Thanks always to TAE for the beta and for being patient.

Disclaimer: I don't own the characters. I make no money. M&Ms are a Trademark of Mars Incorporated and very yummy.

“Here you go, Chief,” Jim Ellison said as he placed a coffee mug on the desk in front of his guide and partner.

Blair Sandburg didn’t even look up from the book he was reading as he mindlessly grabbed the cup and brought it up to his mouth. The lack of aromatic bliss caused him to examine the contents of the mug. “Um, Jim, why did you give me a coffee cup with nothing but red M&Ms in it?”

“Because I don’t like the red M&Ms,” Jim answered with a shrug.

“Oh, don’t tell me you’re one of those M&M snobs who refuses to eat the red ones because you think the original colors were just fine and you didn’t like them messing with the way things were,” Blair said instead of taking his friend’s answer at face value.

“No, I just don’t like the red ones,” the sentinel replied with sigh, knowing that once his friend latched onto something like this, he wouldn’t let it go.

Completely ignoring the chocolates, Blair pressed on, “So does that mean you subscribe to the thought that the different colors have different meanings? You know, where a green is for fertility and yellow is joy, and such?”

“Look, if you don’t want the candy, I’m sure someone else will be more than willing to take it,” Jim retorted with feigned anger as he reached for the cup.

Blair clutched the mug close, out of reach of the larger man. “Not on your life, Ellison. You gave this chocolate away fair and square. It’s just so out of character for you to willingly allow yourself to be separated from the evils of refined sugar, chocolate, or anything remotely associated with junk food.”

Standing and reaching for his friend’s forehead, the guide continued, “Are you feeling sick? Let me check for a fever.”

Ellison batted the encroaching hand away, “Sandburg, cut it out! Why does everything have to have a deeper meaning?” He knew what his friend was digging for, but that didn’t mean that Jim had to make it easy for him.

“Because everything does have a deeper meaning, Jim, and I am in the constant search for the truth of the universe,” the grad student answered with extra grandeur. He then changed his posture to imitate that of the detectives when they interrogated a suspect, “So fess up and tell me why you don’t like red M&Ms.”

Standing up and mirroring his friend’s posture, Ellison squelched the urge to laugh and growled, “Because I don’t like the taste.”

Blair just blinked a couple of times as he processed the answer. He opened his mouth and then closed it, rethinking what he was about to say. Finally he settled on, “You mean you can taste the different colors?”

Jim just shrugged as he sat back down and popped a couple of green candies in his mouth.

“Come on, Jim, you can’t just drop a bombshell like that and then shut me out,” the grad student pleaded, bouncing around to his friend’s side of the desk. With amazing speed he snatched the coffee cup holding Jim’s chocolates and held them out of reach. “Close your eyes and open your mouth.”

“Sandburg!”

“Ah aah, it you want to poison your body with this unnatural processed toxin, than at least we should be able to get some good out if. Now, be a good sentinel and do as you’re told. Close your eyes and open your mouth,” the guide said in his sternest voice.

The sentinel allowed himself a slight smile as he did as instructed and allowed his friend to put an M&M on his tongue.

“What color was that one,” Blair asked.

Jim chewed the candy for a moment and swallowed before answering, “Brown.” He then opened his mouth and waited for the next piece.

This time Blair placed two candies in his friend’s mouth.

Ellison repeated the chewing process and answered, “Orange and yellow.”

”Do I want to know what is going on here,” a gruff voice asked, interrupting the impromptu test.

The two friends looked up at the Captain of Major Crimes with as much innocence as they could muster.

“Never mind. I don’t want to know,” Simon answered for them. He then turned and headed for the elevator and said over his shoulder, “You are lucky that it’s been a long day and I’m going to insist that you leave. You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.”

Jim and Blair rushed to pack up for the day, grabbed their cups of M&Ms and hurried to catch their friend at the elevator.

“Hey, Jim, we need to stop at the mall on the way home,” Blair informed his friend as the elevator doors closed on the trio.

Ellison gave his captain a knowing look and asked, “And why is that, Chief?”

“Because the candy store there has a wall of M&Ms in a rainbow of colors. We can get as many as we like in whatever colors we want,” the grad student answered, all but rubbing his hands together maniacally.

Simon rubbed the bridge of his nose, envisioning his best team on an M&M induced sugar rush. Leave it to Ellison to find a way to get Sandburg to test his senses using his favorite chocolate candies.