Author's webpage: http://www.geocities.com/TelevisionCity/Station/9742/
Author's disclaimer: The characters in the Sentinel are not mine, and no copyright infringement is intended or money being made. This is fanfic.
Author's notes: I've been lurking on this list for... too long to remember. This is my first post. Be gentle. But send feedback. Please.
He stepped through the door, and a hand grabbed him round the throat. Well, he thought, processing, actually, an arm. He wasn't sure quite how it happened, but someone's left arm, the solid bone, the whatchamacallit that goes from wrist to elbow, was pressed into his windpipe like an iron bar. Here goes, he thought resignedly; at least it's one hand against two. He grabbed the arm and pulled...
"You see, that was your first mistake," Jim's voice said reasonably. He tugged on Jim's arm a bit harder and Jim responded with a slight - oh so sight - move. Turning his wrist just enough to twist the rigid bar of his arm added that scant, effortless inch that lifted Sandburg onto his toes and, incidentally, cut off his air altogether.
"And, of course, my right hand is still free to do this..." He pulled his weapon, held it decisively to the side of Blair's head, said "Bang!" and let go. "Oh, and, by the way, Chief, you're dead."
Blair turned on him incredulously. "A banana? You killed me with a banana? That's... that's insulting, man!"
Jim grinned and walked away.
"Oh come on, at least critique the exercise. What was I supposed to have done?"
"You're a smart guy, Chief. You'll figure it out."
Oh god, did that mean he was going to do it again? At this rate, thought Blair hopelessly, he was going to be dead of frustration before he ever got to the Academy. At least the instructors might kill him quickly.
Then, to crown a perfect morning, the radio started playing that damned Santana song again.
The next time, they were in the garage at the station. One minute Jim was round his side of the truck opening the door and the next Blair was being dragged backwards by that arm across his throat. But he knew, now, from surreptitiously sneaking that self defence book out of the stacks at the library, that you tilt your hip and use the edge of your hand to smash backwards into your assailant's groin...
"Much better, Chief," came Jim's voice confidently, "unless the guy knows what he's doing..."
Which Jim, of course, did. He already knew his move hadn't worked, because his "karate" hand had met only the turn of Jim's hip and...
Oh great. Now he was carrying round bananas just to torment his partner.
"Bang. That's two for two."
That thing with cutting off your air was getting to be no fun either...
"Come on, Chief, breathe for me. There you go."
How had he got into the truck? "Did I pass out?"
"Well, technically I suffocated you."
Jim had that oh-fuck-I-just-killed-Sandburg look that meant constant monitoring and blankets for a month, which was all very well if you wanted something in particular but the Volvo had just been detailed and no-one drinks that much tea. Well, except the English. So he threw Jim a bone by smiling the no-really-it's-OK smile and saw him brighten instantly and go back to killtutor. "But keep working on it, Chief. You'll get the idea."
God, the guys at the Academy were going to kill him before lunch on day one.
And, right on cue, Jim started up the engine and the radio blared out Santana. "Smooth", he thought ironically, rubbing his neck, "exactly - not."
"Hey, H?"
"Hairboy?"
How to ask a favour without making it sound like you're asking a favour... academic curiosity, merely; no, not a shred of personal interest in the answer, H, he projected sincerely.
"Say someone grabs you from behind, by the throat... what's your counter move?"
But it was no good, of course. Jim must have told them already, or some bright spark had seen the security tapes from the parking garage.
Because Brown's eyes twinkled as he said, "well, why don't you try it and I'll demonstrate."
No way out of this kind of hazing except to go through with it, try and stay one step ahead. Kind of a judo thing, in fact, in its way.
"OK, I'll bite. I grab you like this..."
"And I stay perfectly still... and let my partner shoot you in the head."
And Rafe tapped Blair on the side of the skull with the end of a banana. And Blair, in spite of himself, laughed.
Santana was just starting to drift in the windows from a car passing in the street when he said, "er, guys, can I interest you in a little proposition..."
So the next time it happened, they were in the middle of the bullpen and Jim, without warning, grabbed Blair round the neck and waited for his counter-move. And Blair stayed absolutely still as, with perfect synchronisation, the men and women of Major Crimes pointed bananas at Jim and yelled "Bang!"
And all it cost him was a six-pack apiece next poker night.
Well, and the aching stomach muscles from all that laughter.
So back to the loft. Because obviously Jim had decided torturing him in public was getting him nothing except embarrassment, and it might be OK with Major Crimes (who were, after all, family) but it wouldn't do to have the entire precinct calling him "banana boy" all through Basic.
He started to feel like Peter Sellers in a Clouseau movie, never knowing when Kato was going to jump out at him and expect him to fight back. The kitchen first. He tried that thing he saw in a Mel Gibson movie, where you smash the (hard) back of your head against the (soft) face of your assailant. And bumped his head on the wall and saw stars, and ended up with a banana in the ribs and that goddamn Santana song blaring out of someone's stereo down the street. So that was no good.
The doorway, twice. Once he tried pulling his own weapon - OK, his own banana - out of his pocket and blowing his assailant away. Jim persuaded him that, if his assailant could remove his weapon, peel it and eat it, all while keeping him immobilised one-handed, well, a real assailant would have little difficulty in shooting him. With his own gun. When he had a gun. As opposed to a banana.
And, excuse me, wasn't this the guy who regularly dropped his gun in moments of crisis, but, no, a banana he has no problem retaining about his person at all times.
The second time he tried all of the above - backwards head smash, karate chop to the groin, AND banana in the guts - simultaneously, and ended up immobilised, on the ground, and wearing banana peel cuffs before you could say "will you get the fuck off of me you fucking neanderthal."
Jim let him go as if he had been burned. "Sorry, Chief."
"Yeah, well..."
He wasn't going to say it, was he? But they both knew, and couldn't say, that he was going to get creamed the minute he walked through the Academy door. But if he couldn't make it through Basic, he couldn't be Jim's partner, and if he couldn't be Jim's partner, well, the world was pretty much going to come to an end, wasn't it? So he just had to. And now there were only twelve days to go. And if they didn't stop playing that fucking Santana record he was going to go crazy, right here, right now, and start sobbing into the rug and get carted off to some psych ward. He contented himself with banging his forehead - gently, reproachfully - on the rug instead.
"You aren't using your brains, Sandburg. If you play by the same rules as the neanderthals you'll lose every time. But if you make the neanderthals play to your strengths..."
Fine. Neanderthal strengths? Well, obviously, er, strength. Big, buff, muscular strength. Sigh. Sandburg strengths? Um... allegedly smart? Outsmart him?
He tried eating all the available weapons but he had to give it up when he put on two pounds and started worrying whether you could OD on potassium.
At the bathroom door he tried breaking Jim's little finger and had to say "uncle" before he could get away to pee.
So brains weren't exactly going to do it either.
And Jim still hadn't dropped a single banana.
But then...
...chopping vegetables for the stir-fry, and there was that godawful Santana song again, and the guy groaning on about being smooth, and, like clockwork, Jim's arm was round his neck and he was stabbing it with the blunt end of his paring knife and then, while they were wiping up the blood and putting a dressing on his ear ("OK OK it was an accident already!") the first glimmerings of an idea came to him...
So he waited. And worried. Because, it couldn't be that simple. Could it? Because, if he was wrong... not going to go there. And, anyway, whatever else happened he was going to win one of these things once, dammit.
And finally they had the radio on and, sure enough, there was Santana in the rotation. And there, like Pavlov's dog, was Jim's reaction. The arm snaked round his throat. And, instead of freezing he... moved.
Moved to the music, swaying from side to side, grinding his butt into Jim's groin...
"This life ain't good enough. I'd give
my world, to lift you up. I can change
my life, to better suit your mood.
Because you're so smooth..." went the music, or as much of it as he could make out. And the arm round his throat went wonderfully slack, and he swayed to the beat, lifting his arms above his head and writhing like one of those oued-nail dancers he'd seen once, and Jim was beginning to sway along with him, and they stood there rippling like a pair of slow-motion belly-dancers.
Oh ho. Is that a banana in your pocket or are you just glad to see me? He swayed harder. He positively undulated. And reached behind him and ran his fingers, lightly, up and down all those bits of big buff neanderthal he could reach. And he didn't need to be a Sentinel to hear how Jim's breathing changed as the guitar wailed and he wiggled his butt against that nice hard thing pressed up tight against it and woo hoo! Who would have thought it?
Somehow he seemed to be bent over backwards and looking up into Jim's face, into eyes dilated so wide the pupils were bright black, and the song was coming to an end and Jim was mouthing along with the lyric, breathing it into his face: "Give me your heart, make it real - or else forget about it."
Smooth.
And suddenly he knew he'd started something, and that soft little sobbing noise they were both making was in fact the "click" of all of the pieces of both of their lives falling into place, and this was the reason he'd kept hearing that damned song - henceforth to be known as OUR song - every time he turned around. And this was the end of having to worry about the Academy, or, indeed, about life, the universe, and everything. Because it was all right now. All. All right. Right now. So smooth... And, too, he'd better do something about getting them away from being frozen in this weird tableau and into the kissing part before Jim had an aneurysm or something.
So.
"Jim," he said sweetly.
The neanderthal - no, HIS neanderthal - grunted patiently.
"I think you dropped your banana."
[end]