There is also no excuse for this story....

All rights belong to Pet Fly. No infringement intended. MA- Mature Adults only. M/M. Sex scenes.

Paternity Blues

Blair watched with increasing consternation as Jim fussed and tidied around the loft far more than usual.

"Hey, man, relax, it's just my mom visiting here. Like family."

Jim glanced up, beaming.

"I know. I want everything to be nice for Naomi. Special."

The smile, the way he said it, raised hackles along Blair's spine again.

"She's my mom," Blair reminded, stressing the last word. "Your mother in law," he added, for extra emphasis.

Jim just beamed again.

"Liking your mother-in-law is unnatural," Blair accused peevishly.

"I can't help it. Naomi's great. The way you're great, but different. Great about the way she's accepted me, everything, great that I can talk to her about stuff, and you."

"Is this a generation thing again?" Blair bristled, reminded again that Jim was closer in age to his mother than him.

"No. Maybe. Kind of," Jim answered, infuriatingly; grinning even more as Blair huffed about, peevish and jealous.

Jim and Naomi had always connected too well for his comfort zone. And lately, the phone calls, the letters; he felt so out of the loop.

"It was your idea," Jim reminded. "And it's too late to think twice about it now. We're all in this for the long haul."

Blair sunk down on the couch with a pronounced pout.

"Yeah, well. I thought it'd be us. Not you and her."

"It is us," Jim assured, leaning over the back of the couch, playing with the curls. Blair pulled away.

"Us. All of us. The whole family."

Jim climbed over the couch to sit on the coffee table, so he could face his love.

"It's all about family," he repeated. "Naomi is part of our family."

Blair pouted some more.

"Yeah. You, me, Mom and the turkey baster."

Blair's eyes widened in horror as Jim looked away.

"It was a turkey baster, wasn't it?" he had to ask.

Jim's gaze had dropped to the floor.

"Jim! That was my mother! How could you!" Blair shrieked.

"I was nervous, she helped, it just happened."

"Oh God Oh God oh God oh God." Blair was holding his hands over his ears, muttering his mantra over and over.

Jim pulled his hands away gently.

"It was only the once, just to get the job done."

"In our bed?"

Jim's eyes flicked away again.

Blair wailed and pulled himself away from his grasp.

"Blair," Jim reached for him, but Blair scrambled away.

"This is sick," he accused. "She's my Mom. You're my husband."

"Blair, we talked about this. You were okay with this."

"No!" Blair was livid. "Not this."

"Blair, you're a student of kinship ties. You know there's no right or wrong. Just different. You wanted this. You wanted a family. You thought it was important that we have a family. You said my bloodline was too valuable to waste. You wanted this. Naomi just helped."

"Helped," Blair repeated, bitterly.

"Does it really matter whether I inseminated or impregnated her?"

"Yes! Godammit, yes! It's adultery!"

"We did it for you."

"Oh, please, don't give me that. You're not the first, or the last. She's always stealing my lovers!"

Blair slammed into his bedroom.

Jim just shook his head. All his reservations, all his doubts, all his arguments, all his squeamishness. Blair had talked him into this, cajoled him into this, pressured him into this. And now, this. Just because, because Naomi had been there.

She'd handed him the plastic container, like a piece of tupperware. He'd just looked at it. embarrassed.

"Shall I wait downstairs?" she offered.

"Yeah, I that'll be..." he just look lost, humiliated, vulnerable. She touched his cheek softly.

"It'll be okay. This is a wonderful thing that you're doing. It means so much to Blair. And to me."

Jim had taken his bit of tupperware upstairs to his bed, and just sat there.

"Nervous?" asked a warm voice. Jim started to find her watching him.

"Yeah." That was putting it mildly.

She sank onto the bed with him, pushing the tupperware container out of sight. Her eyes never leaving his, she reached out, unfastened his jeans and stroked him. He jolted, as if shocked.

"Sssh," she purred, mouth moving over his as her hand slid slowly up and down.

She tasted like Blair, touched like Blair. This was wrong, oh, god, she knew just how to touch him. She played the touching game, peeling away cloths, touching, peeling away more, touching more, drawing him in, mesmerizing him, inviting him to touch her, fingertips, tongue, dipping into her liquid heat, intoxicated by her, her taste, her texture, her warmth, the feel of her breasts, suckling upon her, drawing her to him, drawing him inside her.

"Blair!" He knocked loudly on the door. "I'm sorry, okay? It was wrong. That's why I didn't tell you. She was helping me and...it just happened. I hadn't been with a woman in so long..."

"Oh, gawd, now he's going straight o me," came the strangled wail from inside.

Jim hissed his breath out between his teeth.

"It happened, Sandburg. Just the once. Just to give me a child. I'm sorry this has upset you so much, but just pull yourself together because we're picking up your mother from the airport in two hours."

"Pull myself together," came the dark muttering.

"You go. That's all you want. It's okay. I'm used to it."

Jim rested his forehead against the door, losing the battle.

"Don't be an moron, Sandburg. I married you, not your mother. That was just procreation. You, you mean more to me than anything. I love you, you stupid little idiot. Now open the damn door." The last request was phrased with more of a cop's intonation than a husband's.

"Go away," sulked the voice inside.

Jim had no choice. Maybe the kid would calm down in two hours. He looked at the door again. Maybe Naomi could prise him out. He shook his head. This was not how he'd planned his family life.

He certainly hadn't planned on Naomi or her hands on approach to surrogacy.

"And is your husband meeting you?" asked Naomi's travelling companion, whom she'd met in the seat beside her, whom she had managed to coax into carrying the luggage for the elegant and heavily pregnant redhead.

"Husband?" smiled Naomi. "Oh, no, I've never been married. I'm carrying this child for my son. He and his partner can't have children of their own, obviously - oh, there they are - Jim! Blair!"

Her bags were dropped where they were, but she hardly noticed as her family rushed towards her. Blair she grabbed in an embarrassed, loving hug. Jim leant across to greet her with a chaste kiss on the cheek, but she turned, meeting his lips with her own.

"Cut that out," wailed Blair from below. "Damn it, Jim, were you raised in the Ozarks, or what?"

"He knows," Jim explained.

"Well, it's certainly not a secret," Naomi smiled, patting her well rounded stomach.

Blair curled in on himself on the bed, back to Jim, his refuge of his own room denied to him this night.

"Blair," Jim pleaded, running a hand along a shoulder that was shaken off. "I'm sorry, but it's done," he tried.

No response. Jim bit back the frustration.

"God damn it, Sandburg. This was your idea. Don't you punish me."

"I don't want to talk about it," came the tired reply.

"Blair," Jim pleaded. "I love you. God, I'm sorry. Don't shut me out. Please..."

Jim was begging, touching, pleading, pressuring him with his body. It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair at all.

Naomi woke, hearing her child cry out in the night. She waited, fully awake, and heard the cry again, more clearly this time. It wasn't a cry for help. It was the cry of her child climaxing in the arms of his lover.

She remembered that lover's arms, a warm ripple of pleasure washing through her. She should have never, ever. Not this time. It had hurt Blair, hurt Jim, and now she couldn't look at Jim without remembering, see his hands or mouth without knowing what they could do to her. She hadn't expected Jim to be such an incredible, absorbing, passionate, intimate, sensuous lover.

Oh, Blair, she thought, you've really got a fine one there.

Blair stomped down the steps, already dressed, back pack slung over his shoulder, stomping past Jim to snatch a piece of dry toast on the way out the door.

"You're not staying?" Jim had to ask.

"No. I've got a lot of work on. You knew that," he accused.

"Fine," Jim shot back tersely. "Don't I even get a kiss goodbye?"

Blair bristled, turning as his hand hit the door knob.

"No. Don't think last night means I've forgiven you. It just means I can't say no, and I hate you for that."

And with that, he slammed through the door and was gone.

Jim just stared at the closed door, then turned to Naomi.

"You're his mother. What is wrong with him and how the hell do I fix it?"

"You can't fix it," she smiled wanly. "He's angry with both of us, and he needs to work through that. He feels excluded, left out."

"How can I include him when all he does is slam doors in my face."

"He'll calm down, in time."

"He's behaving like a child."

"Of course he is. His mother is in town. It's only natural."

Jim folded his arms, brooding. "I wanted to share this with him," he all but pouted.

Naomi laid a gentle hand on his shoulder, then removed it after a moment, both too comfortable with the gesture.

"He will calm down?" Jim asked again, unsure. He'd never seen Blair so snitty. He hadn't even moved the last of his stuff out of the spare room, which Jim wanted to convert into a nursery. These last few weeks had been a nightmare. It was like his Blair had been replaced with a churlish, surly clone.

"I don't know how to deal with him when he's like this," Jim appealed to Naomi.

"This requires an enormous commitment on his part. He needs his personal space," she shrugged.

"He'll have plenty of space on the street if he doesn't snap out of it." Jim promised.

"Jim!" Naomi scolded. But Jim was losing his patience.

"You know, I've worn his infidelities, because he's a free spirit, you said. *I* have one night to father a child, which we discussed and he seemed okay with, and now he goes psycho on me. I don't want to break him, Naomi, but it's time he grew up. This is important to me. I don't need his shit, not now."

"I hear you," Naomi placated.

Jim gritted his teeth. One more day of this and he was going to end up on the evening news, and not in a good way.

Jim wasn't at all surprised to find that Blair wasn't home, hadn't been home all day, and had left Naomi to do her own thing. Nor was Blair taking calls at the university. Jim went straight to the business of making dinner, for two, knowing Blair wouldn't be home that night.

"He's off sulking somewhere," he explained to Naomi, not that she seemed half as concerned as he was. "Spare the rod and spoil the child," he muttered under his breath, just about ready to make up for twenty seven years lack of discipline. Violence was definitely beginning to feel like the most satisfying solution, though whether he just spanked Blair like the brat he was or had a Honeymooners knockdown brawl, he couldn't decide. Maybe both.

Naomi could feel the waves of pent up frustration rolling off him and frowned. The part of Jim she didn't like, the brutish bully, thumping about in the kitchen.

He caught her look.

"Well, you talk to him, then. He's your son."

"Blair won't listen to me, he has to follow his own heart."

"Thanks a lot," Jim growled under his own breath, slamming around the counter.

"Damn!" Jim modified his swearing as an oven dish slipped from his hands and crashed to the ground.

He knelt, trying to pick up the shattered pieces. He really swore this time as a fumbled shard sliced his palm open, more from the sudden and profuse blood than pain, because he barely felt it.

Naomi saw the blood, too.

"Jim, oh my God." She made him stand and run his hand under the tap, then led him over to the couch, after finding the first aid kit. She perched on the coffee table before him, so much like Blair, cradling his hand in her own, binding the cut with a practised field dressing. A well of surprises, so much like her son.

"I knew something like this would happen. I could feel the negative energy clear across the room."

"Just clumsiness," Jim tried to counter.

She ran a finger lightly up his wrist.

"You can't feel that," she accused.

"It'll pass. It always does. Every time I get over stressed or upset, it goes out of whack."

"Then calm down."

"I can't."

Naomi never thought she'd ever see real fear in those eyes. She could feel the tremble in his hands.

"Shit, I'm going to lose him. I can't do anything right anymore. I'm going to lose him over this. He said he was okay with this. I would have never...He said he was okay. And I believed him. And now I'm going to lose him, and I can't..."

"Sssh..." Naomi leaned forward, gathering him in her arms, soothing him. It was nice; her softness, her scent, her warmth, too nice. He pulled away, getting up and attempting to scrape the broken remains of the dish into the rubbish, the feeling starting to kick back in, with a vengeance.

Naomi stood, watching him, seeing the hopelessness in his movements.

"Don't give up," she began, then stopped.

He knew it, felt it a moment before she did.

Naomi's face paled.

"I think we'll have to skip dinner." Her voice was shaken. It was too soon.

Blair found the loft deserted, broken and bloody crockery piled on the floor, candles burned down to stubs, something cold and unidentifiable left out on the counter, Jim and Naomi nowhere to be found.

Deep foreboding panged at him as he dialled Jim's mobile.

He found Jim hunched over in a vinyl hospital chair in the corridor, waiting.

"What happened?"

"Naomi went into labour early. She was bleeding. There are complications."

"Shit! I knew it! I knew this was a stupid thing to do!" he exploded.

"Stop it," Jim threw back tiredly. "This was agreed on by three consenting adults, though lately you've been a complete child. I'm sorry you have a problem with this, but it's happening, so grow up and deal with it. If you're lucky, you won't have to clean out your room after all."

Blair fell into quiet, sullen, on the verge of tears sulk mode.

"Will she be okay?" he asked in a very small voice.

"I don't know."

Jim just kept sitting there, thinking his own thoughts, arms folded, his whole body closed off from Blair.

Blair could only take sitting still for so long, slouching off on a long, lonely walk down a corridor.

Jim relished the solitude over the strained silence of the last twenty minutes.

Several hours passed before someone bothered to tell him that Naomi and the child were still alive, but only just.

Jim sat sullenly, hunched over before the incubator that caged his infant son, as Blair stayed up all night scrunched up in a plastic chair by his mother's bedside.

Blair pushed open the door, confronted by the sight of Jim, mother, and child. He stalled. Jim beamed. Naomi beamed.

"Come on in, Blair. Say hello to your brand new baby brother Tristan," Naomi invited.

Blair bolted.

"What the hell," Jim hissed, really at the end of his rope now.

Naomi caught his wrist.

"Let him be for a moment. Blair's never had to share before, neither you nor me. He's been an only child all his life. He feels shut out, discarded."

Jim's pale blue irises contracted.

"Sibling rivalry? That's what this is?"

"Of course. Blair's not the maybe anymore. No longer the centre of our universe. He'll adjust. He just needs time."

"He's had over eight months. He seemed so excited, until recently. I can't raise a child alone, not without him," Jim panicked.

"Sssh," Naomi soothed. "Go to him. But be gentle. He needs to be reassured of our love."

Jim pushed through the door, muttering darkly to himself. Once upon a time, he'd had a reasonably sane and normal life - BS: Before Sandburg.

"There you are," He spoke quietly, having hunted down his quarry.

"Knew you'd find me. Nowhere to hide," Blair admitted, resigned.

"What's going on, with you, with us?" Jim asked quietly, standing before Blair, as patiently, as calmly as he could manage.

"What does it matter. You've got Tristan now."

"I have a son, and it's wonderful. Beautiful. But I still need you, my wonderful, beautiful, demented, maddening, silly husband. We had a deal, remember.? We're raising this child together, okay, you and me, as a family."

He tilted Blair's face up gently, so he could see those eyes.

"We are a family, Blair."

"Yeah, mother, father, son."

"Brother. Husband. Parent." Jim affirmed. "Partner. Lover. Friend," he added, softly, under his breath, folding Blair into his arms.

"This is silly," he murmured. "Naomi and I made a child, but you and I, we'll make a family. A real family. Just like you've always wanted,' he purred, rubbing a hand softly up and down Blair's back.

He felt his young love give in, sink against him, arms slide around his waist.

"I love you, Blair. I love you, so much. Please come and see Tristan with me. He needs you almost as much as I do. He'll need a guide and a protector, as much as I do."

Blair's arms tightened around him.

Yes. They'd be a family.

Jim stopped at the door, almost dropping the paper cup of coffee he held. There was Blair, smiling, holding the child.

Blair cradled his tiny baby brother tenderly in his arms.

"He's got your hair, Jim, " he teased, stroking the barely there tufts.

Jim just grimaced at him.

"Tristan Ellison Sandburg, or Sandburg Ellison?" he asked of Jim.

"He's a baby, not a law firm. Just Sandburg will be fine. Tradition," he smiled.

"So, Jim, have you decided who you're inviting to the Bris?" prodded Naomi.

"Bris?" Jim looked to Blair.

"Blair," Chastised Naomi, "You Haven't told him?"

Blair rolled his eyes.

"A Bris is a ceremony performed on male infants of the Jewish faith..."

Jim made a face. "That's where they..."

Blair nodded.

"Is that a problem?" Naomi asked, frowning slightly.

"No. I just, never thought, no. It's fine. Tradition." he smiled again. He kept forgetting his was a mixed faith marriage. Blair was so casual, so diverse, so unorthodox, he really forgot until Blair brought him up short reminding him, suddenly, with his need for his own cultural traditions.

His hand covered Blair's. "I have no idea what's involved, but I want Tris to be a part of his family's customs."

"Just don't serve cocktail frankfurts," Blair offered advice, teasing poor Jim who'd tried to be so sincere.

His first decision as parent, that his son would participate in his family's traditions and beliefs, until Tristan made up his own mind and made his own choices. And knowing his son was a Sandburg, that was inevitable.

He remembered Blair still hadn't cleaned out his study. That was okay though. Tris wasn't coming home for at least a couple of days, and he was so small, he only needed a corner of the room. So small Jim thought he would keep Tris up in the bedroom, just to watch over him.

He leant forward, brushing Blair's lips with the softest kiss, then his tiny son's brow. He could see some of Blair in the tiny little scrunched up face. "I love you," he promised, to both of them.