"Seen my glasses, man?"

Jim didn't need to look up from the sports page. The stats looked pretty good for the Jags this year. "On your head, Ray Charles."

Snort.

"These are my computer glasses. I want my reading glasses," Blair explained, roaming the loft looking under books and papers that had not been put away last night.

"How many do you own?" Jim moved on to another brief box of text that predicted the college game this week. It was weird having these early morning conversations. Hell, it was weird having a roommate again.

Oops, note to self, don't describe Carolyn as just a roommate. The woman carries a gun.

Blair was still talking. Jim tuned back in.

"... reading and one for computer work, oh, and one - an old pair - that I use when I know I'm going to get messy. I had a fourth, prescription sucks, but hey, glasses cost a fortune, right? They're around here somewhere. I think they survived the explosion. Anyway you'd be an idiot to toss a perfectly good pair because..."

Jim tuned out. Second note to self; don't ask Sandburg a question unless you had the time for the answer or you really wanted to know. Jim glanced at his watch.

Neither.

The coffee tasted burnt but Jim's need for caffeine ruled his brain. He leaned back against the driver's seat and finished the last bit before tucking the Seven-Eleven cup away in the small trash can on the floor between the seats. He glanced at the passenger floor. "Sandburg, put your wrapper in the garbage can."

"Sorry," Blair answered, using his left foot to scoot the plastic closer to where the specially built garbage can sat astride the hump that rose form the floor. He didn't look up from the text book he held in his left hand. His right hand directed the faint penlight beam. "We should work on testing your aperture, man. This suggests your focus..."

Jim tuned out, a skill he was becoming proficient at. He frowned. Litter belonged in the trash can, yet Sandburg's idea of neat and orderly paralleled the horseshoe and hand grenade theory.

Jim pointed. "IN the can, Junior. Put it in the can."

Blair did, breaking off from his explanation with such genuine surprise that Jim felt bad.

Time to lighten up. After all, the kid was finally sleeping through the night without dealing with his post-Lash fallout. He tapped a flannel shoulder. "I just don't want the Ford to start looking like the loft."

Blair smiled, relief and sparkly humor in his blue irises giving a hurt feelings `all clear'. "I'd speculate that, had Burton written about the Sentinel's hut, he would have ranted about the near phobic compulsion for cleanliness and -"

"Wouldn't it be better to wait till you had real light to read all that stuff?" Jim cut in. Did this guy ever talk like a normal person? "After all, you keep this up and you'll have five pairs of glasses."

Blair laughed. "Okay, okay. Let's talk tools of the trade, shall we?"

Jim needed a freaking road map to guide through a typical Sandburg conversation.

"Tools? What? Hammers and wrenches?" He glanced back at the dock yard. The suspect was still a no show.

Jim had to admit, shifts moved faster with a college student along.

"Yeah, if you were a plumber," Blair answered as if Jim had forgotten to take his medication that day. "Your tool would probably be, among other things, traditionally your gun. So, Jim. How many guns to you have?"

Ah, this is where he was going. "Well, let's see. I've got my military side arm, a few that I picked up in my travels..." He saw the shadow of reprove on Blair's face. "... all perfectly legal, Sandburg."

"Riight."

"Wiseass."

"Yep, but please continue."

Jim was learning that Blair's little motion he made with his right hand, like he was stirring the air, meant he was well on his way to proving his point. Oh, well. Chock this up to another way to kill time.

"Certainly, professor. My Sig. My back up. A sweet little Walther PPK I bought off my academy instructor -"

"Shit, man." Blair leaned against the door. "You could start a revolution. I think I don't want to know anymore. That's enough."

"Enough what?"

"I'm just saying, you have your tools of the trade. My eyesight is part of mine. I research. I record. I need my eyes. I have glasses to help. I have to have back up, too."

Jim smiled sweetly. "I'll order you a glass case that straps to your ankle."

He got a shoulder punch for that one. Light, not too hard.

"You know, you have a point. Your mouth is another tool. You're always shooting it off."

Hurt looked back through the wire rimmed spectacles.

Jim's follow through was cut off by the appearance of the suspect.

"Show time, Chief," he said, all business.

Jim hurt. His face was swollen. That last punch nearly fractured his jaw. His gut throbbed from the treatment it had been given.

The suspect had not been alone.

Leaning against the wall, he contemplated his options, glad he had this short respite from the gang's attention. They had thrown him in an ancient cold storage locker.

Thankfully, Blair had stayed in the truck.

Jim did not want to think about what these cretins would do to his roommate.

The thick door opened and Blair was thrown inside, landing hard on his shoulder with a grunt. The door slammed shut.

Jim hurt too much to move.

Blair rolled onto his back, blinking stupidly at the high ceiling. His glasses hung from one ear. His breath fogged a lens. He looked like a train wreck victim with a classic `what just happened' expression down pat.

"Tell me you called for back up," Jim asked. Had talking not caused his head to pound, he would have asked Blair which word in the phrase `stay in the truck' he hadn't understood.

"JIM!" Blair rolled stiffly off the floor and scooted on his butt to Jim's side. "Ohmygod, Jim. You okay? No, shit, of course not."

Jim permitted the concerned touch to his face. From anyone else Jim would be brushing it off. Something about Sandburg made it... he couldn't figure it out.

"Tell me you called, Chief. Or we're in serious trouble here." His lip felt like it had swelled out to next week. It made him sound drunk.

"I tried. I so tried, man." Blair's fingers had moved on to Jim's shoulders. The kid was doing a decent field triage exam. "The cell phone signal out here sucks. I don't know if anyone heard me. They found me making the call."

Jim sighed. His police radio hadn't gotten though to the dispatcher either. Some parts of town were like that. The city counsel had been stingy with the purse strings, delaying the building of more repeaters to better blanket the growing city. The fire department was in the same boat. Would someone have to die before they got the message?

"You okay?" Jim squinted in the dim light. A distant street lamp filtered a beam of sickly yellow light through a high, narrow window at the ceiling.

"I'm good," Blair answered automatically. He had a bruise on his cheek and a lump on his forehead. Nothing too bad. "We gotta get out of here, though. I heard them talking about blowing up the building to cover their tracks."

Jim sighed. "Swell."

Blair stood, one arm circling his middle. He walked like an old man to the door. Pushing with a shoulder, he grunted from the exertion, then went to his knees to peer into the old keyhole. There was no knob to turn. "The room must be an old ice locker or something left over from the cannery days."

Jim didn't answer. He looked up at the high windows. There was nothing to stand on. The walls were thickly insulated. No way could they kick out, besides, judging by the pain and tightness in his gut, the goons had ruptured something.

"What do we do, Jim?" Blair was back at his side.

Jim extended his hearing. He'd tried before and hadn't made it past the rats that lived under the floor and ran through the crawl space above. Now he could stretch out over the surrounding deserted blocks. Go figure.

"We've got some time. They're gone."

"Probably off to shop at dynamite-R-us." Blair licked his lips, looking at Jim expectantly.

Jim sighed, feeling a hundred-years old. The last man in his crew had looked at him like that, after the chopper crash, right before he had died. "Sandburg... I'm really sorry, kid."

Blair sat back. "Screw that talk, man." He patted Jim's shoulder. "What say I take point here? You're looking pretty beat up and all." He flashed a cheeky grin, barely hiding the fear that lurked beneath.

Jim played along. He managed to work his beaten facial muscles into a half smile. "Go get `em tiger."

Jim woke from surgery to find Blair and Simon at his bed side. Someone had stuffed his head, sinuses and mouth with dusty old wads of laundry lint. He slurped the water from the straw that Blair held to his lips. He shifted experimentally and groaned as the pain hit.

"Jim, take a steady breath and close your eyes. Focus on just your breath for a minute. Picture a calm ocean. The pain is just an itty bitty swell, but mostly the water is flat. You're a peace."

The pain soothed out and left him. "Thanks," he whispered. His voice was a stranger, an old man.

"You're welcome, man." Blair squeezed his upper arm. "I'm just glad you're with me."

"How do you feel, Jim?" Simon asked from the other side. "The doctor said you had a ruptured spleen."

"Had being the crucial word, man," Blair added with a frown. "They removed it."

Jim had more pressing questions than what he was going to do without a spleen. "How'd we... get out? Wha' happened?"

"Let's let the doctor look at you first," Simon answered. "She's on the way."

"No, tell me," Jim said. Frankly he wasn't sure how much longer he was going to keep his eyes open. He didn't remember anything past Blair telling him he would take charge.

Blair leaned close. "The bad guys took away your tools, but forgot about mine."

Jim's fuddled brain tried and failed to sort that out.

"Let's just say you owe me more than that ankle case, man." He was holding something over Jim's face to look at.

Jim reined in his focus. Blair's glasses, only one of the ear pieces had been snapped off. A sturdy wire about four inches long remained.

"I picked the lock," Blair reported proudly.

Experience told him even a chuckle would hurt. Jim smiled as he closed his eyes. "That's my partner."

He fell back asleep and missed Blair's brilliant smile.

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