Sentinel Thursday: #390 100%
Summary: What do Jim and Blair really think of each other?
Word Count: 3,223 Over the limit, I’m sorry.
Warnings: Pre-slash. Swearing. J/B
Title: Bad Ass
Author: Patt
Bad Ass
By Patt
Blair overheard Miller from traffic, in the break room say, “Seriously, I was eating at the same restaurant as Ellison and let me tell you, he didn’t look like such a ‘bad ass’ to me.”
Henri asked, “Are we talking about the same Jim Ellison?”
Miller just smiled at the man that was going to defend his friend. “I know you’re his friend and everything, but he was all over that Sandburg cop and he didn’t look tough at all. Quite the opposite, he looked like a fruit.”
“Why don’t you tell him this to his face then?” Henri dared. Henri thought about what was said and really wanted to ask, what kind of fruit, but didn’t want to make this into a joke.
“Hell, I’m not going to start a fight with him, I didn’t say he couldn’t punch me out, but he’s still a fruit,” Miller stated.
“All right, enough about fruits. I need to get back to work and if I was you, I would stay away from Ellison. He wouldn’t like hearing this.” Henri grabbed his coffee and headed for the doorway. Blair tried to move quickly, but not quickly enough. Henri saw him standing there and Blair never thought about it, but Black people do blush. Not exactly the same way, but he blushed and Blair took off for the bullpen before Miller came walking out.
“I don’t see how you can be so friendly with the guy, he’s a fag,” Miller whispered.
Brown frowned. “If you think this about him, why are you whispering?”
“Like I said, he might be a fag, but he’s a big fag,” Miller said as he walked to the elevator smiling.
Blair was standing by the elevator when Miller came around the corner. He got on and Blair joined him. Blair had no idea what he was going to say, but he felt he had to say something in Jim’s defense.
Miller looked at Sandburg and glared. “What are you staring at, Sandburg?”
Before Blair even thought about anything he would say, he pulled back his fist and punched Miller as hard as he could, right in the mouth. Miller wasn’t expecting that and the force from Blair’s fist alone made the room spin as he slowly slid down the wall of the elevator and hit the floor. When the door opened on the next floor, Blair got out and walked away. He never said a word.
++++++++++
Blair sat down in the stairwell and tried to figure out what he was going to do. You just don’t slug someone in the face in the station house. It just wasn’t done, but yet, Blair had just done it. He finally got up, rubbing his sore, red knuckles and started walking up to Major Crimes again. He kept waiting for someone to find him and arrest him.
He walked into the bullpen and everyone was buzzing with excitement about someone attacking Miller, from Traffic, in the elevator.
Jim walked up and said, “Hey Chief, did you hear that Miller got taken down a few notches while on the elevator?”
“Yeah, I heard. What’s the buzz? Who did it?” Blair asked.
Jim smiled at his partner and said, “Dudes not talking. You have to give him credit for not being a whiner.”
“What are we working on today?” Blair asked, changing the subject, totally.
Jim said, “There is a ton of paperwork on your desk. It’s calling your name.” He laughed all the way over to their desks.
“You’re so funny, I forgot to laugh,” Blair said as he sat down and started working on the first file, which was a pretty easy one to do. Before long, he was almost done and had forgotten what he had done earlier.
Jim was talking on the phone with a lawyer about one of his clients that had been mistreated by Jim, when Blair’s phone rang. He picked it up and said, “Sandburg.”
There was deep breathing and then, “I’m going to kill you.”
Jim hung up his phone and said, “Chief, keep that person on the line.”
Blair hated when Jim listened in to his phone calls. Today would have been a good day to have Jim home sick. Oh goody, now he had to worry about Jim and Miller.
Blair hung up the phone and said, “He hung up already.”
“Do you have any idea who it was?” Jim asked.
“I think it was a prank. It’s probably Rafe and Brown, fucking around, Jim. Stop being so serious.”
Jim looked at Blair and saw his red and swollen knuckles and knew immediately what Blair had done.
Jim pulled his chair over next to Blair’s and whispered, “What in the hell did you do, Sandburg.”
Whispering back, Blair said, “Defending my honor.”
“Did he punch you first?” Jim wondered.
“No, I hit him before I said a word. He didn’t know it was even coming,” Blair explained.
Jim just shook his head and wondered what was going on. This wasn’t like Blair at all. His non-violent Blair would never do this. He noticed Henri staring at Blair and knew that Henri knew something.
Jim got up from his desk, strode over to Brown’s desk and said, “Could I see you in interrogation room one?”
Henri Brown knew he was stuck between a rock and a hard place. So he did what he knew he had to do. He walked into interrogation room one and sat down and said, “What’s up, Ellison?”
“Did Blair overhear something today that caused him to have a mental breakdown?” Jim asked quite seriously.
“Oh shit, so it was him that hit, Miller?”
“Brown, answer me, did someone say something to upset Blair?”
Brown looked at the dirty table he was sitting at and wondered when it had been cleaned last. He was thinking of anything and everything except what Jim asked.
“Henri… Answer me,” Jim bellowed, this time.
“It’s no big deal. I don’t know why Hairboy, got so crazy about it. Miller was talking about you and he said some things about you not being as tough as everyone thinks you are. He thinks Hairboy has made you soft.” Brown starting making circles in the dust on the top of the table, rather then look at Jim at this moment in time. Then he wrote his name in the dust.
“So it wasn’t even something said about him?” Jim asked.
“No…” Brown started to get up.
Jim shoved him back down. “I don’t think you’re telling me everything. Tell me exactly what Miller said from the beginning of the conversation to the end.”
Brown had no choice but to tell him what was said. Jim blushed when he heard what Miller said, but soon got over that, with new anger towards his partner. Why had Blair punched him out over that?
“For right now, could we keep this between us?” Jim asked.
“Sounds good to me, I don’t even want to repeat it again,” Brown said as he got up and walked out of the room.
Jim called out, “Hey Brown, could you send Sandburg in here?”
“Sure. No problem.” Brown was lying. It was a big fucking problem. Now Jim knew what people thought about him and he had Blair defending his honor over something that was said. There were going to be ugly words between the two partners, Henri could tell.
When Henri walked into the bullpen, he went right over to Blair’s desk and said, “Jim is waiting for you in interrogation room one. He wants to talk to you. I think I should tell you that I told him what Miller said. I wanted to give you a heads up on that.”
“Fuck… Couldn’t you have made something up? Did you have to tell him what Miller said?”
“He’s waiting, Sandburg and he isn’t in a waiting type of mood,” Henri said as he walked towards his own desk.
“Shit, now I have to think up some story,” Blair said under his breath.
Blair walked into interrogation room one and saw Jim looking out the window. “Sit down, Chief. I need to ask you a few things.”
Blair did just that. He sat down at the same disgusting table and wondered the same thing as Henri had wondered. //Do they ever clean this table or this room?// Then Blair saw Henri’s initial’s written in the dust and this made Blair smile.
“Get the smile off your fucking face, Blair. This is serious. You’re going to have to go into Simon’s office and tell him you hit this man for no reason.”
“Don’t you yell at me, Ellison. It might work with someone else, but it doesn’t work with me.”
Jim got closer to Blair and leaned down to look in Blair’s eyes. “He’s going to be shooting for you now. He’s after you. And all because you didn’t like the fact that someone thought I was gay?”
“He doesn’t think you’re gay, he knows it. Or at least in his mind he knows it. He said you weren’t a bad ass anymore. I couldn’t let him think you were anything other then what you were yesterday,” Blair admitted.
“I’m not worried about how he sees me, Chief. I could care less. What I don’t understand is why you took such offense to me being called gay. I take it, it bothers you?”
“He said you were all over me. I’m sure you weren’t,” Blair said as he drew his name in the dust this time.
“I’m sorry if that bothers you that I touch you all the time and am all over you,” Jim said quietly, not really giving Blair much to work with.
“Back up, I was mad about what he said, not about us and how people see us. He said you weren’t a bad ass anymore. I couldn’t have that. Gay people can be a bad ass too,” Blair declared.
“You know you’re going to have to go to Simon, right?” Jim asked.
“I will right now. Doesn’t mean I like Miller any more then I did two hours ago.”
Jim turned and walked out the door. Blair had a feeling he missed something in this conversation. Somehow, he felt it might have been somewhat important. Blair walked up to Simon’s door and knocked.
“Come in,” Simon barked loudly enough for everyone to hear.
Blair walked in and stood before Simon’s desk. “Sir, I have to report myself for hitting another officer of the law.”
Simon was drinking some of his wonderful smelling coffee. As he took a drink, Blair said this, it went down wrong and Simon started choking on the hot liquid.
Blair rushed around, pounded on Simon’s back until Simon pushed him away as he started breathing correctly again and said, “Oh shit. You’re the one who hit Miller, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Oh stop with the sir, crap. Sit down and tell me what possessed you to hit another officer,” Simon ordered.
Blair sat down and sighed. “He was telling Henri some lies about me and Jim. I’m sick of the lies and people thinking that Jim isn’t as tough anymore since I came on board. It’s not like he became gay just because I work with him.”
“Of course not. Jim has been gay for years. I don’t understand why it troubled you so. Didn’t you know he was gay?”
Blair opened his mouth to say something, shut it and opened it again. “What are you talking about? Jim isn’t gay.”
“Did you ask Jim about it?” Simon wondered.
Blair stood up, looked out into the bullpen and saw his sad looking partner and realized what Simon said was true. How could he be his guide and not know that Jim was gay? Did Jim have a thing for him? “I haven’t asked him if he’s gay because it doesn’t matter. Miller said that Jim wasn’t a bad ass anymore. I couldn’t let him think that Jim wasn’t tough.”
“So you thought by slugging Miller in the mouth, it would show him that Jim is a bad ass?” Simon asked, almost smiling.
“When you word it like that, it sounds so bad. He probably thinks that Jim can’t take care of himself and I had to do it for him. God, no wonder Jim looked so upset.”
“With good reason, Sandburg. This is one of the dumbest things you’ve ever done,” Simon insisted.
“I agree, sir.”
“I’m going to have to suspend you for three days without pay. Now go home and think about things and then talk to Jim when he gets home tonight.” Simon stood up and walked Blair to the door. “I’ll take care of Miller, although you might consider going down and apologizing to him.”
“I’ll do that on my way out of the building. He’ll probably knock my block off and I would deserve it. I’m sorry I let you down, Simon.”
“Hush, now go take care of business and I’ll see you in three days.” Simon shoved Blair out of the door and closed it softly. //Now I have to fill out paperwork. My favorite thing.//
Blair walked over to his desk and said, “I got suspended, so I’ll see you later.”
“It was really dumb, Blair,” Jim said quietly.
“I know. It wasn’t one of my better moments. Can I talk to you tonight?” Blair asked.
“I’ll be home for dinner as usual.” Jim turned and began typing into his computer and Blair knew there was a lot that needed to be fixed.
++++++++++
Blair stopped on the second floor and looked for Miller. He saw him standing with a bunch of other cops. He walked up and said, “Miller, I just wanted to apologize for hitting you this morning. It was a terrible thing to do and I had no right. I told my Captain and he suspended me for three days without pay. If you’d like to take a swing at me, I would let you.”
Miller just stood there, not knowing what to say. He had told everyone on this floor that the guy took him off guard so he must have been huge. The guys standing around Miller started to laugh.
“This pansy kicked your ass?” Martin, a 20 year veteran asked.
“I didn’t exactly kick his ass. I only hit him once and that was in the mouth,” Blair admitted.
The laughter started again. Blair knew they were insulting him, but he couldn’t afford any more days off. He turned and walked away. Miller jumped him and started hitting him from behind.
Blair didn’t fight back, because he felt he owed this to Miller. Martin pulled Miller off of Blair and said, “Sandburg, you all right?”
“Why the fuck are you asking the pansy if he’s all right?” Miller spat out.
“You attacked him without warning. He offered you a swing, but you attacked from behind. That’s low even for you, Miller.”
Blair dusted himself off and walked to the stairway. Miller had gotten a few kidney punches in and Blair was feeling it already. Blair knew he deserved them and had no right to whine to himself.
++++++++++
Word spread quickly all over the station about what had happened. Jim wasn’t happy to hear that Miller had jumped Blair. When he finished for the night he walked into Traffic and saw Miller standing there with a big fat lip.
Two other officers walked up and one of them said, “It’s over and done with, Ellison. There is no need to be here.”
“Miller, I just wanted you to know that I’m going to check out my partner when I get home and see if he’s hurt. If he is, I’m kicking your ass tomorrow. I’ll kick it so far up that you’ll be shitting in your throat.” Jim turned and walked away. No one said anything and Miller believed that Jim Ellison just might still be a bad ass.
++++++++++
Blair made a nice dinner, hoping that would make up for some of his stupidity. Now he knew that he had to apologize to Jim too.
When he heard Jim come in, he looked at his partner and saw a very tired and defeated man.
“Hey, man. Are you hungry?”
“No, I’m going to clean up and go to bed early,” Jim said as he headed towards the bathroom.
“Jim, its 6:30, you can’t go to bed now. You promised you’d talk to me when you got home. I want to apologize to you.”
Jim washed up and sat down at the table. “Fine, what do you want to say?”
Blair sat down in the chair next to him and held Jim’s hand, even though Jim tried to pull it away. “I think you’re a bad ass and I always will. You’re my bad ass. I’m so sorry I reacted the way I did today. I’m so sick of people saying you’ve gone soft since I came on board. I want them to respect you as much as I do. I think I just got a little carried away. I apologized to Miller, by the way. It’s all taken care of. I’m really sorry, Jim, and it’ll never happen again. If you forgive me, I then have one more thing to say.”
Jim smiled up at Blair and said, “You’re forgiven. I know you were trying to defend my honor and it backfired. But it was the thought that counted. Now what do you need to say?”
“You’re fucking gay? Since when? Since you were young, college, army or last week?” Blair asked.
“Since I was in high school. I was bi-sexual. I’m comfortable with that term, so you can call me that too.”
“Jim, I have to tell you that I’m a lousy, cop, friend and Guide. I never realized you were gay. How could that pass my gaydar? I’m really good. Usually. Now one more question if you don’t mind.”
Jim smiled at Blair and said, “I didn’t think it mattered, so I didn’t mention it at all. What do you need to ask me now?
“How would you like to go out on a date? I was thinking Claim Jumper for dinner tomorrow night followed by necking and groping on the sofa until we are about to burst. What do you think of that?” Blair asked.
Jim touched Blair’s face tenderly and stroked the bruise he had from falling on the floor. Then Jim leaned down and in for their first kiss. It lasted a couple of minutes and then Blair pulled away.
“I guess that’s a yes?”
“It’s a yes, Blair. Thank you for the invite. Oh, and by the way, I think you’re a bad ass, so from now on, we both are.”
“Have I mentioned that I’m in love with you, too?” Blair asked.
Jim just smiled. “If Miller left any bruises other then the one on your face, he’s getting kicked from this bad ass tomorrow.”
Blair started laughing and said, “No more kicking anyone’s asses. We’re both bad asses and we don’t need to prove it to anyone.”
“Now you’re talking Blair. And by the way, I’m in love with you, too.”
The two bad asses hugged and kissed once again and knew that life was going to be wonderful from then on knowing that each of them were now 100 percent gay.
The end.
