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Jim did not like finding out he’d been wrong. But here he was, faced with indisputable proof that there were some major flaws with his thought process.
Sandburg spent a ton of time at the university. Poured himself into the work he did there, stayed up til all hours preparing for classes and writing on his thesis and reading all the ridiculous materials he was supposed to read. And he did it all with such joy. He’d come home and regale Jim, over dinner or the occasional stakeout, with stories of what this professor said or that student did or this disaster in the library or that upcoming senior recital. The kid loved what he did, seemed to really love the whole environment.
So Jim had at some point assumed that the school was filled with the same kind of wild-haired, bouncy, bright-grinning, quick-talking, peace-loving, overly-excitable, sloppy-dressed, out-of-the-box thinkers that Jim currently had living at his loft. Figured that Rainier University was basically a colony of Blair Sandburgs exclaiming cheerily over cultural stuff and excitedly writing long-winded reports no one else understood and calling everybody “Man” all the time. It was one of the reasons he avoided the place like the plague. It was also one of the reasons he thought he’d never have to worry about anything happening to the kid there.
Not. So.
Ironically, Blair had been the one to call it in. He’d gone to a meeting with one of his students’ advisors to find the man unconscious and tied up with what looked like a bomb ticking away at his feet and the word BOOM spray-painted in large, red letters on the wall behind him.
“We’re on our way, Chief. Get out of there.” Because it went without saying, right?
“Cool, man. Oh, hey. Seymour’s coming around. See you in a few, Jim.”
“Blair? Hey. Are you listening? Get out of there. Right now. You hear me?” Oh, he’d heard him. Jim knew he’d heard him. But there had been clumsy fumbling and the call had been dropped.
When he got to the building just a few minutes later, it was already evacuated. He went in as the officers began setting up a perimeter outside, bomb squad captain Joel Taggart at his side. They went into that office, and there Sandburg was. Sitting cross-legged up on the desk, his back to the door, talking easily with a red-faced, terrified man bound up in the chair.
Sandburg had looked over his shoulder as they burst into the room, eyes a little brittle, lines of tension in his face from the difficulty of keeping that smile pasted firmly in place. “Hey. It’s okay. I mean, we still have six whole minutes. Hi, Joel.” And as an aside to the bound man, “Joel’s completely the best at this kinda thing, man. We’re practically home free here.” His voice had been calm. Upbeat. If Jim hadn’t been able to hear his heart fluttering in his chest or see the fine tremors running through him, he might’ve been convinced the anthropology student was every bit the confident bystander.
There had been a part of Jim that wanted to grab that stupid little fool off the desk and strangle him with one of the weird, ancient-looking tribal bows hanging on the wall. As it was, it only took Taggart about 3.8 seconds to figure out that the bomb at Professor Gerald Seymour’s feet was in fact a fake. Clock parts and pottery clay.
The moment the all-clear was given and a blubbering Seymour was being cut loose and handed tissues, Jim had Sandburg by the arm and marched him none-too-gently out to the hall with a short, angry, “Talk to you a second, Chief?” that could not have been confused with an actual request at all.
Sandburg allowed himself to be towed, but he hadn’t appreciated it. “Ow. Jim. Jim, ow…”
Jim released the arm with enough force to bump the kid back into the wall. “‘Get out of there, Sandburg.’ You remember hearing me say that? Small, simple words. Not a real hard line of logic to follow.”
There had been chin tapping and general, straight-faced, unrepentant sarcasm. “Now that you mention it, I do recall hearing something vaguely similar-sounding…”
“And?”
“And Seymour was freaking out, Jim.” The sarcasm dissolved into passionate hand gestures and flailing. “Like he wasn’t breathing right or anything. Looked like he was about to have a coronary by the time I got everybody out of the building, man! I couldn’t just leave him alone to stroke out before the bomb squad even showed up. I checked the timer, and we still had time. Besides,” he’d rolled his eyes, “obviously the bomb was a fake…”
Jim shook his head in disbelief and asked flatly, “You’re really gonna try to sell me a line right now about you knowing the bomb was faked?”
He smiled an entirely charming salesman smile and pointed at Jim with both index fingers. “I’ll give you a great deal on it.”
There hadn’t been many days up to that point when Jim hadn’t wanted to punch the kid’s lights out. But he’d yet to experience it to quite that degree. Because this wasn’t Blair being a victim of someone else’s plot or Blair being some innocent caught in the crossfire or Blair just cluelessly following along behind Jim into something sticky. This was Blair Sandburg, anthropology student, teaching fellow, and police observer choosing to play some kind of hero, and that kind of attitude would get him killed a lot quicker than the already overdeveloped ability he had of finding trouble wherever he went.
It had bothered Jim. Because he didn’t just want to punch the kid’s lights out. He also wanted to make sure that the kid never got his lights punched out by anyone, and that was going to be a whole lot more difficult if Sandburg made a habit of walking up to sit cross-legged in front of a ticking time bomb that, for all he knew, someone could have detonated remotely!
Jim had just stared at him. The wide blue eyes, the faltering, hopeful smile, the forever-disheveled curls, the ebbing tremors, the innocent blinking. The kid had been scared. He could pretend like he hadn’t, but the kid had most definitely been scared. And it would’ve been a whole lot easier to ream him out if Jim hadn’t noticed. And it would’ve been a whole, whole lot easier to ream him out if Jim hadn’t been scared, too. “Yeah, well. We’ll talk about it later,” he’d threatened.
They hadn’t.
Actually, embarrassingly, “later” consisted of the anthropologist talking him into helping to make something called homemade pandan rice cream. Rice cream. Seemed like that shouldn’t even be a thing that existed. And also, “What the heck is pandan, and why is it so green?”
But they’d made it and put it in the freezer overnight and had it for breakfast the next morning because “Come on, Jim,” and “Please Jim?” and “You’re gonna love this, man, I promise,” and “Please Jim?” So Jim Ellison had had rice cream for breakfast and wondered what had become of his life, and, blast it all, the stupid, frozen, absurdly green stuff was delicious.
The investigation at the school hadn’t taken much time actually. A couple days. But it was a real eye opener. Not the case itself. The case itself was pretty straightforward, if sad. They’d asked around, talked to a lot of faculty and students. It actually helped that Sandburg had an inside track. Go figure. Eventually they were led to a linguistics undergrad who’d had a bone to pick with Seymour over something trivial like an argument over a paper or a grade or something like that. The kid was bright but too wild and apparently lacking the social grace to know the difference between a college prank and felony assault. They were able to link him to the fake bomb components, he confessed, and that was that. Laid to rest everyone’s fears of the Seymour situation escalating to some kind of mad bomber rampage. Just a simple, regrettable case of a smart kid being really incredibly stupid.
So while the case was nothing to write home about, the eye opener came in the form of spending time at Rainier University with one Blair Sandburg. Mostly the eye opener came in the form of realizing that this small community—or “subgroup” as Sandburg would probably call it—was not at all like Jim had thought it would be. The detective could cite a dozen cases in their short investigation in which Sandburg would begin to spout off about whatever…Sandburgian thing he had to spout off about, and whoever they were talking to—teacher, student, administrator, whoever—would respond with exactly the same range of reactions as Jim saw every day at the precinct.
Eye rolling. Polite feigned interest. The occasional fond indulgence or charmed fascination. Blank stares. Heck, some of these university types were better at blowing the kid off than Simon was. Bottom line, Jim didn’t see a world of long hair and pierced ears and tattered denim and colors and life and spark and a woeful inability to sit still. He saw a world of rules and order and brown tweed and decorum and tradition and frowning disapproval and mostly an academic pandemic of bowing in reverence to the status quo.
And here, the final piece of indisputable proof that Jim Ellison’s assumptions had been all out of sync with reality, there was the kid in Seymour’s office getting torn a new one behind closed doors.
After everything with the bomb prank and the bravery and the close, tight investigation, the professor had “invited” Sandburg to his office for a “conversation.” Jim was polite. Jim waited outside in the hallway, sitting on a smooth cherry bench, absently watching people who looked nothing at all like his partner going by and seeing to their own business. Mostly though, Jim shamelessly eavesdropped.
“I’ve seen a great many students come and go with a great many research proposals and methods. But never in all my academic career have I seen such blatant unprofessionalism or disregard for the rules of conduct during the data gathering for a doctoral thesis.” Jim couldn’t see the professor’s face of course. But Seymour’s face sounded red.
“Well…” Sandburg got out that one word, directed at the floor, and Seymour went off again, a bunch of loud-mouthed, scholarly-sounding drivel about Sandburg’s sloppiness.
Seymour wasn’t one of Blair’s advisors or on his dissertation committee. The man wasn’t even privy to the kid’s real thesis subject. The guy thought Sandburg was writing on the “closed society” thing or “thin blue line” angle or whatever it was that was he was telling people these days. But here this professor was, tearing into the young man like he somehow had a stake or a say in any of it.
They’d worked pretty closely with Seymour the couple of days since the incident. And Jim had sensed the condemnation coming from the man at Sandburg’s heavy involvement in the casework itself. Jim hadn’t really understood it then. He was only just starting to get it now as Seymour prattled on.
“For heaven’s sake, you’re violating the primary goal of the researcher! It is yours to watch and study, not to barge your way into the machine and affect its very inner workings!”
Jim couldn’t understand that. Blair hadn’t done anything wrong. All he’d ever wanted to do was help. Seymour hadn’t been so ready to complain right after the kid stayed with him for the duration of the bomb scare.
He frowned. He didn’t like this guy yelling at his partner. It was one thing when Simon did it—the yelling thing. For one thing, when it was Simon, it was usually both of them getting yelled at, and they usually deserved it. For another thing, Simon, though he’d be loath to admit it, cared about the observer, and somehow that made it different.
On the other side of the door, Sandburg’s voice was calm and steady, and there was the rustle of hands being shoved into jean pockets. “Well…” There was a pause as the kid likely expected to be interrupted again. Surprisingly, he was allowed to continue. So he did. “Not that it’s really any of your…concern, but I knew when I took on the project that in order to gain access to unfettered group dynamics, I’d have to…”
And there was the expected interruption. “You’re even living with that detective! Imagine my surprise when that came to my attention! Living with him! And as far as your status within the police department, you are not only observing, but, for some reason I cannot fathom, consulting on actual cases! Disregarding the disturbing nature of the work and what it would mean for anyone involved should you find yourself in a real, volatile situation—…”
“I hear caring in there somewhere.” The interjection was blithe and quick and expected to be ignored. And it was.
“…everything about what you’re doing is invalidating every piece of data you record as you’re recording it! You’ve obliterated your objectivity, Sandburg! This isn’t some high school project or some cop ride-along show for the purpose of entertainment. This is your doctoral thesis, something you will have to own and defend, something that will be attached to your name when it is inevitably torn to pieces as you stand there looking on!”
Jim felt his jaw muscle twitch. Who did this man think he was?
Sandburg’s heartbeat stayed a calm, steady rhythm. Totally unbothered by some uninformed fool being completely condescending about everything Sandburg was working really hard for. He sounded resigned and even a little amused. Mostly he sounded like he didn’t care at all about the opinion of one man he had no respect for. Good for you, kid. “Well, don’t worry. My name can take it. Appreciate…whatever this has been. If there’s nothing else…” Footsteps, heading for the door.
“You need to detach yourself from this project, Mr. Sandburg. And you certainly need to detach yourself from that detective. If you want any hope of defending your dissertation, you must pull back.”
The hand that had made it to the doorknob froze. There it was. A quick spike in the previously unbroken heart rate. A short exhale. The sound of a nerve being struck. Then the young anthropology student turned to face the professor. “You’re right. Mm, well, about one thing anyway. As I am already aware, I will have to defend my dissertation.” And Jim expected a surge of words to come spewing forth, defending, explaining, educating, and most of all, proving his point. Instead there were only four words, and they were flat and final and unimpressed. “But not to you.” There was a beat as he let that sink in. “Good day, sir.” He started to go, and once again turned back, his voice still somehow sounding polite. “Oh, and also? You’re wrong about everything else you said. That is all.”
Seymour’s voice called out to him again, smug and annoyed and superior. “And when your committee finds your research reeking of a self-indulgent attitude and made completely irrelevant by a gross saturation of the observer effect?”
“The only thing my research might reek of is vanilla,” Sandburg shot back, ridiculously. “And maybe a subtle hint of lavender. Eucalyptus. Possibly cinnamon. But that is only because I occasionally like to burn scented candles, and those are the ones that don’t bother my cop roommate. Because I’m considerate.”
Jim heard the sigh and the sound of skin against a starched collar as the man shook his head. Seymour’s voice stayed quiet this time but swelled with derision. “Is it really just an integral part of who you are that you must invariably disappoint everyone with whom you come into contact?”
There wasn’t even a hesitation. “Definitely.” Then the doorknob was turning, and Sandburg was leaving, heart rate only slightly elevated and face utterly unperturbed. He closed the door behind him and looked at Jim sitting on the bench. His eyelashes fluttered and he made a quick, goofy little wince face. “Don’t suppose there’s a chance you didn’t hear…every part of that?”
Jim shrugged a shoulder. “There’s always a chance,” he offered.
Blair’s chin dropped to his chest with a heavy sigh. “Thought not.” Then his head bounced up and he was looking right at Jim’s face like nothing had ever happened. “You ready to go?”
Jim looked at him standing there. Just Sandburg. Just unique. And not only unique in the middle of a police station filled with cops or on the street trying to help his Sentinel put some psycho away. But apparently unique in his own world, too. Unique unto himself. “You really don’t fit in anywhere, do you.” It wasn’t even a question. Just a quiet thought. An odd, internal musing that somehow, as too often happened with this weird—unique, whatever—kid, found its way past all his carefully constructed barriers and into the light of day.
The heart inside that chest skipped, and only for one brief, barely-there second, there was a look of shock and deep, deep hurt. Jim thought, painfully, that it was the way a man’s face looks the moment a bullet he never saw coming rips its way into his chest. But then blue eyes flickered down toward the floor, and a smile that would never reach them was forced. “Guess not.” Even through the forced brightness, the voice wavered a tiny bit. The smile was visibly cranked up another excruciating notch. “Part of my mystifying, nomadic charm.” Every sign of hurting and sadness was scrubbed away in a moment with the ease of too many years’ conditioning. “Now come on, man. Let’s get outta here. I’m so hungry.”
He turned away and walked, still talking, never giving a pause to wonder whether the Sentinel would hear him. “Hey, my car’s at the station. You can just drop me off, and I’ll meet you back at your place. Oh, and you’re in luck. My night to cook. Basically your life is about to change. I don’t want to give anything away, man, but I do want to prepare you because I’ve been working on this recipe for years, and the absolute perfection of the combination of flavors you are about to experience has been known to make grown men cry. Not like silent, stoic, just-saw-the-Grand-Canyon-for-the-first-time, man tears either. We’re talking full out blubbering. Like a little girl. I mean, I don’t want to oversell this…but it would be impossible to oversell this.”
Sandburg kept up a running commentary as he led the way to Jim’s truck, and Jim followed and let the words wash over him, absently listening for any subtle signs that the happy chatter was anything other than what it seemed. There were none. The kid’s voice sounded like it usually did—all energy and life and confidence and exotic color.
Jim felt something a lot like guilt creep into his chest, and it frustrated him. He wasn’t sure why he’d said those words out loud, but he knew he didn’t mean them how they’d sounded. It wouldn’t be so bad if Sandburg had only been insulted. An insulted Sandburg would’ve been very vocal about what he thought of Jim’s words. The kid had no qualms whatsoever about getting in Jim’s face when he thought the Sentinel needed a good reality check. Blair might be a little guy, but it took a lot to really intimidate him. He’d seen the kid face down guys a lot bigger and stronger without hardly batting an eye, and Jim had long since accepted that Blair Sandburg could not now nor would ever be bullied into anything by Jim’s size or his need for control or even the patented glare that always worked so well on everyone else. Heck, Blair bossed Jim around almost as much as Jim bossed him.
So if this had just been a matter of insult, Jim would’ve been allowed to soothe a ruffled, feisty, sharp-tongued young man with some quick, easy words about how that wasn’t what he’d meant.
But it wasn’t insult. It was injury. Jim had hurt him. Unthinkingly. Right after the kid got stung by a snobbish, contemptuous colleague. And the only thing that snob said that seemed to have pierced Sandburg’s shell at all was the idea that the young anthropologist shouldn’t be allowed to be friends with his research subject. Hadn’t reacted to the condescending tone or the smears against Sandburg’s name or his research methods or his intelligence. Nope, he’d gotten all protective and bristly when the man basically told him to stay away from Jim. And then Jim, like an idiot, went and gave him a great reason why he should do just that. So then, as with all the things that hurt his complicated roommate, Sandburg held it in so close that nobody, not even a freaking Sentinel, could see.
He dropped the kid at his car and told him he’d be another couple hours finishing up some work at his desk.
“Perfect, man. I still gotta go by the store and grab some supplies for dinner.” He slammed the truck door and tapped the frame of the open window. “Come hungry. Because seriously. Ambrosia.” He turned, shouldering his backpack and glanced back. “That’s ‘nectar of the gods’ in layman’s terms, man.”
“I know that,” Jim shot back, a bit too gruff, more because of his own frustrations than the idea of the younger man assuming he didn’t know what ambrosia meant.
Sandburg pointed at him with a grin. “Not yet you don’t.” Then he was gone, bouncing his way to his car.
Jim went and parked his truck, thinking absently and resignedly about whatever weird, foreign concoction he’d have to try to force down for dinner and hoping it wouldn’t come down too hard on his senses. He’d eat it, of course. Blair was too excited about it for him not to, and there was no way in the world he wanted to further disappoint the kid now. He wondered about that. Sure he was pretty used to an excited Sandburg, but he wondered at how it was the young anthropologist would be so happy and chatty over something so inane right after being gut-punched by his roommate.
Sandburg had been quick to let him off the hook, change the subject, and get on with the normal. Really, Jim wanted nothing more than to take a cue from him and let it go. Or at least, he wanted to want that. But for some reason he just felt too wretchedly guilty. He reasoned with himself that if Sandburg was that upset, he wouldn’t have dismissed the thing so immediately, smoothed over it like it hadn’t happened, but his mind wasn’t buying the excuse.
Well, shoot. I’ll just figure out a way to make it up to the kid later. Springing for dinner some night or maybe a couple Jags tickets or, heck, letting the kid get by with putting his feet on the furniture once or twice. After all, ‘actions speak louder than words,’ right? Right? He liked that comforting phrase. It made a great excuse to avoid saying anything close to what he was feeling. He was a man of action. Words always left him floundering.
Problem was, much as he liked the old adage, he’d never been able to fully believe it fit every circumstance. He knew what it was to have hurtful words clanging around in his head, haunting, relentless, ready to push him down the moment he thought he’d made a little progress in pulling himself up. The words he heard were usually in his father’s voice. Controlling and overbearing and always ready to tell him what he was and what he wasn’t. There was a big part of him that felt almost physically ill at the thought that there might be some words like that floating around Sandburg’s head in a voice that sounded too much like Jim’s.
You really don’t fit in anywhere, do you. What had he been thinking?
He was distracted as he finished up his report and squared everything away with Simon at the precinct. His boss had looked at him with an eyebrow raised over the frame of his glasses and made an inquiry Jim only half-remembered over the detective’s inattentiveness, and Jim had deflected inattentively.
Everything in his head told him to let it go. And yet he couldn’t. It was so stupid. By the time he made it back to the loft, he was thinking, with dread, that he might actually have to apologize to Blair Sandburg. Because he might have hurt the kid’s feelings. Apologize. Not so long ago, he would’ve happily died first. What had become of him?
When he opened the door, the kitchen and surrounding area were absent one Guide. Jim dropped his keys in the basket beside the door, sniffing cautiously in fear of whatever Sandburg was making for dinner. He smelled charcoal and smoke most prominently, and his nerve endings fired with adrenaline until Sandburg popped in from the balcony where the grill was, grinning like the proverbial cat. Jim wondered absently if they might be eating that proverbial cat for dinner.
“Hey!” Sandburg greeted. “Dinner’s gonna be done in about ten minutes I think. Nice timing.”
“Great. You want to tell me what we’re having?”
“Isn’t it enough that I’m doing the cooking? What happened to not looking a gift horse in the mouth, man?”
Jim couldn’t help it. “Is that what we’re having? Gift horse?”
Sandburg giggled right out loud. The kid thought Jim was funny. Jim had always had something of a mouth on him. The snark and the biting sarcasm were a pretty ingrained part of who he was. But no one had ever seemed to think Jim was as laugh-out-loud funny as Blair Sandburg did. Jim wasn’t sure what that meant. “Nope. Good guess, though.”
“All right, give. What’s the special tonight, Wolfgang?”
“Well,” he said with high eyebrows, “on tonight’s menu, we have ground camel patties lightly breaded in spiced almond flour with a rich lime and pistachio nut chutney and topped with sliced, boiled snake eggs. Wrapped in cured eel’s flesh. On a sesame seed bun, naturally.” His wide smile was utterly innocent and so very, very proud. “I call them Sandburgers.”
For a split second, there was horror. Then the Sentinel took a more careful sniff and was undeceived. “You. Filthy. Liar.”
Sandburg cracked up brightly at his flat, dry tone. And amid the laughter there was pointing and the token “Oh, man. Your face!” and “Boiled snake eggs? Seriously?”
Blair had grilled out burgers. Burgers. Made of beef. Seasoned with salt. Just regular burgers. High quality meat grilled to perfection, and that wasn’t all. He’d grilled corn on the cob and an aluminum-foil-wrapped packet of mushrooms and onions and summer squashes cooked in real butter. The most exotic thing about the meal was the sweet pineapple Sandburg had cut up and thrown in the freezer so the chunks were pleasantly chilled and delicious.
After they’d sat down at the table, Jim raised an eyebrow. “So the recipe you’ve been perfecting for years is…hamburgers?”
Jim tried not to wince as Sandburg talked around a mouthful of beef. “When you begin to weep, don’t try to fight it, man. Just let it all out. I won’t think less of you.”
You never do, do you.The meal was wonderful. Flavorful without anything that would be overwhelming to a Sentinel’s sensitive taste buds. Smoky and buttery with hints of spices that were so subtle it would’ve taken an effort to identify them. Blair generally didn’t eat much in the way of red meat. Jim wondered about it, but didn’t ask. Was this like a comfort food thing?
Sandburg sat across from him and talked about the deal he’d gotten on hormone-free beef and the home-grown vegetables and told a hilarious story Jim only half listened to about some boyhood mischief that had involved eight pounds of raw meat, the sail off a decommissioned catamaran, and an unbearable, practically handlebar-mustachioed landlord.
“Jim?”
Jim looked up and realized Sandburg had finished his story, and he wasn’t sure how long they’d been sitting in silence. The young grad student looked at him, slightly concerned, and then was momentarily distracted by having to lick a trickle of butter from his corn on the cob off his wrist before it soaked into his thin, leather bracelet. Then the blue eyes were back on him and innocent, and sometimes the kid just looked so young.
“Are you okay, man? You’re kind of a statue.”
Jim nodded. “Yeah. I’m fine.” Are you okay, man? Blair had asked him that often since they met, more often than anyone else. And it wasn’t an irritated, Hey, what is wrong with you? kind of question. It was Sandburg really wanting to know if something was the matter, wanting to help, and every time Jim could remember Sandburg asking if he was okay, it was when he wasn’t.
The dark blue eyes narrowed slightly, evaluating, searching, suspecting. But in the end, Sandburg let it go and smiled. “Cool. Well, I cooked. That means you’ve got cleanup duty, right? That’s the rule, right?”
“That’s the rule.”
“I love that rule. Have I told you that? That is the one rule I can really get behind. Sweet. Well, I’m going to leave you to do all this work by yourself. Enjoy. I still have some papers to grade for my class tomorrow. So I’m adjourning to the living room. Where I will not be helping you clean up anything at all.” Delighted and smug and somehow, for no reason that made any sense to Jim, grateful. He stood from his chair, wiping his hands on his napkin and leaving it crumpled on his plate. Then he popped a big hunk of pineapple in his mouth and grinned a self-satisfied little grin before turning and heading for the couch on the far wall parallel to the windows.
“Hey, Chief.”
Blair turned back, still chewing pineapple, an eyebrow raised.
“Dinner was good. Thanks.”
The mouthful was swallowed, and Jim almost had to turn down his vision to avoid being momentarily blinded by the answering smile. “Aw, man. Now you’re gonna make me cry.” Then the anthropologist happily retreated to the couch, pulling his sock-clad feet up under him in accordance with the habit Jim had been as yet unable to rid him of, and hauling thick folders out of his old backpack. Glasses were pulled out of some pocket and pushed up on his downturned nose, and Blair went away to that place he went when he got totally absorbed in whatever he was reading.
He’d seen Blair spend hours that way. Perched so compactly on the couch, reading and scribbling notes and referencing textbooks and tapping his pen as his work gradually spread out around him to cover all available surfaces in the vicinity. Jim cleaned up their dinner mess, packing the leftovers in the fridge and cleaning their dishes, sending quick glances to his roommate every so often as he worked. He’d initially thought Blair Sandburg would be an easy puzzle to solve. Thought the bright, quirky kid would be simple. He wasn’t. But he sure liked to play simple, though.
It took a few more minutes to go out and clean off the grill, pull the cover back over it, all that. When he got back inside, the loft was clean and quiet with only the scratch of Blair’s pen on paper and the occasional thoughtful mumbles. Jim looked across to the other couch, the one in front of the TV. The one with the TV remote sitting so enticingly near. Would’ve been real easy. To sit down, turn on the TV, relax, ignore, forget. But he’d seen the kid’s face. Heard his heart even. Much as he hated it, much as he couldn’t even understand it, there was no turning back now.
With a sigh, he turned to Sandburg, scooped the folders and books off the seat next to him and sat down, plopping the pile on top of whatever Blair was working on in the kid’s lap. Blue eyes blinked, annoyed at having been interrupted, pulled so unceremoniously out of his own little zone. But when Jim sat down next to him, he looked over, and the annoyance quickly changed to curiosity. He slid his work things to the floor, his full attention on Jim’s face.
Jim took a deep breath. “Why did you stay with Seymour?” he asked all at once. “The other day, when he had that thing strapped to him…why’d you stay?”
“Man…” Sandburg whined in dubious understanding, pulling his glasses off and fiddling with them in his lap. “Am I about to get yelled at again?”
“I’m just asking.”
He was defensive of all things. “I don’t know. It just seemed like the thing to do I guess. Look, Jim, I know I’m supposed to listen to you when you tell me to do something, cop-to-civilian-wise. And it wasn’t that I thought you weren’t...”
“You did a good thing.”
Sandburg did an actual double take. The surprise was almost insulting. “I…what?”
“Paramedics said Seymour was right on the cusp of some kind of ‘cardiac event’ when they got there. If you hadn’t been there with him, talking to him, keeping him calm like you did, well… Could’ve had a Killing Mr. Griffin situation on our hands.”
“Oh.” Sandburg blinked a couple times, processing that. Then he looked sideways at Jim. “Killing Mr. Griffin, huh? Look who reads books.” A small grin teased the corners of his mouth.
Jim gave a somewhat threatening smirk, but wouldn’t be baited any further than that. “So why’d you do it, though? You don’t even like that guy. And he sure doesn’t like you.”
Blair’s eyes were back on his lap, and he was very much talking to the pair of glasses in his hands more than he was talking to Jim. “Well, while it’s true we’re not exactly…golf buddies, I didn’t want to see the guy…you know…explode. And besides, he was alone. There wasn’t anybody else. And he thought he was gonna die. It just wasn’t… I was… It…”
“It just seemed like the thing to do?” Jim offered.
“Yeah.” Blair sent him a quick, grateful glance and nodded.
Jim nodded along with him. And here was the part he needed to say. “I think that’s part of why you don’t fit.”
There was a tiny, almost imperceptible wince, and Sandburg wouldn’t look at him. Busied himself with playing with his glasses. He did say, “Hm?” sort of half-interested, like he was resigned to hearing the rest of Jim’s thoughts. Resigned to being told again how he just didn’t fit.
“You’re just built differently.”
“Is that a short joke?”
“What? No.” All right, Ellison. Don’t chicken out now. “I’m saying you’re wired different. Probably why, on a campus where everybody else is running away from the bomb, you’re the man running toward it. Didn’t matter that it was…kind of a stupid thing to do. Didn’t matter that the guy in danger was someone who would never, on his best day, do the same for you. Didn’t even matter that all you could do when you got there was let that poor fool know he wasn’t alone and ease his fears just a little bit. It’s not a huge wonder not a lot of people get you, kid. You’re made of completely different stuff.”
Sandburg’s mouth was hanging open. But he still managed to get some words in. “Is this a speech? Is that what’s happening right now? Holy cow, you’re giving me a speech.”
Jim ignored him. He had to if he wanted to get any of this out right. “And it’s the same with this Sentinel thing. I had everybody else running from me. I was set to blow, and I knew it; it was just a matter of when and where. And I’m shouting at the world, sending everybody running, going crazy just waiting for the crazy to happen. And just like that, you’re running toward me. Like a maniac.”
“I think you’re over-dramatizing…”
“What I said earlier, about you not fitting—I think maybe you took it wrong. Like it was a bad thing. It wasn’t.”
Blair sat cross-legged next to him, about as still as he ever got, not saying anything. Just looking at his glasses as he turned them over in his hands. Thoughtful. And there was something about a still, thoughtful Sandburg that sucked Jim’s thoughts right out of his mouth.
“‘Cause you know…I never fit either. And not in a heroic sense.”
“You?” Blair took issue with that immediately. “But everyone respects you. And you’re really good at your job. Everyone knows that.”
“Yeah, I learned to blend in. Learned it really well. But I never fit. Maybe it was the Sentinel thing or maybe it’s just me; I don’t know. But all the time growing up, then in the military, then as a cop, no matter what I did, I always felt like I was hiding. I hated that.” There had always been this terrible distance, even among his friends, even with Carolyn. And he’d worked so hard at not letting it show. But it was always there, and he’d never felt he was as good at hiding it as he hoped.
He kept his voice flat and honest and casual and like none of this was any kind of big deal at all. “But then you show up, and you sure as heck don’t fit, but you don’t hide from anybody. Not from guys like Seymour, not from guys like Simon, not even from guys like me. You just…are you. Unique.” Long hair and jungle music and with an answer for just about everything. “And…really freaking annoying sometimes. But it’s nice, though. Most of the time. Sometimes. Because now we got this partnership thing going with you helping me with my senses and all that, but too because all the time you’re teaching me how to do this Sentinel thing, you’re showing me how to do unique well at the same time. And that’s…that’s been a valuable thing to me. I think.”
There was a quiet smile from the guy beside him on the couch, and Jim heard him swallow as he stayed focused on that pair of glasses.
Jim rolled his eyes. “Hey, I’m not being sappy or anything like that…” he said gruffly.
“No, man. Of course not,” Blair immediately agreed, and still the blue eyes were smiling.
“It’s not sentimental. It’s not even personal. I’m just telling you I appreciate it.”
“Oh, I read you,” he nodded. “Completely.”
“You look like you think I’m about to hug you. I’m not. There’s no hugging. No hugging in the loft. That’s a new rule. No, that’s always been the rule.”
“I agree. I wouldn’t stand for it if you tried.”
“Good.”
“Great. Glad you got that off your chest, man. That was…some serious…”
“Just shut your mouth, Sandburg.”
He held up his hands. “I’m not even saying anything.”
They sat in silence for a few moments, and Jim rubbed his eyes. Wasn’t fair for the kid to look so…the way he looked. Like some kind of freaking puppy he’d brought in out of the rain or something. It was disgusting. Jim went to change the subject. “Hey.”
“Yep?”
“What was Seymour talking about before?” Really he wanted to know.
“Uh…when?”
“In his office. The ‘observer effect’ he was so worked up over. What is that about? Is that really gonna be a problem for you when you do your paper?”
“Meh. The observer effect is basically about when an observer alters the behavior of whatever he’s studying by observing it. They talk about it a lot in physics and psychology and…really a lot of the sciences. It’s the idea that your findings can’t be accurate because they don’t reflect a subject’s conduct in its natural state.”
He waved the notion away and went on, “It’s not going to be a real issue in my research. Don’t worry. I’m an anthropologist. I don’t study little particles in space or something like that. I study people. That’s my whole deal. And the thing about people is…they’re messy. Emotional. Interactive. They’re not governed purely by science and logic and order. Anthropologists understand that. Usually. Living among the people they’re studying is an anthropologist’s dream come true. I think Seymour was mostly worried about my objectivity.”
Jim considered that. The observer having an effect on the observed. He looked at the young man sitting next to him. The young man who had, with lots of noise and very little fanfare, entrenched himself rather easily in Jim’s life and home and work. Did Blair really have that much of an effect on Jim? The way he acted, the way he thought? The answer was pretty strikingly obvious actually. “Well,” he said after awhile, shrugging a shoulder. “How’s your objectivity doing?”
He slid his glasses back onto his face and scrunched his nose. “Um, I’m completely professional, man, come on,” he said, and all the loftiness and incredulousness was very much pretend. Then he sighed and dropped the act and picked up one of the folders he’d been grading. “It’s pretty well shot. Don’t tell my committee.”
Jim grinned, reaching out to ruffle the wild curls as he stood up. Another thought occurred to him as he made his way over to the other couch and the blessed promise of TV and no more talking. He turned back before he knew what he was doing, and he was speaking again, uncomfortably. “Hey, you know… You don’t quite fit in with anybody. That’s just…pretty much a given. Doesn’t mean you don’t…you know…belong anywhere.” He almost grimaced. It was probably the sappiest thing he’d ever said to another guy, and somehow he’d had no choice. Blast that hippie.
Sandburg blinked at him, slow and surprised. Then he ducked his head, smiling shyly. He took his glasses off again, folding them and placing them on the arm of the couch. When he looked up, there was mischief glowing in among all the gratitude. “Oh man,” he said, like Jim had gone and done it now. “Great. Now we gotta hug. We gotta hug like men.” He stood up, that expression he wore when he was about to be annoying just because he found a certain sadistic joy in being annoying. He held out his arms. “Bring it in, big guy.”
Jim held up an index finger. “You stay away from me, Junior.”
“Hugging it out. Right here and now. Sensitive males of the 90s.” He started forward, and Jim retreated, darting behind the couch, keeping it between himself and the advancing anthropologist. “Come on. It’ll make you feel better.”
“I will punch you in the face if you get anywhere near me.” Probably anyone else would’ve believed he was dead serious. Sandburg only grinned wider, and it made Jim want to grin because the kid would never have been comfortable enough to tease him like this even a month ago. Frankly, that made Jim feel like he’d somehow managed to do something right.
“I hear what you really mean, you big, ridiculous marshmallow.”
“You are an impossible person. And I’m going to kill you. Go. Shoo. Go sit down. Back over there,” Jim waved his hand toward the couch, glaring and threatening and laughing internally at the look on the kid’s face.
Sandburg held up his hands in surrender. “All right, fine. Fine. But don’t think I don’t know about your sensitive side, Super Cop. It’s going in my thesis. A whole chapter. ‘Tough Guy Sentinels and Their Soft, Gooey Centers.’” He turned and stepped back toward his original seat on the couch, and Jim relaxed a fraction as the kid kept muttering. “Honestly. Guy’s like a freaking…Moon Pie.”
There was a slight pause. Then in the next second, there was a whirling cyclone of hair and arms and legs hurling itself toward Jim, jumping up onto the couch and leaping over the back of it. Jim spun around and dodged the assault, going for the door and escape. He heard Sandburg hit the floor in his stocking feet and then roll gracelessly with the momentum. He didn’t wait to hear the kid scramble up off his knees before he was out the door and running down the hall. It was only half a second before Blair Sandburg was in pursuit behind him, huffing and laughing and shouting and being an unpredictable little ball of energy.
Jim put on a burst of speed and ducked into the stairwell, climbing upward toward the roof, where there would be no escape. What a stupid plan, running up to the roof. Whenever people did that on TV or in the movies, he mocked them.
He took a moment to appreciate the intense absurdity of the entire situation he found himself in. He was running like a madman from a university graduate student who posed him absolutely no threat at all, all because that graduate student meant to give him a hug in order to irritate him. And he was a shield-carrying detective with the Major Crimes Unit of Cascade, Washington and a respected member of society, and he was running full out from this little nerdy guy, and he was grinning. Wildly. Nonsensically. And somehow, this was fun and seemed like a normal thing. He sprinted up the stairs, two at a time, hearing Sandburg puffing along below him, trying to keep up.
This is how brothers are, he heard in the quiet back corners of his own thoughts. Which he knew wasn’t true. He had a brother. It wasn’t like this.
This is how brothers are supposed to be. Without the competition and the rivalry and the constant, forced antagonism. Maybe? He brushed the thought away like a fly.
“I’m gonna bash your curly head in; you know that!” Jim called down.
“Then why you running?” Sandburg taunted up after him breathlessly.
Jim burst out into the late evening sun, up on the roof, slowing his steps with nowhere left to run and breathing hard. Knew he was about to get semi-violently hug-tackled. Knew he was probably going to have to wrestle the stupid kid down amid insults and protests and shouting, and already he was laughing at the inevitability of all of it. What a weird, different thing his life had become since he’d met this weird, different person. Since Blair Sandburg had signed on to be his observer.
The observer effect. That guy, Seymour, had about spat the term, like it was something foul and revolting. When Sandburg came barreling out the door like a wild thing ready to attack, battle cry and all, Jim found he disagreed.