Guidelines 4, Power Play, Chapter 2
Mar. 18th, 2006 08:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lit_galGuidelines 4: Power Play
Chapter 2
Jim/Blair
Jim is a sentinel who failed the U.S. Sentinel Program under questionable circumstances. Blair is the student challenging the entire philosophy of the Sentinel Program. The USSP would just like to see both men disappear.
Previous Episodes in the Series HERE
Previous Chapters HERE
Chapter 2
Jim/Blair
Jim is a sentinel who failed the U.S. Sentinel Program under questionable circumstances. Blair is the student challenging the entire philosophy of the Sentinel Program. The USSP would just like to see both men disappear.
Previous Episodes in the Series HERE
Previous Chapters HERE
Blair struggled to keep his eyes open as Dr. Edwards switched out the transparency on the overhead. This one showed retention from freshman to sophomore year, and he could give her speech from memory. "Reach out to the students… blah… blah… blah…" "Hold high standards… blah… blah… blah…"
Blair sunk a little lower in his seat as Kelly sashayed into the room a good thirty minutes late for the meeting. If that had been Blair strolling in… Actually, if Blair tried walking anywhere in a mid-thigh leather skirt and heels that high, he would have very serious issues even without the twitch in Dr. Edwards' right eye when she was about to blow.
"Ms. Newman, so nice of you to join us," Dr. Edwards spit sarcastically, and Blair flinched just being in the same room with that tone of voice, but Kelly smiled sweetly as she slid into one of the many empty seats in the front row and tilted her head almost as though giving Dr. Edwards permission to continue. For a half second, time stopped as the two women stared at each other and everyone else tried not to breath.
"God that woman has balls," Charlie whispered as he looked up from the video game tucked between the official binder of TA rules and his stomach.
"As someone who has been up close and personal with her genitals, I can promise you, she doesn't," Blair answered. "And I'm hoping you meant Kelly," he added as he watched Edwards and Kelly break eye contact with an almost tangible snap.
"And as someone who is in favor of female genitals any time, any place, and any level of soberness, can I just say that you are fucking insane for going near that one?" Charlie answered about the same time Dr. Edwards frowned toward the back rows. Blair ignored Charlie and Kelly as he tried to at least look attentive. With his new project partnering with the USSP and his new job at the department, he'd managed to crawl up from social pariah to merely annoying in Edwards' books, and he didn't intend to drop back down again.
When the orientation ended, Blair tried to dart for the exit closest to the library where he could hide in the stacks for hours, but before he could reach the double doors to freedom, he found himself eye to breast with a white silk shirt and multiple strands of gold on a perfectly tanned chest. Four months ago the sight of that chest had short circuited every single on of his brain cells, and Blair had a nagging suspicion that he would have fallen back into the whole Kelly-breast worship again if it weren't for the fact that his taste in chests had changed. Like seriously changed.
"Hey there," Blair finally offered with his best not-looking-for-trouble smile.
"Surely you weren't going to leave without saying 'hi'," she said as she stepped closer, and Blair backed up, managing to bump Sarah Ang who specialized in Native American cultures. She shot him a dirty look, and he shrugged an apology.
"Oh, Blair, I just can't take you anywhere, can I?" Kelly laughed, her low voice rumbling with a sexy laugh as she threaded her arm between Blair's body and his right arm, capturing it in a strong hold as she pulled him toward the door.
"Hands off the goods, Kelly. I told you last year that this thing between us over, and I meant it."
"Oh Blair," she laughed, "I've heard that before, and it never lasts. Just give in quickly and we can go for coffee."
"Yeah, but this last time I really meant it," Blair said as he planted his feet, and then nearly fell over as Kelly just kept pulling. He would have been shocked at the woman's strength, but then he'd seen her dripping sweat, muscles flexing as she drove herself to the edge at the gym.
"Kelly, enough is enough," Blair said as he tried to keep some dignity while being dragged down the hall by a woman who stood a good eight inches taller than him. A few of his fellow TA's turned to watch the show, and Blair felt himself blush. Thankfully, he didn't have the sort of fair skin that showed his blushes or he would really humiliate himself.
"Oh, hey, Blair, don't we have to need to meet that one guy?" Charlie asked as he hurried behind them.
"Get lost, Teller," Kelly snapped, and Blair planted his feet as firmly as he could on the tile floor, pulling her to a stop.
"Kelly, knock it off," Blair demanded as he jerked his arm out of her grasp. In an instant, he could see the anger blaze in her eyes as she put her hands on her hips and glared down.
"Blair," she said, drawing his name out into three or four syllables in a clear warning.
"No, Kelly," Blair insisted even though his stomach twisted at that familiar expression. In the past it might have been a good sort of twist, but now he just felt the twisting nausea without the perks.
"You don't say 'no' to me," she said darkly, and her eyes narrowed. Blair suddenly realized just how ridiculous that sounded. Her attitude might have been a bit of a turn on when they were involved, but now she just sounded like a petulant child.
"Okay, I can say 'no' to you, and there isn't anything you can do except deny me sex, which really isn't a problem for me," Blair shrugged as he watched the color rise in her cheeks. "Really not a problem. Big-old enormous not a problem," he egged Kelly on with a wink to let her know just how not worried he was on the sex front.
Nodding to Charlie who stood there with a slightly shocked expression, Blair headed down the hall toward the elevators. The memo he'd gotten assigned him Artifact Room 3 as an office, and Blair had every intention of taking advantage of finally having office space and a bit of respect, even if Kelly Newman wouldn't be first in line to congratulate him.
"Man, you are seriously soft in the head," Charlie hissed as he dashed into the elevator just as the doors closed.
"Oh please, I've dated far scarier than her," Blair pointed out as he punched the button for the basement. "Remember Svetlana? Oh man, what a pair of legs she had." Blair remembered the blonde in her thigh high boots and plaid skirt, the one she wore when they went dancing.
"Yeah, but she was just intimidating, you know, as in, you were the only man on campus with the nerve to ask her out. Kelly is seriously wacked. Did you see the look she gave you?" Charlie asked, but Blair just stepped out of the elevator and headed down the hall. Two doors down, he found it. Below "Artifact Storage Room 3", a brand new plaque announced "Blair Sandburg, USSP Studies."
"Okay, I could live without the 'USSP' part," Blair said as he pulled out his key and fit it into the lock.
"You have some seriously fucked up priorities, if that's what you're worried about," Charlie commented with a snort as Blair pushed open the door to his very own office, which looked suspiciously like a storage room that someone had pushed a desk into the middle of. "This is it?" Charlie asked as he looked into the crowded room.
"Yeah, isn't it great?" Blair answered as he walked in and dropped the orientation information on the desk.
"If you're suffering from pack-rat-itis, maybe," Charlie answered dubiously.
"All it needs is some cleaning. You go hunt down some paper towels and a bucket of water, and I'll start shifting some of this stuff to clear up some shelf space," Blair said. Turning he found Charlie looking at him suspiciously. "Oh come on, it's going to be great," he defended his space, and really he meant it. The desk was an old, heavy oak behemoth, built like a table only lower, and the shelves had thousands of artifacts, each neatly labeled with a square tag so that Blair felt like a kid who'd found a secret room in some museum. It even smelled of age and respectability.
"Soft in the head," Charlie said slowly as he dropped his own orientation folder and the video game on the dirty desk before heading back out the door. "Soft. In. The. Head," he called behind him even once he was in the hall.
"It's great," Blair yelled back as he eyed the shelves, considering how to rearrange his new office so that he had file space without losing the museum feel by putting all the artifacts in boxes.
Four hours later Blair pushed back a sweaty stand of hair as he looked around his office. Artifacts from a dozen cultures sat on the shelves, but he had cleared two bookshelves for his own research, and the desk practically glowed with layers of dirt and dust scrubbed off. It was almost worth missing the Pakistani celebration.
Glancing up at the clock, Blair threw the soggy grey paper towel onto the mountain of trash sitting in a box top. The office hadn't come with a trash can or a computer or an extension cord long enough for his laptop to plug into the wall or even a cheap stapler, so Blair could see a trip to an office supply store in his future. Well, at least after he grabbed a very late lunch and then caught a bus downtown.
With a smile for his new office, Blair locked up and headed out as he debated between the fish place near the bus stop or the student union. However, as soon as he pushed open the doors to the Anthro building, the shouts of a crowd milling near the admin building attracted his attention away from his grumbling stomach and even that little twitch that made him want to call Jim, which he wouldn't do because he wasn't going to nag the man to death.
Cutting across the manicured lawn, Blair wandered toward a tall girl in a black t-shirt with torn jeans, the sort he might have gone for a few months ago.
"Hey, what's up?" he asked as he squinted up at her sign.
"Didn't you hear about the new program? The university sold their souls to the USSP to get a research project—pigs." The woman shook her sign and whooped as a young man with a goatee climbed up on a brick planter. Standing there in shock, Blair felt his arm grabbed for a second time as the girl pulled him forward with a surge of students who pushed in toward the front of the admin building.
"Are we going to let them turn our university into a political tool?" the red-haired man screamed as he balanced on the brickwork. A lacework of shadows from the tall trees gave his face inhuman curves as the audience yelled their support.
"NO!" screamed the girl next to Blair and the other students standing around. Blair watched in a sort of horrified amusement at the enthusiasm on the faces of the students around him, and a part of him considered adding his own voice since he wasn't a huge USSP fan himself. However, protesting himself seemed rather pointless.
"Are we going to let strong arming soldiers march through our campus?" the man on the planter screamed, his voice growing shriller and louder as the crowd cheered him on.
"NO!"
Blair opened his mouth to point out that his Sentinel project wouldn't bring Sentinels on campus, but he doubted they'd listen.
"Are we going to let the government continue to erode our civil rights?"
"NO!" This time Blair did add his own voice. As one who had been hauled naked out of his own bed, he could get behind that one. The girl on his arm smiled at him as she lifted her sign higher. A young man in flannel bumped him, and Blair pushed closer to the girl as he tried to avoid the crowd of students pressing in around him.
"Will we sit by while they turn our civil liberties into a joke?" the man screamed so loud that his voice broke on the word "joke," and he squeaked out the "k" sound.
"NO!" the crowd screamed back, Blair along with them. He'd avoided protests in his early years at the university since he really didn't want to get kicked out on his ass, but he'd grown up in the middle of protests, had been passed around as a baby so that photographers could get a good snapshot of some protester with a 'Stop Nuclear Pollution' sign in one hand and a curly haired baby in the other. Hell, he'd learned to write letters while helping his mom make signs.
"Do we want the USSP on our campus?"
"NO!" Blair allowed himself to shout out all his frustrations in that one word and he screamed it louder than anyone. The girl next to him bounced some, shaking her sign, and Blair couldn't help but smile at her open enthusiasm. The truth was that he didn't want the USSP on campus; he just had to deal with them to keep Jim safe.
"Are we going to allow the USSP on our campus?"
"NO!" This time Blair didn't add his own voice to the chorus of responses. Bodies pressed in from behind, and Blair tried to turn and complain only to have a wave press in against him, shoving him toward the front of the admin building. The girl on his arm stumbled, and Blair reached down and hauled her up by her elbow before she could fall and get trampled.
"Hell No! We won't go!" the man on the planter screamed, and the crowd picked up the familiar chant as body milled into each other, elbows and shoulders shoving, and now Blair could see why. A line of campus police with batons drawn stood in a half circle around the protesters, and now, as the chant of 'Hell no! We won't go' echoed off the brick of the admin building, the campus police shifted nervously.
Blair tried to fight his way up to the planter, to try and somehow derail the coming disaster, but an elbow in his stomach nearly sent him to the ground, and he had to fight just to keep upright. In the milling crowd, he lost the girl, and now he worked around to the edge of the protest, his back up against the brick of the admin building as he watched city police pull people out of the crowd two and three at a time.
Pulling at the glass doors, he found them locked, and as police cars pulled up with their lights flashing, Blair realized that he might be in just a little bit of trouble.
***
Shifting in the metal chair someone had set up next to a wobbling folding table, Blair rolled his eyes at the officer sitting across from him holding the form he had just filled in.
"I told you I don't have any identification."
"And how do you spell your name?" the officer asked even though he insisted on staring at the form on which Blair had written his name rather than at Blair himself.
"Sandburg: S-A-N-D-B-U-R-G. Blair: B-L-A-I-R."
"Address?"
"852 Prospect, Cascade, WA 98765. Do we really have to keep doing this? I gave you my information, and if you would just call Simon Banks or Jim Ellison of Major Crimes, they'll vouch for me." Blair fought back a desire to rip the forms out of the officer's hands so that the man would at least look at him.
"Right." The officer didn't even bother trying to sound convinced.
"Got a problem?" An older officer with gray at the temples walked up, and Blair bit back a number of answers.
"I'm just trying to explain that my identification got lost when I did some consulting work for the USSP down in California." Blair kept his voice calm and steady, but it wasn't easy considering the new officer had a look of amused disbelief.
"Right, and that's why you're protesting the USSP," the older man nodded condescendingly.
"Blair Sandburg *is* the head of the new program, which is why I'm guessing our joker here isn't Mr. Sandburg."
"You run his prints?"
"Nothing in the database."
"If you'd run the police employee database instead of the criminal one, you might find something," Blair pointed out, and a hand fell on his shoulder, tightening as the older officer leaned over him.
"Son, this protest is nothing more than a ticket. Your folks will be put out when they have to pay the hundred dollars, but they aren't going to be as angry as you think. Just give us your correct information, and you can go on your way."
Blair stared up at the man silently. Really, what answer could he give? It took him a minute to decide on his next words.
"You guys really are stupid." As Blair watched the man's features twist into something far colder, he decided those hadn't been the best words to use. "Just check the employee database; I'm really Blair Sandburg. I was just cleaning up my office in the next building over."
"Stand up," the older cop ordered, and Blair recognized that tone from a dozen protests he's attended with his mother.
"Oh man, you are screwing this up. I'm telling you the truth. You don't have to believe me, just take ten minutes to log into the employee datab—" Blair's words ended with a yelp as the man yanked him to his feet sharply enough to make Blair's shoulder ache.
"I have had enough of this crap. Do you kids think we have nothing better to do than babysit a bunch of whiners?"
"I never sa—"
"Terrorism and our boys dying overseas to keep our country safe… Sentinels dying overseas to keep us safe, and you lot have to complain because you think the world is unfair."
"I nev—"
"If you had an ounce of respect for the people who died in the Veteran's Day Bombings or an ounce of respect for the people who are fighting to keep us safe, you wouldn't pull this shit."
Blair would have answered but a strong hand pushed him face first into the side of a police van before frisking him, and the cop's tone of voice suggested that he had passed rational discussion a couple of exits back. When the cop finished frisking him, a cold voice ordered him to put his hands behind his back before even colder steel closed on his wrists. He waited as he heard another officer open the back of the van while Mr. Cranky held his arm like he was going to try and run off handcuffed.
"Get up in there, and next time an officer asks for your name, you'd better give it," the cop ordered as he pulled Blair to the back of the van, and Blair climbed in, sitting on the cold metal seat and exchanging a quick look with two other protesters already in there. Blair heard the metal cage door slam right before the van door closed, leaving the three of them in a twilight as the sun filtered weakly through the thick, narrow windows near the top.
"Hey, man, claiming to be Blair Sandburg and trying to put some of the blame back on him, very cool," one of the others offered in a friendly voice. Blair just sat back and let the back of his head thump against the metal of the van.
"Who's Blair Sandburg?" the other one asked.
"An idiot," Blair answered the student without bothering to move his eyes from the thick glass with the embedded chicken wire type reinforcement, "a real idiot."
Blair sunk a little lower in his seat as Kelly sashayed into the room a good thirty minutes late for the meeting. If that had been Blair strolling in… Actually, if Blair tried walking anywhere in a mid-thigh leather skirt and heels that high, he would have very serious issues even without the twitch in Dr. Edwards' right eye when she was about to blow.
"Ms. Newman, so nice of you to join us," Dr. Edwards spit sarcastically, and Blair flinched just being in the same room with that tone of voice, but Kelly smiled sweetly as she slid into one of the many empty seats in the front row and tilted her head almost as though giving Dr. Edwards permission to continue. For a half second, time stopped as the two women stared at each other and everyone else tried not to breath.
"God that woman has balls," Charlie whispered as he looked up from the video game tucked between the official binder of TA rules and his stomach.
"As someone who has been up close and personal with her genitals, I can promise you, she doesn't," Blair answered. "And I'm hoping you meant Kelly," he added as he watched Edwards and Kelly break eye contact with an almost tangible snap.
"And as someone who is in favor of female genitals any time, any place, and any level of soberness, can I just say that you are fucking insane for going near that one?" Charlie answered about the same time Dr. Edwards frowned toward the back rows. Blair ignored Charlie and Kelly as he tried to at least look attentive. With his new project partnering with the USSP and his new job at the department, he'd managed to crawl up from social pariah to merely annoying in Edwards' books, and he didn't intend to drop back down again.
When the orientation ended, Blair tried to dart for the exit closest to the library where he could hide in the stacks for hours, but before he could reach the double doors to freedom, he found himself eye to breast with a white silk shirt and multiple strands of gold on a perfectly tanned chest. Four months ago the sight of that chest had short circuited every single on of his brain cells, and Blair had a nagging suspicion that he would have fallen back into the whole Kelly-breast worship again if it weren't for the fact that his taste in chests had changed. Like seriously changed.
"Hey there," Blair finally offered with his best not-looking-for-trouble smile.
"Surely you weren't going to leave without saying 'hi'," she said as she stepped closer, and Blair backed up, managing to bump Sarah Ang who specialized in Native American cultures. She shot him a dirty look, and he shrugged an apology.
"Oh, Blair, I just can't take you anywhere, can I?" Kelly laughed, her low voice rumbling with a sexy laugh as she threaded her arm between Blair's body and his right arm, capturing it in a strong hold as she pulled him toward the door.
"Hands off the goods, Kelly. I told you last year that this thing between us over, and I meant it."
"Oh Blair," she laughed, "I've heard that before, and it never lasts. Just give in quickly and we can go for coffee."
"Yeah, but this last time I really meant it," Blair said as he planted his feet, and then nearly fell over as Kelly just kept pulling. He would have been shocked at the woman's strength, but then he'd seen her dripping sweat, muscles flexing as she drove herself to the edge at the gym.
"Kelly, enough is enough," Blair said as he tried to keep some dignity while being dragged down the hall by a woman who stood a good eight inches taller than him. A few of his fellow TA's turned to watch the show, and Blair felt himself blush. Thankfully, he didn't have the sort of fair skin that showed his blushes or he would really humiliate himself.
"Oh, hey, Blair, don't we have to need to meet that one guy?" Charlie asked as he hurried behind them.
"Get lost, Teller," Kelly snapped, and Blair planted his feet as firmly as he could on the tile floor, pulling her to a stop.
"Kelly, knock it off," Blair demanded as he jerked his arm out of her grasp. In an instant, he could see the anger blaze in her eyes as she put her hands on her hips and glared down.
"Blair," she said, drawing his name out into three or four syllables in a clear warning.
"No, Kelly," Blair insisted even though his stomach twisted at that familiar expression. In the past it might have been a good sort of twist, but now he just felt the twisting nausea without the perks.
"You don't say 'no' to me," she said darkly, and her eyes narrowed. Blair suddenly realized just how ridiculous that sounded. Her attitude might have been a bit of a turn on when they were involved, but now she just sounded like a petulant child.
"Okay, I can say 'no' to you, and there isn't anything you can do except deny me sex, which really isn't a problem for me," Blair shrugged as he watched the color rise in her cheeks. "Really not a problem. Big-old enormous not a problem," he egged Kelly on with a wink to let her know just how not worried he was on the sex front.
Nodding to Charlie who stood there with a slightly shocked expression, Blair headed down the hall toward the elevators. The memo he'd gotten assigned him Artifact Room 3 as an office, and Blair had every intention of taking advantage of finally having office space and a bit of respect, even if Kelly Newman wouldn't be first in line to congratulate him.
"Man, you are seriously soft in the head," Charlie hissed as he dashed into the elevator just as the doors closed.
"Oh please, I've dated far scarier than her," Blair pointed out as he punched the button for the basement. "Remember Svetlana? Oh man, what a pair of legs she had." Blair remembered the blonde in her thigh high boots and plaid skirt, the one she wore when they went dancing.
"Yeah, but she was just intimidating, you know, as in, you were the only man on campus with the nerve to ask her out. Kelly is seriously wacked. Did you see the look she gave you?" Charlie asked, but Blair just stepped out of the elevator and headed down the hall. Two doors down, he found it. Below "Artifact Storage Room 3", a brand new plaque announced "Blair Sandburg, USSP Studies."
"Okay, I could live without the 'USSP' part," Blair said as he pulled out his key and fit it into the lock.
"You have some seriously fucked up priorities, if that's what you're worried about," Charlie commented with a snort as Blair pushed open the door to his very own office, which looked suspiciously like a storage room that someone had pushed a desk into the middle of. "This is it?" Charlie asked as he looked into the crowded room.
"Yeah, isn't it great?" Blair answered as he walked in and dropped the orientation information on the desk.
"If you're suffering from pack-rat-itis, maybe," Charlie answered dubiously.
"All it needs is some cleaning. You go hunt down some paper towels and a bucket of water, and I'll start shifting some of this stuff to clear up some shelf space," Blair said. Turning he found Charlie looking at him suspiciously. "Oh come on, it's going to be great," he defended his space, and really he meant it. The desk was an old, heavy oak behemoth, built like a table only lower, and the shelves had thousands of artifacts, each neatly labeled with a square tag so that Blair felt like a kid who'd found a secret room in some museum. It even smelled of age and respectability.
"Soft in the head," Charlie said slowly as he dropped his own orientation folder and the video game on the dirty desk before heading back out the door. "Soft. In. The. Head," he called behind him even once he was in the hall.
"It's great," Blair yelled back as he eyed the shelves, considering how to rearrange his new office so that he had file space without losing the museum feel by putting all the artifacts in boxes.
Four hours later Blair pushed back a sweaty stand of hair as he looked around his office. Artifacts from a dozen cultures sat on the shelves, but he had cleared two bookshelves for his own research, and the desk practically glowed with layers of dirt and dust scrubbed off. It was almost worth missing the Pakistani celebration.
Glancing up at the clock, Blair threw the soggy grey paper towel onto the mountain of trash sitting in a box top. The office hadn't come with a trash can or a computer or an extension cord long enough for his laptop to plug into the wall or even a cheap stapler, so Blair could see a trip to an office supply store in his future. Well, at least after he grabbed a very late lunch and then caught a bus downtown.
With a smile for his new office, Blair locked up and headed out as he debated between the fish place near the bus stop or the student union. However, as soon as he pushed open the doors to the Anthro building, the shouts of a crowd milling near the admin building attracted his attention away from his grumbling stomach and even that little twitch that made him want to call Jim, which he wouldn't do because he wasn't going to nag the man to death.
Cutting across the manicured lawn, Blair wandered toward a tall girl in a black t-shirt with torn jeans, the sort he might have gone for a few months ago.
"Hey, what's up?" he asked as he squinted up at her sign.
"Didn't you hear about the new program? The university sold their souls to the USSP to get a research project—pigs." The woman shook her sign and whooped as a young man with a goatee climbed up on a brick planter. Standing there in shock, Blair felt his arm grabbed for a second time as the girl pulled him forward with a surge of students who pushed in toward the front of the admin building.
"Are we going to let them turn our university into a political tool?" the red-haired man screamed as he balanced on the brickwork. A lacework of shadows from the tall trees gave his face inhuman curves as the audience yelled their support.
"NO!" screamed the girl next to Blair and the other students standing around. Blair watched in a sort of horrified amusement at the enthusiasm on the faces of the students around him, and a part of him considered adding his own voice since he wasn't a huge USSP fan himself. However, protesting himself seemed rather pointless.
"Are we going to let strong arming soldiers march through our campus?" the man on the planter screamed, his voice growing shriller and louder as the crowd cheered him on.
"NO!"
Blair opened his mouth to point out that his Sentinel project wouldn't bring Sentinels on campus, but he doubted they'd listen.
"Are we going to let the government continue to erode our civil rights?"
"NO!" This time Blair did add his own voice. As one who had been hauled naked out of his own bed, he could get behind that one. The girl on his arm smiled at him as she lifted her sign higher. A young man in flannel bumped him, and Blair pushed closer to the girl as he tried to avoid the crowd of students pressing in around him.
"Will we sit by while they turn our civil liberties into a joke?" the man screamed so loud that his voice broke on the word "joke," and he squeaked out the "k" sound.
"NO!" the crowd screamed back, Blair along with them. He'd avoided protests in his early years at the university since he really didn't want to get kicked out on his ass, but he'd grown up in the middle of protests, had been passed around as a baby so that photographers could get a good snapshot of some protester with a 'Stop Nuclear Pollution' sign in one hand and a curly haired baby in the other. Hell, he'd learned to write letters while helping his mom make signs.
"Do we want the USSP on our campus?"
"NO!" Blair allowed himself to shout out all his frustrations in that one word and he screamed it louder than anyone. The girl next to him bounced some, shaking her sign, and Blair couldn't help but smile at her open enthusiasm. The truth was that he didn't want the USSP on campus; he just had to deal with them to keep Jim safe.
"Are we going to allow the USSP on our campus?"
"NO!" This time Blair didn't add his own voice to the chorus of responses. Bodies pressed in from behind, and Blair tried to turn and complain only to have a wave press in against him, shoving him toward the front of the admin building. The girl on his arm stumbled, and Blair reached down and hauled her up by her elbow before she could fall and get trampled.
"Hell No! We won't go!" the man on the planter screamed, and the crowd picked up the familiar chant as body milled into each other, elbows and shoulders shoving, and now Blair could see why. A line of campus police with batons drawn stood in a half circle around the protesters, and now, as the chant of 'Hell no! We won't go' echoed off the brick of the admin building, the campus police shifted nervously.
Blair tried to fight his way up to the planter, to try and somehow derail the coming disaster, but an elbow in his stomach nearly sent him to the ground, and he had to fight just to keep upright. In the milling crowd, he lost the girl, and now he worked around to the edge of the protest, his back up against the brick of the admin building as he watched city police pull people out of the crowd two and three at a time.
Pulling at the glass doors, he found them locked, and as police cars pulled up with their lights flashing, Blair realized that he might be in just a little bit of trouble.
***
Shifting in the metal chair someone had set up next to a wobbling folding table, Blair rolled his eyes at the officer sitting across from him holding the form he had just filled in.
"I told you I don't have any identification."
"And how do you spell your name?" the officer asked even though he insisted on staring at the form on which Blair had written his name rather than at Blair himself.
"Sandburg: S-A-N-D-B-U-R-G. Blair: B-L-A-I-R."
"Address?"
"852 Prospect, Cascade, WA 98765. Do we really have to keep doing this? I gave you my information, and if you would just call Simon Banks or Jim Ellison of Major Crimes, they'll vouch for me." Blair fought back a desire to rip the forms out of the officer's hands so that the man would at least look at him.
"Right." The officer didn't even bother trying to sound convinced.
"Got a problem?" An older officer with gray at the temples walked up, and Blair bit back a number of answers.
"I'm just trying to explain that my identification got lost when I did some consulting work for the USSP down in California." Blair kept his voice calm and steady, but it wasn't easy considering the new officer had a look of amused disbelief.
"Right, and that's why you're protesting the USSP," the older man nodded condescendingly.
"Blair Sandburg *is* the head of the new program, which is why I'm guessing our joker here isn't Mr. Sandburg."
"You run his prints?"
"Nothing in the database."
"If you'd run the police employee database instead of the criminal one, you might find something," Blair pointed out, and a hand fell on his shoulder, tightening as the older officer leaned over him.
"Son, this protest is nothing more than a ticket. Your folks will be put out when they have to pay the hundred dollars, but they aren't going to be as angry as you think. Just give us your correct information, and you can go on your way."
Blair stared up at the man silently. Really, what answer could he give? It took him a minute to decide on his next words.
"You guys really are stupid." As Blair watched the man's features twist into something far colder, he decided those hadn't been the best words to use. "Just check the employee database; I'm really Blair Sandburg. I was just cleaning up my office in the next building over."
"Stand up," the older cop ordered, and Blair recognized that tone from a dozen protests he's attended with his mother.
"Oh man, you are screwing this up. I'm telling you the truth. You don't have to believe me, just take ten minutes to log into the employee datab—" Blair's words ended with a yelp as the man yanked him to his feet sharply enough to make Blair's shoulder ache.
"I have had enough of this crap. Do you kids think we have nothing better to do than babysit a bunch of whiners?"
"I never sa—"
"Terrorism and our boys dying overseas to keep our country safe… Sentinels dying overseas to keep us safe, and you lot have to complain because you think the world is unfair."
"I nev—"
"If you had an ounce of respect for the people who died in the Veteran's Day Bombings or an ounce of respect for the people who are fighting to keep us safe, you wouldn't pull this shit."
Blair would have answered but a strong hand pushed him face first into the side of a police van before frisking him, and the cop's tone of voice suggested that he had passed rational discussion a couple of exits back. When the cop finished frisking him, a cold voice ordered him to put his hands behind his back before even colder steel closed on his wrists. He waited as he heard another officer open the back of the van while Mr. Cranky held his arm like he was going to try and run off handcuffed.
"Get up in there, and next time an officer asks for your name, you'd better give it," the cop ordered as he pulled Blair to the back of the van, and Blair climbed in, sitting on the cold metal seat and exchanging a quick look with two other protesters already in there. Blair heard the metal cage door slam right before the van door closed, leaving the three of them in a twilight as the sun filtered weakly through the thick, narrow windows near the top.
"Hey, man, claiming to be Blair Sandburg and trying to put some of the blame back on him, very cool," one of the others offered in a friendly voice. Blair just sat back and let the back of his head thump against the metal of the van.
"Who's Blair Sandburg?" the other one asked.
"An idiot," Blair answered the student without bothering to move his eyes from the thick glass with the embedded chicken wire type reinforcement, "a real idiot."
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-03-18 05:07 pm (UTC)Great new chapter. Thanks!
no subject
Date: 2006-03-18 05:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-18 05:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-18 05:29 pm (UTC)And yes, I've seen a few shared or tiny offices that did make me wonder if someone had pissed off a dean. But it's better than nothing!
no subject
Date: 2006-03-18 07:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-19 01:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-18 09:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-19 01:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-19 07:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-21 01:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-20 07:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-21 01:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-21 01:56 am (UTC)it always makes my day
Date: 2006-03-20 09:12 pm (UTC)Seriously...thank you for enteraining the masses and I for one consider you a true Mistress of Slash. :) We are not worthy; but oh so pentitent.
SR
Re: it always makes my day
Date: 2006-03-21 01:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-22 09:26 pm (UTC)I've been kinda off in different parts of my multi-fannishness recently, but when I saw that you'd started a new GL, I got all excited and wandered off to your website to refresh my memory of where #3 had left off, which is when I realized that somehow or other, I never finished reading #3. I don't know how that happened.
So I reread the start of #3, then finished it. Lovely stuff and really wonderful to read in one sitting, where I could see how things built and added to previous stuff more immediately. As a reader, often following the details of a dozen or more WIPs, sometimes the memory gets a bit fuzzy between installments, so it's a particular pleasure to be able to read/reread something from start to finish (even when there's a new sequel waiting, WIP-like, in the wings - or do I mean *especially* then?! *g*)
Now #4 has really plunged quickly into the deep end, hasn't it? Blair's facility for stumbling into trouble is working overtime, between the old USSP business still hanging on, new USSP/student protester conflicts, the psycho!hosebeast known as Kelly, and getting himself arrested without ID. Really, getting innocently swept up by a crowd (mob?) in this kinda situation is something that can happen, but I can't see Jim (or the USSP) being able to gain that perspective. Okay, if it weren't a USSP protest, then Jim would eventually cool down enough to see it, but as is, Blair is in very deep kimchee.
And I'm sure that the USSP has new difficulties planned for both our boys. The bureaucratic guide-with-a-small-"g" gang frustrate the heck out of me, I wanted to kick a lot of ankles and shins whenever they showed up in the last story. And the almost incredible stupidity of some of the USSP decisions and policies - *arrrgh* I sure hope Blair eventually gets to kick all their collective asses and hard.
And now I'm wondering how long it's gonna take before Blair gets out of "the System", if Jim and/or Simon will need to rescue him from lock-up or if somehow the USSP/guides get their hands on him now ... and especially I wonder what Jim's gonna do to the arresting officers who manhandled and didn't listen to his Guide. It shouldn't be *too* bad, unless they decide to strip/cavity search him - which is something that sometimes will happen in cases of no identification. Whoa - especially at a protest during a time of high alert re terrrorists....
no subject
Date: 2006-03-29 06:33 pm (UTC)And yep, number 4 jumped right into the hot water, in part because with three stories stories already in the series, I don't really feel a need for a lot of exposition. The USSP stuff is definitely not over, but they aren't the only ones making a power play this episode.
The guides will be just as annoying, in large part because they are SURE they're right, and that really is the most annoying type, isn't it. And I think you're right that Jim is going to be less than amused at finding his guide in jail. Let's hope the arresting officers can run really, really fast.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-31 11:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-01 03:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-02 07:24 am (UTC)Your Blair dialog is priceless , right on the money.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-03 01:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-17 09:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-20 04:16 am (UTC)Love the icon.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-23 01:03 am (UTC)(thanks about the icon. I am so addicted to making icons. *sigh*)