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"How many books does one man need, Sandburg?"
Three big, dented cardboard boxes crowded his living room, each one filled with old books. He could tell they were old; they smelled like mice and damp, and there was the microscopic yet unmistakable skitter of silverfish diving through the warped bindings. Great.
"As many as I can cram in this loft." At Jim's dubious look, Blair added, "Hey, I live here, too. I'm entitled to half the space."
"Half?" Who did Blair think he was kidding? The Navajo blanket draped over the couch was his. All the wall hangings and framed pictures. Most of the fridge was devoted to algae shakes and crumbled tofu. Hell, the shower shelves were shouldered with six different bottles of shampoo. Sandburg was just one man, but he took up enough space for three or four guys, and the slightly defensive look on his face said he knew it. Then he grinned and made a jaunty comme ci comme ça gesture. "60/40 then," he said, clapping his hands together decisively. "Come on, come downstairs with me. I need some help bringing up that bookcase we stashed in the basement when I moved in."
"What, I'm your personal teamster now?"
"Jim, I'm your guide, so I've got a, let's say, 51% share in the Sentinel investment. That's a controlling interest, man." His eyes shone as he opened the front door to the hall. "And I say the order of the day is heavy lifting."
"Mongo only pawn in game of life," Jim sighed, dutifully following his friend to the elevator.
*
Some sweet young thing was moving into the first floor apartment if the box of pink throw pillows in the hallway was anything to go by. Jim silently resigned himself to being volunteered for yet more scut work by a Sandburg eager to make a good impression on a cute girl.
But lo, she had hired movers, and they'd been busy stacking boxes and the odd piece of furniture in the narrow space under the stairwell near the basement door.
Blair paused at the doorway, running an idle finger along a white pine hope chest that had been stood up on one end. "You can't tell what a woman looks like by the way she smells, can you?" He fixed Jim with a speculative look. "Well?"
Jim rolled his eyes, but Blair looked firm, so Jim shut his eyes and gave it a go. The scent was delicate and flowery, expensively feminine yet not female--and the most surprising thing about it was that he recognized it.
"I can tell you that she's tall. Very tall. Long, blonde hair. Full lips. Blue eyes. A real knockout in a tight red dress."
"Seriously?" Blair looked at once highly skeptical and ridiculously intrigued.
"Seriously."
"I wonder what her name is?" Scouting through the groundfloor window, Blair craned his neck, clearly hoping for a glimpse of long legs. Of course, they'd be long legs in three layers of polar fleece, due to the cold snap, but that was Sandburg for you.
"It's Chanel," Jim said lightly, watching Blair's eyes go round. "But the name on her driver's license is Edward Solomon."
Blair considered that for a beat and then said, "A drag queen?" Looking no less interested, this time Blair pushed up on tiptoe to see if she was walking past. Then he froze for a moment and turned to squint at Jim. "How do you know a drag queen?"
"One of the uniforms brought in a guy for DUI. Seems he'd caused an accident, sideswiped her car, so she came in to press charges. Gibson was kind of pissy about it because he'd thought she was a woman until she showed him her ID, so I helped her out. It was a couple of weeks ago. You were at school," Jim added.
"Gibson, huh? Isn't he like, two floors away from you?" Blair could tell that the familiar sounds of booking and lock-up would have had to have been pretty unusual to catch his attention. "Did he yell at her or something?"
Jim shrugged. "Nah, it was nothing like that. She just... smelled upset."
Every so often, Jim did something inadvertently impressive that made Blair smile at him. And about half those times, Blair was, more than impressed, delighted. And while Sandburg was often pleased, tripping the little switch that brought on full-scale delight made Jim feel like a million bucks. And at this moment, a silent sense of delight wafted from Blair like invisible ribbons of smoke. Jim wasn't sure if it was even a smell; a vibration maybe. The purring hum of Blair's brain making the air around him tremble a little, like the shimmer of heat hovering a few inches over baking blacktop.
Blair squeezed Jim's arms with stout affection before unlocking the basement door and tramping down the stairs. Smiling, and possibly riding Sandburg's buzz like a contact high, Jim made his way down the steps, the heavy basement door swinging shut behind him.
*
Fifteen minutes later, Blair's buzz had evaporated and Jim was working up one hell of a headache. A whole body ache, in fact. He rammed his shoulder against the door again, but the stairs were steep and he couldn't build up much momentum.
"You've got to be kidding me," Blair complained. "Ten minutes ago, this hallway was crawling with movers, and now we're locked in the basement and no one can even be bothered to come by and let us out?"
Jim hunched down to peer through the keyhole, but there was nothing to see.
"Something's wedged against the door. Even if we pick the lock, we won't be able to open it from this side."
"Oh, man. We could be locked down here for days!"
"A few hours, anyway. The super will want those boxes out of the hallway soon; they're a fire hazard. Hey, do you have your cell phone? I left mine upstairs."
Blair looked briefly guilty.
"The battery's dead. And even if it was working, I don't think the reception would be so great down here in the basement."
"All right. Let's get comfortable, then."
The two of them arranged a couple of squashy cardboard boxes full of old bedsheets and tablecloths as makeshift couch and settled in to wait. Blair scavenged a dog-eared paperback from another box, and Jim folded his arms across his chest and closed his eyes. He could do with a nap, and it would make the lock-in go faster.
He could feel the occasional brush of Sandburg's elbow as he turned pages in the book, could hear, if he wanted to, the rub of fiber as Blair's fraying sweater sleeves grazed his own torso. It was a comfortable sound, lulling, and Jim was right on the edge of sleep when he heard the funny snap and sizzle of the basement's single yellowed lightbulb going out.
"So much for Tess of the d'Ubervilles," Blair sighed. Jim listened to the flap of the paperback as it hit another cardboard box and skidded to a halt on top of it.
In the perfect dark, Jim could hear the rustle of Sandburg shifting in his cardboard LaZBoy, and sense the random, occasional tickle of Blair's long, springy hair.
"At least it's not absolutely freezing down here, " Blair said conversationally. Jim heard him rubbing his hands together, quick chafing chuffs of sound. "Saves us the indignity of having to huddle together for warmth."
"When did you have any dignity to lose, Chief?"
"That's comedy, man. I know a guy who knows a guy. We'll get you your own HBO special--"
"Come here, Sandburg. You're gonna rattle the fillings right out of my head." He drew his arm around Blair's shoulders and couldn't help smiling when Blair tucked himself under Jim's chin with cheerful alacrity.
"Mm. Better."
Jim had to agree. Having Blair this close drew his focus away from the musty boxes, the cobwebs that smelled like dry sneezes, the slimy patches of mildew, the scuttle of insects. Someone had packed a sandwich in one of the boxes, and it was old enough that Jim could no longer identify the kind of sandwich it had been, but not old enough to dwindle into a ghost of its own scent.
Blair smelled like a library, the kind you could find in shabby waterdamaged stripmalls in the poorer parts of town, full of paperbacks with cracked spines and textbooks from 1948. He smelled like he'd learned everything he knew in libraries; he smelled like he loved books; he smelled a little grubby, actually, but homey somehow.
Jim tightened his arm briefly, gently mashing Blair's face against his chest, where Blair's warm breath soaked into his blue flannel shirt and right past his T-shirt into his skin.
"We're not huddling for warmth anymore, are we?" Blair's question lacked any arch inflection, held only simple curiosity.
"Uh. No."
"Finally." Blair anchored himself with one hand on Jim's shoulder and hauled himself up, half-kneeling, half-crawling into Jim's lap, his hands feeling for Jim's face, his quick breath weaving around in the space in front of Jim, careening from Jim's left ear to the point of his chin and finally to Jim's lips, hovering a moment before moving in to seal against Jim's mouth. Sandburg was everywhere, and Jim was consumed. All sensory input was reporting BLAIR and his blood was skating to all points south, and no darkness had been so complete since he came fully on-line as a Sentinel, and the rush was thrilling, disorienting, like freefall.
Jim had worked his hands under Sandburg's shirt without even thinking about it, and found his skin was shockingly warm. He pushed his tongue into Blair's mouth and earned a hot little groan that made him consider shoving his hands down the back of Blair's jeans for good measure--
And then Blair's cellphone rang.
"Shit." Blair fumbled and slapped at his clothes, coming up with his phone, its LCD screen glowing a soft green, a green Jim could see in the gleam of Sandburg's eyes and teeth as he gave Jim a sheepish smile. "Well, what do you know. The phone works after all. It's a Christmas miracle!"
"It's January, Sandburg."
"Close enough. Um." He thumbed a button and the phone stopped bleating. He cleared his throat and coughed twice. "I paid one of the movers twenty bucks to lock us in," Blair said finally.
Jim soaked that in for a moment. Then he settled Sandburg firmly in his lap, feeling Blair's thighs hot on either side of his own and wound his hands in Blair's hair.
"I gotta say, Sandburg, that's probably the best twenty bucks you ever spent."