Fanfic - Past Imperfect [The Sentinel: Gen/Pre-slash (Jim/Blair)]
Fandom: The Sentinel
Pairing: Gen at the moment. Series will eventually be Jim/Blair.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Weirdness? Possible OOC, due to not knowing the characters as well as I probably should before writing fic about them?
Thanks to atleastintheory for proof-reading!
Past Imperfect
“Jim!” Blair called as he leaned sleepily on the blender.
“Blair!” Jim returned mockingly as he walked down the stairs. Blair glared at him from the kitchen as he poured his seaweed shake out into a tall glass.
“Just for that, you get no coffee,” Blair said threateningly. Jim put up his hands in surrender.
“Anything but that,” he pleaded, unsubtly sneaking towards the coffee pot. Blair snorted.
“Bagel’s toasting,” he said, drinking the last of his shake (Jim made a face, as he did every time he caught sight of the green concoction). “Grab it and you can eat on the way. We’ll be late otherwise.”
“Sure,” Jim replied, shooing Blair off to rinse out his mouth. Whatever health benefits Blair claimed the drink had, Jim had declared, the smell made him sick. Blair hadn’t taken him seriously until Jim had thrown up one morning. Now Blair just rolled his eyes and went to the bathroom obediently. Despite how he was acting, Jim knew he wouldn’t come back out till his breath was Sentinel-safe.
They were out of the house in record time, Jim reluctantly turning over his keys to an entirely too gleeful Blair. Between muttered imprecations every time Blair cornered too fast, Jim ate his breakfast in the truck. By the time he’d finished, they’d arrived at the station.
“You,” Blair said as they strolled into the bullpen, “have no right whatsoever to tell me to drive safely.”
“I don’t know what you were talking about before,” Rafe said as he walked by, “but if Jim’s lecturing about driving safely, I have to interject maniacal laughter here.”
Blair shot Jim a smug look. Jim pretended to ignore them both.
“Ellison! Sandburg! Get in here!” Simon yelled.
“He takes too much pleasure in screaming for me these days,” Blair groused as they dropped their things on their desks and headed for Simon’s office.
“At least he can’t tell you you’re not a cop anymore,” Jim pointed out.
“Shut the door, gentlemen,” Simon said. “Let me introduce you to Roseanna Ackerley. She’s in charge of organising the upcoming Rainbow Pride rally.”
Jim glanced at Blair, who grinned and obligingly explained. “To show support for the GLBT community here in Cascade - that’s gay, lesbian, bisexual and transsexual. It’s next month some time, if I remember right.”
“You do,” Ackerley interjected with a warm smile that was somewhat diminished by the worry lines on her face.
“They’ve gotten threats,” Simon explained bluntly. “The mayor’s supportive of the rally, and he wants to put a security detail on it. Congratulations, you’ve been elected to be in charge.”
Jim very wisely did not grumble about being put on security yet again. Ackerley provided a rough itinerary of the rally, which was due to be spread out over two days.
“It’s not much, really,” she explained. “Mostly it’s an opportunity for people to mingle, and to see that GLBTs aren’t that different from so-called ‘normal’ people. There’ll be a few speeches by prominent members of the community. Most of the threats have been targeting them, so that’s our main worry.”
They spent the next hour or so closeted in Simon’s office working out the details. Ackerley finally left, appearing a lot happier about the security she’d been promised. The smouldering look she threw Jim as she left escaped absolutely no one.
“I’m presuming she’s not lesbian,” Blair commented wryly.
“Maybe she’s bi,” Jim shrugged, and then turned to the very important task of haranguing Simon for putting him on security yet again.
~*~
Roseanna - “call me Anna” - Ackerley had called Jim up the next day. The day after, they’d gone out for dinner together. Before Jim had left, Blair had given him his usual ten-minute list of reminders of things not to do or eat. Jim bore the mini-lecture with good grace.
“Thanks, Chief,” he said, bumping Blair’s shoulder in a friendly gesture as he left. “Don’t wait up!”
Blair simply rolled his eyes and went back to his own dinner, fully aware that Jim wouldn’t be that late coming back. Sure enough, he heard footsteps at the door at almost midnight.
“Thought you’d be later,” Blair commented absently as he typed away on his laptop.
“If I ever accept an invitation from her again, kick me,” Jim instructed him, heading straight to the fridge for a beer.
“That bad?” Blair asked, entering his password and waiting for his email to load.
“Worse,” Jim declaimed dramatically, flopping down on the sofa beside Blair. “She couldn’t talk about anything other than herself. And she’s got a superiority complex a mile wide.”
“Poor you,” Blair consoled, and then said, “what the fuck!”
“What?” Jim asked, nearly dropping his bottle.
Blair turned the screen in an invitation that Jim took, rapidly scanning the email. “High school class reunion?” Jim asked curiously, taking a swig from his bottle. “I thought you said you weren’t in any one school long enough to finish a year.”
“Mostly I didn’t,” Blair agreed. “Except for the last year. Midway through the year Naomi and I ended up in Florida and I enrolled at a high school there. Two weeks later Naomi went off on this retreat somewhere else. The thought of it bored me, so I didn’t go with her… and then I got stuck doing the rest of the year - six months, Jim, I’d never been more bored - and graduated, then decided to come back to Cascade to enrol at Rainier.”
“Right. So that’s the high school then?” Jim asked. Blair stole his bottle and took a mouthful of beer as he nodded in reply. “Oh wait. How old were you?”
“Fourteen,” Blair said with a grin. Jim shook his head in disbelief.
“How badly did they bully you?”
“Oh, they tried,” Blair replied, grin growing even wider. “But you know me!”
“Mouthing off at them even as they tried to stick you in a locker,” Jim theorised. “Kicking them in the balls and running for it.”
“More or less,” Blair agreed. “Some of the girls thought I was absolutely adorable though.”
“And so the guys hated you even more,” Jim muttered. Blair’s eyes crinkled in amusement and unspoken agreement.
“Are you going?” Jim asked after a moment, motioning towards the screen. Blair shrugged and logged off, shutting the laptop down.
“It’s next month. I’ll think about it,” he said noncommittally.
~*~
Jim dropped Blair off at court and waited till Blair got a quick run-down from the attorney. Blair should be out by lunch, she assured them. Blair responded by shooing Jim off.
“I’ll catch a ride from someone here,” Blair told him. “Or take the bus. It’s not that far.”
Jim went off to the station obediently. Simon sent him right back out to meet Ackerley and give her the security plan. Jim cringed inwardly.
Blair was out of court by eleven and called Rhonda to find out what everyone wanted for their lunch. “I’m going to Mama Ellie’s,” he told her, and immediately had half the bullpen clamouring to place their orders. Blair had introduced the sandwich shop to Jim and Simon, who’d both made enough rapturous noises over Mama Ellie’s sandwiches that the others had gotten interested. Now it was a favourite of the Major Crimes crew.
He scribbled down their orders and hitched a ride to Mama Ellie’s from another officer who’d been in court. The shop was only a block from the station; he’d walk back.
“Blair!” Mama Ellie called out jovially. The place was big enough to seat about forty people at a time, but somehow Mama Ellie managed the whole place with only one part-time helper. “What can I do for you today?”
“Well, if you’d like,” Blair said with a smile, “you could help me feed the hordes.” He passed the slip of paper to her and she laughed.
“Coming right up,” she promised, and immediately started dishing up the sandwiches. Blair helped out by wrapping up the finished sandwiches and bagging them himself.
“You know,” Mama Ellie told him confidentially as she worked on Rafe’s (toasted wheat, extra cheese, hold the sauce) sandwich. “My daughter’s been asking about you. Every day, it’s ‘Did Blair come in today? How does he look?’ I keep telling her if she wants to know she can come in and work here for a while, but then she says she has to get to school and runs off. That girl!”
Blair hid a smile. He’d gotten to know Mama Ellie through one of his old students. She’d been one of those who’d been most vociferous in her support of him back when the dissertation fiasco had occurred.
“Well, you tell Andrea that I’m fine,” he told her. “Even if somehow the paperwork seems even worse now than when I was riding along with Jim.”
“And when you going to bring that nice Detective Ellison in?” Mama Ellie asked pointedly. Blair shrugged sheepishly.
“We’ve got a couple of big cases now,” he explained. “When we’re done with them we’ll come here to celebrate, how’s that?”
“You better!” was Mama Ellie’s admonishment as she finished the last sandwich off and wrapped it up. Over Blair’s protests she gave him a discount and a dish of his favourite soup, then shooed him off to work.
Blair’s arrival at Major Crimes was heralded with cheers, as it was every time he volunteered to play errand boy. He was immediately overrun by those who’d placed orders.
“Cheers, Sandy,” Megan said as she bit into her sandwich with relish.
“I hope you got me something,” Jim said from behind Blair in a distinctly disgruntled voice. Blair wordlessly held out the wrapped food.
“What happened?”
“Ackerley,” Jim groaned, sinking into his seat and unwrapping his sandwich.
“Say no more,” Blair commented, patting Jim’s arm before diving into his own sandwich.
“Actually, you should probably look at this,” Jim suggested, shoving a folder over to Blair. By the time they were done with their meals (Jim stole half of Blair’s soup. Blair suspected Mama Ellie had foreseen this, hence the larger-than-usual portion.) they’d gone through most of Ackerley’s objections.
She didn’t like where they were positioning security. They shouldn’t be in uniform. Wouldn’t plainclothes be better? She didn’t want to panic people. Was there really enough security? Couldn’t they get more people? How about if some went undercover? She knew an outfit Jim would look wonderful in.
Blair had to laugh at the last. “I still get people asking me if I’m with Vice,” he told Jim. “If anyone should be going undercover there, it’s me.”
“Like either of us could in Cascade,” Jim snorted, and bopped Blair on the head to refocus his attention.
~*~
Blair RSVPed. The reunion was going to be held in Cascade, which made things suspiciously convenient for him. He probably wouldn’t be able to get time off, he told Samuel Jefferson, who was organising the event, but he might be able to meet them for a meal sometime. They’d have to let him know where they’d be, and when. He might bring his roommate along.
Ackerley grew steadily more demanding as the day of the rally approached. It was evident that she was getting nervous about the threats that had been made against her speakers. Blair had run interference for Jim as much as he could, but she’d fixated on Jim for some reason (It’s the abs, man, Blair maintained), eventually insisting that he be her primary liaison. There was only a week to go, and Jim had started to look a little ragged around the edges. The rally was a fine idea, he thought, but he wished that someone a little less overbearing was organising it. He’d spent most of the afternoon with her, and she’d gotten them some sort of too-salty, too-spicy lunch that had barely stayed down all day.
“Get in the tub,” Blair told him the moment they got home that Saturday evening. “Now.”
Blair was using what Jim had termed his “Guide voice.” There was a time when Jim would have argued. Now he just shucked off his clothes, filled the bath and flopped in ungracefully, too exhausted even to care about the water sloshing over the edge.
Blair popped in, carefully looked only at Jim’s face, dropped a little fragrant oil into the bath water and left him to soak. Lavender, Jim’s nose told him, and he relaxed a little. He relaxed even more when Blair came back in twenty minutes later, coaxed him out of the bath and up to his room, and proceeded to turn him to mush with a massage.
“How’s touch?” Blair asked, and Jim realised with a start that his senses had settled without him noticing. Blair was kneading the base of his spine, just above the towel he had wrapped around his waist. The firm pressure was the most soothing thing he’d felt in a while.
“I didn’t even realise they were going haywire,” he confessed. “Touch is fine now.”
Blair snorted. “No, of course you wouldn’t,” he chided, but there was affection in his voice. “What about smell?”
Smell was back to normal too. Sight and hearing were still a touch above average (for Jim). Taste, as Jim found out when Blair told him to put a drop of juice on his tongue, was still off the charts.
“Well, you’re not finishing that juice now,” Blair said practically, once Jim had finished dry-heaving. The meal he’d put together and carried up to Jim’s room would have to wait. He worked the lightly scented oil into Jim’s skin as carefully as he could.
“I feel like you’re basting me for roasting,” Jim muttered. Blair slapped him lightly.
As he continued the massage, Blair took Jim through his breathing exercises, talking him into a half-somnolent, half-meditative state. He pondered the pros and cons of making Jim some chamomile tea, then decided against it. Jim wasn’t really fond of the taste at the best of times. He worked the oil into Jim’s skin steadily, stopping only when he started to get a kink in his own back.
He left his drowsy Sentinel to snooze on the bed while he washed up and grabbed a quick dinner for himself. As an afterthought, he darted into the bathroom and brushed his teeth, then took the fastest shower of his life. He made sure his neck got a thorough scrubbing, wondering as he did what it would take to settle Jim’s taste. A few minutes later, he was back in Jim’s room, wondering if he should wake the older man.
It was a pity he didn’t have Jim’s superior sight, Blair thought. He could’ve read a book while waiting. Instead, he settled himself in a familiar meditative pose on Jim’s floor, sinking easily into a light trance. They’d discovered that Jim tended to ground himself on Blair best when Blair was completely calm. Meditation did the trick. Even almost-asleep as Jim was, he’d still subconsciously tune in to Blair’s vitals and modulate his own accordingly.
Jim breathed in deeply and opened his eyes, making a soft interrogative sound. Blair slowly brought himself out of his trance and smiled at Jim.
“Better?”
“Lots,” Jim affirmed, pushing himself off the bed reluctantly. Blair got up and found Jim’s robe, offering it to him. Jim looked at him pathetically. Blair rolled his eyes and helped him tie it in place. Jim’s limbs very rarely ever cooperated with him right after one of Blair’s massages.
“I have no bones left,” he moaned.
“Of course you do,” Blair retorted briskly. “I’ve just temporarily liquefied them.”
The glare Jim aimed at him was half-hearted. Blair motioned to the juice.
“Want to try that again?” he asked. “If that doesn’t work we’ll go with extreme measures.”
Jim pulled a face, tried the juice, and attempted not to retch.
“Okay, that’s still way off then,” Blair said, watching Jim carefully.
“It’s fine!” Jim protested.
“Come on, man,” Blair replied impatiently. “It’s not often your senses go so completely out of whack. It’s even worse when it’s an unrelated sense, you know that.”
“It’ll settle eventually,” Jim asserted.
“Ackerley’s just going to get worse,” Blair pointed out. “And your stress level’s going to rise. Under normal situations, a bad spike like this would go back to normal eventually, but not with the mayor breathing down our necks. And you need to be in top shape for the rally.”
Jim pouted.
“I’m not that bad, am I?” Blair asked, faking a crestfallen look.
“Stop that,” Jim growled, reaching out to tug Blair close. “I just feel like a total pervert every time this happens and you know it.”
Blair chortled. “Or a vampire,” he suggested, tilting his head back and moving his hair away from his face. His posture was slightly awkward, but he leaned closer to Jim anyway.
Jim leaned in, tongue flicking out and tasting the pulse point at Blair’s neck. Once, twice, and then he latched on properly, sucking and biting at that point. Blair tried very hard to stay still. And not to get turned on, which was a lot more difficult than it sounded.
“Everyone’s going to be asking me who the girl is,” Blair protested as soon as Jim drew back.
“Hm,” was Jim’s uncommunicative reply as he stared intently at Blair. Then he dove back in, burying his nose at the base of Blair’s neck, letting the curls fall across his face. His fingers restlessly moved across Blair’s skin; he turned his head occasionally, pressing his ear against Blair’s neck. Blair waited patiently, letting Jim settle his other senses properly as well. Almost a minute later, he drew back a little, eyes slightly glazed.
Blair studied him and decided that Jim was as grounded as he was going to get. Besides…
“Let me up, Ellison,” he complained. “I’m getting a crick in my back.”
“Sorry,” Jim replied, sheepishly pulling back and letting go of Blair. The Guide simply shook his head, picking up the glass of juice.
“Give it another shot, man,” he encouraged. Jim willingly took a sip, then downed the entire glass.
“I’ll take that to mean you’re back to normal,” Blair said, beaming. “Finish up your meal and get to bed, okay?”
“Yeah, okay,” Jim replied. “Why don’t you get to bed yourself? You look bushed.”
Blair shook his head. “Nah, I’m good. I’ll go read for a bit - just yell when you’re done and I’ll take the plates down, okay? Don’t move out of that bed!”
Blair got in a good fifteen minutes of reading before Jim called for him. He removed the plates, washed, dried and put them away, and went back up to Jim’s room to see if there was anything else his Sentinel needed. All this to-ing and fro-ing was as good a workout as going to the gym.
There was something else his Sentinel wanted, and who was Blair to deny his Sentinel? In his room, he changed into his sleep-wear, then bounded back upstairs and flopped into bed next to Jim. Jim covered his hand with his own and fell asleep almost immediately, Blair right behind him.
~*~
“I don’t believe it,” Blair pronounced, staring at his screen.
“Ackerley’s been replaced?” Jim asked hopefully, chopping the carrots with a little more force than was strictly necessary.
“They’re having lunch at Mama Ellie’s,” Blair said with a crooked grin. “Jefferson just emailed me the rough itinerary. Most - no, none of them live in Cascade, which makes me wonder just why they’re having it here. Anyway, they figured it’d be good to have a rough sort of plan of where they want to go.”
“Maybe,” Jim theorised, “they want to see just how much a geek you are.”
Blair raised an eyebrow at him.
“The story only really had time to break locally,” Jim said in response. “And it was mostly the tabloids here that jumped us at first. The news networks elsewhere didn’t take it seriously at first. By the time they would have, we’d leaked the news we were going to sue and they backed off even before the actual trial.”
“Ah,” Blair said in enlightenment. “I wonder how many of them think I’m still at Rainier?”
“Probably too many,” Jim replied, tossing the vegetables into the pan. They sizzled merrily and he turned down the heat a little. “Come to think of it, they probably just knew you as the hippie kid, right?”
“They’re gonna bust their guts laughing when they find out I’m a cop now,” Blair decided. Jim considered that scenario for a moment, then started laughing.
Monday rolled around too soon for either of them. Blair packed a reluctant Jim off to meet Ackerley at the site of the rally and explain to her where the security personnel would be stationed. At the office, Blair slogged through paperwork until half past twelve, then happily grabbed his coat and left. A thoroughly horrified Jim met him for lunch at Mama Ellie’s.
“She’s trying to convince me to wear leather!” Jim hissed at his Guide. Blair tried very hard not to laugh.
He failed.
Mama Ellie brought an indignant Jim and an incoherent Blair the sandwiches they’d ordered, plopped two bowls of soup they hadn’t ordered in front of them, and admonished them to eat more (“You boys get skinnier every time I see you!”). Jim meekly agreed, kicked Blair under the table and dug into his food.
They returned to the station and were promptly handed a case by Vice. Jim waited till they got back to the Major Crimes bullpen to glower.
“Obviously,” Blair replied.
“Did… I miss something?” Henri asked in confusion.
“Jim’s sick of getting the drug-related cases,” Blair explained, and threw a pen at his Sentinel. “Stop sulking and get over here, you.”
“You people are weird,” Henri asserted.
“We try,” Jim and Blair chorused together.
It took them two days to close the case. Simon asked why it had taken them so long and promptly assigned them a kidnapping case. Ackerley had more or less hijacked Jim, so Blair worked the case as well as he could alone. It turned out to be easier than he’d expected, from the father’s frantic exclamations.
“What kidnapping?” he asked Simon later that day in exasperation. “I called the girl’s cell and she picked up. She just ran away because she couldn’t stand her dad!”
“And how the hell do I tell that to the fire chief?” Simon demanded.
“That’s why you’re the captain and I’m the lowly detective, sir,” Blair replied smartly, and made his escape.
Jim found Blair’s retelling hilarious. His laughter probably had a lot to do with Blair’s performance of that particular conversation between Simon and the fire chief. Blair hammed it up as best he could, watching with hidden pleasure as Jim finally relaxed after his trying day. He’d grown rather possessive of Jim, he supposed, but he hated it when his Sentinel was so stressed out he couldn’t even recuperate properly at home.
Blair subtly babied Jim for the next few days. Jim noticed his favourite breakfast foods, the lack of seaweed-smell in the morning, his washed, pressed (and folded!) laundry, his finished paperwork. It all went to prove to him that his Guide was not only psychic, he was quite conceivably the sweetest man in the world.
Not that he’d ever use that particular term out loud. He had no desire for Blair to plot revenge; he’d found out the hard way that Blair could be very creative when driven. He still couldn’t look at rubber ducks without shivering.
“Shall we?” Blair asked from the top of the stairs, watching in amusement as Jim grumbled ceaselessly as he dressed. When he heard the word “leather” in Jim’s mumbling, he couldn’t help but interrupt.
“Tell you what,” he began, a mischievous look in his eye. “I’ll wear the leather if you’ll protect my virtue.”
Jim stared at him in disbelief, frozen in the act of pulling his belt tight. Then he barked out a laugh. “What virtue, Sandburg?”
“Oh!” Blair cried in falsetto, pretending to swoon. “That was so cruel!”
Jim fitted his pistol into his holster, then grabbed his jacket. “All right, Princess,” he snorted. “Come on, let’s get moving.”
“Does that make you Prince Charming?” Blair asked, and skipped nimbly ahead of Jim’s swat.
The threats that had been made, as it turned out, were real but easily dealt with. Jim smelled the Molotov cocktails before the would-be agitators got anywhere near the rally. A few discreet commands to check out some “suspicious persons” netted them all the troublemakers. A few of them, Jim was disgusted to find, were little more than kids.
Ackerley, in a much better mood now that the threats to her rally had been removed, asked Jim if he’d like to meet her for lunch on Monday after the rally. Blair apologised for Jim and explained that the two of them already had plans. Jim hastily agreed and steered Blair away. Ackerley looked like she wanted to protest, then stopped and studied the two of them. Jim was spectacularly unconcerned with the way Blair had completely invaded his personal space, pulling him even closer at one point to ask about some of the stranger choices of attire in evidence. Ackerley’s eyes got very big, and then she nodded solemnly at Blair. Blair just barely managed to keep a straight face, and nodded back just as solemnly. Jim remained oblivious to the by-play.
~*~
“Sorry, Chief,” Jim apologised, working at his tie. Blair shrugged lightly.
“It’s okay, man,” he assured. “I’m only swinging by for a few, and even that’s only if Simon doesn’t mysteriously find something for me that needs to be done immediately.”
“Still,” Jim said, reaching out and tugging at a loose curl affectionately. “I’ll come down if I can.”
“Thanks,” Blair said with a genuine smile. They took their own vehicles that morning; Blair went straight to the station while Jim went to court. There was a particularly nasty rape case that they’d worked on that was being heard. He was supposed to have been called only on Tuesday, but the time had abruptly been changed to that morning. Jim had his fingers crossed that the change meant good things.
“Reunion, huh?” Simon asked in interest when Blair explained why he’d be taking a slightly longer lunch than usual. “So long as someone doesn’t try to frame you for a murder, I guess.”
With that ringing endorsement, Blair finished up as much paperwork as he could - both his and Jim’s. Paperwork multiplies, Blair decided as he worked through the stacks. It waits till night when there are no humans around to see and then the stacks get up and have sex and make little paperwork babies. Every newborn baby radiates Lunatix™, a colourless, odourless gas that impacts only those humans that come into contact with the babies. These humans turn into mindless paperwork-filling automatons and eventually go insane. They should be treated with extreme caution, especially since most are armed with pens, which everyone knows are mightier than swords - and possibly guns.
He made a mental note to share his theory with Jim and scratched his signature across a sheet. Twelve o’clock, the little desk-top clock told him. Time for lunch. Time for the reunion. Time to meet up with his childhood tormenters.
Or tormenter-wannabes.
He cleared his mind of all extraneous thoughts. Wouldn’t do to let it slip to them - or Jim - exactly how bothered he’d been by the bullying attempts, even if he’d always stood up to them unflinchingly.
Blair threw on his coat as he got up. By the time he’d made it out of the Major Crimes bullpen, he’d picked up another list of lunch-time orders, even with the knowledge that he’d probably be back late this time. Mama Ellie’s was too big a prize to give up, Blair thought with a grin, especially for his poor Lunatix™-soaked compatriots.
The sandwich shop’s big glass windows let him see that some of the tables had been taken. About twenty people, he guessed. Mama Ellie had confided in him that she’d been booked out for a few hours, and Blair had admitted that it was his class reunion being held at her shop. He’d garnered her cooperation in not mentioning his current vocation. It’d be interesting to see how long it took his old school-mates to catch on.
“Blair!” Mama Ellie’s voice rang out merrily as he stepped through the door. He grinned at her.
“Hey, Mama Ellie,” he greeted her cheerfully. “Got another list of orders for you, but take your time about them. I’m having lunch here today.” He handed her the list on which he’d written down the miscellaneous orders from his colleagues.
“Your usual, then?” she asked, and bustled over to the sandwich makings without waiting for a response.
“Surprise me,” he answered with a chuckle, and moved over to the nearest unoccupied seat. They’d pushed together some tables to allow them all to sit relatively near each other. The seat Blair took was at the corner, where he’d be able to move away quickly and easily. Some of Jim’s habits had rubbed off on Blair. It was natural, he supposed, given the amount of trouble both of them could get into.
“Sorry if I’m late,” Blair said. “But I’m afraid I can’t get away from work for long. Blair Sandburg, for those who didn’t recognise me.”
“Your hair!” one of the men at the table blurted out, and Blair grinned ruefully.
“Yeah, I decided I’d grow it out,” he said, shrugging. He belatedly recognised the man who’d spoken as one of his chief harassers, a Caleb… something. Ainesworth, that was it. Ainesworth, in fact, had been the reason he’d grown his hair out. No matter how much peanut butter he’d had smeared on his head, the bubblegum that Ainesworth had worked into it hadn’t wanted to come out. He’d had to crop most of it off, and Blair had decided never to cut his hair again after such a “traumatic experience that has scarred me for life!”
Mama Ellie came over with his sandwich and usual tureen of free soup just then, breaking the slightly awkward silence that had fallen.
“You spoil me,” he declared, eyeing the soup happily. It was his favourite.
“Someone needs to,” she said archly. “And where’s that Mr Ellison of yours?”
“Work,” Blair sighed dramatically. “Something he couldn’t get away from, I’m afraid. I’ll be sure to tell him exactly what he missed out on today.”
“You do that,” Mama Ellie said with a self-satisfied look, and Blair laughed incredulously.
“You come here often?” asked the pretty woman (was that Lisa O’Brien? Blair remembered her as the sweet young girl who’d taken him under her wing and treated him like her kid brother.) across the table from him. She was eyeing him now like he was an alien specimen.
“Pretty regularly,” he admitted. “She makes the best sandwiches in Cascade, in my humble, unbiased opinion.” A snort from the counter told him exactly what Mama Ellie thought of his humble, unbiased opinion.
“So,” Blair continued, “humour this old soul. Why’d you people decide to have this little reunion here in rainy old Cascade?”
The few nearest him exchanged uneasy looks. Finally, Ainesworth decided to bite the bullet.
“Fact is,” he said a little hesitantly, “we - Sam and Terry - were the ones organising this, right? And well, we wanted to make it easy for you to come to the reunion. If you did, we wanted to… well, apologise. For how we treated you when we were kids.”
“They wanted to apologise,” Lisa chimed in happily. “I wanted to know what happened to the little genius we had.”
Blair raised an eyebrow. That, he hadn’t expected. “Apology accepted,” he said easily. “And I apologise too, for the time I kicked you in the balls.”
Ainesworth winced in memory even as some of the others started laughing. The rest of the meal passed in companionable chatter. A few of them had kept in touch with others, but for most, it was an opportunity to catch up. Not everyone was there, of course, but some had brought friends or significant others, and the group was loud and engaging.
Blair determined from a few comments that everyone there (except Mama Ellie, who was thoroughly amused) thought that he was still with Rainier. He didn’t lie, but he didn’t disabuse them of the notion either, skilfully deflecting questions about the exact nature of his work. What, he wondered with amusement, would it take for them to realise he was avoiding work-related questions?
As it turned out, it took Jim, breezing into the shop and heading straight for Mama Ellie to place his order. “Wow,” Blair heard Lisa murmur when she caught sight of Jim, and had to fake a cough to hide his laugh.
“Jim,” Blair called, reaching out and grabbing another chair from an adjacent table. “You’re done already?”
“The whole case is over,” Jim replied as he came over and took the seat Blair offered him.
“You’re kidding!” Blair exclaimed, sitting up straight in shock.
“Nope,” Jim practically crowed. “He changed his plea to guilty. Maximum sentence; he’s not seeing anything but the inside of a jail for a long time.”
“Excellent,” Blair said, satisfied. “Oh - guys, let me introduce you to Jim Ellison. He’s my house-mate and my partner at work.”
“Partner?” Lisa asked uncertainly.
Ainesworth looked from Jim to Blair in disbelief. “Wait, Sandburg - I thought you were working at the university?”
“He was when we met,” Jim agreed. “But he’s been a detective with Cascade PD for about a year now.”
Lisa looked like she might faint. Blair shrugged and got up on the pretext of bringing his empty soup bowl back to Mama Ellie, ignoring the confused babble of questions targeted at an amused Jim.
“Major Crimes is lucky to have him,” Jim said. “The other departments were clamouring for him, but I got first dibs.” He shot a smug look at his partner, who’d oh-so-casually removed his coat to reveal the revolver snug in its holster at his waist. The appearance of the gun prompted yet another round of incredulous exclamations. Somewhere amongst the gibbering, Blair distinctly heard someone wail, “But he was a hippie!”
He couldn’t help it; he laughed.
~*~
“Pretty interesting reunion,” Jim commented, taking Blair’s coat and hanging it for him. Blair shrugged blithely as he headed to the kitchen and a nice, cold drink of water.
“Back then, it got to me a little,” he admitted. “But I kind of get where they were coming from, y’know?”
“You’re a better man than most of us ever will be,” Jim said, ruffling Blair’s hair. Blair bore the injustice with good humour.
“Simon wanted to know,” he told Jim, “if anyone had died at the reunion and if I’d been framed for her murder.”
Jim snorted, taking the stairs at a brisk trot. “Wrong reunion.”
“That’s what I told him,” Blair agreed. “Then he said, ‘Oh yes, it’s you and Ellison, isn’t it? What was it this time then? Armed robbery? High-speed chase? Poisoning?’ And he wouldn’t believe me when I said absolutely nothing out of the ordinary happened!”
“It’s us,” Jim called down. “He’s justified.”
Blair poured out a second glass of cold water for Jim, set it on the table and went to his own room to change. “But still,” he argued, voice muffled as he pulled a loose t-shirt over his head. “He didn’t have to be so incredulous.” He heard Jim’s footsteps on the stairs and poked his head out of his room.
“Chief?” Jim asked dryly. “When have we ever managed to take a vacation that didn’t go bad?”
Blair started to protest that it hadn’t all been that bad, and then closed his mouth with a snap. Jim saluted him knowingly with his glass.
“Maybe that’s the trick,” Blair said thoughtfully, slumping back on the sofa. “I didn’t actually take a vacation, so nothing went wrong.”
“We’ll try that next time,” Jim decided, coming over to join Blair on the sofa. Blair promptly put his feet up on Jim’s lap. “I’d like a holiday that doesn’t involve poachers or mafia one of these days.”
“We’ll be old and grey and still end up in the midst of a stunningly-conceived plot to murder the president,” Blair predicted glumly. Jim snorted and bumped the edge of his glass against Blair’s shin.
“You can start planning how to get us out of that now,” he said. “And for that matter, how to get out of all the paperwork waiting for us tomorrow.”
Blair perked up. “About that!” he said enthusiastically, and Jim gave him a wary look. “I have a theory…”
~fin
Concrit please!
Pairing: Gen at the moment. Series will eventually be Jim/Blair.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Weirdness? Possible OOC, due to not knowing the characters as well as I probably should before writing fic about them?
Thanks to atleastintheory for proof-reading!
Past Imperfect
“Jim!” Blair called as he leaned sleepily on the blender.
“Blair!” Jim returned mockingly as he walked down the stairs. Blair glared at him from the kitchen as he poured his seaweed shake out into a tall glass.
“Just for that, you get no coffee,” Blair said threateningly. Jim put up his hands in surrender.
“Anything but that,” he pleaded, unsubtly sneaking towards the coffee pot. Blair snorted.
“Bagel’s toasting,” he said, drinking the last of his shake (Jim made a face, as he did every time he caught sight of the green concoction). “Grab it and you can eat on the way. We’ll be late otherwise.”
“Sure,” Jim replied, shooing Blair off to rinse out his mouth. Whatever health benefits Blair claimed the drink had, Jim had declared, the smell made him sick. Blair hadn’t taken him seriously until Jim had thrown up one morning. Now Blair just rolled his eyes and went to the bathroom obediently. Despite how he was acting, Jim knew he wouldn’t come back out till his breath was Sentinel-safe.
They were out of the house in record time, Jim reluctantly turning over his keys to an entirely too gleeful Blair. Between muttered imprecations every time Blair cornered too fast, Jim ate his breakfast in the truck. By the time he’d finished, they’d arrived at the station.
“You,” Blair said as they strolled into the bullpen, “have no right whatsoever to tell me to drive safely.”
“I don’t know what you were talking about before,” Rafe said as he walked by, “but if Jim’s lecturing about driving safely, I have to interject maniacal laughter here.”
Blair shot Jim a smug look. Jim pretended to ignore them both.
“Ellison! Sandburg! Get in here!” Simon yelled.
“He takes too much pleasure in screaming for me these days,” Blair groused as they dropped their things on their desks and headed for Simon’s office.
“At least he can’t tell you you’re not a cop anymore,” Jim pointed out.
“Shut the door, gentlemen,” Simon said. “Let me introduce you to Roseanna Ackerley. She’s in charge of organising the upcoming Rainbow Pride rally.”
Jim glanced at Blair, who grinned and obligingly explained. “To show support for the GLBT community here in Cascade - that’s gay, lesbian, bisexual and transsexual. It’s next month some time, if I remember right.”
“You do,” Ackerley interjected with a warm smile that was somewhat diminished by the worry lines on her face.
“They’ve gotten threats,” Simon explained bluntly. “The mayor’s supportive of the rally, and he wants to put a security detail on it. Congratulations, you’ve been elected to be in charge.”
Jim very wisely did not grumble about being put on security yet again. Ackerley provided a rough itinerary of the rally, which was due to be spread out over two days.
“It’s not much, really,” she explained. “Mostly it’s an opportunity for people to mingle, and to see that GLBTs aren’t that different from so-called ‘normal’ people. There’ll be a few speeches by prominent members of the community. Most of the threats have been targeting them, so that’s our main worry.”
They spent the next hour or so closeted in Simon’s office working out the details. Ackerley finally left, appearing a lot happier about the security she’d been promised. The smouldering look she threw Jim as she left escaped absolutely no one.
“I’m presuming she’s not lesbian,” Blair commented wryly.
“Maybe she’s bi,” Jim shrugged, and then turned to the very important task of haranguing Simon for putting him on security yet again.
~*~
Roseanna - “call me Anna” - Ackerley had called Jim up the next day. The day after, they’d gone out for dinner together. Before Jim had left, Blair had given him his usual ten-minute list of reminders of things not to do or eat. Jim bore the mini-lecture with good grace.
“Thanks, Chief,” he said, bumping Blair’s shoulder in a friendly gesture as he left. “Don’t wait up!”
Blair simply rolled his eyes and went back to his own dinner, fully aware that Jim wouldn’t be that late coming back. Sure enough, he heard footsteps at the door at almost midnight.
“Thought you’d be later,” Blair commented absently as he typed away on his laptop.
“If I ever accept an invitation from her again, kick me,” Jim instructed him, heading straight to the fridge for a beer.
“That bad?” Blair asked, entering his password and waiting for his email to load.
“Worse,” Jim declaimed dramatically, flopping down on the sofa beside Blair. “She couldn’t talk about anything other than herself. And she’s got a superiority complex a mile wide.”
“Poor you,” Blair consoled, and then said, “what the fuck!”
“What?” Jim asked, nearly dropping his bottle.
Blair turned the screen in an invitation that Jim took, rapidly scanning the email. “High school class reunion?” Jim asked curiously, taking a swig from his bottle. “I thought you said you weren’t in any one school long enough to finish a year.”
“Mostly I didn’t,” Blair agreed. “Except for the last year. Midway through the year Naomi and I ended up in Florida and I enrolled at a high school there. Two weeks later Naomi went off on this retreat somewhere else. The thought of it bored me, so I didn’t go with her… and then I got stuck doing the rest of the year - six months, Jim, I’d never been more bored - and graduated, then decided to come back to Cascade to enrol at Rainier.”
“Right. So that’s the high school then?” Jim asked. Blair stole his bottle and took a mouthful of beer as he nodded in reply. “Oh wait. How old were you?”
“Fourteen,” Blair said with a grin. Jim shook his head in disbelief.
“How badly did they bully you?”
“Oh, they tried,” Blair replied, grin growing even wider. “But you know me!”
“Mouthing off at them even as they tried to stick you in a locker,” Jim theorised. “Kicking them in the balls and running for it.”
“More or less,” Blair agreed. “Some of the girls thought I was absolutely adorable though.”
“And so the guys hated you even more,” Jim muttered. Blair’s eyes crinkled in amusement and unspoken agreement.
“Are you going?” Jim asked after a moment, motioning towards the screen. Blair shrugged and logged off, shutting the laptop down.
“It’s next month. I’ll think about it,” he said noncommittally.
~*~
Jim dropped Blair off at court and waited till Blair got a quick run-down from the attorney. Blair should be out by lunch, she assured them. Blair responded by shooing Jim off.
“I’ll catch a ride from someone here,” Blair told him. “Or take the bus. It’s not that far.”
Jim went off to the station obediently. Simon sent him right back out to meet Ackerley and give her the security plan. Jim cringed inwardly.
Blair was out of court by eleven and called Rhonda to find out what everyone wanted for their lunch. “I’m going to Mama Ellie’s,” he told her, and immediately had half the bullpen clamouring to place their orders. Blair had introduced the sandwich shop to Jim and Simon, who’d both made enough rapturous noises over Mama Ellie’s sandwiches that the others had gotten interested. Now it was a favourite of the Major Crimes crew.
He scribbled down their orders and hitched a ride to Mama Ellie’s from another officer who’d been in court. The shop was only a block from the station; he’d walk back.
“Blair!” Mama Ellie called out jovially. The place was big enough to seat about forty people at a time, but somehow Mama Ellie managed the whole place with only one part-time helper. “What can I do for you today?”
“Well, if you’d like,” Blair said with a smile, “you could help me feed the hordes.” He passed the slip of paper to her and she laughed.
“Coming right up,” she promised, and immediately started dishing up the sandwiches. Blair helped out by wrapping up the finished sandwiches and bagging them himself.
“You know,” Mama Ellie told him confidentially as she worked on Rafe’s (toasted wheat, extra cheese, hold the sauce) sandwich. “My daughter’s been asking about you. Every day, it’s ‘Did Blair come in today? How does he look?’ I keep telling her if she wants to know she can come in and work here for a while, but then she says she has to get to school and runs off. That girl!”
Blair hid a smile. He’d gotten to know Mama Ellie through one of his old students. She’d been one of those who’d been most vociferous in her support of him back when the dissertation fiasco had occurred.
“Well, you tell Andrea that I’m fine,” he told her. “Even if somehow the paperwork seems even worse now than when I was riding along with Jim.”
“And when you going to bring that nice Detective Ellison in?” Mama Ellie asked pointedly. Blair shrugged sheepishly.
“We’ve got a couple of big cases now,” he explained. “When we’re done with them we’ll come here to celebrate, how’s that?”
“You better!” was Mama Ellie’s admonishment as she finished the last sandwich off and wrapped it up. Over Blair’s protests she gave him a discount and a dish of his favourite soup, then shooed him off to work.
Blair’s arrival at Major Crimes was heralded with cheers, as it was every time he volunteered to play errand boy. He was immediately overrun by those who’d placed orders.
“Cheers, Sandy,” Megan said as she bit into her sandwich with relish.
“I hope you got me something,” Jim said from behind Blair in a distinctly disgruntled voice. Blair wordlessly held out the wrapped food.
“What happened?”
“Ackerley,” Jim groaned, sinking into his seat and unwrapping his sandwich.
“Say no more,” Blair commented, patting Jim’s arm before diving into his own sandwich.
“Actually, you should probably look at this,” Jim suggested, shoving a folder over to Blair. By the time they were done with their meals (Jim stole half of Blair’s soup. Blair suspected Mama Ellie had foreseen this, hence the larger-than-usual portion.) they’d gone through most of Ackerley’s objections.
She didn’t like where they were positioning security. They shouldn’t be in uniform. Wouldn’t plainclothes be better? She didn’t want to panic people. Was there really enough security? Couldn’t they get more people? How about if some went undercover? She knew an outfit Jim would look wonderful in.
Blair had to laugh at the last. “I still get people asking me if I’m with Vice,” he told Jim. “If anyone should be going undercover there, it’s me.”
“Like either of us could in Cascade,” Jim snorted, and bopped Blair on the head to refocus his attention.
~*~
Blair RSVPed. The reunion was going to be held in Cascade, which made things suspiciously convenient for him. He probably wouldn’t be able to get time off, he told Samuel Jefferson, who was organising the event, but he might be able to meet them for a meal sometime. They’d have to let him know where they’d be, and when. He might bring his roommate along.
Ackerley grew steadily more demanding as the day of the rally approached. It was evident that she was getting nervous about the threats that had been made against her speakers. Blair had run interference for Jim as much as he could, but she’d fixated on Jim for some reason (It’s the abs, man, Blair maintained), eventually insisting that he be her primary liaison. There was only a week to go, and Jim had started to look a little ragged around the edges. The rally was a fine idea, he thought, but he wished that someone a little less overbearing was organising it. He’d spent most of the afternoon with her, and she’d gotten them some sort of too-salty, too-spicy lunch that had barely stayed down all day.
“Get in the tub,” Blair told him the moment they got home that Saturday evening. “Now.”
Blair was using what Jim had termed his “Guide voice.” There was a time when Jim would have argued. Now he just shucked off his clothes, filled the bath and flopped in ungracefully, too exhausted even to care about the water sloshing over the edge.
Blair popped in, carefully looked only at Jim’s face, dropped a little fragrant oil into the bath water and left him to soak. Lavender, Jim’s nose told him, and he relaxed a little. He relaxed even more when Blair came back in twenty minutes later, coaxed him out of the bath and up to his room, and proceeded to turn him to mush with a massage.
“How’s touch?” Blair asked, and Jim realised with a start that his senses had settled without him noticing. Blair was kneading the base of his spine, just above the towel he had wrapped around his waist. The firm pressure was the most soothing thing he’d felt in a while.
“I didn’t even realise they were going haywire,” he confessed. “Touch is fine now.”
Blair snorted. “No, of course you wouldn’t,” he chided, but there was affection in his voice. “What about smell?”
Smell was back to normal too. Sight and hearing were still a touch above average (for Jim). Taste, as Jim found out when Blair told him to put a drop of juice on his tongue, was still off the charts.
“Well, you’re not finishing that juice now,” Blair said practically, once Jim had finished dry-heaving. The meal he’d put together and carried up to Jim’s room would have to wait. He worked the lightly scented oil into Jim’s skin as carefully as he could.
“I feel like you’re basting me for roasting,” Jim muttered. Blair slapped him lightly.
As he continued the massage, Blair took Jim through his breathing exercises, talking him into a half-somnolent, half-meditative state. He pondered the pros and cons of making Jim some chamomile tea, then decided against it. Jim wasn’t really fond of the taste at the best of times. He worked the oil into Jim’s skin steadily, stopping only when he started to get a kink in his own back.
He left his drowsy Sentinel to snooze on the bed while he washed up and grabbed a quick dinner for himself. As an afterthought, he darted into the bathroom and brushed his teeth, then took the fastest shower of his life. He made sure his neck got a thorough scrubbing, wondering as he did what it would take to settle Jim’s taste. A few minutes later, he was back in Jim’s room, wondering if he should wake the older man.
It was a pity he didn’t have Jim’s superior sight, Blair thought. He could’ve read a book while waiting. Instead, he settled himself in a familiar meditative pose on Jim’s floor, sinking easily into a light trance. They’d discovered that Jim tended to ground himself on Blair best when Blair was completely calm. Meditation did the trick. Even almost-asleep as Jim was, he’d still subconsciously tune in to Blair’s vitals and modulate his own accordingly.
Jim breathed in deeply and opened his eyes, making a soft interrogative sound. Blair slowly brought himself out of his trance and smiled at Jim.
“Better?”
“Lots,” Jim affirmed, pushing himself off the bed reluctantly. Blair got up and found Jim’s robe, offering it to him. Jim looked at him pathetically. Blair rolled his eyes and helped him tie it in place. Jim’s limbs very rarely ever cooperated with him right after one of Blair’s massages.
“I have no bones left,” he moaned.
“Of course you do,” Blair retorted briskly. “I’ve just temporarily liquefied them.”
The glare Jim aimed at him was half-hearted. Blair motioned to the juice.
“Want to try that again?” he asked. “If that doesn’t work we’ll go with extreme measures.”
Jim pulled a face, tried the juice, and attempted not to retch.
“Okay, that’s still way off then,” Blair said, watching Jim carefully.
“It’s fine!” Jim protested.
“Come on, man,” Blair replied impatiently. “It’s not often your senses go so completely out of whack. It’s even worse when it’s an unrelated sense, you know that.”
“It’ll settle eventually,” Jim asserted.
“Ackerley’s just going to get worse,” Blair pointed out. “And your stress level’s going to rise. Under normal situations, a bad spike like this would go back to normal eventually, but not with the mayor breathing down our necks. And you need to be in top shape for the rally.”
Jim pouted.
“I’m not that bad, am I?” Blair asked, faking a crestfallen look.
“Stop that,” Jim growled, reaching out to tug Blair close. “I just feel like a total pervert every time this happens and you know it.”
Blair chortled. “Or a vampire,” he suggested, tilting his head back and moving his hair away from his face. His posture was slightly awkward, but he leaned closer to Jim anyway.
Jim leaned in, tongue flicking out and tasting the pulse point at Blair’s neck. Once, twice, and then he latched on properly, sucking and biting at that point. Blair tried very hard to stay still. And not to get turned on, which was a lot more difficult than it sounded.
“Everyone’s going to be asking me who the girl is,” Blair protested as soon as Jim drew back.
“Hm,” was Jim’s uncommunicative reply as he stared intently at Blair. Then he dove back in, burying his nose at the base of Blair’s neck, letting the curls fall across his face. His fingers restlessly moved across Blair’s skin; he turned his head occasionally, pressing his ear against Blair’s neck. Blair waited patiently, letting Jim settle his other senses properly as well. Almost a minute later, he drew back a little, eyes slightly glazed.
Blair studied him and decided that Jim was as grounded as he was going to get. Besides…
“Let me up, Ellison,” he complained. “I’m getting a crick in my back.”
“Sorry,” Jim replied, sheepishly pulling back and letting go of Blair. The Guide simply shook his head, picking up the glass of juice.
“Give it another shot, man,” he encouraged. Jim willingly took a sip, then downed the entire glass.
“I’ll take that to mean you’re back to normal,” Blair said, beaming. “Finish up your meal and get to bed, okay?”
“Yeah, okay,” Jim replied. “Why don’t you get to bed yourself? You look bushed.”
Blair shook his head. “Nah, I’m good. I’ll go read for a bit - just yell when you’re done and I’ll take the plates down, okay? Don’t move out of that bed!”
Blair got in a good fifteen minutes of reading before Jim called for him. He removed the plates, washed, dried and put them away, and went back up to Jim’s room to see if there was anything else his Sentinel needed. All this to-ing and fro-ing was as good a workout as going to the gym.
There was something else his Sentinel wanted, and who was Blair to deny his Sentinel? In his room, he changed into his sleep-wear, then bounded back upstairs and flopped into bed next to Jim. Jim covered his hand with his own and fell asleep almost immediately, Blair right behind him.
~*~
“I don’t believe it,” Blair pronounced, staring at his screen.
“Ackerley’s been replaced?” Jim asked hopefully, chopping the carrots with a little more force than was strictly necessary.
“They’re having lunch at Mama Ellie’s,” Blair said with a crooked grin. “Jefferson just emailed me the rough itinerary. Most - no, none of them live in Cascade, which makes me wonder just why they’re having it here. Anyway, they figured it’d be good to have a rough sort of plan of where they want to go.”
“Maybe,” Jim theorised, “they want to see just how much a geek you are.”
Blair raised an eyebrow at him.
“The story only really had time to break locally,” Jim said in response. “And it was mostly the tabloids here that jumped us at first. The news networks elsewhere didn’t take it seriously at first. By the time they would have, we’d leaked the news we were going to sue and they backed off even before the actual trial.”
“Ah,” Blair said in enlightenment. “I wonder how many of them think I’m still at Rainier?”
“Probably too many,” Jim replied, tossing the vegetables into the pan. They sizzled merrily and he turned down the heat a little. “Come to think of it, they probably just knew you as the hippie kid, right?”
“They’re gonna bust their guts laughing when they find out I’m a cop now,” Blair decided. Jim considered that scenario for a moment, then started laughing.
Monday rolled around too soon for either of them. Blair packed a reluctant Jim off to meet Ackerley at the site of the rally and explain to her where the security personnel would be stationed. At the office, Blair slogged through paperwork until half past twelve, then happily grabbed his coat and left. A thoroughly horrified Jim met him for lunch at Mama Ellie’s.
“She’s trying to convince me to wear leather!” Jim hissed at his Guide. Blair tried very hard not to laugh.
He failed.
Mama Ellie brought an indignant Jim and an incoherent Blair the sandwiches they’d ordered, plopped two bowls of soup they hadn’t ordered in front of them, and admonished them to eat more (“You boys get skinnier every time I see you!”). Jim meekly agreed, kicked Blair under the table and dug into his food.
They returned to the station and were promptly handed a case by Vice. Jim waited till they got back to the Major Crimes bullpen to glower.
“Obviously,” Blair replied.
“Did… I miss something?” Henri asked in confusion.
“Jim’s sick of getting the drug-related cases,” Blair explained, and threw a pen at his Sentinel. “Stop sulking and get over here, you.”
“You people are weird,” Henri asserted.
“We try,” Jim and Blair chorused together.
It took them two days to close the case. Simon asked why it had taken them so long and promptly assigned them a kidnapping case. Ackerley had more or less hijacked Jim, so Blair worked the case as well as he could alone. It turned out to be easier than he’d expected, from the father’s frantic exclamations.
“What kidnapping?” he asked Simon later that day in exasperation. “I called the girl’s cell and she picked up. She just ran away because she couldn’t stand her dad!”
“And how the hell do I tell that to the fire chief?” Simon demanded.
“That’s why you’re the captain and I’m the lowly detective, sir,” Blair replied smartly, and made his escape.
Jim found Blair’s retelling hilarious. His laughter probably had a lot to do with Blair’s performance of that particular conversation between Simon and the fire chief. Blair hammed it up as best he could, watching with hidden pleasure as Jim finally relaxed after his trying day. He’d grown rather possessive of Jim, he supposed, but he hated it when his Sentinel was so stressed out he couldn’t even recuperate properly at home.
Blair subtly babied Jim for the next few days. Jim noticed his favourite breakfast foods, the lack of seaweed-smell in the morning, his washed, pressed (and folded!) laundry, his finished paperwork. It all went to prove to him that his Guide was not only psychic, he was quite conceivably the sweetest man in the world.
Not that he’d ever use that particular term out loud. He had no desire for Blair to plot revenge; he’d found out the hard way that Blair could be very creative when driven. He still couldn’t look at rubber ducks without shivering.
“Shall we?” Blair asked from the top of the stairs, watching in amusement as Jim grumbled ceaselessly as he dressed. When he heard the word “leather” in Jim’s mumbling, he couldn’t help but interrupt.
“Tell you what,” he began, a mischievous look in his eye. “I’ll wear the leather if you’ll protect my virtue.”
Jim stared at him in disbelief, frozen in the act of pulling his belt tight. Then he barked out a laugh. “What virtue, Sandburg?”
“Oh!” Blair cried in falsetto, pretending to swoon. “That was so cruel!”
Jim fitted his pistol into his holster, then grabbed his jacket. “All right, Princess,” he snorted. “Come on, let’s get moving.”
“Does that make you Prince Charming?” Blair asked, and skipped nimbly ahead of Jim’s swat.
The threats that had been made, as it turned out, were real but easily dealt with. Jim smelled the Molotov cocktails before the would-be agitators got anywhere near the rally. A few discreet commands to check out some “suspicious persons” netted them all the troublemakers. A few of them, Jim was disgusted to find, were little more than kids.
Ackerley, in a much better mood now that the threats to her rally had been removed, asked Jim if he’d like to meet her for lunch on Monday after the rally. Blair apologised for Jim and explained that the two of them already had plans. Jim hastily agreed and steered Blair away. Ackerley looked like she wanted to protest, then stopped and studied the two of them. Jim was spectacularly unconcerned with the way Blair had completely invaded his personal space, pulling him even closer at one point to ask about some of the stranger choices of attire in evidence. Ackerley’s eyes got very big, and then she nodded solemnly at Blair. Blair just barely managed to keep a straight face, and nodded back just as solemnly. Jim remained oblivious to the by-play.
~*~
“Sorry, Chief,” Jim apologised, working at his tie. Blair shrugged lightly.
“It’s okay, man,” he assured. “I’m only swinging by for a few, and even that’s only if Simon doesn’t mysteriously find something for me that needs to be done immediately.”
“Still,” Jim said, reaching out and tugging at a loose curl affectionately. “I’ll come down if I can.”
“Thanks,” Blair said with a genuine smile. They took their own vehicles that morning; Blair went straight to the station while Jim went to court. There was a particularly nasty rape case that they’d worked on that was being heard. He was supposed to have been called only on Tuesday, but the time had abruptly been changed to that morning. Jim had his fingers crossed that the change meant good things.
“Reunion, huh?” Simon asked in interest when Blair explained why he’d be taking a slightly longer lunch than usual. “So long as someone doesn’t try to frame you for a murder, I guess.”
With that ringing endorsement, Blair finished up as much paperwork as he could - both his and Jim’s. Paperwork multiplies, Blair decided as he worked through the stacks. It waits till night when there are no humans around to see and then the stacks get up and have sex and make little paperwork babies. Every newborn baby radiates Lunatix™, a colourless, odourless gas that impacts only those humans that come into contact with the babies. These humans turn into mindless paperwork-filling automatons and eventually go insane. They should be treated with extreme caution, especially since most are armed with pens, which everyone knows are mightier than swords - and possibly guns.
He made a mental note to share his theory with Jim and scratched his signature across a sheet. Twelve o’clock, the little desk-top clock told him. Time for lunch. Time for the reunion. Time to meet up with his childhood tormenters.
Or tormenter-wannabes.
He cleared his mind of all extraneous thoughts. Wouldn’t do to let it slip to them - or Jim - exactly how bothered he’d been by the bullying attempts, even if he’d always stood up to them unflinchingly.
Blair threw on his coat as he got up. By the time he’d made it out of the Major Crimes bullpen, he’d picked up another list of lunch-time orders, even with the knowledge that he’d probably be back late this time. Mama Ellie’s was too big a prize to give up, Blair thought with a grin, especially for his poor Lunatix™-soaked compatriots.
The sandwich shop’s big glass windows let him see that some of the tables had been taken. About twenty people, he guessed. Mama Ellie had confided in him that she’d been booked out for a few hours, and Blair had admitted that it was his class reunion being held at her shop. He’d garnered her cooperation in not mentioning his current vocation. It’d be interesting to see how long it took his old school-mates to catch on.
“Blair!” Mama Ellie’s voice rang out merrily as he stepped through the door. He grinned at her.
“Hey, Mama Ellie,” he greeted her cheerfully. “Got another list of orders for you, but take your time about them. I’m having lunch here today.” He handed her the list on which he’d written down the miscellaneous orders from his colleagues.
“Your usual, then?” she asked, and bustled over to the sandwich makings without waiting for a response.
“Surprise me,” he answered with a chuckle, and moved over to the nearest unoccupied seat. They’d pushed together some tables to allow them all to sit relatively near each other. The seat Blair took was at the corner, where he’d be able to move away quickly and easily. Some of Jim’s habits had rubbed off on Blair. It was natural, he supposed, given the amount of trouble both of them could get into.
“Sorry if I’m late,” Blair said. “But I’m afraid I can’t get away from work for long. Blair Sandburg, for those who didn’t recognise me.”
“Your hair!” one of the men at the table blurted out, and Blair grinned ruefully.
“Yeah, I decided I’d grow it out,” he said, shrugging. He belatedly recognised the man who’d spoken as one of his chief harassers, a Caleb… something. Ainesworth, that was it. Ainesworth, in fact, had been the reason he’d grown his hair out. No matter how much peanut butter he’d had smeared on his head, the bubblegum that Ainesworth had worked into it hadn’t wanted to come out. He’d had to crop most of it off, and Blair had decided never to cut his hair again after such a “traumatic experience that has scarred me for life!”
Mama Ellie came over with his sandwich and usual tureen of free soup just then, breaking the slightly awkward silence that had fallen.
“You spoil me,” he declared, eyeing the soup happily. It was his favourite.
“Someone needs to,” she said archly. “And where’s that Mr Ellison of yours?”
“Work,” Blair sighed dramatically. “Something he couldn’t get away from, I’m afraid. I’ll be sure to tell him exactly what he missed out on today.”
“You do that,” Mama Ellie said with a self-satisfied look, and Blair laughed incredulously.
“You come here often?” asked the pretty woman (was that Lisa O’Brien? Blair remembered her as the sweet young girl who’d taken him under her wing and treated him like her kid brother.) across the table from him. She was eyeing him now like he was an alien specimen.
“Pretty regularly,” he admitted. “She makes the best sandwiches in Cascade, in my humble, unbiased opinion.” A snort from the counter told him exactly what Mama Ellie thought of his humble, unbiased opinion.
“So,” Blair continued, “humour this old soul. Why’d you people decide to have this little reunion here in rainy old Cascade?”
The few nearest him exchanged uneasy looks. Finally, Ainesworth decided to bite the bullet.
“Fact is,” he said a little hesitantly, “we - Sam and Terry - were the ones organising this, right? And well, we wanted to make it easy for you to come to the reunion. If you did, we wanted to… well, apologise. For how we treated you when we were kids.”
“They wanted to apologise,” Lisa chimed in happily. “I wanted to know what happened to the little genius we had.”
Blair raised an eyebrow. That, he hadn’t expected. “Apology accepted,” he said easily. “And I apologise too, for the time I kicked you in the balls.”
Ainesworth winced in memory even as some of the others started laughing. The rest of the meal passed in companionable chatter. A few of them had kept in touch with others, but for most, it was an opportunity to catch up. Not everyone was there, of course, but some had brought friends or significant others, and the group was loud and engaging.
Blair determined from a few comments that everyone there (except Mama Ellie, who was thoroughly amused) thought that he was still with Rainier. He didn’t lie, but he didn’t disabuse them of the notion either, skilfully deflecting questions about the exact nature of his work. What, he wondered with amusement, would it take for them to realise he was avoiding work-related questions?
As it turned out, it took Jim, breezing into the shop and heading straight for Mama Ellie to place his order. “Wow,” Blair heard Lisa murmur when she caught sight of Jim, and had to fake a cough to hide his laugh.
“Jim,” Blair called, reaching out and grabbing another chair from an adjacent table. “You’re done already?”
“The whole case is over,” Jim replied as he came over and took the seat Blair offered him.
“You’re kidding!” Blair exclaimed, sitting up straight in shock.
“Nope,” Jim practically crowed. “He changed his plea to guilty. Maximum sentence; he’s not seeing anything but the inside of a jail for a long time.”
“Excellent,” Blair said, satisfied. “Oh - guys, let me introduce you to Jim Ellison. He’s my house-mate and my partner at work.”
“Partner?” Lisa asked uncertainly.
Ainesworth looked from Jim to Blair in disbelief. “Wait, Sandburg - I thought you were working at the university?”
“He was when we met,” Jim agreed. “But he’s been a detective with Cascade PD for about a year now.”
Lisa looked like she might faint. Blair shrugged and got up on the pretext of bringing his empty soup bowl back to Mama Ellie, ignoring the confused babble of questions targeted at an amused Jim.
“Major Crimes is lucky to have him,” Jim said. “The other departments were clamouring for him, but I got first dibs.” He shot a smug look at his partner, who’d oh-so-casually removed his coat to reveal the revolver snug in its holster at his waist. The appearance of the gun prompted yet another round of incredulous exclamations. Somewhere amongst the gibbering, Blair distinctly heard someone wail, “But he was a hippie!”
He couldn’t help it; he laughed.
~*~
“Pretty interesting reunion,” Jim commented, taking Blair’s coat and hanging it for him. Blair shrugged blithely as he headed to the kitchen and a nice, cold drink of water.
“Back then, it got to me a little,” he admitted. “But I kind of get where they were coming from, y’know?”
“You’re a better man than most of us ever will be,” Jim said, ruffling Blair’s hair. Blair bore the injustice with good humour.
“Simon wanted to know,” he told Jim, “if anyone had died at the reunion and if I’d been framed for her murder.”
Jim snorted, taking the stairs at a brisk trot. “Wrong reunion.”
“That’s what I told him,” Blair agreed. “Then he said, ‘Oh yes, it’s you and Ellison, isn’t it? What was it this time then? Armed robbery? High-speed chase? Poisoning?’ And he wouldn’t believe me when I said absolutely nothing out of the ordinary happened!”
“It’s us,” Jim called down. “He’s justified.”
Blair poured out a second glass of cold water for Jim, set it on the table and went to his own room to change. “But still,” he argued, voice muffled as he pulled a loose t-shirt over his head. “He didn’t have to be so incredulous.” He heard Jim’s footsteps on the stairs and poked his head out of his room.
“Chief?” Jim asked dryly. “When have we ever managed to take a vacation that didn’t go bad?”
Blair started to protest that it hadn’t all been that bad, and then closed his mouth with a snap. Jim saluted him knowingly with his glass.
“Maybe that’s the trick,” Blair said thoughtfully, slumping back on the sofa. “I didn’t actually take a vacation, so nothing went wrong.”
“We’ll try that next time,” Jim decided, coming over to join Blair on the sofa. Blair promptly put his feet up on Jim’s lap. “I’d like a holiday that doesn’t involve poachers or mafia one of these days.”
“We’ll be old and grey and still end up in the midst of a stunningly-conceived plot to murder the president,” Blair predicted glumly. Jim snorted and bumped the edge of his glass against Blair’s shin.
“You can start planning how to get us out of that now,” he said. “And for that matter, how to get out of all the paperwork waiting for us tomorrow.”
Blair perked up. “About that!” he said enthusiastically, and Jim gave him a wary look. “I have a theory…”
~fin
Concrit please!