Chemistry
by Helen W.
A companion story to the Season One episode Attraction
There were things about working with Jim Ellison that were easier than Blair had thought they would be.
Like dealing with Jim's tough-cop persona; it turned out that Jim himself got bored of it pretty quickly.
Helping Jim use his sentinel abilities at crime scenes had also turned out to be no big deal. Blair wasn't sure whether Jim's co-workers were obtuse, or simply chose to look the other way, but he and Jim got very few odd looks after their first few weeks of working together, even when they weren't being particularly discreet.
And juggling his work at the U. and time with Jim? All Blair'd had to do was give up sleep and a consistent social life. No biggie.
But there were things about working with Jim that were hard. Things that came out of nowhere and bit them on their not-so-proverbial asses. Like that whole mess with the SenQuil a few weeks back. Blair had done some research into which natural remedies might be least likely to cause adverse reactions in the hypersensitive, in anticipation of just the sort of situation they'd faced when Jim had caught that cold. What he hadn't been prepared for was how resistant Jim would be to even trying the things Blair had prepped for him. He also hadn't been prepared for how fast Jim's senses had spun out of control when he took the OTC shit instead.
(And where the *hell* had Jim gotten the idea Blair was a user? Didn't he radiate 'clean'?)
Today was another tough one, except that it wasn't external chemistry screwing them over, it was Jim's own body's.
It was Simon's "Like a dog" crack when Jim left Chatfield's with Laura that got Blair pointed in the right direction.
Jim was acting like Laura McCarthy was a bitch in heat. And what drove your average hound-dog crazy? Pheromones.
Blair didn't know much about pheromones, though some of the quantitative studies he'd read on the human sense of smell had used them. What was the human sex hormone called? Antro-something? Andro-? If he was remembering things right, though, people were all over the map in how they responded to it, and maybe a third of the population couldn't pick up its scent at all.
But - Jim wasn't registering whatever-it-was as odor. And he sure wasn't picking up something that everyone produced.
Across the dining room, Laura's water glass was sitting where she'd left it after flinging its contents at that Marcus Cole look-a-like; time to commit a little larceny, then hit the stacks.
Diving into a new field's literature was, as usual, equal parts exhilarating and confounding. It didn't help that it was after 10 p.m. when he started.
For hours, Blair plowed through bound back-issues of Nature and Biology of Reproduction, Science and The Anatomical Record Part A, Discoveries in Molecular, Cellular, and Evolutionary Biology (a journal he vowed to never, ever to reference because its name was just too damn long). By 2 a.m. he had the library to himself, the building dark except for single rods of florescent light which hummed and flickered on with his passage.
It turned out there was considerable debate about whether humans could even be said to have pheromones, since social and psychological factors seemed to play a much larger role in behavior than any human-secreted chemicals in the environment. On the other hand, at the endocrine level it was a different story. And if we didn't react at least a little, why would we produce them at all?
And, of course, Jim was no ordinary man.
When the morning staff started to arrive, Blair gathered the articles he'd xeroxed and headed home.
Jim wasn't there. Hadn't been there.
Man, why did Blair have to be the adult here?
Blair was still reading when Jim came in. Blair'd hoped that he would be able to figure out exactly which of the 350-odd compounds he'd learned were in human sweat might be the culprit, so that maybe he could devise a deodorant or something. A targeted, all-natural, hypo-allergenic deodorant. Before noon. On no sleep.
It was going to be a cruddy day. On the other hand, he might get a paper out of it.
He finally gave up and trudged up to the loft to make his case to Jim, with no idea how he'd take Blair's conclusions. It took a little convincing, but Laura's filched water glass clinched it.
"This is damn freaky," Jim said. "Can you turn this off?"
"Maybe," said Blair. "If I had six months and a team of biochemists."
Blair didn't want to let Jim out of his sight, but Jim assured him that he'd be doing paperwork all morning and that Blair would be useless to him unless he got some rest. So Blair pulled down his shade and got a couple of hours in, giving up when the papers in his backpack started screaming to be graded (April being the cruelest month for anyone in academia). Jim came home at noon with a couple of subs, and Blair followed him down to the truck when they'd finished them off.
Jim seemed - well, normal. Sane and in control.
As they drove towards Laura's hotel they talked about some leads Jim had been developing. He'd done a search of circus performers and found the name "McCarthy" a couple of places, including associated with a group called "The Flying Sullivans" which seemed to have the exact same skill set as their thieves. All they needed now was visual confirmation, and he'd put Research onto finding some photos.
They segued to talking about Laura and her possible connections Ted and Bruce McCarthy, and about what Jim was experiencing - how his feelings felt so real.
Knowledge must have been power, because when they saw Laura in the jag Jim still seemed, well, okay. Not like he wanted to run across the street and mate in the bushes.
Blair expected Jim to at least show obvious signs of jealousy when Bruce McCarthy got into the car with Laura, but, again, Jim was completely calm, completely his normal self.
And then the jag exploded.
For an infinite moment, neither of them moved. Finally Blair turned toward Jim. "Are you..."
"I'm fine," Jim snapped, reaching for his radio. He calmly relayed the basic facts, then jumped out of the pickup's cab and, his back to the raging flames, scanned the rooflines of the nearest buildings.
Blair suspected Jim just wanted something to do; worked for him.
Within a minute or two a pair of squad cars arrived, followed by several ambulances (useless) and a bevy of fire equipment (useful but not entirely necessary; the fire was already starting to burn itself out.)
Jim spoke with some of the newly-arrived officers, then put in a call to Joel Taggart and headed back to the truck.
"I can drive," Blair said.
"I'm fine," Jim repeated. "Don't ask me how or why."
And this was another thing Blair wasn't prepared for. Was this grief? Shell-shock? Or just normal Ellison?
Their first stop at the station was Research, to see if they'd turned up what Jim was looking for yet. Marcie was fighting with the FAX machine and held up her hand splayed when she saw Jim: the universal sign for "Give me five."
"Stay here and wait?" Jim managed to make it a request, and Blair nodded, still trying to figure out how he should be responding to Jim. Should he let Jim go upstairs without him?
Twenty-five years of more types of therapy than he could count, and training in meditation traditions from six continents and a handful of mid-ocean island groups, and he didn't know what Jim needed from him when it counted most.
As soon as Marcie was done, Blair grabbed the folder and ran up the two flights to major crimes, not wanting to wait for the elevator. Along the way he peeked in - the Sullivans were the McCarthys, all right.
Laura was dead, but at least they knew who'd done it, and why. Ted McCarthy, the greedy bastard.
Ten minutes later they were back in the truck, headed to Ted McCarthy's hotel. In an unusual stroke of luck, they crossed paths with Ted in the hotel lobby; then bullets were flying and Jim was giving chase and Blair was ducking and reflecting that this was yet another thing his life heretofore hadn't prepped him for.
Blair called for back-up, which arrived in the form of two squad cars. Their occupants jumped out and ran right past Blair; apparently, Jim had subdued Ted and called it in without bothering to let Blair know. Great, thought Blair. If he wasn't needed, maybe he could nap now?
Jim appeared soon after. "You look like shit, Sandburg. How about you grab some shut-eye in the truck? I want to check out Laura's room; we're just a block from her hotel."
"Sure you don't want me with you?" Blair asked. "Her room could bring up - you know, things you aren't prepared for..."
"Not with you a zombie," said Jim. "You've had quite a day."
"*I've* had quite a day?" But after being shot at on top of almost zero sleep... "Call me if you need me."
"Sure thing, chief."
Blair was awoken by yet another duet of black-and-whites zooming past at full volume. He put the truck in gear and followed them the couple hundred feet to the Cascade Suites, where Laura had been staying. Jim came jogging out as he arrived; without a word to the other cops, Jim opened the passenger-side door and jumped into the cab. "Get me out of here as fast as you can," he said.
"Are you..."
"Drive, Sandburg. Now."
So they wove through rush-hour traffic to HQ. After they'd put a few blocks between them and the hotel Jim exhaled audibly. "We're far enough away," he said.
"From?"
"From her. From Laura."
From where she had died? But Jim had been okay being near it earlier. Or had Blair been too exhausted to notice?
"She's alive," Jim said. "It was all her. That woman I saw in the jag - it was Bruce's girlfriend. I left Laura cuffed to a post in her room. I - I had to get out of there before I changed my mind."
Blair reached out with his right hand and rubbed Jim's shoulder quickly. "Done good, Jim," he said.
Considering everything that had happened in the past day, wrap-up at the station went quickly.
Dinner was from a Wonderburger drive-through; and twenty-four hours after they'd gotten the call about the fire across the street from Chatfield's, they were back in the loft.
Jim got Blair a beer without having to be asked, and Blair took it gratefully.
Damn, a lot had happened today.
Blair settled into his favorite corner of the sofa and closed his eyes, rolling the beer back and forth between his palms. Yeah, he was still wired. Parts of him, at least.
He felt the sofa depress as Jim joined him. "Want me to find something on the tube?" he asked.
"God, no," said Blair.
"Yeah, silence is good," said Jim. "Uh, chief..."
Blair opened his eyes. "You okay, Jim?"
"Yeah," said Jim. His eyes were clear and his body language was open; whatever was going on with him, as far as Blair could tell it fell far short of torment.
But, still, Jim pretty obviously had stuff to talk about, stuff he might not be able to get out later. So Blair straightened and tried to shake off his fatigue. He could give Jim a little bit more. That wouldn't be too hard. "What's on your mind?" he asked.
Jim laughed. "How do you do that? How do you know what I'm going to say?"
"I don't, usually," said Blair. "But I try to pay attention."
Jim nodded. "I try too."
"I can tell," Blair said. Carefully, but not too carefully.
Jim turned more fully toward Blair. "And the thing is - Blair, why should I have to?"
That felt like a bit of a low blow. "It's how civilized humans treat each other."
"That's not what I mean!" Jim jumped up and walked to the bookcase, then turned and walked back across the room. "What I mean is, why did Laura, of all people - why was it so easy with her?" Jim reached the far wall and turned, continuing, "What the hell good are pheromones if they make it too easy to understand the wrong people and don't do a damn thing towards helping you with the right ones?"
"Well," said Blair, now fully alert. "There's a question."
"What's the answer?"
"There's more to pheromones than sex. In animals, pheromones communicate all sorts of things. Aggression. Danger. Whose territory is whose. And, who knows? Maybe you give off some sort of sentinel-specific pheromone that only anthro grad students have receptors for."
"You think?" Jim dropped back onto the sofa. "You gonna do a study?"
"Yeah, it'd be cake," said Blair. "You'd have to not wear deodorant for a couple of weeks and then I'd take all your dirty t-shirts and give them to a random sampling of anthropologists and, I don't know, math majors, and see which group felt more like following your sweat into a burning building. It would be subjective as all hell, but maybe the mathematicians could help me jimmy the stats."
"And what would that prove?"
"Um... I forget."
Jim waved a hand in front of Blair's face and Blair rolled his eyes. "I'm awake, it's just that experimental design's not my strong suit at the best of times. I'm better at observation."
"Sorry, chief," said Jim. "All-nighters are tough."
"No, Jim," Blair said. "A night in the library's easy. That, I've been doing twice a month since I was sixteen. And don't get me started about the semester I took Pascal. I'm dog-tired, but this isn't hard."
"But something's hard?"
"Knowing what to do. And the getting shot at, but mostly knowing what to do before and after. So I don't get in your way, and I give you the support you need, when you need it."
"Pheromones might help."
"No. Yes. Maybe. Maybe they even *are* what brought us together. But they also hooked you up with a psychopath. And her up with a cop. Really, you two might have had beautiful superhero children together, but-"
"Don't forget the great... you know... physical aspects..."
"More than I needed to know. But I was saying, maybe you two were meant to commingle genes, but that doesn't guarantee you could have lived together, even if she wasn't a criminal."
Jim sat back. "I hadn't thought about that." He paused. "Superhero children? Think we could?"
"God help us," said Blair. "Don't ask me to nanny."
"Naw, but I'd ask you to help me find one. You might find this - this" - and he waved his hands - "stuff hard, but you're good at it. I hope you know that."
"Thanks, man," said Blair.
And when had 'easy' been any fun anyway?
THE END
All feedback welcomed, here or to helenw at murphnet dot org.
Becky's transcript site was, as usual, invaluable.