Shadows and Siege 8
Shadows and Siege Part 8
Sequel to Shadows of the Past
Fandoms: Primary: Sentinel. Secondary: La Femme Nikita, Stargate SG-1
Slash, Rated: ADULT
Shadows and Siege part one
Shadows and Siege part two
Shadows and Siege part three
Shadows and Siege part four
Shadows and Siege part five
Shadows and Siege part six
Shadows and Siege part seven
"This is… this is so stupid I'm out of words, man," Blair muttered as he flipped through television stations so fast that not even Jim could tell what was on.
"How would you make contact?" Jim asked. "Then again, you already sat down next to one by accident. So, how would you make contact this time?" Blair stopped flipping for a second and glared. For a half-second, Jim thought he was about to get an earful of just exactly what Blair thought, but then he sighed, and went back to flipping through stations on the television.
"We obviously work for the cheap end of the conspiracy network. SG-1 gets a suite all to themselves," Blair pointed out as he glanced around at the hotel room. A fresh floral bouquet on the dark wood dining room table in the corner was starting to wilt, so Jim could guess the team had been here for three to four days with strict orders for housekeeping to not come into the room. Even so, they should have secured their room more effectively. Jim found it frighteningly simple to break in.
"We had an entire wing of the hotel," Jim pointed out.
"So not the same thing. We lied and cheated our way into that. Our tax dollars are actually paying for this," Blair said with a wave of his hand at the entertainment center, the small kitchen against one wall, the open doors into the two large bedrooms tastefully decorated in shades of red. "They have king sized beds. You think their team spends as much time screwing each other as ours?" Blair asked casually, but Jim had to grit his teeth to avoid snapping at the unasked question he could feel just under the surface. Yeah, Blair kept pushing the sex, but it wasn't easy to take when Blair had almost totally stopped smelling of desire. In the past, Blair had been a constant source of pheromones, to the point that Jim sometimes expected to be able to see a cloud around him like Pigpen in the comic strip. Jim hadn't been joking when he suggested that Blair might do a table leg because as horny as Blair was all the time, he might have in the absence of a better partner. Only now, the pheromones were almost absent.
"Military frowns on that, especially within a unit," Jim said shortly.
"Yeah, but I didn't see any signs encouraging it at Section, and our whole unit is getting more sex than Marilyn Monroe at a free-love commune," Blair pointed out.
"There's no smell of sex." Jim held the back of the chair tightly, resisting the urge to go sit next to Blair, to let his hand wander to Blair's knee and lean close. It would get him what he wanted in the short term, a burst of that delicious Blair lust. In the long run, it would cost him his friendship with Blair, and he was just starting to understand what he would do to avoid that.
"Man, you totally ruined my fun. I was going to try and figure out who slept with whom," Blair said, but his voice was strangely flat where Jim expected teasing playfulness.
"Blair," Jim sighed. Maybe he should deal with this issue head on. He would if he could figure out how to start, but how the hell did you demand an explanation when your partner wasn't doing anything consciously? Blair couldn't exactly control his hormones, and if the idea of having Jim physically addicted to his pheromones was enough to scare him out of having any pheromones, Jim couldn't blame him. But he couldn't find a way to tell Blair that he didn't blame him without it sounding like blame.
"Yeah?" Blair was staring at him in concern because Jim had hesitated too long.
"They're coming," Jim said, actually relieved that SG-1 was going to save him from the most awkward conversation of his life. Chasing a man was supposed to simplify things. He still remembered being nineteen and the unit captain coming through when Jim was taking some personal time to practice on the obstacle course. Back then, he'd been slightly on the scrawny side after growing faster than his body could keep up, and he'd struggled to make the Ranger requirements. The captain had leaned against the fence and watched for a long time as Jim ran the course, pushing himself to move faster and more efficiently each time.
'Nice form, Ellison.'
'Thank you, sir.'
'You ever tried fucking a man, Ellison?'
Jim had lost his balance and grabbed at the guide rope to keep from falling off the narrow plank. 'No, sir.'
'Think about it.' The captain had walked away. Twice more he'd watched Jim work on the obstacle course, offering advice on how to approach training and shave seconds off his time. The third time, he'd asked Jim if he wanted to trade handjobs. It really had been that simple. But with Sandburg, nothing was that simple. Four years of living together, and it still wasn't that simple.
Jim glanced over and Blair was clutching the remote tightly enough to break it, and his heart was pounding. With a frown, Jim moved around the chair and let his hand drop to Blair's shoulder. "Calm down, Chief. These are the good guys."
"Right. I know this." Blair nodded absent-mindedly, and Jim tightened his fingers a little. "Okay. I know, they're all about saving the world, not shooting two potential NID agents who've broken into their rooms without giving them a chance to explain."
"They have an archaeologist on the team. I don't think they're the shoot-first type," Jim pointed out. Blair nodded as if he understood, but his heart was still pounding too fast, and he really was about to strangle the remote control. Jim inched closer so that his hip pressed into Blair's arm as he reached down and gently liberated the remote. Letting his hand rest on Blair's wrist, Jim hated himself for needing the faint trace of pheromones that seeped into the air before Blair's face twisted and all hint of desire vanished. Getting the message loud and clear, Jim moved to the end of the couch so that he would be between Blair and the team.
"They know we're in here," Jim said as he leaned back against the arm of the couch and half-sat on it, trying for casual. "Colonel O'Neill is ordering the zats out, so even if they are the shoot-first sort, it's not going to be any worse than training."
"I'm still saying this plan sucks," Blair muttered.
"Yeah, but it's the one we were ordered to do," Jim pointed out. Blair glared at him, making it perfectly clear exactly what he thought of orders.
Jim tilted his head toward the door, watching the green light on the swipe-card lock flash before the door exploded in and armed SG-1 members stormed through. O'Neill was first, his zat held high as he lunged right. Teal'c held his zat lower and went to the left. Major Carter remained with her body half hidden by the door, and Jim could barely see Jackson's glasses as he peered from behind her. Jim just waited with his arms crossed, still leaning on the couch as he let them get into strategic positions.
"Did you get lost on the way to the registration desk maybe?" O'Neill asked as he lowered his weapon, but he could afford to. Carter moved into the room, and both Teal'c and Carter still had weapons trained on them. Jim deliberately leaned back in a position where he would have trouble countering an attack.
"I found the right place," Jim offered calmly. "Calm down, Chief, they're not going to shoot us," Jim said as he tilted his head toward Blair.
"Yeah, yeah, you say that now, but man, I know how annoying your cryptic act gets. Totally annoying." Blair crossed his arms over his chest and inched closer to Jim. Immediately, Jim could feel the shift in the air. Dr. Jackson slipped into the room, closing the door behind him, and both O'Neill and Carter relaxed slightly. Teal'c didn't. Even with the bandanna tied around his forehead, Jim could see the outline of the tattoo pressing against the fabric, and the feel a goa'uld larva this close made his skin crawl.
"Aren't you supposed to be in Cascade chasing down pickpockets and litterbugs?" O'Neill asked with more than a little sarcasm as he headed for the refrigerator in the kitchenette area.
"Pickpockets?" Blair almost yelped. "Oh man, that is so not cool. Reinforcing your own power construct by degrading others is the lowest form--"
"Relax, Chief," Jim interrupted before Blair could get going good. "He's just trying to let us know that he had us checked out."
"He could have done it without the insult. Totally not cool," Blair complained a little more quietly. Teal'c raised an eyebrow, but the zat remained steady.
"Hey, you're the ones who broke into my hotel room," O'Neill pointed out as he turned around with a soda in his hand.
"Dr. Sandburg, maybe you could explain what you're doing here," Jackson quickly interjected as he stepped forward, watching O'Neill for tacit permission to get in the middle. O'Neill leaned against the wall with his soda, and that seemed to be what Jackson wanted. "I read your paper on victimization as a form of psychological infantilism. Fascinating work."
"Um… thanks?" Blair said, obviously put off-balance by the sudden change of topic, and if Jim had to guess, that was Jackson's whole point.
"I have to wonder why you would be breaking into my rooms. There's not much about late dynasty Egypt that would be of interest, and I certainly would have offered you any assistance if you had asked."
Blair snorted. "And the zats are just Egyptian stelae, I suppose?"
Jim watched while SG-1 exchanged cautious glances. "We know about the goa'uld," Jim said calmly. "I've already identified two hosts and was working on identifying more when our paths crossed." Not even the way O'Neill focused on his soda could erase the impression Jim had that he had just aggravated a very powerful man. The casual attitude as O'Neill fingered the tab on the can didn't do anything to hide the steel under that exterior.
Eventually O'Neill made eye contact, and Jim stood up straight as the man evaluated his options. Blair started to say something, and Jim reached down and let his hand rest on Blair's shoulder, silencing him. O'Neill had to make this choice on his own.
"NID?" O'Neill asked.
Blair choked. "Oh man, not even. Those people suck, and not in the sexually satisfying sort of way."
Teal'c's eyebrow rose an entire inch and Dr. Jackson's face twisted and twitched for a second.
"Not fans of the NID then?" O'Neill finally turned his focus toward Blair, and Jim had to fight an urge to put himself between the two men.
"They want to capture the goa'uld, and excuse me, but capturing brain-sucking aliens is stupid on a level that I don't normally see outside of a horror flick."
This time, Dr. Jackson choked on something, and O'Neill's mouth actually twitched in a smile.
"They're not known for their great thinking," O'Neill admitted, "but that still doesn't answer the question of who you work for."
"Sir," Jim interrupted, "I don't have the authority to discuss my employers, but we were led to believe you would not get involved on Earth. In your absence, we were ordered to identify and eliminate the goa'uld."
This time O'Neill snorted. "I'm not letting snakeheads set up shop on Earth. However, I still don't see how a cop from Cascade is involved in this, and the amount of classified information you seem to have access to suggests that the safest course of action might be to transfer you to the nearest military facility."
Jim could feel Blair fist his shirt so tightly that it pulled across his chest. "You could do that," Jim agreed. He certainly wasn't going to try and get in a pissing contest with O'Neill over that. "However, I wouldn't be much help to you behind bars."
"Help?" O'Neill sounded way too amused, and Jim could hear Blair's heart start to pound a little faster as the smell of sour fear gave way to sharp anger.
"Oh man, Jim has done what you couldn't. We already know two of the goa'uld, and you're throwing away the best chance to identify the rest before they go off breeding or eating brains or whatever they do when they aren't playing their power games," Blair snapped.
O'Neill's mouth twitched in amusement before something more calm and serious settled across his features. "And how exactly has he done that?" O'Neill's voice was so quiet that Jim could imagine people falling for that facade of indifference. Blair didn't. He snapped his mouth shut and glared murder at the man.
"It's okay, Chief," Jim said as he turned enough to untangle Blair's hand from his shirt. "I'm a Sentinel. I can spot the goa'uld pretty easily, even from a distance. I can tell you that Teal'c is a jaffa, not just from his file, but from the way I can sense his goa'uld." Jim watched O'Neill's face. "You don't look surprised," he commented. Blair stood up, and Jim shifted to keep himself between Blair and Teal'c.
O'Neill was already nodding. "Your records said you had potential, but not that the senses had expressed. It's one reason why I always passed on your file when you were doing covert ops. My teams tended to go into isolated areas in small teams or pairs, and I didn't want you expressing those senses in the field."
"Sentinel?" Jackson asked. "Is there something you're not sharing with the rest of the class, Jack?"
Blair jumped in before O'Neill could answer. "Did you ever read Sir Richard Burton's work?"
"The guy who married Liz Taylor?" O'Neill immediately asked, and Jim flinched at the beginnings of a pissing contest between O'Neill and Sandburg as they rushed to interrupt each other. Jim had experience accepting orders, but for Blair, the concept of commanding officer didn't fit into his vocabulary. The concept of not interrupting a commanding officer obviously didn't exist either.
"The explorer," Blair said dryly as he rolled his eyes.
"He translated the Kama Sutra. We talked about him at the conference," Jackson agreed quickly. "You said he got you interested in anthropology."
"Totally. But as soon as I got over the fascination with bizarre body positions, most of which don't seem very enjoyable to me, I moved on to his work with South American natives."
"I thought he did most of his work in Arabic speaking areas," Jackson said with a frown as he moved forward a step. O'Neill didn't stop him, and Jim could only hope that indicated some sort of truce because he really didn't want to end up locked under some military base.
Blair smiled. "Oh yeah. Snuck into Mecca, which at the time was like... whoa! But he did work in South America with Sentinels--human beings with five senses heightened beyond the normal range. They can see birds a mile away and smell the game as it moves through an area. They're guardians used to protect the tribe."
"And some branches of the military use them as scouts and spies," O'Neill added, and Jackson turned to the colonel with a wide-eyed expression of shock.
"You knew about this?"
O'Neill shrugged. "No one uses them much since the seventies because, face it, technology pretty much makes the senses obsolete."
Jim flinched before Blair even got his tirade started. "Buddy, you're an idiot. An idiot with issues. No way does technology make the senses obsolete. That's like saying a bird is obsolete because we have airplanes, which is a total fallacy. The senses are integrated and more adaptable than any piece of equipment." Blair had slipped out from behind Jim, and Jim reached out and caught his guide's shoulder, reeling him back in when Blair's finger poked the air a little too close to O'Neill. "Otherwise, how is it that Jim has spotted the goa'uld, and you--for all your precious technology--are still bumbling around like the keystone cops?"
"Chief," Jim warned as O'Neill's face went blank. That wasn't an expression you ever wanted to see on the face of a commanding officer or someone holding you at gunpoint. "Our orders are to cooperate and to offer assistance in identifying the goa'uld. If you don't want assistance, I'll describe the two hosts I have identified, and we'll go our own way."
"Back to your handlers," O'Neill stated.
"I assume they would collect us," Jim agreed. "As of right now, I don't have a way to contact them because it was assumed that you would rather I not report on your activities."
O'Neill gestured toward Teal'c, and he lowered his zat, sliding it under his jacket. The man looked as dangerous without the weapon as he had with it drawn.
"So, you were ordered to report to me?" O'Neill checked.
"Yes, sir," Jim agreed. Blair stood stubbornly silent on the matter.
"Sweet," O'Neill smiled. "Then as your commanding officer, I would appreciate it if you left your weapons here and waited in the far bedroom." Even though O'Neill had a friendly, suddenly pleasant expression, Jim could feel the dread settle in his stomach. Right then, O'Neill would be calling for MP's to come collect them. There wasn't much he could do about that now. He just nodded and slipped his arm around Blair's shoulders to push him toward the bedroom.
"We didn't bring weapons."
"I'm sure you won't mind if I send Teal'c along to check on that." Jim stopped for just a second, but it was long enough to signal Blair there was a problem.
"No way," Blair blurted as he slipped out from under Jim's arm. "He's already controlling himself around one of those alien things, but you can't expect him to stand still and let one touch him. It's instinctive. He knows that thing is a danger to the tribe and it sets off his internal alarms. Man, you may have heard of a Sentinel, but you have no clue what the fuck you're doing if you ignore his instincts."
"Blair, enough," Jim snapped as he reached out and grabbed Blair's arm. He had to use his superior strength to physically haul Blair back when the man clearly wanted to rip O'Neill's eyes out. "I'll deal. Move." Jim still ended up just about dragging Blair back to the bedroom and then standing between Blair and the door.
"He's an ass!" Blair declared the second they were in the room.
"He's an ass who you've been ordered to report to and who can hear you," Jim countered. Jim had the pleasure of hearing O'Neill's team pretty much tell him the same thing. At least Jackson was. Jim tilted his head, and immediately Blair was there, his palm resting against Jim's chest as his warmth soaked into places where Jim was increasingly feeling cold and achy. Bending down, he repeated the furious whispers he could clearly hear from the front room.
"Jack, that was out of line."
"Give it a break, Daniel."
"No, Jack. They probably think you're calling for the firing squad."
"For cryin' out loud. I'm calling the General."
"And how are they supposed to know that?" Jackson hissed angrily.
"He's a Sentinel!" Jack yelled that one loud enough that Blair jumped, obviously hearing that shout on his own. "He is probably listening to every word."
"Sir," Carter said, her voice much softer than the other two, "if he can identify goa'uld maybe we..."
"Don't say it Carter."
"But, sir."
"Literally. Don't say it. He has to be listening to every word. Write whatever you're going to say."
Pencil scratched across the rough surface of paper for several seconds, and Jim almost lost himself in the rub and brush of the strokes before Blair's hand cupped his cheek, pulling him back to the present.
"They're writing notes to each other," Jim whispered.
"I don't suppose you'd be up for a test to see if you can identify the pen strokes--you know whether the sound is going away or coming toward you and how long the stroke is?" Blair said hopefully. Jim looked down at his guide with fond exasperation.
"How am I supposed to know if I'm interpreting the sounds right?" Jim asked.
"Yeah. We should do that under test conditions, but I so need to remember that one."
Jim sighed at the idea of even more tests. Of course, the only thing worse than the idea of more tests was the idea of Blair being so turned off by the thought of bonding that he left altogether. Jim didn't like the idea of spending the next thirty years with Blair without being able to bond. He liked the idea of thirty years without Blair even less.
It was like reading that Section report had opened this hole and all he wanted to do was fill it by pulling Sandburg into his life so tightly he could never leave. But he wouldn't do that to Blair. Not even if it meant living without the pheromones that Blair used to put out with such startling regularity. Maybe if Blair got back to his own life and got to chase a couple of lab techs, the scent would be back. Jim shoved down a little primitive part of his brain that wanted to kill anyone Blair lusted over.
"Carter's coming," Jim said as he pushed Blair a step farther into the room and turned around to face her. It took only a second for her to come in the door, her face an impassive mask even though Jim could smell distress on her. Whatever the colonel had written, she didn't like it. But like a good little soldier, she'd go along; Jim had no doubt of that.
"Colonel O'Neill asked me to check you for weapons. I need you to move to the wall," she said, her voice almost apologetic.
Blair grumbled about territories and pissing contests as he moved to the wall and got into the position. Jim moved to his side and did the same, pressing his lips closed against all the angry words that wanted to come out as Major Carter quickly and efficiently frisked him. He really didn't like being on this end of the situation. He didn't like anything about this end of the situation. Unfortunately, he couldn't figure out what to do about any of it.
Sequel to Shadows of the Past
Fandoms: Primary: Sentinel. Secondary: La Femme Nikita, Stargate SG-1
Slash, Rated: ADULT
Shadows and Siege part one
Shadows and Siege part two
Shadows and Siege part three
Shadows and Siege part four
Shadows and Siege part five
Shadows and Siege part six
Shadows and Siege part seven
"This is… this is so stupid I'm out of words, man," Blair muttered as he flipped through television stations so fast that not even Jim could tell what was on.
"How would you make contact?" Jim asked. "Then again, you already sat down next to one by accident. So, how would you make contact this time?" Blair stopped flipping for a second and glared. For a half-second, Jim thought he was about to get an earful of just exactly what Blair thought, but then he sighed, and went back to flipping through stations on the television.
"We obviously work for the cheap end of the conspiracy network. SG-1 gets a suite all to themselves," Blair pointed out as he glanced around at the hotel room. A fresh floral bouquet on the dark wood dining room table in the corner was starting to wilt, so Jim could guess the team had been here for three to four days with strict orders for housekeeping to not come into the room. Even so, they should have secured their room more effectively. Jim found it frighteningly simple to break in.
"We had an entire wing of the hotel," Jim pointed out.
"So not the same thing. We lied and cheated our way into that. Our tax dollars are actually paying for this," Blair said with a wave of his hand at the entertainment center, the small kitchen against one wall, the open doors into the two large bedrooms tastefully decorated in shades of red. "They have king sized beds. You think their team spends as much time screwing each other as ours?" Blair asked casually, but Jim had to grit his teeth to avoid snapping at the unasked question he could feel just under the surface. Yeah, Blair kept pushing the sex, but it wasn't easy to take when Blair had almost totally stopped smelling of desire. In the past, Blair had been a constant source of pheromones, to the point that Jim sometimes expected to be able to see a cloud around him like Pigpen in the comic strip. Jim hadn't been joking when he suggested that Blair might do a table leg because as horny as Blair was all the time, he might have in the absence of a better partner. Only now, the pheromones were almost absent.
"Military frowns on that, especially within a unit," Jim said shortly.
"Yeah, but I didn't see any signs encouraging it at Section, and our whole unit is getting more sex than Marilyn Monroe at a free-love commune," Blair pointed out.
"There's no smell of sex." Jim held the back of the chair tightly, resisting the urge to go sit next to Blair, to let his hand wander to Blair's knee and lean close. It would get him what he wanted in the short term, a burst of that delicious Blair lust. In the long run, it would cost him his friendship with Blair, and he was just starting to understand what he would do to avoid that.
"Man, you totally ruined my fun. I was going to try and figure out who slept with whom," Blair said, but his voice was strangely flat where Jim expected teasing playfulness.
"Blair," Jim sighed. Maybe he should deal with this issue head on. He would if he could figure out how to start, but how the hell did you demand an explanation when your partner wasn't doing anything consciously? Blair couldn't exactly control his hormones, and if the idea of having Jim physically addicted to his pheromones was enough to scare him out of having any pheromones, Jim couldn't blame him. But he couldn't find a way to tell Blair that he didn't blame him without it sounding like blame.
"Yeah?" Blair was staring at him in concern because Jim had hesitated too long.
"They're coming," Jim said, actually relieved that SG-1 was going to save him from the most awkward conversation of his life. Chasing a man was supposed to simplify things. He still remembered being nineteen and the unit captain coming through when Jim was taking some personal time to practice on the obstacle course. Back then, he'd been slightly on the scrawny side after growing faster than his body could keep up, and he'd struggled to make the Ranger requirements. The captain had leaned against the fence and watched for a long time as Jim ran the course, pushing himself to move faster and more efficiently each time.
'Nice form, Ellison.'
'Thank you, sir.'
'You ever tried fucking a man, Ellison?'
Jim had lost his balance and grabbed at the guide rope to keep from falling off the narrow plank. 'No, sir.'
'Think about it.' The captain had walked away. Twice more he'd watched Jim work on the obstacle course, offering advice on how to approach training and shave seconds off his time. The third time, he'd asked Jim if he wanted to trade handjobs. It really had been that simple. But with Sandburg, nothing was that simple. Four years of living together, and it still wasn't that simple.
Jim glanced over and Blair was clutching the remote tightly enough to break it, and his heart was pounding. With a frown, Jim moved around the chair and let his hand drop to Blair's shoulder. "Calm down, Chief. These are the good guys."
"Right. I know this." Blair nodded absent-mindedly, and Jim tightened his fingers a little. "Okay. I know, they're all about saving the world, not shooting two potential NID agents who've broken into their rooms without giving them a chance to explain."
"They have an archaeologist on the team. I don't think they're the shoot-first type," Jim pointed out. Blair nodded as if he understood, but his heart was still pounding too fast, and he really was about to strangle the remote control. Jim inched closer so that his hip pressed into Blair's arm as he reached down and gently liberated the remote. Letting his hand rest on Blair's wrist, Jim hated himself for needing the faint trace of pheromones that seeped into the air before Blair's face twisted and all hint of desire vanished. Getting the message loud and clear, Jim moved to the end of the couch so that he would be between Blair and the team.
"They know we're in here," Jim said as he leaned back against the arm of the couch and half-sat on it, trying for casual. "Colonel O'Neill is ordering the zats out, so even if they are the shoot-first sort, it's not going to be any worse than training."
"I'm still saying this plan sucks," Blair muttered.
"Yeah, but it's the one we were ordered to do," Jim pointed out. Blair glared at him, making it perfectly clear exactly what he thought of orders.
Jim tilted his head toward the door, watching the green light on the swipe-card lock flash before the door exploded in and armed SG-1 members stormed through. O'Neill was first, his zat held high as he lunged right. Teal'c held his zat lower and went to the left. Major Carter remained with her body half hidden by the door, and Jim could barely see Jackson's glasses as he peered from behind her. Jim just waited with his arms crossed, still leaning on the couch as he let them get into strategic positions.
"Did you get lost on the way to the registration desk maybe?" O'Neill asked as he lowered his weapon, but he could afford to. Carter moved into the room, and both Teal'c and Carter still had weapons trained on them. Jim deliberately leaned back in a position where he would have trouble countering an attack.
"I found the right place," Jim offered calmly. "Calm down, Chief, they're not going to shoot us," Jim said as he tilted his head toward Blair.
"Yeah, yeah, you say that now, but man, I know how annoying your cryptic act gets. Totally annoying." Blair crossed his arms over his chest and inched closer to Jim. Immediately, Jim could feel the shift in the air. Dr. Jackson slipped into the room, closing the door behind him, and both O'Neill and Carter relaxed slightly. Teal'c didn't. Even with the bandanna tied around his forehead, Jim could see the outline of the tattoo pressing against the fabric, and the feel a goa'uld larva this close made his skin crawl.
"Aren't you supposed to be in Cascade chasing down pickpockets and litterbugs?" O'Neill asked with more than a little sarcasm as he headed for the refrigerator in the kitchenette area.
"Pickpockets?" Blair almost yelped. "Oh man, that is so not cool. Reinforcing your own power construct by degrading others is the lowest form--"
"Relax, Chief," Jim interrupted before Blair could get going good. "He's just trying to let us know that he had us checked out."
"He could have done it without the insult. Totally not cool," Blair complained a little more quietly. Teal'c raised an eyebrow, but the zat remained steady.
"Hey, you're the ones who broke into my hotel room," O'Neill pointed out as he turned around with a soda in his hand.
"Dr. Sandburg, maybe you could explain what you're doing here," Jackson quickly interjected as he stepped forward, watching O'Neill for tacit permission to get in the middle. O'Neill leaned against the wall with his soda, and that seemed to be what Jackson wanted. "I read your paper on victimization as a form of psychological infantilism. Fascinating work."
"Um… thanks?" Blair said, obviously put off-balance by the sudden change of topic, and if Jim had to guess, that was Jackson's whole point.
"I have to wonder why you would be breaking into my rooms. There's not much about late dynasty Egypt that would be of interest, and I certainly would have offered you any assistance if you had asked."
Blair snorted. "And the zats are just Egyptian stelae, I suppose?"
Jim watched while SG-1 exchanged cautious glances. "We know about the goa'uld," Jim said calmly. "I've already identified two hosts and was working on identifying more when our paths crossed." Not even the way O'Neill focused on his soda could erase the impression Jim had that he had just aggravated a very powerful man. The casual attitude as O'Neill fingered the tab on the can didn't do anything to hide the steel under that exterior.
Eventually O'Neill made eye contact, and Jim stood up straight as the man evaluated his options. Blair started to say something, and Jim reached down and let his hand rest on Blair's shoulder, silencing him. O'Neill had to make this choice on his own.
"NID?" O'Neill asked.
Blair choked. "Oh man, not even. Those people suck, and not in the sexually satisfying sort of way."
Teal'c's eyebrow rose an entire inch and Dr. Jackson's face twisted and twitched for a second.
"Not fans of the NID then?" O'Neill finally turned his focus toward Blair, and Jim had to fight an urge to put himself between the two men.
"They want to capture the goa'uld, and excuse me, but capturing brain-sucking aliens is stupid on a level that I don't normally see outside of a horror flick."
This time, Dr. Jackson choked on something, and O'Neill's mouth actually twitched in a smile.
"They're not known for their great thinking," O'Neill admitted, "but that still doesn't answer the question of who you work for."
"Sir," Jim interrupted, "I don't have the authority to discuss my employers, but we were led to believe you would not get involved on Earth. In your absence, we were ordered to identify and eliminate the goa'uld."
This time O'Neill snorted. "I'm not letting snakeheads set up shop on Earth. However, I still don't see how a cop from Cascade is involved in this, and the amount of classified information you seem to have access to suggests that the safest course of action might be to transfer you to the nearest military facility."
Jim could feel Blair fist his shirt so tightly that it pulled across his chest. "You could do that," Jim agreed. He certainly wasn't going to try and get in a pissing contest with O'Neill over that. "However, I wouldn't be much help to you behind bars."
"Help?" O'Neill sounded way too amused, and Jim could hear Blair's heart start to pound a little faster as the smell of sour fear gave way to sharp anger.
"Oh man, Jim has done what you couldn't. We already know two of the goa'uld, and you're throwing away the best chance to identify the rest before they go off breeding or eating brains or whatever they do when they aren't playing their power games," Blair snapped.
O'Neill's mouth twitched in amusement before something more calm and serious settled across his features. "And how exactly has he done that?" O'Neill's voice was so quiet that Jim could imagine people falling for that facade of indifference. Blair didn't. He snapped his mouth shut and glared murder at the man.
"It's okay, Chief," Jim said as he turned enough to untangle Blair's hand from his shirt. "I'm a Sentinel. I can spot the goa'uld pretty easily, even from a distance. I can tell you that Teal'c is a jaffa, not just from his file, but from the way I can sense his goa'uld." Jim watched O'Neill's face. "You don't look surprised," he commented. Blair stood up, and Jim shifted to keep himself between Blair and Teal'c.
O'Neill was already nodding. "Your records said you had potential, but not that the senses had expressed. It's one reason why I always passed on your file when you were doing covert ops. My teams tended to go into isolated areas in small teams or pairs, and I didn't want you expressing those senses in the field."
"Sentinel?" Jackson asked. "Is there something you're not sharing with the rest of the class, Jack?"
Blair jumped in before O'Neill could answer. "Did you ever read Sir Richard Burton's work?"
"The guy who married Liz Taylor?" O'Neill immediately asked, and Jim flinched at the beginnings of a pissing contest between O'Neill and Sandburg as they rushed to interrupt each other. Jim had experience accepting orders, but for Blair, the concept of commanding officer didn't fit into his vocabulary. The concept of not interrupting a commanding officer obviously didn't exist either.
"The explorer," Blair said dryly as he rolled his eyes.
"He translated the Kama Sutra. We talked about him at the conference," Jackson agreed quickly. "You said he got you interested in anthropology."
"Totally. But as soon as I got over the fascination with bizarre body positions, most of which don't seem very enjoyable to me, I moved on to his work with South American natives."
"I thought he did most of his work in Arabic speaking areas," Jackson said with a frown as he moved forward a step. O'Neill didn't stop him, and Jim could only hope that indicated some sort of truce because he really didn't want to end up locked under some military base.
Blair smiled. "Oh yeah. Snuck into Mecca, which at the time was like... whoa! But he did work in South America with Sentinels--human beings with five senses heightened beyond the normal range. They can see birds a mile away and smell the game as it moves through an area. They're guardians used to protect the tribe."
"And some branches of the military use them as scouts and spies," O'Neill added, and Jackson turned to the colonel with a wide-eyed expression of shock.
"You knew about this?"
O'Neill shrugged. "No one uses them much since the seventies because, face it, technology pretty much makes the senses obsolete."
Jim flinched before Blair even got his tirade started. "Buddy, you're an idiot. An idiot with issues. No way does technology make the senses obsolete. That's like saying a bird is obsolete because we have airplanes, which is a total fallacy. The senses are integrated and more adaptable than any piece of equipment." Blair had slipped out from behind Jim, and Jim reached out and caught his guide's shoulder, reeling him back in when Blair's finger poked the air a little too close to O'Neill. "Otherwise, how is it that Jim has spotted the goa'uld, and you--for all your precious technology--are still bumbling around like the keystone cops?"
"Chief," Jim warned as O'Neill's face went blank. That wasn't an expression you ever wanted to see on the face of a commanding officer or someone holding you at gunpoint. "Our orders are to cooperate and to offer assistance in identifying the goa'uld. If you don't want assistance, I'll describe the two hosts I have identified, and we'll go our own way."
"Back to your handlers," O'Neill stated.
"I assume they would collect us," Jim agreed. "As of right now, I don't have a way to contact them because it was assumed that you would rather I not report on your activities."
O'Neill gestured toward Teal'c, and he lowered his zat, sliding it under his jacket. The man looked as dangerous without the weapon as he had with it drawn.
"So, you were ordered to report to me?" O'Neill checked.
"Yes, sir," Jim agreed. Blair stood stubbornly silent on the matter.
"Sweet," O'Neill smiled. "Then as your commanding officer, I would appreciate it if you left your weapons here and waited in the far bedroom." Even though O'Neill had a friendly, suddenly pleasant expression, Jim could feel the dread settle in his stomach. Right then, O'Neill would be calling for MP's to come collect them. There wasn't much he could do about that now. He just nodded and slipped his arm around Blair's shoulders to push him toward the bedroom.
"We didn't bring weapons."
"I'm sure you won't mind if I send Teal'c along to check on that." Jim stopped for just a second, but it was long enough to signal Blair there was a problem.
"No way," Blair blurted as he slipped out from under Jim's arm. "He's already controlling himself around one of those alien things, but you can't expect him to stand still and let one touch him. It's instinctive. He knows that thing is a danger to the tribe and it sets off his internal alarms. Man, you may have heard of a Sentinel, but you have no clue what the fuck you're doing if you ignore his instincts."
"Blair, enough," Jim snapped as he reached out and grabbed Blair's arm. He had to use his superior strength to physically haul Blair back when the man clearly wanted to rip O'Neill's eyes out. "I'll deal. Move." Jim still ended up just about dragging Blair back to the bedroom and then standing between Blair and the door.
"He's an ass!" Blair declared the second they were in the room.
"He's an ass who you've been ordered to report to and who can hear you," Jim countered. Jim had the pleasure of hearing O'Neill's team pretty much tell him the same thing. At least Jackson was. Jim tilted his head, and immediately Blair was there, his palm resting against Jim's chest as his warmth soaked into places where Jim was increasingly feeling cold and achy. Bending down, he repeated the furious whispers he could clearly hear from the front room.
"Jack, that was out of line."
"Give it a break, Daniel."
"No, Jack. They probably think you're calling for the firing squad."
"For cryin' out loud. I'm calling the General."
"And how are they supposed to know that?" Jackson hissed angrily.
"He's a Sentinel!" Jack yelled that one loud enough that Blair jumped, obviously hearing that shout on his own. "He is probably listening to every word."
"Sir," Carter said, her voice much softer than the other two, "if he can identify goa'uld maybe we..."
"Don't say it Carter."
"But, sir."
"Literally. Don't say it. He has to be listening to every word. Write whatever you're going to say."
Pencil scratched across the rough surface of paper for several seconds, and Jim almost lost himself in the rub and brush of the strokes before Blair's hand cupped his cheek, pulling him back to the present.
"They're writing notes to each other," Jim whispered.
"I don't suppose you'd be up for a test to see if you can identify the pen strokes--you know whether the sound is going away or coming toward you and how long the stroke is?" Blair said hopefully. Jim looked down at his guide with fond exasperation.
"How am I supposed to know if I'm interpreting the sounds right?" Jim asked.
"Yeah. We should do that under test conditions, but I so need to remember that one."
Jim sighed at the idea of even more tests. Of course, the only thing worse than the idea of more tests was the idea of Blair being so turned off by the thought of bonding that he left altogether. Jim didn't like the idea of spending the next thirty years with Blair without being able to bond. He liked the idea of thirty years without Blair even less.
It was like reading that Section report had opened this hole and all he wanted to do was fill it by pulling Sandburg into his life so tightly he could never leave. But he wouldn't do that to Blair. Not even if it meant living without the pheromones that Blair used to put out with such startling regularity. Maybe if Blair got back to his own life and got to chase a couple of lab techs, the scent would be back. Jim shoved down a little primitive part of his brain that wanted to kill anyone Blair lusted over.
"Carter's coming," Jim said as he pushed Blair a step farther into the room and turned around to face her. It took only a second for her to come in the door, her face an impassive mask even though Jim could smell distress on her. Whatever the colonel had written, she didn't like it. But like a good little soldier, she'd go along; Jim had no doubt of that.
"Colonel O'Neill asked me to check you for weapons. I need you to move to the wall," she said, her voice almost apologetic.
Blair grumbled about territories and pissing contests as he moved to the wall and got into the position. Jim moved to his side and did the same, pressing his lips closed against all the angry words that wanted to come out as Major Carter quickly and efficiently frisked him. He really didn't like being on this end of the situation. He didn't like anything about this end of the situation. Unfortunately, he couldn't figure out what to do about any of it.