Exhausted, battered, and sunburned to a crisp, Detective Jim Ellison would have been better off parked on the sofa at home with a beer. He knew this because four people had told him so in the last hour and a half. Three of them were cops and the fourth was a doctor, so he had it on good authority. Still he was sitting here on the plastic chair from hell, with his sunburned face buried in his hands, unable to tear himself away from the steady thumping and the soft rhythmic whisper of air that told him his world was more or less intact again.

A slight hitch in the rhythmic air flow and the faint hiss of rough sheets over bare limbs roused him from his half zoned state and he looked up hopefully. The bright spark of joy that drove him out of his chair dimmed slightly when his best friend and partner blinked at him once, and then closed his eyes and, quite deliberately, turned away.

"Hey," Ellison said, "That's a hell of a welcome."

"Just go," Sandburg said wearily. "I'm not going down that road again, man."

OK. This wasn't exactly what he'd expected. Ellison parked a hip on the edge of the bed. "You want to tell me what's going on here, Chief?"

Sandburg's face twisted with pain at the sound of the affectionate nickname. "God, Simon, don't. It's hard enough."

"All right. I'm officially insulted now."

Sandburg turned his head to look at him, hope dawning heartbreakingly in his eyes. "You're..."

"Not Simon. I can promise you that."

Confusion still reigned supreme in the blue eyes but a tentative joy was creeping in.

Ellison grinned at him. "OK? We good here?"

"Ohmygod. Oh, man. I thought..." He reached out for Ellison with his good arm.

Macho image be damned. Ellison gathered him in and gave his unruly curls a good ruffling before he let him go. "I know. I thought the same thing about you for a while. But we're both here now, so there's nothing to worry about, right?"

Sandburg only shook his head. Exhaustion, pain, and the drugs still lingering in his system left him emotionally brittle and it was clear that nothing but pride was keeping him from breaking down entirely.

"Relax," Ellison said, "I'm going to get out of here now, and let you get some rest. Simon didn't think you believed him, so I just wanted you to see for yourself, OK?"

Sandburg nodded, still struggling to pull himself together.

"Good," Ellison said, and rose to leave.

"Yesterday," Sandburg said.

Ellison stopped and looked down at him.

"Yesterday," Sandburg said again. His voice still had a rough edge from the measures they'd taken to rid him of the drugs. "Simon was here. I was pretty out of it, ya know, from the drugs, and I thought he was you. But he wasn't." His blue eyes met Ellison's with sudden intensity. "Jim, he wasn't you."

Ellison swallowed hard, and his eyes closed briefly. "I know." He reached out awkwardly and patted Sandburg's shoulder. "We have some things to talk about, Chief. But there's no reason for you to worry. They tell me if you sleep tonight and eat something tomorrow you can go home tomorrow afternoon, so let's just work on that, OK?"

"No, wait. I didn't ... Jim, it was an accident, man."

No way in hell was Ellison going there now. "I know," he said. "Get some sleep. I'll see you in the morning."

He hated to leave, but there was going to be some heavy fallout and this was neither the time nor the place to deal with it. Ellison wasn't up to it and God knew Sandburg wasn't in any shape.

He returned to the loft, grateful for the care Simon had taken to make sure the place was well cleaned. He couldn't have dealt with the visual reminders of his roommate's second brush with death in less than a week. Still he couldn't help but notice that there wasn't a beer in the place and the crew had missed a few glass splinters. One of them nicked his finger when he tried to pick it up from the floor. Ellison swore and stuck the finger in his mouth, but he continued to collect the slivers and drop them in the trash until he was sure there were no more to find. Only then did he allow himself the luxury of showering until the hot water ran out and then falling asleep in front of the TV.

The news from the hospital was good. Sandburg had slept peacefully through most of the night and polished off his breakfast obediently if not exactly enthusiastically. By the time Ellison arrived to pick him up he was already dressed in the jeans and sweatshirt Ellison had left for him on his last visit. The doctors seemed willing to overlook the question of how he'd come to swallow a full bottle of prescription painkillers. After all, as Ellison pointed out, if it hadn't been the accident Sandburg insisted it was, the situation that triggered it no longer existed, and he had the entire Major Crimes Division as a safety net if he needed one.

They drove home in silence. Sandburg still looked like he'd been dragged behind a horse, and Ellison had a feeling he wouldn't last much beyond the sofa, if he made it that far. Blair surprised him, though, and rallied a little when they made it home. His broad grin when they got inside was a pretty credible attempt at `tired but normal'. "Man I thought I'd never be glad to see this place again and now it looks like heaven. You want me to cook something for dinner?"

"I want you to park somewhere and try not to break anything." It came out harsher than he'd intended. He tried to soften it with a smile but he wasn't at all sure it worked. "Why don't you take the sofa? Just this once, I'll let you hold the remote."

Blair snorted. "What did the doctor tell you that you're keeping from me?"

Ellison meant to laugh, but that wasn't the sound that welled up from his throat. He clenched his jaw furiously to keep it from escaping.

Sandburg's eyes darkened, and he settled on the sofa with a sigh, wincing as the movement jarred his injured shoulder.

"Blair," Ellison said.

Sandburg looked up.

"Relax, will you? You're wound up like a jack-in-the-box. Everything's good. More than good." He took the other end of the sofa and grabbed the remote.

"Hey!" Blair protested.

"Snooze you lose, Chief."

"That's cold, man. Take advantage of a one-armed cripple."

The sentinel cocked his head. "Do you hear that?"

"Hear what?"

"I'm not sure. Sounds like a whole orchestra of violins."

Sandburg snatched the pillow from behind his head and pitched it at him.

"Oof," Ellison said, catching it and tucking it behind his own head. "You wanna toss me the other one? This one's a little flat."

"Yeah well, have this to go with it!" Sandburg retorted, and flipped him the bird. He couldn't hold the scowl though and gave up the attempt pretty quickly. When he kicked off his shoes and settled back, his bare toes wound up just barely in contact with Ellison's knee. Ellison pretended not to notice. All in all, life wasn't half bad.

Ellison woke in the morning with vague memories of having crawled half asleep from the sofa to his bed somewhere in the wee hours. He lay there for a long time, listening to Sandburg sleeping soundly in the room below him. They'd ordered Chinese for dinner and stayed up watching classic sci-fi on the Showtime Beyond channel until he'd caught Sandburg drooling on the arm of the sofa somewhere between Forbidden Planet and The Outer Limits. Ellison had called a halt then and ordered him to bed. On second thought, he'd given himself the same order, and for the first time in what seemed like forever, he'd slept straight through to mid-morning. The day was dark and overcast, which explained, why the morning sun hadn't kicked him out of bed at the crack of dawn, as it normally did. He was tempted to lie where he was, but his muscles were still protesting the abuse of the past week, and his sunburned skin was beginning to itch. He wanted a long hot shower and he wanted to be sure he left time for the hot water tank to top off before Blair needed it.

Afterward, comfortably clad in his oldest jeans and a Cascade PD sweatshirt, he made a quick trip to the European bakery they favored on special occasions. When he returned, Sandburg was in the shower. Ellison got a pot of coffee going and by the time Sandburg emerged, awkwardly toweling his hair with one hand, Ellison was sipping coffee and perusing the sports page. He set the paper aside and gave his roommate a concerned glance.

"How's the arm? Shouldn't it be strapped?"

"I couldn't quite manage it," Sandburg said, ignoring the first question.

Ellison let him get away with it. He helped him with the sling and strap, and then laid out the pastries he'd chosen to tempt Sandburg's returning appetite.

Sandburg's eyes widened at the sight. "Jim. I'm touched. You baked."

"Slaved over `em all night," Ellison said, "I hope you appreciate it."

"More than you know. Hospital oatmeal is the worst, man." Sandburg's hand hovered between the chocolate croissant and the flaky cream cheese pillow, but finally landed on the cream cheese, as Ellison had known it would. Chocolate had its lures, but Sandburg's relationship with those cream cheese pastries bordered on the indecent.

"Coffee?" Ellison said.

"Oh yeah."

Ellison grinned at his enthusiasm and went to pour him a cup. Sandburg still looked like lukewarm death, but he was clearly on the mend. Settling back at the table with his own cup and a chocolate Bismarck, Ellison wanted to give in to the warm fuzzy feeling and leave the past in the past. The last thing he wanted was to see its shadow in Blair's eyes again. But the spectre was there with them, too insistent to be ignored.

"Jim? You're not zoning on me are you?"

"Hm?" Ellison shook his head as much to clear his brain as to answer the question. "No. I'm not zoning. Eat your breakfast."

"Been there done that." Sandburg swallowed the last bite of pastry and licked the last of the cream cheese from his fingers then held his fingers up and wiggled them. "See?"

The act was meant to win a smile from Ellison, but it was all bravado. What he was really after was reassurance. Ellison wanted to give it to him but when he thought about what he'd so nearly come home to, he wanted to shake him until his teeth rattled.

"You're pissed at me," Sandburg said.

"No. I'm not... Yes! I am! I'm pissed as hell at you! What in God's name were you thinking? Jesus, Blair!"

Sandburg leapt out of his chair, shoving it back so violently that it overturned. "Yeah, well I was pretty pissed at you too, you know!"

Shocked, Ellison could only stare at him.

"You left me, man! One minute I'm in the water and you're telling me -- promising me -- that you're not going to let go of me. You're not going to leave me. You and me forever, buddy! And the next thing I know, I'm waking up alone and Simon's telling me you're gone. Not `gone to the store' gone. Not `gone under cover for a couple of weeks' gone, but gone! As in never coming back! You left me! Just took off where I couldn't... Where I couldn't... Ah hell."

"Where you couldn't what, Chief?" Ellison demanded. "Couldn't follow me? You really think that's what I'd want?"

Sandburg glared at him, breathing hard, his jaw set stubbornly. Then the fight seemed to go out of him all at once and he looked away. "Where I couldn't watch your back, man." He reached down awkwardly to right the chair and dropped into it wearily.

Ellison swallowed hard. "Look, I'm a cop. Risking my life is part of my job. I accept that. I was a soldier before I was a cop. I wouldn't be any good at either one if I couldn't face my own mortality. What I can't face is thinking that every time I put my life on the line in the course of doing my job, I'm putting your life on the line too. That I've eclipsed your life to the point that every day that I go in to do my job, it's like putting a gun to your head. That scares the hell out of me, Chief. Can you understand that?"

Sandburg toyed with his coffee cup, staring into the depths of it as though he expected the answers to come floating up from the depths of the dark liquid. When he finally raised his eyes to meet Ellison's, there was truth in them. "Jim, I swear to God, what happened that night was an accident. I must have taken a couple of pills and forgotten that I had. And then, well I'd had a couple of drinks and I think I just got confused. It was stupid, but it wasn't deliberate."

"All right," Ellison said. "I believe you, but..."

"I mean, I thought about it. But I knew if I did it and you caught me on the other side somewhere, you'd kick my ass to hell and back. And I wasn't all that sure about the back part."

"You got that right," Ellison said. He left the table and turned away. "I'm sorry about letting go. It was a rogue wave. It just tore me away from you and I got disoriented. The noise of the storm and the waves slapping at me. My sense were totally out of control."

"I never blamed you for that," Sandburg said. "It wasn't your fault. I was just so damned pissed at you for not coming back. I guess it sounds pretty stupid, when you think about it."

"Now that you mention it." Ellison turned and winked at him.

Sandburg chuckled, "We're a pair aren't we?"

"Something like that, Chief." He walked to the door and pulled it open to reveal Simon Banks standing with one hand poised to knock.

"Damn you, Ellison," Simon said.

"Good morning to you too. Don't touch the chocolate croissant. It's Sandburg's. The rest is fair game."

"Hey Simon," Blair called out from the table.

"I can't stay anyway," Banks said. "I just wanted to see how the kid was doing. And when you're coming back to work."

"He's good, and I'll be in in the morning. I've had about all the vacation I can stand."

"And I've about had my fill of covering for you," Banks said. "I'd never realized just how tough your job is. I don't think my heart could take it for long."

Ellison glanced at his roommate. "Sometimes I don't know how mine does, Simon, but it all works out. Thanks though. For covering." He met Simon's eyes deliberately.

Bank's answering smile had more than a little sorrow lurking behind it. "Just don't be asking me to do it again any time soon, and we'll call it even."

"God, you two. Get a room." Sandburg said. "Oh, no! No! Hey, come on. There are two of you! And I'm injured! No, don't! I was only joking! Aw, c'mon guys! Jiiiim!!"

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