Fic for Sentinel Thursday
Slightly late for the prompt but there's an old saw about that sort of thing...
I wrote this for the 'remembrance' challenge onsentinel_thurs. Gen, 1700 words approximately. I wrote this around a Veterans Day theme and as a foreigner no doubt I've got things wrong, so point them out gently and I'll see what I can do.
Company
There were times when Jim would willingly acknowledge Sandburg a great guy and a good friend, but there were other times when it was Jim's fervently held opinion that the professor needed to haul back his curiosity and just shut the fuck up. And the end of a long shift at the end of a crappy day was one of them. He turned the key in the car ignition; the key was smooth and shiny and worn and he could feel every little scratch on it between his fingers.
"No automatic leave for department members on Veteran's day, huh?"
"Crime is like rust, Sandburg."
There was a brief pause while Sandburg correlated his music references. "True. Hell, feels like *I* never sleep."
"You could try giving your mouth a rest. The rest of you might follow," Jim snippily suggested, and was punished immediately with the Sandburg Look of Reproach (TM).
"Witty observation, Jim. Very witty."
Jim shrugged. "Whatever, Chief." He glanced sideways to see if pouring nicknames on troubled waters had worked. Sandburg was giving a lot of attention to doing up his seatbelt, with a click that sounded over-loudly in Jim's ears. Fine, then. It was time to drive home to a meal and a shower and his bed and see if tomorrow's new day improved anyone's mood.
Sandburg's backpack was moved to some optimal position on his lap. "*My* observation is that you were pissed off on Memorial Day and now you're pissed off on the lead-up to Veteran's Day and I'm prepared to admit to some curiosity about this phenomenon."
Jim rolled his eyes as he pulled the truck into the traffic. "According to your usual 'observations' me being pissed off isn't exactly a statistical anomaly."
"Yeah." Sandburg's voice suggested he accepted the justice of this remark. "But you had odd body language when you were talking to McGee in the break room, and the vibes got going and you are not talking the vibes down right now."
"Talking the vibes down," Jim muttered in mild disgust. There were times when Sandburg barely spoke English. "I served, and I saw action, and I lost colleagues and friends, and I'd have thought that your college education could connect the dots there."
"Exactly!" Sandburg declared. "But what I don't get is why you don't apply for leave, or offer to march with the off-duty guys, which would make sense to me, rather than just being a growly bastard."
"Are you implying that I'm showing a lack of respect, Sandburg?"
To Jim's considerable annoyance, Sandburg chuckled. "*Really* not talking the vibes down. No, I don't think that, Jim, because I'm not actually stupid."
Jim gritted his teeth. "Great, so if you're not stupid then you can recognise a man tired at the end of the day who would just like to not make conversation between now and his well-earned sleep."
March with the off-duty police officers? Hess, who was an ex-Navy man in Homicide, did it. Maybe it made Jim a cynical, grudging SOB but he couldn't connect how the flags and the band and the drawn-up lines of Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts who tried so hard to march in time honoured his memories of going down with his men in a shot-up chopper. There'd been an article in the Herald about the no doubt very earnest and respectful talk that was being hosted at the museum in the weekend, and Jim had found himself imposing Oliver's face onto the speaker's photograph. Oliver could spin a good line of talk.
Sandburg already knew plenty about some levels of Ellison fucked-upness; sticking probes into the fault-line between Jim's deep respect for the men and women he'd known in the service, and Jim's equally deep antipathy towards the hypocrites and tricksters he'd seen hiding behind rules and regulations was off the agenda. Jim granted that he wasn't the most self-aware man in Cascade but if he hadn't come to an accommodation with his issues between individuals and institutions by now he probably never would, and standing with a crowd to salute the flag just wasn't going to work out any time soon.
Sandburg tried again. "If you're worried that this is a dissertation thing, it's not..."
Jim held up his hand.
"It's peachy that it's not a dissertation thing, Chief, but since your future book deal *isn't* hinging on this discussion can we just drop it?"
He got the Sandburg expression of Irritation With Bonus Underlying Concern (also TM), which was something else that pulled him in two directions. Sandburg had actually noticed, actually remembered, that Jim got antsy about some of these things? Weird; creepy even. But comforting, too. As was the fact that Sandburg finally shut up, and sat quietly next to him all the way home.
***
It wasn't like Jim didn't like listening to Sandburg talk when the conversation was about something that wasn't Jim, or sentinels. There were long, boring stake-outs when Sandburg was in full spate. Listening to him was like standing in a good river, feeling it all rush past you, knowing that you might catch a fish, you might not; but just being there was more than okay.
Sandburg's moods were changeable but the same, like the sparkle on the water - earnest, amused, pompous, sly, indignant. "We were all rolling our eyes at each other, because from an anthropological point of view, all culture is invented - or created at least. But the local paper put together this ridiculous headline because the owner had contacts with some guy who had a beef about the federal support the tribe was getting."
Jim had rolled his own eyes, maybe; but in an affectionate sort of way. "You don't think that maybe the article had a point?"
That got him a mulish glare. "Only in so far as it was expressing a basic human situation before reducing it to the absurd. Like I said, all culture is invented, or changed or created or developed. Someone, somewhere, has to do something for the first time. Rituals become tradition but tradition has to start somewhere, and yeah, sure, tradition and culture can be questioned, but not necessarily by some racist shit-heel who's worried that the no-good Indians are going to have an unfair advantage." Sandburg had been pretty passionate about it all. It had become one of Jim's more representative memories of 'Blair Sandburg, Anthropologist'.
Maybe he got the idea because of that memory sitting in his head, comparatively close to the surface; or maybe it was the memory of white linen and silver in a mess-hall a long time ago and a far distance away. Still, when he and Sandburg got home late, their hands juggling hot and greasy containers of takeout, Jim hadn't intended anything except grabbing a fork and a beer and digging in. Instead, he paused for a moment, looking at his bare table in his tidy home, and he went with the idea that struck him suddenly. It wasn't like he hadn't acted on the fly before now, although that more usually tended to really dangerous, stupid but necessary things. This - not so dangerous. Maybe stupid, but suddenly quite necessary. It was nearly the end of Veteran's Day after all.
"Hey, Chief, I - can we do something a little weird?"
Sandburg grinned. "Are we talking weird on your scale or weird on mine?"
Jim ignored this. "I want to eat properly. Plates, silverware, tumblers instead of beer bottles."
Sandburg stared at him for a moment, and Jim swore to himself that if he saw Sandburg's note-taking hand twitch just once, then he'd be wearing the very good Pad Thai from the Jasmine Garden on his head. There were no twitches. Instead Sandburg nodded, put his share of the food on the kitchen counter and started getting plates out. He gave Jim a quizzical look when Jim got out extra plates and knives and forks, and set out three extra settings with the big, chunky glasses neatly placed. Jim dished the meal onto the plates where he and Sandburg would sit, and then took a moment to look at the three extra settings. It was as much as he had for the decent stuff that would match.
He felt very sheepish. He could sit down and mumble something to Sandburg about mess traditions to honour the dead, and just leave it at that, but that would be the coward's way out. Instead, feeling more than a little stupid now, he stood behind one empty chair and cleared his throat.
"So... I guess I should tell you who our guests are."
Sandburg nodded. He didn't look impatient for his meal, despite the fact that Jim hadn't needed sentinel senses to hear his gut rumbling on the way up in the elevator, despite the air being rich with savoury smells of peanut and spice and the promise of good food. He looked grave, and encouraging.
"Ben Sarris. Ben's father died at Normandy, and Ben used to carry around a little book of poetry that belonged to his dad, and he'd read to you out of it, and God help you if you tried giving him shit about it."
Next chair. "Tommy Mendez. Now, Tommy, Tommy was a pistol. Most baby-faced guy you ever saw but he had a mean sense of humour, and you can and should take that any way you like." Jim looked at Sandburg who just nodded in his 'go on' way and Jim moved to the next place-setting.
"Jack McKenzie. He had a twin sister who wrote to him, and that's how we discovered that his nickname back home was Jackie Cool. Took him a while to live that down."
Jim could have said more - but he was hungry and Sandburg was hungry, and he still wasn't convinced that he hadn't made a fool of himself somehow. He sat down in front of his food, to find that Sandburg had lifted his beer, condensation frosting the surface of its proper glass, in a gesture of a toast.
"To Ben and Tommy and Jack."
Jim clinked glasses with him and took a sip, before he put the heavy tumbler down.
"Come on, Sandburg. Let's eat."
I wrote this for the 'remembrance' challenge onsentinel_thurs. Gen, 1700 words approximately. I wrote this around a Veterans Day theme and as a foreigner no doubt I've got things wrong, so point them out gently and I'll see what I can do.
Company
There were times when Jim would willingly acknowledge Sandburg a great guy and a good friend, but there were other times when it was Jim's fervently held opinion that the professor needed to haul back his curiosity and just shut the fuck up. And the end of a long shift at the end of a crappy day was one of them. He turned the key in the car ignition; the key was smooth and shiny and worn and he could feel every little scratch on it between his fingers.
"No automatic leave for department members on Veteran's day, huh?"
"Crime is like rust, Sandburg."
There was a brief pause while Sandburg correlated his music references. "True. Hell, feels like *I* never sleep."
"You could try giving your mouth a rest. The rest of you might follow," Jim snippily suggested, and was punished immediately with the Sandburg Look of Reproach (TM).
"Witty observation, Jim. Very witty."
Jim shrugged. "Whatever, Chief." He glanced sideways to see if pouring nicknames on troubled waters had worked. Sandburg was giving a lot of attention to doing up his seatbelt, with a click that sounded over-loudly in Jim's ears. Fine, then. It was time to drive home to a meal and a shower and his bed and see if tomorrow's new day improved anyone's mood.
Sandburg's backpack was moved to some optimal position on his lap. "*My* observation is that you were pissed off on Memorial Day and now you're pissed off on the lead-up to Veteran's Day and I'm prepared to admit to some curiosity about this phenomenon."
Jim rolled his eyes as he pulled the truck into the traffic. "According to your usual 'observations' me being pissed off isn't exactly a statistical anomaly."
"Yeah." Sandburg's voice suggested he accepted the justice of this remark. "But you had odd body language when you were talking to McGee in the break room, and the vibes got going and you are not talking the vibes down right now."
"Talking the vibes down," Jim muttered in mild disgust. There were times when Sandburg barely spoke English. "I served, and I saw action, and I lost colleagues and friends, and I'd have thought that your college education could connect the dots there."
"Exactly!" Sandburg declared. "But what I don't get is why you don't apply for leave, or offer to march with the off-duty guys, which would make sense to me, rather than just being a growly bastard."
"Are you implying that I'm showing a lack of respect, Sandburg?"
To Jim's considerable annoyance, Sandburg chuckled. "*Really* not talking the vibes down. No, I don't think that, Jim, because I'm not actually stupid."
Jim gritted his teeth. "Great, so if you're not stupid then you can recognise a man tired at the end of the day who would just like to not make conversation between now and his well-earned sleep."
March with the off-duty police officers? Hess, who was an ex-Navy man in Homicide, did it. Maybe it made Jim a cynical, grudging SOB but he couldn't connect how the flags and the band and the drawn-up lines of Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts who tried so hard to march in time honoured his memories of going down with his men in a shot-up chopper. There'd been an article in the Herald about the no doubt very earnest and respectful talk that was being hosted at the museum in the weekend, and Jim had found himself imposing Oliver's face onto the speaker's photograph. Oliver could spin a good line of talk.
Sandburg already knew plenty about some levels of Ellison fucked-upness; sticking probes into the fault-line between Jim's deep respect for the men and women he'd known in the service, and Jim's equally deep antipathy towards the hypocrites and tricksters he'd seen hiding behind rules and regulations was off the agenda. Jim granted that he wasn't the most self-aware man in Cascade but if he hadn't come to an accommodation with his issues between individuals and institutions by now he probably never would, and standing with a crowd to salute the flag just wasn't going to work out any time soon.
Sandburg tried again. "If you're worried that this is a dissertation thing, it's not..."
Jim held up his hand.
"It's peachy that it's not a dissertation thing, Chief, but since your future book deal *isn't* hinging on this discussion can we just drop it?"
He got the Sandburg expression of Irritation With Bonus Underlying Concern (also TM), which was something else that pulled him in two directions. Sandburg had actually noticed, actually remembered, that Jim got antsy about some of these things? Weird; creepy even. But comforting, too. As was the fact that Sandburg finally shut up, and sat quietly next to him all the way home.
***
It wasn't like Jim didn't like listening to Sandburg talk when the conversation was about something that wasn't Jim, or sentinels. There were long, boring stake-outs when Sandburg was in full spate. Listening to him was like standing in a good river, feeling it all rush past you, knowing that you might catch a fish, you might not; but just being there was more than okay.
Sandburg's moods were changeable but the same, like the sparkle on the water - earnest, amused, pompous, sly, indignant. "We were all rolling our eyes at each other, because from an anthropological point of view, all culture is invented - or created at least. But the local paper put together this ridiculous headline because the owner had contacts with some guy who had a beef about the federal support the tribe was getting."
Jim had rolled his own eyes, maybe; but in an affectionate sort of way. "You don't think that maybe the article had a point?"
That got him a mulish glare. "Only in so far as it was expressing a basic human situation before reducing it to the absurd. Like I said, all culture is invented, or changed or created or developed. Someone, somewhere, has to do something for the first time. Rituals become tradition but tradition has to start somewhere, and yeah, sure, tradition and culture can be questioned, but not necessarily by some racist shit-heel who's worried that the no-good Indians are going to have an unfair advantage." Sandburg had been pretty passionate about it all. It had become one of Jim's more representative memories of 'Blair Sandburg, Anthropologist'.
Maybe he got the idea because of that memory sitting in his head, comparatively close to the surface; or maybe it was the memory of white linen and silver in a mess-hall a long time ago and a far distance away. Still, when he and Sandburg got home late, their hands juggling hot and greasy containers of takeout, Jim hadn't intended anything except grabbing a fork and a beer and digging in. Instead, he paused for a moment, looking at his bare table in his tidy home, and he went with the idea that struck him suddenly. It wasn't like he hadn't acted on the fly before now, although that more usually tended to really dangerous, stupid but necessary things. This - not so dangerous. Maybe stupid, but suddenly quite necessary. It was nearly the end of Veteran's Day after all.
"Hey, Chief, I - can we do something a little weird?"
Sandburg grinned. "Are we talking weird on your scale or weird on mine?"
Jim ignored this. "I want to eat properly. Plates, silverware, tumblers instead of beer bottles."
Sandburg stared at him for a moment, and Jim swore to himself that if he saw Sandburg's note-taking hand twitch just once, then he'd be wearing the very good Pad Thai from the Jasmine Garden on his head. There were no twitches. Instead Sandburg nodded, put his share of the food on the kitchen counter and started getting plates out. He gave Jim a quizzical look when Jim got out extra plates and knives and forks, and set out three extra settings with the big, chunky glasses neatly placed. Jim dished the meal onto the plates where he and Sandburg would sit, and then took a moment to look at the three extra settings. It was as much as he had for the decent stuff that would match.
He felt very sheepish. He could sit down and mumble something to Sandburg about mess traditions to honour the dead, and just leave it at that, but that would be the coward's way out. Instead, feeling more than a little stupid now, he stood behind one empty chair and cleared his throat.
"So... I guess I should tell you who our guests are."
Sandburg nodded. He didn't look impatient for his meal, despite the fact that Jim hadn't needed sentinel senses to hear his gut rumbling on the way up in the elevator, despite the air being rich with savoury smells of peanut and spice and the promise of good food. He looked grave, and encouraging.
"Ben Sarris. Ben's father died at Normandy, and Ben used to carry around a little book of poetry that belonged to his dad, and he'd read to you out of it, and God help you if you tried giving him shit about it."
Next chair. "Tommy Mendez. Now, Tommy, Tommy was a pistol. Most baby-faced guy you ever saw but he had a mean sense of humour, and you can and should take that any way you like." Jim looked at Sandburg who just nodded in his 'go on' way and Jim moved to the next place-setting.
"Jack McKenzie. He had a twin sister who wrote to him, and that's how we discovered that his nickname back home was Jackie Cool. Took him a while to live that down."
Jim could have said more - but he was hungry and Sandburg was hungry, and he still wasn't convinced that he hadn't made a fool of himself somehow. He sat down in front of his food, to find that Sandburg had lifted his beer, condensation frosting the surface of its proper glass, in a gesture of a toast.
"To Ben and Tommy and Jack."
Jim clinked glasses with him and took a sip, before he put the heavy tumbler down.
"Come on, Sandburg. Let's eat."