Blair always felt more of an outsider when he was inside than when he was outside, which sounded either ironic or slightly neurotic, but it was true nevertheless. Let him sit at the edge of some tribe recording the number of times that children imitated some adult behavior and he felt perfectly at home. But now as Roth pointed out Blair's gray metal desk and Blair's patched rolling chair and Blair's oversized computer with the fragments of half-removed stickers still clustered around the monitor, Blair felt like an utter alien wandering an unknown landscape.

An enormous black woman watched him, her arms crossed over her chest as she leaned against another squat metal desk. A man with a pinched face and thin smile stood near the coffeemaker. A Hispanic woman with a distracted expression and a pencil behind her ear ignored him in favor of a mountain of paperwork. A large man who badly needed a shave walked into the room through a door on the far end, and he didn't even try to hide his displeasure. In fact the sight of Blair brought an instant scowl to his face.

Blair idly wondered whether the desk that was now his had belonged to one of the three officers found guilty of taking bribes or if those desks had been sent away in some attempt to cleanse the unit of the collective guilt of having dirty cops in their midst.

"So you'll take cases with either Jeff or Bets to start with, they've got the most experience." Roth nodded first at the thin-lipped man and then at the black woman who looked like an extra from the set of Xena. Well, she was a little too thick for a show that featured T&A as much as feminism, but she was still formidable with wide shoulders and enough height to look Simon straight in the eye. Jeff's lips just managed to get a little thinner.

"We take the calls as they come in unless I assign a case personally. No favors, no swapping cases, no exceptions," Roth insisted with a steely expression that made Blair doubt his wisdom in taking the job. Of course, he had steadily doubted his wisdom for the last week, so that wasn't difficult.

"Got it," Blair confirmed as he dropped his beloved backpack on his desk. So far it just had a couple of clipboards and a few notepads, but Blair knew that soon enough he would have case notes and files and reports and phone numbers of snitches and packets of food for when he had no time to eat between cases. In fact he hoped the backpacked filled with his life quickly because he couldn't keep living in his old one. Never again would he have anthropology term papers jammed inside the worn backpack next to a lunchable and a white noise generator. He needed something else to fill that space now.

Blair stood waiting for Roth to say something, but the man continued to stand and stare at the other members of the unit. For the first time, Blair wondered if Roth himself was on the inside of this closed society or if, like him, Roth was on the outside of the unit formed by the other detectives. Simon had always been one of the guys, but Blair supposed that he shouldn't assume that was true everywhere. The division between supervisors and workers was well documented.

Blair forced his thoughts away from those studies.

"So, anything on the agenda for now?" Blair asked to break the silence that had fallen.

"You and Jeff have a suspicious fire investigation on 6th and Indian School. Make sure you file a transportation request before you go," Roth ordered and then the man strode across the room and disappeared into an office that had the blinds drawn. Blair looked over toward Jeff whose thin-lipped smile had disappeared.

"Jeff Clarkson," he introduced himself as he walked between the desks with his hand held out. Blair extended his own hand.

"Blair Sandburg."

"So, heard you were part of some hotshot team up north," the black woman, Bets, added from her position still leaning on her desk. At that, Maria looked up.

"Oh man, I was sort of the tag-along end of that team. I partnered with Jim Ellison who was covert ops, Army-hero, cop of the year sort."

"*Was*?" Jeff's voice took on an edge that made Blair very aware of the fact that this closed society had been attacked and suffered losses. They were circled inside their defenses, and he wasn't one of them.

"No, no. Nothing like that. He still is off being this god-cop. I just needed to move on, you know," Blair shrugged in his best show of non-threatening resignation.

"I get that," Jeff nodded as he seemed to make some sort of decision. "Come on, we've got a case to investigate."

***

Jeff was still laughing as they got off the elevator three hours later.

"Man, I don't think it was *that* funny," Blair complained darkly as he glared at the man.

"Hell yes it is," Jeff insisted as he pushed open the doors to the bull pen. "Bets, check this out," Jeff called the minute he got in the room. Russo, the large, unshaven man had now shaved, and his square jaw made Blair flash on another face from another squad room before he blinked and noticed the suspicious brown eyes watching him.

"What's up?" Bets asked without looking up from the notes spread across her desk.

"Drunk guy who sleeps in the alley behind our burned out storefront... He thought Sandburg was his long lost girlfriend." Bets slowly looked up from her papers, her eyes focusing first on Jeff and then turning slowly to Blair. Blair crossed his own arms and glared back defiantly. Unfortunately, he knew full well how this was going to end. After a three second pause, Bets took a deep breath and started laughing, heavy deep laughter that carried to the far corners of the room. Jeff and Russo both joined her as Blair stood in the middle of the room both the center of and excluded from the joke.

"It gets better," Jeff finally gasped out. "The guy got a hold of Sandburg's curls and wouldn't let go. Kept calling him Veronica and trying to pet him." Blair transferred his glare from Bets to Jeff.

"It wasn't that funny, man."

"Oh the hell it wasn't," Jeff shot back. "It was fucking hilarious. Sandburg was all 'unhand me you beast'," Jeff mocked in a high tone.

"Hey, I do not have a girly voice, and that could have been called assaulting a police officer. Not cool. Very not cool," Blair interrupted before Jeff could take the joke any farther. Well, not that interrupting would stop the story from doing the rounds of the rumor mill. Blair understood how hazing worked, but he still didn't have to like it, even if it was an inevitable stage of being accepted into any closed society.

"You run the guy in?" Bets asked, her voice still edging toward barely contained laughter.

"Oh, this is the nice part. Sandburg got the guy to talk. Turns out the 'accidental' fire came the same night the owners moved thirty thousand dollars worth of assets into a separate storage facility. Sandburg's boyfriend took us right to it. We may not have a case yet, but I think we have enough for some warrants and a heart-to-heart talk with the Chanders."

"A homer first time at bat," Bets said, and Blair couldn't help feel a little spark of pride as the clear alpha-dog of the bull pen gave him her stamp of approval.

"Yeah, well I'm going for a shower. I feel like I have crap all over me after that."

"God knows you smell,” Jeff added with a slap on Blair’s back, and the friendly touch both assuaged and highlighted an ache in Blair’s heart. Blair pulled himself back together before he made a scene in front of his new co-workers.

"Ha ha, man. I have a spare set of clothes in my car, so I'll be back in twenty." Blair headed back for the elevator after dropping his backpack on his empty desk. He didn't notice Bets behind him until he got on the elevator.

"Good work there,” Bets offered as the elevator doors closed on them.

"Thanks," Blair stood staring at the numbers as he wondered why she had followed him.

"Haven't seen Jeff laugh since IA took his partner out in handcuffs." Bets’ words were spoken unemotionally, but Blair had been around cops long enough to hear the warning. Part of Blair found it fascinating the way that this group was reacting with Jeff beginning an initiation that would end in Blair being part of the group if Blair could handle the teasing, and Bets warning him away. Of course, maybe Bets wasn't warning him off as much as warning him about the stresses in the group. Maybe it was even Bets' way of accepting Jeff's decision to let him in: her way of telling him to tread carefully now that he was moving toward becoming an insider.

"Must have been hard. My partner got accused once--didn't stick. Of course it wasn't true in his case." Blair offered back. Reciprocity. She offered some, he offered some. He tried not to think about how his heart still ached whenever he remembered Jim. Their friendship had survived the IA investigation, but it hadn’t been strong enough to survive what came after.

"Oh, Nate was dirty. He hid it well, but Jeff spent a lot of time blaming himself after it all came out." Blair had no answer for that, so he watched the elevator doors open on the first floor employee lobby.

"Gotta go get some clean clothes," Blair offered as an apology as he stepped out and ended the conversation.

"Yeah, well lockers are at a premium around here, so don't expect to get your own, Frizzy," Bets said lightly, clearly indicating that their little heart to heart had ended. Blair stood and watched as the elevator doors closed on her and he was left alone in the small room that led out to the employee parking.

Symbolic language, he realized. Bets had warned him that he hadn't earned his way far enough inside to have a locker, he didn't have the status yet, but she had also opened the door with the assigning of a nickname. Blair reached up and pulled at his curls which actually had become rather frizzy and dry since coming to the valley, but he hadn't yet found a conditioner that could do battle with the desert air. Frizzy. Well, at least it was less effeminate than ‘Sandy’.

Blair pushed open the glass doors and stepped out into the bake oven with heat flowing off the concrete. He hurried to get his clothes from his car and get back inside to the air conditioning.

“Frizzy, God damn it, if you don’t start logging your paperwork, I’m going to staple the damn things to your forehead,” a voice challenged Blair the minute he walked in the bull pen.

“Good morning to you too, man,” Blair answered as he dropped his backpack next to his desk. He fell into his chair and tried to ignore the spot where the blue tape that patched the blue vinyl was starting to curl up. This chair definitely needed to belong to someone with less arm hair to lose.

"You know, if you are in a department where you only have one partner, this might work, but damn it, I needed the results of the ballistics test from the Kipfer case, and I don't know where the hell it is in that disaster zone." Jeff waved his had toward Blair’s desk.

"Chill, man. It's right here," Blair plucked a file from the middle of a mountain of paper that leaned to the north.

"Frizzy." Jeff made Blair's nickname sound like a curse, and Russo snickered a little on the far side of the room.

"Man, I know. I'll get the files in order." Blair considered the mountain of lab reports and interview notes that made perfect sense to him but really weren't in any order that anyone else could use. In Cascade he had just used Jim's system for everything, but without Jim's disapproving eyebrow to condemn random papers left on the desk, Blair had fairly well fallen back into old habits.

"Sandburg, you're on desk duty until that desk stops looking like a disaster zone," Roth ordered as he passed the pair of them on his way to the office. Jeff's back instantly went a little straighter his lips thinned into that sharp expression of disapproval that was so unique to Jeff. Blair mumbled some answer as he considered the pile with a critical eye. Funny. He was the newest one in the department, but Roth was the outsider.

When the captain had hired Blair, he hadn't mentioned that Roth had been brought in to clean up the unit, which put him clearly on the outside of the society formed by the detectives who worked for him. Unlike Simon, he didn’t get invites for drinks after work, he didn’t throw barbeques at his house, and the others didn’t look to him for advice or suggestions. Okay, to be fair Blair wasn’t getting a lot of social invitations either, but no one looked at him with that guarded suspicion they used on Roth.

Blair plucked a file from the top of the pile as he watched Roth in his office. The man had started leaving the blinds to his office open, but now the detectives worked with one eye always to the captain who had replaced their "real" captain. Of course, from what Blair could gather, their "real" captain had been a genial and jovial man who'd let the detectives have full rein and hadn't noticed three of his detectives selling their services. Blair opened a drawer and used the edge to prop the files up as he started filing reports and notes into their respective case files.

"Guys don't approve of your vertical filing system, huh?" Maria asked with humor in her voice. Blair shrugged.

"Guess not. Something about have to be able to actually find paperwork when they need it," Blair said in a self-deprecating tone.

"Yeah, there is that. You want me to go down and requisition some office supplies for ya?" Maria offered. Blair gave her one of his best smiles even though the woman really didn't require the levels of bullshit required to win over women like Bets or even Sam back in Cascade.

"Would you?" he asked as he used one hand to keep the pile from falling now that he was disturbing the layers.

"No problemo. You don't even have to waste that smile on me," Maria said with a wink, and Blair just gave her a wider smile. She laughed as she headed out the door. Once she was gone, he realized that he hadn't told her what he wanted, but hopefully she would show up with something useful.

Blair had been working his desk for nearly two hours before he had corralled his paperwork into bins. He refused to go so far as to alphabetize the things, but at least with their tabs all lined up and facing out, a person could quickly skim the dozen files to find the right one. Lab reports had been filed, and in the process of checking the files, Blair discovered that he really had missed logging in quite a few reports. Each incoming report had to be listed in the front summary, and he didn't need some scummy lawyer getting someone off because of his poorly done paperwork.

Blair paused as he wondered when the police had become 'us' and defense lawyer had become 'scummy.' God, Naomi would have a fit and promptly burn enough sage in his house to set off the smoke alarms. Blair was still considering that mental shift when two men appeared at the door to the bull pen. Most of the detectives dressed in an office casual that would have thrilled Jim; however, these two had the cheap suits that dominated cop shows. Glancing around, Blair realized he was alone in the bull pen; even Roth was missing. He must have gone out the other door. Before the two suits even started heading his way, Blair had a suspicion or two. After all, he had ducked calls from Internal Affairs for three days now.

***

"We know this unit has sheltered dirty cops before, and with your own record, you surely don't want any more suspicion cast on your reputation," Grumpy Suit said as he leaned against the wall of the interrogation room. Blair knew the man was Detective Verder from IA, but he preferred to think of the man with the wide face and wider middle as Grumpy Suit.

"Oh man, do not even try that crap on me," Blair snapped as he leaned back in the uncomfortable chair.

"It's your duty to make sure that good cops don't get tainted by these creeps who sell their badges," Unctuous Suit insisted from his chair across from Blair.

"Man, you two have quite the routine, but if I see something I question, I'll go to Roth. So don't even try and play this cloak and dagger shit." Blair pushed back his chair and headed for the door. Grumpy Suit stepped in his way.

"You're either part of the problem or part of the solution, Sandburg." Blair stood looking up into the man's wide face.

"Buddy, that is what we call a false dilemma, which is a fallacy of distraction, sometimes called a black-or-white fallacy. Of course you've also thrown some ad baculum in there too, so you're just sprouting fallacies. So verbally you're not making your point as well as some of my freshman students used to. In fact, I'd fail you on logic and persuasiveness. And if you think standing in my way is physically is going to intimidate me, you obviously have no idea who I've worked with for the last four years because you can't glare half as well as a cranky ex-Ranger who's discovered ostrich meat in the chili."

Blair didn't wait for a reaction, he circled around Mr. Grumpy Suit and stormed out of the interrogation room. Rather than swallow his anger, Blair went in search of Roth.

***

Blair sat logging in the lab reports that had shown up for the day and wondering if Roth had any idea how poorly insulated his office was. Everyone in the bull pen could hear the yelling.

"... and if you want to talk to one of my detectives, you come to me. If I find you trying to go behind my back again, I will file a formal complaint with your captain." Roth yanked his office door opened and glared as the two IA detectives left silently. Russo and Maria sat at their desks pretending to ignore the scene, and so did Blair, but Jeff and Bets watched with undisguised glee.

As the door to the bull pen closed with the two intruders on the outside, Roth stood at the open door to his office, obviously still angry.

"Way to go, Cap," Bets offered, and Jeff smiled in a rather predatory way as he considered the closed doors through which the two IA detectives had disappeared.

"Vultures," Jeff proclaimed. For a second all movement in the room stopped as alliances swung and barriers moved.

Then Roth went back into his office, and everyone went back to work. Clearly the closed society had shifted because Roth and Blair were now inside, and the IA guys were clearly outside. Strangely enough, Blair could feel the pull in his own psyche, the desire to close ranks against the outside force that threatened the unit.

Thinking back, Blair wondered if he'd been inside or outside in Cascade. He knew the Major Crimes guys had taken him in, but to the rest of the department, and to the officers at the academy, he had always remained outside: the stranger, the invader, the one who threatened the group with his ruined reputation.

Blair wondered if he would have ever felt like he had a place inside the society if he'd stayed up there. Well, it was a hypothetical question now. Blair sighed as he realized a broken little part of him would always wish that he could have found a way in, but he hadn't and it was too late now.