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By Kel (dragonbane4@aol.com)
As soon as Brian got off the phone, he bellowed for Joel, and the other man poked his head around the corner. "You bellowed, oh he of long wind and loud voice?"
Rafe snorted. "Yeah, I did. Come on, Jim's asked for our help with this whole situation."
"Did he give you any details?"
"No, not really, he just told me what he needed us to do."
Joel stuck his head back around the corner and finished getting dressed. "So what are we doing?" he asked through the wall.
"We're going to the University and seeing what we can find out about why the Dean is suddenly best friends with William Ellison," Brian answered, raising his voice so that Joel could hear him. "Seems he's trying to screw Blair over to break him and Jim up--that's just a guess, but from what Jim's been saying and what's been happening, I think that's the case."
"Asshole," chimed in Megan.
"Megan! What are you doing here!"
"Lurking outside of doorways listening. Ever since people found out about the baby, nobody tells me anything." She walked in, ignoring Brian's bare chest for the moment and sitting on the bed. "You're going to Rainier? Does Blair know about this?"
"I am assuming Jim'll tell him. Megan… please… take care of yourself and stay out of this right now," Brian pled. "I'm sure Jim wouldn't want you worrying about it."
"I am a big girl, Brian Rafe, I can take care of myself! I'm not going to let big Jim go through this by himself."
"Hey now, what are we, chopped liver?" asked Joel, fully dressed and coming into the room as well. "Megan, you know Jim's been worried about you and the baby, ever since the fall. Hey, he bought a new house up in the mountains, right? Well, we all know that Jim can't accessorize for shit anyway… set him up a few housekeeping sets. Furniture schemes, accessories, all the things that he's gonna need to get for that new place. Because if you don't, he and Blair are gonna be sleeping on an air mattress and eating trail mix."
Megan stifled a snort. "He's not quite that bad," he said, coming to Jim's defense.
"Please, you've seen the man's closet," Rafe scoffed. "If it's not black, white, or some God-awful mufti print that goes with either color, then he doesn't own it."
"Hey, he owns a few greens," chimed in Joel.
"Yeah, and the blue that really brings out his eyes," Megan pointed out.
"Okay, okay, so Jim's a clothes horse with no sense of accessorizing his personal space. "
"Except for that damn Red Heron fishing hook poster," added Joel.
"So will you do it, Megan? Set him up a house that's really a house and not just something he throws together."
"I know damn well you're only doing this to get me out of the way," Megan admitted. "But you also make a damn good point. All right, I'll stay here and decorate Jim's house for him, but you've got to promise to call me and update me on what's going on."
Both Brian and Joel nodded their agreement. "We'll keep you in the loop, Megan."
"Promise?"
"We promise."
"I'll hold you to it." Megan gave both men kisses on the cheek as she walked out.
As soon as she was out, Joel through Brian a t-shirt. "Come on, let's go."
Brian quickly got dressed, and jumped up to follow Joel out. Once they got outside, Brian got behind the wheel of one of the pickups and then started driving. "Joel. You got any clue what we're gonna do here, man?"
Joel shook his head seriously. "No idea whatsoever. But, we're gonna do our best. We owe it to Jim, man. He's saved all our asses at least once, and he's our friend. It's the least we can do for him. I never seen him this happy before, and if we can help make him happy, then that's what we're gonna do."
"Amen to that, big man… amen to that," Brian said, echoing the sentiment. "Okay, Joel, how the hell are we going to do this?"
"Do what?"
"Ask all these questions without getting in deep?"
Joel laughed. "You're asking me? I don't have the foggiest." He paused and thought for a moment. "How about we just say we're there to explore the campus? I mean, Jim was taking a class here after all--we can just say a friend of ours recommended the campus and we're checking the place out before we invest in classes of our own."
Brian nodded. "That makes sense. Just make sure we don't drop Jim's name or Blair's name. That'll get them going in a second, and not in the direction that we want to take them in, that's for sure."
"Agreed. We spread out when we get there, meet at the big fountain every hour to check in and trade what we find out?" He was quiet as Rafe pulled into a parking space and took the parking slip, displaying the visitor card on the dash of the truck. "This is gonna be touchy."
Brian looked at him. "Think we should head down to the bookstore and get notebooks or something so we don't stand out?"
"Couldn't hurt, we could take notes on anything we find." After a brief detour, both men were armed with notebooks and pens. "Okay. We should talk to the faculty first, and then any of the teachers assistants who might know anything. If you get lost, the map is on the inside of the notebook, and I'll have my cell phone on."
"And are we assuming that I'm the one that's going to get lost?"
"Of course we are," Brian grinned. "After all, you're the one who got us lost on the way up to Castle Peak for that ski weekend."
"Only you remember that," Joel grumbled. "Meet back here in front of…" he turned around and consulted the name on the building "…Hargrove in an hour."
"See you then, man." A quick clasping of hands and both men split up to start their canvassing of the campus.
An hour later, thirsty and footsore, Brian and Joel met up around the fountain with pages full of rumors but nothing for sure. They traded books, and read what the other had found out. "Okay, so all we know for sure is that yes, the Dean is dirty but he's smart enough to keep whatever it is he's doing under some serious wraps."
"Yeah, yeah, that's about the size of it," Brian confirmed. "It all seems to come down to money. Look, they say here that the Dean didn't pipe in at all on the library and who it should be named after until all the bids had come in and he'd had personal meetings with all of them. And then here, the Dean's secretary's assistant says that he's got weekly meetings with an *old Mr. E* and he always comes back sweating and rumpled."
An ugly scenario started to form in the back of Joel's mind. //Down, boy, you're seeing ghoulies everywhere,// he reprimanded himself. //It could be nothing more than a racquetball game.// "Okay. So now we've got what, a weekly connection to William Ellison and it's somehow connected to money. So where do we go from here?"
Rafe consulted his watch. "Okay. Damn, Ellison got me up early. We can't go to the dean's office, he's in a meeting right now but that pretty little TA wouldn't tell me anything else, or else I'd say we toss the place."
Joel chuckled. "I don't think Jim would want us getting arrested, Bri."
"You're right. Okay, let's go mingle some more and see what we can find."
As Joel walked away, he shook his head. //You're seeing bogeymen everywhere, boy, just let it go.//
At the end of their second hour, the number of students had almost doubled, and their worries about blending in were almost gone. Joel's hand was cramping from all the writing he'd done, of girl's names and phone numbers. He'd made the mistake of mentioning he'd heard what a good prof Blair Sandburg was, and suddenly he had testimonials pouring out of the woodwork about how good a teacher he was and that even though they'd come onto him, Blair had declined them. //Well, I'm sure that's going to be helpful.//
Rafe was making his way over to the meeting with Joel when he was accosted by the pretty assistant of the Dean's secretary. "Krissa."
"Brian!" She was out of breath. "I've been looking for you, I just heard something from one of my girlfriends, maybe this will help you. The dean's meeting this morning was with Blair Sandburg and old Mr. E's son Stephen, and the dean is sweating big time! He's got a meeting with old Mr. E in about half an hour and Stephen got a phone call while he was in the meeting and told the Dean to go ahead and make the meeting with old Mr. E and that he'd be waiting when he got back!" Krissa was out of breath and she put her hand on Brian's arm. "Then the Dean had me call up old Mr. E and then he lit out of here like a bat out of hell! Then Stephen high-fived Blair and told him that there wasn't anything for him to worry about and then he left too, and Blair went to his class!"
Brian's pen was flying over the notebook pages, scribbling down everything that Krissa was telling him. "Krissa, babe… you're a lifesaver." He closed the notebook and kissed her cheek. "Now, promise you won't tell anyone else what you just told me."
"Promise," she said, kissing him deeply for a long beat. "See you round campus."
Joel laughed as he saw Rafe getting a passionate kiss from the young college girl. He waved and Brian came over. "I thought we were here to get information, not dates."
"Here, this is what that was about," he said, shoving the freshly written paragraph at Joel while he read over Joel's notes. "Holy shit, Joel, can I have this??? I can refill my little black book in no time."
"No," Joel said, picking up his notebook. "Come on. We got to get back to the station, and we can organize this stuff and call Jim with what we've got."
"Okay, let's go." Brian led the way back to the parking deck and eased the pickup out of the parking space and back onto the road. They hadn't been on the road long, and Brian's cell phone rang. "Hello?"
"Bri! Can you and Joel pick me up? I'm at the corner below my dad's house, but we… we gotta go to the University, gotta go see Blair and see… see if I can fix what Dad did."
"Jim? Yeah, of course, we're on the way, just stay there," Bri said, and passed the phone over to Joel.
"Jim? Jim, what's wrong? Jim?" The line went dead in his ear. "I think we got a problem, Bri," Joel said seriously.
"Hold on." Rafe hit the brakes and in the middle of the road spun the big truck around and headed back the way they'd come.
"Until we find out what's happening with Jim, we don't say anything about what we've found. We gotta pull him together first."
"Agreed," Brian said, and drove like a bat out of hell, ending up at the sidewalk beside the phone booth where Jim and his old man were about to get into it. He spilled out of the truck, and Joel was only behind him by a split second. "Jim!" He interposed himself between father and son, pulling William to his feet and pushing him a few steps back as Joel wrapped his arms around Jim's and pulled him back a few steps, separating them. "Jim, what the hell is going on here!"
Jim turned his head and tried to hide from Brian's abrasive voice. "Shut up! Talk low! Don't yell."
Rafe blinked, and then forced himself to lower his voice to a near whisper. "Jim, what is going on?"
"That… bastard is trying to get Blair fired because we're dating! Told you about it earlier."
//Not all of it, Jim,// Joel though before speaking up. "Jim. Come on, man, we'll get you in the truck. We'll get you to Blair."
Jim let himself be led to the truck and settled in by Joel's gentle hands. Rafe eyed William warily. "I don't know what's going on, I'm not sure I want to know, but if you've fucked with Blair and fucked *up* Jim and Blair… then I hope to God your house doesn't burn down because nobody in our group will be running to your rescue."
"Bri!" shouted Joel. "We gotta move, the man's getting the shakes!"
Rafe sprinted back to the truck and got back into the driver's side, gunning the engine and laying rubber as they peeled off down towards the University.
As Bri was driving, Joel was talking to Jim, but all Jim could say is, "We've got to get to Blair before my Dad does."
Joel looked at Jim. "Jim, what did your dad do?"
"He was trying to dig up dirt on me and Blair. I don't know who all he talked to at Blair's university but he went and stirred up shit. He tried to tell me that Sandburg slept with twenty-eight women since the beginning of the year and then my dad went to the dean with his bullshit and the dean says he's expelling all the girls and firing Blair. That's why I sent you guys to the University to look for dirt on the Dean, see if we could find a way to save Blair's job and get my old man out of our lives." Jim dropped his head in his hands; the dials were slowly appearing behind his eyes and his mind grabbed at it, turning it down to one of the lowest settings. Joel offered him a tissue and he blotted his eyes. "I can't believe my dad is doing this."
Brian and Joel exchanged glances. Neither could they. //At least we got proof that he's wrong about the sleeping with the girls,// Bri thought. "Blair will know what to do," is the only thing that Brian could offer. "If anyone here knows anything… they're not saying a word…all we got are rumors." When they got to the university, Brian parked the truck in the parking deck, and they wove through the hallways to Blair's office, waiting outside the locked door in a small knot.
Jim was taking deep breaths, breathing in the scent of his lover as it seeped out from under the door of Blair's office. //If I could roll in it I would,// Jim thought to himself, comforting himself with Blair's scent.
Rafe's hand on his shoulder shook Jim out of his thoughts. "Hey, Jim, how much longer until Blair gets out of class?"
Jim consulted his watch. "About ten minutes."
Brian looked over at Joel. "You'll stay with him, right? I gotta go to the men's room."
"Of course," Joel nodded, sliding down to lean beside Jim. "You gonna call Megan? Let her and Simon in on what's going on here?"
Jim interrupted. "You can't! Not with her and the baby, you can't! She doesn't need the stress right now, please!"
Brian looked from Joel to Jim. "All right. We'll wait to see what's happening before I call the guys."
"Thanks," Jim said, watching Bri disappear down the hall in search of the restroom.
In the restroom, Brian leaned against the wall and called Megan. "Megan. Do I have some shit to tell you." He proceeded to fill her in on the situation. "And so that's where we stand right now."
"Do you want me to come down there?"
"Hell no! I had to swear to Jim I wasn't going to tell you anything!"
"Brian!"
"Megan, he's about to have a breakdown here, and I had to tell him something!"
Megan sighed. "Fine, I won't tell him I know about it but the next time he goes to see that bastard of an old man, I'm driving him, because he'll have to pick up his truck."
"Fine fine fine. I gotta get back to Jim, Megan. I just wanted to let you know what's going on."
"Thanks, Bri."
Brian hung up, and as he walked back towards the group, he could see Blair approaching Jim and Joel, and behind Blair, the Dean was coming up. Blair hailed them first. "Jim? Joel? Brian?"
Jim opened his mouth to speak, but was surprised by another voice overriding his. "There you are, Mr. Sandburg. We need to have a talk." Blair turned to find a very stern faced Dean Wilkerson standing there, his arms crossed over his chest.
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