It should be hard. It should scare the hell out of me, but it doesn't. When I have to fire *at* someone, maybe then it will. (Jim says it will. He says having a person on the other end of the gun is a mindfuck like you wouldn't believe, but you do what you have to do. Just lie back and think of England.)
I'm the third-best shot in my class. No one expected me to even want to pick up a gun--which I didn't, not really, but anything for Jim, always and ever anything for Jim--but I did. And I've got a steady hand, and I'm strong and well-coordinated and I have got *motivation* like they wouldn't *believe*. My partner's out there with no one to watch his back until I'm out there with him, and I'll be damned if there is anything to stop that.
So Naomi's little boy can shoot, now, and Naomi's little boy wears a uniform, and Naomi's little boy spends extra time at the firing range trying to work his way up to best in the class, and he cut his hair to comply with regulations and he lives with a cop and he's put down roots and he's gone completely and utterly *establishment*.
Well, not completely.
I doubt very much that the establishment would approve of my fantasy life, mostly because it involves my cop roommate naked, covered in oil, and handcuffed to a large bed. Not that he knows about this, mind you, though sometimes he says things that make me think *his* fantasies involve *me* naked.
Half of the PD already thinks we're fucking. *I* could hear those rumors flying--no need for sentinel hearing. But we're not, because I'm too damn *ethical* to nail my research subject to the mattress. Of course, he's not my research subject anymore. He's still my partner, though, and that's a huge can of worms I don't even want to get into. Now, if I fuck him, they might separate us--and if they do *that*, and he zones on the job and no one else can recognize it or bring him out of it, he's fucked in a bad way. He could end up dead.
The way my outline-of-a-man target is dead, his torso full of bullet holes.
Yeah. Naomi's little boy is a good shot, and he doesn't suck anyone's cock or fuck anyone's ass, not now, not ever. He's Jim's partner, and he lives with him and loves him and calls him "friend" and that's all.
It's enough to live on, for a sentinel and his guide.
I've got a new target set up, and I load the gun and raise my arms again, as easily as breathing.
----
The End.
