Double Blind
(NC-17)

Jim's new girlfriend looked like me.

I'm not talking minor resemblance in coloring here, either. I'm talking identical from the back, 'is that your sister?' from the front, separated-at-birth looked like me.

I was out of town when he met her, in Chicago at a two-week symposium on vanishing tribal cultures. I hadn't wanted to go. What if Jim zoned out without any backup around to bring him out of it? What if he got covered in some exotic chemical and his senses freaked out? What if some psycho from his Special Forces days shot him with a tranquilizer dart? What if --

Okay, okay. So I was getting a little paranoid. But can you blame me? Look at the guy's track record. And he calls me a trouble magnet! Anyway, you get my point. I was getting major bad vibes about leaving Jim alone.

Finally, Jim practically packed my bags and shoved me out the door. "Go, Chief. I'll be fine. Go do the professional thing in Chicago. You know it was an honor to be asked to participate. You need to go and network."

"I'm not sensing a lot of separation trauma here, Jim."

"I'm a big boy, Chief. And so are you."

"You'll miss me."

"Oh, yeah. Two whole weeks without weird food. No tests assessing my reaction to multiple stimuli. No trying to tape 'Law & Order' and finding that the TV was changed to the Discovery Channel. No Afro-Celtic drum solos filling the loft. Sure, I'll miss you!"

So off I went for two fun-filled weeks in the Windy City. Jim was right; I needed to go. For all I love working with Jim and observing the 'closed society' at the station, sometimes it feels good to be around people who don't need a translation of everything I say. My own tribe, I guess.

I sat in on some great panel discussions, stayed up 'til all hours in a bull session comparing Aboriginal Dreamtime to Jung's collective unconscious, heard a couple of papers presented -- but let me tell you, Wassermann's study of Tlingit fishing culture and its adaptation to modern economic forces is way off base. I mean, he totally over-emphasized the effect of government regulation while practically ignoring the ongoing role of tribal -- uh, sorry.

And I called Jim every day. Not my idea, I'll tell you that. Mother Hen was worried about his one chick. Oh, please! What kind of trouble could I get into, surrounded by a couple hundred anthropologists? Um, never mind. I didn't mind checking in, though. It was kind of nice, knowing that there was someone out there who knew where I was and cared how I was doing on a daily basis. That was a new thing for me. Jim and I, I don't know how to describe it. It wasn't a father-son thing; the age and power dynamic is totally different. I guess 'brothers' would be closer, except that usually has some competitive component from what I've seen. Whatever. It was there and it was the best thing I've ever had and if a daily phone call made Jim happy, so be it.

He wasn't home when I called the fourth night. Not to worry, I told myself. He was probably working late on a case.

He wasn't home the fifth night. Stake-out, I thought.

He wasn't home the sixth night. At all. I know 'cause I called every hour. I punched in the code that turned off the answering machine and let the phone ring. No way he could sleep through or ignore that.

He wasn't home.

Visions of Jim's battered, bleeding body lying in an alley somewhere were floating past my eyes, but I'm proud to say I didn't panic. I did the most logical thing under the circumstances.

The reasonable thing.

I called Simon Banks at 3 o'clock in the morning.

Hey -- it was 5 a.m. my time.

The captain was not amused.

"Jim's probably out on a date," he told me. "He met this woman a couple of days ago and they really hit it off."

"A date," I said blankly.

"Yes, Sandburg. A date. You know what that is. Two people who like each other go out, spend time together. That's what people who have social lives do. I'd like to have a social life. I probably would have a social life if I didn't already have a nosy teenager asking awkward questions, a detective whose senses go haywire occasionally and a long-haired consultant who calls and wakes me up at 3 o'clock in the freaking morning!

I held the receiver away from my ear and grimaced. Whoops.

A date. Okay. I could handle that. Really. No reason to be concerned. Just because Jim had even worse luck with women than I did was no reason to worry. I mean, let's not even get into the women he was involved with before I met him. Carolyn was -- No, I'm not going to say it.

In the past year or so, there was that reporter chick.... Jim won't open up to his wife and he thinks he can manage a relationship with a woman dedicated to the fine art of the expose'? Riiiight. And how about trying to date a woman whose sister just suffered sever radiation poisoning? Yeah, great timing.

I liked that arson investigator we worked with, but even a blind man could see that there weren't any sparks between Deb and Jim. Sorry about the pun, but if the cliche' fits....

The less said about the unfortunate Margaret incident, the better. I'm not one to say 'I told you so.' At least, not to Jim's face.

So if he wanted to stay out all night with some woman he had only met a few days ago, more power to him. Couldn't care less.

B.S.

Not just initials. A way of life. 'Cause I did care. A lot. I hated the thought of Jim being with somebody -- anybody -- else besides me. I hated the thought that he was out enjoying himself instead of staying home and missing me.

I was sitting in a hotel room half a continent away from the man I loved and he didn't love me.

Life sucked.

That wasn't fair to Jim, though. It wasn't like he knew how I felt about him. I'd dated pretty regularly since I met him -- no sitting at home mooning about my roommate for me! And some of those dates were men 'cause Woody Allen was right when he said bisexuality doubles your chances for a date on Friday night. But I'd never intentionally made a move on Jim. I'd slipped a few times. I couldn't control my eyes that time on the rig when he showered in front of me -- hey, at least I didn't make any 'Beefstick' comments! -- and it inspired more wet dreams than I could count. I probably put my hands on him more times than I should have when he was blinded by Golden, but what was I gonna do, let him walk into walls? Or so I told myself at the time.

Never once did Jim respond, either to encourage me or to let me know he wasn't interested. As far as I could tell, he'd never seen anything beyond friendship in my feelings for him.

The rest of the symposium dragged on for me. All I could thing of was Jim. Jim and some nameless, faceless woman.

Finally, finally! I flew back to Cascade. Jim picked me up at the airport and with only a little encouragement filled in all the missing details about one Melinda Rieger. She was a CPA downtown he'd interviewed in the course of some routing inquiries.

After she'd given him her expert opinion on the legal ins and outs of off-shore investments, she'd asked him out to dinner. He'd said yes.

She was seven years younger than Jim, a transplanted Californian who'd fallen in love with the slower pace of the Pacific Northwest when her husband's company had transferred there. Five years ago, the marriage had fallen apart and he'd moved on, but she'd stayed and started her own business.

She was smart, ambitious, funny, energetic, beautiful....

I hated her already.

I reminded myself of the pep talks I'd given myself at the hotel. It's Jim's life. He can do whatever he wants with who he wants. I'm his friend. I'll be happy for him. So I put a mask over my true feelings and I smiled when he told me how great she was and dammit, I was happy for him. I'd be happy for him if it killed me.

I didn't meet her for a couple of days; our schedules just didn't mesh. Yeah, right. I was avoiding seeing her and Jim together like I'd avoid the plague. Finally, though, morbid curiosity got the better of me. I had to see the woman who'd swept Jim Ellison off his feet.

They were going to a new place downtown, Crescent Moon, already making a name for itself with a combination of smoky jazz, great ribs and a romantic atmosphere. Perfect. I could mingle with the crowd and scope her out. Fifteen minutes after Jim left the loft to pick Melinda up I was out the door, on my way to the restaurant to plant myself in an inconspicuous spot.

I was on stake-out, playing hide-and-seek with the object of my affections.

Great. The man had driven me to the nadir of teen-age behavior. He always did seem to bring out the immaturity in me. Maybe I could have Simon pass him a note to find out if he liked me.

Sandburg, get a grip.

I found a dark corner near the combo playing cool, syncopated rhythms and nursed along a mineral water. I was in enough turmoil without getting a buzz on. A plate of the house specialty -- 'Bayou Wings, guaranteed to raise your temperature!' -- grew cold in front of me. My stomach was in a knot. I hunched over my chair and kept an eye on the door.

A crowd of people came in all at cone and cluttered up the entrance. When it cleared out, Jim Ellison stood there, a short woman at his side. Her back was to me and all I could make out was the long, dark, curly hair hanging to below her strong shoulders. A swimmer, I wondered? I couldn't tell much more about her; her figure was hidden under a bulky leather coat. A waiter moved in front of her and Jim, leading them to one of the few empty tables in the room. As she turned to follow him, I finally saw her face.

Like I said. Jim's girlfriend looked like me.

At that distance, I couldn't see the color of her eyes, but I'd put money on the certainty that they were the same cloudy blue that I saw every morning in the mirror. She had the same long line from broad cheekbones to pointed chin, all softened into a feminine version of my own face.

I watched her moving next to Jim and I got the strangest feeling of deja vu, as if I was watching Jim and me as people must have seen us so many times, walking down the streets of Cascade or into Simon's office.

I dropped some money onto the table and I got out of there as fast as I could.

I don't remember the trip back to the loft -- suddenly I was home and I couldn't stop shaking.

What the hell was going on? There was no way Jim had missed the resemblance. Was there?

The same thought kept running through my mind. Jim had no right to be dating a woman who looked like me when I was home pining after him. He should be right here with the genuine article.

So I made my plan. When Jim got home, he wouldn't know what hit him. I was through worrying about his delicate psyche.

All right, so I was a little crazy. Can you blame me? Living with a Sentinel seemed to have brought out some of my own primitive impulses.

I sat there in the dark, waiting for my helpless prey to come home. It was after 2 a.m. when I heard his key in the lock. I saw his shape silhouetted in the doorway, saw him drop his keys in the basket. The sound of the door shutting seemed to echo in the loft and I could almost imagine that I could smell her perfume lingering around him.

Tough luck, Melinda, I thought. You've had your last night with him. He's mine now.

"Blair? You still up?" Jim walked towards the couch where I sat, the darkness no barrier to his eyesight.

"Yeah, Jim. I'm up. I've been waiting for you." Was that my voice, so deep, so rough?

I felt the cushion give way next to me, felt the heat of his body.

Now or never, I thought. Put up or shut up.

Now, I like to think I'm a considerate lover, that I know how to have fun with sex, how to be serious. I know that different situations, different people, need different approaches and that it takes two people working together to make things good.

Care and consideration were the last things on my mind as I turned to Jim. God, that man makes me stupid sometimes.

I ... well, I pounced. That's the only word that really conveys both my mood and my action. I pounced on Jim Ellison and pushed him back on the arm of the couch and I kissed him like I'd die if I didn't.

Mr. My-Hands-Are-Lethal-Weapons Covert Ops Agent never even put up a struggle.

I was pulling off his coat and ripping at the buttons of his shirt and fumbling at his belt, dragging my mouth from his and nipping my way down his throat to his chest. I felt the heat rise from his body, smelled his skin, tasted the salt of his sweat.

I barely realized that his hands were equally busy, pushing my shirt off, his hands roaming over my back and cupping my ass, pulling my hips down hard into the cradle of his thighs.

Eventually, we were both stripped to the skin, lying full out on the couch, every inch of our bodies in contact. I could hear my voice as I dropped punishing little kisses along his jaw and under his ears. "You belong to me, Jim. Sentinel and Guide, remember? Together forever. You're mine."

And Jim's voice was a reassuring rumble from beneath me. "It's okay, Chief. I'm here. We're here together. It's okay." His hands, petting and caressing me, meant to be soothing but each stroke only enflamed me more. I was caught up in the need to brand myself on him, to make sure that he could never discard me, to know that he was as tied to me as I was to him.

Finesse was the last thing on my mind as I slid down his body, my mouth open and wet on his skin as I zeroed in on my goal. Jim's hard cock drew me like a magnet. I sat back on my heels between his legs and reached out for it. A shudder ran through him as I measured it from weeping crown to the base, then gently cradled the tender sac underneath. I licked my lips and slowly took him into my mouth. The taste of his pre-ejaculate was a little salty, a little bitter on my tongue. I lingered on the crown, sucking, then licking, then running my tongue along the underside, listening to the moans I was drawing from him.

Jim's hands came up to the sides of my head, wrapping themselves in my hair. He gently encouraged me to take him deeper and I gladly obliged. All my concentration was centered on the cock in my mouth, how hard it felt beneath the hot, silky skin, how I could feel the vein along the underside pulse and flutter when I hollowed my cheeks and moved my head up and down, how the taste of Jim was filling my mouth. I did to Jim everything I had ever enjoyed having done to me and everything that I had ever imagined enjoying. I slipped one hand under him and found the sensitive skin just in front of his anus. I caressed him from the puckered opening to the base of his shaft, returning to press gently into him with one finger, feeling the muscles resist the slight pressure.

Shudders were racking his body and I could feel the climax build from deep inside him. I dropped my head and let him thrust into my mouth as far as he could as the first stream of cum hit the back of my throat. I swallowed quickly, wringing every last drop I could from his softening cock.

I slowly let him fall from my mouth and moved back up Jim's limp body. I kissed him deeply, my tongue snaking into his mouth and letting him taste himself. I could feel my own semen wet against my thighs and stomach. I'd come without even touching myself, the satisfaction of bringing Jim to climax enough to trigger my own.

"You're mine," I whispered into Jim's mouth.

"I know," he whispered back, sleep taking him almost as soon as the words were said.

I carried that satisfaction with me as I followed him into slumber.