Night Watcher

I'm an addict.

I realized it earlier today, except that my drug of choice is my best friend, partner, roommate. I crave him just as surely as any junkie craves his next fix, and like any junkie, the more I get, the more I crave.

Which is no doubt why I'm standing here, at two in the morning, one foot on the stairs, wondering if tonight's fix will be the one cut with strychnine.

God knows I've tried to kick the habit. I've picked fights, bribed my way into expeditions to the unknown, done every annoying thing I can think of to get him to throw me out, cut me off from my supply for good. Dammit, the man just has way too much tolerance.

I could always just pack up and leave on my own, find someplace else to live. Something else to write my thesis on. Never see him again. Make a clean break of it, put it all behind me, and pray I survive the withdrawal symptoms.

Not!

So I move up the stairs, mouse quiet. Watch the squeaky step in the middle.

Now I'm here, the edge of his bedroom, and I can see the clean line of him sprawled out in deep sleep, pale skin gleaming in the moonlight.

Step closer. Pause. Two more steps. I can see him clearly in the light. Even relaxed in deepest slumber he makes my heart ache with his beauty. Mistress Moon shines down, and I can see the dark and light play across his back, hard muscle cut under smooth skin. If I could get closer I could see the faint scarring left from the crash that killed his squad mates and woke his Sentinel abilities. God knows I've studied those scars enough to trace them from memory, and the thought of tracing them across his body with tongue and hands, soothing away the faint ache that I can see is still there, mentally and physically, is making me so hard I hurt.

Look somewhere else, quick!

Yeah, right. At what? Across his tight ass, down hard thighs and calves to the soles of his feet? Like I can get below his knees. So what then? Up? Across broad shoulders to strong arms and hands, arms that have carried me out of more than one deep-shit situation, hands that take mine in friendship, that I would die to feel run across my own body just once. His neck? That stubborn, unbending, mule-thickened neck, that I want to run my lips across? Sometimes I can see the pulse beating just there at the base of his throat, and I have to leave before I give in to the urge to press my mouth just there, then nibble my way up the heavily corded tendons, along his square jaw to his earlobe.

Shit! Stop it, Blair, before the smell of your lust wakes him up. Out, now, you've had your fix, now get out, back to your cave, and pray to God that you can make it through another day without doing anything stupid.

But one last look won't hurt, just a quick glance at those incredibly kissable lips, those eyes, those blue...blue eyes?

Shit!