Blair typed in the date on his report. Weeks. Glancing over at the wall calendar taped next to his desk, he realized he'd left Cascade 20 days ago. Funny, three weeks into living with Jim he'd felt like he'd known him forever. Now he'd been away from Jim three weeks, but he still kept turning around to tell Jim something only to discover Jim wasn't there. It left him feeling the gaping hole in his soul again. Ironically, another part of him felt like his life with Jim had been years ago, so long ago that he could barely remember the expression Jim would get when Blair would say something particularly stupid. Blair found his lapse of memory infinitely sad.

Blair pulled his hair back using a leather tie decorated at the end with small silver and turquoise beads. Late June and Blair was ready to be done with the heat, and he had never expected to feel that way about heat and sunshine.

He had loved this time of year in Cascade. The first summer session would end July 4th, and he always had a three week break from taking classes or teaching. He smiled remembering the second year he had lived with Jim.

Sprawled out over the couch in the loft, Blair stared at the high ceiling in utter exhaustion.

"Hey, Chief, pack a bag. I've got a week off and we're heading for the cabin," Jim had announced as he came through the door, and Blair groaned.

"Oh man, I'm too tired to move."

"Tough, Sandburg. Move your ass because we're leaving at first light, and I know you aren't going to pack in the morning. I'm going to be lucky if I can get you to the truck at all without carrying you that early in the morning."

"Man, I am not moving for the next week, so if you want me in the truck, you're going to have to carry me," Blair told the ceiling. It was too much work to actually look at Jim.

"Okay with me; I figure you're small enough." Blair tilted his head up and found Jim standing right in front of him with his arms crossed and a devilish look on his face.

"Oh no you don't. No, no, no, no." Blair words didn't stop Jim from pouncing. Blair tried to make it up and over the back of the couch, but Jim had his left leg in a solid hold, pulling him back.

"No feet on the furniture," Jim growled as he grabbed Blair's arm. Blair brought his other arm around to grab at Jim's head.

"Not fair, you're too bald to get any hair!" Blair complained as he pulled Jim's head to one side with a firm hold on Jim's ear. One quick move that Blair didn't have a hope of either copying or escaping, and Blair found himself face down on the couch as Jim sat on the small of his back.

"So Sandburg, you're planning on staying on the couch all week, huh? You're a little lumpy," Jim had laughed even as Blair bucked. Okay, it was actually more like Blair trying to buck because Jim was a solid man and Blair couldn't get leverage with Jim still holding one of Blair's legs hostage.

"Ass," Blair snapped although his words were muffled by the couch cushions.

"You say something?" Jim asked, and Blair realized Jim had his arm only when he started pushing it up Blair's back.

"Uncle!" Blair shouted, and the weight disappeared from his back.

"Wuss," Jim accused him with a smile.

"Yeah, well some of us missed these little brotherly ceremonies," Blair said as he righted himself on the couch. Immediately he had looked over to Jim afraid that he had stepped over some invisible line in Jim's guarded psyche, but Jim had looked back at him fondly.

"Still seems like I won fair and square, so we will be leaving at oh-five-thirty, and you will be in the truck," Jim said triumphantly before disappearing upstairs with an overly cheerful whistle.

Blair had complained at 5:20 when Jim physically pulled him upright and pushed a cup of coffee into his hands. He had complained at 5:21 when Jim took his packed bags down to the truck. He had complained at 5:30 when Jim threw a pair of jeans and a t-shirt at him, and again at 5:31 when Jim pulled him to his feet and pushed him into the bathroom. He was still complaining when he got in the truck at 5:50 and when Jim went through a drive through to grab breakfast before they left the city. The entire time, Jim remained annoyingly cheerful.

Blair didn't fully wake up and stop complaining until three or four hours later when Jim pulled off on a dirt road that wound its way around the mountains. Blair rolled the window down and breathed in air not filled with smog or pollution or the scent of hot city.

"Man, this is beautiful. God I love this time of year."

"Yeah, wait until you see the cabin," Jim had answered with a smile.

Blair blinked at the image of himself in the mirror, unwilling to recall the week of laughter and teasing and practical jokes involving baking powder. For the next two years he'd spent all June looking forward to that week they would take off, and now what did he have?

Blair finished in the bathroom and went out into the living room where a Salvation Army sofa draped with his meditation rug sat facing a small television. Yeah, this time June wasn't a month of anticipation; it was just one more month to survive. Blair grabbed his keys and headed to work.

"Frizzy, get a new God damn bag," Russo swore as Blair struggled to thread the one side of the zipper back into the zipper pull after it broke for the hundredth time.

"Chill, man. I'll get it." Blair knelt on the hot sidewalk and concentrated on making the small pieces of interlocking metal actually interlock again.

"Not before I turn grey, you won't," Russo muttered impatiently. "We're going to hit all the university traffic if you don't get the lead out."

"There see, good as new," Blair declared triumphantly as he held up the backpack with the newly restored zipper.

"Yeah, until the next time. Frizzy, you're getting a paycheck that I *know* you don't spend on clothes, so do us all a favor and get a new damn bag… something that doesn't look like it belongs to a high school student." Blair got in the car without comment since arguing with Russo didn't generally end well. The man was cranky and aggressive. Usually Russo's attitude didn't bother him since the man generally didn't go after Blair, preferring instead to verbally attack Bets. This time his words made Blair irrationally defensive.

Blair fingered the worn strap of his backpack and considered all the years he'd had with the thing. It was the last thing Naomi had bought him before he went off to college, and he remembered picking it out while she had looked on proudly. This bag had carried his books that first semester when he had used his outgoing nature and his humor to hide his terror at being alone. The stain on the bottom came from the expedition where the Kombai people had nearly turned him into a giant bleeding pin cushion. The zipper had broken for the first time when he'd had a whole set of papers to grade and he'd tried to stuff two extra sweatshirts in on top of them so he wouldn't freeze on stakeout.

Blair's eyes stung, and he focused for a second on the traffic as Russo aggressively maneuvered around a truck to try and get into the carpool lane. He hadn't even noticed that they had reached the freeway, but now that his thoughts had gone to Jim, he couldn't seem to get that face from his memory.

He remembered Jim turning to him in resigned dismay when he'd had to drive back to stakeouts after Blair had left the backpack sitting in some corner, and sometimes that had actually worked out for the best. He couldn't even count the number of times it had flown through the air, bouncing to a stop on the bed as Jim cleaned the living room while complaining about Blair's inability to keep his stuff in his area. Several times Jim had even shoved the bag into his stomach, and at first Blair had been annoyed, but then he'd realized that he was the only one Jim trusted to see that anger and pain. Everyone had seen Jim's humor and Jim's stoic façade, but only Blair got those other parts.

Except that was past. Blair touched the fraying seam on the bag, and he realized that he hadn't ever detached from Jim. He still held on to that memory as though it could fill the hole left by Jim's physical absence. The bag was just one more symbol of that: a reminder of years spent as a student, a teacher, a guide.

It was time to let go. As Russo finally pulled into the coveted carpool lane and started accelerating past the other cars, Blair decided that it was time to truly detach. After work he would go and get a bag that wasn't soaked in his past. He would get something that didn't remind him of the years he'd spend chasing some impossible dream, and maybe even a bag that didn't look like it belonged to a high school student.

Blair glanced over at the carefully manicured transvestite, her gown a little outrageous in the slightly seedy atmosphere of the club. "Okay, that's sounding a little like a bad pick-up line," Blair said jokingly. Then again, he was standing in the middle of a gay bar, so he shouldn't be surprised by that.

"If I thought I could lure you away from the testosterone squad room, I'd use a much better pick-up line than that one," she said with a wink. "Miss Rose Gentle," she offered her hand with the palm down. No one could accuse Blair of missing subtle cultural cues, so he brought the enormous hand up and kissed it gently.

"Oh, honey, you have found yourself a keeper," a large black transvestite with eye-numbingly platinum hair laughed.

"And that," Miss Rose said with a wave toward the woman, "Is Chocolate Babe. Babe, if this weren't catch and release fishing around these parts, I might take this one home."

"So," Blair said when the two stopped laughing, "is this the part where the new cop gets all flustered and runs out of here or the part where I fill some sort of cop stereotype and get offended that you're insulting my manhood?" Blair asked with a laugh. Even though he was the butt of their joke, he couldn't resist both their enthusiasm and their not so subtle way of making sure the police avoided their place. The room was nearly empty, but a leatherman leaning against the bar turned to watch them curiously.

"Oh, this one's got a brain under that adorable mop of curls," Miss Rose said as she reached up and tugged a spiraling curl. The gentle pull reminded him of how Jim would do the same whenever he wanted to prove a point. 'See, Sandburg? I told you the Jags would pull it out in the end.' And then that large hand would reach over and tug his hair. At the time, Blair thought he'd been annoyed at the gesture, but now he couldn't help missing it.

"Just don't call me Frizz," Blair complained, and then wondered where that brain of his has suddenly gone because he had just doomed himself to that nickname for the rest of his life. Miss Rose just smiled innocently, which looked actually faintly disturbing on a six foot something inch wo/man wearing red lipstick and a gold sequined dress.

"I'll call you anything you want if it gets me a date," Miss Rose suggested, laying it on a little thick for Blair to take the offer seriously.

"Oh man, that would be the best offer of the last decade except that I'm not gay."

"Honey, everyone is gay given the right man to make the offer," she had moved around so that she stood next to him by the bar, and now she hip butted him. Blair thought about that for a second.

"I don't know about that. If I were going to change teams, I would have done it years ago. So, what exactly are you trying to keep me from seeing with your enthusiastic welcome?" Blair looked up at Miss Rose and suddenly he had the uncomfortable feeling of being studied. She looked down at him, pursing her red lips and frowning slightly. Blair fidgeted a little under the intense look. Then Miss Rose shook her head, her ornate hair combs rattling their hanging jewels.

"Nothing, sugar. Why don't you let me buy you a drink? Babe, you can come up with something non-alcoholic, can't you?" Miss Rose finally asked as she looked across the bar.

"If I look long enough," the transvestite behind the bar answered.

"No, I really should get going. I'm new around here, and I'm just trying to get to know the neighborhood a little bit. Roth calls it going on walkabout."

"Yeah, the others have wandered through from time to time," Miss Rose said, and Blair had an image of Russo coming in this place. It wasn't a good image.

"So I should—" Blair gestured toward the door, not sure why he suddenly felt exposed, naked.

"You should do what makes you happy, honey. That's the only secret to life," Miss Rose finished for him, and Blair fled.