Kscope 2, Part 1

Mornings were the hardest. Jim would watch Blair sleep, dark curls spilling over his sweet, slack face, his nipple ring and curly chest hair catching the glow from the skylight, and wait patiently for his lover to wake. He didn't dare touch, didn't dare kiss, not until those blue eyes opened and decided which soul they were going to be windows to today. Blair was adamant that Jim not affect the waking process in any way, and frankly, Jim couldn't have lived with himself if he'd started kissing and stroking Blair only to terrify and traumatize his five-year-old or nine-year-old selves, or any of the other myriad Blairs who lived inside Sandburg's skin.

The heart quickened, Blair made a little snuffling sound, and Jim held his breath as dull blue eyes opened and took in their environment. He rubbed his face, the blue eyes brightened, and he smiled. "Morning, Jim. Nine. Howdja sleep?"

"Pretty good, BJ," said Jim, hiding his disappointment. "Your turn to cook; I'm going to go brush my teeth."

"'Kay, can I just check email first?"

"Check, but wait to reply until we get to the station, okay? I'm starved." He went to shower and brush his teeth, and when he heard a keyboard clatter, he hollered, "What did I say, BJ?" and grinned at Blair's grousing.

Breakfast was good, scrambled eggs, toast and Canadian bacon, and they left the loft almost perfectly on time. But Blair was unusually quiet this morning, and stared at Jim for a long time as they drove to work. Finally he said, "I never wake up in my room downstairs anymore. I always wake up in your bed."

Oh shit. "Yeah, you do," said Jim, not sure what to say.

"Yesterday wasn't lil'Blair. My last email was from one of the big Blairs. So it wasn't like a kid coming up for a hug or a story and falling asleep."

"That's true," Jim allowed.

Blair considered this for a while. His knees met his chest, and he asked, "Am I your boyfriend?"

"Parts of you are," said Jim, wishing there was a manual for this kind of conversation.

"Does that mean I have to kiss you?"

"Absolutely not," said Jim. "You're just my friend. You don't have to worry about any of that stuff, and if I say or do anything that makes you uncomfortable, I want you to tell me, okay?"

Blair nodded. "Kay. Can I still hug you?"

Jim smiled. "Yeah, you can still hug me, Chief."

When they got to the station, Blair hopped out of the truck and called over his shoulder, "Gotta go to the bathroom, Jim, I'll meet you upstairs?"

"Why didn't you go before we left the house?" Jim asked, amused.

"I didn't have to go then," Blair said as though it were obvious.

Jim rolled his eyes and said, "Fine, meet me in Simon's office. We need to go over our progress on the Jack of Clubs case with him. I'll grab the file off your computer?"

"Sure, whatever," Blair agreed, bouncing a little from foot to foot as he tried to control his bladder. He dashed off, and Jim made his way into the building at a more controlled pace.

Upstairs in the bullpen, Jim sat down at Blair's desk and called up the file to email to his own computer. But when he opened Blair's email program to send the file, he stopped and stared at the addresses and subject headings on the screen: a yahoo list called TheCommittee, with a flurry of threads called things like 'friends', 'Jack of Clubs', 'haircut' and 'tutoring'. The most recent one, dated this morning, was titled 'birthday'. Jim grinned at that; Jim's birthday was coming up soon and he was willing to bet this was a discussion of a present or surprise party for him. He clicked it open.

Re: Birthday
>>>>>>>>>[Blair30 wrote] So we're coming up on the big day, guys, and we need to figure out some stuff.
>>>>>>>>>First, are we all jumping up our ages a year? I don't think we should, because none of us
>>>>>>>>>has gotten a year older developmentally, and it'll confuse Jim. Second, who's going to be
>>>>>>>>>awake on the big day? And third, what do we want for a present?
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>[Blair8 wrote] I vote we get a year older, or Jim is never going to let me drive his truck. And
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>[Blair28 wrote] I hate to break it to you, but Jim doesn't let me drive the truck.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>[Blair30 wrote] Well, we can't all be awake. I vote the younger the better: birthdays are way
>>>>>>more exciting when you're a kid.
>>>>
>>>>[Blair9 wrote] Yeah, but if there's a party, it's going to be with all our grown-up friends, and
>>>>they're not going to have as much fun if they can't talk to us. It's going to suck if one of us
>>>>is just in the corner playing with toys and the grown-ups are on the far end of the room pretending
>>>>they're not talking about us and 'how well Jim's holding up'.
>>
>>[Blair27 wrote] They do that? Which ones? I thought we went over this...
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>[Blair8 wrote] I want spiderman toys. I don't have any and there cool.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>[Blair30 wrote] They're cool. Yeah, you need some new toys; I just wish I could get that new compendium
>>>>>>of revisionist histories. Or some of that new chrysanthemum/grapefruit blended tea they're
>>>>>>selling at SuperNatural, it's so expensive.
>>>>>
>>>>>[Blair19 wrote] Speaking of toys, I'm starting a thread on TheCommitteeOnJim for the post-14 Blairs.
>>>>
>>>>[Blair9 wrote] Why? We're not getting ourselves presents for our own birthday, are we? I mean,
>>>>we could, but we'd break the bank.
>>>
>>>[Blair8 wrote] Should we? Like a secret Santa thing?
>
>[Blair9 wrote] Yeah, but what if someone gets left out?

Jim closed that email and did what he had originally meant to do, feeling overwhelmed and vaguely embarrassed, as though he'd walked in on someone taking care of a bodily function. He'd known the Blairs conferred over email, had even heard them refer to themselves as 'the Committee,' but he'd had no idea of the scope of this thing. Even Simon couldn't get Blair to look more professional; now Blair had to negotiate a haircut with his alternate selves? And a special list just for talking about him, or more precisely his relationship with Blair, felt a little like the way Carolyn used to dissect him over the phone with her friends. What exactly went on in that discussion? And why were 14-year-olds even allowed on that list? Jim sure as hell wasn't sleeping with anyone that young!

He went back to his desk, opened the case file, and compared it to his own notes before printing out both files to bring into the meeting with Simon. When Blair came in Jim carefully avoided looking at him while Simon asked, "Well? Where are we with this case?"

"We've matched the killing pattern to five unsolved cases up in Alaska," said Jim, calling attention away from Blair thumbing quickly through the case file to catch up to anything he had missed while his other selves were on the job. "But there were no credible suspects in those cases, and there's a huge PR firm up there with a high turnover employment rate; lots of people coming and going. Even though the population in that part of Alaska is so small, the employment turnover makes it hard to narrow down a list of suspects."

"PR firm? In Alaska? What do they do, sell ice to Eskimos?" Simon asked.

"Lots of big stores like Taco Bell and Blockbuster test out new stuff in Alaska before they advertise here," Blair piped up. "People up there are kinda cut off, so if something stinks, they don't have a global-size screw up on their hands. But we think the PR guys don't have anything to do with this."

"Why not?" Simon asked Jim.

Jim jerked his thumb at Blair. "Wrong 'we'."

"Because none of the parents saw strangers hanging around," said Blair. He checked back through the file, frowning, then nodded and put it down. "Five kids got snatched there in broad daylight and all of their bodies got put back in their beds with all that weird stuff, and no one saw anything weird. And no one saw anything when our three kids got taken either, or when they got put back. Thirty says you can't do that stuff without a trace unless you do your homework, watch the kids, the house, all that stuff. He says people would have noticed a stranger spying on their kids. So that means it has to be someone who can spend time with kids, walk right up to them, and no one will blink. I vote we need to talk to the sisters and brothers and friends, ask if they had teachers or babysitters who gave them the willies or were extra nice to the kids that got killed."

"Good idea, Sandburg. You two up to all that interviewing?"

"I'll leave that to Sandburg; he's better with k-with interviews," said Jim. "This guy's too smooth for my tastes. He had his pattern down solid even in Alaska before he added the playing cards. I'm thinking he started somewhere else. I'm checking the database for unsolved crimes in different states, trying to see if we can narrow down his point of origin. Serial killers often start up because of a trigger event that's related to what they're doing; if we can find the first murder there'll be more clues, and we might be able to cross-match it to the death of someone's child or sibling and get this guy's real identity from that end."

Simon nodded. "Good work, gentlemen. Keep on this; I don't want this guy to get his hands on another kid."

Jim and Blair went back to Jim's desk, where Blair said, "I wanna go over the evidence."

"Come on, BJ, cut me some slack. You know I hate going through that stuff with you when you're younger. How about we see if we can get some interviews in today?"

"Fine," Blair grumbled.

"BJ, you're not just spinning your wheels today. Most of the kids we have to interview are pretty shaken up by what happened to their friends or brothers. You know I'm no good with kids."

"You're good with me," Blair pointed out.

"Yeah, but you're special. Look, I need you to make these kids feel safe so we can talk to them. It's important stuff."

Blair nodded, but said, "You call the parents. I'm going down to evidence to look at the stuff."

"BJ--"

"How'm I gonna know what to ask if I only know the case file?" Blair pointed out.

Jim didn't have a good answer for that, but after Blair left, he called down to the coroner's office to make sure Blair only looked at the evidence, not the bodies. Then he called around to all the parents, who wanted the interviews to happen tomorrow or the next day when they could sit with their kids if things got too intense.

For good measure, he looked at the photos of the crime scene to refresh his memory. The children's mutilated bodies had been carefully washed and arranged on their beds surrounded by odd items like yoyos, boomerangs, apple seeds, and the same three playing cards at each scene: the six of hearts, the nine of spades and the jack of clubs. They had to have some significance, since the killer had to buy a fresh deck to have those cards ready for each kill, but what?

Blair came upstairs, looking frustrated. "I asked the lab to check what kind of apple the seeds came from. I couldn't think of what else to do. And those cards..."

"Not exactly a good poker hand, is it?" Jim agreed. Then he heard something familiar and froze. "Oh hell. What's she doing here?"

Blair turned to look at the door, and Jim felt a lurch of horror as Blair yelled, "Mom!" and ran over to crash into her and hug her tight. "I missed you, I missed you so much, I love you..." he babbled as Naomi hugged him back and kissed him.

"I missed you too, sweetie. I hated fighting with you, and when I got your letter, I knew I had to come back and work things out with you."

Jim's jaw tightened. "What letter?" Damn it, the Blairs knew they weren't supposed to contact Naomi for the same reason they weren't allowed to talk to Stoddard or a half-dozen other people: while his younger selves had been told about the press conference and its fallout, they couldn't conceive of how completely and viciously the people Blair had loved had rejected him. Chasing after those people was just asking for more heartbreak. But from the expression on Blair's face, he was as clueless as Jim as to which of his selves had broken that cardinal rule.

"Does this mean you're quitting your job with the police?" Naomi pressed as Blair searched her face for clues.

"What letter?" Jim repeated, demanding as much for Blair's sake as his own.

Naomi handed over the well-creased, typed sheet of paper, and Jim read it aloud. "Mom -- I've started this letter a hundred times, and I still don't know what to say, except I'm sorry if I hurt you. I miss you. We've been away from each other before, but this is the first time I didn't know in my heart that you still loved me, and it makes me feel alone. Come back. I want to be a family again. Your son, Blair."

Jim couldn't help a twinge of pain at the thought that he wasn't enough to keep Blair from feeling alone, but the shocked look Blair shot him helped ease that sting a little.

"Mom," said Blair, "I ... I'm not quitting the force." He ducked away from the disappointment on her face. "Don't be mad, please," he whispered. "I can't pretend things haven't changed, because they did. I'm not the me you want anymore." His eyes filled up with tears, and Jim ached for this nine year old boy apologizing for choices he never made and damage Naomi didn't even know was there. "But what the letter says, about my missing you, I do. I've never gone this long without talking to you before, and it hurts. I miss you, Mom," he said, and his voice broke entirely as Naomi hugged him.

"I miss you too," she whispered. "Oh, sweetie, we'll work this out. I know we can."

Blair looked hesitantly back at Jim. "You were gonna check other cities, right?" he asked.

Jim jerked his head at the door. "Go talk to your mom, Chief. We've got interviews tomorrow, but I can handle things for today. I'm here if you need anything."