AN: I have to send out some huge thank you's to Ranger for her invaluable help as a beta for this effort, as well as Enola for aid in selecting the title I could simply not come up with.

Disclaimers: Not mine, or I would have hired some real writers… ;)

Hidden Wolf

by Marnie Rowe AKA Bumpkin

Rated: PG

Description: First impressions are not always the true measure of a person, they only really tell you what they want you to know. Jim takes a second look at Blair – finally.

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Blair looked up at Jim, a sardonic twist distorting his lips. It wasn't a pleasant expression, and certainly not one Jim had ever expected to see gracing his young roommate's normally cheerful features.

Then again, he had also never expected to come across Sandburg in a dark alley fighting off five guys very efficiently all on his lonesome either, but he had wandered onto just such a scene less than a half hour ago. He'd spotted the altercation and gone to put a stop to it like he would any other time, and been caught totally flat footed when he had recognized who was in the middle of the melee.

Jim hadn't even had a chance to go to his partner's aid. At the time, he could only stand and watch from where he was lurking in the shadows, open-mouthed with shock, he might add, as Blair fought off his assailants with what Jim could only think of as disturbing competence.

Seeing the younger man he had dismissed as a naïve scholar laying into one guy with a punishing haymaker, and then promptly turning and taking down two more with a brutal series of roundhouse kicks, bouncing them off the alley walls. The last two were dispatched with less violence, but no less effectively for that. Well, it was defiantly an eye opener that was for sure. Then Jim was stunned even further, when in what seemed to be one seamless move, Blair bent to grab a knife from the unconscious body of one of his assailants and unerringly let it fly in his direction.

It missed.

Thankfully.

Probably on purpose Jim guessed. Jim thought the younger man must have sensed someone was lurking in the shadows and the stunt with the knife was because he wanted to scare them off if he could, and for most people in the area it would have worked. It was a strategy that made perfect sense to Jim – avoiding a fight was always best, less chance for someone to get in a lucky shot and hurt you. At that point Jim had quickly moved out of the shadows, identifying himself as he did so.

"Hey Chief, it's just me."

Blair's battle ready stance had relaxed at the sight of his roommate, but it didn't go away totally. Plus, a new tension seemed to edge onto his boyishly handsome features.

"Jim." His normally melodic voice sounded curiously flat and Jim's stomach twisted. This wasn't good. No, it wasn't good at all. "What brings you out to this area, man?"

"I was on my way home from talking to a snitch, and I thought I heard a disturbance. I stopped to check it out. Standard procedure, y'know how it goes," Jim said blandly. He knew the worst thing he could do at the moment was make a big deal out of things, he had to play it cool or Sandburg would rabbit. Naomi had, after all, taught him well.

"Ah, I see," the younger man said sagely, and then paused briefly before continuing awkwardly, "so, ah, how long were you standing there then?"

In other words, 'What did I see?' Jim mentally translated his guide's stumbling question. He thought about it for a moment and then answered, "Either not long enough or too long, I think." Which brought them to the sardonic look that Jim really didn't think suited his young, normally upbeat, guide.

"Wha-at?" he asked playing up their normal bantering tone hoping to lighten the mood. "It was a valid statement for the question asked." Blair relaxed a bit more as he snorted and rolled his eyes. Jim smirked back, inwardly feeling thankful. They weren't back to normal, but at least they weren't totally on edge anymore.

After one last glance around to make sure none of the clowns in the alley would be following them, Jim and Blair fell into step with each other as they began to walk to the truck. Neither seemed to feel the need to say anything for the moment, they were content to just be with each other and let the new information settle.

The mood persisted for the entire trip back to the loft, up to the time that they got inside and settled with a couple of beers on the couch. Then the thin veneer of normality began to crack.

"So, Sandburg, were you ever gonna tell me that you could fight like that or were you gonna leave me thinking that you were some peacenik that couldn't fight his way out of a paper bag?" Jim's voice sounded faintly betrayed. Blair's, when he answered, was calm but had an undercurrent that was both aggrieved and angry.

"Oh man, I never told you I couldn't fight. You made some assumptions when we first met that I just never disabused you of Jim because, well frankly, it pays to be underestimated. But for crying out loud man, think for a minute! You slammed me up against my office wall on our second meeting. Now I could have made you drop me easily, but seeing as I was trying to talk you into letting me study you at the time, I didn't think that was such a hot plan, y'know what I'm saying? If you think back though, there wasn't one second at the time that I was truly frightened, even with 'big scary guy' pinning 'supposedly helpless me' against a wall – that should have told you something if you just thought about it."

Jim was squirming as he did think back; Blair really hadn't been scared at all. It was in fact part of what had convinced him that Blair could hack it as a police observer. He'd unconsciously been taking advantage of it while consciously dismissing the reality. Talk about being willfully blind. Blair saw the dawning understanding in his friend's eyes and decided to drive home a few more home truths.

"You really thought all the traveling Naomi and I did was peaceful? Come on man, the world's a dangerous place! You, of all people, know that. Mom and I had to learn how to defend ourselves if need be. And yes, I have a few more skills other than the hand to hand you saw, at my disposal in case you were wondering."

Jim shook his head, he didn't need to know at the moment, this was enough to take in for now. More than enough really. He was finding out that he really didn't know the man that he thought of as his best friend. It made him wonder exactly how much he meant to the man in question. Was he just a freak to him – something to watch over and record after all?

"It's always about you, isn't it?" Blair seethed. 'Ooops,' Jim thought, 'he must've said the last bits aloud.' Blair wasn't interested in Jim's contrition; he was too busy icily laying out another viewpoint.

"You're always so concerned with being thought of as a 'freak', but think for a minute Jim on what you would call someone who never finished out a year of school in one place, someone who advanced a grade more often than not when they did change schools during a school year - and that is only when we stayed in the US. We aren't counting the months when we were out of the country trotting all over the globe on whichever spiritual quest my mother had heard of at any given time. Then you know that I started Rainier at sixteen, but it wasn't at a freshman level. I had already tested out of all of those classes and half of the sophomore ones. You want to talk freak? Well, I had my bachelors by the time I was 18, my first Masters before twenty-one, the second not too long after that. Professors and classmates alike hated me because I didn't so much steepen the grading curve as warp it into a spiral. I wasn't exactly what you would call a 'popular guy' on campus."

Jim winced. He could certainly see how Blair wouldn't have been the most popular of people, at least to the other students. He didn't get why the professors wouldn't like him, but he could ask Blair about that later. He did get that Blair hadn't been able to hide; it hadn't even been a possibility. Blair's differences had come from the way he had lived and the way he interacted with the world. Jim had at least been able to pretend to be a normal kid right from the get go, unless he did anything to set himself apart Jim's differences would never have been noticed. Naomi had made that impossible for Blair.

God all the time that he had been whining, Blair must have wanted to tell him to shut up and suck it up. Especially since he was supposedly some hotshot Army Ranger, trained to withstand the worst anyone or anything could throw at him. Okay, either tell him to shut up, suck it up or laugh himself silly at him. Jim guessed that was what showed that Blair truly was his friend, Blair supported him no matter how bone-headed he acted (and Jim could do bone-headed quite well, he had to admit to himself). Blair didn't always go along with him, he wasn't a yes-man or anything like that, but he made sure Jim knew he wasn't alone. Jim wasn't sure that he had ever really given that level of friendship back. Perhaps it was time that he did. A good way would be to acknowledge that he wanted to see the whole man now.

"Blair Sandburg," he said quietly, turning to face his friend on the couch and holding out a hand. "I'm Jim Ellison, and I'd like very much to get to know you."

Blair looked at the offered hand with narrow eyes and then up to Jim's face. His lips twisted up into that little half smile for a moment, but Blair reached out and grasped Jim's offered hand in return as he asked dryly, "So, does this mean that we aren't going to 'no comment' or obfuscate when either of us asks the other a question anymore?"

Jim openly grinned back, "Only if it's classified, anything else is fair game – fair enough?"

Blair's wry little smirk grew as he replied, "Fair enough. Just as long as you respect that it goes both ways man."

Jim's hand clutched convulsively around Blair's as his face reflected his surprise, but all Jim managed to say was a rather strangled, "What?!"

The End