Refugee Status
by lamardeuse

Rating: NC-17

Pairing:  Jim/Blair

Warnings:  mature themes, language

A/N:  Written for ponders_life and the Sweet Charity auction.



















On the last night before Blair leaves town, he climbs the stairs to Jim’s room and crawls into bed with him. Jim hears him coming, of course, but he lets him get that far, lets their skins slide together for a moment, lets their mouths brush before Jim's hands close around Blair’s biceps, freezing him in that endless moment of potential.

Selfish as always, Jim thinks to himself, when he lets himself remember.






He’s had partners. First Megan for a while until her exchange was up and she went back to Australia, then a series of eager young detectives, none of whom reminds him of Blair.

Not one of them ever learns the truth about him, either. He’s gotten good at hiding it, but then who the hell would guess something like that?

He still has the senses, but they’re part of him now. Somewhere along the line he stopped fighting, and they finally settled in, into his blood and his bones. There is no effort, no choice to be made in using them or not using them. He couldn’t wish them away now if he tried, not that he wants to.

He’s without a partner right now, but Jim knows Captain Mancini is on the lookout for another one. You’re good with rookies, he tells Jim, and Jim nods and thanks him for the compliment, though it feels like a short jab with a knife when he says it.






Blair gets his doctorate from Berkeley after writing a completely new dissertation on the cross-cultural influences in modern Vietnamese society. This one is published, and though Blair doesn't make a million bucks on it, it still sells better than a lot of dry academic studies that moulder on university bookstore shelves. Blair chalks it up to the Vietnam connection, but Jim knows it's a credit to Blair's talent as a writer and observer of human nature rather than his choice of subject. Nobody remembers old wars.

On the strength of the dissertation, Blair gets an assistant professorship and spends a lot of time in the field. He writes to Jim from all over the world – the Far East, the Near East, the Middle East, you name it – long letters about everything and nothing, and Jim reads every one at least five times and presses the paper flat with his hands, fingers spread across the evidence of Blair’s touch, before placing them in a file he keeps in a drawer in the kitchen under the silverware.

When Blair starts e-mailing him, he deletes them after reading them once. It’s not the same.

He sees Blair every couple of years; Blair flies into town and they get together to drink and have dinner at some ethnic restaurant or other, a different one every time. They talk about Blair's work, Jim's work, Jim's dad, Blair's mother, Simon, Darryl, and occasionally Blair's latest girlfriend. Jim doesn't talk about people he’s dating.

He never invites Blair up to the loft, and Blair never asks. Still reading each others’ minds after all this time, Jim thinks, the anger as persistent as a toothache.






Jim still works out regularly, though he has to change his routine – more cross-training, less weights – to keep ahead of the middle age spread. He goes through a sushi phase and drops ten pounds, but soon gains it all back in muscle. For the hell of it, he goes to a gay gym and gets cruised no less than four times in an hour and a half.

Not bad for an old guy, he thinks.






Blair goes to the Academy full-time on his own insistence. He could've gotten away with the weapons training only, but he didn't feel right about it, wanting to be on an even footing with the other cops, not wanting anyone to be able to say he didn't earn his place at Jim's side. They don’t talk about it much, or really at all; Blair attends his classes, Jim goes to work, they come home, they eat supper, they watch a game if one’s on. Perfectly normal.

Only Jim doesn’t fall asleep any more to the scratch of Blair's pencil on paper, and the incessant calls from harried undergrads worried about their latest mark stop dead. Blair quits performing experiments on Jim, quits blindfolding him or wrapping his head in cotton or whatever the fuck he had cooked up that week to test Jim's senses. Most of the time Jim thought the experiments were pointless, so he doesn’t know why he suddenly misses them; he only knows that it’s part of everything Blair gave up that day to protect him, and that suddenly makes them important, valuable, like a precious heirloom stolen in the night by unseen theives.

One day three months in, Blair comes home looking tired. When he emerges from the shower, Jim sees the bruise before Blair manages to button up his shirt. He crosses the distance between them in two seconds, and before he knows what he’s doing his fingers are hovering, trembling, over the purpling flesh covering Blair's ribs.

“It's nothing,” Blair grunts. “Just zigged when I should have zagged in hand-to-hand class today,” but the words don’t make sense; Jim's gaze is riveted to that spot, and he thinks for a crazy moment that if he stares hard enough he'll be able to see the blood seeping from ruptured capillaries, see it flowing into once healthy tissue, making everything ugly.

“Jim. Jim!” Jim blinks, slowly returning to the sensation of Blair's hands gripping his arms, nails digging into the skin. “C'mon. C'mon back, okay?”

He closes his eyes and loses himself in darkness for a moment, and when he opens them again, he doesn’t look at Blair's concerned face. “I'm good. I'm fine,” he mutters, stepping back and dislodging Blair's hold on his arms, ignoring the faint feeling of dizziness that persists, ignoring Blair's hands still half-reaching out to him.






Jim gets his new partner as promised, and Christ, either they’re getting younger or Jim’s getting older. This one looks barely out of high school, and he calls Jim ‘sir’ twice before Jim growls at him to knock it off.

Seven hours later Jim’s sitting in the emergency waiting room, waiting for the doctor to come out and tell him what the hell’s going on.

“What the hell’s going on?” Jim looks up to see Mancini, red-faced and disheveled, striding across the space between them, scattering the walking wounded as he goes.

“I’m waiting to find out. The doc said she'd let me know as soon as – ”

“I’m asking you,” Mancini snaps, and Jim feels a surge of rage so sudden and overwhelming that it scares him. He hasn’t felt that way since the jungle.

Taking a deep breath and letting it out before speaking, he says, “The kid was going to a party later and he wanted to stop at a liquor store near his apartment before I took him home. I was waiting in the car, and by the time I heard anything, it was too late.” The kid didn't live in the best part of town, and normally Jim's senses would be on high alert, but he was tired, so fucking tired, and the first sign of any trouble was the kid's shout of warning, followed in the next moment by the sound of a gun cocking. The trouble is that he can’t be sure he wouldn't have picked up something earlier if he'd been paying attention.

Mancini's looking at him, just looking, his gaze steady and tinged with understanding. That only makes Jim angrier.

“He was going to celebrate his first day on the job,” Jim growls. “His friends are somewhere right now, waiting for him to show up.” Mancini looks away, and at least Jim manages to get that out of it.

Mercifully, the doctor shows up then; both men turn and face her. “He's going to pull through,” she says immediately, and Jim starts breathing again. “He's not going to be catching any bad guys for a few weeks, though.”

He hears Mancini's murmured, “Thank God,” and suddenly Jim's on his ass in the hard plastic waiting room chair again, face in his hands, because Christ, the only thing he can think of is that could've been Blair.






Jim goes out with women, even sleeps with a few. None of them are around long enough for him to consider himself in a relationship, and he tells himself he isn't sure why.

One night he goes out to a club to see a Brazilian band that Blair used to be crazy about, and a guy with long dark hair pulled back in a ponytail buys him a drink. He reciprocates, and they skip the band's third set to make out behind the club, Jim holding the guy against the wall with the heels of his hands pressed to the guy's shoulders. When the guy reaches for his belt, Jim pulls away and says, “I'm forty-two years old and I'm a cop. No way am I going to fuck in a public place.”

“So let's fuck at my place,” the guy says, and well, okay, Jim can't fight that logic.

It's clumsy and awkward at first, and then everything seems to speed up and the next thing Jim knows the guy has him stretched out on the bed and is working two fingers into his ass, and shit, that's not what he wanted at all, except he's harder than he's been in years and he may well have been moaning steadily for the last five minutes because his throat is hoarse and dry.

“God, you're tight,” the guy breathes. “You've never done this before, have you? Am I the first one to do this?”

“You want – a medal?” Jim grunts, though he's panting because he can't get enough air and fuck, fuck.

“Just let me,” the guy's whispering, low and dirty in Jim's ear, “let me in, you're gonna like it, I promise you...”

“Get on with it already,” Jim growls. Ever obliging, the guy rolls on a condom, hikes up Jim's legs and pushes into him, and Jim closes his eyes and focuses on the soft brush of long hair against his calves.






Jim ignores the phone, and eventually it stops ringing. He doesn't even bother checking his e-mail, and if carrier pigeons are landing on his windowsill or somebody’s sending up smoke signals from the nearest rooftop, he doesn't notice. He isn't sure what day it is when the knock sounds on his door and won't quit.

He's not entirely surprised when Simon barrels past him and plants himself, glaring, cross-armed and silent, in the middle of his living room. He sees Simon about three or four times a year, but he's also a good friend of Mancini, and Jim knows the cop grapevine extends past retirement, maybe even beyond the grave.

“I'll go back tomorrow,” Jim says.

The glare doesn't abate. “That's not why I'm here and you know it. People are worried about you, goddammit.”

And that just sounds so much like the resulting speech after one of those times Blair prodded Simon to be more sensitive to his staff that Jim starts laughing, helplessly. It gets so bad that he has to lean back against the kitchen counter and wrap his arms around himself to keep his ribs from aching.

“Okay, that answers my next question,” Simon mutters, but his tone isn't as gruff.

“Which was?”

“Whether you'd lost your marbles.” Jim giggles again at that and wipes at his eyes.

“Truth is, Simon – ” Jim glances up, then away “ – I'm starting to think I don't want to play anymore.” It's the first time he's said it aloud, even admitted it to himself. Somehow it seems less terrifying with Simon here.

There's a pause, then a sigh. “How close're you to retirement?” he asks, though they both know the answer.

Not close enough; if he'd gone straight from college to the force he'd be looking at early retirement within a year, but his years of military service mean he won't be able to cash in for a while. “Five and a half years, minimum.”

“You thought about putting in for a change of assignment?”

Jim shakes his head. “Mancini knows I'm too valuable on the street. Besides, there's nothing else I'm good for.”

“That's not true,” Simon protests. “There's all kinds of things you can – ”

Jim spreads his hands. “Like what? PR, maybe?”

Simon snorts. “God forbid.  People'd be picketing the police station every day.” He waves a hand, no better at this than Jim but evidently not wanting to give up. “Look, why don't you – take some time off? Give yourself a while to think about it, to figure out what you want.”

Jim swallows around a mortifying lump in his throat. That's just the fucking trouble, isn't it? He's known exactly what he wanted for ten years.

Aloud, he says, “Yeah, okay. I got some time coming to me.”

“Make sure you actually go somewhere,” Simon prods. “Fishing, camping.” He pauses. “Visiting old friends.”

Jim's jaw clenches. “Simon.”

“When was the last time you saw him?”

Jim doesn't bother to ask who he means. “A little over two years. He was heading out on another expedition. Cambodia.” He doesn’t say that he hasn’t gotten so much as an e-mail from Blair in over ten months.

“Yeah, well, he's probably back by now. You might want to give him a call, see how he's doing.”

“He's doing great,” grits Jim. “He doesn't need to hear from me.”

“Jim,” says Simon, and there's iron in the word. “Maybe I was never sure why Sandburg up and left like he did, but I figured it probably had something to do with you trying to be noble. No, just shut up and listen for a minute,” he adds, holding up a hand to forestall Jim's protest. “Personally, I think Sandburg would've made a good detective. He was smart, he had common sense, and he had the benefit of three years of experience working with you. He came a long way in the time we knew him, and he was acing everything they threw at him at the academy.”

Jim flashes on the memory of the bruise on Blair's pale skin, as vivid and violent now as it was seven years ago. He thinks of the rookie lying in a pool of his own blood on the dingy, cracked linoleum of a liquor store while Jim pressed his wadded-up shirt to the wound, stanching the flow as best he could. “Yeah, well, he might've made a good cop, but he was a better anthropologist,” Jim mutters. “And that's what he was meant to do.”

“Didn't know you believed in predestination,” Simon says, then sighs. “What I'm trying to say is, nobody who spends their life being noble ever looks back when they're eighty and thinks, 'well, at least I was noble.' Noble doesn't get you anything but lonely, Jim.”

“Don't you think I fucking know that?” Jim snaps, and he's alarmed to hear his voice come out rough and fragile, like something about to shatter.

Simon walks up to him and lays a hand on his shoulder before letting his hand drop to his side. “Yeah, you know it,” he agrees softly. “Now you just gotta convince yourself you deserve better than that.”

Jim doesn't hear Simon let himself out; he's too busy listening to his heart pound in his chest.






It takes him three days to actually make the call. First he tries sending Blair an e-mail to his Berkeley account, but it promptly bounces back. He tells himself he just wants to talk to Blair, wants to make sure he's okay. Of course, he thinks, Naomi would have contacted him if anything ever happened, and the thought chills him straight to the bone, because it reminds him just how far apart they are now. Time was when he would have been the first to know if Blair was in trouble, hurt, afraid. But then, time was he would probably have been the reason for all three.

When he calls the last number he has for Blair, the number at Berkeley, he's told it's been disconnected. He then googles the university and contacts the main switchboard, and through that the Anthro department. The perky-voiced woman on the other end tells him that no, Dr. Sandburg isn't working at Berkeley any more; he accepted a teaching position with the University of British Columbia last fall. Jim is still drowning in the realization that Blair has been living less than two hundred miles from him for the past nine months as he googles again, this time for UBC. Sure enough, he’s there in the Anthro faculty directory, right under the S’s, no picture beside his name. There’s no office number, just an e-mail address, but Jim feels weird about getting in touch with him that way. He thinks about calling the switchboard and asking for his number, but that seems kind of stalkery. If Blair had wanted him to have his number, he would've told him, would've let him know he was moving to a whole other fucking country, and suddenly Jim's grabbing his keys off the table and moving toward the door.

Five hours later he's crawling through Richmond in the driving rain, wondering if the highway will ever end. He hasn't been in Vancouver in a long time, and the little geography he remembers is obliterated by the increasing realization that he's gone off the deep end. Taking the first exit after reaching Vancouver proper, he almost turns the truck around, but instead he buys a map at a service station and he's on his way again. He has to go through with it now, he tells himself, because he paid four bucks plus a crazy amount of tax for the map, and yeah, he's right off the deep end and going down for the third time.

After that it's kind of a blur until he's opening the door to Blair's classroom. It's not a huge classroom, but big enough that Blair doesn't see him at first, and Jim has a few minutes to do the observing for a change.

“Yeah, that's a good point,” Blair says, nodding at one of the students, and Jim's recollection of dry, dull lectures in college are nothing like this. Blair's not lecturing, he's discussing, and he's giving the kids equal time to shine, giving them his full attention as he listens to them. He's sitting up on a stool, his feet resting on the rungs, faded blue jeans stretched across his thighs, and Jesus, he looks good. Then he turns his head to look at the next speaker, and  –

– the ponytail's gone. He's cut his hair. The last time Jim saw him, he was still –

Blair's still talking. “Okay, but how do you account for the discovery Atkins made last year? How do you incorporate that into the previous scholarship?” When the kid doesn't answer, Blair looks up and scans the room. “Anybody else want to try tackl– ” He stops mid-word when his gaze locks with Jim's, and Jim is trapped, open-mouthed and paralyzed, by those eyes.

The class shifts restlessly, sensing that it's suddenly leaderless, but before they can panic and run Blair blinks and resumes command. “You know what? That's a good question for all of us to consider. Why doesn't everybody give me a thousand words on that for next class – ” a few half-hearted groans “ – and I'll promise to do the same. I'll read mine aloud and you can all laugh at me, how's that? Now go and enjoy the day.” He glances out the window. “Well. As best you can.”

The class empties quickly. Only when the last student is gone does Jim summon the wherewithal to stand. Blair's still sitting, an unreadable look on his face, and for a breathless moment, Jim's certain Blair's going to tell him to get lost.

“Sorry I – ” Jim waves a hand to indicate the vanished class, and Blair seems to snap back into himself at that.

Blair blinks at him, then shakes his head. “No problem. They were kind of stunned today anyway. Summer session, you know? They don't really want to be here any more than I do.” He makes a feeble gesture in Jim's direction. “I'm the one who's sorry. I'm just – I'm having a little trouble believing you're here.”

“I'm here,” Jim says, as firmly as he can manage.

Blair chuckles. “Yeah, I'm finally starting to get that.”

“You didn't tell me...” Jim begins, then stops. Blair's under no obligation to tell him he changed jobs, moved, cut his hair, anything.

“Yeah, well, there are a lot of things – ” Blair snaps, cutting himself off before he can finish the sentence, though it doesn't matter. Jim's chilled to the bone anyway.

Blair scrubs a hand over his face. “Look, I'm sorry. Again. It's been a hell of a week, and I – ” He shakes his head.

“You and me both.” Blair looks up, and there's something there, some hint of the old Blair that makes Jim's pulse leap and his palms sweat. When Blair's gaze stays on him, he waves a hand. “I, uh, when are you done for the day?”

Blair's mouth quirks upward at the corner. “I was gonna put in an hour or two grading papers, but I can blow it off.”

Jim opens his mouth, then shuts it. “Okay. Buy you dinner?”

“Sounds good.” Jim starts down the wide steps to join him, and Blair waits until he's only a few feet away before sliding off the stool. Jim stops a foot or two in front of him, his gaze roaming over Blair's upturned face. There's a wisp of gray at Blair's temples that wasn't there the last time they saw one another.

“Whatcha doin'?” Blair asks softly. “Counting the wrinkles?”

“Blackheads, actually,” Jim returns. “You got lousy pores, Sandburg.”

Blair chuckles dryly. “Dick.” He takes a deep breath, lets it out. “Okay, don't freak.”

Jim frowns at the non sequitur. “About what?” he demands, but Blair's already turned and is walking toward the door, and Jim has his answer because Blair's gait is a slow, uneven limp.

His hand's halfway to Blair's retreating shoulder before he realizes he doesn't have that right anymore, either. Pulling his hand back, he follows behind Blair as he exits the classroom and leads Jim out into the fresh air, where the clouds are finally beginning to break up and yield to the late spring warmth.






Blair lives in a house on the Haida lands near the university. According to Blair, it’s some of the only affordable housing left in the city, because most people don’t like the lease arrangement. From his perspective, though, it’s perfect, both in location and price. The older bungalow is surprisingly homey, with a small front yard full of ornamental bushes and rounded granite stones.

“I bought it because of this,” Blair says, sweeping an arm to encompass the back yard. Jim sucks in a breath; the space isn't much bigger than the front yard, but it's an oasis of lush growth, evergreens forming a protective cocoon around a teak patio and a natural stone path leading to a small pond. “As soon as I saw it, I knew I was headed for the mortgage and the property ladder.”

Jim swallows, feeling a tug of connection that can't be fully explained by the landscaping. “Yeah, I, uh, I can see why you would want to be.”

The interior is dated but cheerful, and Blair spends a while giving him the tour, despite the fact that the house can't be more than a thousand square feet. They're having a hard time not bumping into one another, their movements uncoordinated, clumsy. Jim remembers when they used to bump into one another because they couldn't seem to help being in one another's faces. This isn't the same.

Blair offers him a beer which Jim turns down, opting for a Coke instead. He sure as hell doesn't need caffeine, but he needs alcohol even less. Now is the time, if ever there was one, for a clear head. The sun's come out so they sit out on the patio for a while, staring at the evergreen boughs drooping toward the earth.

“I should go to a hotel,” Jim says, but he didn’t even bother to pack a damned bag and he hasn’t shaved since this morning and he knows he looks haggard, stretched thin over his bones. This time he’s the stray, seeking shelter, uncertain of his welcome.

“The living room has a sofa bed,” Blair says, matter-of-factly. Jim doesn't know if he should read anything into the invitation or not, doesn't know if he can. Blair's mysterious injury has floored him; he has a thousand questions buzzing in his head, and he has to clamp his mouth shut to keep them from escaping.

“Well,” Jim manages, “thanks.”

“No problem,” Blair says. “After all, what are friends for?”






They take Blair's car to Granville Island, an artsy spot with a huge food market that makes Jim's mouth water. Blair buys a huge basket of golden plums and they eat four or five of them apiece, licking the juice off their fingers as they walk. Jim stops at a pastry stall and buys baklava for later and challah bread for the morning, then spends the next twenty minutes feeling foolish, as though even making that much of a plan is presumptuous. Blair makes no comment other than tearing off a golden knot of challah and popping half of it in his mouth before Jim can say anything.

Supper ends up being Indian take-out from the food court, crisp samosas and thick curry and lentil dal that is better than the stuff served at a lot of high-end restaurants back home. Afterward, they walk along the waterfront in a slow, almost comfortable silence, and Jim chucks pieces of naan at the seagulls and watches the tiny water taxis dart under the shadows of the multi-million dollar condos and thinks, I could. I want to.

After they get back, though, his courage deserts him, and he pleads fatigue from the long drive in the rain. Considering he probably looks like death warmed over, Blair takes him at his word; he's looking pretty worn out himself, and it hasn't escaped Jim's notice that the limp has gotten worse over the course of the evening. He's sure he'll be too keyed up to sleep, but he's out the moment his head hits the pillow, lulled by the familiar, loping rhythm of Blair's heartbeat. He only wakes to the warm pressure of Blair's hand on his shoulder in the morning.

“Hey,” Blair says softly, leaning over him. “How'd you sleep?”

Jim blinks up at him muzzily, and Blair chuckles. “C'mon, we've got somewhere to go.”






They drive for close to an hour to the other end of town, and Jim's surprised when they park outside a brightly painted community centre on an otherwise rundown street. There are a couple of skinny East Indian kids dressed in skateboarder chic hanging outside, and they greet Blair when he stops to talk to them. When he introduces Jim, they say hello grudgingly, their wary gazes on him the whole time.

There's a vacant lot out back with a small garden plot, a skateboard ramp and a basketball court. Three groups of kids are taking turns playing two-on-one, but Blair soon organizes them into teams.

“Okay, we need one more for Ravi's team – hey, Jim, why don't you join in?” Blair asks casually, and Jim shoots him a dirty look.

“Man, how old is he?” Ravi says, with some disgust, as he dribbles the ball.

Jim steps forward and deftly snags the ball from him, then zooms in on the hoop with his sentinel vision and scores a perfect basket from where he's standing, nearly thirty feet away. “Old enough to have forgotten more than you're ever gonna know about b-ball,” he says, grinning without a hint of mirth.

Ravi looks him up and down, then nods. “Fine,” he mutters.

Blair plays referee, and it turns out to be a pretty lively game. The kids are experienced players, but not so good that Jim can't keep up with them easily. In the last minute, Jim flies down the court, then hooks the ball to Ravi from behind his back. The setup is perfect; Ravi lands another basket right before Blair blows the whistle.

It's then that Jim realizes they've drawn a bit of a crowd; there are about a dozen kids, boys and girls, watching them intently. One of them down at the back turns toward the other one and murmurs something to his comrade; Jim pricks up his ears at the sound of the familiar accent.

Grinning, he returns the high fives of his teammates, then walks over to the pair at the back. “Are you going to play?” he asks the startled boys in Quechua, “Or are you just going to sit back here and criticize all day?”

The taller boy glances at the shorter one, who nods imperceptibly. “Yeah, okay,” the taller one says. “But only if you're on our side.”

Jim nods back, feeling a surge of satisfaction he hasn't felt in – hell, in forever. Feeling a prickle of awareness, he turns back to the court to see Blair watching him, an approving and self-congratulatory expression on his face. In that moment, Jim wants nothing better than to stride across the court, pull Sandburg close to him and watch that smug look melt into something entirely different, but for now he'll take what he can get.






“When I first moved here, I rented an apartment just around the corner from the Centre,” Blair explains later over lunch at a nearby Thai restaurant. “It was cheap – by Vancouver standards – and that was about all it had to recommend it. For a Canadian city, this place really needs a wake-up call on how it treats its working poor and underclass. They're shoved to the side to make room for the next multi-million dollar condo, and sometimes it seems like nobody gives a damn.”

“You're preaching to the choir here, Chief,” Jim murmurs. He's become increasingly restless over the course of the morning, and now he's practically vibrating in place. He feels like he's going to explode if he doesn't do something soon. The problem is, doing what he wants to do will probably precipitate another explosion.

Blair continues, oblivious to Jim's inner debate. “Well, it's not much, but I'm doing what I can. Not that it's such a chore – the kids are great, aren't they?”

“The kids are hooligans – ” Blair shoots him a look, and he grins “ – but yeah, they're pretty cool. It's kind of amazing that they all get along.” Jim counted about a dozen different ethnic groups there this morning. It was kind of like the street punk version of the UN.

“It isn't always like that, but it's getting better. There's a new volunteer there, a psychologist trained in crisis intervention. He's been a huge help.”

Jim feels a surprising jab of jealousy at the smile in Blair's voice. “What's his name?”

“Hm? Oh, Sam. Sam Toulany.” He pauses to shovel in another bite of nasi goreng with his chopsticks. “Which reminds me, you're gonna meet him tonight. Mary – you met her, the woman who teaches gardening – is having a fortieth birthday party, and the whole staff is going.”

Jim shakes his head. “I'm sure she didn't mean for me to – ”

Blair waves the hand that isn't holding the chopsticks. “We're supposed to bring a guest. Besides, it's a local mating ritual to bring any unattached, eligible straight guys you can find to parties.”

Jim almost chokes on his curry. “And you're a great student of ritual.”

“Please,” Blair says, “that's professor of ritual.”





Blair, as it happens, was speaking the truth. The women at the party, many of them around Jim's age, ooh and aahh over him as though he's the Koh-I-Noor diamond: in other words, rare, valuable and shiny. Jim's more than a little in fear of his life when three of them offer to get him a drink simultaneously, then shoot daggers at one another with murderous eyes as he cowers in the corner.

The guy Blair gushed about is another reason this party sucks. Jim tries really hard to hate Sam Toulany, but in the end he can't because he's just too damned perfect to hate. He's personable without being smarmy, well-spoken without being elitist, and self-assured without being arrogant. To top it all off, he appears to be in his mid-thirties, still has all his hair and is almost ridiculously good-looking, sort of like Omar Sharif in a button-down Oxford.

“Blair's such a marvelous person,” Toulany is saying, smiling beatifically at Blair as Blair turns a little pink around the edges. “Truly an old soul. I'm privileged to know him.”

“Yeah, me too,” Jim says intelligently. The feeling of being out of place and time belatedly slams into him as he finds himself suddenly confronting the realization that, true to the old adage, you can't go home again. He's barged into Blair's life without so much as a warning, and he has no idea how he can bridge the chasm between them and walk from the past into the present. It doesn't help that his own present is a roiling stew of half-formed thoughts and bone-deep exhaustion; he doesn't have anything to offer Blair, and he suspects they both know it.

Toulany obviously does, though; it's pretty clear from the moment Blair walks in the door and into the good doctor's bear hug that there's real affection there, though whether it's of the kind that may develop into the two of them being naked in the same room, Jim isn't sure. He's never been really good at reading that kind of thing, which is part of the reason why he's standing here now watching Blair and another guy trade possibly meaningful glances.

He's so lost in his own head that it takes him a few seconds to realize Blair's looking up at him patiently, the way you might with an old, deaf uncle who fought in the Big One and so deserves to be treated with respect despite the fact he's gone dotty. “What?” he says testily.

Blair raises his eyebrows. “I'm just kind of shocked you think of me as an old soul,” he says, obviously trying to keep from cracking up. Jim's torn between wanting to smack him and wanting to kiss him stupid.

“Well, I don't know about your soul, but you are a lot older these days,” Jim teases, reaching around the back of Blair's neck to tug at a strand of the short hair curling above his nape. “You have the look of a respected academic climbing up the property ladder.”

“Bite me, man,” Blair shoots back, grinning. “Once a neo-hippie witch doctor punk, always a neo-hippie witch doctor punk.”

Blair holds his gaze for three seconds too long, and Jim holds it right back, greedy for this, for everything they've lost. When the three seconds are up, Blair starts guiltily and turns swiftly back to Toulany as though he's forgotten he was even there. When Jim looks up, he notices the guy's smile has dimmed somewhat. He resists the urge to punch the air.

“Blair tells me you are a policeman in Washington State,” Toulany says, changing the subject with a false brightness.

“I was,” Jim blurts, as surprised at the words as Blair seems to be.

“What? Jim, you – ”

Jim doesn't look at Blair. “Yeah, I'm, uh, I'm looking at early retirement.” There's a pause while he frantically searches for more. “I'm thinking about going back to school.”

Blair just stares at him, dumbfounded, and Toulany's smile returns. “Well, that is wonderful,” he says warmly. “University study is so enriching.”

“Yeah, I know,” Jim mutters. “I already have a degree.”

Toulany's handsome face falls. “Oh, I did not mean – ”

“It's okay,” Jim says lightly, “it's only a bachelor's. Actually, I was thinking about something totally different. I hear Cirque du Soleil has a kickass school.”

Toulany natters on for a couple of more minutes, then excuses himself and wanders off to talk to Mary. Jim watches his retreating back and thinks that maybe he can still hate him. He just has to resolve to work at it.

He can feel Blair's steady gaze boring into the side of his head and summons the willpower to turn toward him. “You want some wine? I saw some wine in the kitchen.”

Blair continues to stare at him. “When were you gonna tell me?”

“About the same time you were going to tell me about your leg,” Jim growls.

Blair's jaw clenches. “I broke my hip on my last trip to Borneo.” He looks up at Jim. “Okay. Your turn.”

Jim's hand is halfway to Blair's face before he stops himself. God, he's desperate to touch him, and he's standing in the middle of a roomful of strangers and one of them is inside his own skin.

“What's the soonest we can get out of here?” Jim rasps.

Blair blinks at him. “I think I can make up a convincing but non-life threatening emergency.”

Jim sags in relief. “Thank God.”






They stop at a mini-mall near Blair's place, where Blair orders two extra tall grande whateverthefuck fair trade light roasts at the Seattle's Best. This is how Jim knows they're going to be at this all night.

When they get back to Blair's house, Jim goes to the fridge and digs out the baklava, and they work together silently to distribute it onto plates, then sit on the couch side by side. Jim can feel the heat of Blair's body inches from his, and it's almost too much for his overloaded senses. “So tell me what the hell's going on,” Blair says without ceremony after the first piece of pastry is gone.

Jim's momentarily distracted by the sight of Blair sucking honey off his fingers. “You first,” he rasps.

Blair blows out a breath. “Not much to tell. I slipped and fell down half a damn mountain – my own fault – and when I quit falling I had a broken hip and three broken ribs. Two operations later, the ribs are fine, but the hip...” He trailed off, shaking his head. “The therapists at the hospital here use Eastern methods – acupressure, massage – and I wanted to give it a try. It's helping; I've got twice the mobility and strength I did this time last year.” This time he's the one to study his hands. “That and Berkeley wasn't too crazy about having a field anthropologist who might not ever be able to return to the field.”

Jim frowns. “Did they – ”

Blair shakes his head. “They didn't have time to, but I could see the writing on the wall.” He looks up. “I'm kind of glad to be back up here, anyway. It was too sunny in California.”

“Rainforest becomes you,” Jim says, then closes his eyes. “Shit, I mean – ”

“It's okay,” Blair says, and the tone of his voice tells Jim that it really is. “It's true I might not ever be back schlepping through the jungle, but there are plenty of other challenges out there I can handle. That's one of the cool things about anthropology – there are people everywhere.” He smiles without mirth. “Maybe I'll finally write that book on the thin blue line.”

And there it is, the thing that they haven't talked about for seven years suddenly dropped into their laps. Jim clears his throat before speaking. “I could say it was for the best, that it was what you were meant to do, but now I – ” He spreads his hands, indicating Blair's injury, everything he's been through.

“Yeah, I can see how that would change your opinion,” Blair says acidly, then, relenting: “Okay, so maybe it was. We’ll never know for sure, now. I was never all that good at making those distinctions around you.”

Once again, Jim finds himself adrift on Blair’s sea of psychoanalysis. “What distinctions?”

Blair looks at him for a moment, then hitches a leg up on the couch, turning toward him. “Well, for want of a better one, how about the distinction between my head and my heart?” he murmurs. “I always sucked at that one.”

Jim's heart tries to somersault out of his chest. “Blair – ”

But Blair leans back and shakes himself as if he's just woken up, and Jim takes the hint. “Okay, it's time for This Is Your Life, Jim Ellison,” Blair says scratchily. “Spill.”

Jim stares down at his hands, folded in his lap, because it's easier, then takes a deep breath and plunges ahead. “Two weeks ago my partner – a kid who was my responsibility – got shot. He's gonna be okay, but it was close for a while. I haven't been back to work since; in fact, every time I think about setting foot in the station I want to puke.”

Blair's voice is hushed. “Jesus, Jim.”

Jim keeps his gaze on his hands, suddenly feeling light-headed and strangely giddy, and hell, while he's confessing here he might as well make it good. “You want to know what really makes me sick? It's that every time I think about him, I thank God it wasn't you.” He looks up, and Blair's expression is as stricken as he imagines his own must be. “I thank God every fucking day that you left, Sandburg, because I can't stop thinking you might have been killed because of me, because I wanted you with me – ”

“Jim, c'mon – ”

“ – and if anything had happened to you I wouldn't have been able to – nothing was worth that, you understand?”

“Even our friendship?”

Jim finally looks up at that. He shakes his head. “Yeah.”

“It wasn't your decision to make,” Blair says, though there's no heat in it, only regret.

“You gave up everything because of me, Sandburg,” Jim insists. “If you'd – ” He chokes on the words, takes a breath, continues. “Look, I know wanting you with me in the first place was selfish, and I know pushing you away was selfish. Fine, I'm selfish.”

Blair's hand is on one of his now, thumb stroking against the backs of his fingers. “And that's why you made me think I couldn't cut it?” Jim hesitates. “Answer me, goddammit.”

“Yeah, that's part of the reason.”

“What's the other part?”

Jim looks right into Blair's eyes and is surprised to find it isn't half as hard as he thought it would be. “The part where I was in crazy in love with you but didn't have the balls to tell you.”

Blair stares at him for so long Jim's afraid his eyeballs will dry out. “Was?” Blair finally manages.

“Yeah, well, it's kind of an ongoing condition, if you gotta know.”

Blair drops his head and his shoulders start shaking. “You're a total asshole, you know that?”

Jim turns his hand palm up under Blair's and closes his fingers around Blair's wrist, feeling the pulse beat strongly just under the skin. “Yeah, I know it,” Jim murmurs. “And I know I can't make up for lost time. I don't even know if you want to – hell, I don't know why you would if you did. But I had to say it, even if you – ”

“Jim?”

Jim looks up. There's a glimmer of mischief in Blair's eyes that almost stops his heart. “Yeah?”

“I, uh, never thought I'd say this to you, but do you think you could stop talking now?”

Jim reaches up with a trembling hand and strokes a thumb over Blair's lips, then nods as he leans in. Blair's mouth is warm, lush like the garden of this house, welcoming like the arms that wrap around him and tug him close.

Jim follows Blair's instructions and stays mostly silent, though some sounds manage to escape, especially after they make their stumbling way down the hall to the bedroom. He can't help the sigh as Blair's hands roam over him, staking claim to territory they've owned forever, and he can't hold in the soft curse as Blair grazes a nipple with his fingernail. He can't stop the moan when Blair's fingers close around his cock, and he can't keep from whispering love you as he presses his mouth to the smooth skin covering Blair's hip.

“I heard that,” Blair whispers back, but there's a smile in it, and then he's reaching for Jim and tugging him up to kiss him over and over again. Jim pulls himself back from a zone just in time – man, that hasn't happened in years, but this is, God, this is Blair, finally – and reaches over to tug open the drawer of Blair's nightstand. Sure enough, he finds what he's looking for.

Blair watches him carefully with wide, lust-dazed eyes as Jim tears the condom packet with his teeth. He looks up at Jim and opens his mouth to ask a question, but before he can get it out Jim swings a leg over his thighs, straddling him.

Blair's eyebrows shoot for his hairline. “Jim, you – oh, God,” he breathes, because Jim's rolling the condom down over Blair's cock and thumbing the cap on the lube, and Blair stares up at him, rapt and panting, as Jim slowly lowers himself. It burns, but not enough to make him hesitate, and to take his mind off it he concentrates on Blair's short nails digging into his thighs, on the tiny beads of sweat forming along Blair's hairline. Jim takes Blair's cock deeper, then deeper still, and when he's finally filled, no empty spaces left, he knows there's no way in hell he's ever giving this away again.

It takes an impatient growl from Blair and a frustrated jerk of his hips to bring Jim back to the present, and then they're both making up for lost time, transforming long-frozen potential into eager, fluid motion.

 




“Jim?”

“Mmmm?”

“I thought of a way you can stay.”

Jim nuzzles Blair's neck, half-asleep and goofily contented. “Howzat?”

Blair plants a kiss on the top of his head. “Claim refugee status. Persecution on the basis of sexual orientation.”

“'S'ever been done?”

“I don't think so. You could be a test case.” Blair's hand curves around the nape of Jim's neck; Jim decides he likes that a lot. “Take it all the way to the Supreme Court if we have to. The United States would file a formal protest. We’d be on CNN.”

Jim rolls his forehead against Blair’s shoulder. “Sounds complicated. What else've you got?”

There's a pause. “Well, you could actually go to school up here and get a student visa.”

“Mmmm. Could study anthropology. You’d be the professor and we’d play Detention.”

“Or I could marry you.”

Jim hides his smile against Blair's skin. “First thing in the morning, I'm calling your mother and telling her how bourgeois you're getting, with your short hair and your property ladder and your marriage proposals.”

Blair shoves at Jim’s shoulder, and the next thing Jim knows he’s on his back, grinning like a loon as Blair pins his wrists to the mattress and mock-glares down at him, the twisted curve of his mouth as he tries not to laugh giving him away. Jim carefully nudges a knee up between Blair’s legs, smile turning carnal as Blair’s eyes fall shut.

“Professor, I’ve been a naughty boy,” he purrs, and Blair collapses, the laugh bursting out of him. Taking advantage of the situation, Jim hooks his other leg around Blair’s thighs and proceeds to show him just how naughty he can be.




End






May 2007

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