Disclaimer: not mine, sadly. But I love them anyway. And thanks to Danny and Paul and Paramount for not suing me.
Written for Sentinel Secrets on LJ. The prompt was "celebration".
Slash ahead. Boys kissing boys. You've been warned.
"Good collar, guys."
Jim nodded in thanks as he accepted the mug of coffee Simon was holding out towards him.
"Not the least of which was that we managed to embarrass the Feds a little bit," Blair piped up, grinning as he took the mug Simon was offering.
Jim suppressed a smile, looking down at the liquid in his cup. Once Blair had started at the academy, Simon's behavior had changed. Now Simon offered Blair coffee, asked his advice about cases, had stopped calling him "kid". He certainly never told Blair he wasn't a cop, even though he technically wasn't one – or at least wouldn't be one until tomorrow.
He felt a pang at that, the urge to smile fading away. The guilt knotted in his stomach again; entrenched, familiar. Tomorrow. The day Blair was going to graduate from the police academy. The day he was going to officially become a cop, officially accept the badge and the gun, officially become his partner, and officially give up his dream of being an anthropologist…all because of him, all because he had fucked up.
Simon's chuckle broke into his reverie. "The look on Carrington's face, Sandburg, when you said, 'Never mind, man, I've already got a confession'…"
"It's not every day he gets scooped by a – what did he call us? – a 'testosterone-laden Neanderthal and his hippie sidekick'." There was a pause, and then Blair's voice shifted, deepened with concern. "Jim? Jim, you okay, buddy?"
He felt Blair's hand on his arm and looked up into wide blue eyes. "You zoning on the coffee?" Blair asked.
He took a deep breath, shook his head slightly. "No, no, I'm okay, just tired. Long day."
"Well, then, what are you waiting for?" Simon said, with his typical gruffness. "Get the hell out of here, go have a beer or two or three." He sat down behind his desk, waving the two of them towards the door.
Jim had put his coffee down and was reaching for the doorknob when he heard Simon's voice. "Oh, Sandburg, I almost forgot…here." He turned to see Simon handing Blair a slightly worn cigar box.
"Thanks, Simon, I appreciate it." Blair took the box and tucked it under his arm. "You want to join us?"
Simon grimaced. "No, Sandburg, unfortunately, since I'm the captain, I have to work on the fourth-quarter budget projections. Have one for me, though." He shot a look at Blair. "Although try not to have too much fun tonight…tomorrow's a big day."
Blair rolled his eyes, although his smile was pure pleasure. "You think?"
Chuckling, Simon clapped Blair on the shoulder. "Go on, get out of here," he said.
He could feel Blair's eyes on him as they were pulling their coats on. "Jim, are you sure you're okay?" Blair's fingers curved lightly around his wrist, half-hidden by his coat sleeve, and he felt a surge of guilt at that, as well. Ever since they'd become lovers, Blair had been more cautious and restrained about touching him in public, worried about giving them away. How many more things are you going to take away from him, Ellison? he thought. How many more parts of himself does he have to give up before he decides he's had enough and leaves?
"Yeah, I'm sure," he said, roughly, fighting the urge to jerk his wrist away. Seeking to change the subject, he gestured towards the cigar box Blair was holding. "What's that for? You're not planning on taking up smoking, are you?"
"God, no," Blair said, smiling a little crookedly. "It's for…uh, it's a little project I'm working on." He looked up at Jim, concern in his eyes. "Does the smell bother you?"
He shook his head. "No, it's fine. I'll just keep thinking Simon's in the loft until it fades." Feeling suddenly defiant, not caring who saw, he slung an arm around Blair's shoulders and turned them towards the elevators. "Come on, partner, the first round's on me."
Jim woke suddenly, the dim gloom of his bedroom telling him more effectively than any clock that it was hours yet to dawn. He reached out, only to find the space next to him empty. Warm, but empty. He listened, and quickly located Blair sitting on the couch in the living room.
He rolled out of bed, pulling on a pair of boxers, and padded quietly down the stairs. "Hey, Chief, what's up?" he asked, settling next to Blair.
Blair glanced at him. "Can't sleep," he said, with a rueful smile. "Too wired, I guess. Thinking about tomorrow." He had a beat-up cigar box on his lap, the corners of which had been reinforced with duct tape. The cigar box Simon had given him that afternoon was sitting on the coffee table in front of him.
The lid of the box on Blair's lap was up, and Jim could see that it was filled with a variety of objects; photographs, a thin strip of rope with some pale ivory beads, a few matchbooks, a piece of stained glass, and some postcards. He also noticed that there was a mug of Emperor's Song tea sitting next to the box on the coffee table. His heart sank slightly. Blair bought that tea from a Chinese herbalist downtown. It was expensive, and sometimes hard to get, so he only drank it on rare occasions. "So, what's all this?" he asked, waving his hand to encompass the boxes.
Blair's cheeks reddened slightly, and he gave a little laugh. "Oh, it's just this thing I do," he said. "I know it's kinda silly, but…I like to keep a box of mementos, things to help remind me about some of the important events in my life." He gestured at the box on the coffee table. "Simon was nice enough to give me one of his old cigar boxes, 'cause, as you can probably tell," he lifted the box on his lap, "this one's getting a little old." He stirred the contents of the box with a finger. "I was just going through these before I transferred them to the new box."
Jim felt a pang of guilt so strong, he felt like he'd been stabbed through the heart. It was so wrong that Blair's life had been reduced to this; that he had to content himself with looking at dusty trinkets and pictures instead of actually doing, teaching, going on expeditions. "Christ, Blair, I'm so sorry," he groaned, rubbing his hands over his face. "This is all my fault."
"What are you talking about?"
"This." He leaned back against the couch, waving his hand at the box on Blair's lap. "You shouldn't have to sit here, pining for what your life used to be…and you wouldn't have to, if I hadn't been such an insensitive asshole…"
Blair was silent for a moment. "Oh, man," he sighed, "I thought we were done with this." He put his hand on Jim's arm. "Jim, buddy, I think you're missing the big picture here. I look at these things in celebration, not regret."
"But…the tea…"
"What about the tea?"
"You don't make it very often."
Blair nodded. "Yeah, well, this is a pretty big deal for me, here. I'm graduating from the academy tomorrow. It's a big change in my life, a rite of passage, and I felt like I needed something of suitable gravity to mark it."
"Which is exactly my point…"
Blair blew out his breath in a long, exasperated sigh. "You are such a…such a…." Apparently unable to come up with an appropriate moniker, he flipped the lid of the box open and took out a photograph. "Okay, look," he said, handing the photograph to Jim.
A younger Blair stared out at him, smiling, hair shaggy but shorter, dressed in khakis and a t-shirt, and extending his middle finger towards the picture-taker.
"That's from my first expedition," Blair told him, grinning. "I was a senior at Rainier. It was a huge honor to be asked to go; Buckner kind of finagled it for me at the last minute. I bought a new pair of hiking boots, and no one warned me to break them in first…so I spent most of the trip nursing huge blisters on my heels and ankles, which Raul – the guy who took this picture – never failed to tease me about."
Jim couldn't help chuckling. He could just imagine how Blair had been at that age; cocky but also insecure; embarrassed about his mistake but determined to keep up and pull his weight. "I bet you never forgot about breaking your boots in again," he said, handing the photograph back to Blair.
Blair snorted. "You can say that again." He pulled the strip of rope and beads out. "This was a gift from the chief of the Kombai tribe I lived with in New Guinea. I saved his son – a herd of wild pigs stampeded the village and I pulled the kid out of the way. The chief adopted me, made me into one of the Kombai, and gave me this necklace."
Jim took the necklace reverently, turning it around in his hands. "What kind of beads are these?" he asked.
"Dog's teeth," Blair replied, grinning widely when Jim glanced askance at him, one eyebrow raised. "It's what represents money, wealth in their culture – it's what the men give as dowries." He accepted the necklace back from Jim, placing it carefully in the box. "I don't usually wear it; it's too precious." He looked off into the distance, the wide grin still on his face. "Man, that was an amazing experience. It wasn't my first expedition, but it was the one where I really got what anthropology was all about, you know? Trying to understand other cultures, other people; finding the differences and the commonalities among us all." He went back to poking around in the box. "Not that you need to travel anywhere to appreciate the need for that. We could all use a little more understanding, especially at home."
Jim felt a moment of shame, mixed with awe. For Blair, anthropology was clearly more than just a field of study. It was a part of who he was, a way of seeing the world and the people in it, and he wasn't going to abandon it just because he wasn't in academia anymore. Why hadn't he been able to see that?
But Blair had pulled out another object and was showing it to him. "Hey, remember this?"
He frowned at Blair. "It's a key, Sandburg."
Blair laughed. "You don't remember, huh? 'One week, one week, man, and, I promise, we'll be out of your hair'."
He smiled, unable to resist Blair's good humor. "Miss all that space sometimes, eh, Chief?" He slid his arm around Blair's shoulder, pulling him close.
"Oh, God, no," Blair replied, snuggling in against his side. "Not when I had to share it with those rats." He looked up at Jim affectionately. "This is much, much better."
He turned his head and kissed Blair gently. "I'm glad you stayed for more than a week. Even if I do have less hair because of it." Something in the box caught his eye, and he reached over, moving some of the contents out of the way. He pulled out a matchbook, the name "Domenic's" emblazoned across the front. "Is this from?..."
Blair's face lit up, a sheepish grin curling across his face. "Yeah."
The memory warmed him, and he tightened the arm he had around Blair. About a week after the press conference, when things had quieted down somewhat, he'd taken Blair out to dinner at Domenic's, a quiet Italian restaurant in their neighborhood. They'd split a bottle of wine between them, which had led to some very serious conversation, and, back at the loft, some very serious necking. That was the night they'd become lovers.
"So, do you get the bigger picture?" Blair was saying, poking Jim in the ribs, right where he was most ticklish. "Remembering the past doesn't have to be a painful ordeal, you know? It's a way of honoring and understanding who you were and how far you've come; celebrating your life, in a way." He looked up at Jim, his blue eyes calm, a gentle smile on his lips. "There's always a silver lining, you just have to find it." The smile deepened. "I know 'repression' is your middle name, man, but you should try it sometime."
He'd been a fool, he could see that now. He'd been so caught up in guilt and remorse for the way he'd behaved, for the changes he'd brought to Blair's life, that he hadn't noticed that Blair had adapted to those changes happily, losing none of what made him who he was in the process. A fierce wave of love and desire washed through him. He dropped the matchbook back into the box, closing the lid and pulling it out of Blair's hands, placing it on the coffee table. "I can think of a few past memories I'd like to celebrate right now," he said huskily, stretching out on the couch and pinning Blair underneath him.
"Oh, man, I like the way you think," Blair murmured, just before Jim took his mouth in a kiss.
Jim closed the door to the loft, stripping off his dress jacket and draping it over one of the kitchen chairs, then loosening his tie. Blair was doing the same, and then he flopped onto the couch, kicking off his shoes and putting his sock-clad feet on the coffee table.
"Oh, man, I am beat," Blair sighed. "That ceremony went on forever."
Jim thought about saying something about the feet-on-the-coffee-table rule, but then decided against it. Blair was right, the graduation ceremony had been long. And hot. Instead, he went into Blair's old room and retrieved a wrapped package from where he had hidden it under Blair's old bed. He came back into the living room and, sitting next to Blair on the couch, handed it to him.
Blair looked at him in surprise. "What's this?"
"Graduation present."
Blair grinned and eagerly tore the wrapping paper off. But his eyes grew wide as the gift was revealed; a wooden box, expertly crafted, with a delicate, sinuous pattern inlayed on the top in darker shades. "Wow, Jim, this is…this is gorgeous." He looked at Jim, amazement and appreciation mixed in his gaze. "Thank you. Thank you so much."
He pushed a lock of hair that had escaped Blair's ponytail back behind his ear, and smiled. "You're welcome. I figured you could use something permanent to put those mementos of yours in. That way you won't have to keep begging cigar boxes from Simon."
Blair laughed, eyes shining, hands roaming over the box. "Thanks, man. It's beautiful. A treasure chest for my treasures."
You're my treasure, he wanted to say, but that sounded way too sappy, so he settled for something else. "I've…uh, I've been thinking about what we talked about last night," he began.
Blair gave him a sideways glance, head tilted. "Oh, yeah?"
Jim cleared his throat. "Uh, yeah, and I…I thought you had a good point. About memories being something good rather than something to be avoided. So I thought…uh, I thought…." He trailed off, feeling at somewhat of a loss. This had seemed to be a much easier speech when he was rehearsing it earlier.
"You thought you'd share a few stories with me, since I shared some with you last night," Blair said, a knowing grin on his face.
"Yeah," he said, relieved. Blair always knew what he meant, even when he couldn't say it.
"Sounds good, man," Blair said cheerfully, settling back against the couch. "Go for it."
He reached out and opened the box, taking out a photograph. Blair's eyes brightened, and he knew Blair had recognized it as the picture of him and his unit that Blair had found when he had been kidnapped by Oliver. He put an arm around Blair's shoulders, smiling as Blair leaned in against him. "This is Sam Holland, as you know, but this guy, behind him, that's Pete Sarris. Veronica's father. Pete was a funny guy, liked to play practical jokes on everyone. One night, after we'd all been out drinking, we got back to base, only to find…"