Author's webpage: http://members.home.net/valgarry

Vow

hope comes from the smallest places,
little rooms inside the heart. the
furniture there bears the traces of
every unsuccessful start.
--john gorka, furniture

It wasn't much. Just a kiss on the top of the head, nothing sexual in it, no reason for Simon to stop and stare. He did, though.

Jim and Blair were in Blair's office -- his former office -- putting books into boxes. They were bent over the same box, Blair's eyes shut, Jim's mouth touching his hair. As Simon watched, Jim pressed Blair's shoulder and whispered something in his ear. They pulled apart and turned to face the door.

"Simon ... should you be up?"

Blair's voice was steady, but the colour along his cheekbones betrayed him. Simon entered the room and claimed the one chair that wasn't covered in books.

"Can't sit around the house all day. It wasn't my idea to go on leave for four weeks." He leaned back and felt the chair hit something solid. "What have you got back there?"

"Tribal masks. A spear. Couple of shields. Seriously, are you sure it's okay for you to be walking around?"

Simon took a good look around the office. There were still a few things hanging on the walls, including Blair's diplomas.

"I don't see your medical degree, Sandburg."

"No," Blair said amiably, "I'm not any kind of a doctor."

Simon didn't have an answer for that, and it was suddenly difficult to look Blair in the eye. Instead, he looked past the clutter to see what furniture remained in Blair's possession.

"That's not a bad chair, " he commented, looking at the chair behind Blair's desk. "When they gave you this office, did the chair come with it?" "It was here when I got here, if that's what you mean. Why?"

"Well," Simon said, "I'm not a lawyer, but it seems you have reason to believe that chair now belongs to you."

"There's room in the back of the truck," Jim added. "I figure you could fit in your all junk, that chair, and maybe the filing cabinet. You want the filing cabinet?"

Blair stared at him.

"I'm not sure I have a use for it anymore. Are you police officers seriously recommending I clean this place out? To serve, protect, and help yourself?"

Jim exchanged an amused glance with Simon.

"Think of it as a going-away present. Simon's right -- you could make a good case for thinking these things were yours to take. After all, whoever had the office before you just left them."

"Considering the opinion they have of me around here," Blair said, "I'm guessing they'll count the silverware in the cafeteria after I'm gone. I think we'd better leave the furniture where it is." Jim shrugged.

"Your call, Chief."

And there the matter rested. Simon watched as they packed and carried things to the truck and quarrelled in an offhand way that had more to do with habit than genuine annoyance.

It was normal behaviour ... or at least, what passed for normal with them. The strange moment of intimacy that Simon had interrupted was over, and there was nothing outside of his own memory to tell him it had happened at all.

He decided to forget he'd seen anything. It was none of his business anyway.

"I," he announced once the office was empty and the truck was full, "am buying lunch. You will want to take advantage of this offer, because it will probably never happen again."

Jim looked at Blair.

"You heard him, right?"

"Yeah, I heard him." He gave Simon the intense, peering-down-a- microscope look he usually reserved for Jim. "You're actually going to follow through on this? Because that bait and switch you pulled last time ..."

"That was not a bait and switch," Simon protested. "I fully intended to pay for the meal, but after half an hour of you chewing on ice and you," he pointed to Jim, "complaining about the waitress' perfume, I changed my mind. Let me put this another way -- as long as the two of you manage to behave, I will buy you lunch."

"Can we get a written definition of `behave'?" Blair asked.

"No!" Simon said, as loudly as he could manage without tearing his stitches. Blair lifted his hands in surrender.

"Okay, okay. It's just that who's paying for lunch could have an effect on what I order."

"Sandburg..."

"Hey, forget I said anything." Blair grinned at him. "Let's have lunch."

jack's crows are in for a murder. a murder is a
gathering. some watch, some go a little further.
some eat what the others bring.
--john gorka, jack's crows

Simon was off duty until he had completely recovered from the gunshot; Blair wasn't supposed to show his face around the station until the press went away, and Jim had taken the day off. Still, when they walked in the restuarant and noticed a tv showing news at the back of the room, they went for it the way flies went for a bug zapper.

They gave their menus limited attention, their eyes constantly moving to the screen, watching for trouble in the Great City. It didn't take long before all of the menus fell to the table and their eyes locked on the screen. It was Simon's belief that there were three kinds of cases taken on by Major Crimes. There were one-Aspirin crimes -- murders, arson, the usual strife of a big city. Four Aspirin crimes were the murders of children, large scale heists, sex crimes. Then there were tilt-the-bottle-and-shake crimes. Those could range from the theft of biological weapons to mass murder to the end of the goddamned world.

What Simon saw on the tv screen was a four-Aspirin crime with real potential for expansion. A synagogue had been trashed the night before, painted with swastikas and covered in filth. Better still, a janitor had apparently caught the perpetrators in the act and was now face down in the dumpster.

Nothing like a good hate crime to foster peace, love, and understand in the city of Cascade.

A shot of the area around the dumpster revealed a large percentage of the Cascade police department, including the envoys from Major Crimes. "Looks like Rafe and Brown are handling it," Jim said. Simon got the impression that he was trying for a conversational tone, but he'd missed it by a mile. He was furious that the case hadn't gone to him.

"You took the day off," Simon reminded him. The newscast went to commercial and he looked away from the screen, confirming what he'd suspected. The little muscle at the back of Jim's jaw was twitching rapidly. Blair had picked up his menu and was staring at it intently, but his eyes weren't moving and Simon doubted he was seeing the words. Actually, Simon believed that he and Blair were having one of those rare moments when they were thinking the same thing. Jim should not, not at all, not in any way be allowed to work on this case.

"I'm going to the station," Jim said. He got as close to standing as he could and glared at Blair, who had him pinned into the booth and showed no signs of standing to let him out. Blair set his menu down.

"I'm pretty sure H. and Rafe have things under control," he said. "Sit down; let Simon buy you lunch. If anything urgent comes up they have your cel number. Right?"

Their eyes locked, and Simon raised his menu to hide a smile. He'd never seen Jim win a staredown with the kid, and he didn't think he ever would. About half a minute later, Jim sat down.

"I realize every city has that trash," he said, "but I didn't think we had any groups that ... extreme."

Simon looked at Blair and found Blair looking at him. Since that wasn't helpful, he looked at Jim again.

"You know how mob mentality works, Jim. I wouldn't guess that any of them went there planning to kill that janitor."

"That doesn't make them any less dangerous," Jim muttered.

"No," Simon said, "I agree. Right now they're very dangerous because they've killed someone. But I don't think we can rule out the local groups just because we checked them out and they didn't seem violent. The potential for violence is always there. And these people feed off each other."

"Historically," Blair pointed out, "these things have tended to get worse instead of better."

Jim smiled a little. Of late there was a real edge to Blair's sense of humour, and Simon was getting the impression Jim liked it. Simon could have lived without it, but it certainly knew where that edge was coming from.

"This won't get worse," Jim said. "I'm shutting it down." That settled, he lifted his menu. Blair looked at Simon and raised an eyebrow. Simon responded by rolling his eyes. Once the Sentinel of the Great City had made up his mind, there wasn't much that could be done about it.

"Just don't forget you're a cop," Simon told him.

"I know I'm a cop," Jim said with exaggerated patience. He didn't look up from his menu.

"Remember that it's H. and Rafe's case," Blair added. "Everyone knows you're the best detective in Major Crimes--"

Jim glanced at him.

"We're the best team in Major Crimes."

"Whatever," Blair said, but he was smiling. "Just because we're the best team in Major Crimes, that doesn't make them incompetent. You don't want them to think that you think they're not good enough."

"Rafe and Brown are mature enough to accept help," Jim said. "Are the fajitas any good here?"

Which was the end of that discussion.