Finnesse Chapter 2, a sentinel fanfic

Disclaimer & etc: See Chapter 1

FINNESSE

Chapter 2

The answer machine kicked in just as Jim entered the loft; since his hands were full of Chinese food, he ignored the call, which was for Sandburg from Rainier anyway. Depositing the food on the counter top, he removed his gun and badge and went into the bathroom for a quick wash to freshen up before coming back out and starting to lay out the food as his ears locked onto Blair's Volvo about two blocks away.

Technically it was Blair's turn to cook but mid-terms were looming and Blair seemed to be in a dozen places all at once with sleep and food being removed off his schedule. In comparison, Jim had spent most of the last week, and today, twiddling his thumbs in court to ensure their two big drug-case busts got the maximum possible sentencing; fortunately the judge was an old hand, eminently sensible, and the jury for once weren't insane or expecting every case to be like CSI, The Mentalist, Lie To me, Silent Witness, Body of Proof, or whatever current 'procedural' TV show turned them all into vastly superior detectives than say, oh, the police, and the defence attorneys didn't have delusions of being Perry Mason. So while he was bored and fed up, he wasn't emotionally frazzled, drained, frustrated or furious. To Jim's relief, Blair had taken the tormenting of the cops at the PD with good grace and wry humour over the poster, such as the anatomically correct series of balloon animals made out of condoms that kept appearing on Sandburg's desk; Jim recognised the handiwork of Bernardo Bertorelli in Vice. Sandburg, with niceness typical of him, had brought them home and they now stood in 'proud parade' along one of his bookshelves in his bedroom/study.

By some miracle, Jim had only ever seen the dreaded poster once more in the past month, and he had been prepared for the shock. What had surprised him more was the stark line in white capitals above the nude image: WHAT TERMINAL TESTICULAR CANCER LOOKS LIKE. However, Blair had said that the nude shot was for a cancer charity, and it was typical of Blair to leap right in and help if asked regardless of how out in left field the cause might be.

Familiar footsteps approached the loft and Blair entered, sniffing loudly and grinning as he sighted the Chinese food. "You got dinner? Thanks, man." He placed his jacket on the hook and dropped his backpack by the couch, coming straight over to the breakfast bar.

They ate in companionable silence, Jim noting how Blair devoured the food like a starving wolf and so, despite his own love of Chinese goodness, he actually ate less than he made it appear, allowing Blair to consume a good two thirds of the food, which the younger man practically inhaled. Obviously the kid had been skipping lunch as well as practically any sleep if the entire Louis Vuitton collection of bags under his eyes was anything to go by. Blair finished and quickly rinsed their crockery as Jim grabbed a beer and headed to watch the early evening news before the Cascade Jaguars game. The detective raised one bottle questioningly but Blair shook his head, hefting the backpack and making for his room.

"Oh, wait, Rainier left a message for you about a meeting." Jim told him.

"Thanks." Blair hit play, listening to the message about a change in time with a strange lack of expression, before lifting the cordless phone off the cradle and hitting the speed-dial button for Rainier while he walked into his room out of deference to Jim watching the news. He heard Blair tell someone the change of time was not a problem then tuned his friend out as the news came on. Blair returned to replace the phone in the cradle and then went back into his room, the familiar scratching of his pen indicating he was grading papers, with occasional sub-vocal 'sighs' or 'mmms' indicating respectively a student who had probably plagiarised the paper wholesale or been lazy and one who had been engaged and diligent enough to make an effort.

Jim grinned as the local news came on and his court case was the headline. Whilst it was irritating to sit there every day while the legal weasels wrangled, in this case it was worth it. They had Edward Lascelle six ways from Sunday on so many drugs charges the guy would never see the outside of a jail cell until he was carried out in a coffin and the increasingly pasty pallor of his defence attorney showed the guy knew he was fighting a lost cause. As the lead detective in the case, Jim had taken carefully hidden pleasure in getting up on the stand and putting as many extra nails as he could in Lascelle's already well-sealed coffin –

The phone rang in the middle of the segment and Jim scowled as he picked it up, drawing in a breath, but before he could demonstrate his irritation with a sharply barked 'Ellison', the caller spoke without preamble and he blinked as he heard the acid tones of Dean Marcia Edwards.

"Sandburg, I shall come straight to the point. I am calling to offer you the chance to resign with immediate effect, rather than drag the good name of this institution through the mud at the Special Review tomorrow. Before you answer this offer, I should make it quite clear that I have a copy of that quite disgusting…tape…and I am shocked and appalled. You are of course within your rights to attend the Special Review tomorrow, but let me make it quite clear that the morals clause in your contract enables me to terminate your employment with immediate effect. I am absolutely –"

"Talking to the wrong guy," Jim interrupted. "I am Detective James Ellison, Mr Sandburg's room-mate. I certainly hope that I'm not hearing the Dean of Rainier University making threats against a member of her staff?"

The woman spluttered incoherently on the other end of the phone. A hand reached over and tugged the phone from Jim's hand as Blair took it, having come out of his room in time to hear Jim identify the caller. "Dean Edwards, this is Blair Sandburg speaking. What can I do for you?"

Without utilising his aural abilities, Jim easily heard the woman's strident tones as she reiterated to Blair what she'd just said, and his eyes narrowed at the way she sneered, 'room-mate' twice in a derogatory tone that clearly implied she thought the term was a euphemism.

"I don't think so." Blair's tone was coolly calm, his respiration and vital signs equally as undisturbed. "I'm quite aware of the tape's existence, Ms Edwards. I shall see you at the Special Review meeting tomorrow." Without saying goodbye or allowing her to reply, he terminated the call, looking tired.

"What's going on, Chief?" Jim frowned at Blair's weary face. "What tape, and what's this Special Review?"

Blair gave a sigh. "I think I'll have that bottle of beer after all."

Jim muted the sound on the TV as Blair headed for the kitchen and popped the top of a bottle of beer before coming back into the living area and slumping on the couch. "The Special Review meeting has been called as an emergency session by the university's Board of Governors, they're considering firing me because of the morals clause in my contract."

"Morals clause - you?" Jim raised both his eyebrows. For all his cracks about table-legs and Blair's revolving door love-life, affectionate teasing was all that they were - Jim never for a moment had any worries about Blair having an inappropriate affair with one of his students or doing anything morally unethical. Blair was an honourable and sensible man – he was the master of his body, not its slave. "Is that the tape she was going on about?"

"Yeah-huh," grunted Blair. "See, when I did that nude shot for the cancer charity, it sold really well, so at the same time these porn-flick producers illegally used my photograph to promote their movie. They picked a guy with curly brown hair who superficially looked like me from the back and made out it was me with a lot of soft-focus lens shots and stuff. By the time anybody found out what was going on – nearly a year later by then - and stopped their little game the damage had been done. As part of damage control I stipulated that the nude image could only be used in medical and cancer based charity campaigns to take the glamour away. Mostly it works but every so often when they use the photograph the movie pops up again hanging on its coat-tails."

"But you can prove the guy in it isn't you?" Jim persisted.

Blair gave a snort of laughter as he stood up off the couch to head back to the pile of papers waiting to be graded. "Jim, my name is Sandburg. Sand…burg…" he drew out the word, "if necessary you just freeze-frame one of the close ups and it's very clear that the guy is not a Jew. Anyway, you don't even have to go that far. If you freeze-frame the guy's face when he's turned towards the camera it's clearly not me even to normal eyesight."

"So why is the Dean trying to fire you on morals grounds?"

"She isn't. Chadwick Preston IV is." Blair paused at the doorway of his room and scored a perfect shot of the beer bottle into the trash can. "He's one of the jocks in my Anthro' 101 class and unfortunately he's Brad Ventriss reincarnated. He combines arrogance and stupidity with a rich daddy who throws money at him like confetti out of guilt for never being around."

"You flunked him." It wasn't a question but a statement; those same ethics that meant Jim didn't worry about Blair being fired due to some contractual morals clause meant that Blair insisted on each of his students pulling their weight in his classes. Nobody got a free ride because of a Congresswoman mother or a Fortune 500 Company CEO daddy.

"Yeah, he cribbed an entire essay from the 'Net word-for-word, didn't even change the date." Blair explained. "Then he ordered me to change his grade to an 'A' when he saw that poster of me. I kicked him out of my class and reported him to the Ethics Committee, so he ran straight to daddy and now Chadwick Preston III is trying to get me fired on moral grounds."

"How much of a problem is it?" Jim asked.

"Not one," Blair reassured over his shoulder, waving a hand to indicate Jim was missing the start of the Jags game on the muted TV as he went back into his room to carry on marking. "It's easy to prove the porn guy isn't me and it's easy to prove Preston Junior plagiarised the essay. When she fired me during the Ventriss case, Dean Edwards made a huge mistake and left Rainier wide open to me suing them – by not doing that not only did I claim the moral high ground but I have the entire Board by the proverbial. I only have to point out how once before Dean Edwards sided with a murderer for money and she'll back-pedal for all she's worth." He paused and added, maybe more to himself, "My problem is that Dean Edwards made another mistake last time in that she mistook my magnanimity for timidity. Tomorrow I shall have to make it clear that I own her academic ass entirely due to her own fault and that I won't tolerate a third incident like this."

"So she can't even hold the poster against you?" Jim raised his voice slightly as he turned the sound down to the threshold of his hearing.

"Only theoretically," Blair called back as he sat down at his desk, "and if she does, I have the perfect defence that it wasn't gratuitous but for a worthy cause."

"Okay, Chief, but if you need any help, let me know." Jim offered firmly. "I defy even that woman to object to a cancer charity, but even if you had to pick that particular one to model for, like you said, it was still for a good cause."

Yeah, well, having cancer of the balls is a great motivator. Blair picked up his pen with a smile, feeling better for having Jim's support even if only in an emotional sense.

He yelped as he was hauled unceremoniously out of his chair by a big hand grabbing his arm. "Jim! What the hell -" he broke off as he looked into Jim's shocked and frightened face.

"You don't have…You look normal…" Jim didn't release his grip on Blair's arm, his anxiety almost tangible.

For a moment Blair was utterly flummoxed and then it suddenly dawned on him. "I actually said that out loud, didn't I?"

Jim wasn't listening. "I would know…" his voice faded and his expression became concentrated.

With a sense of shock, Blair realised that Jim was using his senses to check out Blair's…oh, ick. "Hey! No way! Ick, Ellison. Don't even think about it. It's icky enough knowing I can't even jack off in the shower in case you hear it." He pulled away from Jim's grip on his arm. "I don't have testicular cancer and I never did."

"You just said…" Jim persisted, even though his sensory input indicated that Blair was a normal, healthy adult male.

"Okay, look I thought I had it…" Blair blew out a breath as Jim folded his arms in that immovable nobody-is-going-anywhere-until-Ellison-gets-answers stance.

Sitting back down in his desk chair, Blair rubbed his hand wearily over his eyes, despite his reluctance to have this conversation feeling comforted in the way that Jim's sole focus was on him; that total concentration could be very reassuring even as it was intimidating. "You know I started Rainier at thirteen as their prize prodigy on a full ride scholarship for gifted kids?"

"Yes?"

"Well I wracked up a zillion hours in the classroom but because of my age I couldn't do any fieldwork; Rainier was frightened of being sued. So as soon as I reached eighteen I went wild, in several sense of the word. You name the expedition and I signed up for it. It wasn't too hard because I'd already lived on every continent bar Antarctica by the age of ten and I already spoke nineteen languages. Anyway, at twenty I was in Berlin when the Wall came down and jumped at the chance to do a long-term study in Scandinavia and Western Russia on the anthropological effects of Glasnost."

Jim listened patiently as Blair talked of how he'd lived in Lapland, Sweden and finally Finland, aware of his Guide's elevated temperature and vital signs, all indicators of his distress.

"Anyway, I'm twenty-one and living in Punkailaden, a small village about forty kilometres outside Tampere in southern Finland." Blair explained. "One morning I wake up and well, I'm sore, down there. I have a tiny lump on one of my balls."

"What did you do?" Jim asked in concern.

"Absolutely nothing," Blair snorted in self-derision. "I was terrified to my bone marrow. The thing is, I essentially spent my adolescence living at Rainier University; I wasn't a grown up, but I wasn't a child – I was a healthy heterosexual male living in a place that was awash with booze, recreational pharmaceuticals and nubile young women – and none of them would touch me with a ten-foot pole for fear I'd get them into legal trouble. None of the beer parties or frat boys would let me with half a mile of them, the campus drug dealers ran from this gawky fourteen year old, but neither of those really bothered me."

Jim nodded; whilst he and Blair differed tremendously in their views on narcotics and had had to 'agree to disagree' on the emotive subject, Blair had never been the boozer/druggie type – they were crutches to avoid dealing with a person's real problems.

"What did bother me was that I lived my adolescent angst at Rainier as underage jailbait, surrounded by delectable co-eds who weren't going to get a corruption of a minor-stroke-statutory rape rap for anything in the world. By the time I was legal I'd been a walking maelstrom of hormonal lust-mush for years just waiting to explode. When I got that sore spot I went straight into a gibbering panic that I was going end up having to be medically castrated and I was never going get laid again. I spent every day desperately ignoring the terror in my hind-brain. I was twenty-two by the time the lump had grown too big and the pain too severe to ignore."

"Damn it, Sandburg," Jim whispered it as he took in Blair's haunted face and the pallor resulting from that remembered terror.

Blair shuddered. "I went to a doctor in Tampere. He took one look at me and sent me straight to the hospital where they did tests and kept me in for observation. The test results came back within twenty-four hours and this very polite Finnish consultant, Dr Haakala, sat me down in his office and in excellent English went through how they had an excellent treatment procedure and that my prognosis was very positive, yadda, yadda, yadda, and then at the end of about forty minutes of me sweating and shaking he casually mentioned that I hadn't got testicular cancer, just a very large cyst that had formed over an abscess."

"Cyst?" Jim repeated the word in relief.

"My reaction was a lot less polite." Blair confessed. "As in why he couldn't have told me straight away and how I'd spent the past eight months convinced I was going to spend the rest of my life singing soprano. At that point the good doctor retorted he hadn't told me immediately because he wanted to impress upon me how stupid I was and that if I had actually had testicular cancer I would have been dead about two months before I went to a doctor."

"Chief…" Jim found himself lost for words.

"I never thought about death." Blair admitted with a shrug. "The idea that I might die had honestly never occurred to me. My sole focus was that the doctors might have to remove one or both of my balls and I'd never get laid again – all my unconventional pro-feminist upbringing and I was a classically conventional 22-year-old male solely focussed on being able to 'get some', talk about reverting to type. Dr Haakala told me that it was an even 50-50 chance as to whether the lump was a cyst or cancerous tumour and I was just extremely lucky. He was angry with me because he said that if it had been cancer, it would have been terminal, whereas if I'd gone to the doctor right at the beginning, if I had had cancer it could have been successfully treated and left me a healthy, fertile young man."

"But because you waited eight months…" Jim's stomach twisted as he realised how lucky Sandburg had been.

"Yeah. I had a very painful, much more difficult to treat cyst, but if it had been cancer, it would have been terminal weeks before I even thought about visiting a doctor – unnecessarily so." Blair reiterated. "It was that consultant, Dr Haakala, who was part of the campaign running at the time in Scandinavia to highlight reproductive organ cancers amongst men. The only way to tell whether I had a tumour or a cyst was by medical tests, you couldn't tell just from looking. Hell, I'd still been having sex with my long-term Scandinavian girlfriend until she left me for one of those post-Communist Russian millionaires a month before I went to the doctor's and she never noticed anything unusual."

"You volunteered to do the poster." Jim knew his friend well. Once the consultant's chastisement imprinted on the young man how foolish his delay in seeking treatment had been, Blair would immediately put aside his own personal discomfort and offer to assist in preventing others from making the same mistake.

"Yeah, I wanted it to be a photograph of me before I started my treatment to make the point. Medical professionals with forty years experience have looked at that poster and never realised that I wasn't perfectly healthy." Blair explained, "I felt I owed it to Dr Haakala. He was a great consultant and really took the time to reassure me. He was so sad when he explained how many times he'd seen terminal teenage boys and young men in their twenties come to his office when if only they'd sought treatment right off the bat when it was first just a bit sore or a tiny pea-sized oddity they'd have been curable with no lasting side-effects."

Jim sat down next to Blair, laying his hand gently on the other's forearm since his only other habitual display of affection, the noogie, was clearly not appropriate. "I've never even given it any thought, Blair. What you went through so young…I'm sure you helped save lives."

"I can only hope." Blair shrugged. "It just makes me so mad that slime like Chadwick Preston IV would use this to try and get me kicked out of Rainier because he's a spoilt rich brat and Marcia Money-is-God Edwards is helping. How that woman got to be Dean is beyond me." He gave Jim a reassuring smile. "Don't worry; I have Right, both morally and legally, on my side. It just pisses me off that I have to waste a day jumping through the hoops."