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Peja's Wonderful World of Makebelieve Import
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Published:
2020-11-05
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2,055
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1/1
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Through Your Eyes

Summary:

Jim...Blair....Cristmas memories made

Work Text:

Through Your Eyes
By Akablonded

"Hey, Jim! C'mon, man! Get up! Time's awasting! Where are those lights? Tinsel? Ornaments? And balls! We need lots and lots of balls!"

"Balls you don't need, Sandburg. Them, you got plenty of."

"Very funny. Not, 'Ebenezer' Ellison!" My partner, roommate, thorn in my side, and the undeniable "fun" in my dysfunction snorts unattractively. Actually, it's about the only thing that he does *unattractively.* Sandburg's a pretty damned attractive guy. Oh, what the hell, he's drop-dead gorgeous. Objectively speaking, of course. If he were a woman, I'd probably have fucked him stupid by now. In a cold, New York minute. So fast, you wouldn't have seen skid marks.

Guess it's good he wasn't/isn't. Because it's given me the chance to get to know the real Blair Sandburg.

And to fall in love with him.

Christ. I hear the boxes of decorations that Sandburg's been lugging up from the basement all morning being totally trashed. (How can it only be 7:20? I know how. It's Saturday. There *is* no time before 8:00 AM on Saturdays. It's the law. Particularly if I'm trying to sleep and not get into the holiday spirit.)

Christmas has always been a tough time for the Ellisons. See, my mom left my dad, my brother Steven, and me when I was just a kid. On December 16th,right after breakfast. It was a beautiful, Wednesday, but raw. How did the writer, Kinky Friedman, put it? "The day was as cold as blue eyes that don't love you anymore." I remember every detail of my mother's running away. Even down to the pattern on the pale yellow dress she wore. And the sad, resigned look on her face, that lustrous, long, red hair falling gently around her shoulders. She went out the front door with a small suitcase in her gloveless hand, and didn't look back. I never even got a chance to give her the special present I'd made.

Later, when I was a member of the U.S. Army trained in Covert Operations, well, Christmas, as often as not, was spent in foreign places on secret missions that didn't have "Peace on earth to men of good will" as their primary objective.

During my short-lived marriage to Carolyn Plummer, I tried to get into the spirit of the season by making the holidays a "family thing." Her family. Big mistake. Epic, actually. Near as I can recall, the Plummer clan was divided almost evenly into two camps: the first thought Caro was crazy for getting involved with someone like me. The second *knew* she was crazy for getting involved with someone like me. The ex-Mrs. Ellison practically spat out that I was repressed, distant, uncooperative, un-Christian, and a pain-in-the-ass disappointment of a husband who really did want to be *just* a cop and not the youngest Chief of Police in Cascade's history. Right in front of her 80-year-old grandmother, the only one who liked me. (What she said was that I had a nice '*tush.* Hey, with that family, you took what you could get.)

Oh, yeah, and one more thing. She said that I was unbelievably dull and predictable gift-giver. Guilty on all counts. So sue me. I really thought that a woman liked getting perfume and jewelry and sexy lingerie -- if it came from someone who loved her. Another fact to be tucked away in the section of my brain marked 'Politically Incorrect Blunders of the 20th Century.' We had the good sense not to repeat it in the second year. There was no third year.

Haven't had that problem for quite a while now. Blair Sandburg, the kid who's shared my life these past few years and helped me tame my five heightened senses, is the undisputed Poster Child for Happy Holidays. Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanzaa ... you name it, he'll celebrate it. Being an anthropologist gives my little professor the uncanny, and sometimes, unnerving ability to relate not only the whys and wherefores of any major observance, but also the traditions, folklore, costumes, foods, and gift-giving protocols that accompany it. (Ask me sometime about what you should get a Druid on the Solstice. Hint: Got a 'Virgins R Us' store around you?)

Maybe Blair's really into this stuff because he and his mom, Naomi (one of the original flower children) led ... the best word I can come up with on three hours' sleep is *Bohemian* kinds of lives when they were both growing up. Sandburg missed out on alot, I think. I keep envisioning a skinny, eight-year-old, with big, oversized glasses, and an even more unruly riot of curls, pressing that great button nose of his against the window of a house where Christmas was being celebrated -- and never being invited in. Of course, I may be blowing smoke up my own ass. He and his mom may have always found friends and home and hearth wherever they went. Maybe the Sandburgs were always included and ... wanted. Like I wasn't.

But the way Blair *attacks* the season, I think he's making up for lost time.

So, even though Sandburg doesn't have much extra cash to spend, my partner buys/makes/barters something special for the people who matter to him. At Rainier, at Major Crimes, for some of our neighbors, and me.

The first year, Sandburg *gave* me a whole week free from any Sentinel tests and a pass to eat anywhere and anything I wanted. That included hoovering breakfast at Perkin's Pancake House, lunch at Wonderburger, and dinner at Geets Diner. I gorged myself until even I was revolted by the amount of grease, cholesterol, and calories I sucked up.

I got him shirts and jeans and a winter coat. And underwear. OK, so they weren't *great* gifts, but he needed them, for God's sake. But Sandburg was like a kid in a candy store, ripping away paper, and saving bows, and oohing and aahing about every damned *sensible* present.

Last year, the unacknowledged, totally clueless love of my life gave me a Tibetan carving one of his anthropologist-friends found for him. The two figures on the relief looked familiar: one was large and menacing; the other, smaller and standing slightly behind the first. Funny thing, though, from my perspective, the pair looked equal. Seems there was an ancient legend that went along with the piece of art, about a guardian of some long-ago, mountain village. The man was supposed to be *blessed* by the gods with super powers. And the other? A teacher, a helper ... a guide to the big lug.

I got him shirts and jeans and a winter coat. And underwear. Again. (Well, he needed them AGAIN.) And I got him a copy of "Mountains of the Moon," the movie about Sir Richard Burton, the Victorian explorer -- not the actor -- and the guy that did the legwork on the whole subject of Sentinels, men and women like me who are born with a genetic advantage, if you call being able to see a parking space in a mall lot a mile away, or being able to smell the grounds at yet another Starbucks in the next county, an advantage. Seriously, the good thing about heightened senses is that they've helped me in my police work, and in taking on the responsibility of being the *Watchman* of my tribe, whether the tribe is in the jungles of Peru or here in this mid-sized Washington city.

And Blair practically danced around the loft with it, eyes incandescent, as though his too-big soul was threatening to spill out of them. He threw surprisingly strong arms around me in the Sandburgian version of a *thank you* -- a big, Blair hug that squeezed the air out of my lungs and the love out of my heart.

This year? Who knows? He's given me no hints, no indications of what might be in the pipeline for this Blessed Protector from his Blessed Protectee.

"Ellison, get that huge, lumbering carcass out of that bed, and down here. If we don't hurry, there won't be a decent tree left on the lot!"

"Sandburg, trust me on this. One. There will be plenty of trees left. Two. You are seriously going bat-shit berserk because it's Christmas Eve. Get therapy."

"Get stuffed."

"Get bent."

"Get fucked. And get dressed. Now." Hmm. His master's voice.

"Give me a few minutes."

"Five."

"Fifteen."

"Five."

"Ten."

"Five."

"Five." Where the hell are my clothes? When the hell did I lose control?

Oh, no. Music. Holiday music. Please God, no. One more round of chestnuts roasting on an open fire, halls being decked, and sleigh bells jingling, I'll be forced to do something desperate to those frigging lords aleaping, geese alaying, not to mention that squawking partridge in a pear tree.

Please, Sandburg. I'm begging you, don't start --

"Bring a torch, Jennette, Isabella ..."

-- singing. I don't care that his voice is great, that it makes me feel warm, and wanted and ... Jesus. And what, Ellison? What else does it make you feel? Say it. Say it now. Say it fast before you lose your nerve. Loved. Loved by Blair Jacob Sandburg.

"I want to see Christmas through your eyes ..."

Listen to him crooning along with Gloria Estefan. You know, that song isn't half-bad. It seems written for me about him.

*Till I had you I didn't know that I was missing out.

Had to grow up and see the world through different shades of doubt.

Give me one more chance to dream again,

One more chance to feel again through your young heart.

If only for one day, help me try.*

*I wanna see Christmas through your eyes.

I want everything to be the way it used to be.

Back to being a child again, thinking the world was kind.

I wanna see Christmas through your eyes.*

It's all true. Without Blair, I'm ... incomplete. He's the one that's dragged me kicking and screaming into being human. The wonder I see in him everyday is such a gift.

*I see the rain, you see the rainbow hiding in the clouds.

Never afraid to let your love show, won't you show me how?

Wanna learn how to believe again.

Find the innocence in me again, through your young heart.

Help me find a way, help me try.*

*I wanna see Christmas through your eyes.

I want everything to be the way it used to be.

Back to being a child again, thinking the world was mine.

I wanna see Christmas through your eyes.*

So, what can I give *Sinatra* this year? I think I have a plan --

"Jim. Up."

Do-able, Sandburg. Do-able.

***

Blair's sleeping, wiped out by the day and the festivities and a loft full of people, not unlike a wornout puppy, sprawled all over the bed.

My bed. He's naked, and sticky, ripe from having been loved six ways to Sunday by yours truly. Want to know what I finally gave Blair?

I got him shirts and jeans and a new winter coat. And underwear. Hey, I'm nothing, if not predictable. He'd ripped into them early this morning before all our friends arrived with his usual, unrelenting good cheer, then did a three-sixty around the living room trying to spy the A-list gift.

"What are you looking for, Sandburg?"

"The *goods,* man. The *real deal.* The *brass ring.* C'mon, Jim, let me have it!"

So I did. Right between the eyes. Actually, right between the lips would be more to the point. I bent down from behind Sandburg who was sitting lotus-positioned, cross-legged on the couch, surrounded by Christmas debris, turned that flushed face up toward mine, and proceeded to kiss the stuffings out of him. The kiss lasted longer than my marriage did. It lasted so long, we almost ran out of holiday. As we finally broke apart, those Blair eyes were just about to question me when I gave him the best thing I could think of.

"I love you, chief. Merry Christmas."

Love. Great gift. I heartily recommend it. Never has to be exchanged. One size fits all.

And the best part? I finally got to see Christmas through his eyes. And was it ever worth it.

***

*Christmas Through Your Eyes by Gloria Estefan and Diane Warren.

Comments to: akablonded@aol.com