Author's webpage: http://trickster.org/radiofree

Author's notes: This has been lurking on my hard drive for about two years. Anna made me search it out and dust it off and then convinced me to post it. She also came up with the title. If you're looking for depth or relevance, this is not the story for you. =) Many thanks to Anna for non-consensual posting encouragement, Nita for regular old encouragement, and Margie for a really quick beta.

"What would you call joining the military if not fighting for a cause I believe in?"

"Selling out to the nationalistic propaganda machine that chews up America's youth and spits out perfect little soldiers, and--"

"Oh, for god's sake--"

"--blatantly surrendering your right to self-determination--"

"Okay, okay, fine. I'll have you know that I'm a member of a very active, very liberal group right within the police department."

"Yeah? Somebody start a movement to bring back the Betamax?"

I reached over to smack him; Blair threw himself back on the couch and rolled. He took the blow on his hip, cracking up and complaining at the same time. "Ow! Very civilized, man, I'm so impressed."

"You can take the throwback out of the jungle..."

"Tell me about it," Blair said. He looked good sitting there grinning, happy. I hadn't seen him looking like that nearly enough lately.

I stepped out on the proverbial limb. "I'm a member of PFLAG."

He had a handful of popcorn halfway to his mouth. That journey was never completed. Big-eyed as a fish he just gaped at me, very obviously stunned clear down to the bottom of his liberal soul. It was a lot funnier than it was flattering. I settled back to watch the show -- half audience, half performer. There was a flutter dead center in my gut, familiar in recent years, that told me I was about to do something stupid.

I kind of liked it.

"You're a member of PFLAG," he said.

"Yep."

"Parents and friends--"

"Of lesbians and gays. Yep."

"You're a member of PFLAG. You are."

"Change the record, Dr. Demento."

Blair didn't even twitch. There was a war going on under the surface of his skin and it was resulting in some pretty funny expressions. Had to be hell, torn between the sensitive 90s guy who ate sprouts, worried about the rainforests, and never pried... and the real Blair Sandburg. My Sandburg.

The one who wanted to know.

"Simon?" he hazarded, grinning. "Joel!"

I rolled my eyes. The 90s guy was never even in it.

"No, and no," I said, "but I'll be sure to tell them they were in your thoughts."

"Rafe? He's always wearing those lavender button-downs."

"They're blue, and you're indulging in some awfully prejudicial stereotypes there, don't you think? I'm seeing a whole new side of you."

"Jim," Blair said reproachfully. "Please. Naomi Sandburg didn't raise any prejudiced children."

"That you know of."

That got me smacked with a pillow -- the blue one, which was harder than all the rest of them and he knew it.

"Wearing lavender -- assuming Rafe did, which he doesn't -- doesn't make somebody gay. There's no universal color of gayness. That's why those little triangles have rainbows on them."

"But if there were, you gotta admit, lavender would be pretty damn close."

"But there's not."

"But if there were."

I studied the ceiling. After three years living with Sandburg, I should have a PhD in ceilings. "Was there a point to this conversation?"

He just kept blinking at me like a little old lady's turn signal, only blue instead of red and I think he was doing it on purpose. "You're really in PFLAG?"

"God help me. Why did I open my mouth?"

"Come on, Jim, who is it?"

"Half of Major Crime thinks it's you."

"Two-fourteenths of Major Crime knows it ain't. Give, Jim."

"I'm not at liberty to--"

"Bullshit." He slugged me on the arm, which I didn't really deserve, and rolled his eyes, which I probably did. "I'm your best friend. I don't care who swore you to secrecy. Trust me, they didn't mean you couldn't talk to me. Everybody knows you talk to me about everything."

I laughed. "In what universe, Sandburg?"

"The one I'm gonna kick your ass out of if you don't tell me!"

"Stephen. Happy? It's Stephen. Why'd you think he's still toeing my dad's line?"

Blair blinked. "I thought it was because he's a schmuck."

"He is schmuck. But he's also gay."

"Wow."

I took a long pull from my beer, and leaned my head back against the cushions of the couch. "What does 'schmuck' actually mean, anyway?"

"I mean, really, Jim. Wow."

I closed my eyes.

"How gay are we talking here?"

"About fifty-seven percent. Jesus, Sandburg, what kind of question -- "

"Sorry, sorry. I guess I just meant, like... is he in the closet? Out of the closet? Is the door to the closet open? Is there anybody in there with him?"

This was fun. It was better than the questions about Stephen's senses, anyway. And my dad's senses. And my mom's. If I'd had a childhood pet, Sandburg would have run tests on its remains.

"He's in the closet," I said. "Hey, you know the difference between being gay and being a sentinel?"

"What's the difference?" he said, grinning, waiting for the punch-line.

The new and improved Sandburg-Era Jim Ellison was a strange and interesting guy. You never knew what he might suddenly find the guts for.

"One trait runs in the family," I said.

And everything went silent and still.

Blair sat there like an ice sculpture of himself, beer bottle frozen halfway to his mouth. His eyes were on mine. Gradually, as understanding set in, those eyes widened.

And widened. The hand holding the beer came down in slow motion, put the bottle on the coffee table, and drew back. He kept looking at me. And kept looking. And--

"So, what're you thinking?"

Blair blinked. "I'm thinking there are a lot of gay people in a conversation that had a lot of straight people in it just a minute ago."

"But are you thinking of that as a good thing or a bad thing?"

"'Unlikely' was the first word to come to mind."

"Okay," I said, nodding. "But are we talking unlikely in a good way or--"

"Ellison."

"Yeah?"

"Chill."

"Yeah."

Blair paced.

Up and down the length of the couch, behind me, he paced. He paced really loud, and kept a pretty decent distance between us. The times I'd told him all this in my head, he'd reacted a lot better, but to be fair, I'd said it a lot better those times than I'd said it just now. I should've built up to it, probably -- should've sat him down with some pamphlets or something -- but there were times I just had to say something to shake him, remind him he hadn't cornered the world market on martyred tolerance.

Coming out was probably taking that compulsion to an unwise extreme, but hell, I was on my fourth beer.

And he was asking for it.

"So you, you're not like just a parent or friend, as such," he said, stomping a little harder. "You're a lesbian or a g--"

"Yes, Blair," I said solemnly. "I'm a lesbian."

"That's so not funny."

"Probably why I'm not laughing."

"You're not laughing because you're scared," he said.

"I'm not laughing because...because..."

"Yeah?"

"Okay," I said. "A little concerned."

"HA!"

"Fairly nervous?"

"If you were wearing boots," Blair said, "you'd be shakin' in 'em."

Nobody ever said the kid wasn't observant. "You think you could sit down? You're giving me a complex."

"I'm giving you a complex. I'm giving you a complex. Oh, man." Blair laughed, but it wasn't a terrifically stable-sounding kind of laugh. It was more like the kind of laugh you might hear from a guy before he opened fire in a post office.

"I should've kept my mouth shut."

He stopped, and turned, and pointed at me. He was glaring. His mouth worked, but nothing came out of it; he shut it with a snap, made another pointing jab at me with his finger, then stalked into his room. He didn't shut the door.

"Sandburg--"

"Don't talk to me," he yelled. "I don't talk to people like you!"

I stared at the open door. "You don't talk to gay people?"

"Stupid people! I talk to plenty of gay people, damn it!" He came back out and threw himself down on the couch beside me. There was a notebook in his hands,. "I don't talk to stupid people, and you are definitely stupid people, Jim. I love you, but you're stupid. Yet another issue for me to work out in therapy."

"That you love me? Or that I'm stupid?"

"Yes."

He opened his notebook, and looked hard at the first page.

"What's that?"

"My other dissertation." He said it casually, flipping through the blue-lined, ink-filled pages.

The words acted in my brain like polar opposites. They wouldn't press together. Otherdissertation. I could think it, but then the words sprang away from each other. "Your what?"

"Not really," he said as things got stranger. "I mean, it's not really a dissertation, so it can't really be my other dissertation, but it's... well, I guess it's a journal. All the stuff I knew I could never put in the real one, I put in here."

Which made that the interesting part. "So when do I get to read it?"

"Never. You never get to read it."

"Never."

He turned to me. "You know how I said I love you?"

"Hey, Sandburg, if you're about to burst into song or something --"

"I meant it. Jim, listen to me, okay? I really meant it. And it's because of the fact that I love you that I was never going to put any of this into anything that ever got published. And since I knew that, since I knew nobody was ever going to see this but me, I put lots of stuff in it that was, well, tangential."

"Like recipes for stroganoff tangential? Or like how-to-kill-an-urban-sentinel tangential?"

"You're never going to know." Blair grinned briefly, stunningly, then looked back down at the pages. "I'm willing to brief you on certain highlights, though."

"What, the Time-Life version?"

"Reader's Digest, maybe."

"You love me," I said.

"And I thought those things were just for keeping your hats on straight."

He was grinning. He wasn't looking at me -- but the bastard was grinning. All of a sudden, I felt taller and a little more buff. "You love me," I said again, jabbing a finger in his direction. "That's what you said, I heard you."

"No offense, man, but I'm sitting right next to you. That's not going to make much of an article --"

I reached up and took his face in my hands and spread my fingers over it: rough skin and smooth, bristled and not, a tactile oxymoron. He looked down at me, his eyes wide open blue, and I pulled him down, opened his mouth with my thumb and opened mine and brought us together just like that, sealed the connection. His tongue was alien and cool in my mouth until I licked it, sucked it in. I twisted and fell back, and Blair's body fell onto mine then so fast and hard it took the air out of me and I had to breathe through my nose because he had my mouth and it wasn't going anywhere.

And there wasn't enough air.

And that was okay, because I was living off him now, I didn't need it, or thought I didn't, or didn't want to, until he pulled back and licked some of the wet off his mouth and said, "Jesus."

I was breathing then, deep and painful tides of air, but it was irrelevant. I was getting dizzy anyway.

"Jim," he said.

I hooked my hands up under his arms, over his shoulders, and eased him back onto me.

"Hey," I said. I didn't know what else to say. "Hey, Blair. Come on, chief..."

"Shut up." He spoke into my throat, muffled, hot words on the skin there. I ran my hands over his back, long trips from waist to neck, and ended cradling the back of his skull, holding him to me, looking up at the ceiling. His hair was knotted around my hands and I didn't think I could get free without hurting him or donating a couple of fingers.

"That was..."

He made an inarticulate, kind of displeased noise in the back of his throat.

"Mmmm?"

"God," he said. "You're such a moron."

"Hey, I figured you out."

"For three years, you don't tell me this."

"I didn't think it was relevant."

"You didn't think it was -- !"

"And what about you! For three years you yammer at me about everything from tribal cures for male pattern baldness to the pain and anguish of muzzling your inner child, and on this one topic you lose the power to express yourself?"

He looked up at me, his eyes wide and bright in a scary, vicious way that was actually kind of sexy. "I'm putting it in the paper," he said.

"Oh, no you're not."

"Oh, yes I am. That and everything else. Everything from the stroganoff recipe to how-to-kill-an-urban-sentinel, it's all going in, and then I'm mailing it to the Pentagon, and another copy to the Chinese, and ... and one to Chris Carter, I swear to God -- man, cut that out!"

I probably could've stopped laughing at him, but to be honest, I didn't really try.

My inner child was having a pretty good time.

~ ~ ~

End! Feedback always welcome at lynne@hexwood.com

Meredith Lynne
Lynne@hexwood.com
http://trickster.org/radiofree