"You had a Chopec name."

"What?" Jim looked up, startled, and Blair swallowed the word 'nothing' and replaced it with honesty. He'd been brooding about this for two weeks now. Time to bring it out in the open.

"You didn't tell me. All this time -- months -- and you never told me you had a Chopec name."

Bewilderment became indifference. Blair could almost hear Jim thinking, 'Oh, that wacky Sandburg!' or, knowing Jim, probably 'What the fuck is the kid babbling about now?' or something similar.

Jim shrugged. "Didn't occur to me. Consider yourself told. Unless you want it in writing?"

Blair realized that he sounded ridiculously petulant and didn't care. A name for Jim that he didn't know… Names were important -- "-- they have power, Jim. Significance. Meaning -- and what does it mean, anyway?"

"Enqueri?" Jim blinked at him. "It means --"

"No, don't tell me." Blair held up his hand, all dignified forgiveness. "Keep your little secret." Dignity wasn't much fun. Bitching was. "It's not like you tell me anything about yourself, so I don't know why I'm surprised. I have to drag it out of you, chip it out of you, beg --"

"I love you."

He stumbled to a halt. "What?" He'd heard Jim's words clearly; every word, singly and in that order, was in his vocabulary, but the whole thing made no sense.

"I'm saving you the trouble of excavating the inner recesses of my psyche and giving you that for free."

Jim's mouth, that clear, familiar shape, a bow for the arrow of his tongue, was smiling. Oh, so now he was the entertainment for the evening? Blair took a swift, indignant breath and expelled it, unused, wasted. Jim loved him?

"You could say it back to me," Jim prompted gently. "Throwing a 'don't' in there wouldn't make my night, but I promise not to cry on your shoulder."

"Say it again," Blair asked, a plea not an order. "Say it with my name?"

"I love you, Sandburg?" Jim tried.

Blair screwed up his face.

"I love you, Chief."

Blair just looked at him. Two down, one to go.

"Blair." Jim's expression became yearning, terrified, expectant as he bit the bullet. "I love you, Blair."

"Oh, that's -- that's good, Jim." Pathetic response in the face of Jim's leap of faith. Blair shook his head hard enough that a strand of hair whipped into his eye and made it water. He yelped and put his hand up to rub it and Jim shifted closer on the couch and stopped him, his hand warm on Blair's wrist.

"Let me see…"

The kiss was inevitable which didn't stop it being endearingly awkward for the first three seconds, explosively hot after that.

"Love you," Blair panted, his lips tingling, licked, bitten, taken. "Love you, Ellison, Enqueri, Sentinel… Jim. My Jim. God, you're mine. Hear me? Mine…"

Jim groaned back something that might have been 'Yours' and found a place to kiss on Blair's neck that reduced him to a whimpering mess, clawing at Jim's shoulders and babbling nonsense that Jim seemed to understand because he kept on doing it.

He still wanted to know what 'Enqueri' meant; was anticipating delving into the roots of the word with a scholarly fervor, but it could wait.

Oh, God, Jim was yanking his T-shirt off over his head, his hair ruffled, waiting for Blair's hand to smooth it, his chest bare, waiting for a kiss to be planted on every square inch, an airy flag declaring it claimed, property of one Blair Sandburg.

Yeah, it could wait.

"Mine," Blair said dreamily, tasting it, testing it, knowing exactly what it meant.

Jim nipped at Blair's earlobe. "Mine. All mine. Every fucking bit of you."

Jim sounded pretty sure of his definitions, too.

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