Ian had somehow got last dibs on the shower on Sunday morning. That had the drawback of the bathroom already being a little steamy and soggy from its previous occupants but the benefit of being able to take as long as he liked and use every last drop of hot water if he wanted.

After amusing himself trying out the different settings on the showerhead – it had eight; Eppes could be a bit precious, though Ian had to admit the pulse massage was pretty awesome, meaning he soaped up all over again just to get the full benefit – he finally managed to pull himself away and went in search of coffee. Don and Colby were leaning against the counter in the kitchen, with Colby devouring a stack of toast. He pushed his plate over towards Ian in invitation when he saw him. Ian appreciated that for the sacrifice it was and took just the one piece to chew on while he poured himself a coffee.

Colby shoved the last pieces of toast into his mouth and turned to rinse out his mug in the sink.

"I've got to go," he said, once his mouth was more or less empty. "I've got a ball game down the Center with David and some of the kids." He looked over at Don. "See you at work tomorrow?"

"Come round later," Don said. "I'll be back here by nine."

Colby ducked his head, but Ian was pretty sure he saw the hint of a pleased smile round his mouth as he picked up his duffel and left.

"You've got plans then?" Ian asked Don.

"Dad has me and Charlie and Amita round for dinner every Sunday to lecture us on marriage and grandkids." Then he frowned. "That's not fair," he admitted. "The lecturing is a by-product. He just wants us to spend time together when there's less chance I'll get called away by work."

"Granger doesn't go along?"

"No."

"Your dad – "

"Dad's fine with the whole thing about me liking guys. He just doesn't need to know about this."

Ian sipped at his coffee. He'd seen Don getting increasingly gun-shy when it came to relationships. He couldn't really blame him given how disastrous his track record was, but he hadn't realised how bad things had gotten. Looking now at Don's tight unhappy face, Ian wondered if he should say something. He wasn't exactly the best person to talk about relationships but at least he wasn't in the middle of one and trying to fool himself that it didn't exist.

"Look, if I tell Dad or Charlie then it becomes this thing," Don said at last. "And then it all ends up a clusterfuck, like always."

He rubbed his hands wearily across his face, the cost of every single one of his many clusterfucks showing.

Ian took the coffee pot over and gave him a refill.

Don kept his eyes fixed on his mug. "Only time it's not gone wrong is with you."

"That's because I'm never here more than a few days."

Don huffed what might have been a laugh. "Yeah, probably. Because if you were here… I don't know. We'd most likely end up killing one another."

"Because you don't know how to back down, and I won't."

"Yeah."

They were silent for a while.

"It's been different this time," Ian said at last, offhandedly.

"Yeah."

Ian sipped at his coffee again.

Don finally unpeeled himself from the kitchen top. "I should go," he said. "I said I'd give Dad a hand at the house today. There's a spare key on the hook if you need one."

Ian nodded. He'd been planning on spending the day walking the area that Charlie's hot pocket analysis (damn it, Granger) had identified, getting the feel of the place, the hideouts and the ambush points and maybe getting a bead on Marriott. It was good to know he had somewhere to come back to.

.

It was a little after nine when Ian answered the knock on Don's door. Granger was there, with that ever-present duffel over his shoulder. Would it kill Don to let him leave it here? Given their conversation this morning, yeah, Don probably thought that it would.

He let Colby in and noticed the way he immediately glanced around the apartment.

"Don's not back yet," he said.

Colby nodded, looking somewhat awkward and unsure of himself. It might be because for the first time they were alone together without Don, but Ian suspected it had more to do with the fact that it was Ian who'd been making himself at home in Don's absence while Colby was treated like a visitor. Saying that Don had a few issues was akin to saying Charlie quite liked numbers.

Ian liked Granger. He'd thought he was a good man for Don to have on his team – being ex-military meant he didn't shy away from mixing things up when necessary. That, his tendency to make smartass comments, and of course the whole spy thing had been all he'd known of him before the last few days. Now he could add to the list the fact that he was easy to be around, that something about him seemed to have worked its way under Don's skin, and that he was delightfully slutty in bed. And also that having him there seemed to have changed the dynamic between Ian and Don in an unexpected way that Ian was still working on figuring out.

Determined to make the situation more natural than it felt right now, Ian sat back down in front of Discovery channel. Colby joined him, beers from the fridge in his hands, seemingly with the same intent.

"I love shark week," he said, passing a bottle over to Ian as they settled to watch a tiger shark taking a seal apart with brutal efficiency.

"I wouldn't mind going swimming with sharks sometime," Ian offered.

Colby looked at him doubtfully. "I can see how that would work for you but I think anyone else would just get eaten. I think I'll stick with dolphins. They're friendly."

"You know many dolphins?"

"Some days they're out there in the surf," Colby said. "Some days I just sit on the board and watch them playing." He paused for a minute before gesturing with his beer as he spoke. "It's quiet out there. Easy. Free. Brings everything back to basics, you know?"

And Ian did know. With their job, they needed something to do that, or the job would eat them alive. Colby obviously had his surfing and Ian had his wilderness, but he didn't know what Don had to keep him balanced. Don could get pretty close to the edge at times. Ian did too, but he always knew exactly what he was doing. Don was another matter – it would be all too easy for him to fall.

"You ever take Don surfing?"

Colby looked surprised at the question. "Not really," he said. "We've gone sometimes but I don't think it's really his thing. He likes it fine, but it – it's a sport to him. Like baseball, he wants to be as good at it as he can be."

"So what is it for you?"

Colby seemed to struggle to put it into words. "It reminds me there's something bigger out there. I guess like Larry and his stars, you realise how things just keep on turning, regardless. Everything gets put in perspective. And when you catch that perfect wave, you can't do anything except be in the moment."

He flushed slightly and looked down, as if unused to sharing such private thoughts. Ian could understand that.

"Sounds like the way the backcountry is for me," he said.

Colby nodded slightly, Ian thought as much in acknowledgement of his openness as what he had said.

"D'you ever get tired of moving round all the time?" Colby asked

"You mean do I want to settle down somewhere, have the daily commute to work and the standing order at the grocery store?"

Colby shrugged. "Some people like that."

"Do you?"

Colby turned his bottle round in his hands as he considered the question. "I think maybe I do right now. After everything, it feels…"

He tailed off, apparently unable to find the words he wanted, but Ian thought he knew what Colby meant: he needed to know he was no longer down the rabbit hole where nothing and nobody had been what they seemed.

"How about you?" Colby asked a little abruptly. "Do you want that?"

Ian had been asked that question a lot over the years, but he didn't usually answer it.

"I like the freedom," he said after a moment, "But the hunt's the reason why I do it. So long as that's there, that beats any amount of settling down."

Then he glanced at Colby and told him something he'd only just admitted to himself. "It might be nice to have a base, though."

And at this rate, they were going to start braiding one another's hair any minute now.

Taking a swig of beer, he steered back to less dangerous waters. "It's good to visit civilisation occasionally – you get proper showers and don't have to worry about waking up to find a moose sitting on you."

"Does that happen to you often, the moose thing?" Colby asked.

"It's been known."

The door opened, and Don came in looking a little harried and glancing at his watch. He relaxed when he saw them both there, and then his face brightened as he saw what they were watching.

"Oh hey, sharks."

He nudged Colby over towards Ian so he had room to sit down. The couch really was too small for three grown men, unless those three grown men were very familiar with one another.

"How was it?" Colby asked.

"Rib eye," Don responded, as if that answered the question. Judging by Colby's expression, it did.

Ian sat back on the couch, enjoying the warm solidity of Colby's thigh pushed against his and remembering just how easily and eagerly those thighs had opened for him that morning when Ian had licked Colby's nipple and then bitten down on it. Ian's hand started to work its way up under Colby's t-shirt, trying for the same effect again, this time running the edge of his nails over Colby's nipple. Colby made a strangled sound and sure enough, his legs parted.

"Sharks," Don said meaningfully, nodding towards the TV and for all the world sounding like a weary parent chiding naughty children. But Ian noticed that his hand was now on Colby's thigh, his thumb digging into the muscle while his fingers were playing with the inseam of his jeans.

Ian pulled the front hem of Colby's grey t-shirt up over his head and down his back, just far enough that his arms ended up restrained, while serendipitously baring his torso. Ian was nothing if not efficient. Given that Ian was unacquainted with mercy and that Don appeared unable to resist the temptation Ian had laid out next to him, Colby ended up helpless beneath their combined onslaught.

"One time, just once," Colby got out in a series of gasps, "I'd really like not to be the antelope."

"Sure Colb, whatever you say," Don agreed, before his mouth covered Colby's, swallowing whatever other crazed delirium might have emerged.

"Definitely slutty," Ian said admiringly as he watched the way Colby, his arms still pinioned, offered up his body, mutely begging for anything they wanted to do to him. "I like it."

Don murmured his agreement against Colby's ear. And after that it wasn't far to the floor where there was far more room than on that damned couch, and more than enough room to demonstrate to one another, and Colby, just how much they approved of his sluttiness.

.

"I think I'm getting too old for sex on the floor," Don grumbled as he wandered in from the bathroom, naked and stretching his body carefully, one hand to his back.

Ian kneaded Don's shoulders briefly, then flicked him on the ass. "Stop being so precious," he said. "Granger's the one who ended up with the rug burn."

"I'm sure the skin will grow back. Eventually," Colby put in on his way to the bathroom, toothbrush clutched in his hand.

"Yeah, but he enjoyed getting it."

"And you enjoyed putting your back out from what I could tell."

Don smirked as he got into that ridiculously-sized bed of his. "At least I didn't do it for real this time."

Ian grinned at the memory, even as he pulled the covers down and encouraged Don over onto his front. "That did spoil the mood a bit. Not to mention having to explain to the doc just how pretzeled up you'd been when it went."

Don groaned as Ian's hands started working on him, and then he laughed slightly. "Her face when she finally got it…"

"I thought Mitch was going to put his own back out he was laughing so hard."

"Oh yeah, Mitchell," Don said. "I'd forgotten he was with us. Damn, that was a good weekend."

Ian nodded, and Don groaned again as Ian's long fingers found the knots in his muscles that certainly hadn't been put there by a bit of energetic sex. Probably down to that stressful team of his.

"Those were the days, when we were young and free," Don sighed.

"Yes, granddad. Young and idiotic is how I remember it."

"The point is, young," Don said. He paused. "You ever wonder how we got to here?"

"I wonder how we're both still breathing sometimes."

"Oh yeah, yeah, that's better." Don wriggled happily under Ian's ministrations. "Hey, you know what, you should stay on as a consultant in LA – I could do with your massage skills on call."

Ian was finishing off now, long, slow sweeps over the smooth skin of Don's back, and Don seemed to be melting under him.

"I'm not sure the Bureau would write off a masseur against your team budget; the professor was hard enough to get past the bean counters."

"Yeah, but once they knew about your magic touch – Ow!" Don rolled over, rubbing his ass and glaring at Ian, who had just delivered a stinging slap.

"You pimping me out to accountants now, Eppes? You're not exactly making it sound irresistible."

Ian pulled the covers back to get in on his side of the forty-three acre bed, and that's when he noticed Granger standing in the middle of the bedroom, looking uncertain. Just once, Ian would really like not to see that look on him. He held the covers open in invitation.

"You coming, Colby?" he asked.

Instead of climbing over Ian to get into the middle, where he'd slept every night so far, Colby slid onto the bed next to Ian, effectively forcing Ian over toward Don.

"Night," Colby said firmly, and pretended to go to sleep.

Don was already more or less asleep for real, which left Ian stuck in the middle. Also, for the record, unlikely to get a single second of sleep with Don on one side beginning to snore softly because he'd fallen asleep on his back, and Colby's shoulders forming a tense and unhappy line on his other side. He didn't know what had upset Colby, though it was a safe bet it was Don – the man sabotaged his relationships like nobody else Ian had ever known.

Ian sighed as Don snuffled and then started snoring again and Colby tensed up even more. He'd never thought he'd long for the days of waking up to a moose crashing ass-first through the tent wall.