Archive of Our Own

This Oops, also used as a way to try to get my brain going, is not as silly and cheerful as the others, but it's not horrific or anything, and does have its goofy moments. The next one will be more cheerful. This is the first thing of any significance I've written in a few months, and as with the others in the series, I just kind of blurted it in a couple of hours to a day--closer to a day in this case. No beta. No edit beyond spellcheck and a laconic readover. Be warned therefore. This whole series deals with a topic some may find touchy, having to do with current events (that's one reason I haven't written any more 'til now). Sadly, there was no way to change the topic in question; it's an integral plot point.

Thanks to all of you who like these weird little ditties and write to tell me so.

No sex, really, it's bleeped over. Rating for language.

This story is a sequel to: Oops IV and a Half: The Conscience of a Connor

Oops V: He Bore Himself With a Proud Humility

The blood was singing in Rafe's ears. It was not painful, but it had been enough to wake him up. Fuddled by sleep, he tried to figure out where he was and why he seemed to be on a head-down slant.

He recalled a deep sense of self-satisfaction at the fact he had not ruined the &%!*ing crepes after all, and that damage to the loft kitchen was minimal (a certain balding cop assured him it was possible to sand the scorch mark by the dining table out of the floor). There had followed much appreciation by the resident anthropologist and his partner, the certain balding cop, of Rafe's developing culinary prowess. Then came random trading of insincere insults over after-dinner cleanup, leading to generalized and indiscriminate towel-snapping and soapsud-flipping. Then the resident anthropologist had been double-teamed by his dinner companions via the use of a pair of salad tongs (a certain balding cop) and a well-thrown ice cube (Rafe). There had immediately followed a declaration of full-on war by said anthropologist. The three of them proceeded to perform a frantic three-way pinball-machine imitation around the apartment as said anthropologist and two cops, all whooping with hilarity, conducted battle in the theaters of the kitchen and living room with an assortment of improvised weapons. The temporary allies (i.e., Rafe and a certain balding cop) dissolved their mutual non-aggression pact when one party failed to respect a show of good faith on the part of his ally, citing the well-known "Hell, Rafe, you don't bend over in the middle of a water fight right in front of a man holding a seltzer bottle--hey, wait a minute, don't shake that, you're wasting a perfectly good beer--!" effect, which had brought many a lesser pact to an abrupt close; this resulted in a subsequent every-man-for-himself free-for-all, one of the kind that can wreck an apartment even when the participants aren't three fairly sizeable grown men.

Let's see...then there came the roughhousing chase up the stairs, led by the resident anthropologist, and the sequential dogpiling of each of the three individuals in question by both of the other two, via an improvised but effective trade-off system, for the purpose of clothing removal. Then came a multi-staged, mind-blowing carnal episode...and the most recent thing he remembered was lying around half-dead with a goofy smile on his face, listening to Jim purr in contentment and Blair giggle and sigh softly a couple of times as his thoughts amused him, as they all fell asleep.

So he was probably still at the loft, and--hold it.

"For crying out loud," he groaned in a sudden, humiliating flash of realization. He had somehow managed to wind up with his head stuck between the railing and the taut cable beneath it. His head was kind of snared in a downward direction because of the involvement of the edge of the bed. He could pull loose, but it wouldn't be comfortable. That explained the blood-in-the-ears noise. He was starting to get dizzy by this point.

Well, this was not the most comfortable way to emerge from the depths of a snug--not to mention smug--slumber that he'd ever encountered. He groped around. Blair was no longer in the middle of the large bed; but when Brian thrashed a bit more, trying to get his head the hell back on the right side of the guardrail without leaving any clumps of hair or portions of his face behind, he discovered that Blair was not actually missing; he had only relocated slightly. He was at the foot of the bed, under the covers. Which was why Brian had, as he deduced with his finely-honed investigative skills, been gradually inched upward on the mattress as both of them moved in their sleep. Jim had not been thusly inched, likely because he tended to crash out on his back and move about as much, over the course of the night, as the fallen, fossilized redwood he vaguely resembled. Rafe was a little more mobile, thus more vulnerable to the machinations of a chilly curled-up ball of humanity that was trying to get comfy between Jim and Rafe's feet and the foot of the bed. Rafe gathered that his own pillow, which was not in evidence, was lying on the floor outside Blair's room, though he didn't bother trying to look. Even if it weren't dark, he wouldn't see much but the patterns overfull blood vessels leave on your retinas when you've been making like a bat for too long.

"Grf..." he groped around with his left hand and encountered a nice big warm soft-skinned deltoid, which he proceeded to whack a few times. "Jim," he rasped. "I could use a hand here."

Jim galumphed around a little, not really waking, but muttering something that at least had Brian's name in it somewhere, which was a step in the right direction. Rafe whacked again, hard enough to make a resounding smack echo through the loft. "Jim!"

Jim jolted awake. "What! Uh, what, I'm up."

"Take a look. Could I get some help here?"

There was a pause, presumably while Jim's eyes focused in the dimness, and a sudden burst of snorts. "Brian, Christ! As far as I know, you're the only person alive who's ever been able to manage that."

"I had help. Our friend the poster child for perpetually thin blood is at the foot of the bed in a little shivering lump."

"He's...? Uh-oh."

"Uh-oh what?"

"He's--well, here." Jim cut off his explanation in favor of rendering aid to the inverted, and dragged himself close enough to help ease the passage of Brian's noggin back to the comfortable side of the railing. "Careful, don't leave an ear...he's down there because he's cold, obviously, which is because the power's off."

Brian swallowed and rubbed his throat a couple of times, simultaneously pulling his other arm out from under the covers to check the air temperature; he plopped to his back as the shivery, sparkly rush of blood draining back out of his head made him dizzy. "It's only a little chilly..."

"Good enough for Sandburg. Once we get to September, if Sandburg's sleeping up here, I have to set the furnace to come on at about one a.m. every night and stay on for an hour or so; it keeps it just warm enough that he doesn't end up like this. It's not a problem when he sleeps in his room, because he's got a couple of electric blankets, but those things keep me up; hum's too loud."

Brian's brows went up. "Must be a couple of way old electric blankets. He sleep up here much before, uh, before?"

"Sometimes, when his mom came to stay or whatever. He'd kind of snuffle his way underneath me occasionally if he was cold, or down to the foot of the bed like he's doing, but it's not usually much of a problem."

"Oh. You say the power's off?"

"You haven't spent enough nights here yet to tell right off, maybe. Listen."

Brian listened to the silence. "The fridge is off, but it doesn't run all the time anyway. Since you fixed the freon leak, at least..." he shook his head. "You're right, I guess I don't know what the various hums and rattles sound like around here. I thought you had gas heat, anyway."

"We do, but the timer switch is electric; the thermostat switch is a little crotchety, so we don't use it that much. I'll have to turn the furnace on with the manual and turn it off again later unless we can get the footwarmer down there sufficiently toasty on our own. Drag him back up and get him to lie in the bed like an actual human being, and I'll go see what the deal is." He rose, a bit effortfully, and took his robe off the desk chair.

"Right. Toss my pillow up when you get down there, could you?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah, sure." Jim tied the belt of his robe and started down the stairs.

"Jim?"

"Yeah?" Jim paused.

"Um, darkness? Reading labels on fuse boxes? Stairs? The safety courses Simon keeps volunteering MC to teach at the grade schools?"

"What are you babbling about?" Jim chuckled good-naturedly.

"Haven't you got a flashlight for just such emergencies?"

"Oh. Um, yeah, right, good idea," Jim muttered, went back around the bed and scrabbled around in the bedtable opposite the stairs side--the side Blair usually slept on when it was just the two of them catching z's upstairs; Jim had happened to end up there this evening--and pulled out a small black halogen handlight. He switched it on and started downstairs again at a fast scuttle.

Rafe eyed the empty air where Jim had just disappeared, wondering what was up, then shrugged and ducked under the covers, crawling down to the foot of the bed. Groping around, he located Blair's head; he wrestled through the tent of the tucked-in covers to reach it, and determined that it was facing him even though it was pitch dark under the damn comforter and Blair's hair was all over the place. He stroked the soft locks out of the way. "Hey. You. The bedbug."

"Mmp." A squirmel.

"You know you're about the biggest bedbug I've ever seen?"

"Mrp. Best lookin', too," Blair muttered indistinctly.

"Yeah, you got it all over a louse, Blair, I have to admit."

"Your face and my ass, Rafe."

"We did that already. Come on out; I'll warm you up. Jim's gone to do something about the heat. You're going to suffocate down here."

"Mlp." More squirmels.

"And so am I, for that matter. How do you stand this? I never thought high-thread-count percale could make me so claustrophobic." He got his arms around Blair, hands crossed on the other man's chest, and hauled him carefully toward free air. This produced a long, low sound of complaint from his sleepy burden, but no struggles. From what Jim had said, Blair was likely used to this kind of thing.

They heffalumped from darkness back into dimness, knocking Brian's newly-returned pillow into the floor. He made a long arm and got it back, then wrapped himself around the other man. "Poor widdle shiverin' baby Blair--"

Blair elbowed him in the gut. The breath left Rafe in a whoosh and he retaliated via going for Blair's midsection, which he had established earlier was an at least minor tickle zone on him. Blair muttered words to the effect of oh-no-you-don't and a thrashing, snickering wrestling match started up in the middle of the bed. In a few moments, Rafe, not wanting to rip out the covers and have to deal with Jim bitching long and loud when he came back upstairs, managed to wrap around Blair again and hold on, until the fact that he was no longer attacking, only defending himself, penetrated Blair's hilarity, and they lay there cackling and panting for a moment.

"You warm now?" Rafe grinned.

"Yeah," Blair laughed, "but not for long if we don't fix the covers."

"By all means, wouldn't wanna--"

The front door slammed. "Rafe! Get Sandburg up and get dressed, you've got to help me evacuate the building!"

"Ah, SHIT!" Rafe and Blair both said, leaping out of bed and frantically trying to locate clothing in the darkness.

Blair tripped in the covers and hit the floor. "Jim, it's freaking dark and you've got the flashlight--"

The flashlight, still lit, sailed over the railing and landed in the mussed bedcovers with a soft plop, its glow muted by blue sheet. "Hurry up!"

"Jim, what's the situation?" Rafe hollered, grabbing his shirt. His pants, fortunately, had dried, but there was still food and beer all over the shirt. Cursing, he threw it on the floor and gratefully accepted the sweater, apparently Jim's, that Blair thrust into his hand. 'One of these days,' Rafe thought, 'I really have to get around to getting some clothes over here.' "Did you find a diffuser or are you having symptoms?"

"I'm about to tell Simon the whole thing, throw me some jeans and get a move on--yeah, Simon, it's me. We need backup here at the loft--yeah, Rafe's here. Not yet. The building just lost power--yeah, the whole building, but none of the neighboring ones. When I headed down to the basement to check I found the diffuser. No, just sitting out there--and the power wasn't actually cut, by the way, the building master was just turned off...no, I didn't contaminate the scene. I figured some kind of wiring problem and somebody didn't know how to cut power to just their own place, and then I saw the diffuser...right, we're on it. I'll call you when we've got everybody--" he paused as a pair of shorts and his jeans landed on his head. He pulled them off, clenched the phone between his shoulder and ear and started getting into them. "--when we've got everybody out. Right." He let the phone fall to the kitchen counter and finished buttoning, found himself sloppily engulfed by his shoulder holster and pistol courtesy of Rafe, who was hopping past pulling his other shoe on. Blair shoved Jim's badge into his pocket at almost the same time.

"Thanks, guys. Okay, Blair, you take our floor, everybody up here knows you. Rafe, clip your badge onto your holster and take the second floor. I'll handle the ground, its closest to the diffuser. I've already gotten a few places cleared on the way up here."

"Right."

"Yeah, Jim. What's our cover story?" Rafe wondered.

"Power's out and we've got reports of smoke--standard procedure, clearing the building as a precaution in case of a wiring fire. Don't worry, most people here know me and Blair, they'll just assume you work with me."

"Well, good, because badge or no, I'm not the picture of Cascade's finest right at the moment."

"Ah, you look cute in Jim's sweater. Like a little kid in Daddy's clothes." Blair dodged the grab Rafe made for him, adroitly rounding the corner on the other side of the stairs, a mutter of "...paybacks are a bitch..." floating in the air behind him as Rafe and Jim started down the steps at high speed, Jim saying "C'mon, Rafe, we'll kill him later."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah..."

"That everybody?" Simon wanted to know, trudging up to Jim. "Y'know I was in the middle of a great dream..."

"So were we," Blair said glumly. He was leaning against the grill of the truck, next to Rafe, head on the taller man's shoulder. Jim had been using the radio inside the cab.

"Mmmph!" Simon waved both arms in a frantic get-it-away-from-me gesture. "Can the 'we' stuff, Sandburg! I'm not supposed to know about any of this, you know."

"Sorry, Simon," Blair smirked. He exchanged the smirk briefly with Rafe, who remained silent. Blair added "By the way, if anybody asks, our poker game ran late and Rafe was too beered up to drive." He elbowed Rafe gently. "Look beered up."

Rafe slumped against the truck, slithering downward a bit before catching himself, smiled goofily, and faked a hiccup, covering his mouth and bugging his eyes out.

"On second thought," Blair muttered, as Simon actually smirked at the performance, "you were only a little beered up. You're sober now."

"Gotcha," Rafe grinned, getting Blair back on his shoulder.

"That's everybody," Jim affirmed, coming around the side of the truck. "Present and accounted for. Well, present in body."

"Yeah," Simon said, looking at the folks in bathrobes and sweats, perched in various attitudes of semi-somnolence on cars and curb benches all over the area. "We're sure nobody's affected?"

"Well, it's not easy to tell with this stuff, as you know, but fortunately a lot of the uniforms here were around for the gassing in your office; they've seen people who were hit with it. It's kind of hard on them when all we've got to tell them is 'Look for anybody who's acting weird, and oh, by the way, maybe also anybody who's not acting particularly weird'. Big help there."

"I know," Simon said grimly. "Here comes Serena."

Serena Chang and some of her people were emerging from the front door of the building. They had their contamination suits unzipped and the helmets off. While this seemed to be some kind of good sign, the grim looks on their faces indicated otherwise.

"Serena," Blair said as the group came up toward Banks to report. "What's going on?"

"This is going on," Serena said, grimly waving the metallic diffuser, which was inside a plastic bag but held in her bare hand, under Blair and Rafe's noses. "Or rather, this is not going on."

Everybody looked at each other.

"It's a dummy?" Jim said quietly, brow furrowing.

"Think about it, Jim," Rafe said. "The diffuser, according to what you told us, was just sitting out there right in front of the fuse box. The power wasn't actually cut--the switch was just turned off--"

"--to lure somebody down there," Blair finished. "So someone would find it. And even if it wasn't Jim, somebody would have got hold of the super about the power being out, and he would have gone down there--"

"--and he would have called Jim, on finding some weird piece of equipment that he doesn't know anything about in the building boiler room," Simon said grimly. "And Jim would take one look at it and evacuate the building. Our favorite head case must've known that it wouldn't take long for somebody to head down to the basement once the power shut off. Hell, you only woke up and noticed when, again? There were surely still people up besides you; if a few minutes went by and the power stayed out, somebody would've gone to check it out."

"We woke up at about one-thirty," Rafe said. "Blair got cold and--"

"--came out of my bedroom and woke Rafe up--he was on the couch," Blair cut in.

Rafe gave him a look. "Yes, just what I was going to say," he agreed. "The only way the whole thing might have gone past would have been if someone was stupid enough to just turn the power back on without finding out why it had been turned off in the first place. Speaking of which...?"

"It's clean," one of Serena's people said, hopping around, trying to get out of his suit. "No nasty surprises in the circuit, none of the other usuals. Everything's been gone over. You can turn the power back on."

"Well thank God," Jim muttered, then turned around and started waving at people. "Okay, everybody, listen up! We've checked it out and there's no leaks and no wiring problem--likely somebody had to put in a surge protector and didn't know how to shut off just the power to their own place. We'll be asking around. Meantime, our super, Mr. Godfry, is gonna head downstairs and turn the power back on. Then everybody can go back to bed. Thanks for your cooperation."

Various mutters of things like "S'allright, Jim," "No problem, detective," and such, as well as a few less charitable mutters, floated back to them as Jim turned back to face Simon, Serena and the others. "Now," he said, "I guess we get to figure out what the hell this was all about. I'm trying not to think of the possibility of another diffuser hidden in the ductwork."

"Jim, you know as well as I do that the only way to find that out is to do the kind of building search that'll have everybody out here on the street until tomorrow evening. We can't do that every time this nutbar plants a dummy, or we'll never be doing anything else. If this gas were immediately deadly, hell, the whole damn town would likely be quarantined--but so far, nobody's done anything deadly...well, except, um..."

"Yeah," Blair pointed out. "That. If what happened to Megan was a drug interaction, this stuff could interact with other things. That could kill the person having the interaction, or any unfortunate schmuck crossing their path if it does anything to them like it did Megan."

"I know all that, Sandburg," Simon sighed. "Better than anybody but Megan, I know it. But remember what we talked about at the meeting--whoever this guy is, he apparently is out to...to fuck with us, to inconvenience us, and, more than likely, to make fools out of all of us in the department. Face it, it could easily not even occur to him that his little 'harmless' scheme could potentially be deadly to anybody. There's definitely a vendetta here, but so far it's shown no signs of being a murderous one."

"Could change," Rafe pointed out softly.

"We know that, Rafe," Simon said, also softly. "But the only thing we can do now is not allow this to stop us from following procedure in investigating it, and remember what we know--remember our training, and not let ourselves panic."

"Right, Captain," Rafe said, then dropped his voice a little farther and added "But there's one thing we haven't talked about yet."

"Yeah?"

"The fact that we are most likely going to be getting another call tonight. It's not likely to be a repeat of the Kincaid's little tea society or anything--it only took one Forensics team, and a couple of patrol units, to respond to this. It's barely possible this was just to piss Jim and me and Blair off, but I'm willing to bet our stalker is not watching Jim's apartment, in particular, closely enough to know that tonight he'd be able to pants all three of us. You'd better check your answering machine as soon as we go upstairs again, Jim. There are reasons past being a pain in the ass that this guy might have wanted to get you out of the building for a while. Away from--"

Jim blanched. "My home phone. And my cell's on the bedside table--shit." He bolted for the front door of the building.

Rafe was heaving Blair's weight back onto his own feet before turning to follow Jim, but he stopped at what he saw when he turned. "Hey. The power's still out and he didn't have the flashlight," he noticed, frowning. "How'd he plan to get up to the third floor at a dead run without killing himself?"

"Well, the emergency lights," Blair said reasonably, with a let's-change-the-subject air. "You know, we'd probably better make sure everyone's--"

"Blair, most of those lights were out when we were on our way down, about which you guys better do something before this happens again, by the way. The only ones working were mostly on the third floor."

Blair kind of lurched to a halt.

"Night maneuver training," Simon put in quickly. "Jim's good in the dark."

Rafe shot him a sideways smirk.

"Don't touch it, detective, or I'm busting you back to beat cop," Simon growled.

Blair watched nervously as Brian continued, gaze narrow and calculating, to stare toward the building where Jim had disappeared into inky blackness; he was distracted as one of the uniforms called "Captain! Em on dispatch is trying to reach Detective Ellison."

"Uh, oh," Serena muttered. "I think we just heard the other shoe drop."

"Shit," Blair whispered.

Simon called back to the uniform cop "He's not out here with his radio at the moment. Tell her she can get him at his home number, or his cell. Why's she want Ellison? Em knows we've been having a situation at his building."

"There were two calls from the same neighborhood--one was 911, but the other one came straight to her board and asked for Ellison specifically."

Just then Jim blasted back out the door, a little bit more dressed, stuffing a t-shirt into his jeans. "That other call you were expecting, Brian?" he shouted as he blew through the crowds of flashlight-bearing people re-entering the building, "I bet I know where it's from. Stonebridge Circle."

"Jim, isn't that--" Blair gulped.

"--where Stephen lives," Jim finished grimly, slamming the truck door.

"No fucking wonder," Blair kept saying. "Time window. Stephen is a cop's brother--doubtless why he was targeted--it's not at all impossible he'd try to get hold of Jim."

"Nobody's realized before that they'd been hit 'til it was over, though," Brian wondered.

"True, but it's pretty much only been chance that nobody's gotten on the horn to chat up a pal. Hell, for all I know, somebody has; we don't know what went down with everybody that day at the station. Anyway, what if one of Stephen's most heartfelt wishes were to tell his brother how much he loves him?"

"Or something along those lines. I get your point."

"Right, it's not unreasonable that whyever he did it, Stephen might try to get hold of Jim, and it only makes sense that Stephen's got all Jim's numbers. Cutting anyone's phone line would have been pretty useless--Stephen's got a cell, too."

"So our stalker might know the Ellisons pretty well?"

"Maybe. But then practically anybody who is anybody has a cell these days, and definitely someone in Stephen's position would have one. No, this guy just needed to make it damn near impossible to reach Jim through any avenue Stephen would have the clearance to use."

"Stephen did finally call Em."

"Yeah, but you heard what Simon just told us over the radio--about all he could get out clearly to her was Jim's name. Em wasn't sure at first that the call wasn't from Jim, that something wasn't wrong with him; and whoever it was, they didn't sound like they had a lot of time for a trace--though when it finally came through it was Stephen's phone. Anyway, that's why she tried direct-channeling his radio before she tried Carlson and Dexter's."

Jim took a turn on two wheels. "Ellison! Christ!" Brian shouted, grabbing onto Blair. "Calm down!"

"It isn't your brother," Jim muttered tightly.

"No, but next time it could be, and I have a sister in town, too," Rafe said, as calmly as possible. "Nobody's been killed so far; there haven't even been any attempts in that direction--"

"Nobody's been incoherent so far, either," Jim snarled.

"Tell us, Jim," Blair tried. "What did he sound like? What...what else did you hear, if anything?"

The let's-have-the-sentinel-lowdown request, disguised though it was, gave Jim something to think about and he seemed to get some kind of grip, at least for the moment. "I couldn't tell what he was saying."

"Did it sound like he might have been drunk?" Brian asked. Jim shot him a glare, and Brian said "It's not an insult, Jim. The occasional night of overindulgence can happen to the best of us."

"Stephen doesn't drink; he's one of those people who get a migraine from even one beer."

"Have you ever heard him sound like that before?"

"No I've never..." Jim trailed off.

"Jim, does Stephen have any kind of seizure or panic disorder?" Brian said quietly.

"Come on," Jim burst out, "it's got to be the gas! It's past belief that Stephen would suddenly develop either thing and go all 911 on me just as one of this crackpot's diffusers chases me away from my phones! If Stephen's been falling down in epileptic fits or screaming terror lately, neither he nor anybody else has discussed it with me."

"Just procedure, Jim. Stephen wasn't acting, either on your machine or talking to Em, like any of the victims have so far. If he could be in danger, we need to be prepared for it."

"I know," Jim said miserably. "I'm sorry, Brian, I'm just..."

"I know, Jim," Rafe said softly. "Could you understand anything he said?"

"No," Jim sighed, and pressed his lips grimly together, then said "Well. Just my name a few times."

"Then are you sure the voice you heard was Stephen?"

"Of course I'm sure."

"You said you've never heard him sound just like that before; he doesn't drink; he--"

"I know my brother's voice, Rafe, for God's sake. Besides..." Jim sighed. "He called me Jimmy. No one in Cascade but he or Dad or Sally would do that, and it was not Dad or Sally."

"I didn't think Stephen ever called you that," Blair said softly. "I've only ever heard him call you Jim."

"He doesn't," Jim said, and Blair would have sworn, if he'd been looking at anybody else, that he was fighting tears. "Not since we were little."

Brian gently ventured "Then, Jim--he even called you something that he never does any more. If there's a chance that the voice on the phone wasn't Stephen, we need to--"

"Damn it, Rafe!"

Blair said "Jim, he's just worried that some psycho might be in your brother's house, trying to lure you there. Worse yet, as far as he knows, said psycho might have Stephen already, be planning to use him as a hostage, you know that's why Rafe's asking. But, Rafe...Brian, come on."

Rafe turned his head to look at Blair.

"Trust me on this one. If Jim says that it was Stephen's voice he heard, then it was definitely Stephen's voice."

Rafe stared at him.

Blair sighed. "I know; it's not procedure. Can you just please leave it for now? Trust us?"

Rafe pressed his lips together much as Jim had, then nodded tersely once. He proceeded to stare straight ahead out the windshield, remaining nearly motionless no matter how many stunt maneuvers the truck went through.

Blair knew that Brian was hurt and insulted, very well aware that something crucial was being kept from him. 'Brian's a detective, for God's sake, and we're living in each other's pockets now as well as working together...I wonder what the hell Jim and I thought we were going to get away with...?'

"Roll me over, in the clover--roll me over, lay me down, and do it again..."

"Oh, Jesus," Simon whispered. "We gotta get the fire department out here and get him down from there." He pulled out his cellphone and began punching buttons.

Rafe's hand came down over Simon's. "Not yet," he said. "Jim's trying to find a way up there--"

Jim suddenly reappeared around the corner of the house as the garage door began to open. He skidded to a halt next to them. "If we need to get an ambulance out here, tell them to pull in. My truck and Simon's car won't attract any attention, but I don't want any red-and-blue flashing out here."

"Jim, are you nuts? What if he falls? We've gotta get some equipment out here to get him down safely with."

"I'll get him down. He's not swinging from the lightning rod or anything. He's my brother; I'm not going to let him get hurt. If I thought he wouldn't be hurt worse by the attention that would be called to this--"

"What could be worse than a two-story drop onto, worst case scenario, a concrete driveway?" Simon demanded.

"The headline. 'Fire department called out when youngest VP in Cascade's preeminent Fortune 500 corporation cracks under pressure of job, is dragged, stoned out of his mind, from atop own house.' If I let that happen, Stephen would spend a couple of weeks taking me apart with a cuticle scissors. Why do you think he called me--or tried to--when he realized something wasn't right? He trusts me not to let that happen."

"But if it's his life at stake--"

"You've gotta let me try first," Jim insisted tightly. "Have an engine and ambulance on standby, but don't call them out until I say so, or one of us falls off the roof, whichever comes first."

"Jim--"

"Simon, come on. There's no time for this."

"Now, this is number four, and he's got me on the floor--roll me over, lay me down and do it again--roll me over in the clover..." sang Stephen.

"Didn't know Stephen could sing that well," Blair said in glum amusement. "Guess if he sucked there'd have been more than one disturbance call."

"Okay, I'm going to see if I can get up there without freaking him out. I need you guys to talk to him, keep him distracted, keep him calm. Don't call for more backup or send anyone else up there until I give the signal, right?"

Not pleased, Simon nodded.

Just then Stephen appeared, illuminated softly by the incandescent yard light. "Hi," he said. "Aren't you guys hot?"

"Jim, has he got any clothes on?" Rafe muttered in sympathetic horror, because he didn't from the waist up, at least.

"I couldn't tell for sure from the top of the pool house--he was on the garage roof when I started climbing up there to get a look, but before I could he was a story higher--but I think he's wearing shorts."

"Now this is number five, I'm surprised I'm still alive--roll me over, lay me down and do it again, roll me over in the clover..." sang Stephen, kind of jamming around just a little where he sat, leaning against a window gable.

"Christ," Blair muttered, covering his face with his hands.

"He looks...shiny, kind of," Rafe muttered.

"Sweat," Jim concurred, staring up at his brother. "He's sweating like crazy."

"What else can you tell?" Blair asked at once.

"He's flushed. His hair's matted down...his eyes are too bright, and they're not really tracking...his pupils are dilated, but it's dark...oh my God."

"What?" Blair said anxiously.

"I can feel it now, the wind changed--" Jim looked stricken. "Blair, he's burning up. If his temperature goes any higher he's going to go chills, and that's when it starts getting dangerous."

"'Aren't you guys hot?'" Blair concurred. "But nobody's had any kind of serious fever from the gas before."

"And when you couldn't understand him over the phone--and Em couldn't either...whatever caused that is apparently gone," Brian said. He was staring at Jim, had been since Jim began to describe what Stephen looked like, two stories away, in the dark, but evidently he was sticking by his promise to sit on his frustration until the situation wasn't so urgent.

Stephen was staring, fascinated, at the silvery gleam of a round attic vent where it spun on top of a short ventilation pipe. Suddenly he crawled over, grabbed it and yanked it free.

"Uh-oh," said Simon.

Jim cursed and started sneaking around the side of the house again, toward the back.

Stephen had slumped forward on the nearest window gable, his chin resting on one forearm. The other hand held the roundish vent whirligig out in front of him while he contemplated it, humming to himself.

"Um...Stephen? Hi, it's Blair. You feeling okay, buddy?" Blair called, moving forward across the lawn.

Stephen didn't appear to hear him. "Alas, poor Yorick," he sighed, gazing sadly at the whirligig. "You really don't look so good, y'know? I mean, fuck, it doesn't get much worse than being a skull, for God's sake. What'd I tell ya about that Pritikin diet shit? Suck the flesh off your bones, make your head fall off. Now look atcha. For the lova Christ, Horatio, put him back in the ground." Stephen pitched the whirligig off the side of the house and rolled over on his back. "To be or not to be, that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or just say the hell with it and eat a crossbow bolt, you know? Was Hamlet a big nelly or what? Thrift, thrift, Horatio! the funeral baked meats did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables, and Christ I'd love a pizza. Say, any of you guys want a pizza?"

"Oh, Jesus," Simon groaned.

"Stephen," Blair tried again. "C'mon, man, you're scaring us here. Why don't you come down from there and we'll see about it? I could go for a pizza, too."

Stephen shook his head rapidly, lost his balance as a result and grabbed for the top of the window gable. "S'hot down there. Cool up here. 'This is number seven and we're on our way to heaven, roll me over, lay me down and do it again, roll me over in the clover...' Say, wanna play 'Name That Clunker?' That's where I rewrite the lyrics to the tune of some shitty song or other and sing it and you tell me what it is. Here's the first one: 'We're an insipid bunch of whiners and we're really fucking depressed, wank wank wank wank...'"

"'Seasons in the Sun,'" Blair called back grimly, but he couldn't control a smirk.

Rafe had edged behind Simon and was desperately trying to get the smile off his face, seeing as this was not funny, but God, if it hadn't been for his morbid choice of material in general, Stephen would have been, well, cute.

"Got it in one!" Stephen congratulated him. "That uplifting ditty about a person who's dying for no apparent reason, although for my money not doing it anywhere near fast enough."

"I know what you mean," Blair called back. "Listen, Stephen, we really need you to come down. I know you're hot and you needed a little breeze to clear your head, but if you come down we can help you cool o--"

Suddenly Stephen crab-scuttled away across the roof. "Here I take my stand! Remain where thou art, and if thou shalt attempt to diminish by one step the distance now between us, thou shalt see that the Jewish maiden will rather trust her soul with God, than her honour to the Templar!"

"What the fuck?" Simon blurted, then gasped "Oh, hell--" he took a reflexive half-step forward, one hand going up as if to ward something off; Steven had moved right to the edge of the gable he'd climbed, hanging on with one arm, on one knee to the opposite of the side he'd approached from.

Rafe was having no trouble not smiling, now. "Ivanhoe, don't ask me why," he said. "The jewess Rebecca standing on the battlement, facing off against that Templar, what's-his-face--though at least Stephen's got a better grip than she was described as having. Thank God he didn't try to stand up."

Jim's voice came through the dark, though the three on the ground couldn't see him at his current position. "Stephen, kiddo--you're confused, I know, but I am not du Bois-Guilbert," Jim insisted. "I played him in the same production where you played Ivanhoe, remember? And remember--Rebecca did not jump, right? You remember that? Right?!"

Rafe muttered "In that scene, she was threatening to jump off the tower if the Templar guy didn't stay away from her."

"Shit," Simon hissed. "Jim better not make a move that way, then."

Jim was continuing "Stevie, it's me, Jim, your brother. You called me, because you need help. I'm here."

"I will not trust thee, Templar. Thou hast taught me better how to estimate the virtues of thine Order."

"God. I don't even wanna think about where that poor guy's head is," Simon said, with a whistle of sympathy.

After a pause, Jim said "May my arms be reversed, and my name dishonoured, if thou shalt have reason to complain of me. Many a law, many a commandment have I broken, but my word never."

"Whoa," Brian whispered. "Go, Jim, that's it."

Stephen was silent a long moment, then said, in a breathy waver, "I will then trust thee."

Then he crumpled--forward, thank God--and hit the roofing tiles like a ton of bricks.

Jim called down to the other three, who were already moving, "I swiped a ladder from the neighbor's porch when I couldn't find one in the garage; it's against the gutter in back." He was gathering Stephen up as well as he could--Stephen wasn't quite as big as Jim, but he was definitely no shrimp, and he was unconscious, deadweight. "Simon, come up the ladder just high enough to take him over your shoulder--Rafe, Blair, you steady it and help him get down without overbalancing..."

The maneuver was accomplished. "Blair," Jim said quickly, taking Stephen back with Rafe's assistance, "there's a key to the garage door into the kitchen in a fake rock in that potted tree. He keeps sweats and stuff in the lower left drawer of his dresser, first bedroom on the left, second floor. Grab his shaving kit, too, and you and Simon follow Rafe and me. Cascade General trauma center, you know the drill. Just hit the garage door button on your way out."

"Gotcha," Blair said, hightailing it around the house to get in through the big garage door.

"You played du Bois-Guilbert in high school?" Rafe murmured to Jim, sitting down next to him in the waiting area and handing him one of the two cups of coffee he carried, hoping to distract his stewing friend from his worry. "Drama club doesn't really seem like your speed."

"It was an all-school thing," Jim said. "I just drove Stephen to the auditions, went in to watch, and got drafted to do line readings with some of the people who were trying out. Apparently, I didn't totally suck. It turns out, though, that it was only partly that--the other part being that the Knights Templar costume, though it obviously wasn't real armor, was still really fucking heavy, and the director needed someone who could both do the lines convincingly, and not be wobbling around all bowlegged and desperate-looking by the time the third act rolled around. But you're right, it isn't really my speed. Stephen was always the performer in the family."

"Well, he can sing, all right."

"Yeah." Jim smiled. "He used to sing all the time. He used to...God. Sometimes I could kill Dad for the way he railroaded Stephen into getting an MBA. Stephen always wanted to act and sing. And he's good at it. But Dad made sure he understood that there was no way he'd ever be good enough, and to forget that ridiculous idea."

"A lot of parents don't like the idea of their kid going into any kind of show business. It is one of those professions where if you're not one of the ten percent who are filthy rich, you're one of the ninety percent who are boiling banana peels for soup. And a lot of the latter category are incredibly talented. It's not a very forgiving business; luck is an even bigger factor than either talent or persistence."

"I know, but...knowing our Dad, I don't suppose I should have expected anything else. But sometimes I wonder if Stephen could have believed in his own talent enough to at least take his shot, if I hadn't..."

"Hadn't left when you were eighteen," Rafe said softly. "If you'd stayed around to...help back him up against your Dad."

"Yeah."

"Jim, I know you're feeling guilty about Stephen getting hit, but you've gotta try to keep it together, for his sake. Don't start wallowing and if-onlying."

"I wish I could get Stephen to believe that it wasn't really his doing that I left, that it was the way Dad dealt with the situation, with us. It was that that I couldn't take any more. I always loved Stevie. Did my best to protect him when we were younger. Yeah, I was pissed as hell at him about what happened, but he was a betrayed, hurting kid. It was Dad he was lashing out at when he took that tire iron to the Cobra, for being such an asshole as to condemn Stevie for getting all A's and one fucking B on his report card; he wasn't deliberately trying to frame me. That part just happened. He was a kid; he probably thought at the time that what happened was only fair."

"Have you told Stephen that?" Brian wondered quietly.

"Things have been...we haven't had a chance to...no, I haven't told him that," Jim murmured. "We're both being pretty damn careful to keep our asses covered. We've hurt each other pretty badly in the past. I can forgive Stephen. He can forgive me. Forgiving Dad is another story, because he's the reason Stephen and I hurt each other so often later on. He's the reason Stephen and I could only manage to be allies, after we were teenagers, under the shittiest circumstances--when we really needed each other; we were leery of each other the rest of the time. I just want...I want Stephen back, that's all. I want what Dad took from us. And I want back all those years we wasted, after I came back to Cascade, when both of us were so damn stubborn neither one could bring himself to bend his stiff neck, though I know those were our own fault, and we have to just eat it and kiss them goodbye. And now look what's happened to him. Seems like every time we start to get a decent groove going, something fucking happens. And it's usually my fault."

"Jim, don't. You know as well as I do that you didn't do this to Stephen."

As though he hadn't heard, Jim continued "And then when he called me for help, where the fuck was I? I fell hook, line and sinker for the stalker's setup, I was--"

"--performing your duty to serve and protect," Brian said sharply. "Jim, Stephen needs you right now. I'm not saying your feelings aren't important, even if they're not rational; but you need to sit on them until you're sure Stephen's all right. Like I said, he's having enough trouble without you adding your guilt to his problems."

Jim sighed and nodded, and had a sip of coffee. "I know. But...Stephen's got kind of a special...it's different. Sometimes I can't stay objective."

"He's got an in with your feelings that nobody else could possibly have, except for your Dad."

Jim looked up and glared. "Dad does not have an in with my feelings."

"I mention the idea and you immediately go on the defensive. I'd call that some kind of an in, even if not a positive one."

Jim glared another moment, then looked away and said "Yeah, I see your point." He took another sip of coffee.

Simon and Blair walked up slowly, muttering to each other. They stopped and Simon said "They found the diffuser. It was in the air conditioning vent in Stephen's bedroom. And this one was no dummy."

Jim rubbed his face tiredly with one hand. "Yeah, I heard."

"When?" Rafe puzzled.

"While Simon was on the phone--" Jim broke off, going very still.

There was a stiff silence.

Then: "Really, now," Rafe whispered. "That payphone all the way at the end of the hall, that we can't even see from here. Really." His face was completely relaxed, but his hazel eyes were burning.

"Jim," Blair said, "we need to talk. It'll only take a minute."

Jim exhaled in a whoosh, nodding, and got up. He and Blair moved away across the waiting area and down the hall Simon and Blair had just come back up.

Brian looked up at Simon. "Do you know what it is they're keeping from me?"

"Don't look at me," Simon said somberly, arms folded across his chest, shaking his head a little. "I'm just the moral support here. Yeah, I know about it, but Sandburg's the expert."

Rafe nodded slowly, then stared into space for the few moments until Jim and Blair came around the corner again, looking, if not exactly grim, pretty damn serious.

"Brian," Blair said softly. "Jim's going to wait here for word on Stephen, see if they'll let him in to visit. In the meantime, you and I and Simon are going to have a little talk." Blair held his hand out to Rafe. Rafe was still a moment; then he set down his coffee on the endtable he was next to, took the hand and rose. He followed Blair and Simon out.

"Well, they ran through the briars and they ran through the brambles, they ran through the bushes where a rabbit wouldn't go, they ran so fast that the hounds couldn't catch 'em--"

"--down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico," Jim joined in softly, coming up to the bed where Stephen lay. There were three different IV needles stuck into his body at various locations. Nevertheless, the younger Ellison grinned at him as they finished the song together. "Hi," he said. His gaze was hazy, but he looked comfortable enough.

"Looks like they got you wired for sound, here, kiddo," Jim smiled back, touching one of the monitor pickups taped to Stephen's bare upper torso. "You know, last time Brian was in the hospital with his head messed up, we couldn't get him to stop singing weird tunes, either."

"Just wait until I start in with Bobby Goldsboro," Stephen snickered. "I expect to be hearing screams of outright anguish from unsuspecting staffers when they come strolling blithely in."

"Ye Gods. Brian's into alternative, at least," Jim grinned. "You're stuck in the seventies. How do you feel?" He reached out and gently rested one hand flat against Stephen's chest, avoiding the monitor pickups, feeling the slow thud of Stephen's heartbeat. "You're still feverish."

"Yeah. They've given me two alcohol rubdowns already, which is why my eyes are watering, and if you move the blanket you'll see icebags on either side of my waist. Had a couple up by my neck, too, but I threw 'em in the trash once I was alone, they were making my ears hurt." He mimed pitching something toward the corner of the room, where Jim, glancing around to follow the gesture, saw a lined metal trash can. "Two points! Nothin' but net. Can you believe they tried to stick one between my legs? Something about major arteries close to the surface there. I told 'em there were other things mighty damn close to the surface there too, added a few choice words about what they could do with their major arteries. They got rid of it."

"Good for you," Jim chuckled.

"But they've got so many antipyretics dripping into me, my tongue tastes like an old aspirin. At least the fever wasn't high enough to need that godawful tub-of-icewater thing."

Jim winced at the very thought, then got the idea out of his head and said "They want to do some scans when you're more stable, make sure the fever didn't do anything too nasty to your head."

Stephen yawned. "Head's fine," he said when he was done, "just spacey."

"Stephen..." Jim left his hand where it was while he thought. "I wondered--do you remember trying to get hold of me somewhere between one-thirty and two-thirty this morning?"

Stephen blinked. "I...must have. You came."

"But you don't remember it?"

Stephen shook his head, then blinked dizzily. "Remind me not to do that," he murmured as his eyes slowly refocused. He yawned again.

"What do you remember?" Jim wondered.

His answer was another jaw-cracking yawn.

"Okay, kiddo, never mind; I think I better let you sleep," Jim said, taking Stephen's hand in his free one. "They'll be in to throw me out in another minute, anyway."

"Not...wanna ask..." but another yawn interrupted him.

"Shhh..." Jim let go of his hand and reached for a clean white washcloth that lay folded on the bedtable. He went to the sink and wet it with cool water, wrung it out and came back. He began pressing it gently to Stephen's face and chest. "Get some sleep, Stevie. There'll be plenty of time later to talk about all of it."

"Mm...Jim?"

"Mm-hm?"

Stephen sighed as the cloth moved gently down the side of his face and neck. "Thanks for...comin' to my rescue..."

A hard ball suddenly materialized in Jim's throat, and his eyes stung. "No problem, Stephen," he managed to say, fairly smoothly. "That's what I'm here for." But Stephen was already asleep.

"I'm sorry," Jim whispered, still stroking carefully with the cloth. "I'm so sorry, Stephen."

There was a tap on the door.

Jim shook his head rapidly and swallowed the lump, determinedly getting his shit together. "Come in," he said.

The door opened and Rafe peered around it. "Jim?" he whispered.

"Yeah," Jim whispered back. "Hang on." With a final caress of the cloth to Stephen's forehead, Jim hung the terrycloth on the bedrail and leaned down to carefully kiss Stephen's cheek. Then he turned toward the door and followed Brian out, shutting it quietly behind them. "I had to flash my badge and say you were my partner to get this far, and frankly I'm surprised even that worked," he whispered.

"Where are Blair and Simon?" Jim said, also softly.

"Simon's taking Blair home," Brian said. "He says we can come in a couple of hours late tomorrow."

"Good of him, since that's likely what he'll be doing, too," Jim said, managing a slight smile.

Rafe was just standing there, holding his hands, gazing at him. Try as he might, Jim couldn't detect anything in his regard but a kind of quiet fascination.

"So, um..." Jim cleared his throat as quietly as possible. "What do you think?"

Rafe smiled slowly. "I think it was pretty damn flattering that someone like you should have called me 'such an interesting guy' the morning after our first date."

"Brian...I think...I suppose I kind of wanted you to know without being told. Don't say it--I know that isn't fair. But I guess that's why I haven't been that careful lately. I didn't want to hide it from you, but..."

Rafe was shaking his head, freeing one hand to make a shushing motion. "It's all right, Jim. We can talk later about...all that. I'm not angry now. And I'm not going anywhere."

Jim nearly slumped against Rafe, his eyes closing in relief, but he kept it together, considering their semi-public location. He opened his eyes and whispered "Thank you."

"Don't mention it. How is Stephen?"

"The doctors think he's going to be fine. They suspected an allergic reaction at first, but when that didn't pan out, and his tests all turned up negative for systemic infection or anything else, and his fever started dropping steadily--not all that fast, but steadily--they handed me some mumbo-jumbo that basically boiled down to 'There definitely was something wrong with him, but it doesn't seem to be there now, and we can't figure out what it was'. Another problem is that he had a temperature of 104.8 when we got him here--"

"Jesus. That can kill an adult. He should've gone into the chills stage a lot earlier."

"Yeah," Jim said. "They were pretty surprised when several of the usual high-fever and/or heatstroke symptoms didn't show up at all. It's bizarre he stayed conscious as long as he did, and even more bizarre that he was able to get up on the roof. I still don't know how the hell he did it. I just hope he can remember, because at least right now--he's still got a couple of degrees of fever--he says he doesn't remember trying to get hold of me. I asked him if he remembered anything else, but he kind of passed out."

"Shit. I can imagine."

"He'll be in ICU," Jim sighed, sounding like he was reassuring himself as much as Rafe, "until the fever's completely gone; and they want to run some more tests, and do a few scans. Rafe, this is..." Jim shook his head in chagrin.

"I know. If this dickhead is going to start attacking our families, we're out of time. Especially since delirium, or whatever it was initially, and then deadly fever is apparently a reaction at least some people can have--Stephen's not on any medication, is he?

"Um, nothing but your basic over-the-counter stuff. So yeah, apparently it doesn't have to be a situation like Megan's. Some people just react differently, although thank God it can't be all that common, not to have happened until now, unless..."

"Right," Rafe whispered. "Unless the stalker is graduating to some nastier shit. Come on. We'd better get some rest. Simon's going to be expecting us to be ready to take this thing by the throat tomorrow."

"I'll be more than happy to oblige him," Jim growled.

Rafe's glance darkened, too. "Right there with you, Jim."

As they started out, Jim said "By the way, did Blair and Simon tell you that Megan knows? About me."

Brian nodded. "Blair said she figured it out while you were in Peru."

"Kind of like with you. Megan and Blair and I were in each other's faces for days down there, and with that much exposure...it's just not possible to be discreet twenty-four seven, and still use the senses effectively."

"You can tell me all about the trip, and the senses--and believe me, you will--when we don't have this situation on our hands."

"I know, Rafe. I was just afraid you were going to...be..."

"Well, I'm not. Stunned, maybe...Jim?"

"Mm?" They proceeded out the automatic doors of emergency and started for the truck.

"Getting back to our immediate problem, why do you suppose Stephen suddenly went into Rebecca mode up there?"

"Maybe because he was pretty darn regressed the whole time?"

"How do you mean?"

"Well, you'll notice he didn't call any of you by your names."

"Um, no, he didn't. Does that mean he didn't recognize us?"

"That'd be my guess, considering...well, that tune he was singing? Our uncle Gene taught it to us when we were kids."

"'Roll me Over in the Clover?' Kind of a raunchy tune to teach a kid."

"Was a favorite of his from the war. Anyway, we also used to play 'Name That Clunker'--in terms of pop, the seventies were an excellent era for that game--and we'd screw around with the lines of classic plays; made 'em more fun when we had to study them for English. And I told you about Ivanhoe, of course. You got a fever of nearly a hundred and five, it wouldn't be all that shocking to look at someone and see...hell, anybody, du Bois-Guilbert, Old Mother Hubbard, Opus the Penguin..."

"Okay, you played the Templar guy, Stephen's head was back in that time, he saw you, and his fever supplied the armor suit, I can buy that. But why would he suddenly go into Rebecca's lines? I've only read the book; doesn't the play have any scenes between Ivanhoe and du Bois-Guilbert?"

"Yeah, it does...but...if he finds out I told you this, he's gonna make the cuticle-scissors scenario look like a dream vacation."

Rafe grinned. "He won't hear it from me."

"He was almost cast as Rebecca."

"WHAT?" Rafe paused in the act of climbing into the truck. "Why would he want to play Rebecca, for God's sake?!"

"Mostly because he liked her, and he thought Ivanhoe was a waste of dialogue."

"But Ivanhoe's the hero...?"

"Yeah, well, so was Hamlet, and you heard Stephen's opinion of him, right?"

"Point taken. I have to admit, thinking about both the characters as I read them, Rebecca is a lot more interesting. So, come on--how did he manage to almost get cast in a woman's role?"

"Well, you noticed he sings, right?"

"Yeah, I mentioned it."

"Got a real...bright, clear singing voice compared to his speaking voice, right?"

"Yeah. His speaking voice is...sort of warm and soft."

"He's a baritone now. But at the time he had a very pure tenor. He could sound like a girl really easily, without sounding like a guy trying to sound like a girl, or using his falsetto, or anything else that would make it easy to tell he was a boy, voicewise. Heck, he didn't really have much of a falsetto yet, anyway, when he was fifteen. So he got some help from some of his friends who did costuming, and they thought it was the greatest idea since Cliff's Notes to put one over on the drama instructors like that. They helped him with the costumes, and a couple of the girls helped him with the makeup--fortunately he still didn't have much beard. He shaved about twice a week." Jim started the truck and headed for the street.

After a moment, Rafe prompted "Well?"

"Well, he showed up for the costume tryouts in full regalia, and since you're supposed to have certain lines memorized already for that, he memorized the scenes in question."

"How did he get on the list of Rebecca candidates with a name like 'Stephen'?"

"He planned ahead. He'd signed in for the preliminary line readings as 'S.J. Ellison'. A little screwing around with the character lists and he was under 'Rebecca' rather than 'Isaac'. Those lists get scribbled on and marked out and rewritten during the course of a tryout session all the time."

"Ah. So go on."

"Well, looking back on it, I've gotta say that he really knew what he was doing in terms of making himself look like a realistic girl, not a campy drag-type. He didn't have access to anything that would look like real tits--he tried borrowing a bra off someone and stuffing it, and the closest thing he and his friends could get to something that looked like actual boobs was the bird seed the costume people kept around to make a high-school girl's tits look like a sixty-year-old's. So he said screw it, and just didn't--plenty of fifteen-year-old girls don't have much volume in that department. His cohorts just wrapped a scarf around his chest for a little padding, and left it at that. He didn't overdo the makeup--didn't have to; he was one of those lucky assholes who never got a very noticeable case of zits, and though he's got some sun damage these days, he had very smooth, fair skin at the time. Rather than go with a bad wig, he had a friend of his help him make a period-looking hair veil. He pinned a little guest towel to the back of the dress's collar, hairpinned the veil to cover his hair, and tucked the trailing part of the veil around to make it look like it was covering a long braid down his back. Chemise, kirtle, the whole bit. Brian, I've gotta tell you--if I hadn't known who he was, I might have asked him out. If he weren't my brother, I wouldn't have recognized him. Which is what he was counting on, of course, in terms of the casting director."

"So he was a regular junior Dustin Hoffman," Rafe smiled. "'I will NOT be artistically limited!'"

"He was a hell of a lot nicer guy than Hoffman."

"Okay, yeah. So what happened?"

"Well, a couple friends of ours--girls we'd known since we were all little--came over to the house the night before costume tryouts, and helped him practice walking. It helps that the walk of upper-class women of the place and time was...kinda contrived--they were going through another period of what Stephen called 'walking like a duck', though I'm not sure why he said that. It looked graceful as hell when he did it. Guess that must've been what it felt like. Anyway, they helped show him how to make maximum use of what hips he had, namely not much, along with another couple scarves wrapped around them to help the long skirt stand away from his body and swish like it was supposed to."

Rafe was giving him his "I am a wiseass" look. "Can I ask exactly how you know so much about this stuff? You sound like a medieval fashion designer."

Jim looked at him innocently. "From Stephen, of course."

"Of course." Rafe smirked. "Please go on."

"He didn't really expect that once he got found out, they'd let him do the role--for one thing, even if they let him, Dad would have exploded when the invitation they always sent parents said his son was playing Rebecca; he just wanted to see if he could get cast for it...and he did."

"How did they find out what he'd put over on them?"

"He showed up for the first day of rehearsals in his gym clothes. Word started spreading through the cast and crew, and people started looking at him going 'My God, that is her--I mean him' and he ended up getting a standing ovation. Then he got detention for a week for screwing around with the production schedule."

"Production schedule?"

"They couldn't get started until they'd recast Rebecca, which took the better part of a week."

"So if he got in trouble, how did he end up as the star?"

"What you might expect. The kid cast as Ivanhoe was playing chicken on his roller skates--yes, roller skates, it was 1979--and got clipped by a car. Nothing serious, but he was out of the play, and his understudy had wussed out just before the start of rehearsals. I gotta admit, when you're that age, going through all that work when you know that--barring disaster--you're never gonna get to perform...let's just say that even though our school had one of the best-known drama departments in the state, they still had a hard time keeping understudies. They couldn't even get one for Rebecca in the first place, which is why Stephen caught it for messing with tryouts. Anyway, when they found out they'd lost Ivanhoe, the coaches and casting directors nearly ran each other down getting to the phone to call Stephen. The way they saw it, any fifteen-year-old boy who could snow them so totally playing an interesting, expressive, fairly kick-ass woman, at least for the style of play--and still come off totally female...hell, playing Ivanhoe wouldn't be squat next to that."

"Were they right?"

"Yep." Jim smiled. "Though he did get his ass kicked when they caught him pole-vaulting with his lance. I'm told I didn't totally bite, either, though the girl who ended up playing Rebecca kept losing pieces of her costume when I'd pick her up for the kidnapping bit, and she'd struggle, because the veils and stuff got caught on my quote armor unquote. Finally they had her fake a faint, though that wasn't in the script, and, as Stephen and the girl who played Rebecca both said, lousy for the character. Also my fake moustache kept falling off, and they finally had to use some goddamn sticky crap that I bet they fasten tow cables to jumbo jets with. I will never understand how women can stand to wax their moustaches off. I cursed steadily for about a week, trying to get the thing off after the dress rehearsals and performances."

"So what did your Dad think of the two of you landing such big roles?"

Jim's smile vanished. "Not much. The only reason he didn't do his usual 'give only one of us something just to hurt the other one' routine was because we were both in the play. He didn't know which of us to be madder at--Stephen, because he'd landed the lead, which would take up a ton of his time, and he knew Dad didn't approve of his music and drama stuff--or me, for 'encouraging' Stephen, plus deciding not to try for the football team that year--thought the drama thing might be a fun change. Boy, was he pissed."

"I see," Brian said softly.

Jim pulled into his spot and shut off the engine. They sat there silently for a minute, before Rafe reached over and put a hand on Jim's shoulder. "I bet the two of you had a lot of fun doing a play together."

Jim smiled. "Yeah. And we were free to really have fun, because Dad wouldn't come anywhere near the whole shebang. Rehearsals were tiring, but we both always looked forward to them."

"Are you going to call your Dad about Stephen?"

"He's out of town," Jim replied shortly.

Rafe just sat there quietly with him for another minute, while Jim gazed into the distance. Finally Rafe saw him begin to smile.

"What are you thinking?" he wondered, and started unbuckling his seat belt.

"About the cast party," Jim chuckled. "For one thing, the girl who played Rowena tried to show up in my costume just for the laugh, but we laughed a lot more at the fact that three people had to carry her in. She was not large." He got out of his seatbelt, and they disembarked and locked the doors.

"Could she stand up at all?" Rafe wondered as they went into the building.

"Uh...kind of," Jim said. "She was all bracing her feet really carefully, trying to get the rest of the suit balanced over it, and she kept going 'Okay, a little more, not yet, I think I got it--wait!' We were all standing around doing 'You can do it' type clapping chants, and they finally let her go, and she stood there looking like a two-year old with her face only halfway out of the breastplate, and we all started cheering...and then her eyes, which were all you could see of her face, got huge, and the suit just kind of folded up--ankles, knees, so on, until she was in kind of a bizarre squat with her arms sticking straight out to either side. But for some reason, she didn't fall over." Jim unlocked the loft door.

Rafe was cracking up. "Christ, poor kid. What'd you do?"

"Well, we mobilized trying to get her the heck out, but to keep from doing permanent damage to the costume we ended up having to get into somebody's tool kit and unscrew both halves of the breastplate--the ties were fake, they didn't really tie or untie--so we could lift the mail skirt, straighten the legs and pull her out."

"How'd she take it?"

Blair's voice floated down from the loft. "She got right up, went straight to Jim, fell to her knees and kowtowed before him. Kind of an early version of 'I'm not worthy'. Everybody laughed and did exactly the same thing. Stephen says that it was the only time he's ever seen Jim blush."

"The suit wasn't that bad," Jim muttered.

There was a smile in Blair's voice as he said to Rafe "You've never heard that story?"

Rafe just chuckled and shook his head as he and Jim made their way upstairs, and out of their clothes. They crawled in with Blair.

Everyone was quiet for a while. Jim lay stiffly, staring at the ceiling. He didn't even realize Blair was watching him until he heard him say "I think we ought to put Jim in the middle." He began climbing over Jim and shoving him toward Rafe at the other side of the bed.

"Blair. Dammit, Chief, I'm fine. I like the edge."

"Well, so do I, and I want it for the rest of the night."

"Okay, okay," Jim sighed, surrendering. He was immediately sucked up to on both sides. Everyone got comfortable and was still.

'Okay. Maybe tonight I like the middle,' Jim thought, hiding his face in Rafe's hair.

"We're gonna get 'em, Jim," Brian whispered, just as Blair murmured "He'll be fine, Jim."

"I know," Jim answered them both. "Still, thanks."

They slept.

End Oops V: He Bore Himself With a Proud Humility by Blue Champagne: [email protected]

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