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The words blurred on the page, running and melding together in some psychedelic kaleidoscope of shock and disbelief. Just, this, it was impossible. This couldn't happen. Well, it did happen, Blair knew that. He'd caught enough students trying to pass off other people's work for a grade, but that was about laziness and passing the class. This, though? He didn't get it. He just couldn't understand.
And God, it wasn't even anthropology.
"Blair?"
He blinked until the text, his text, in the American Journal of Sociology was clear.
"Blair? Are you okay?"
He looked up and tried to smile, but it wasn't happening. "I don't think I'm going to be okay for a while, Andrea."
"Hey. It sucks, but you know it happens." Andrea leaned across his desk and looked at the article. "Still, it's kind of a go you thing, you know?"
He frowned. "Kyle stole my work!"
"Yeah, but it was your undergrad work. It's excellent work. The research? I'm completely jealous. If I was going to steal someone's work, it would have to be yours so I could look like a genius."
He slumped back in his office chair, arms akimbo and head hanging over the back. He stared at the ceiling and huffed a sigh. "I'm not really feeling better about this."
"I'm sorry, Blair," she said, sounding a lot like she wanted to hug him.
He crossed his arms over his chest. "Yeah, me, too. Kyle had some good ideas on his own. He could have done his own work easily. He didn't have to do this."
Andrea stuck her hands in her pockets and shrugged. "You know the pressure to get published. Especially when you're a newly minted PhD. He's probably trying to get out of his post-doc hell and move into some tenure-track position and he needed to get a few solid articles in quickly. The temptation is deadly out there for those of us who aren't child prodigies."
Blair quit contemplating the ceiling and glared at her. "Funny how we have centuries of academics who manage to do just that."
She had the grace to look abashed, but not much. "I said the temptation is there, not that it's okay to do it. Don't jump all over me for Kyle. Displaced anger isn't cool."
Blair took a deep breath and decided to ignore her. He picked up the journal. "He took my theoretical perspective and critical survey of the literature and came up with a sociological paper using tribal ethnography? You're a sociologist. How come AJS didn't figure out Boas and Malinowski are anthropologists?"
"They probably thought it was cutting edge."
Blair snorted and shoved a hand through his hair. "It wasn't cutting edge when I developed the hypothesis. It was an old twist on the same old same old."
She stared at him flatly. "I don't know what to tell you, Blair. I don't know how much of his paper is plagiarized, other than the part he took from you. He might have done his own work and put your hypothesis to the test. Your theory is solid. He used survey work from National Sample Survey and the International Social Survey Programme. It's interesting."
Blair jumped to his feet and threw his hands in the air. "It's tribal ethnography! You can't do a good tribal ethnographic comparison study with those surveys."
"Not an anthropological one, but you can kind of do it sociologically if you twist the hypothesis a little."
"No you can't!"
"Bad time for lunch, Chief?" Jim leaned against the door jamb, hands in his pockets. He was in his tight khaki pants and a dark blue Henley over a white tee shirt.
Blair narrowed his eyes. The jackass was probably posing for Andrea's benefit. She was kind of hot, for an intellectually constipated sociologist. No way. There was enough repression in Jim's life. "Not even, man. I am so ready to get the hell out of here."
Andrea's eyebrows went up. She smiled at Jim. "Hi, I'm Andrea Mitchell."
Jim nodded pleasantly enough. "Jim Ellison."
"Pleased to meet you."
Blair rolled his eyes. She was pretty enough, but a little too short, she had half an inch on Blair, and her hair was mousy brown. Definitely not Jim's type. Not if he had anything to say about it and today he damned well did. He shrugged into his coat. "Hey, Andrea, mind if I keep the journal for a little while? I'll get it back to you next week."
"No problem, Blair." She flashed another smile at Jim. Jim seemed confused. She reached for her own jacket. "I really hated to be the bearer of bad news."
"I'm glad you told me. I'll bring it by your office next Tuesday or Wednesday." He stuffed the journal into his backpack and zipped it closed.
"That'll be fine." She picked up her pack and looked at him expectantly. She wanted an invite to lunch. No way.
He smiled his best we're good buddies smile at her. "See you next week, then."
She squinted at him for a moment, then her shoulders relaxed. "Oh," she said, drawing it out. "I see." The tone was slightly condescending, in that so that's the way the cookie crumbles way women sometimes get. "Well. I'll see you next week." She smiled at Jim again. "Nice meeting you, Jim."
No, the cookie did not crumble that way, as a matter of fact, but if Jim wanted an academic, Blair had one he would point Jim in the direction of if and when Jim ever asked for the hookup.
Andrea slipped past Jim and wandered off to do her mindless sociologist thing.
Jim smirked at him, obviously amused. "Letting that fish get away, guppy?"
Blair paused in the middle of slinging his backpack over a shoulder just to glare at Jim. "That particular fish spent a few pleasant weeks in the net years ago. Catch and release, man. She looked kind of into you. If you're interested, you can run her down. She's a Marxist-feminist. She'll be right up your alley."
"A what?"
Blair settled the strap on his shoulder. "Marxist-feminist. Totally thinks that the only way for women to be truly free is to get rid of capitalism." He tilted his head and looked up Jim with a half grin. "She's kind of got a point. Madison Avenue uses women's bodies to sell everything from luxury cars to power tools. So, wanna show her your DeWalt?"
Jim shook his head, a half-smirk on his face. "Oh, ha ha."
"Well, her hair isn't red and her legs aren't all the way up to there, just most of the way, but she does have a criminal record if some minor anarchist vandalism is good enough for you."
Jim frowned. "Jeez, Sandburg. What crawled up your ass and died?"
Blair sighed and shoved a hand through his hair again. "Sorry, man. It's just, she gave me some shitty news and I'm taking it out on her and then you and that's very uncool. I shouldn't have said that to you. I'm sorry."
Jim turned and fully blocked the doorway. "What bad news?"
"Can we just go home? I'm all wound up and I'll say something crappy to you again. I, shit."
Jim wrapped an arm around him in one of those brief, buddy hugs. "Sure thing, sport. We'll pick up something on the way."
*****
The Wonderburger-Subway drive thru half-joke had flopped. Sandburg hadn't even picked up on it. Jim was worried, not so worried that he didn't let Sandburg's food vigilantism lapse pass without getting a combo at Wonderburger instead of pulling through the alley it shared with Subway, like Sandburg usually demanded, for one of the Jared specials Sandburg usually bullied him into. He cared about the guy, but a triple meat burger with extra cheese, super sized fries, and an extra large chocolate shake weren't going to kill him. Well, they wouldn't hurt Sandburg. Hell.
Jim sat the bag on the counter in the loft and wondered if he'd even enjoy the taste now. He prodded the bag with his finger and left it there. He took couple of glasses of water to the kitchen table, where Sandburg was slumped, face buried on arms crossed over the table's surface, and sat down. "Okay, Sandburg, we're home. Spill."
The hairball heaved a sigh worthy of a hippo.
He poked Sandburg's shoulder. "Out with it. What's up?"
"I got plagiarized." Sandburg tossed his body back in the chair, hair flying and arms waving. "I can't believe it, you know? I thought Kyle was my friend. Or kind of my friend. We knew each other way back when. It was a group project we worked on in this Globalization Theory class. I only took it because Kelly Walker the stacked blonde was in it. Should have dropped when I lost interest in her, but the class was cool and there wasn't a lot of homework. It was all sociology and I was just about to graduate in anth. Not even my minor, but it was interesting. Learned a lot about Marx and corporate America, but nothing that would really apply to anth. I hooked up with Andrea, Kyle, and Jordan there. Had some fun and channeled Naomi for a while. Jordan was an MBA. Man, he hated that class so bad. Final was an essay. Dr. S let me apply anth theory to it, bring in Boas and Malinowski and, you don't want to hear all this."
Jim leaned over enough to fist bump Sandburg's shoulder. "Sure I do."
Sandburg's eyebrows went up. "You want to hear anthropological theory?"
Jim kept his face bland. "I want to hear about what's upsetting you. I can do without the theory, but it's part of the story, right?"
Sandburg wrinkled his nose. "Sort of."
"So, spill. We're not getting any younger."
Sandburg sighed, and then reached out and fiddled with his water glass. "So anyway. We had this essay to write. I used anth theory, Boas's cultural relativity and twisted it with a little conflict theory to make it more applicable to a global studies situation. Thought field ethnography might work as the methodology. Nothing ground-breaking, really. We had to make presentations to the class." Sandburg twisted the glass and held his breath for thirty-eight seconds, then let all of his air out in a single, long whoosh. "Andrea, me, Kyle, and Jordan had a study group. We checked over each other's papers, even though I didn't really think I needed it, and Jordan didn't either, but Simpson is hell on wheels to the soc students, so we helped. I guess Kyle kept a copy of mine. My review of the literature, my discussion of theory, well, it showed up in his article, pretty much word for word, in the American Journal of Sociology."
"Aw hell."
"He's, well, not exactly my friend, but we know each other and I thought we were colleagues, man. We had this professional kind of relationship where there was some respect. He's a smart guy and he did excellent work on his own. I don't understand why he did this." Waves of misery poured off of Sandburg like sulfur off of an onion.
Jim's brow furrowed. "What are you going to do?"
"I don't know."
"Where's the li—" Jim cleared his throat. "Where is this Kyle at now?"
Sandburg smiled. "Thanks for sticking up for me, man. I appreciate it. He's at UNLV. Andrea says he's doing post-doc there, probably shopping for a tenure-track job."
"So I can't just go kick his ass for you."
"No, you can't. I wouldn't let you, even if he lived across the hall." Sandburg's smile softened a little as he leaned forward and wrapped both of his hands around Jim's left one. "Thanks for wanting to, Jim."
Jim smiled back. "Hey, you change your mind on the ass kicking, let me know. I'm your man. No expiration date on the offer, Chief. Just let me know."
"I think I'll just call him and ask him what he was thinking." Sandburg didn't let go of his hand. "I doubt he'll get away with it. Simpson's still around and reads the AJS. He'll recognize my work. It's bound to be unusual in sociology. Andrea picked it up easily enough."
"Are you going to report him?"
Sandburg bit his lip and looked like a lost little boy. "I don't want to."
"But?"
"It's hard. Kyle was my peer. He's, like, this person I respected and I don't want to report him."
Jim squeezed the fingers wrapped around his. "You'll do the right thing, Sandburg."
Sandburg's fingers squeezed back. "Thanks, man."
*****
Blair quietly shut the door on the loft, dropped his back pack next to the wall, trudged to the couch where he let his body collapse. Jim stuck his head over the railing of the loft, then trotted down the stairs.
"Hey, Jim."
"What's up, Sandburg?"
"I reported Kyle. Well, me and Dr. Simpson." Blair chuckled, even though he didn't feel like it. "I called him up this morning, Kyle. He apologized and said he regretted doing it from the minute he sent it in. Regretted not putting me on as a co-author. That's all it would've taken."
Jim flopped onto the couch next to him. "So, what happens now?"
"He gets a review by the journal and UNLV. They'll print a retraction somewhere in the next issue, like they do on page 12 in the newspaper, and he'll lose his post-doc fellowship at UNLV. If he's got a line on a job, he'll probably lose it. His name'll be mud in sociology." He felt cold all of the sudden and crossed his arms over himself. "God, this sucks."
Jim wrapped an arm around him and tugged him into the crook of a muscular cop chest. The kind of chest attached to the kind of guy that wouldn't put his name on someone else's words without permission. Blair snorted into Jim's ribs, then laughed.
"Chief?"
He poked Jim's rib. "You plagiarize me all the time, you fuck."
Jim poked him back. "I do not. I don't put my name on those reports you write. You put my name on those reports you write."
"But I've got your permission."
"Yup. You can do all of my paperwork, Chief."
"Gee, thanks, man."
"Anytime, Sandburg. Glad to help."
"It still sucks. I liked Kyle. I still kind of like Kyle. I just feel so sad and a little angry this happened. He put in so much work on that and for what?"
"It's hard to say why people do what they do. If you ever figure it out, let me know. I'll get you a Nobel, Alfred."
Blair snuggled into Jim's side. "Will do, man."
"You gonna be okay, Chief?" Jim squeezed him in the understated, one-armed hug way. The warmth he felt had less to do with Jim's body heat than it did with the weird security he felt rolling through him in contentedly purring waves.
Blair smiled. "Yeah, I will. Now."
"Good."
Blair soaked in the warmth, waiting for Jim to back off of the line, that way too close to be friends line to just good friends. Jim's breathing deepened, evened out. "Hey, Jim?"
"Hmm?"
"I don't have red hair and my legs aren't all the way up to there, but I do have some shady public disturbance arrests on my rap sheet."
Jim tilted his head enough to rest his cheek on Blair's head. "I can live without the excitement."
"Me, too." Blair threaded his fingers through Jim's and settled. Yeah, this was it. This was the way it was supposed to be.