The Things You Like
by Mab
Blair came out of his bedroom, and Jim did a double take.
"Sandburg, what the hell is that?"
Blair stopped short. Fly done up? Check. No toilet paper on the heel of the sneakers? Check. He smoothed down the front of his new shirt and grinned.
"It's a shirt. An item of clothing, which as it happens, fulfils several functions. It keeps me warm, keeps me decent, makes a statement of personal taste," at this point Jim rather theatrically covered his eyes, "and of course all clothing, whether you intend it or not, also makes statements about your perceived or desired status in your society. And I just like it."
Jim's expression was pained, the look of a man being blinded by an unpleasantly bright light.
"I'd say it looks like your desired status is to be a pile of horse manure. Please tell me you're not wearing that in to the PD."
"Well, Jim, if I did, that would be what I believe is known technically in the cop business as a lie."
Jim groaned, and muttered something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like "never going to live this down".
Blair's new shirt received mixed reactions at the station. H pretty well summed it up when he said, "Those are mighty big flies, Hairboy."
"Actually, H, I don't think that they're supposed to be representational. More like a sort of anatomical study."
Both H and Rafe took a closer look at the hand painted design on the shirt. Big flies, larger than Blair's palm, overlapping in gold and charcoal-grey line drawings, on a pale yellow background. Blair thought that they were elegant, in a peculiar way, and he liked the colours.
Rafe cast a look in Jim's direction. "Hey, Ellison, I guess that you and Sandburg are going to be really bzzzzzy today."
If a man could be said to flip the bird with dignity, then Jim Ellison was that man.
"Yeah," H smirked, "the team of Ellison and Sandburg is going to be on those suspects like flies on shit."
Blair was unrepentant, but as a gesture of goodwill went down to records to pick up some files. Lindy Thomson, who job-shared with another clerk, was there, and she and Blair had a long and very interesting conversation kick-started by his shirt, which began with the importance of the scarab and other insect images in Egyptian mythology, and then somehow segued into the way Giger used insectile shapes to evoke images that were simultaneously horrific and erotic.
At this point, Blair thought that the whole chat was looking quite promising, but Jim eventually came in search of him, and irritably hauled Blair upstairs. Blair got the impression that Jim didn't like Lindy Thomson that much.
The afternoon was spent driving around Cascade, following up various sadly unproductive lines of enquiry. On the way home, Jim took another look at Blair in his new shirt.
"Why flies, Chief?"
Blair grinned.
"Roger Watson owed me for grading papers when his mother was sick and his girlfriend's taking a textile and design course."
"But why flies, Sandburg?"
"I just liked the shirt, okay?"
"You like the weirdest things."
Blair was grading 101 Intro to Anthro essays, and deciding that educational standards were going to hell in a hand basket. If this was the standard of the average college aspirant then God save America. Jim was doing something in the bathroom that Blair presumed involved cleaning, specifically getting the shower corners clean, since Jim was in there with an old toothbrush that was dragged out for those fiddly jobs which apparently were the only thing that stood between the loft and CDC emergency procedures.
"Sandburg, get your ass in here."
"Jim, the bathroom is not going to say anything snarky if I don't clean it. Students, however, make very pointed remarks about the expense of their education if you don't hand back their grades when you said you would."
"It's your crap," Blair mentally translated 'hair', "in the drain, and I'm not touching it. Just get it out of the way."
Blair huffed out a breath, and marched forward to wrestle with the slimy tangled mess that he knew he was going to find. Jim called out, "I'll just get you some newspaper to put the mess on," and the two of them were somehow sliding past each other in the doorway. Blair had a brief but surprisingly potent vision of sentinel chest and neck very close up, a brief impression of a solid body sliding against his, before he was in, and Jim was out. Blair bent down to industriously start dragging out the hair, and hoped that Jim would assume that his red face was due to his head down posture over the drain.
Jim came back with the newspaper. Blair found himself babbling about the first thing that came into his head.
"This reminds me of this really strange short film I saw at a festival. This woman, she's cleaning out her drain, and she drags up this huge hank of hair, which, you know, morphs into a guy. So they get it together, but then he starts, like, taking over the house, behaving like an utter slob, dropping hair everywhere etc, so she kills him, and really it was interesting in a really weird sort of way, only about ten minutes long from beginning to end."
He looked up. Jim was watching him, raptly, affectionately and disbelievingly.
"Jesus, Chief, the things you like."
"Well, I wouldn't say I liked it the way I liked 'The Empire Strikes Back', but it was interesting."
"I have every sympathy with the woman," said Jim, but he tousled Blair's hair gently, before returning to the great bathroom spring clean, assuming that spring came about twelve times a year. And Blair wondered exactly where Jim's sympathies lay, given the options described.
"That sucks, Jim, I mean, really, really sucks. We know that he did it."
Jim's voice was weary, but patient.
"Those keen anthropology instincts striking there?"
"Somebody that smug thinks that he's gotten away with something."
"Welcome to the bright world of modern policing, Sandburg. You suspect, emphasis on suspect, that Aberline did it, I suspect Aberline did it, but much as it pains me to admit it, first we have to prove it. But he's a smug bastard all right."
Jim headed for the fridge, collected two beers, and offered one to Blair. Blair accepted it, and flopped down on the couch, morosely toeing off his shoes.
"I'd be incredibly grateful if you put those in your room."
Blair just glared at Jim, who was leaning against the kitchen island, sipping his own beer.
"Hey, you really are bothered by this guy."
Blair sighed.
"I'm bothered by myself. Jim, I believe in innocent until proven guilty. So, it's just a little disconcerting to discover that what I'd really like is to hold Aberline's head down a toilet bowl, flushing repeatedly, until he confesses."
Jim laughed.
"I don't know, he strikes me as a fairly tough nut."
"A little humiliation can work wonders with smug white-collar bastards who think that they're above consequences," Blair muttered, looking darkly at his innocent bottle of beer. He slouched further down the couch cushions. He didn't notice Jim's approach until he felt the very slight give of two hands leaning on the back of the couch, either side of Blair's head. Blair tilted his head back and admired the upside down view of Jim's face. The odd angle didn't hide the warmth in Jim's expression.
"Tomorrow, we go out and get the bastard. Deal?"
"Absolutely."
Blair stretched out, enjoying the pleasurable pull in his legs and down his spine. He rotated his shoulders and arched his neck back that little further to try and work out the cricks, and saw the exact moment when the warmth in Jim's face flared into heat. Blair's eyes locked with Jim's, and he watched as Jim bent down to him, the movement seeming as slow and inexorable as continental drift, and kissed him. The angle was a little awkward, but Blair was dazzled just the same.
Yeah, he thought, now this, I like.
Blair looked up at the ceiling, admiring the way the skylight was a slightly less dim sheen against the darkness of the rest of the loft. He lay against Jim's comforting bulk and warmth. Solid muscles seemed to amount to a metabolism that put out a lot of heat, or was it just Jim? Didn't matter. Blair was warm too, and he felt good. He couldn't resist a little mental riff, 'I knew that I would now,' and his breath chuffed out in amusement.
Blair couldn't see much, but he knew that Jim was lying sprawled on his back, at least one arm lifted and curled around his head. Blair had seen babies sleep like that, and the idea that Jim slept like that sometimes was sort of, well, cute. Blair knew Jim's position despite the dark, because he had turned on his side, his forehead pressed against the silky inside skin of Jim's upper arm, his nose not quite heading into Jim's armpit. Blair's arm was draped loosely across Jim, and everything was pretty damn good.
Jim stirred a little. The hand on the side away from Blair came down and stroked across the back of Blair's hand.
"I'd have thought that was a little fragrant there, Chief."
Blair grinned.
"Well, Jim, I think that that's exactly how I'd describe it. Fragrant." And he breathed in gently, as if he was the sentinel, trying to identify all the rich complexities that made up Jim's smell.
"I like it," Blair said.
Jim shook in brief, silent laughter.
"The things you like," he said, and went back to sleep.
Return to Story Index