Email: slashgirl@gmail.com

Author's notes: Got the idea from an article in Reader's Digest, I used some of the basic
ideas there more than anything. Also, this'll probably take me a couple days to get up at
my website.


Outside looking in
by Stacy L.A. Stronach
28 March 1999


Jim Ellison walked around the corner of the shed, heading for the clothes
line platform, having just left the happy noisiness of a
cabin full of people. He and and his lover, Blair Sandburg, had
invited a few people up here for the long weekend and it gone
quite well so far.


The late spring evening was cool, but the sky was clear, and the
stars sparkled like tiny jewels in the sky. Jim had offered to
come retrieve the clothes, because he like being outside,
especially up here. Besides, it was dark, and he had the best
sight of the lot of them. Of course, he couldn't exactly share
that fact with everyone.


The cabin was up in the mountains, a good hour's drive from the
city, a refuge from all the mayhem and madness that was Cascade.
Up here, there was quiet and open spaces, clean air and no
neighbours. His brother, Stephen, had given Blair and him the
land as a present, shortly after they'd told Stephen they were
together as lovers. Blair and Jim had taken a couple weeks in the summer,
and with the help of Stephen and a few of their friends,
had built the simple cabin here in the woods.


Jim climbed up on the platform, quickly and efficiently removing
the clothes from the line. The last thing he took off was one of
Blair's t-shirts and Jim held it up to his face, inhaling. He
could still smell Blair's scent on it, along with the unscented
detergent, and most of all, the outdoors smell that permeated all the
clothes. Reassuring, normal smells.


Heading back, he turned the corner by the shed, and Jim paused,
staring at the dark house with it's rectangles of yellow light.
It wasn't that he needed to readjust his vision, he'd anticipated the
change in brightness. It's the fact that here, now, he wass
an outsider and looking inside his home seems somehow
transformed.


The plain, unfinished table in the kitchen has taken on deeper,
warmer tones. The cabinets, the pots and pans hanging from the
ceiling, all the little odds and ends that make up his kitchen
somehow seem less utilitarian objects and more like the pieces of the
puzzle that make up his home.


Jim shifted his gaze to the living room, fascinated by his new
perspective. The fire was glowing in the fire place, casting a
warmth to the room and the people in it. He smiled, seeing Blair
and Daryl Banks, sitting on the floor, opposite one another, with the
chess game set up between them. Blair lifted a piece and
placed it, and Jim could imagine him explaining to Daryl why he
had played it. Blair, always the teacher.


His glance was drawn to the sofa, where Blair's mother, Naomi,
sat, along with Daryl's father, Simon. The two were talking
quietly, and from the looks directed at the two sitting on the
floor, obviously about their children. More than likely swapping
cute but embarrassing stories about their boys.


Looking near the fireplace, Jim saw Stephen, in the arm chair,
with his daughter, Sydney, sitting on his lap, his arms wrapped
around her, securing her. Sydney held a big book in her lap, to
which she'd point, then say something, obviously reading the book to
her father.


For just a moment, he felt like a stranger, staring into a house
that wasn't his, watching the simple, everyday interaction of
family. Then, the next moment, he wonders what it would be like
if he really were a stranger, if he could never again enter that
house. What if he couldn't touch Blair's silky curls or hear his
wonderful laugh again? What if he could never hug his niece again or
go surfing with his little brother? Or experience one of
Naomi's visits, or Daryl's teenaged exuberance, or smell one of
Simon's cigars, ever again?


Jim felt his heart and his soul expand as he let his family, for
these people surely were his family, in, without condition. He
realised that all the trials and tribulations they experienced,
that the daily friction which living and working together
brought, all the barriers they placed in their relationships and
as ragtag a bunch as they might be, it didn't amount to much.
That those things were of little significance, because the most
important thing, that which overshadowed everything else, was the simple
fact they loved each other. It was love which bound them
together and which would keep them together, it was love that
made them a family.


Jim smiled as he slowly made his way back to the cabin. Glad that he
wasn't a stranger and that this was his family, this was his home.
And that he wouldn't change it for the world.


the end