audrarose

Title: The Shot
Author: Audra Rose
Genre: Slash
Summary: There are all kinds of courage.
Note: I don’t know where this came from *g*. I did use
the phrase. And for the record, the 1000 word limit
is. killing. me. :)




Simon nudged Blair with his elbow and pointed down at
the bar with his beer bottle. “I think you’re trying
to get drunk,” he said, conversationally.

Blair followed the beer bottle pointer to the line of
empty bottles in front of him and thought that for a
police captain, Simon could be surprisingly
unobservant.

Obviously he wasn’t trying to get drunk; he was trying
to get Spectacularly Drunk. Drunk at the competitive
level. The kind of drunk where you wake up and think,
“Okay, this hangover isn’t so bad,” but that’s only
because you’re still wasted, and the real hangover –
the one looming over you with the power of a fucking
tsunami – that hangover won’t hit until 2:30 that
afternoon when you start making deals with God and
begging for death. That kind of drunk. As quickly as
possible.

“It’s understandable,” Simon continued. “Guys on the
force ten, twenty years still have this reaction to
the kind of crap that happened this afternoon.”

“I screwed up, Simon.” Blair figured he’d better get
used to saying the words.

“Sandburg, the situation was screwed up when we got
there. It takes balls to admit you made the wrong
call, but you did the best you could. Stop wallowing.”

“Sorry,” Blair mumbled, and took a long drink.

Simon shook his head. “If it makes you feel any
better, it could have worked. You tried. No one
blames you for what happened. And IA won’t, either.”

“Jim does.”

“No he doesn’t,” Simon scoffed, a little too quickly
for Blair to believe him. “Jim’s fine. He’ll be fine.
Look at him, for god’s sake.”

This time Simon’s beer bottle swung in an arc down the
bar and when Blair followed it he saw Jim leaning
casually against the rail about ten feet away. Though
he’d only been paying half-attention to his partner’s
tequila consumption, he could see that Jim had his
eyes on the prize as well.

Jim seemed to be having more success, however. While
so far Blair had only managed to give himself a
headache, it looked like Jim was already Confidently
Drunk – that delusional stage where you’re convinced
you’re irresistible and can go home with anyone in the
bar. Except, of course, in Jim’s case where the
delusion was actually true. All this charm was
currently directed at one of the bartenders, a tall,
blonde knock-out who was somehow managing to fill
drink orders and look like she was paying total
attention to Jim at the same time.

When Jim tossed down another amber shot without the
benefit of lime or salt, Simon muttered, “On the other
hand, that could get ugly fast.”

“You’re right,” Blair sighed, and took a drink of his
own beer.

“Well?” Simon asked after a few seconds.

“Well, what?”

“Go!” Simon said. “Go talk to him. Stop him.
Something.”

“It’s my responsibility to stop Jim from dropping a
hundred bucks on over-priced alcohol?”

When Simon ignored him as if he’d already gone Blair
rubbed his eyes. Of course it was. Except tonight
his head hurt and now it seemed like the bar was too
loud and too crowded and the only thing he wanted to
do was finish his beer and go home. He most
emphatically did not want to talk to Jim. Maybe it
took balls to admit to himself that he screwed up.
Admitting it to the guy who paid for the screw-up was
a whole different ball game.

Not that he had much choice.

Turning away from the bar and plunging into the crowd
was like joining a colony of amoeba – Blair combined
and divided in a fuzzy haze until he emerged somewhere
near Jim’s vicinity, where the crush of people
standing near the bar halted any forward motion. He
plastered on a pleasant grin and tried to elbow his
way through the crowd.

“Excuse me,” he mumbled, making little progress until
Jim looked up with a suddenly razor-sharp glance and
reached out, grabbing the front of Blair’s shirt in
his fist and tugging him up to the rail.

“Sandburg,” Jim said calmly, as if he were greeting
Blair at the station instead of in a loud, smoky bar.
As if they weren’t being pressed into each other by
the people around them. As if Jim weren’t hanging onto
the open collar of Blair’s shirt so the backs of his
fingers burned against Blair’s skin.

“Jim.” Blair responded, trying to focus on something
other than Jim’s hand on his chest. “Hey, do you
think we could –“

“Sandburg,” Jim said, as if Blair weren’t speaking,
“This is Rhonda.”

“Rachel,” the bartender corrected.

“Right. This is my partner, Sandburg,” Jim informed
Rachel seriously, “and he needs a shot.” Only Jim’s
careful diction showed Blair how messed up Jim really
was.

“No, that’s okay, I –“

“You need a shot. Trust me.”

“Jim - “

“Come on. It’s better than being shot, isn’t it?” Jim
said, with a smile that was a little frightening.
Apparently Jim’s comment was a lot funnier than Blair
thought it was, because Rhonda-Rachel-Right was
laughing it up.

Actually, the more he thought about it, Blair didn’t
think that comment was funny at all. Obviously he
needed to do some serious catching up, or leave them
to it. He had the start of a head-ache worthy of
Spectacularly Drunk proportions, so he was leaning
toward calling it a night when Jim removed his hand
from Blair’s shirt and thumped him on the chest hard
enough to hurt. “You owe me. Do the fucking shot.”

“I owe you?” Maybe that was true; well, of course it
was true, but god, it hurt - a sharp, hot-steel jab to
his heart - to hear Jim say it. How the hell doing a
shot would make things even, Blair couldn’t even begin
to guess, but he didn’t feel like arguing with the
vaguely wild look in Jim’s eyes.

“Fine. I’ll do a shot. But I need a lime.”

“Great! Rhonda –“

“Rachel-“

“Make it a double.”

“Now wait a minute,” Blair began but Rachel was
rubbing a lime on his hand while Jim was dumping salt
on his sleeve, and the next thing he knew he was
holding what looked like a tumbler of tequila.

“Go for it.”

Deciding tequila might actually help at this point he
threw his head back and tossed it down. The only
problem came when Jim decided to deliver a
congratulatory slap on the back at the precise moment
Blair started to swallow. Through a hacking cough and
burning eyes Blair reflected that absorbing 80-proof
alcohol through the walls of your sinus cavity could
become a popular way of getting Spectacularly Drunk if
it weren’t also Spectacularly Painful.

“Okay. We’re done.” Blair wheezed, as soon as he
could speak, and closed his hand around Jim’s upper
arm. “Close out his tab,” he said over his shoulder
while he dragged Jim away from the bar.

“What the hell, Sandburg –“

“You’ve had enough. This is about me anyway, so go
ahead. Get it out of your system.”

Blair had never seen Jim get so angry so quickly.

“Fuck you, Sandburg.” With a two-handed shove against
Blair’s chest Jim turned, pushing through the crowd to
stalk out of the bar.

Blair looked blankly at the door for a minute,
thinking that he should have remembered how fast
Confidently Drunk could become Belligerently Drunk.
He thought about letting Jim go, maybe just letting
him go for once. All the time Blair knew he’d follow,
though, because outside the bar there were cars to
drive and fights to get into. Besides, doing more
than one thing he’d never forgive himself for in the
space of a day was more than Blair could bear to think
about.

It took him awhile to make his way through the crowd,
and by the time he got to the street he’d begun to
worry that Jim had already gone. Stumbling into the
cool silence of the outside air was like hitting a
concrete wall, and he had to stand still a minute,
swaying while he waited for his head to clear. He
looked down the street and saw that the truck was
still parked where they’d left it, even if it was a
little fuzzy around the edges. Blair wasn’t sure where
to start, so he picked a direction that led away from
light and noise and started walking. He almost missed
Jim, who was standing motionless in the darkened
doorway of a closed storefront.

Blair backed up a step to look at him. Jim stood with
his hands in his pockets, looking out at the street
with a lost expression on his face.

“I can’t drive,” Jim finally said.

“Yeah, I know. Me neither.” Blair moved to stand
next to Jim in silence, waiting for whatever was going
to come next.

“He was going to shoot you,” Jim murmured, not looking
at Blair.

“I thought I could talk to him,” Blair blurted, before
Jim finished speaking, thinking he could stop the
words before they had a chance to take him apart.

“He had a gun in your face and he was going to shoot
you,” Jim repeated, still looking out at the street.
“Right in front of me. I had no choice.”

“Because I didn’t give you one. I know that.” Blair
took a deep breath and then the words came pouring out
in a rush. “I had the drop on him and I didn’t take
it, so now there’s gonna be questions and IA’s gonna
make you jump through hoops. And, oh yeah, I almost
forgot - now you have that stupid, strung-out kid’s
death on your conscience instead of me because I
didn’t have the fucking balls to pull the trigger. I
know all of that. I just don’t know what to do about
it.”

Somewhere during Blair’s speech Jim had closed his
eyes and leant his head back against the door frame.
Blair started wondering if Jim was planning on just
passing out right there when he whispered, “I can’t do
this anymore.”

Jim’s grief was Blair’s, hopeless and tight in his
chest, and Blair had to bend his head down against the
ache. “I thought I could talk –“

But then he couldn’t talk, not with Jim’s mouth hard
and hot on his, not with Jim’s tongue sliding deep and
sweet against his own. Jim’s taste was lime and tears
and god, so good that Blair didn’t want to breathe or
move or think about the fact that they were making out
in the doorway of a pawn shop.

Jim shoved Blair harder against the door and deeper
into the shadows, moving his mouth to slide over
Blair’s jaw, and the sudden rush of oxygen let Blair’s
brain focus, just enough for him to whisper, “This
isn’t just Horny Drunk, is it?”

“W-what?” Jim stuttered, but he bent closer to answer
Blair with his hands and his lips and Blair thought
no, this is No Other Way Drunk. This is It’s This or
Nothing Drunk.

So he kissed Jim back, his mouth open and wet, and
curved his hands around Jim’s hips. He let his
fingers drift over Jim’s shirt, tracing the muscles of
his sides until Jim moaned like it hurt, until he
dragged Blair hard up against him and locked their
bodies together from thigh to cock to chest. There
was no arguing with the way Jim pushed against him,
with the way he dug his hands into the muscles of
Blair’s ass and ground their bodies together. It was
clear Jim wanted to make Blair come; that he wouldn’t
stop until he made Blair come while standing in the
shadows without ever once touching skin to skin.

When it was over, when they were anchoring each other
in the darkness, Jim’s whisper was hurt and ragged
against Blair’s hair. “You’ve got to be able to take
the shot, Chief. The next time there’s a whacko with
a gun – you can’t do this if you can’t take the shot.”

Blair searched for something to give him. “I could
take it,” Blair said, pulling Jim closer, groping his
hand into Jim’s hair, wrapping his arm around Jim’s
shoulders. “I can see myself taking it. If the whacko
was aiming at you.”

Blair knew from the helpless way Jim leaned into him
that it was the wrong answer and the right answer and
that tomorrow they would have to talk about it, but
not tonight. Tonight they had this. And it was such
a bone-deep relief to know that even after all the
questions and consequences and decisions, they would
still have this. Would always have this, maybe. Even
if he could never take the shot.