Title: Chatroom
Authors: Athena and Uris
Fandom: The Sentinel
Pairing: Jim/Blair
Warnings: m/m, adult subject matter
feedback: Please, when these stories were first posted they were written out of order and some confusion arose about the characterization.
Archive: yes
Notes: Last of the California series excluding Ethics which is already in the WWOMB archive
Summary: Blair meets his editor and a discussion on stereotypes ensues.
Chatroom
by Athena and Uris
Sandy: Hi, KT and Stacy.
KT: Hi, Sandy. How is your hubby?
Sandy: He's fine.
Stacy: Hi, Sandy. Welcome, what took you so long? We thought you forgot.
Sandy: 8:00 your time is 5:00 my time. I had to start dinner. Hubby complains if dinner is too spicy and he tosses it in the trash when it's bland. His allergies make it worse. I'm kretching, again. With a name like Sandburg, it is probably genetic. How come you have to chat while
I'm making dinner?
KT: Stacy and I live on the East Coast. It isn't my fault you are the odd man out.
Sandy: Excuse me if I need to wander off.
KT: Can't DH make his own dinner?
Sandy: He only knows how to make meat and potatoes, and we agreed no meat in the house. Since I have dinner cooking, can we get down to business?
KT: We're concerned that the chapter on sex roles will be rejected by the publisher because it's too strongly feminist.
Sandy: When has feminist become a dirty word?
Stacy: Since Reagan became president.
KT: And Baby Bush is worse.
Sandy: I tried to be fair. I'm flattered you asked for me to help write American Values and Society. However, by picking source material one biases the work.
KT: You make the claim that most sex role behavior is learned.
Sandy: It is. I never said that boys on the average aren't more aggressive than girls or that girls on the average aren't more verbal. Just that you couldn't predict someone's behavior based on their sex. I need to check my pot. BRB.
Sandy lowers the heat on soup.
Sandy: Sorry about that. The discussion always comes down to nature vs. nurture, and it's always a combination of the two.
KT: The latest research leans heavy on the nature side of the fence.
Stacy: You hardly touched the subject of sexual preference.
Sandy: I wrote about gay pride marches, how AIDS has affected the homosexual community, and gay marriages - should they be legal?
Stacy: You seem to imply that sexual orientation was also a case of nature vs. nurture. Such a comment could set the gay rights movement back fifty years.
Sandy: I certainly wouldn't want that.
Sandy ROTFL.
---
A man with long curly hair fastened in a ponytail walked to their table. He was wearing blue jeans, a navy blue shirt and beige jacket. Karen noticed his small gold hoop earrings as he reached over to shake her hand. "Karen Thompson," said the man. "I recognize you from your photo. Stacy, you're far prettier in person. Your photo doesn't do you justice."
"Do we know you?" asked Karen.
"Now I'm hurt," said the man in a soft voice, putting his hands on his hips. "Blair Sandburg, Sandy, 5'8", curly brown hair, ponytail, blue eyes. I told you my husband didn't want me sending photos over the Internet. I was kidnapped when I lived in Cascade, so he's overprotective."
"You forgot the most important detail: sex, male or female?" Karen felt like he answered the question of sex as frequently. She couldn't help feeling betrayed. She had felt sorry for Sandy because she was kidnapped due to her husband's work. Now she didn't even know if the husband existed. Was everything Sandy wrote about herself, himself, a lie?
Stacy hugged Blair. "It's nice to finally meet you."
"Blair, you proved your point," said Karen.
"What point?" asked Blair, taking a seat near Stacy, a 5'3" woman who weighed over two hundred pounds.
"Sex roles," said Karen. "You can't be the same person that talked about checking food labels because DH is allergic."
"A man can't be devoted to another man?" asked Blair. His point was that you couldn't determine someone's behavior by his/her sex, not the other way around. However, that made the initial point even clearer.
"I didn't say that. Over the last few months, I formed images in my mind about a certain ardent feminist married to a homicide detective."
"You never asked my sex, and I felt no reason to tell you," explained Blair.
"You mentioned your DH, what I was suppose to think?" said Karen.
"You wrote DH, I wrote DH. If you wrote SO, I would have written SO. If I wrote something different, the lights would have would have went on and the sirens would have sounded." He felt that Karen Thompson would have never hired a gay man to update an introductory level book on American culture.
"He has a point," said Stacy.
"My opinions have not changed because your perception of me has," said Blair. "I stand by everything I wrote. If you had know, I was gay would you have accepted my opinion on sex roles, marriage and the family?"
Stacy said, "That is a terrible thing to say."
"Blair, you're the same infuriating person I have been arguing with for months. Your presence has made a boring project interesting," said Karen.
"You're amazing thorough for a first year textbook." Stacy had revised the other half of the textbook.
"After having to take a publisher to court for submitting incomplete work to a university behind my back, I'm a little overzealous," said Blair. "Jim claims it's a character flaw."
"Jim is your DH," said Stacy. "Was he able to make the trip?"
"He's getting a room," explained Blair. "The traffic from the airport was terrible."
"The bibliography is going to be as long as the book," Karen yelled. This was American Values and Society, first year textbook that she only wanted Sandburg to update. "You didn't even put homosexuals in a good light."
"I thought I did until Stacy said I put the movement back fifty years," said Blair. "I thought the excerpt from the UU minister supporting gay marriage was very favorably and still politically correct enough to be seen in the Bible belt."
"You implied there was a possibility it could be a choice," said Stacy.
"Many life events aren't exactly a choice, but they aren't predestine either," said Blair. "Things aren't as cut and dry as we like to think. No one chooses to be gay. However, in other circumstances, Blair Sandburg might have been happy in an arranged marriage to the girl from
the next village over."
"You don't feel this is the case with everyone," said Stacy.
"Nature vs. nurture is a false dichotomy and anyone that argues on such a premise is all ready lost before they began," Blair said. "The environment works on the genetic pattern which in turn works on the environment to countless levels of complexity. Our genetic blueprints are far more complex than anyone wants to imagine."
"I'll take the textbook as is," Karen said.
---
After Jim arrived at the bar, he bent over and kissed Blair's neck. "Babe, is all the business done?"
Blair put a hand on Jim's hand. "Yes,"
Karen, Blair's editor, said. "The contract will be in the mail Monday morning. This is my husband, Robert."
Jim extended his hand to Robert. "James Ellison."
Robert's pulse rate rose slightly as he extended his hand to shake hands with an obviously gay man. "Jim, stay for dinner."
Jim firmly shook the man's hand trying to deny the effect the adrenaline had on Robert Thompson's body. "Hotel restaurants tend to be overpriced." Before taking a seat beside Blair, Jim casually put his arm around Blair as to say he's mine.
"After we finish our drinks, we can find a restaurant," Karen said. "Do you both like Indian food?"
"Don't worry; Jim isn't allergic to most Indian spices," Blair said.
"Are you really allergic to paprika?" Karen asked as she finished her cocktail.
"Chief, you haven't giving out all our secrets?" Jim put his hand on Blair's knee.
"Karen has to chat about the textbook at five o'clock; she couldn't contact me at a normal hour."
"Time zone problems. By the time, it's a good hour for you, I'm asleep," Karen said.
Robert drank his beer. "So do you really work for SFPD?"
"One of their finest," Jim said.
"After Blair talked about evolutionary anthropology, I knew that our information on primate evolution was badly out of date. Blair, would you like to work on another textbook for me?" Karen asked.
"I did rant on that subject," Blair said. "You kept talking phenotype and genotype like they were separate entities."
"Since completing the human genome project, we know less about genetics than we thought we did. It opened a whole new can of worms," Jim said.
"If you are going to discuss shop all night, I'll watch the game," Robert said. Just when Jim thought that Robert's pulse couldn't get any higher, it spiked. Jim felt like saying calm down you'll give yourself a heart attack, but he couldn't admit to hearing a man's heartbeat from across the table.
"My end of it is genetic fingerprinting," Jim said. "I try to keep up with the field."
"I think Jim reads more scientific texts than I," Blair said.
"If you are going to talk about examining hairs on dead bodies." Robert finished his beer. "I'm leaving."
The waitress left the bill on the table.
"Allow me." Robert took cash from his wallet to cover the drinks and tip. "Let's find a place that Blair can eat more than an overpriced salad."
"I'm sorry for the deception," Blair said, looking at Robert as they left the table.
"I was expecting you to have more curves." Robert's pulse had returned to normal.
"We had this happen before. Blair's name is ambiguous and I forgot to mention to an old friend that he was a man. He didn't know that my date needed to shave until we got there," Jim said, trying to put Robert at ease.
"You could imagine how his old army buddy reacted," Blair said. "He knew Jim was gay and I still felt like hiding under a rock."
Jim touched Blair's arm momentarily. "Babe, I would never intentionally put you on the spot."
Robert whispered, "Cocksucker."
"After emailing her several times a week on my progress, mentioning my sex became harder and harder. I tried to imply it by stating that I was short. Nearly five eight is short for a man, not a woman. I even wrote about a gay and lesbian organization on campus. It seemed stupid to say, 'Hey, I'm a man'. This would be applying that you didn't know the obvious," Blair said. "I figured what was between my legs had nothing to do with my ability to write textbooks, although I did feel at odds when I wrote a section on family values."
"I'm sorry for the way I acted," Karen said. "I have to ask you this. Was Sandy really kidnapped?"
"Which time?" Jim asked.
Blair shrugged his shoulders.
"Why did they kidnap your boyfriend?" Robert asked.
"I was a police observer and the only idiot without a gun," Blair said.
"Blair worked as an unpaid observer for three years to do research for his dissertation but that is another story," Jim said touching Blair's hand as they stepped outside the hotel.
Robert whispered to his wife. "Does he have touch him so often?"
"Dear, they deserve the same respect as any other couple," Karen whispered back. Karen and Robert fell behind Jim and Blair. Karen continued to whisper. "This man is going to do a major research for me for peanuts; keep your opinions to yourself."
---
While tea and coffee was being served, "I want to know why you were so adamant that sexuality is a continuum," Karen said.
"Personal experience," Blair said. "Jim, would you mind?"
"My personal experience is better example," Jim said. "Being gay in the military isn't something I would wish on my worst enemy, especially before 'don't ask, don't tell.' However, after I resigned my commission, I fell in love with a lady. When we married, I thought it was for life."
"But the marriage failed," Robert said.
"It wasn't because I'm gay. It was because we had different expectations of marriage," Jim said.
"Carolyn and Jim had an amiable divorce," Blair said.
Amiable, Jim thought. Carolyn left the state when Blair moved into his house.
"Jim, perhaps, you were deceiving yourself," Karen said. "Many gay people marry. It doesn't make them straight."
Blair decided there was no point in discussing his past. Karen would claim denial. Blair knew that he fell in love with Jim; the packaging didn't matter. Blair could count the number of girls that he had sex with one hand and never had a long-term relationship with a woman. Blair had flirted with many women, but he wasn't a dog that slept with them without forming a relationship first. Blair had never looked at a man sexually before the moment that he desired Jim. He didn't know why he desired Jim but it was a feeling that he wanted to feel the rest of his life. Jim helped Blair out of his seat. Blair kissed Jim briefly. It felt so good to show Jim affection publicly.
"Sorry, man, if I made you uncomfortable." Blair didn't care if he made Robert or Karen uncomfortable by showing his man affection on the street. He wrote about the need to claim your mate in front of others but enjoying the sensation of holding his love's hand couldn't be
described adequately in text. Karen had tried to put him a box when she thought he was a quiet police officer's wife, then changed her opinion after reading his text on sex roles, marriage and family to believing he was a feminist, then upon meeting him, believed him to be a liar and then when he told her that his DH existed to be an arrogant homosexual.
"I enjoyed hearing about Blair's other textbook," Robert said. Blair's first textbook was about police ethics. It was based on Blair's dissertation on the police force as a closed society. The text focused on how police needed their own code of morality in order to conduct their work. Listening to Jim talk about police work, Robert could almost forget that he was a cocksucker and see him as a real man.
"I'll email you about the new textbook and send you a list of proposed chapters," Karen said.
"I look forward to hearing from you," Blair said.
"How long do you think it will take you?" Karen asked.
"It took three months to do half a textbook, so six months for a whole one," Blair said.
"It took you and Gary six months," Jim said.
"Neither of us had free time. I was a new professor and Gary had a pregnant wife and twins. Jim complained the whole time we worked at our apartment that we were too noisy. It was quieter working in Gary's house with the screaming four year old twins and his pregnant wife was less moody than Jim," Blair said.
"I love you when you talk dirty," Jim wrapped his arms around Blair. They walked toward the hotel entrance, leaving Karen and Robert Thompson on the street.
Jim allowed Blair to go through the rotating doors first then followed him inside. Blair opened his mouth and kissed Jim deeply putting his arms around Jim's waist pulling Jim into a tighter embrace. Jim put his fingers into Blair's long curly hair as his other hand squeezed Blair's tight ass.
"Jim, we need to continue this in our room," Blair moaned. Jim and Blair continued to make out in the elevator. Blair nibbled on Jim's ear. "I can't wait to get to our hotel room and tear your clothes off."
"He called me a cocksucker," Jim whispered before licking on Blair's ear tugging gently on the earring.
Blair said under his breath in a voice only Jim could hear, "Cocksucking is a skill. Karen's technique must leave something to be desired." The door opened on the restaurant floor of the expensive hotel and elderly couple entered the elevator. Jim would have normally would have stopped groping Blair in public but after all that Robert said that evening he didn't feel like it.
The woman whispered to her spouse, "That's two men."
"Look at the hair, that is a man and woman," the man whispered back.
"Can't they wait until they get to their room? Some people have no decency."
The doors opened and the couple left. Jim glanced at the floor number and returned to kissing his mate. As the door opened on their floor, Blair shook his hair out; the tie had been long lost. Jim slid his card into the door slot. The light changed to green and he opened the door. Blair hurried out of his clothes soon after the door opened.
"You couldn't wait until I lock the door behind us," Jim said.
"I want you so much." Blair unbuttoned Jim's shirt for him and bit on Jim's now naked shoulder. Blair's hands undid his pants as his mouth worked on his hard chest. "I've waited too long."
"Honey, slow down." Jim planted his mouth on Blair's neck and proceeded to give him a large hickey.
"I think you like embarrassing me. We aren't teenagers," Blair said before returning the favor. Blair was thinking about the harassment that he would get at school on Monday.
Jim pulled Blair to the bed. "Baby." Jim continued to move his hands and mouth over Blair's skin. "I need you so badly." Jim licked the tip of Blair's cock while stroking it lightly and licked the fluid off it. "You taste so good." Jim loved the smell of Blair's musk.
As far as Blair was concerned, Jim was the best cocksucker in the world and he wasn't sharing him with anyone. Jim moved his tongue over Blair's circumcision scar. Jim pulled it slowly into his mouth causing Blair to gasp in exquisite agony. Blair took Jim's head in his hands and pulled
him closer being reduced to monosyllables. After enjoyed the taste and smell of his lover's fluid, Jim licked Blair's balls. Jim moved his hands over Blair's butt, then heard people on the higher floor emptying their rooms in a hurry.
Jim whispered as he pulled his hands off Blair's incredible ass, "We have to get dressed."
"Now," Blair complained.
"People are going downstairs," Jim said. "The hotel is being evacuated."
"Focus on a voice," said Blair putting on his boxers. Jim was already dressed, except for his shoes and socks.
"Too many voices. We're too far from the lobby."
Blair slipped on his pants and pulled on a t-shirt. "Could it be a bomb threat?" They were on the twenty-third floor of a forty-floor hotel in mid-town Manhattan. It took a long time to evacuate a hotel that size. The management would try to evacuate one floor at a time so a panic wouldn't ensue. "Listen to one voice. Perhaps, you can hear what is happening,"
"I'm trying." Jim tied his shoes. "Can't you dress faster?"
"I would rather be taking my clothes off."
"I rather be taking them off, too."
"When this is over promise me some great sex?" Blair was still working on his shoes.
"I always give you fantastic sex. Your body drives me wild. Hold that thought." Jim dialed the office. "I'm a police officer. Is there anything I could do to help?"
"Evacuate the building with the other guests," the clerk said.
Blair said, "Can you focus on the lobby?"
"We're on the twenty-third floor. Chief, I do have limits. It might be a bomb threat. They're nearly to our floor. Can't you hear people rushing the stairs?"
Blair picked up his jacket. "Let's go. When we get back in our room, I'm nailing you to the mattress."
"I hope we aren't out there all night." Jim put his wallet in his pocket. Jim closed the door behind them as they walked in a normal pace to the closest stairs. Blair opened the door leading to the staircase. Blair and Jim hurried down the stairs as other hotel guests joined them. Jim could hear the bomb squad outside talking as they approached the ground level. "The bomb squad is still waiting for the building to be evacuated." Jim opened the door to the outside. "Stay outside."
After they stepped away from the building, Blair kissed Jim briefly. "Let the bomb squad do their job."
"I can help locate it." Jim pulled out his badge in front of the officers standing in front of the building. "SFPD, homicide. I worked seven years with Major Crimes in Cascade, Washington. I have experience defusing bombs."
The officer in charge yelled, "Stay out of the way of New York's finest."
"Yes, Sir." Jim snunk back into the building. As usual, Blair followed Jim inside. "Why must you follow me?"
"You need me to help you with your senses. Can you smell anything suspicious?"
"Nothing." Jim turned up his hearing and heard men talking in a suite on the third floor. "No plastic explosives, no TNT. There are people that didn't evacuate."
"What are they talking about?" Blair asked. Jim heard the men say that there wasn't a bomb and didn't hear anyone in the room admit to dialing a bomb threat. Blair put his hand on Jim's back as they walked to the third floor.
"Steady, Man." Blair whispered, "Can you hear their conversation?"
"There isn't a bomb just a fake. It's in the second floor restaurant."
"Do you want to locate the fake bomb?" Blair whispered stroking Jim's back in little circles.
"That feels good. We have to turn back. The bomb squad needs to check every room. Finding the fake bomb won't help that much."
"Let's go then. We shouldn't be in the building. We can tell the police the suite number the preps are in."
"Keep rubbing my back."
"Does your partner keep you grounded?"
"She does it because it helps me do my job. She doesn't enjoy it like you do."
"I'll use any excuse to touch you." Blair squeezed Jim's arm as they walked down the stairs.
"I figured as much." Jim stopped at the door of the side exit.
"We can tell them what you heard." Blair told the officers the suite number that the men were in and Jim told them that he heard that there was only a threat not a bomb according to the conversation that they heard from the hallway.
"Did you hear the location of the device? We have to check it out," said the bomb squad captain.
"In the kitchen near the mixing bowls," Jim said.
"You overheard that in the hall," the captain said.
"I have good ears. I had practice listening when I was in covert ops," Jim said, trying to be convincing.
"I'll have my men look for it," the captain said.
The "bomb" was found to be shoebox with a mechanical clock that clicked loud enough to hear it several rooms away without sentinel hearing. The shoebox lid said, "Ha. Ha. Bomb." Bombs threats were never funny. But after 9/11 to place a fake bomb in a New York City high-rise was truly sick.
Blair came home to find a letter from Karen in his email.
Sandy,
I'm sorry about my husband's behavior. You didn't deceive me. I deceived myself. I hope we can have a meaningful business relationship. You'll be receiving both contracts by snail mail in a few days. With the contracts, I have included a chapter outline. Please, make any changes
you deem necessary. Hope to be hearing from you soon.
Sincerely,
Karen Thompson
The end