In Conclusion, Cousins.
by Laura JV

Gracias to Bas and elyn for betas.

* * * 
"Sandburg!"

"Yeah?"

"Stop doing the paperwork and go talk to Simon."

Blair looked up at Jim, drummed his pen on the clean sheet of paper with his ink-stained forefinger and thumb, and said, "Don't tell me we're staking out the Holiday again."

"Yeah."

"Can't we go bust some people at some other dance club?  One with women?"

"Did that.  Last week.  And the week before."

Blair dropped the pen.  "Oldest established permanent floating meth lab...."

"First, it's not meth.  Second, stop quoting musicals and GO TALK TO SIMON."

"Already undercover, I see," said Blair.  "Musicals.  Next you'll be spending hours at the gym.  OH WAIT."  He dodged the grab Jim made for his neck.  "Tsk.  You know the rules.  No nookie in the bullpen."

"Asshole," Jim said, his stomach twisting inside him like a dissatisfied snake.

Blair disappeared into Simon's office, but not before flipping Jim off. Jim picked up the leaky pen, dropped it into the trash, and put a new pen on the desk in its place.  His stomach settled down in time for lunch.

* * *

Blair drummed his fingers on the dashboard of the truck, humming tunelessly.  Jim waited for him to come out with something amusing.  Blair was a great guy to have around on stakeout, as long as you didn't mind the crazy arguments he'd come up with to pass the time.  Since Jim ranked "crazy arguments" slightly above "playing cards" in his personal list of ways to relieve boredom, it worked out well.

About an hour in, Blair turned to him.  "We should be making out.  It'll be less suspicious if anyone comes up to the truck."

Jim rolled his eyes.  "I'm going to kick the ass of whoever thought up this idea for a stakeout.  How am I supposed to see anyone doing anything if I'm making out with you?"

Blair poked him sharply in the forehead.  "You're a sentinel.  Use your ears, man."  He climbed across the bench seat and straddled Jim's lap, then bent down so that they were nose-to-nose.

"You're worse at making out than my junior-high girlfriend," Jim said, sliding one hand up and laying it on the back of Blair's neck.

"Whatever," Blair said, pressing his palms into Jim's shoulders.  "You really want to make out?"

Jim shifted in his seat, unsure if Blair was joking.  "Not with you, loxbreath."

"Har har.  Do you hear anything?"

"Not yet." Blair's pulse beat against his palm, perfectly even and slightly fast.  Jim let his hand tighten a little.

They waited, Blair's arms heavy around Jim's shoulders, his thighs warm against Jim's own.  After a few minutes, Blair said, "These are more interesting when we get to go dancing."

"After that show you put on last time, I think Simon was afraid you'd run off to Vegas and get a job as a showgirl."  Blair was not a good dancer, but he'd flung himself onto the dance floor with an enthusiasm matched only by the size of his white man's overbite.  When Jim had described it to Simon, complete with a demonstration of the cha-chas, Simon had snorted coffee all over his desk.

"No reason why you can't go dance with Rafe, and Brown and I can do the stakeout."

"Sandburg, why would I want to dance with--"

"I mean, mix it up a little.  Don't you think that they'll eventually get suspicious about always being busted shortly after you and I show up?  We need to catch them off guard."

Jim dropped his head again the back of the seat.  "Sandburg, if I'm supposed to be listening while we do this, you need to *shut* *up*."

The radio crackled, and Jim untangled his arms and reached past Blair's hip.  "Ellison."

Brown's voice, staticky and urgent, filled the cab of the truck.  "Get in here.  Something you need to see."

"On our way."

He felt slightly bereft when Blair rolled off of him to leave the truck.

* * *

Four hours, five arrests, and one interrogation later, Jim was ready to dive headfirst into bed and not emerge until the next millenium.

"I have to say," Blair said, propping a knee on the dashboard, "I would not have expected a gay bar to be fencing stolen Soviet-era military tech.  Stolen Soviet-era porn, maybe. Soviet-era uniforms for roleplay, sure.  Kinky."

Jim tightened his hands on the wheel and refused to think about Blair in a Soviet military uniform. "The thing *I* don't get about these stakeouts," he said, driving eighty on the three-AM-deserted streets, "is--"

"Is how come we have to make out in public, when anyone following us would find out we live together and that therefore making out in public is suspicious?"

Jim decided Blair must be going insane from lack of female contact, except for Connor, who didn't count anyway as she was probably really a robot or a kangaroo or something.  "You must not be getting laid, Chief."

"That's none of your--well, I'm not, but that's not the point.  Did you make out with Carolyn in public?"

"Yes.  But only when we weren't married."

"See?"

"*We're* not married."

"We're gay.  We can't get married."

Jim took a corner slightly faster than the laws of physics really wanted him to, his stomach twisting up again.  Blair's foot thumped on the floor as he brought his knee down to brace himself against the G-force. "Only pretend gay. We didn't even make out. Anyway, that's not what I was going to say.  I was going to say, how come they make *you* wear special clothes for these but they let me wear whatever?"

Blair looked him up and down.  "Well.  Because you already dress gay."

"What the--I do *not*--what does that even *mean*?"

"I don't know.  Just not many straight guys dress like you.  Like, your shirts are always tucked in and kind of tight."

"They do, too--I know plenty of straight guys who dress like me.  What the hell?"

"Name one."

"Ted, down at the bakery."

"Has a boyfriend."

"He does not."

"Does too."

Jim ran a yellow light and upped his mental tally for the night to five. "Sandburg, I'm a sentinel.  That guy he claims is his cousin IS HIS COUSIN."

"Did you smell their genes or something?"

"No, I didn't smell their jeans.  Jesus, Chief.  I do not go around like some kind of super pantysniffer--"

"Genes, genes--G-E-N-E-S, Jim.  Like their DNA."  Blair looked as if he wanted to poke Jim in the head again, and only the extreme high speed of the truck was holding him back.

"Oh.  Yeah.  They're family."

Blair snickered.  "See, now, you're using that gay lingo--"

"If you don't watch it, I'm going to crash your side of the truck into a telephone pole."

Blair snapped his mouth shut and watched the blur of passing streetlights for a while. Jim pressed his fingers against the bridge of his nose and waited.  

Finally, Blair shifted back to look at him.  "So they're really cousins?"

"Yeah."

"So if I were gay, I could date one of them?"

"Jesus, Sandburg!"

Laughing, Blair tucked his knees up against the dash and slouched against the back of the seat.  Jim upped his speed to ninety just so that Blair would be sure to die if they were in an accident.

* * *

Jim stared at the ceiling, counting dust flecks.  He was up to six hundred and three, which was a new record; the ceiling wasn't particularly dirty, but normally he fell asleep around three-fifty.  He could hear the pipes making mysterious pipe noises in the walls; he could hear the wind blowing around the corner of the building and bouncing against his window.

One of the neighbors had a cat, and she was giving birth to kittens.  He could hear that, too, and rather than being enchanted by the miracle of life, he felt rather ill.

He went downstairs and into Blair's room.  "Sandburg.  Move over."

"Wah?"

He said the first thing that came to mind.  "We're breaking cover if we don't sleep together.  Move it."

"Mmf."  Blair rolled over and Jim climbed into the small bed with him. Now all he could hear was Blair breathing, and making little muttering noises in his sleep, and all he could smell was sweat and flannel.  He fell asleep almost at once.

* * *

"Jim.  Jim."

"Wah?"

"Why are you in my bed?"

Still half-asleep, Jim looked up at Blair, who had pillow marks on the side of his face and his hair sticking out every which-way.  "Couldn't sleep."

"Clowns will eat you?"

"More like noises.  Sorry, Chief."  He scooted upright and scratched the bit on the top of his head where his hairline was edging backwards.

"Next time, turn on your white noise generator.  Or at least drag me upstairs; I'm all cramped and cold from being shoved into the wall."  Blair was sitting tailor-style, and his bare knee brushed against Jim's blanketed one.

The words came before he could stop them.  "You could just sleep up there permanently."

Blair stared at him, then whacked him with a pillow.  "Asshole.  Then I'd *never* get laid."

Jim opened his mouth, closed his mouth, stared at his hands, and said nothing. After a minute, Blair said, "Oh."

"Apparently," Jim answered, his stomach clenching up like a barfight fist, wondering what the fuck was going on that he'd just propositioned Blair.

"You haven't just been on too many stakeouts at the Holiday?"

"Sandburg, shut up."

Instead, Blair socked him on the shoulder.  "Hey."

"What?"

"You're gay."

"Yeah.  Apparently."  It felt true, but he wasn't entirely sure what that meant.  He carefully smoothed out a wrinkle in the blanket and picked off a pill of lint.

Blair's knee bumped his again.  "Jim. You didn't know?"

"Fuck.  No."  He studied the bedcovers to have a change from looking at his hands. Blair's foot crossed into his line of vision as Blair uncrossed his legs, and he jerked his eyes away from it.

"Jim?"

"Yeah?"

"We should make out."

Jim looked up, surprised, and before he could say anything, Blair straddled him, and pressed his hands into Jim's shoulders, like he had last night.  He was heavy and warm and Jim laid a cautious hand on one of his hips.  Blair grinned down at him.  "Unless I still have lox breath."

Jim shook his head.  "Morning breath.  Not as bad--" and then Blair's mouth was on his, and Blair's pulse was beating against his hand, and they tumbled back onto the futon, which broke.

"See?" said Blair.  "Now I *have* to sleep upstairs permanently."

Jim tangled his fingers in Blair's hair and shifted so that the broken frame was no longer poking him in the kidney.  Blair's thigh had landed between his own, and he pressed into it lazily.  "Sandburg," he said, "shut up."