guilt as he suppressed the irrational urge to hide the package behind him. "What is it?" he asked, somewhat defensively.

"Tell me you didn't buy tongue," Blair demanded as he came up and took the heavy bag away from him. "Get off that leg. Sit down." He had a harried look as he hefted it onto the counter and began disemboweling the hapless package, yanking its sodden contents out in sharp, jerky motions and spreading them over the work surface.

"Ice-cream, steak, beer..." He shook his head and stared at Jim, who began to suspect he should regret the generous purchases of what he had thought of as comfort food. "You wanna tell me what's the occasion?"

He was suitably horrified and at a loss for words. "I..."

Blair looked away quickly, ashamed. "Sorry. I know it's not like that."

"Blair, I..."

"Jim." He held up a forestalling hand, when Jim would have said more. "Jim. Don't make a big deal of it. I've heard enough about the damned dissertation already. I know it's great, I know it's stupid, but it's finished and I don't want to hear any more about it, at least for a while. Please." He waited for Jim's tentative nod before returning his attention to the spoils of Jim's foray into life as usual.

"Where did you get these, they're all melted." Blair peeled up a corner of the lid, grimaced at the thick, gooey mess inside, and crammed the dripping tub into the freezer without another word.

"Tongue?" He struggled to make sense of the initial complaint, sought some kind of hint, some explanation for Blair's bad mood other than the obvious, and hazarded a guess at the next best option. "Where's Naomi?" He looked around, though he had known she was not here; there was only Blair standing at the sink, a severed tongue in one hand.

"I don't know. Bought half a dozen tongues, left them, took off for parts unknown. Said something about processing-" He gestured vaguely, the dead, moist flesh dangling limply in his hand, and Jim found himself watching the wagging tongue in morbid fascination until his not-precisely-new partner noticed his stare, remembered the tongue, and set it down. Blair picked up the knife again. "I need to process these things before I put them away. Sit down!"

Numbly, Jim obeyed, limping stiffly to the couch.

"What do you want for dinner? Tongue, tongue or tongue?" The tone was still sharp, testy, and it put him on edge, defensive, expecting an attack.

"Tongue sounds good," he offered meekly after considering his options. "Boiled?"

"Maybe," Blair allowed with a faint smile, and granted him a softer look. "Or would you prefer a steak? I don't think we should refreeze those steaks you brought back."

"You're right," he agreed mildly, but Blair was frowning again as he finished cleaning the tongues and began to wrap them up for freezing. "Or we can leave them for lunch tomorrow. I'm still on leave." The only answer was the sounds of the knife, crisp sounds of fresh vegetables, softer, wet sounds of meat, smells of blood and salt and pungent herbs, necessary evils. It would probably smell a lot better, even delicious, when Blair was done with his preparations. But for the present, he sat and concentrated on not noticing the unpleasantness, the sounds and smells tickling on the edge of his awareness like a troubled conscience, watching the inescapable dust settle over his world, sparkling, drifting down like snowflakes.

It was quite good, if overly elaborate in presentation, as some of Blair's culinary experiments were. He would have been as pleased with the alarming slab of boiled flesh Naomi had first presented him with, perhaps in an attempt to unsettle him, not knowing he had eaten far worse. But the preparation was a welcome diversion for both of them, an excuse to leave each other with their own thoughts, and over the course of sticking a fork in a nearly unrecognizable piece (barring the tastebuds which he tried not to contemplate too closely), he gathered up the courage to bring up a nagging idea.

"You--you can tell your friends the truth, you know. Those that matter. You should."

A sharp look, and for a moment the panicked thought that he knows! flashed through him, then Blair spooned more vegetables onto his plate, and he thought that it might have been just Blair taking care of him as usual, worrying about what strange ideas came up in his paranoid mind, if he would get territorial and defensive again.

Blair smiled and toyed with his food. "The walls have ears, Jim. You know I shouldn't. Can't. Won't. Let's not talk about it now."

"We have to," he persisted, not wanting to let it go while he still dared consider alternatives.

"Bite your tongue. We don't have to talk about it now." Blair forked a larger slice onto Jim's place, and he obeyed before he thought, biting into the rich meat thoughtfully.

"What are we going to do now?" he tried again, a final essay against Blair's implacable determination to avoid the topic.

Blair looked down briefly. "I don't know," he conceded quietly, and Jim reached out instinctively to comfort, stopping just before their hands touched. Blair closed the remaining distance and squeezed his hand. "But we'll figure it out together."

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