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Fallen asleep, Chief...? At last.
So you wait a few minutes to be safe, watching Sandburg, listening to his breathing (through the muffled buzz and thump of the tribal 'music' he's playing through earphones and thinks you can't hear). You wait, even though you know he's just like a small kid that way, when he's out, he's out like a light, and waking him by main force next morning is one of the unexpected and bizarre trials of being The Sentinel of the Great... Loft.
Which is unnervingly tidy for once, he must have taken your last two or three, four... seven lectures of house rules to heart. Not that you think it'll last, but you can enjoy it while it does. A couple of clutter-free days, if you're lucky.
He's totally out for the count tonight, it's been a hell of a week at Rainier, and bedlam at the PD. So what's new?
You gather up a few drifting papers, scribbled notes for one or another of his classes, you think (at least, you hope - his writing's as bad as any medical doctor wannabe, but the words 'threshold', 'piercing' and 'ethno-something-torical attitude to pain sensitivity' tend to leap out at a lab rat, you know?) and pile them neatly on the table, along with a vaguely horrifying and totally fake Patagonian artifact he uses as a paperweight... when it's not buried under papers, that is.
Yeah, he did tidy up, you can see that. Sandburg lives for clutter, and every so often it all meanders its way out of his room and threatens to take over until you blow your stack, he moves it back into the room, and we start all over again. Nothing like having a set and orderly routine, Sandburg.
Stop at the door, stare in - whether in wonder or horror, who knows? Sure, the loft's tidy - no books, no papers, no plates and cups and terrifying fetish whatchamacalllits - but that's because he's moved them all in here. Onto his table, his shelves, his chair, his floor, his bed for chrissake.
And he's gone to sleep on them. Stripped down to his shorts and - god knows why - one sock, collapsed onto the nest of academic chaos and is dead to the world. From the look on his face - and the abandoned sprawl the rest of him is managing - must be a pretty damn good dream.
Be nice if... no, you don't go there. Not worth it, remember? The sprawl's probably for that sweet little brunette he was so lyrical about last week, not...
So don't.
Christ, how can anyone sleep on one book, let alone three? You can't believe you're squinting at a brick-sized hardback with naked people on the cover and words like "psychocultural" and "symbolic ecstasy" on the spine, or another one, half-open and with tiny print that would zone you into anthropological hell if you were stupid enough - to -
Try and see what the hell " psychological cleansing... pain - and -"
"...And examples of - of -"
Fuck. A zone might be preferable to what you're think there, Chief.
Shake your head, try to clear it, both of the zone and the pictures Sandburg's bedtime reading conjure up. And that's just the reading that include the nest of papers, photocopies, scribbled pages, pictures, you name it.
You don't want to set foot in the paper (and crockery, and everything else) tornado, but the Sentinel inside can't help wincing at the thumpthumpdronethumpdrone of the 'music' - well, he calls it music - still playing through his earphones. Proves how damn tired Blair is if he can sleep though... but hell, he likes the stuff. He probably went to sleep when he was a kid, Naomi's idea of lullab-
Shit, how the hell does he sleep though that din??? He snuffles a little, but doesn't even notice when you take the earphones away, holding the ear-splitting things out like some sort of garbage till you find the off switch on the player.
So sue me, Chief, it's not Santana so I don't care.
Hell, it's probably some sort of Polynesian love song... but you won't ask him, he's all too ready to tell you a million things you didn't want to know about exotic erotica as it is, without realizing what talking about it does to...
You weren't going there, remember?
Yeah, right. You stare down at him for a minute, but you know all too well if you do go there... you're on your own. Whoever he's thinking off as he stretches and shifts, and mutters something that you force yourself not to hear... whoever she is, she's not you.
Obviously.
Shutting down the laptop perched on the chair, now... yeah, you'll be able to tell Blair, hand on heart, that yes, you saved whatever he was doing and no, you didn't read a word of it.
(It was thirty-seven words, and you have no idea what thirty-six of them were about. You're not sorry.)
Three cups, one stale coffee, one staler chamomile, one... oh god, you do not want to know what was in that one on the floor. Mainly because he's probably gonna try and make you drink it sometime, and ignorance is even more bliss to a susceptible and all-too-easily-suckered Sentinel. You gather them up anyway, with the plate that still has the pizza that stood in - at midnight - for dinner.
You think about trying to move him off the books, maybe throwing a blanket over his near nakedness... but your hands are full, it's not that cold, he looks good - as in feeling good, him feeling good, and yeah he probably does.
Christ. Get your mind off it, Ellison... and go and find something else to do. On your own.
Anyway giving him hell - when he opens those baby blues tomorrow with a whole tribe of naked people in front of his nose, inky anthropology all over where he's been lying, and only one sock - should be good for a week at least.
'Night, Chief. Sweet dreams...
