I drove slowly to Dad's house, in no hurry for the evening's activities to begin, and not at all sure that what Blair had planned was going to be good idea. As a matter of fact I was pretty sure it wasn't a good idea at all. This compromising business was tougher than it sounded.
It had rained all day, and the streets were black and shiny in the truck's headlights. I hoped the rainy season was about done, because both Blair and I were ready for some sunny days again. I wanted to grill out on the loft's balcony without needing an umbrella and for us to go for runs in the park without having to dodge constant rain puddles.
It had been three months since the night Dad's ghost threw a hissy fit because Blair and I had touched and kissed in his house. I hadn't gone back there but twice, along with Steven, to finish up the crap we had to do in order to settle Dad's estate. Things wouldn't wrap up for months yet, but we wanted to put the house on the market.
Dad hadn't made an appearance while Steven and I boxed things up and ferried furniture out. That was fine by me. I hadn't gotten any fonder of dealing with mystical shit, although this weird connection I had to the spirit plane had helped me to save Blair's life twice now. I was grateful to the panther and the wolf for what they had done, and I didn't really mind anymore the occasional visit to what Blair always called "Blue Jungle Land," but I wasn't going to go out of my way to look for any involvement with the supernatural.
Blair and I'd disagreed about this. He had really wanted us to stage an intervention, get Dad, or whatever leftover energy from Dad's life that was hanging around, to move on. He'd been eager to do a séance, or burn sage throughout the house, or play around with a Ouija board.
I'd thought we should ignore the whole thing. Blair had accused me of being an ostrich hiding his head in the sand, but hell, if we didn't stir my dad's ghost up again maybe he'd disappear on his own, no help needed from us.
We, ah... had gotten a little loud discussing what to do about a week after the ghost had targeted Blair. I didn't want Blair to step foot inside the house again, for obvious reasons. Well, obvious to anybody except Blair, and Blair wanted to try to talk with Dad, find out why he hadn't caught the soul train out of here.
It was the first time since Blair had come back to Cascade that we'd had a huge fight.
I winced, driving along these streets that I'd grown up riding my bike on, remembering the accusations that had flown back and forth. "Controlling asshole," Blair had jabbed at me, and I'd verbally hit him back with all the anger that I hadn't really realized I'd been holding onto until I heard words hurtling out of my mouth about not being able to trust Blair to do as he promised. That he'd God-damned agreed to stay in protective custody and he'd lied to Henri and lied to me by his actions. That he was reckless, that he'd almost died, for Christ's sake, and that my dad was still trying to kill him and that I didn't care if he ended up with twenty Ph.D's, he was still dumb as a rock if he thought going to confront a ghost who wanted him dead was anything but stupid, and that he hadn't an ounce of common sense.
I'd stopped then, chest heaving, and Blair looked sucker-punched.
He'd bit his lip, and then squared his shoulders.
"I'm not leaving, Jim. Even if you pack all my shit up, and hey, that wouldn't take long, would it, and even if you pushed me out the door, I'd just sit my ass down on your doorstep because I'm not leaving. I'm sorry I screwed up and I admit I fucked up and you have a right to be angry, but you don't have the right to make my decisions for me, Jim."
He was trembling with anger, although I could see he was trying for a calmer tone of voice. My own rage, now expressed, was waning, and I went to him, to gather him up in my arms, but he held his hands out, warning me that he didn't want me to touch him.
"Look, Sandburg, I don't want you to get hurt. You act like that's a crime or something." I was starting to feel the let down that comes from an adrenaline spike.
"Well, I'm not a big fan of getting hurt, so we're on the same page there. But Jim, remember that you can't wrap me up in cotton batting and keep me tucked away from the world. If I can help your father gain peace, then I'm willing to take the risks that go along with it. But I promise you that I'll take precautions, and I won't do anything by myself. Please believe me, okay?... Well, if you think you can trust me, that is."
He fell silent, watching me for a moment, and then walked over to where his shoes lay abandoned by the couch and picked them up, showing them to me.
"I think I need some time to finish cooling down so we can talk more productively. I, uh, I didn't do very well with following the fair fighting rules; I'm sorry I called you an asshole. After my break, I'd like to talk about some things I figured out about why I made the decision to lie to you, about why I went to your dad's house that night. I hope you'll listen to me."
He'd sat down on the couch and put on his shoes and I'd looked at him, my body still thrumming with the effects of the anger that had poured out of me. A small voice inside was screaming, "He's going to leave you again; he's going to walk out that door and not come back."
I took several deep cleansing breaths, just the way Blair had taught me, and told that voice to go fuck itself. He wasn't leaving me, and I wasn't throwing him out. I loved the little shit, and he wasn't perfect. Good-hearted, beautiful in body and soul, but human, and human beings screwed up with each other. I needed to really forgive him for the mistake he'd made because I did know he was sorry. I flashed again on how Blair had looked in the hospital bed, those slow tears leaving a trail of brine as they'd made their journey across his skin.
"Where are you going?"
He shrugged, stood up and headed for the door, pausing to put on a jacket.
"Just for a walk, maybe down to the harbor. Listen to the gulls squabble instead of us."
"Can I walk with you? I'll keep my mouth shut."
He smiled at me a moment, a glimpse of sunshine breaking through stormy clouds.
"I'd like that. I'd like that very much."
It had rained that morning, and looked like it would again in the evening, but we walked down to the ocean and along the dock roads without the usual February drizzle.
Before too long, he reached out for my hand and we walked along in a silence that shifted from tense to comfortable. Hesitantly, he brought up the discussion again and this time we didn't raise our voices; we worked things out before we returned home.
Blair told me what his meditative Monday-morning quarterbacking had helped him to figure out. He was going to go back to counseling again for a while, through the free service at the university. He "wanted to work more on understanding how not to let those old patterns of behavior that had their origins from when he'd been sexually abused exert unwanted influence on his present day decision-making," or in my words, get his head screwed on straight.
We compromised about how to deal with Dad's ghost. I'd get my time to see if he'd just go on his own and Blair would stay away. Before we put the house up for sale, though, Blair and I – taking the precautions Blair assured me he'd set up – would do another kiss test and see if Dad showed up to protest. Blair had a point about not setting up the new homeowners with such a booby trap. We could hardly refuse to sell the house to any gay couple who wanted it on the grounds that showing affection towards each other might result in the wrath of Dad's ghost towards them. Or kids experimenting with same-sex attraction, playing spin the bottle, might be traumatized for life if my father's ghost showed up to play by making the bottle smash them on the head.
I'd spilled my guts about how I'd felt when I'd realized Blair was in trouble, how scared I'd been when I'd seen his astral body and how mad I'd been when I'd realized he'd hustled us with that little "obfuscation" of his.
I really, really hated that word. I could live the rest of my life with Blair and not miss hearing it come out of his mouth. Blair looked startled when I told him that, then ashamed and thoughtful.
I told him that I did trust him to keep his word to not sneak over to Dad's house, and that I knew that most of the time when he did something after being told not to - "stay in the truck," for example, when he'd been my observer - it was because he was trying to help. Hell, he succeeded most of the time. I'd probably be dead by now if he hadn't used his own judgment about when to throw the rule book out the window.
I told him I was proud of him, that he was the bravest guy I knew. That I was sorry for insulting his intelligence earlier.
He'd laughed at that, and told me that me calling him reckless was pretty much one of those pot/kettle deals.
Blair declared after we'd climbed the stairs at our apartment building and gone back inside the loft that we'd done much better this time on following the fair fighting rules.
I ticked them off in my head. No name calling, take a break if you get too mad, and stay on the current problem and not bring up the ninety-nine times the other guy had done something to piss you off. Yeah, we'd done okay. Maybe Blair would like to do something relaxing now.
"Hey, Chief. Can we add another part to the fair fighting rules?"
"Like what?" He arched an eyebrow at me.
"Make-up sex." I arched my eyebrow right back at him.
"Very innovative there, James. I highly approve. I mean, we had our adrenaline peaking for a while there, and walking helped to calm us down, but we could use some endorphin rushes to finish the mellowing out." He walked over to where I was leaning on the kitchen counter, and kissed me, a teasing invitation to come and play with him.
I sent in my RSVP and started dancing him toward the stairs, feeling him relaxing against me, trusting me to move him backwards, to catch him if he stumbled. I wanted to return that trust back to him.
I pulled my mouth from his as we reached the bottom step.
"Hey, lover boy. Feel up to being the driver tonight?"
He'd grinned at me and grabbed my ass. "Oh, yeah."
He'd hummed "Baby, You Can Drive My Car" all the way up the stairs until I silenced him with another kiss.
"Less singing, more action," I suggested, with a touch of a growl in my voice when I'd finished with his mouth. Blair got off when I shaded my voice into that tone. It made him get all flustered when I'd tell him that, but hey, the senses don't lie. If his arousal was charted on a graph, doing that voice and throwing in a little manhandling would spike it right up.
He swallowed, then narrowed his eyes.
"Oh, no, not tonight. But I'll take a raincheck. Now, should I undress you, or should I make you strip for me. Choices, choices..."
It had been good, better than good, and we'd both slept like the... I shook my head. Well, like a log. We'd both slept like logs after he'd fucked me. He had started to wear out so we switched positions so that he was on the bottom, and I could do the brunt of the work.
Sex with Blair was fun and steamy, tender and hot. Just thinking of him stretched out on our bed, fucked into sleepy satisfaction or his mouth working me into a frenzy, my hands tangled in his curls, made me ache to run my hands over his skin, kiss him until his eyes had gone dark and the scent pouring off him intoxicating me.
Tonight, I was taking him to bed and rocking his world. It would be something to look forward to after we did the mystical mumbo-jumbo litmus test to see if Dad was still hanging around.
I pulled into Dad's driveway and turned off the engine. Blair was meeting me here after driving back from Seattle, but we weren't doing this stunt by ourselves. Steven and Simon were coming, too. If things went bad during this invoking of Dad's ghost, I wanted some extra muscle around to drag Blair's butt out of danger.
He was now finally over the lingering effects of the mono and being poisoned with my dad's meds. He'd put serious job hunting on hiatus for a while so that he could teach those classes for the Seattle detectives, but those were over as of tonight. He wouldn't finish his research for probably a couple of years. He would just be tracking the solve rates of the guys he'd tutored on how to really use their senses at crime scenes and while interviewing witnesses, and compare them to the solve rates of guys who matched them for age and experience who hadn't had the benefit of his seminars. Joel had wanted to take the classes, and until we'd gotten Blair another car, Joel had driven him to the Seattle P.D.
Joel was the only detective from Cascade that Blair had let take the classes. Henri wasn't remotely interested; he was head over heels in love with his new baby girl and wanted nothing to do with anything that meant spending time away from his family. He'd even transferred to Burglary and Theft, to avoid being called out from home to handle a murder scene or other crimes that Major Crimes would have to put a lot of manpower into solving.
Conner had left for home before Christmas. Rafe had gone to be a fed.
I didn't even see Simon much anymore at work, just the occasional briefing; he had gotten the assistant chief position when Sullivan had retired. Joel hadn't wanted Simon's old job; he was counting down the days until he put in his mandatory years and could retire. Alexandrov, the head of Patrol, had taken it. He was a fair man, but not a friendly one. I didn't see us developing the kind of friendship Simon and I'd had. I didn't tell him about my senses, but I think he knew anyway. I think most of the P.D. figured I had above average senses. Nobody thought it made me into some kind of superhero, the teasing that I'd gotten from Rafe and the other guys after Naomi and Sid had released Blair's diss to the press aside. Maybe some kind of freak, yeah, but hero, no. Blair had been the only one to look at me like I was Superman and Batman and Captain America, all rolled into one.
The bullpen didn't feel the same way to me anymore. Except for Joel, I wasn't close to the detectives that were there now, not like before. Even Rhonda had chosen to follow Simon into his new position.
In so many ways, it had been Blair who had worked his magic and spun friendships between that core group of colleagues. Mr. Wizard was still not allowed to hang with me while I was on the job, and not even Simon's lobbying with the police chief had rescinded that restriction.
Fuck you, Dad, for all your behind the scenes manipulations to keep Blair and me apart.
Sullivan had come clean about being the leak when we'd met. He'd said he hadn't realized that Dad was trying to harm Blair. He'd been embarrassed to discuss Dad's reasons, hemmed and hawed about it until I lost patience and told him he fucking owed it to me and to Blair to explain my Dad's reasons, if he knew them.
He'd capitulated, but hadn't met my eyes. Dad, his old friend from childhood, his good friend, had confided in him, told him how worried he was that I was falling off the straight wagon, casting Blair in the role of seducer, a tempter with a pouty mouth and long hair and pretty eyes. Dad was frantic, he said, to keep Blair from corrupting his son. At first, after he suspected that Blair was trying to seduce me, he'd just crossed his fingers that I'd see through Blair's Machiavellian intrigues and boot him out of my home and stop allowing him to shadow me at the P.D.
When that didn't happen and Blair publicly shamed himself to protect me, Dad had been struck with an epiphany. He'd realized that things were even worse than he'd known because Blair wasn't just seducing me; he loved me. He'd sounded Blair out about leaving me for better job opportunities, for money, when he'd invited us to dinner shortly after Blair had accepted the P.D.'s offer. Blair hadn't responded to Dad's inquiries during the private chat they'd had while I had been sent to the store to get something Sally needed for dinner.
Now that had puzzled me. Blair had never said that Dad had tried to bribe him, and I wondered if he'd even realized that an offer had been on the table. I'd asked him about it when I told him what Sullivan had said and he remembered Dad asking him about his plans, telling him he had contacts that could make the transition to another city "a lot easier," but he'd missed the whole "this is a subtle bribe" part.
Dad had told his friend that I did have enhanced senses; it was what made me vulnerable to Blair because I had allowed myself to use Blair like a crutch and not handle things myself. I needed to be weaned away from Blair, but Blair, despite my dad's best hopes, stuck around instead of slinking out of town, tail between his legs.
That was when Dad made his pitch for Sullivan's help. He knew from me that a deal had been worked out for Blair to take the abbreviated course at the Academy, and while he couldn't actually be offered a detective's shield and pay yet, he would be mostly assigned to Major Crimes, only doing the absolute minimum with Patrol.
Dad had been persuasive, telling Sullivan that a frank talk about the problems I would encounter as a gay man if I kept Blair in my life wouldn't stop me from keeping Blair around. He said I was too stubborn for that approach. He called Blair a leech and that it was time to pour salt on him to make him let go of me.
Dad asked Sullivan if he could get Blair's deal with Simon rescinded and Blair's observer status pulled. Poor little virgin Jimmy Ellison needed his daddy to look out for him to keep him from making the kind of mistake that would ruin his life.
I kind of hoped Blair could rig a way to talk to Dad. I'd like to call him on that kind of attitude and point out that I'd been fifteen the first time I'd shared hand jobs with a friend, and seventeen when I'd given my first blow job. I'd been bi-sexual all my life, and Dad had had no right to mess with me like that.
Dad's strategy had been successful. Sullivan was swayed into acting as a co-conspirator, and he painted such a black picture of Blair that the chief, who'd been dubious about the irregularities of Blair's offer anyway, scrapped it. My dad had also approached the mayor, but didn't tell him his goal was to save his son's ass. Literally. The mayor pressured the chief, too, more out of wanting my dad's financial support than anything else, but Dad's plan worked. When Blair did leave town, Dad asked Sullivan if he would keep his ear open for anything that concerned Blair. Sullivan promised Dad that he'd share any information on Blair. Dad had been his good friend for most of his life, and Sullivan had kids of his own. You didn't stop worrying about them, he'd commiserated with Dad, just because they'd grown up.
When Blair's name had come up as a suspect in a murder case, Sullivan told my dad, and when Blair ended up in Tennessee, in a small-town holding cell, that information was passed to Dad, too. When Blair and I returned to Cascade and Bergman was arrested, Sullivan told my father Blair and I were back, even though he knew Blair was in protective custody and that information was on a need to know basis.
Sullivan swore that he had no idea that Dad had arranged a hit on Blair. He wasn't lying. He was absolutely sick about his part in Dad's actions. He told me that if I wanted to press charges against him, he wouldn't fight me.
I'd told him I wouldn't. I told him I forgave him. Anyway, Sullivan had punished himself more than a tongue lashing or pursuing charges against him would have accomplished. Besides,I was sure any accusations I made would be swept under the rug by the upper brass, even if Sullivan was ready to take his lumps.
Blair told me I'd given my Karma a real boost by letting my feelings of frustration and anger with Sullivan's meddling go. I'd rolled my eyes at him, but yeah. I had let that shit go. The Sandburg influence at work, I told him.
The sound of a car approaching had me checking my watch. Simon's car pulled up on the street, lights turning off, and he got out, stretching.
I walked over to him and we made small talk, me asking about how his new job was going, until Steven's sleek silver Porsche rolled up and parked behind Simon's black Ford Explorer. Once Steven joined us, the conversation shifted to where Dad's estate was at in the probate process.
Blair was running late, to nobody's surprise. We didn't go inside because without the ringmaster, there wasn't anything much to do.
Just as I was reaching for my cell phone to find out where he was, I heard the asthmatic wheeze of the wreck he called his car in the distance.
"He's coming. I can hear his car puttering three streets over."
We all smiled at each other, amused at how Blair invariably would fall in love with some relic of a classic car and turn a blind eye to its faults, like an engine on its last legs and more Bondo than paint on the body.
Simon just shook his head when the red 1966 AMC Marlin with only one working headlight parked behind my truck.
"Hasn't he gotten that fixed yet? I'm tempted to give him a ticket myself."
I chuckled. "I offered to buy a new headlight for him, but he won't let me. He's saving up the money he's making from the tutoring jobs Stoddard's sent his way to pay to get it fixed. He's made an appointment at a garage for next Tuesday, since he'll be working tomorrow and Friday doing tutoring. Midterms for spring quarter are coming up, plus quite a few of his kids have research papers due."
"He doesn't tutor on the weekends?" Steven asked.
"These are undergrads. Weekends are sacred unless it's finals week."
Blair's car door opened with a groan and I made a mental note to squirt some more WD-40 on the hinges. Blair got out, waved at us, and started hauling out bags of stuff.
We moved towards him to lend a hand.
This was going to be his show now.
~oo~oo~oo~oo~