Small Town Start

Small Town Start is a set of three stories that began with a picture by Helvetica.  I wrote an AU where Grace Ellison took Jim with her when she left her husband, and where Blair is only a couple of years younger than Jim rather than the at least seven years of the tv show.

This is one of the pictures that inspired me:

http://makedeath1oveme.tumblr.com/post/36488635092/the-sentinel-blair-and-triumph

Having written a story based on Helvetica’s pictures, we turned full circle when she drew pictures for stories I wrote to continue in this setting for the 2010 The Sentinel Big Bang.  All three stories, and the pictures that Helvetica drew to illustrate them are under the cut.

What You Ought, What You Need

This story refers to the death of a child by Sudden Infant Death syndrome.

1984

Football practice was long over, but Jim still sat in the shelter of the bleachers, watching the sky turn red as the day rolled on to sunset. Maybe, he thought, staring up at the sky and the moving clouds, if he just sat still enough he might feel the earth rolling, revolving around its way.

Bullshit, Jimmy. Always full of bullshit. That was his step-father’s voice, still viciously resonant inside his head, even though his mom had kicked that bastard out years ago, all the hope in their wedding picture washed away in booze and disappointment. God, she knew how to pick them. First that tightwad dickwad that was his father, and then Al Pawlak, good old Al. Jim shut his eyes and leaned his head back, the pole hard against his skull, and listened to the sound of footsteps on the grass.

“Hey.”

Jim smiled. “Hey.”

There was a tiny tremor in the ground underneath his ass, the bloodwarmth of someone’s body, a shoulder leaning companionably against his.

“The mighty quarterback rests from his labours, huh?”

“Shut up, Sandburg.” Jim opened his eyes and there he was. Skinny, dorky Blair, with his wild hair and his smart-ass mouth, and his girlie name which made it imperative that Jim call him Sandburg, whether he liked it or not. Blair never complained, so Jim assumed that it was no problem. If Blair had a problem, or a suggestion, or an idea, you knew about it.

Suggestions, now. “Got the corsage picked out? It had better be impressive, man. If you want to get some of that Homecoming poontang you have to supply the goods.”

“You’re a crude little shit,” Jim declared, with no heat at all.

“I’m living vicariously. It’s not like I’m ever going to bag a Homecoming queen.”

“It’s not hunting season.”

“And that, my friend, is where you’re wrong.” Blair made some ridiculous hand gesture, which Jim ignored.

“You don’t ever stop thinking about sex, do you?”

“It’s a completely normal stage of development. I have to be inside the curve for something.” Blair stretched out his legs. There were grass stains on the faded jeans he wore, stains that Jim was pretty sure hadn’t been there when school ended that afternoon. He turned his head and checked Blair more thoroughly, taking in the flushed cheeks, and the way that Blair’s hand was wrapped around the tatty strap of his backpack, like he was worried that someone was going to take it away.

“I thought I told you to tell me if Paulie was hassling you again.”

“Paulie didn’t do anything.”

“Sandburg….” It was as threatening as he could make it. He’d scared off guys bigger than himself, before. Score one lesson that step-daddy taught him, although it never did work with Blair.

“I wanted to run, and I slipped. That’s all.”

Jim turned properly, and glared at Blair. “So, why did you want to run? There’s a track over there.” He waved a hand.

“Working off nervous energy. Have to do it somehow since I’m never going to get any.”

“You’re not even sixteen yet.”

“The senior can do math. Bless the education system of the good ol’ US of A.” Blair swallowed, the adam’s apple dipping and rising in his scrawny throat. His voice had broken not so long ago, just like a tree branch snapping, and Jim wasn’t quite used to it yet.

“What is it with you? I’d have thought you’d be happy. I…” Jim paused.

“Used the super-hearing again? I can’t blame you. I would, too.”

“You got a scholarship. They were practically wetting their pants in the teacher’s lounge because you make this place look good.”

“Well, it’s good to know that something can make this place look good, because I’m going to be looking at it for a while.”

Jim couldn’t quite take that in, and sat in stunned silence before he exclaimed, “You have to be kidding me.”

“Nope.”

“But why?”

“Alice has cancer.”

There was nothing to say to that, and so there was a silence for a while, broken only by some bird settling for the night.

Jim spoke first. “So why do you have to stay?” It came out aggressive, angry. Blair’s problem was that he never got angry when he should.

“Because Gray has to work. It’s going to be bad enough as it is. If he doesn’t work, then there’ll be no fucking money at all, and how will they pay for chemo and morphine? Someone has to look after her, and drive her to the doctor.” It came out steady in Blair’s new voice, a man’s sentiments coming out of this skinny kid, and Jim’s anger turned scorching.

“That doesn’t have to be you! What about that church that Alice and Gray go to? Huh? I bet that someone there could drive Alice to the doctor’s.” He took a deep, indignant breath. “It’s not like…” He strangled the sentence, but too late.

Sandburg stood up, but before he walked away he said, “It’s not what, Jim? It’s not like Alice is my mother? Yeah, well, thank god for that, that’s all I can say to that.”

Jim scrambled to his own feet, and grabbed a hand around Sandburg’s arm, felt the warmth under the coarse press of the jacket weave against his palm. “Okay, okay. I’m sorry. But what about Naomi? She must have money. Couldn’t she help out?” He’d met Naomi once. She’d floated into the room like a princess out of a fairy story, with her gauzy clothes and sweet scent, and she’d embraced him and looked him up and down and cooed that he was going to be a handsome man. He’d been gratified and mortified in about equal measure. Blair had been one mass of mortification, especially when his mother told him that he looked ‘so beautiful, sweetheart’.

“We’d have to find her first. You know what Naomi’s like.”

“Alice and Gray – they can’t want you to turn this down, no matter how sick Alice is.”

Sandburg shrugged. “What are they going to do? Drag me to college by my hair? I don’t think so.”

“You’re being stupid!” It was a whine, like he was the kid, and not gasping for the man’s future that was coming after school. How could he be a soldier if he whined like a little kid?

“Then I’ll be stupid.” Blair’s voice didn’t sound so grown-up all of a sudden, and Jim couldn’t bear it. He pulled Blair in for a hug reinforced by an athlete’s muscles, and held him hard. There was a hurt, salt scent in the air that made his throat sore.

“Fuck but you’re stupid.”

Blair dragged himself out of the hold and wiped his hand across his eyes, across his nose.

“Takes one to know one, army grunt.” But he smiled, even though it was uncertain, and checked his watch. “God, Alice will kill me.” He took off at a run, but he yelled over his shoulder as he went, “Remember, Jim. A really great corsage, or she won’t put out.”

Jim flipped his finger at the departing figure, but Blair didn’t see it. Somehow, the idea of getting into Stacey Wilson’s pants just didn’t have the same appeal any more. Leaving Blair behind was bearable because he’d thought that Blair was going, too. They were both going to leave this little shit town behind them and go on to greater things. That was meant to be the plan. Plans didn’t always work out, but it wasn’t right. It wasn’t.

***

1989

He had a headache. What else was new, Jim thought bitterly, watching old familiar landmarks come into sight. The old cheese factory. They’d painted the memorial bridge recently – it was a blinding white as the bus slowed down just a little to safely cross. Here we are, he thought, the main street of Shitville, USA, as the bus jerked to a stop, and the driver got out to unload the bags from the back.

Jim stood to get out and then halted in mid-movement. That was Blair out there, which was all he needed; Blair there to watch him creep back like the loser that he was. His steps dragged but he still had to get off the damn bus.

“Hey,” Blair said, his face bright, and pleased, and what the hell did he have to be pleased about? “Welcome home.”

“Complete with welcoming committee. Joy.” Jim snagged his bags, and hauled the duffle over his shoulder. “What are you doing here?”

Sandburg was persisting in being cheerful, although Jim could see the wariness underneath it. “Like you said, man. Welcoming committee.”

“How the hell did you know which bus I was on?”

“Grace told me you were coming back. There’s only so many buses. I guessed; since you didn’t bother to write me with the details, or your mom or anyone else.”

“I’m a big boy. I can make it home on my own.”

“What about your leg?”

“The leg’s fine.”

“Put your gear in the back of the truck.” It was a battered old pickup, but roomy.

“How old is that piece of shit?”

“Same age as me. 1969. It was a good year.”

“If you say so.”

“Just get in the fucking truck, Jim.”

“Pissy, aren’t you.”

Blair rolled his eyes, and slammed the door on his side of the truck with a strength that confirmed the ‘pissy’ description. Jim stared straight ahead, unreasonably irritated by the tiny dreamcatcher that hung from the mirror

“Ungrateful bastard,” Blair muttered, as the truck pulled away.

“Yeah, well excuse me if I’m not delighted to be back here.”

Blair hauled the truck around the right hand corner, not the left, past the last of the houses and heading for the level crossing with the weeds growing up through cracks in the asphalt. “My mom’s house is thataway, Sandburg,” Jim said, jerking his thumb in the right direction.

“I know, but if I take you back there you’ll poison her in this mood. We’ll go up to the lookout and I’ll open up the cab to the breezes and we’ll wait for you to turn into a human being again.”

“Christ,” was all Jim could say. But he leaned back, and shifted his left leg up as far as it could go.

“So it does hurt.”

“It has a plate in it. It gets tender, but that doesn’t mean that it won’t get better. Or that I couldn’t have walked.”

The truck had some grunt to it, despite Jim’s snarking at its age. Twenty minutes saw them pulled in at the top of the Thomas Garner Lookout and Picnic Area. Jim got out and left the door open. “There. You can purify your sacred space now.”

“Delighted,” Blair shot back, but he followed Jim to the edge of the lookout, with its view over the woods and the town.

“What do you see, Superman?”

“You can cut that bullshit out, too.”

“What do you see?” It came out equal amounts wistful and demanding. Blair always had been impressed by what Jim could do. It didn’t impress Jim so much. It certainly hadn’t impressed William Ellison; Jim had overheard too many conversations that he shouldn’t have been able to when he was a kid, before his mother got out from under and took the defective son with her.

“I see the same hick town I always saw.” I can see my house from here. Mordant humour. “What did you expect?”

“Why come back then?”

“Had to go somewhere.” And his mother wasn’t getting any younger, or any more sensible about her men. (And Blair is still here, a very quiet voice whispered, from a place usually ignored.) “Had to go somewhere.”

“What went wrong, Jim?”

“I have a plate in my leg.” Jim shrugged.

“But you could have transferred to something non-combat. That would have been possible, wouldn’t it?”

Jim stared out over the view. The old Henderson place had been painted a horrible blue. The Country Bar and Steakhouse had a new sign. And the old, familiar noises rose like vapour into the air; people, animals, machinery, the swirl of the wind and the leaves.

“Maybe. But I had a seizure in the hospital. Weird reactions to some drugs. I got pretty sick, even without the damn leg.” And they assessed him and he got given his marching orders. Too much of a liability. Too likely to react badly to the vaccinations and drugs he’d need for overseas service. Too much attitude as he saw what he’d wanted slipping away from him.

“I’m sorry.”

Jim turned to look at Blair then. He’d seen one picture since he went away, Blair standing in front of the semi he was driving for a living, and he’d still been one scrawny looking kid. He’d filled out since then; the shoulders had broadened, and he walked like a man sure of his own strength. He’d grown sideburns, Jim saw. They didn’t look so bad on him.

“Yeah, I know. But shit happens. Karma. All that stuff.”

“All that stuff….” Blair shook his head. “Philosophical to the last.”

“You’re the professor.”

“Nah. Roads scholar.” It was an old joke now. There had been books scattered in the cab of the pickup, Jim realised. He hadn’t paid any attention before, but now he found himself curious as to titles, subjects, what was taking Blair’s attention these days.

Jim took a deep breath. It smelled good up here. The smell of good earth, the trees, his friend standing patiently beside him.

“I think I’m human again.”

Blair grinned. “Good to know. Come on, man. Your mom promised us a home-cooked meal.”

“I knew this wasn’t altruism,” Jim said, in tones of deep but mock offense. He took a half-hearted swipe at the back of Blair’s head, which Blair ducked easily. “I don’t think so,” Jim said, and lunged, and grabbed, and noogied Blair’s scalp like they were both still teenagers.

“Fucker!” Blair yelped, squirming, but not too hard.

“Gotta take your medicine if you’re going to mooch off my mom, Junior.”

Blair escaped, strands of his hair loose over his face where it had dragged free from its tail.

“I’m going to mooch to a purpose. Peach pie, Jim. She told me peach pie.”

“Better get going, then.”

So Blair drove them back down the hill, and Jim tried to think about peach pie, and that he’d be able to see Blair all the time again. Nothing else. Nothing else at all.

***

1992

It was, Jim guessed, kind of ironic that Gray had died rather than Alice, way back when Jim still thought he was going to be the big career soldier. Blair had sent him a letter, and Jim had sent some awkward words back, and wished that he could be there. He didn’t know what he could have done, but still. Being there was what would have counted.

He knew that then, and he knew that now, while JJ’s tiny coffin disappeared behind the curtain. Jim hardly heard it – he’d made himself deaf, almost truly deaf, because he’d been scared shitless of what he might hear when the coffin was out of sight, out of mind. Not for him, not unless he shut down hard, which he did, his arm around Carolyn’s shoulder while she sobbed helplessly, and her mother stood by, silent, but trembling, and Carolyn’s father stood still as a stone except for sporadic efforts to wipe his face with a very white handkerchief.

Grace wasn’t there. She’d found some guy to take her away from all of this, and Jim wished her luck. But Blair was there, standing away from the family group, a respectful friend. More respectful than Carolyn’s sister, who Jim had heard muttering about that goddam hippie, and that might have turned unseemly, except for a look from Carolyn, pleading and miserable. Jim had locked up the words in his chest, instead, along with everything else, and now he looked down at Carolyn’s pretty red-brown hair, and didn’t think about how his little boy was so still and on his way to being dust and ashes.

They went back to Carolyn’s parents’ house, and they ate, and some of the men drank too much beer, and Jim tried to be attentive to the people offering their condolences, but it was too hard. Everything kept slipping away from him, and it was Blair who took off his shoes and his good jacket and laid a comforter over him in the bedroom. Blair took away the empty crib too, after a whispered downstairs conference with Carolyn’s mother that Jim heard every syllable of. Valerie wasn’t so bad. Jim had knocked up her little girl, but he’d married her too, that was what you did, wasn’t it? Took the consequences of your actions.

He slept it off, like it was a drunk instead of grief, and woke early the next morning. Carolyn was there, his wife, her face smoothly young against the pattern of the pillowcase. Just a baby, like JJ. What did anybody know? Jim got out of bed as carefully as he could, not wanting to wake her, not wanting to talk to her either, and pulled on some clothes and slipped out of the house. There were a few other early risers about, men and women on their way to work, and here was Jim playing hooky.

Alice’s house was on a corner, facing the streets four square. The house was quiet, but Jim could hear the sound of movement in the big shed that served as a garage, and stuck his head around the door into a bare-bulb lit light quite different from the dawn outside.

“You’re up early.”

“Never went to bed. You know me, sometimes I just want to keep on going.” The shadows on Blair’s face suggested that he wouldn’t keep going much longer. He looked drawn and pale, except for his hands which were dirty with grease.

“She looks good.” The bike stood gleaming under the light.

“Yeah.” Blair dipped his hands in the chemical cleaner and then turned on the faucet over the steel tub in the corner. His hands clean, more or less, he wiped them on a towel. “How are you going?”

“About as good as you’d expect.”

Blair stepped up and enveloped Jim. It felt just like that, even though Blair was shorter, a blanket cutting the chill memory of yesterday and all the other days, especially the one when Carolyn found JJ small and cold and silent in his crib.

“Hell, Jim.”

Jim didn’t say anything, just stood there inside Blair’s arms.

“I am so sorry,” Blair said.

“It’s not like it was your fault, Sandburg.” Jim eased out from Blair’s hug, suddenly too aware of how it would look to anyone else walking in the door. It would only be Alice, but he didn’t want Alice to see. She had a speculative look on her face sometimes when Jim visited, and it bugged the shit out of him . He didn’t want to know whatever it was that Alice thought she had figured out.

“It’s freakishly tidy in here,” Jim said instead of anything else.

“Yeah, it is. I’ve been cleaning it out. Alice is going to live with her sister. You met Janis, that time they visited.”

Jim felt the cold go right through him. “What about the semi? The business?”

“Alice is going to sell that, get herself a nest egg.”

“What about you?”

“Well, I guess that I’m going to be made redundant.” He was smiling, damn him.

“Not much of a reward given what you gave up for her.”

Blair cocked an eyebrow. “Who owed who here, Jim? I got paid good wages before Gray died, and after. Rewards don’t come into it.”

“And you’re going to leave this burg at last. Congratulations,” Jim said, and swung on his heel and out into the early morning air, where he still couldn’t get enough breath in his lungs.

“Jim! Hey! Wait up!” Blair ran up behind him “What is your problem?” Then he flinched, remembering some of Jim’s problem, at least. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. But, man…over-reaction much. Yeah, I’ll be moving on, but not this minute.”

“You’re still going. Good for you. Go for the brass ring.” Jim was walking fast, and Blair had to walk faster to keep up with him.

“Come back and have some coffee, Jim.”

“I can have coffee at home, Sandburg.”

“You could, but you don’t want to be there. Bad memories, bad vibes, bad everything.” Blair looked up at him; encouraging. Hopeful. Hopeful for what? But Jim followed him into Alice’s kitchen instead. There were gaps on the counters, a box in the corner, an air of vague disorder through it all, but the coffee smelled good. Alice was upstairs, showering. Jim’s freaky hearing heard it all, before he concentrated on the bubble of the coffee and the thunder of it pouring into the cups. Maybe he didn’t want to know what Alice thought when she saw him watching Blair like this because he already knew. Fag. Homo. The turn of Blair’s wrist as he poured out the milk and put the mugs on the table, the way that a strand of hair lay loose over his ear…

“Jim? You’re spacing out there.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay. Hard week.” Blair gestured. “Drink up.”

“Where will you go?”

“No more roads scholar, I’m going to be the real thing. I’m going to college.”

“Congratulations.” Jim tried to make it genuine, ashamed of his anger in the garage, ashamed of what it said about him.

“Yeah. Rainier has scholarships, and I haven’t missed so much really. If I’d started when I was sixteen I would have been a fish out of water, socially for sure.” Blair smiled. “You remember what an annoying little jerk I was when I was a kid?”

“You’re still a kid.” Which was a lie, because Blair was one of the most grown-up people Jim knew. Time to live up to the example that Blair had set him. “Hey. Seriously. I’m glad for you, you know?”

“Yeah, I know.” Blair gulped down his coffee, like it was a shot at a bar. “Come with me?”‘

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“How the hell can I come with you, Sandburg? I’m married. You remember Carolyn? I’m a – ” Jim stopped short. He wasn’t a father, hadn’t been a father for six agonising days, had he?

“Jim.” Blair was looking at his hands, which were twisted together around the coffee cup. “I’m not saying that Carolyn’s not a really nice person. Because she is. But the only reason you married her was because of JJ, to give him a dad. And that was a really good thing that you did. But JJ’s gone. And I know that you don’t love Carolyn, not like that.”

Jim sat up straight, and he stared at Blair like he’d never seen him before. “You know, Sandburg, there are people who might question your timing here.”

“Yeah, I’m taking advantage of you, if that’s what you mean. I don’t want to watch you doing what you think you ought to rather than what you need to do.”

“And you didn’t do what you thought you ought to do?” Jim snarled, his hand waving to encompass Alice and Alice’s house and the chance given up eight years ago.

Blair shook his head, perfectly calm – on the surface at least. “I did what I needed to do. What I needed to do, not what I thought I ought to do. And what I need to do now is ask you, Jim. So I’m asking. Come with me.”

“I can’t do that, Sandburg.” Jim stood. “I can’t do that.”

“Maybe you could, if you just think about it. I can do that. I can let you think about it.”

Jim shook his head. Blair was crazy, that was all there was to it.

Blair was standing in front of him, somehow. “Come on, I’ll give you a ride home. On the bike. I’m selling it anyway. Might as well enjoy it while I can.”

Jim felt his jaw drop. Why for that than for any other of the morning’s shocks, he couldn’t have said. “Why are you selling it? It’d make you the cool guy on campus, a beautiful ride like that.”

“I’ll need the money. And the insurance would be a killer. Besides, I won’t need it. I’ll have another dream instead.” Blair had that determined look on his face; martyr’s holy fire.

“I can walk home.”

“I’ll give you a ride, man.”

“You’re a shit. And not very subtle.”

“How long have you known me, now?” Blair looked almost cheerful. “No surprises there. Come on.”

It was a mistake, Jim knew it, but he got on the back of the bike, and folded his arms around Blair’s strong, solid body and Blair sedately drove him back to his grieving house.

“Like I said. It’s okay to think about it, and decide what you need to do.” Blair looked at him, blue eyes lit with more than the slanting morning sun. “I want you to be happy, Jim. Always did.”

“And you think that you can do that. Make me happy?” It was a taunt, but Blair didn’t back down from the venom.

“Yeah, I think I can. When you know what you think, you tell me.”

Jim turned his back and walked up the path. They were all awake now, and wondering where the hell he was. He opened the door, and uneasily stepped inside.

He could still hear the purr of the bike.

What Happens in Small Towns

Jim knew the rules of being a good son-in-law living under the roof of his wife’s parents and one of them was helping your mother-in-law out with the chores.

“Blair’s here,” Valerie called from her

vantage by the kitchen window. Jim turned his head from the litter of supper dishes that he was stacking, and went instead to open the door. Blair always came around the back.

“Hey.”

Blair was bundled into an old, bulky sweater, with the collar turned up against the evening chill. “Hey.” He came in. “Hi, Valerie. Sorry to call at this time of night.”

“That’s okay, Blair.”

“I won’t be long.” Blair turned to Jim. “The bike’s sold. I’m taking it for a good-bye run on Saturday. Any chance that you want to come along?” His eyes were very blue under the kitchen lights, very piercing, completely aware of what he was saying. ‘Any chance that you want to come along?’ He wanted Jim to go to Cascade with him, leave behind his wife and this house and JJ’s grave out at Riverfield cemetery, and Jim was scared out of his mind by how easy it was to think that he should do just that.

“I’ll talk to Caro, but I don’t think she’ll mind,” Jim said. Blair didn’t like that answer. His smile stayed friendly, his stance stayed relaxed, but Jim knew Blair well, and his freaky sight picked up the little twitches of hurt and worry around Blair’s eyes and mouth.

“Okay. Call me. I figured I’d drive out the back of the lookout, then over to Windham and back. Hills and valleys and a couple of good straight roads – might as well do the thing properly.”

“Sounds good. Yeah, I’ll call you.” The bike was sold, and Blair was leaving soon, and yes, why not; things should be done properly.

“Tell Carolyn I said ‘hi’.” And then Blair was gone, and Jim carefully picked up the plates and carried them over to his mother-in-law, who was scented with an odd mix of her favourite perfume and dishwashing chemicals.

“He’s a nice boy,” Valerie said. “You’ll miss him when he goes.”

“Yes,” Jim said. “Yes. I will.”

He went through to the living room. Carolyn was folding laundry, her long-fingered, pretty hands smoothing out underwear and jeans, and the last of JJ’s clothes that they were going to give to Valerie’s church group.

She picked up a little blue onesie, and held it by the shoulders. “I remember before he was born. I could hardly believe that I wasn’t looking at doll clothes, they were so tiny.” She laid it down on her lap and folded it with great care and precision, so that it lay empty and tidy and ready to go.

“Blair’s sold his bike,” Jim said, and shifted his eyes to the landscape on the wall so that he didn’t have to see the disappointment in Carolyn’s eyes. He hated talking about JJ. It made him feel like something was tearing inside him. “I’m going out with him on Saturday – the last ride.”

“Have a good time, then,” Carolyn said stiffly.

“Thanks,” Jim said, and then felt like a fool several ways. He sat down beside Carolyn, and put one arm awkwardly across her shoulders.

“That little apartment over Pittman’s Store is for lease.”

She tensed.

“I know that you like being around your Mom, but it’s not like…”

He stopped. They’d been living with Mike and Valerie because they were saving – saving to be able to afford something decent for when JJ was older, and would have needed his own room and space to play. “I think it would be better, honey. And it’s not far, you’ll still be able come home to your Mom when you need to.”

Carolyn’s hands were scrunched into the onesie, undoing all the careful work of her folding. “Like when you’re out? Which is all the damn time, right now, Jimmy.”

“I’ve got overtime. You’re going to tell me that I shouldn’t take it?”

“No.” She rested her face in her hand. “No.” Her voice trembled. “I’ll think about it.”

“Okay.” He kissed the side of her head, and then stood. “I’m going for a walk. Okay?”

“Too bad if it wasn’t,” she said and fished up a pair of jeans to fold.

He pulled on a jacket and walked the twenty minutes it took to get to Hanrahatty’s Saloon, and he made one beer last three-quarters of an hour while he sat slouched in a corner and noted, without stepping in to use the john, that someone had been smoking pot in there , and then he walked back again. He might as well get used to not walking or driving around to Alice’s to see Blair.

***

Blair picked him up on Saturday, all bounce and enthusiasm as he hauled Jim out of Valerie’s kitchen. It was a good show, Jim knew, just like his own which melted into nothing as he sat behind Blair on the bike. Blair took them via Windham first, blatting along the straight stretches while Jim watched the shoulders a few inches in front of him far more than he watched the countryside. He’d left Blair behind when they were just teenagers, and he’d missed him but it hadn’t felt as desolate as this; but that was the difference, wasn’t it? Jim had been the one leaving, the one heading on to the bigshot career. He felt quite unreasonably angry and he didn’t even know who he was angry with.

They wound up the hills, down through the woods, and then Blair took them off the road down a dirt track. The official lookout was another three miles on, but everyone knew about Lukie’s View. It was ugly these days because the area had been logged not so long ago, but the promontory at the end of the road still had one the best angles to look out over the county. They reached the end of the road and Blair stopped. They were the only ones there.

Jim got off the bike, and fumbled for the bag with the thermos of coffee. His hands were cold, and he warmed them around the cup that he poured. Blair didn’t say anything, just walked out to the end of the View and stared down the hills to the land below.

“Coffee?” Jim said.

Blair turned his head, the lines of cheekbone and jaw hard against the empty grey sky behind him. “Yeah. Why not. We brought it to drink it.”

He walked back, kicking at a broken log stump before sitting on it and sipping at the cup that Jim handed to him. It was all so ordinary there, for a moment. No lingering glances or touches, just the simple mechanics of passing a hot drink between two sets of hands.

“This is it, then,” Blair said. He gulped down the coffee, despite the heat of it and then stood and patted the bike’s saddle. “Hail and farewell.” He looked at Jim. “What about you, man? Hail and farewell for you, too?”

“I’ll miss you,” Jim said simply. Because he would.

“You’re a stupid bastard,” Blair told him. He pushed back loose strands of hair from his face. “No, really, you are so stupid.”

Feeling this pissed off at Blair ought to make the whole conversation easier. It didn’t. “Then you’ll be glad that you’re leaving me behind. You sure wouldn’t want someone as stupid as me embarrassing you at your university, would you?”

Blair’s face turned red and then white. He took a long breath. “Okay. That was dumb of me. But, Jim….” His hands spread wide, encompassing confusion and curiosity, and a yearning plea.

“What sort of man would I be if I just dumped Carolyn and our marriage?” Jim asked, his voice rough with anger. “Especially now.”

“You’d be a man doing something sensible.”

“You’re out of your fucking tree, Sandburg. And not exactly unbiased. Since when was it supposed to be sensible to run off to the big city and play gay!”

And there it was. Blair hadn’t said a damn thing about what he wanted Jim to be with him in Cascade. Neither had Jim, but that didn’t stop him feeling mightily pissed off at the idea that Blair had been playing him all this time, being his friend and nursing fantasies behind his back.

“I’m not playing, Jim.” It was softly said – and dangerous. That wasn’t something that Jim had ever thought he’d associate with someone unequivocally outing themselves. He’d assumed that a stance like that would make you vulnerable, not a threat.

“Well, guess what, Chief. Neither am I.”

“Yes, you fucking are, you’re still playing, Jim. I…”

“Who the hell are you to tell me who I am?” Jim roared.

Blair was in his face then, come from nowhere, and Jim’s gut flip-flopped like crazy. “I’m someone who knows you. I know you, and I’ll tell you something for free. I’m going to Cascade, and whether you ever see me again or not, I give you and Carolyn six months. A year, tops, because you married for the wrong reasons, and she won’t ever be what you want, and you won’t ever be what she wants.” He turned away as if to head for the bike and then whirled around and shouted, “Damn it, Jim! You don’t love her!”

“You think you know so much about who I love?” Jim sneered.

“Yeah,” Blair said breathlessly. “Yeah, I think I do.” And then he was back in Jim’s space again, awkward and demanding against Jim’s body, and damn near pulling Jim’s head down by the ears to plant a sloppy, desperate kiss on his mouth. It put Jim off-balance more ways than one, and he grappled his hands onto Blair’s shoulders and then just held on, because this was it, and Blair was going, and Jim was staying with Carolyn. So, really, one stupid kiss didn’t matter in the greater scheme of things.

Blair detached himself eventually, but only so that he could lean his forehead against Jim’s shoulder. Jim shifted his hands into something like a bear-hug. “Chief, you have the worst sense of timing ever.”

“I know. But before… I was the nerdy kid and you were the awesome jock, and then you weren’t here because you were in the army, which is a culture so supportive of alternative sexuality, and then you were fucking your way through every woman in town until you knoc-” He stopped, his head still buried against Jim’s shoulder, his arms holding on hard around Jim’s body. “You want to tell me when there would have been a good time?”

Jim very gently pushed him away.

Blair’s face was a patriotic study – red and white skin and blue, watery eyes. “Well, hey,” he said with heart-breaking brightness. “I got a good-bye kiss out of this debacle. Can’t be all bad.”

“No, it wasn’t all bad. But, Blair.” It was Jim’s turn to plead. “I can’t… I won’t hurt Carolyn like that. And, god, next time you want to tell someone about your big gay love for them don’t introduce the subject the day after their kid’s fucking funeral.” Jim’s voice wobbled.

Blair bent to pick up the bag. “Yeah, I know, loyalty, it’s a good thing. Makes you admirable. Not like that would-be home-breaking shit, Blair Sandburg. And timing. I get it.”

“I never asked you who bought the bike.” Jim’s throat was closed.

“Some collector in Oregon. I guess we’d better take the goods safe back home to the garage.” Blair’s back was turned, but Jim could hardly miss the swipe at his eyes. “I need the cash.”

Blair secured the bag, and sat and turned the bike towards Jim, towards the sealed road that would take them back to town. “Come on, man. Last ride,” he said, and smiled.

***

Carolyn rubbed at a smudge of dirt on her hands. “What do you think?”

Jim considered for a moment. “I think that if we get any more scientific about positioning this furniture you and I could get diplomas from MIT.”

That surprised a tiny yelp of laughter out of Carolyn. “It’s not a big space, that’s for sure.” Her face glowed, and for a moment Jim remembered that he loved her. He did.

“How about we splash out with a meal at Hanrahatty’s?” Jim asked “We can walk there in five. Celebrate being at the centre of all things.” He tried to make that a joke and not bitter irony.

“I don’t know. We’ve taken a hole out of our money – the deposit and everything…”

“And we’ve worked hard all day and we deserve a break. A celebration.” He stopped as Caro’s face changed, and he realised just what he’d said.

Carolyn plastered a brittle smile on her face. “It’s okay. You’re right. We should go out and toast to us, and – and new starts.”

Hanrahatty’s was quiet, and it might have been pleasant to be out together except that the girl who was bar-help and waitress knew Carolyn from school, knew her family, and wanted to falteringly offer her sympathies for their recent tragedy. Jim stonily wondered why she couldn’t have just sent a card at the time rather than souring his appetite for his dinner. But Carolyn smiled wanly and said something polite and after that it was an okay meal. If they didn’t talk so much, well, did it matter?

When they went back home (their new home, their new start) they made love, for only the second time since JJ had died. It went okay, they both came, no-one burst into tears afterwards. Jim lay awake for a while afterwards in the dark, tracing out the shape of the room. Their bed, with Carolyn tucked into a neat curl under the covers, Jim lying on his side beside her. Carolyn’s bureau there. His bureau there. The stack of plastic storage crates in the corner, neatly draped with a quilt. In the corner of the bottom drawer of Carolyn’s bureau there was one set of baby clothes – a little suit, booties and the shawl that Carolyn’s aunt had knitted, along with her grandmother’s ancient prayer cards.

And in the top left-hand drawer of Jim’s bureau was a photograph of him with JJ, and the postcard he’d received from Blair, with a picture of ‘historic Hargrove Hall’ and Blair’s address and the words, ‘Have worked out how old I am compared to the rest of my year. Ancient. Completely ancient.’ The first ‘ancient’ was underlined three times, and it had made Jim smile, in amusement and relief that Blair was still prepared to write to him and tease him, before he stuffed the postcard under his socks. He’d have to call Blair some time, and let him know that he and Carolyn had their own place now.

***

Jim was working construction, building big houses for people who clearly had a lot more money than he did. Maybe, he thought cynically, they just had a lot more debt. That was something that he and Caro generally agreed on – money. He’d heard Valerie talking to a friend of hers about it, how it was a good thing, because she’d seen a lot of marriages founder on the question of who spent what and where.

So, less than ten dollars a week on beer, especially when it was about the only money Jim spent on himself? Small potatoes. A man didn’t go out and get drunk on barely ten dollars of beer a week, not at bar prices. Jim nursed his drinks, made them last a while, endured the ribbing some of his friends would give him about being pussy-whipped when he refused to spend more. A man couldn’t be pussy-whipped when he wasn’t actually spending that much time at home.

Tonight, he was at the Bird in Hand, halfway to Windham and on the truck-stop route. It was a nice drive in the twilight, and a busy bar, and Jim sat quietly and sipped his draft, which was not the best beer in the county, regardless of what the blackboard said in big, awkwardly written letters. There were some men by the pool table, trash talking each other. Jim watched them, aware of an ache somewhere in the pit of his stomach.

There was one man, broad-shouldered and fit, with blond hair, and crows-feet cheerfully crinkling at the corner of his eyes. He didn’t look anything like Blair at all, and that was part of the ache in Jim. Guys weren’t anything that Jim had seriously considered when he was younger and filled to bursting with hormones and boners – maybe he’d had the occasional random thought, but curiosity and horniness were all there was to that. Jim liked women just fine, and he’d loved the thought of an army career. But now and again, he could look at a man now, at the line of shoulders or the curve of ass, and realise that yeah, he’d do that. There was a part of him, were Blair Sandburg suddenly in front of him, that would quite willingly punch Blair in the nose for providing that particular epiphany.

But Blair wasn’t here, and Jim was at the Bird in Hand, and when the cute blonde girl gave him the eye, he gave it right back at her.

“You’re not waiting for anybody?” she asked. There was a sweet lilt to her voice that he liked.

“Nah. Just enjoying a beer after a hard day, that’s all.”

He lifted his glass and saw her gaze rest on his wedding ring. There was the slightest hint of a frown between her carefully manicured brows, but it was gone and she turned a brilliant smile on him. Jim had sluiced off with cold water and a wash-cloth and put on a clean t-shirt before he left work – fastidious common-sense, if you weren’t going home to shower. But he’d be okay to be next to; if he chose to invite this curvy little piece to some slow dancing, there’d be nothing to turn her off.

“So what do you do?”

“All those fancy houses out by Masonville? I’m working on those.”

“And with the muscles to prove it,” she said. Her voice was approving, but Jim felt a sudden chill curl in his gut. What the hell was he doing? It was one thing to be restless, unable to go home at night and face Carolyn, and absolutely another to cheat on her. And just like that, the headache spiked through his skull, and the noise from the jukebox was a harsh buzz in his ears. Involuntarily, his hands rose to shelter his head.

“You okay? the woman asked with surface concern, but disappointment and contempt hid underneath. She probably thought he was drunk, and Jim doubted that the rough shove back of his chair so that he could stand would change her mind. Disgust washed sourly through his gut, and angry frustration. He hadn’t had one of these ‘turns’ for a while, and he always hoped that they were finished and gone, until his body betrayed him with this stupid shit yet again.

“I’m fine,” Jim ground out. “But I get migraines, okay? Sorry,” he muttered and headed for the door, his own footsteps like gunshots in his head. From some far, far away place, he heard the blonde mutter, ‘Migraine my ass,’ to someone, another woman who tittered, ‘Never mind, honey. He’s probably gay, anyway.”

It was a little better outside. Jim took a cautious breath, and felt something inside relax. The air was still dirty with gasoline fumes, and noisy with the hum of motor vehicles, but it wasn’t quite so bad. Jim figured that he might even be able to get to his car and get back home, and he was nearly at the driver’s side door when he was spun around and thrown against the unforgiving metal. Confusedly, he looked into the face of Wade Atkins.

“You are one sorry fucker, Ellison, and it’s just as well you decided to walk away from that slut.” Atkins’s face was screwed up in anger and disgust; outrage, even.

Jim forced his hands up between them, but Atkins’s grip in his jacket hardly shifted. “Back the fuck off.” His head still hurt, and he could feel red anger in him, down deep and getting drunk on the pain and humiliation of the last few minutes.

“Maybe I will, if it means that you’re going home where you belong.” Atkins shook Jim. “Are you going home, Jimmy?”

Home. That was the plan, wasn’t it? Home, to Carolyn, his wife. “Yeah, I’m going home, Wade. Wish you were me?” That red anger in Jim’s gut chuckled, and Jim enjoyed one soaring moment of gleeful rage before he was doubled up on the ground of the parking lot, with his arms wrapped over his gut.

Atkins’s voice shook with jealous anger. “You fucking treat her right, Ellison, or there’ll be more where that came from. You hear me?”

Jim didn’t say anything. Instead he gingerly hauled himself up to lean against the side of the car. “Shit,” he muttered to cold and empty air. Atkins was heading out of the lot, his hand stuck out of the car to flip the bird at Jim as he headed onto the road. “Asshole,” Jim said softly, and then groaned and rested his head in his hands. God, but it was bad this time, and desperation built up in him. Besides the ringing in his head and the soreness in his gut, his leg was joining in as well. He had to be able to drive, and again he took some cautious breaths, slow, down into his aching belly, and he thought of Blair, and that book on yoga that he used to flip under Jim’s nose. Jim would smirk, laugh outright sometimes, and he never did twist himself into any damn pretzel, not even for Blair Sandburg, but he thought of Blair’s voice now, and tried to let his breath flow.

After a while, his body settled enough that he thought that he might get home safely, and he staggered to his feet and fumbled in his pocket for his keys. He could see his face reflected in the car window off the lights in the parking lot. He’d grazed his face when he hit the ground. Atkins’s punch to his gut he’d be able to disguise. The scrape and the blood – not so much. Jim slumped down into the driver’s seat and started up his car, and headed home.

It wasn’t that late when he got there, stumbling up the narrow steps to the apartment. Carolyn was still up, talking with her friend, Wendi; the coffee cups and the plate of cookies lay tidy between them on the table. Carolyn spotted the graze on his face straight away, and Jim braced himself. Raw hurt or frosty disapproval; which one would it be this evening?

“What have you done to yourself now?” his wife asked. Jim ticked option number two and walked carefully across to the tiny kitchen and the glasses and the faucet and cool water.

“Nothing serious,” he said, and sipped his water. It wasn’t as refreshing as he’d hoped. It tasted too much of chlorine, of whatever impurities clung to the pipes, and Jim put the glass carefully down in the sink.

“It’s time I was going, anyway,” Wendi said. She hugged Carolyn, and headed for the door, but not before she glared at Jim. He stared back as coolly as he could, aware of his chin jerking up in defiance. Another woman who thought he was drunk when he wasn’t. This – this was his ‘I don’t give a damn’ face.

“Rough night?” Carolyn asked. She looked tired, like she’d had a rough night herself.

“I tripped,” Jim said. “Because I was tired. Not because of anything else.”

“Maybe you should think about getting home a little earlier if you’re so damn tired,” Carolyn shot back.

Jim held up one hand. ‘Don’t start. It’s not anything – ”

“Oh, I know it’s not anything. It never is anything. It’s just my fucking husband out on the town because he’d rather drink bad beer in cheap bars than come home at night!” Carolyn’s voice was hard and low, and Jim recognised the signs of imminent tears, which made him feel trapped and angry.

“It’s no big deal,” he said, and then tried to turn the conversation. “I spend a damn sight less on beer than you do on your lottery tickets.”

“It’s not about the money!” Carolyn burst out shrilly. Her eyes were bright with tears that weren’t quite ready to fall, and her cheeks were flushed – bright red patches under the angry blue eyes. “It’s not about the fucking money! You’re never here! I sit here in this shitty little apartment and you’re never here.”

“You’re not sitting here all alone. You have your friends, you have your goddammed mother…”

“And my friends and my mother aren’t you. It’d be nice to see my husband now and again. It’d be nice to be able to tell myself that you actually want to come home at night, but I can’t do that, can I, Jimmy?”

Jim said nothing; he turned his back and headed for the couch. He figured he might as well stake it out now. It looked like that would be where he’d be spending the night.

Carolyn’s voice came out of a vast distance, even though the room was small. “You can’t do it, either, can you? You can’t turn around and look me in the face and say that you actually want to be here. You can’t do it, can you?”

Jim sat and leaned forward, arms on his thighs, hands hanging loose and useless between his legs. God, but his leg hurt. It hurt almost as much as the tightness in his chest and the burn in his throat. “I’m sorry,” he said roughly. “I’m sorry, honey. I really am.”

“Sorry doesn’t make much of a marriage, does it?” The bedroom door shut quietly, and behind its shelter Carolyn cried softly, muffling the noises she made in the pillow; and Jim lay on the couch with his hand over his face and wondered how something done for good reasons could turn out so damn badly.

***

Jim tried, but Carolyn observed his more regular returns home with a kindly, courteous contempt, and when Jim once put his hands gently on her shoulders as she sat at the table, she leaned her head against his right arm and said, “It’s not working out.” They stayed there, touching, the warmth of their bodies the only thing that merged between them. It shouldn’t have been a shock when Jim came home to an empty place one night, and looked around him at the gaps where some things used to be, and the letter that hadn’t been on the table in the morning when he left.

He sat down and looked at it for a while without touching it. Finally he picked up the envelope, which was dry and rough between his sensitive fingers, and opened it up, to find the pale blue note paper that Carolyn favoured.

‘Jimmy,

Don’t pretend you’re surprised, and please don’t call me, not for a couple of days at least.

I’ve taken half of the money in the account, and my own things. You can keep what’s still in the apartment, sell it, whatever you like, although I’d appreciate my half of the deposit back. Dad’s organising a lawyer. He’ll be in contact.

I don’t know. I wish I knew if it was losing JJ, or if everything was wrong from the start, but I can’t do this any more.

I’m sorry.

Carolyn.’

Jim folded the note and carefully placed it back in the envelope. Then he picked up the phone and dialed Valerie and Mike’s number.

“Hello?” Mike’s voice.

“Mike. This is Jim.”

“Yes, I thought it might have been. Jim, I’m sorry. Carolyn told me what she wrote you. I’m not letting you talk to her, and if you come around here, it would only be because you wanted trouble. We don’t need any trouble, son.”

“Look. I just want…. Is she okay?”

“No, she’s not okay. Just leave it for tonight, Jim. I know that you must feel sick about this but that’s just too bad right now. I’m looking after my girl. You understand me?”

“Yeah. Yeah. I understand.” Jim hung up, and stared at the wall for a while. Carolyn had taken their wedding picture. Jim didn’t get that. Why, when it was all over? He was two weeks shy of turning twenty-seven years old and for his life so far he had a dead kid and a failed marriage.

“Fuck.” It wasn’t enough. He threw his head back and shouted, loud as he could, “Fuck you! Just fuck you!”

The phone rang, jangling his nerves. He stared at it for a moment, not sure whether he should pick up or not. But then he stepped forward and clutched the receiver against his ear.

“Yes?”

“Jim? Valerie called me.” It was his mother.

“Hey, Mom.”

“How are you, darling?”

“Uh. Not so good. You know, with my wife leaving me and everything.”

“Oh, Jimmy. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Jim felt weak at the knees and a little queasy. He sat down, the receiver still held in his hand with a white-knuckle grip. “It’s okay. It’s not your fault.” Jim tried to get an emotional grip, but his feelings were just as white-knuckled and sweaty as his hold on the phone. “How’s everything at your end?”

“Fine. Rich is good. He got a good report from his doctor.”

“That’s great.” It was great. Rich had been good to his mother; he was a decent man, and if he and Grace lived on the other side of the country just about, that was too bad.

“I won’t badger you tonight, darling. But I’ll call you in another couple of days. You let me know if anything major happens. Call collect if you have to.”

“Mom. I can afford a phone call, okay?” The words came out like hail on the skin.

“I know, I’m sorry. But it was such a shock when Valerie called me, although in some ways it wasn’t. With poor little JJ… I still feel guilty that I couldn’t come then.” His mother sounded like she was nearly ready to cry, which was bad, because Jim didn’t need anything to set him off right now, and the only other option was an anger that he couldn’t unleash towards Grace.

“It’s okay, Mom. Rich wasn’t well. It happens. It’s good that you’ve finally got somebody nice.” Jim used to have somebody nice, didn’t he? God, he was going down for the third time in a cold lake of self-pity, and he didn’t care at all.

“Take care of yourself. Don’t make any stupid decisions in the first hurt, Jimmy. Don’t do that to yourself.”

“I’ll be fine. And I won’t do anything stupid. I promise. You take care of yourself, too. Bye, Mom. And thanks.” He hung up and stared at the phone like it might bite him. It stayed quiet, and alone in the silence of his apartment, Jim swallowed hard and paced about the space, noting more clearly what was still there and what was gone.

Carolyn’s careful, decorative clutter was gone from the top of her dresser, as was the good quilt from the bed which was plain and forlorn with just the comforter and a spare blanket. Jim’s things stood just as they had that morning, nothing disturbed there at all. He opened up his sock drawer, and dug down for the keepsakes at the bottom. There was the small album his mother had sent of her doings with Rich, the postcard from Blair, the picture of JJ. He’d been three months old and Jim had him scooped in his hands, one under his head and the other under JJ’s tiny butt. JJ had been happily surprised and he’d crowed like a tiny rooster, and then he’d flapped his arms like wings, startled at his own noise, while Jim smiled at him with what had to be the sappiest expression on earth, even for a doting father.

Jim laid the photograph, and Blair’s postcard on the comforter. Hargrove Hall faced the ceiling in an entirely historical manner, but Jim could feel the underlining of Blair’s words with one touch of his index finger.

“I don’t know, Chief,” he said, before he propped both pictures against the lamp base on the nightstand and lay down on his side and looked at them for long minutes. He could go to Cascade now, if he wanted, because there was certainly wasn’t anything to keep him here. He could go any place he wanted.

If he went to Cascade… His father and his brother were there, strangers that they were now. Blair was there, and Blair had kissed him before he left, and Jim had freaked out about a few things in his time, but that kiss hadn’t been one of them and what did that say about him, and about Blair?

Jim stretched his whole length across the bed, filling up some of the cold empty space where last night Carolyn had lain. Sadness, depression – those were the right emotions for this moment, and he felt those, sure. But there was a heavy relief hiding just underneath them, and Jim felt out the shape of that relief before he shut his eyes and fell into sleep.

***

He made another call to Grace three weeks later.

“Hey, Mom.”

“Jimmy!” Her voice was filled with pleasure. “How are you, darling?”

“Packed and ready to head out of Shitville.”

“James Joseph! My ears!” But he could hear the smile. “And this call is to let me know where your gypsy way will take you? It had better be.”

“I wouldn’t dare not tell you. It’d be more than my life would be worth.”

“Talking about daring, dare I hope that you’re heading in an easterly direction?” Grace’s voice was wistful.

Jim turned his head – averting his face from a glance that couldn’t come through the phone line. “It’s more like ‘Go west, young man.'”

There was a silence on the line. “I see,” his mother said finally. “Jimmy, are you sure?”

“I can catch up with Blair, and maybe think about finding a decent job in Cascade. And it’s big enough that I can decide when I get there whether I follow up on the long lost family or keep my distance. It’s not all about Dad and Stephen.”

“Oh, Jimmy. I don’t know if it’s wise. I really don’t. It’s been so long.”

“Better to let sleeping dogs lie?” Jim asked.

“More like not open old wounds,” Grace said unhappily.

“That’s my choice, isn’t it.?”

“It’s not just your wounds, young man.”

“Mom…”

“No, Jim. I mean it. It was a mess, and not just your father’s fault.”

“I know who didn’t return the letters and the calls, Mom. Just because you left didn’t mean that they had to shut down contact. If I turn up on the old bastard’s doorstep and make him uncomfortable I won’t be shedding any tears for him. Or for baby-bro either.” Another silence. Jim felt like shit. Stephen had never responded to any of his mother’s overtures – whether at the behest of their father or out of his own motives, Jim didn’t know. Yeah. A mess, and he’d just rubbed his mother’s nose in that fact.

“Hey. I’m sorry, Momma. I didn’t…”

“I know, Jimmy. It’s okay.” It clearly wasn’t okay, but there wasn’t much that Jim could do about that on the end of a phone line. “Look, darling. Take care. Tell me your new address and all your news. Take care.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I will. Love you, Mom.” It wasn’t something he said often.

“I love you too, Jim.”

“Yeah. Bye.” He put the phone down. The line was due to be cut off any time now, and he didn’t really know why he’d left it so late to talk to his mother. He picked up the last bag. “Don’t lie to yourself, Jimmy,” he muttered, as he headed down the stairs for the last time and chucked the bag onto the front seat of his car. It was starting to rain, a grey drizzle that wasn’t much more than a mist, and it stayed that way until he was on the interstate and gunning his way up to seventy.

The rain came down more heavily and flew in comet trail tears across the side windows, but Jim didn’t feel like slowing down, any more than anyone else on the road did. It was free and clear for now, and he was headed for Cascade.

 

What Happens in Big Cities

Blair would probably call it karma or destiny or fate that Jim lucked into a job working on renovating one of the buildings on the campus of Rainier University. Jim wasn’t so inclined to believe in any of those things, preferring instead to note that coincidences happened.

He’d been in Cascade two weeks, and he hadn’t contacted Blair. Jim had organised a partly furnished room for himself, in a building with shared facilities and noisy pipes. But the space was his own, and he set it up how he wanted it. The walls might as well have been veils, however. Jim did find that hard to deal with, and he cursed his overactive senses and didn’t look his neighbours in the face in the mornings. They didn’t need to know that he knew who had sex, who fought over money, who smoked weed, any more than he did. Work was a cakewalk by comparison. He could disappear into the noise of ripping out walls, and sawing and fitting sheetrock, and the loud crack of nail guns, in a way that was almost the same as ignoring it. But he hadn’t contacted Blair.

He did find himself looking around the campus when he came in to work, though. The renovation was being carried out in an administration building that was a pleasant Victorian shell around a nest of charmless fifties alterations, which were in their turn being consigned to the local landfill. Rainier was mainly a liberal arts college, with a decent social sciences department and a small, but surprisingly prestigious, engineering school. The hum of energy and affluence was very different from the little town Jim had left behind, and there were various reminders, like the rainbow flag hanging in the window of the small tower block that housed the main university administration, that the big city was more relaxed about some things than a small town.

There was a rise that looked down a slope towards the man-made lagoon and sports field at Rainier, with car parking just on the other side of it, and the second day that he’d been at work Jim had stared down that rise, his hands unconsciously fingering the flannel of his work shirt, looking for a familiar face. He’d found it, a good distance away: Blair Sandburg, with his hair trimmed a little shorter than last Jim had seen it but still long enough and luxuriant enough to satisfy Naomi’s wildest hippie fantasies. He’d been dressed in jeans and a colourful tee shirt and a navy blue coat and he had a backpack slung over one shoulder, and an adoring looking and handsome young man draped over the other.

Jim had stared for a few moments, waiting for the coldness in his stomach to do something – melt, disappear, just go away damn it, because Jim was behaving like a jerk. He knew that. Spying. Being stupidly resentful that Blair wasn’t pining away and ‘saving’ himself for Jim when Jim had made it clear that he couldn’t give Blair what he wanted and then sent him on his way to Cascade. All of it jerk behaviour, and Jim had acknowledged that in himself and gone to work and found it was one of those days that he needed to wear his gloves and his goggles, because the allergies were worse than the irritation of wearing the gear.

Two weeks in Cascade, and Jim needed to get off his ass, and contact Blair, and he acknowledged that he would do that, because anything else was unthinkable, but he needed another day or two to get over himself first. Blair would probably call it karma or destiny or fate that, having made that promise to himself, Blair took it all out of Jim’s hands with a short sharp knock on the door.

“Hey, Jim. It’s me.”

Of course it was. Who else would it be on a Saturday morning when Jim hadn’t even eaten yet? At least he was dressed as he went to open the door. Blair was right about it being him: Jim got the full Sandburg experience of long, untrammelled hair, two sparkling hoops in his left ear, and a camel coloured embroidered jacket that had obviously been bought from some store or market that sold fair trade coffee and crystals rather than the local J C Penney. All these things came with the added bonus of an irritated expression.

“Sandburg,” Jim said. He’d been holding off, but now he couldn’t help grinning like a fool.

Blair sauntered in, with a gently musical, “Hel-loo, asshole.” Jim could feel the irritation on his own face at this greeting – helped along by guilt, and the buried anxiety about what he’d started by choosing to come to Cascade. “God, you son of a bitch, why didn’t you tell me you were coming?” Blair demanded.

With that, Jim found himself hugged, and hugged hard. He bent his head and shut his eyes, and held tight, before he permitted himself one deep, aware inhalation of scent and then untangled himself. It was one thing to know that his best friend was gay and maybe in love with him when Jim was married to Carolyn and trying to make it work. It was one thing to contemplate what exactly Blair might want from him when the pair of them were in two entirely different locations. It was another thing entirely when the two of them had apparently nearly welded their bodies together.

Jim’s hands let go of Blair’s shoulders as he made his excuses. “I was going to contact you. But there you go, ahead of the curve again.” Blair looked good, Jim thought. He looked happy, despite being pissed off at Jim. But why shouldn’t he be happy? He was an intelligent young man, taking an opportunity he’d dreamed of for years. He was a beautiful young man who was almost certainly getting laid on a regular basis.

“Yeah, there I go.” Blair’s grin was incandescent now that he’d delivered his scolding. His gaze travelled around the small living space. “This place is a shithole. You know that, right?”

Jim shook his head, amused at Blair’s mercurial shift from rebuke to interior decoration advice. “It’s cheap, and I don’t have to share it with anyone. It’ll do for a start. So how’d you find me?”

Blair turned around, exasperation showing again, even though the smile was still there too. “I had the urge to call my old buddy, Jim Ellison, so I tried your number. Then I tried Valerie and Mike’s number, and that was informative,” Blair’s fingers waggled in air quotes at ‘informative’, “but not about your whereabouts.” His eyes widened in renewed exasperation at Jim’s unannounced presence in Cascade. “So then I went for the big guns, and I called your mother. Because I never forget who the good contacts are, man. Never.”

“You have good timing,” Jim said. “Mom can’t have had my address more than a couple of days.”

“Yeah,” Blair said. “Maybe my sense of timing’s improved at that.” Blair pushed some hair back. There was a touch of colour in his face that Jim decided not to notice. “So. Hey. Jim Ellison in Cascade. How’s it treating you so far?”

“You can see the palace I’m living in for yourself, Chief.”

“God, I’ve missed hearing that nickname.”

Jim shrugged. “I’ll keep working it into the conversation.”

Blair shook his head, grinning. “You have work yet?”

“Construction. It’s what I’ve gotten used to.” Jim paused. “I’m doing a refit in one of the old buildings at Rainier.”

That information saw Blair’s eyebrows rise. “Huh. You don’t say? There’s enough building going on in this city, that’s for sure.” He stared at Jim a little more. Jim could feel his jaw grind out of sheer damn nervousness, before Blair started talking again. “Can I treat you to breakfast? We can catch up. Think of it as an early housewarming present, until I work out what’ll fit with your monk-like approach to interior decoration.”

It was on the tip of Jim’s tongue to enquire whether the boyfriend would object, but he stopped himself in time. There was no need to give that away.

“A monk I’m not, but breakfast sounds good. Let me grab my wallet. What’s it like outside?”

“A jacket would be a good idea. The wind’s a little sharp even if the sun is making a rare guest appearance.”

“Okay.” Jim picked up a jacket and his wallet and keys, and ushered Blair out of the room, shutting the door on his sparse belongings.

“I’ve heard about this place called Wonderburger,” Jim said. “If you want a suggestion.”

Blair had missed an old nickname. Jim had missed watching that mobile face twist itself into emotional semaphore: amusement, exasperation, simple joy at the teasing. “Oh, come on. Wonderburger? Of the BagelBacon’n’Egg? You have to be kidding me.”

“Nope, don’t believe I am.” They headed outside, and down the block. “And there’s the sweetheart,” Jim said, running a hand over the paintwork of the old pick-up. “Is it still a squirrel’s nest in the cab?”

“Get in and find out,” Blair shot back across the hood, before climbing in and leaning across the seat to unlock the door for Jim. “After I shift the books for you.” He suited actions to words, dragging the items spread across the seat into a pile in the middle that Jim judged would slide off the first time that Blair pressed the brakes.

“I see you’re still living up to the high standards that Alice taught you.” Jim kicked an empty disposable coffee cup from under foot. Instead of a dream-catcher, there was some sort of doll, handmade and garish, hanging from the mirror.

“I looked after Alice’s space the way that I ought to, but the truck’s always been mine.”

Blair looked across at Jim then, with an expression that made Jim stare straight ahead and say, “Tell me about life in the big city, Sandburg. Is it everything it’s cracked up to be?”

Blair put the truck in gear, before he pulled out. “It has its moments. I’m free for the morning.” He grimaced. Although I’m starting part-time work next weekend, gotta keep body and soul together somehow. How about I show you the sights after we eat? I know this traditional-style diner….”

“Wonderburger,” Jim said, in a tone that brooked no debate.

“Or there’s a cute little patisserie down Prospect. It’s close to the West Harbour, and we could go on to this interesting mall/wharf/thing down there. Performers, and crafts. They had a fire-eater once. It’s cool.”

“Sandburg….”

“Trust me, man.”

Jim gave up. And besides, Blair was right. The coffee at Collette’s was pretty good and they did savoury croissants that were perfectly and deliciously flaky. The mall/wharf/thing was an interesting place to meander around, and there was a stunning view across the sound to the business district and its towers on the east side.

“I have to introduce you to Tony,” Blair said, completely casual except for the quick, assessing sideways glance. “We’re together. He’s fun.”

It was just as well that Jim already knew that this was coming. He could be completely casual in his turn. “Congratulations, Chief. You guys have fun talking about – anthropology?” Jim leered in what he hoped was the right sort of trash-talking, guy manner.

“Shit no!” Blair’s smile was bright. “He’s an engineering student. Masters.” His hand made some gesture that might have been meant to indicate towers or bridges, or else was simply obscurely obscene.

“Ah,” Jim said, as if the wisdom of the ages had just been imparted. “Engineering.”

Blair burst out laughing, and then punched Jim on the shoulder. “Oh yeah. I missed the Ellison ability to put about one million meanings into one word.”

“As opposed to your ability to use one million words and still leave everyone confused as hell?”

“Well, actually,” Blair drawled, “most people seem to understand me pretty well. I don’t know why you have so much trouble.”

Jim clutched his hand over his heart. “Ouch. Well, I’m just the dumb carpenter, Chief. You’re the academic.”

“I remember your GPA. And the way you used to borrow books from me. Playing the dumb card is kind of unconvincing.”

And just like that, Jim’s mood changed. “I’m not seeing much evidence of intelligence in my life so far, Chief.”

Blair’s face softened. “Hey. Don’t be so hard on your self. You make it sound like you’re forty and balding and life has passed you by; and none of that is true.”

The rush of the wind and the cries of the seagulls were suddenly loud in Jim’s ears. He ducked his head, and then chuckled. “Thank you, oh mighty guru.”

Blair leaned against the wooden railing, and looked out over the harbour. The wind blew his hair back in a mass, but a few individual strands were caught in their own breeze, waving in separate tendrils.

“It’s good to see you again, Jim. Really good. And I’m sorry that things didn’t work out with you and Carolyn.”

Jim wondered if Blair was as sorry as he might have been pre-boyfriend, and shrugged. Blair had offered, and he’d said no, and somehow they were still friends, which Jim was grateful for. “Thanks. I guess I should wish you and Tony better luck than we had.”

Maybe it was the brisk wind putting the colour in Blair’s face. “Hey man. I’m too young to be married off just like that. Tony and I are good friends, but we’re not exclusive or anything.”

“Horndog,” Jim said evenly. He wondered what exactly ‘not exclusive’ meant since apparently Tony didn’t have any claims to being the love of Blair’s life. “At least you can’t knock each other up,” he said feelingly.

“True, although I guess I’m more likely to be the one holding the baby shower if we could.” Oh, that was a ‘gotcha’ moment and Blair’s raised eyebrow and challenging smile showed that he knew it. An appalled flush of heat ran through Jim, just behind the vision of Blair in bed with handsome Tony, which was something he’d been trying not to think about. Thanks for way too much information, Chief, he thought.

“Christ, Sandburg. My ears!” Jim cuffed Blair across the back of his head, which relieved some of the mix of feeling in his chest. “You owe me a beer for putting that in my head.”

Blair’s face was clear and relaxed, and Jim had the feeling that he’d passed some sort of test. “No way. I bought you breakfast when I’m a poor starving student. Which means that you owe me a beer since you actually have a job.”

“Oh for… Fine. I’ll buy you a beer. And maybe I should put a few bucks aside for the future baby shower as well.”

“I use protection,” Blair said impishly.

So did I, Jim thought, and look where it got me.

***

“Hey! Jim!” Jim turned from his survey of the lagoon where a group of young men and women in Rainier shirts were paddling canoes, and looked back towards the voice; Blair, and a couple of friends. Tony, of course, and a young woman of a nearly flaxen blondness which Jim could see was natural, and which contrasted blindingly with her black clothes and raccoon eye make-up.

“Lisa and I are going on to an anthro tutorial, later,” Blair said as they drew nearer. “Lisa Barry, Jim Ellison, Jim, Lisa. Thanks for grabbing us a bench, man.” Courtesies done, Blair sat himself on one side of the table and fished a plastic container out of his backpack, which held some sort of rice salad. Lisa sat on the opposite side, and Tony perched on the table itself, long legs down by Lisa, his body angled towards Blair’s right side. Jim sat on Blair’s left, and ignored Blair’s pointed finger and exclamation of “Heart attack city!” over Jim’s sandwich.

“I hope that we didn’t screw up your wheel-barrow pushing schedule,” Tony said pleasantly. His dark hair flopped down over his forehead, shadowing his eyes.

Jim’s close-cut hair didn’t allow that luxury but he smiled back, and hoped that it reached his eyes. “So long as we get paid, I guess we can let you guys wander around.”

Blair was looking between the two of them. “Bricks?” He turned to Tony. “What have you been up to this morning?”

Tony smiled. “Leading the CE babies in a little exercise about loadings, surprises and expecting the vagaries of human nature in nice tidy architectural problems,” he said. Jim reckoned there was a good loading of condescension in his voice.

Blair swallowed a mouthful of his rice salad. “Someone enlighten me, huh?”

Jim knew the story, but he gestured towards Tony, who took up the explanation. “They’re gutting the old Romance languages building, right? And they’ve nearly finished taking out the partitions when someone discovers that in the last refit however many years ago, when they took the chimneys down, that someone couldn’t be bothered totin’ that load – so they just laid all the bricks, and I mean all the bricks, on a false floor in one of the attics. Found entirely by accident. And Professor Broucek decides that this is a great opportunity for the first year babies to get a few engineering life lessons, and work out a few equations.”

“Babies?” Lisa enquired sweetly.

Tony’s hands flourished in satirical apology. “Freshmen. First years. Jeez.”

Jim shrugged. “It didn’t take that much time out of the morning.”

“Found entirely by accident? What does that mean?” Blair’s gaze flicked between Tony and Jim, before he grinned. “Was someone looking for a nice quiet place to smoke their lunchtime joint or something?”

“Who knows? The foreman there – Costello?” Jim nodded an affirmative, “he just said that one of the guys noticed something hinky, and there ya go. A bunch of students mingling with the blue collar types and getting a taste of that working class sensibility.” Jim caught the look in his eyes and saw mockery. He took a bite of his sandwich and chewed on it with unnecessary energy.

Jim could feel a hint of heat from Blair’s skin. “Give it a rest, Tone.”

“Something up?” Jim blandly enquired.

“Blair’s counter-culture cred has been impugned.”

“That is not what I said,” Blair replied. “I’m just kind of confused as to what the hell Professor Stoddard’s comment meant, that’s all.”

Lisa piped up. “You got an A, Blair, the first one that Stoddard’s handed out in three years. Whatever he meant, I doubt it was anything bad.”

Jim eyed the other three, feeling decidedly in the dark. “You want to explain here, Chief?”

Blair stabbed a piece of celery with more vindictiveness than an innocent vegetable deserved. “Maybe it’s stupid of me. But I think I’ll talk to him about it anyway.”

Tony slapped his palm over his face. “Oh for fuck’s sake, Blair. You got an A! An A that goes to towards your final evaluation. And if Stoddard thinks that you brought ‘an interesting blue-collar sensibility’ to whatever the hell soft science you boys squish around in the anthro department, then what the hell does it matter?”

Blair’s shoulders were hunched. “Thank you for that incisive summary,” Blair said, looking at Jim, his hands gesturing towards Tony. “Fine. You guys are right. I’m making a big deal out of nothing. I have no right to see anything potentially condescending about that remark at all.”

“You drove semis for years, Blair,” Tony continued. “Drove the interstate, drank that crappy truck-stop coffee. Maybe it was a compliment. Maybe that blue collar sensibility of yours is a breath of fresh air in these middle class liberal halls of academe. What do you think, Jim?”

Jim’s mouth had just closed around another big mouthful of sandwich; he gestured that his mouth was full, and chewed, while Blair looked at him as if his opinion mattered. Jim felt like a complete dork. “I wouldn’t know what some college professor thinks is a compliment or not,” he said roughly, when his mouth was finally empty. “But if Blair wants to talk about it then why shouldn’t he? Isn’t that the point of higher education? Discourse?” He rounded ‘discourse’ in his mouth, mockery right back at Tony, who’d had no friendly motivation in seeking Jim’s comment. That much he was sure of. “I’d better get back to my blue collar work. You guys were late today.”

He stood up from the bench, and brushed down the front of his shirt, feeling out of place in his flannel and jeans. Sure, there were plenty of grunge kids who aped the working man look on Rainier’s campus, but as often as not their shirts flapped loosely in the breeze, unlike Jim’s, which was tucked tidily into his jeans to be out of the way when he worked. They didn’t have the calluses that Jim had on his hands, or the blackened nail on his right pinkie where that idiot Johansen had jammed the framing they were fitting.

“See you later, Chief. Nice to meet you,” he said to Lisa. Tony he ignored.

Blair lifted a hand in farewell salute. “Yeah, see you, Jim. Sunday?”

“Yeah. Sunday.” Jim walked away. Lisa was asking something about lecture notes, and Blair was hunting through his backpack. He could tell all that with his ears, but he turned and looked back when he was on the edge of the rise. Tony was looking back towards Jim, not aware that Jim could see him, before he turned his eyes back on Blair and scrambled off the table to sit opposite him.

“What, Tone?” Jim muttered. “Worried about Sandburg getting caught up in that blue collar sensibility?” He felt vaguely depressed. The lift that he’d had from Marty Costello’s praise, from Johansen’s ‘Holy shit!’ when he’d poked his head through the hole that Jim had, on his own initiative, knocked in the wall upstairs – that was gone. There wasn’t much there in common with Blair’s academic aspirations, with the tie-dyed t-shirt he wore and the rainbow pin that decorated Blair’s jacket lapel. Blair wouldn’t have worn that pin when he was driving up the interstates and drinking that crappy truck-stop coffee, couldn’t have worn it.

But when Jim told Blair the full story over eggs and hash browns on Sunday, about how the crackle and pop noises of the building had driven him to investigation, Blair’s fascination and approval gave him that lift right back again.

“Oh, that is so cool,” Blair declared, carefully stacking hash browns on his fork. “Pass the coffee pot, man.” The hash browns made their final journey from fork to mouth.

“If you say so.” Jim poured out some coffee.

“Yeah, I do say so. I mean, hell, James, you have issues, you know what I mean?” Jim’s mood swooped down again. Time with Blair seemed to be an emotional rollercoaster these days; Jim couldn’t settle, and he didn’t like it.

“We all have issues. I seem to recall you being all bent out of shape by your teacher talking about your blue collar background.”

“Sensibility,” Blair said, coffee cup nearly at his mouth. “And Professor Stoddard and I have that all dealt with now.” He grinned. “As a matter of fact, he’s told me that I’m going to be invited to study for an Honours degree.”

He looked happy, and Jim said, “Congratulations,” and meant it.

“Thanks. I’m pretty much ecstatic over it, I have to admit. Said ecstasy relates to my issues, which I at least have a handle on, whereas I’m never sure if you have a handle on your issues.”

The coffee curdled in Jim’s stomach. “Meaning?”

“Your senses, Jim.” Blair’s look was knowing, said without words, ‘yeah, sure, buddy. Just one issue at a time.’ “Look, tell me. How well do you think I ever fitted in back in our little town?”

Jim shrugged. “Alice and Gray thought you fitted with them.”

“Oh, now that’s tactful. I was the weird kid, you know that. Which was fine, because I was being me, as opposed to someone else’s idea of what I ought to be, and Alice and Gray weren’t exactly the usual small town deal. So, no problem. But people are social – we need to be part of something, and Professor Stoddard’s comment pinged me because it implied that I was outside of something that I wanted to be on the inside of. You with me?”

“I think that my meagre intellect can cope with the argument so far, Chief.”

Blair set a fork full of food to mopping up the egg yolk on his plate. “Never doubted it. My point is that my entirely not meagre intellect figured out why I had the issue with Professor Stoddard’s comment. But my not at all meagre intellect cannot figure out why you’re so damn uncomfortable with the senses.”

“They’re nothing special. And they cost me something important, so why should I be that impressed with them?”

“You don’t let go of stuff, do you?” Blair’s stare was suddenly penetrating.

“Part of my charm,” Jim said, and then took a hurried sip of coffee. That had sounded unexpectedly like flirtation rather than distraction.

“Yeah, and every god and goddess in humanity’s broad pantheons knows that I’m susceptible.” Blair looked both rueful and amused. “But even before the army – you were pretty iffy about them, and I never could figure out why.”

.”Oh for – look, Sandburg. Put the psychology stuff away, will you?”

Blair tilted his head sideways, as if considering his options, before he said, “Okay. But one day, all will be revealed!” Blair’s hands soared into a ‘hey presto’ gesture.

“You tell yourself that. You going to finish those fries?”

“Have them.” Blair pushed his plate over.

“An honours degree, huh?”

“Yeah.” Blair was delightedly smug.

“That’s great. Really. You wanted this for a long time.” One of them might as well have something that they’d wanted, and Jim had always had a weird soft spot for smug on Blair.

Blair’s smugness turned to an unexpected shyness as he looked at Jim. “Yeah, it really, really is great. Thanks.”

***

Jim was lying on his bed when the phone went, and he grabbed the receiver without turning his head.

“Ellison.”

It was Blair, in chatty, cheery mode. “Hey. Jim. How are you, man?”

“I’m okay.”

“I’m extending an invitation. Tomorrow night, I think that you and I should head out into the wilds of urban Cascade and try a little bar-hopping. Exploration. What do you think?”

Jim blinked, and kept staring at the ceiling, which was blurry right now, and had been for a while. He cleared his throat.

“That’s some offer you’re making there, Chief. Thanks. But I don’t think so.”

“No problemo. I’ll bring some beer with me, and we can sit around in front of the tv, instead. You, me, beer. A match made in heaven.”

“I don’t – ”

“Oh, come on, Jim.”

“You’re whining, Sandburg.” Jim’s voice was rough, but Blair either didn’t notice, or simply pretended not to notice.

“I am not whining. I’m offering free beer and I’m being rejected. I’m hurt.”

Jim shut his eyes for a moment and grinned. “I’d have thought you’d be hardened to rejection by now,” he said, and then opened his eyes wide. Had he really just said that to Blair? He knew he was out of it tonight, but that was shading out of mean and into cruel.

Blair didn’t miss a beat, whatever Jim’s misgivings. “I am never rejected, man. Never.” Except maybe just once. “My conquests are fucking legendary.” Blair’s voice was affectedly indignant, a big, fat tease. “And a good friend would help me drink my beer to celebrate my legendary status. So spring-clean your place and get in some food because I am coming around tomorrow night. Seven.”

Jim had to clear his throat again. “Okay. Sure. Seven.”

“Okay.” Blair’s voice dropped, suddenly hesitant. “Look, never mind tomorrow. I could come around tonight, right now. If you wanted.”

“Tomorrow is fine, Chief. Tomorrow is great.”

There was a pause, silent except for the sound of Blair breathing at the other end of the phone line. “Okay. Take care, Jim.”

“Yeah, sure.” Jim hung up the phone, just as blindly as when he’d picked it up. Then he patted the photo that was sitting in his pocket, with JJ’s image turned inward to his chest, to his heart, and swallowed hard. One year ago today, and tomorrow Blair was going to bring himself – and beer.

 

***

Jim would like to claim that sitting in an auditorium at Rainier waiting on a guest lecturer to begin his speech on urban gay history through the ages, however that was expressed in academic language, was something that normally he’d be as likely to willingly undergo as root canal work. But ‘normal’ included a persuasive Blair Sandburg, and here Jim was, sitting next to Blair amid a group of friends and fellow students who were also here courtesy of Blair’s persuasive tongue and organisational capacity.Blair was apparently surprised by how many people had taken up his suggestion. “Hey, it’s a party,” he said, as yet another figure scouted up and down the aisles to join the group of chattering young people.

“Yeah, babe, you know how to throw them,” Tony said, without any of his usual snideness. That twisted something in Jim. He dealt with Tony much better when he could assume that he didn’t appreciate Blair. When Tony leaned over the back of his seat to talk to someone, Jim fumbled a piece of paper out of his jacket pocket, a brochure with information that Jim had been mulling over for a while now.

“I wanted to show you this. See what you think.” He handed the brochure to Blair and watched Blair’s eyes scan quickly over it.

“Hey. Great. So construction isn’t doing it for you anymore?”

Jim made a noncommittal gesture with one hand. “It’s not that I dislike it, but it’s something I just stumbled into. I figured it was time to get a grip, think about what I really wanted to do.” What he’d really wanted to do was the military, and it had taken a long time to lay the corpse of that dream to rest. “And I…” He didn’t want to sound pompous. Part of the army dream had been adrenalin and playing toy soldiers, but Jim had always been aware of the idea of service. Being in The Service. “I figured this would be useful.”

“Yeah, I can see that, it’s a beautiful idea.” Blair’s voice became sly. “And there’s driving the ambulance too, sirens blazing. I can just see you now.” Jim’s hands clenched, and then relaxed. He thought of JJ – of Carolyn in the back seat of the car, her frantic face mottled red and white as she puffed gentle, useless breaths into their baby while Jim single-mindedly concentrated on reaching the hospital. It wasn’t Blair’s fault that he couldn’t see into Jim’s head.

“Jeez, Sandburg, you make me sound like some sort of an adrenalin junkie.”

“You, me, bike. Ring a bell? Everyone needs a little rush, man. If you get it in something constructive, all the better, right?” Blair’s finger ran under a particular line of print. “And this grant would pay a lot of the costs. Do you think you’ll get it?”

Jim shrugged. “I’m honourably discharged. I’m eligible. I’ve got an interview next Wednesday.”

Blair’s mouth opened in pleased astonishment. “What time? I’ll send you good vibes.”

“Good vibes for what?” Tony asked, leaning forward.

“Jim’s looking at getting EMT certification. Isn’t that a cool idea?”

“Copacetic,” Tony said with mild sarcasm, but then his gaze shifted to the stage, where a tall, plump man had stepped forward.

“That’s Dean Chalmers,” Blair muttered into Jim’s ear, as the audience quieted. “Looks like it’s show time.”

Chalmers made his introductory speech, there was a short burst of polite applause, and George Friedan stepped up to the podium. He was trim with his short grey hair and neatly trimmed beard – the perfect picture of a quietly-spoken academic, except for the flamboyant clothes. Jim supposed that gay academics could get away with plum-coloured velvet sports coats in their late middle-age.

Jim looked sideways at Blair sitting beside him. Blair’s full attention was on Friedan, and yes, Jim granted that the guy was an arresting speaker once he got going. But Jim still couldn’t quite get over the fact that he was here at all. The last time he’d sat in a group of people like this it was because Carolyn’s sister had been selling tickets for the local high school fundraiser – a fashion show of all the things guaranteed to send Jim screaming into the night. But he’d sat next to Carolyn, then seven months pregnant, and watched awkward teenage girls live out their modelling fantasies, and felt a lot more out of place than he did sitting here next to Blair Sandburg while some professor talked about molly houses.

And then Tony nudged Blair’s knee with his own at an anecdote that made the audience chuckle, and Jim caught the tail-end of the smile that Blair sent Tony in return. He reached across and lifted the brochure out of Blair’s hand where it still rested, and folded it and jammed it into his pocket once more. Then he riveted his eyes to the stage and the speaker, and let Friedan’s gentle, precise voice go in one ear and out the other. He was here to get a little culture, after all.

When Friedan was finished, a young woman sitting directly behind Blair leaned over with her hands upon his shoulders and said, “The All-Niter Coffee shop? And dessert?”

Blair tilted back his head and smiled at her. “Sounds good. Tony?”

Tony smiled. He could be rather charming, but he certainly never unleashed it on Jim, who knew full well why. “Sounds great.”

“Jim?” Blair’s face was bright. “Want to join us? They do amazing pie.”

“Yeah, sure.” Jim eyed the small core of students who were hanging around in their chairs, sorting out arrangements. “Just don’t expect much conversation from me.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Tony murmured. He probably didn’t even expect Jim to able to hear him – there were still plenty of people in the auditorium, and Blair’s group especially was starting to get noisy. Blair twisted his head in annoyance and then shrugged his shoulders in apology.

“Okay. Let’s get going. Pie!” Blair called out, and the group headed for the exit, scattering in all directions once they were outside in the night air.

“Where’d you park the truck?” Jim asked. Blair gestured, and Jim grinned. “Same way as you, then.”

Tony had slung an arm over Blair’s shoulders. “That wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.”

“Thank you for your confidence. I told you Professor Friedan had a good rep. What did you think, Jim?”

“He was interesting. Kind of flamey, though.”

Tony smirked contemptuously, and Blair smacked his hand over his face. Jim thought at first that Blair’s exasperation was at least amused, but Blair looked a little grim as his head came up.

“What the hell does that mean? Flamey? As in what – not quite flaming?”

Jim’s chin lifted, quite involuntarily. “Jeez, Sandburg, get your panties out of the twist you’ve got them in, there. I’m not saying that the guy wasn’t worth listening to.” Because – god. Just because Jim had noticed the guy wasn’t exactly going the route of tweed jacket and a pipe.

“I guess Jim doesn’t appreciate the good professor’s dress sense.” Tony’s contribution, which was filled with calm, liberal, man of the world mockery for the poor hick. Jim could feel his ears turn hot.

“I figured that Friedman’s dress sense was just fine. Hell, I wish I knew where to find a coat like that.” Jim tried to imagine Blair in a purple velvet jacket and realised that it wasn’t so very hard. “And aside from the flameyness, how did you find the play, Mrs Lincoln? Given that this guy is a world authority in his subject?”

Jim had found himself in Tony’s shoes – attending the lecture hadn’t been as bad as he’d thought it would be, but sullen irritation spoke up. “It was kind of over my head. What do you expect from some guy who works with his hands?”

“Fuck, Jim. Get the chip off your shoulder.”

“Nice pun,” Jim said tightly. He didn’t even know how they’d gotten into this ridiculous argument.

“What?” Blair said. Then his face lit with comprehension and he bared his teeth in frustration, before he came to a dead halt and then ran the car length that was left to get to his truck. It was sitting oddly on the road. Blair reached his vehicle, went down on one knee and swore. “Motherfuckers!” He stood and kicked the front curb-side tyre. It had been slashed. Jim saw gouges in the paintwork too, harsh lines dragged with a key most likely, and one word carved on the hood – fag.

He turned and looked back down the street. Angry voices were raised that he hadn’t registered as such because he was too caught up in that stupid quarrel with Blair.

“Sounds like you’re not the only one, Chief.” Jim jogged down the street and then stopped. He could see perfectly well in the glow of the streetlights, and he counted. At least another five or six vehicles, including an expensive looking BMW. He headed back again to find Blair sitting on the hood of the truck, feet on the bumper, his head in his hands. He lifted it as Jim returned. “Both front tyres. Bastards! Shitty, stupid, bigoted, gutless thing to do.”

“Yeah. And they spread themselves around too. There’s a BMW that got the same little kiss as sweetheart here.”

“A Beamer? Holy shit, that’s Dean Chalmers’ car. Oh man! Campus security is going to wish that they’d never been born, every one of them, and then they’re going to be fired. Probably out of a cannon.” Blair slid off his truck, and then banged the abused paintwork with his fist. “Fuckers!”

“What do you want to do, Blair?” Tony asked. “Leave her here and deal with it in the morning?”

“Shit. If I leave it here, I’ll probably get a parking fine on top of everything else when 8 o’clock comes round. Damn it!”

Jim watched Blair before he turned his head to look back down the street. The same essential tableau was depicted in several spots – just the players and the props varied.

“I’ll give you a lift, Blair,” Jim said. “Assuming that the shits didn’t get me.”

“Yeah, thanks. Can you give Tony a lift too? He came with me.”

“Let me check that I’ve got a ride to offer you.” Jim was parked another half a block down, and approached his worn Ford with some nervousness – but it was okay. “That’s something at least,” he muttered, before he headed back towards Blair and Tony once more. Tony was leaning against Blair’s truck, arms crossed against his chest. Blair was pacing, his hands clenched in front of him and shaking with drumbeat emphasis as he called down a variety of historical, agonising punishments on the vandals.

Tony lifted an eyebrow at Jim. “He’s in a hanging judge mood. It’s always the pacifist, new age guys.”

“Not in the mood, Tone.”

“And he always calls me Tone when he’s really pissed.”

“He’s got reason to be.” Jim daydreamed for a moment; wondered that if his hyperactive senses were all that instead of a giant pain in his ass, whether or not he could track down whoever was responsible; sniff them and track them to their frat house lairs and punch them out for putting that wounded, furious expression on Blair’s face. “Come on, Chief. You can deal with this in the morning. You’re going to have think about new tyres anyway.” Never mind the paintwork. Jim was already working out the approach he’d make to one of the guys on his crew who also did custom car work. If nothing else, he might let them borrow his gear and his workshop.

“I’m going to have to think about not eating is what I’m going to have to do. I’ve got insurance but the deductible is sky-high.”

“Jim’s right, Blair. There’s nothing you can do right now.” Tony approached Blair, who finally ceased his frenetic movement.

Blair took a deep breath, let it out again; but Jim could see the lines of strain around his mouth. “Okay. Okay.” He took one last look at his truck. “Fuck!” he said feelingly, before looking up at Tony. “Sorry. Not much of a fun night out.”

“Not your fault. Come on. We’d better go via the All-Niter and tell people what’s happening.”

“Yeah. There’s not going to be much pie in my future, that’s for sure.”

Tony and Blair piled into the back seat of Jim’s car, and he took the detour via the All-Niter, where Tony got out long enough to explain the situation and then came back again. “Home, James.”

“Yeah, sure. I live but to serve.” Tony chuckled; Blair was unusually quiet.

Jim expected that Blair would go in with Tony when they reached his apartment. Tony clearly expected it too, but Blair excused himself. “No. No, man. I’m still too pissed off. I need my own space tonight.”

“Your own space a zillion miles away from the U.”

“I know. So I get a ride tomorrow?”

“Yeah. I guess.” Jim stared ahead out the windshield for the goodnight kiss, and then Blair climbed into the passenger seat beside him.

“Thanks, Jim. I really appreciate this.”

“No problems. And I have an idea for your paintwork. I can’t promise anything yet, but I’ll check it out and let you know.”

Some of Blair’s dark mood lifted. “Thanks, man.” Jim pulled out onto the road, and Blair sighed. “That was a downer. God. What a bunch of dicks. Why do people do crap like that?”

“I don’t know, Chief. I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault. It’s good that they didn’t get you. Or Tony for that matter. He was thinking about driving himself. At least I have friends I can tap for transport, right?” Blair smiled, but it was only a shadow of his usual effervescent grin. ‘Fag’, they’d written across his car. Jim gripped the steering wheel that bit more firmly; pretending that it was the neck of the one of the dickwads involved quieted some of the anger seething inside.

“So hey,” Blair continued. “It’s especially good that they didn’t get you, what with the big interview coming up.”

“Yeah.”

“It’ll go great, Jim.”

Jim turned his head briefly to look at Blair. “Because you’ll send me good vibes?”

“The best.”

“I’ll count on it,” Jim said, and smiled in relief. At least their quarrel outside the auditorium had been wiped out by the night’s small disaster. There was silence for while, broken only by the occasional cleansing breath from the right-hand side of the car.

Jim was nearly pulling up outside Blair’s apartment when Blair said, “You know something? I’ll bet that an EMT could find a lot of uses for an enhanced sensory ability.”

Maybe an EMT could at that, although Jim found the idea set off a deep uneasiness.

“I have to get the grant and get into the training course, first, Sandburg.”

“Piece of cake.”

Jim wasn’t so convinced. “We’ll see,” he said, and parked his car.

“Yeah. We’ll see.” Blair’s face was quizzically affectionate.

“Try and get some sleep, huh? And if you need any help with the truck tomorrow, you tell me.” Jim put out his hand and clasped the back of Blair’s neck. His friend’s hair was caught in a tail tonight, and the band was stiff against Jim’s palm, a contrast to the soft spring of hair. Blair ducked his head, and when he lifted it, there was a light in his eyes that Jim didn’t quite recognise until Blair shifted across the seat toward him and kissed him.

Jim could see it coming, like slow motion. He could have drawn back. He could have kept his mouth shut when he felt Blair’s tongue sweep across his lips. Instead of withdrawing, he kept his grip on Blair’s neck, on the softness and warmth of his hair and his skin, and he kissed back. And when Blair pulled back, Jim followed, distracted by sensation, until a gentle hand on his cheek and the sound of Blair’s voice brought him back to himself.

Blair smiled. “Come in with me,” he said; but the smile faded at whatever he saw in Jim’s face. The response to the kiss had been unthinking impulse. But getting out of his car and following Blair into the little apartment, past his roomies’ bedrooms and into Blair’s was a step too far.

“I’m sorry.” Jim whispered it, and then cleared his throat to speak more clearly. “I’m sorry, Chief. I don’t know if I can do this.”

Blair dropped his head against the seatback. “Can’t do what, Jim? Can’t do me? Because I could accept that.” He fixed Jim with a stare. “Or can’t do flamey?” he flung. “Can’t do some dickhead screwing up your paintwork with shitty words?”

Jim winced.

“I guess I got my hopes up when you turned up in Cascade.”

“Sandburg…. I just don’t know! God.” Jim pinched hard at the bridge of his nose. “And what about Tony?” Blair opened his mouth, and Jim said bitterly, “Yeah, I know. You’re not exclusive. But I don’t do that sort of crap, never mind anything else.”

Blair took another deep breath. Jim could get to really hate that huff of breath. “First, I come on to you when you’re involved, and then I come on to you when I’m involved. You’re not going to have much of an opinion left of me, are you?”

“Hey.” Jim hated that tone in Blair’s voice, hated it when Blair sounded down and defeated. He took Blair’s hand in his and curled his fingers around hard, lifted their clasped hands into the air between them. “There were a couple of weeks way back in school when I wondered why I kept stumbling over this mouthy kid who perpetually talked himself into trouble, but overall, I’ve always had a pretty good opinion of you. That’s not going to change.”

Blair’s lids dropped, partly shuttering his eyes. He stared at the grip of their hands, and it occurred to Jim that he and Blair could lose each other over this. Blair could get sick of the unrequited love thing. Jim could decide that he really couldn’t do this, and they could just avoid each other for a time that got longer and deeper, like sailing out over the ocean from the coast. There came a time when it was easier to make landfall on that other faraway shore than to turn back.

Jim knew that. How many years was it since he and his father and brother had talked to each other? But not Blair. God, not Blair. His hand tightened.

“Tell me, Jim. Tell me if you can’t stand the too damn pushy crap, okay?” Blair gently pulled his hand away, trying to claim his freedom.

“I like you pushy.” Jim felt his heart start beating harder in his chest, because that felt dangerously close to some sort of declaration, and Blair had every right to be pissed over mixed messages. Reluctantly, he let go.

“Okay.” Blair’s eyes were troubled, but he looked Jim in the face now. “Okay. I’ll let you know if I need a hand with the truck. And thanks.”

“It’s no trouble, Chief. See you.”

Blair was out of the car, and he lifted his hand in a goodbye gesture, before he shut the door and headed for his apartment, his stride jerky with energy. Jim watched and then left, his arms shaky with reaction. He was getting closer to making a decision, letting Blair be pushy one more time, but he wasn’t quite ready to do any pushing of his own. Not quite.

***

Jim spoke to Arty Ventura about Blair’s truck, and that was two Sunday afternoons with all three of them working together, some money paid to Arty by Blair, and two cases of beer delivered, paid for by Jim; Blair’s truck was still marred by primer patches while he tried to scrape the money together for work that had a hope in hell of matching the existing paintwork.

Arty had his doubts about university students, but he advised Jim that Sandburg was a weird little fucker but okay. Jim managed not to get in Arty’s face over his assessment of Blair, and drove home smugly proud of his self-restraint.

The EMT course interview went well. It went really well, and a month after the vandalism at Rainier, Jim received his official confirmation letter, and the list of textbooks and the confirmation of the grant that would pay his course costs and the papers for the student loan that he’d still need to pay for his living expenses. He tried calling Blair to share the mix of glee and trepidation that was bubbling in his chest, but Blair’s female roomie, Sharna, told him Blair was out.

“Okay. Thanks,” Jim told her, trying to ignore his disappointment. It just meant that he’d have to wait until tomorrow to tell Blair the news, and that would be fine because tomorrow was a Saturday. They could maybe go out for brunch and celebrate. Hell, Jim would even accommodate Tony’s presence if he had to.

Jim was asleep when the shrill persistence of the phone dragged him out of a heavy sleep. He pulled up the mask he wore (the curtains at his window didn’t block the light from across the street) and checked the time. 3:38 a.m. His hand flailed for the receiver. “Yes!” he demanded, hoping like hell that it wasn’t Rich or his mother.

“Fuck you, you asshole.” The voice was blurred with alcohol. “Just fuck you! You couldn’t fucking leave him alone, could you?”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Jim muttered, and slammed the receiver down. “Fuck you too.” He stared at his ceiling. He was pissed off and wide awake, and when the phone went again he picked it up and snarled with heavy sarcasm, “Hey, sport? Try an 0900 number next time, huh?” He was about to cut the connection and leave the phone off the hook but he heard his name.

“Christ, I could kill you, Ellison.”

“Who the hell is this?” The voice was shaking, shuddering with what sounded like enraged crying, while it spewed out a litany of insults and maudlin self-pity. The penny dropped. “Tony?” Jim said in total disbelief. He simply couldn’t imagine Tony, who’d always projected a ‘too cool to care’ vibe, sounding that unhinged.

“You just couldn’t leave it alone, could you, you fucker? You’re too fucking straight to lay a hand on him…” there was a gagging sound that made Jim flinch. It sounded like Tony was right on the edge of puking his guts. “Don’t want him but don’t want anyone else to want him.”

Anger and disgust finally overcame stunned surprise and train-wreck curiosity. “Drink some fucking coffee, and get the hell over yourself,” Jim snapped into the phone, before ending the call, and turning the phone off for good measure. Then he dropped back onto his mattress and shut his eyes.

Drunken quarrel, or genuine break-up? Had Blair actually said anything at all about Jim, or was an epically wasted Tony savaging an easy target? Jim wrestled with the serious temptation of calling Blair, who might well be still awake after the fight it seemed likely that he and Tony had yelled their way through. And if he was asleep – well, why should Jim be the only one with disturbed rest?

But if he called Blair, what exactly was he going to say? Jim’s brows pulled together in a hard, cramping frown. Clearly, if anyone had been dumped, it was Tony. It didn’t necessarily have anything to do with Jim. He’d certainly found Tony to be an irritating yuppie wannabe. Maybe the scales had simply fallen from Blair’s eyes. Nothing to do with Jim, just Blair seeing that a relationship wasn’t working, a full month after Blair had once again kissed Jim, and Jim had asked him, ‘what about Tony?’

He rolled over in his bed, restless and irritated and unsure, and suddenly determined to share the wealth of all those feelings when it was a touch more day-lit than it was now. Jim smiled grimly to himself, aware of a small, hard knot of amusement at Tony’s drunken tirade. Here he was – the Other Man. “God, Sandburg,” he muttered. “Only you.”

***

Jim slept in until about eight, and then he woke to the sound of noisy sex on the floor below his. Jeez, honey, he thought, as the woman grew ever more strident, if you want to hit the high notes that much, join the Met, why don’t you?

He could live without the wakeup call, not least because despite his annoyance, it was still making him horny as hell. “God damn it!” Jim complained to nobody in particular. He wanted to piss, but unless he also wanted to water the ceiling, he had a problem.

Jim had, when he got right down to it, several problems. The morning wood was just the most urgent one, not the most important. Jim put his hand on his hard-on, and shut his eyes. He needed to go see Blair this morning. That was the plan, formulated last night. It was still the plan. He needed to go see Blair, and do- what? Tease the hell out of Blair about Tony’s melt-down, for a start. Jim didn’t feel any particular sympathy for ‘Tone’ at all, and if that made him a class-A son of a bitch, Jim could live with that. Commiserate with Blair? Congratulate him? Kiss him?

Yeah. Why not put his hands all over his dick and think about kissing Blair? It wasn’t the first time he’d done it the last few weeks. Think about how Blair felt under his hands, the warmth, the smoothness of Blair’s skin, the strength in Blair’s arms that first kiss on the Lookout. Jim made the fantasy more explicit. Blair shirtless. Blair naked. Blair with his sweet, full lips wrapped around Jim’s dick. And then it was all over, and Jim lay in his bed until his breathing and heart beat quietened, and he didn’t have any excuse not to get out of bed and do something that was going to change his life.

It was ten o’clock when he reached Blair’s apartment, and Sharna was wide awake. She smiled politely at Jim. “Blair’s still asleep. He got in pretty late last night, and then he got out of bed to throw up about 6.30. Perfect alarm clock, you know?”

“I can guess,” Jim said, but nothing more, although he gave her one of his better smiles. He liked Sharna. “I think it’s time I roused Sleeping Beauty.”

“Good luck,” Sharna said dryly, and sat down on the sofa with her feet up and a copy of Cosmopolitan in her hands.

Blair was lying on his stomach when Jim poked his head around the door. He was wearing a tank top, and his face was buried beneath an avalanche of hair. He neither looked nor smelled his best. A tangle of blankets reached below Blair’s shoulder blades. Jim crouched beside the bed and put his hand on Blair’s shoulder, which was heated and mostly bare under the narrow straps of his top. He shook Blair, surprisingly carefully given the nervous tension that ran under Jim’s skin. Blair moaned, and opened one unwilling eye.

“Good morning, sunshine.” Jim sounded manic, even to himself.

Blair’s hand closest the edge of the bed stirred, and shaped itself into a fist with one middle finger extended. “Screw you and the overly cheerful horse you rode in on.”

“Come on, Sandburg. Rise and shine.”

“Why?”

“We need to celebrate your new status as a single guy.” Jim’s heart felt like it was blocking his throat. However, he had Blair’s full attention now.

“What?” Blair struggled upright.

“Come on, Chief. I got my wake-up call in the wee small hours and here you’re dragging the chain when the morning’s nearly over.”

Blair tried to push the tangled mat of hair away from his face. “Are you talking in code, or what?”

Jim felt a golden, glorious recklessness run through him. “I got a phone call from good old Tone at three-thirty this morning. I can’t remember the exact conversation, but I do remember that he said fuck a lot, and that he pretty much blamed me for you dumping him on his skinny ass.”

Blair’s hands moved to cover his face, and he groaned. “Oh shit. Just shoot me now.” His face emerged from behind the barricades. “He didn’t.”

Jim was standing now, his hip perched against Blair’s crappy dresser. “You know, Sandburg, I really think that he did.”

“God. I’m sorry, Jim. He had no right to do that, and it was stupid of him.” Blair was sitting up in bed now, the covers draped around his waist.

“I guess I’m more interested in whether he guessed right.”

Blair looked suddenly wary. “I thought that we’d already established that Tony shouldn’t be abusing you for something that’s got nothing to do with you.”

Heat flushed Jim’s skin. “So you breaking up with him had nothing to do with me?”

Blair was looking distinctly shifty. “Tony and I… it was fun, but it wasn’t working. That’s it. And that’s all you need to know, Jim. I’m not playing kiss and tell.” He moved to get out of bed, grabbing for a tattered old wool robe. He was half-hard under his boxers. “I need to take a piss. I drank about a gallon of water earlier.”

“Before or after you puked?” Jim said heartlessly. The finger was sent his way again, as well as a reproachful expression.

“I also need a shower. Just, make yourself comfortable.”

“Sure thing,” Jim told him. He stepped right into Blair’s space, still filled with nervous impetus, and clasped his hand around Blair’s upper arm. “But hurry back, huh?” He got a look of bleary-eyed speculation, before Blair shambled out into the hallway.

Okay, he told himself. Okay. He could do this. This was shit or get off the pot time. He looked around at Blair’s room, at the posters for Amnesty International and Greenpeace, the small prints that depicted some sort of tribal art, the books and the papers, the deeply prized laptop bought just before the asshole attack on Blair’s truck. There were some photo frames on top of the makeshift book cases – Naomi, Alice and Gray. Jim. There he was, included without fanfare among Blair’s family. Jim wanted it to stay that way.

He felt too wired to sit quietly in Blair’s bedroom, and he was painfully aware that he could hear the noise of the shower. He realised that he’d lost any sense of what was normal for other people to hear. If he and Blair talked later, fought, had sex – just how much of it was going to be clear as daylight to Sharna and Blair’s other roomie? Restlessly, Jim headed for the kitchen.

“So he’s alive,” Sharna said. She was examining Jim over the top of her magazine, and Jim told himself that any curious glint in her eye was his own paranoia speaking.

“Yeah. Do you mind if I make a fresh batch of coffee?”

“Be my guest.”

“The plumbing’s kind of loud here,” Jim said.

“I don’t think the developers paid a lot of money for sound-proofing, that’s for sure.”

Jim fiddled with coffee. He’d been here often enough that he knew where things were, but maybe something about his bent-down head gave the game away, because Sharna put her magazine down and stood up. She was bright. It was one reason Jim liked her.

“You know something? I think I should go do some shopping.”

“Have a good time,” Jim said, hoping that his relief didn’t show. “Where’s the stoner king?”

“Sleeping it off in his room as normal.” Sharna’s face was slightly pink. “A herd of elephants could have an orgy and I doubt he’d wake up. If you know what I mean.”

“Yeah.” The kitchen was filled with the scent of the coffee. Jim had smelled better, but it would do.

Sharna headed for her room, and Jim heard her mutter, “So much for my quiet morning at home. God, Blair. I have got to pump you for the secrets of your success.” Jim felt a small twinge of guilt, but her face was clear of anything except a pleasant good-bye smile when she emerged. “See you,” she said, and was gone.

Blair emerged from the bathroom, draped in the old robe, but without his grubby underclothes. He was shaved and his hair was pulled back into a damp, kinked tail.

“Coffee?” Jim suggested, offering a cup.

“You’re a prince.” Blair sank into the chair next to Jim.

“How’s the head?”

“Not so bad now. I’m clean, semi-hydrated and I took a couple of Advil. And I have caffeine. My cup runneth over.” Blair sipped his coffee. “What are you doing here, Jim?”

“Like I said, Chief. Celebrating your single status.”

Blair stared at Jim. “Uh-huh. And you’d care why?”

“Figured I’d grab you while we’re both still in between relationships.”

Blair was still staring, but this stare had evolved into open-mouthed, befuddled astonishment.

“It’s a good thing that I know you’re smart, Chief, because you look pretty dumb right now.”

“I…. Jim, are you for real? Because, it’s not that I’m not happy at the idea, actually overwhelmed probably describes it better, but it’s… Are you sure?” Blair scrubbed at his face with his hands. “I’m just – kind of surprised.”

“Yeah.” Jim watched carefully, trying not to feel too sick or stupid. “I’m getting that impression.”

“I mean…. What is this? Get me on the rebound or something?”

“I always assumed that it was Tony who got you on the rebound.” It was quite possibly the most arrogant thing to ever come out of Jim’s mouth, but he didn’t care. “I’ve been thinking, Blair. Okay? For a long time, and you know it or you never would have kissed me that first time.”

“Well, yeah. But I didn’t realise that you’d got so far along overcoming your virgin scruples, man. I…. Wow.” Blair picked up the coffee and sipped at it, held the cup at his mouth like a barrier.

“Virgin scruples?” Jim said, disbelief raising his voice.

“Figure of speech.”

“I hope so.”

“I… Really? You really mean it?”

Jim stood up, suddenly irritated. Blair wasn’t usually this dense. “I’m here. Saying it. Yes, Blair Sandburg, I would like to explore this big gay love that we might have going, and yes, you were right about me and Carolyn being wrong for each other, and what the fuck do I have to do? Crawl?” Jim pulled off his shirt, exasperated enough to make a grandly obvious gesture, and stood there, half-naked in the little kitchen. “Or will this do?”

Blair stared up at him with a totally shell-shocked expression. The moment turned in slow revolution, and as Blair still said nothing, Jim picked up the discarded shirt in humiliated disgust. “Christ, Chief. You’re usually a lot faster at telling me when I’ve just made a damn fool of myself.”

This galvanised Blair into action. “No, no.” He leapt up from his chair and skittered around the table to grab Jim’s shoulders. “The only person who’s made a fool of themselves is me. I…” Blair’s gaze went to his hands on Jim’s skin. “You can do this.” His face turned predatory. “Which means I can do this?” His hands, his warm, broad hands slid in an arc across Jim’s chest, palms resting on the nipples, the tips of his fingers pressed lightly against Jim’s sternum. Jim rested one hand across the back of Blair’s, and held it there. He could do this, and there was one thing in particular that he absolutely should do. He lowered his head, and kissed Blair.

Kissing wasn’t so very different – it was still mouths and tongues, but Blair’s hairy, flat-planed body was something new, especially given that Jim suspected that they weren’t going to stop at kissing. Blair’s hands took enthusiastic advantage of Jim’s shirtless condition, and that felt good; but Jim was aware of the size and strength of the hands that spread hot across his skin.

Blair drew back. “You okay?”

Jim looked into Blair’s face, which was alight with hunger and happiness, and a dawning anxiety.

“Yeah. But be gentle with me, huh?” It wasn’t completely a joke and they both knew it, but Blair sniggered and rested his forehead against Jim’s shoulder.

Blair’s hands settled at Jim’s waist, one hand pressed into the small of his back. “I can do that,” Blair said, lifting his head. “How about we take this party into the bedroom.”

“I can do that,” Jim parroted, feeling his own smile broaden at Blair’s grin.

“Come on, then. You know the way.” Blair led anyway, gesturing Jim into his room with a flourish, shutting the door and shucking his robe in one uninterrupted motion.

Jim stared.

Blair was bravado incarnate. “This is it, Jim,” he said, gesturing like ‘it’ was the holy grail or the Hope diamond.

Wordless, Jim held out a hand and received an armful of warm, naked Blair. That was better. It was easier to feel than to look right now, especially as Blair began placing gently fervent kisses along the line of his collar bone. Jim let his hands run along Blair’s back, feeling the completely masculine mass of muscle under the skin, and knew a deep relief, because he cared only so far as it meant that it was Blair Sandburg he was touching.

“What do you want to do, man? Because there is like, a whole menu that I plan on working through with you.”

“I bet,” Jim said, one hand cupping Blair’s nape under the damp hair, and feeling stupidly at a loss. All the options of sex suddenly had brand new features, such as the cock that was rising hard and rosy red at Blair’s groin.

“And speaking of menus,” Blair said, “sit down.” He pushed Jim down to sit on the edge of his bed. “Oh, yeah, sit down,” he murmured, and sank to his knees in front of Jim. “I have a recommendation,” he said impishly.

“Yeah, I have one, too. Let me get these pants off.” Sitting was not comfortable right now.

“Excellent plan. Absolutely excellent,” Blair said, and undid the button, undid the zip, pulled Jim’s chinos down and cast them aside, while Jim sat on the edge of the bed, on the edge of his seat, waiting for what he knew was coming – Blair’s mouth. Blair’s mouth, closing over Jim’s cock like it was the best thing that Blair had ever known.

Jim made an inarticulate noise and tried not to shut his eyes. Blair deserved Jim watching this, watching his best friend go down on him with a single-minded concentration that Jim got off on nearly as much as the physical sensation. He always had got off on that at one level, got off on knowing that Blair cared, that Blair thought Jim was worth his time. That Blair loved him.

“Blair. I’m going to come.” Blair lifted one hand into the air, thumb and finger circled in an ‘okay’ sign, and kept right on with what he was doing, which was blowing Jim along an incoherent torrent of pleasure. Jim, propped on his arms, was trembling with the tension and the need until finally there was an end to it, and Jim took a deep breath, and looked at Blair, who was kneeling at his feet looking immensely pleased with himself.

“You liked?”

Jim leaned forward and pulled Blair close. “I liked. Like all that moaning didn’t give it away, you cock-sure little shit.”

“I always knew you’d be the romantic type,” Blair said, one hand firmly tracing the line of a pectoral muscle. Jim looked down at Blair’ still hard cock, and faced a sudden surge of sensation in his chest, like an unexpected swell under a boat. Blair’s hand rested on his shoulder, and one eyebrow lifted.

Jim fumbled with some words. “I… Uh. What do you want? Because, the terrain – it looks great but it’s not quite what I’m used to, but…”

“Sit up on the bed, man. Snug up against the wall.”

“You have a plan, do you?” Relief, and embarrassment at sounding like such a putz, warmed Jim’s face.

“I always have a plan. Back up.” Jim followed instructions. “Spread your legs.” They were challenging words in the circumstances, but given that Jim was firmly planted on his ass he decided to go with the flow and see what happened.

What happened was that Blair clambered onto the bed, his hard-on leading the way, to sit with his back to Jim’s chest, settling back against Jim with a sigh like a man easing his way into a hot bath. “Oh, yeah,” he said, in happy satisfaction. It confused Jim. They hadn’t done anything yet, but there was no denying the pleasure in Blair’s voice.

“Sandburg? I’m assuming that you want me to do something about this?” Jim reached around and put his hand on Blair’s cock.

Blair hissed. “Yeah, I want. But this…. this is something that I’ve dreamed about for a long time, Jim. Let me have a moment.”

Jim shook his head, and then kissed Blair’s temple. “You’re a strange man, Chief. But I guess I can let you use me for a cushion if it makes you happy.” His hand lay lightly palmed against the warmth and hardness of Blair’s cock, and his skin buzzed pleasantly with Blair’s weight against him.

“Okay.” Blair’s voice was business-like all of a sudden. He moved, rolling off to the side to search inside a drawer. “Got myself comfortable and then realised that I’d forgotten an essential.” He brandished a tube of K-Y, and then knelt in front of Jim and squeezed some of it into his hand. “Think you can jerk me off? Remember the basic motions?” His words teased, but there was something yearning about his face that made Jim lean forward for a slightly awkward, off-balance kiss.

“Yeah, I think I remember the technique.”

Blair settled against Jim with a repeat of that pleased sigh, his head resting on Jim’s left shoulder. He grinned. “What are you waiting for?”

It was strange, holding on to the heat and strength of an erect cock but not feeling anything except the sensations against his palm. “What do you like?” Jim whispered. “Is this okay?”

Blair arched against him, and guided the stroke of Jim’s hand with his own hand. “Yeah, like that. Oh. God…” Blair’s head pressed hard into Jim’s shoulder, leaned into Jim’s jaw and cheek. Jim shut his eyes, and concentrated on the feel of Blair’s body against him, the smell of sex and something that was maybe happiness, because that was how smelling it made him feel. Blair was into it now, his breath harsh in Jim’s ear, his fingers digging into Jim’s legs as Blair held on, and then rode out the spasms of climax, until he stilled. Jim rested his hand over Blair’s cock, unsure of himself again, and desperately wanting something to wipe the semen that smeared his hand. Blair had apparently lost the power of speech, and Jim eventually decided to just sacrifice the sheets, before he wrapped his arms around Blair.

“Oh. My. God,” Blair said softly.

“Good enough for a beginner?” Jim asked.

Blair waved his hand, like a conductor requesting something from the orchestra. “You’re a keeper.”

“Good news.”

Blair’s crossed his arms over his chest and took a hold of Jim’s arms, his head nuzzling into Jim’s now instead of pressing in frantic demand. “You’re okay?”

“I’m okay, Sandburg.”

“I’m just – I’m having a moment here, Jim. Because, I’m half expecting to wake up and find out this was all a dream.”

“It’s not a dream.”

Blair’s shifted slightly, the better to look at Jim. “You’re sure?”

Jim felt a really big grin stretch his face. “Yeah. And I can prove it.”

“You can, huh?”

Jim delivered his proof – one that was definitive and inarguable. “Yeah. We need to change the sheets. This bed reeks. Seriously.”

Blair’s head tilted to let out a full-throated laugh that shook them both. When he was quiet again, he said, “You’re right. I am totally awake, totally not dreaming.” He got off the bed, and stood there, staring down at Jim like he still wasn’t convinced. “Sheets. Oh, man.”

Then he leaned over Jim, and kissed him again.

“Maybe I’m being pushy…”

Jim lifted his eyebrows. “You? Surely not.”

“Has it ever occurred to you that two can live as cheaply as one? Especially if they share accommodation? Living space? One bed?” Blair’s face was hopeful, and slightly smug. Jim always did have a weird soft spot for smug on Blair.

“It’s a new idea, Chief. But I guess I could be brought round.”

 

Finis