Work Text:
History Lesson...Sort Of
by Peggy R (Narfstuff)
Pegasus22857@comcast.net
"Hey Baby," Jim said as he came through the door, finally home after a long and boring day of doing nothing but catching up on his paper work. He placed his keys in the basked, hung up his coat, then removed his shoulder holster and gun and placed them on a hook by his coat, then walked over to his lover, who was sitting at the dining room table. His attention completely on his laptop.
"Hi hon," Blair replied as he lifted his cheek for a kiss.
Leaning down, kissing his lover's cheek, Jim glanced at the laptop. He was playing a game. Blair Sandburg was actually playing a video game. "Whatcha got there Chief?"
Blair paused the game and looked up at his lover, "Jim, this is like the coolest game, man. Kinda like a history lesson while having fun finding things. It's called Titanic. You find the things on the list they give you, even though some of the things are kind of a stretch, but hey, it's still fun. Then when you finish a scene they give you information about the Titanic. Like, did you know that the top speed of the Titanic was 23 knots. That's 25 miles an hour, and that the Titanic was never christened?"
"No, Chief. I didn't know that." Jim said as he walked over to the fridge to get himself a beer.
"And did you know that Captain Smith had plans to retire after seeing the Titanic across the ocean, or that the ships weight, fully loaded was 46,328 tons?"
"Nope, didn't know that either."
"Or how about among the items lost on the ship were over 3000 bags of mail and an automobile."
"Wow." Jim stated.
"Yeah, this is soooo cool, man. But the really sad part Jim, was that she had only enough lifeboats to hold half of the passengers she carried and that the largest percentage of survivors came from first class. The rest never had a chance. Though 94% of the women and children on board survived. She wasn't even at capacity Jim, she could carry 3,547 passengers plus crew. There were only 2,228 on board and only 705 survived. That is just so sad, man." Blair said softly.
"Yeah, Chief it is." Jim could hear the spike in his lover's heartbeat, "Baby, that happened over 70 years ago, you're getting upset over something you have no control over and couldn't have prevented, if you had." Jim said softly wrapping his arms around the young man.
"I know that Jim, it's just… sad that so many people had to die. I know how it feels to drown."
Jim tightened his arms around his lover, "I know you do, Chief."
Bouncing back suddenly, Blair looked up at his sentinel, "Did you know the price of a first class ticket was $4,700. That would be about $50,000 in today's economy. That's crazy Jim."
"I'll say."
"And that she was re-discovered on July 14th, 1986. 74 years after she sank."
"That I knew."
"And that the two pieces of the Titanic lay 1,970 feet apart on the ocean floor, and that it took 3,000 people two years to build her?"
"That I didn't know."
Jim walked back into the kitchen to see what he could scrounge together for dinner, when he heard Blair start to chuckle lightly.
"What'd you find, Chief?"
"Oh Jim, this is, like, too funny. Listen to this, the original Quack Quack clock, was a giant disaster, when it was tested in 1737. People didn't respond well to the small wooden duck that originally resided inside. Many were said to suffer permanent insanity as a result. The duck was promptly evicted to make room for the soothing song of the Cuckoo and the clock rocketed to stardom. How crazy it that?"
"Well, Chief," Jim looked over at the young man staring at the screen of his laptop, "had you been back in that time, there would be a little Blair sitting there instead of a cuckoo, sprouting different facts at the quarters of the hour." Jim laughed and ducked as his lover threw a pillow from the couch at him.
"You ass." Blair chuckled.
"Yes, but I'm your ass." Jim answered as he placed himself again, behind his lover, gently starting to massage his shoulders.
"Oh that feels good, love."
"Blair?"
"Mmmmm?"
"Would you like to take a cruse?"
Blair's eyes popped open, "Oh hell no, I'm keeping my feet firmly planted on dry ground, thank you."
"Well, how about someplace about 10 feet above our ground level, has all the comforts of a state room,except the place it's housed in isn't moving? Well, except maybe for the bed."
"Oh yeah, I'm down with that."
As the night wore on, dinner forgotten, the bed in the loft rocked with the motions of the ocean.
~THE END~