HAZARDOUS TO YOUR HEALTH

by Dreamweaver

****

Saturday mornings weren’t meant to be filled with housework, Blair Sandburg mused to himself.  Saturday mornings were meant to be spent sleeping in late, having a leisurely breakfast featuring something like waffles, or pancakes, or French toast.  They were meant to be free from pressures of having to get things done…weren’t they?  

He sighed mournfully, hoping Jim heard him.   

“Keep it up, Sandburg, just keep it up.”   

The low, amused response told him that yep, Jim heard him, all right.  Blair grinned, even as he bent once more to his appointed task of cleaning the bathroom.  He was griping merely for the sake of keeping up appearances, of course.  Several years of sharing a home with Jim Ellison had accustomed him to the rituals of loft-cleaning so dear to the heart of a neat-freak Sentinel with enhanced senses, and if Blair were being honest, he’d have to admit that he appreciated living in a clean-and-tidy environment, most of the time.  He just wished that he and Jim weren’t the ones who had to keep it that way!  But neither police detectives nor grad students made the sort of money that enabled them to employ maid service on a regular basis, unfortunately.  

And today, he couldn’t even honestly complain about the breakfast, or the hour, either!   Jim, apparently in a mood to coddle his roommate and partner after a hard week, had produced omelets and cranberry muffins, and they had lingered over second cups of coffee and the morning paper.  And it wasn’t like Blair was the only one working; Jim was out there in the kitchen, cleaning up the breakfast mess, doing his share and more, and they’d tackle the living room together, a little later…  

It was merely the principle of the thing!   

“I feel like Cinderella!” Blair muttered now, knowing that Jim could hear him just fine – one of the perks of living with a Sentinel: you never had to raise your voice to get his attention.  Well, most of the time, anyway.  “Slaving away in here….I’m sure cleaning is hazardous to a person’s health, Jim.  We shouldn’t be doing it; it’s bad for us—”  

“You’ve made it quite clear that cleaning is hazardous to my health, if I use the wrong stuff,” Ellison replied, amiably, “but you notice I still do it.  But hey, if you’d rather do the kitchen, be my guest!  I’ll trade if you want.  But you won the toss, after all, and got to choose—”  

“No, no, that’s okay,” Blair hastily interrupted.  “I’m almost done in here; you’ve just gotten started.”  

“Don’t forget that the floor needs to be mopped; you’re not as close to done as you think, Sandburg,” Jim admonished.  “And by the way, considering I’m the one who has to clean up the kitchen, I think that ought to be Cinder-Ellison!”   

Blair laughed; he couldn’t help it.  “Good one.”  

The distinct sounds of the dishwasher being loaded came to Sandburg’s ears, and then he heard an exclamation from his partner:   

“Ugh!  Sandburg, what the hell have you done to the dishwasher?  It smells like a dead mouse got in here, or something!”  

That accusation brought Blair from the bathroom to defend himself.  “Jim, there is absolutely no way a mouse, living OR dead, could be in our dishwasher,” he said heatedly.  “Firstly, there are no mice in the loft.  Secondly, if there were any mice here – which there aren’t – not even one intent on committing suicide could get into the dishwasher!  And thirdly, why are you blaming me?”  

“You loaded it last night after dinner,” Ellison grumped.  “It was fine before then!”  

“It’ll be all right once you run it,” Blair told him, and retreated to the bathroom  He squirted glass cleaner on the mirrored door of the medicine cabinet.  “Just dial down for a minute, you shrinking violet!” he added softly, flinching slightly at the temerity of that comment; and he momentarily held his breath, not sure what the Sentinel’s reaction might be!   

“You, my little guppy, are asking for it!” was Ellison’s only reply.  A few more muted grumbles came from the kitchen, but Jim evidently was not intent on retaliation, for he didn’t comment aloud again.  Blair relaxed and returned to his tasks.  

He rubbed the mirror with paper towels, noticing that the cabinet door was exhibiting a tendency to swing open again, after being closed.  Absently making a note to mention the problem to the loft’s resident handyman – Jim – he shoved the door shut again, tossed away the used paper towels, and turned his attention to the counter.  

In the kitchen, Jim started the dishwasher, wiped off the island, and was just heading for the closet which held the vacuum cleaner, preparatory to tackling the living room, when he heard a soft thud from the direction of the bathroom, followed by an exclamation:  

“OUCH!  Dammit!”  

The Sentinel paused, and waited.  Coming from Blair, ‘Ouch!  Dammit!’ could indicate anything from a paper cut to a stubbed toe to a broken arm.  “You okay?” he inquired, after a moment.  

Blair didn’t answer.  

“Sandburg?  You all right?”  Slightly worried now, Jim headed for the bathroom, casting his hypersensitive hearing ahead of him.  Blair’s heart rate had abruptly rocketed into the stratosphere.  Jim lengthened his stride.  “Chief?  What happened?”  

“I – I…”  Blair didn’t continue.  

“Chief?”  Jim pulled up in the doorway, his eyes widening in alarm as he took in the sight of his partner.  Blair was standing in front of the sink, staring dazedly at the medicine cabinet, whose door was swinging lazily open on its hinges.  His left hand was pressed tightly against his forehead, covering his left eye, and Jim could see bright red streaks of blood oozing out between his fingers and trickling down his arm.   

“SANDBURG!”  

“I’m all right….”  The words were a mere whisper.  “I just – the cabinet door – I stood up, and…hit my head….”  Slowly, Blair turned towards his roommate.  “I’m okay….”  

Jim knew this was probably true, but he also knew that Blair was stunned and shaken by the sheer unexpectedness of the accident.  A person didn’t consider the possibility of suddenly dripping blood all over the countertops and floor, when cleaning the bathroom, after all, and it was a shock when it happened.  

“Chief—”  Jim moved to grasp his Guide’s arm.  “C’mon – just sit down for a minute, and let me take a look-see.”  Carefully, he steered Blair towards the toilet, and seated him on the closed lid.  “There you go; just take it easy.  You’ll be okay.”  

“The cabinet…” Blair whispered again.  “The door won’t stay shut.”  

“So I see,” Ellison glanced briefly at the little swinging door, then returned his attention to his partner – who was beginning to quiver with reaction.  

“I – I got the counter dirty…” Blair sounded distinctly upset. “And I just finished cleaning it!”  

“Hell, don’t worry about the damned counter!” Ellison snapped, then immediately moderated his tone.  “Blair – listen to me, buddy, it’s okay.  You hear me?”  He grabbed a clean washcloth from the linen cupboard, then began gently prying Blair’s fingers away from his face.  “Let me see, Chief – please.”  

Folding the washcloth into a thick rectangle, Jim pressed it firmly against Blair’s forehead as soon as the younger man’s hand was out of the way.  He didn’t try to evaluate the injury just yet; he wanted to get the bleeding under temporary control, first.  

“Ow…”  Blair flinched, and closed his eyes.   

“Easy,” Ellison murmured.  He kept the pressure on, but gripped Sandburg’s shoulder reassuringly with his free hand.  “Gonna be fine, Chief, just relax….”  

“Ow—” his partner repeated.   

Jim noted with relief that Sandburg now sounded more irritated than traumatized; hopefully, the shock was starting to wear off.  

“Okay, let’s take a look….”  Cautiously, Jim raised the washcloth.  Thank the Lord! was his first reaction.  The laceration was about half an inch long, and located just above Blair’s left eyebrow.  Straight, deep enough to cause considerable bleeding but not so deep as to be dangerous, no jagged edges or skin flaps.  “This doesn’t look too bad, Chief.”  More gently now, Jim replaced the cloth, trying to absorb more of the oozing blood.  

“That’s good….”  

“Might be a good idea to take a run over to the ER, though—”  

“NO!”  Blair jerked back, away from his roommate’s ministering hands.  “You just said it was all right!”  

“I said it didn’t look too bad; I didn’t say it didn’t need treatment,” Ellison qualified.  

“You can do that, can’t you?”  

“Chief, I can bandage it, but—”  

“So, bandage already!”  Sandburg snapped.  “I WON’T go to the hospital, Jim!  There is absolutely no way I’m going to live with the humiliation of explaining how I ended up in the emergency room because I got hit with a cabinet door!  A LITTLE cabinet door, at that!”  He was chewing his lips in agitation, his blue eyes fastened on the Sentinel, challenging him to argue.  

“Okay, okay, calm down.”  Jim replaced his hand on his partner’s arm, trying to soothe him.  To his consternation, he felt Blair shaking again, beneath his fingers.  “Blair?  Buddy?  Relax, it’s all good.  We’ve got some butterfly strips; I’ll take care of it.  Hear me?  You don’t have to go to the hospital….I’ll take care of it – okay?”   

“O-okay….”  The younger man suddenly seemed to deflate.  He sagged back against the wall, closing his eyes.  

“Hold this – keep the pressure on,” Ellison instructed, lifting Blair’s left hand and placing it against the folded washcloth.  “I need to get out the first aid stuff.”  

Blair obeyed silently.  Jim, rummaging through drawers and the medicine cabinet for antiseptic and butterfly strips, felt red flags being raised in his mind, by this uncharacteristic silence.   

“Blair, you doing okay?”  

“Feel like…a fool,” muttered his Guide.  “How am I ever going to explain this to the guys at the station?”  

“Worry about that later,” Jim advised him.  “You can always tell ‘em you did it on purpose so you wouldn’t have to clean the living room…”  Carefully, he peeled back the cloth, and prepared to swab the injury with diluted hydrogen peroxide.  “Hang on now, this is going to sting a little…”  

Blair hissed through clenched teeth, and half-rose, as the antiseptic bubbled in the cut.  “God Almighty!”  

“Just ‘Jim’ will suffice; thanks just the same,” Ellison said calmly, blue eyes twinkling.  Gently, he pushed his Guide down again.  

“Damn you, Jim…”  Blair’s breath came in a series of hitching gasps, as he attempted to cope with the disinfectant’s bite.  

“Rather go to the ER?”  Jim inquired sweetly.  

“No, but…ouch – ow – ow – dammit.”  

“Shhh, shhh, it’s all right.  Hold on; it’ll ease up in a minute.”  Despite his teasing, Jim regretted having to cause his Guide pain, and was sympathetic.  He set down the peroxide bottle, and took Blair’s hand in his own.  “Squeeze – hard.”  

After a few moments, Blair’s breathing returned to normal, and his vise-like grip on Jim’s hand slackened.  Working quickly, the Sentinel applied butterflies, smoothed on an antibiotic ointment, and topped it off with a large Band-aid.   

“There.  All done.”  Jim patted his partner’s shoulder.  “How’s it feel?”  

“Better – pretty good,” Blair said, unwilling to admit that he was starting to get a throbbing headache.  And he was telling the truth, in the most literal sense…the cut itself did feel much better now!  

“You’re getting a fairly good-sized bump there,” Jim commented, putting away the first aid supplies.  “Might be a good idea to put a cold pack on it for awhile.”  

“After we finish cleaning,” Sandburg said grimly, attempting to stand.  “I’m not going to let a cabinet door have the last word!”  He was surprised to feel his knees shaking under him, and he leaned against the counter, hoping Jim hadn’t noticed his weakness.  

No such luck.  

“Ice pack first, cleaning later,” Ellison said firmly, and unceremoniously ushered him out of the bathroom and into the small bedroom beneath his own.  

“Jim – no – I’m fine, man, really I am….I’ve got to finish cleaning the bathroom – I got blood all over, remember?”  

“I know, Sandburg, I know.  Humor me.  If you lie down for a little while, it’ll make me feel better.”  Jim seated him on the futon, and gently pushed him back against the stack of pillows, then turned and left the room, evidently in search of an ice pack.  

“Blessed Protector Syndrome,” Blair sighed, and capitulated.  Trying to argue with Jim about this seemed like way too much work at the moment.  He lay still and awaited his partner’s return.  

Jim was back in a matter of seconds, a battered-looking package of frozen peas in his hand.  Wrapping their reusable ‘ice pack’ in a dish towel, he handed it to his partner.  “Keep it on for twenty minutes; then we’ll see how it looks.”  

“Yes, Doctor Ellison,” Blair murmured, meekly accepting the cold bundle and gingerly placing it against his face.  

“No smart remarks, Junior.”  Jim exited once more, and Blair heard water being run in the kitchen.  Then the Sentinel was back again.  “Here – take a couple of these.”   

Sandburg opened the eye not covered by frozen peas and beheld his roommate, holding out a bottle of aspirin and a glass of water, and looking stern.  “Do I have a choice?” he hedged.   

“No.  Another ‘yes, Doctor Ellison’ will do nicely.”  The stern look was tempered by the twinkle in Ellison’s eyes, but Blair knew this was a battle he wouldn’t win, if he chose to fight.   

He chose to surrender without firing a shot.  “Thanks,” he muttered, and drank down two of the caplets.  

“Good boy.”  Jim patted his shoulder.  “Why don’t you take a nap?  I’ll check on you in 20 minutes.  I’m going to go do something about that cabinet door, before we end up killing ourselves!”  

*****

Twenty minutes later, on the dot, Blair found himself being gently shaken awake, and the cold weight of the frozen vegetables removed from his face.  “Mmmph,” he mumbled sleepily.  “’m ‘wake….’m okay….”  

“Yeah, I think you are.”  Jim inspected the injury site with the meticulous scrutiny possible only to a Sentinel.  “The swelling’s gone down.  How are you feeling now?”  

“Better.”  Blair blinked, and smiled a little.  “Headache’s almost gone.  Ready to go back to being Cinderella again.”  He sat up, letting Jim help, knowing the older man needed the contact, needed the tactile reassurance that his Guide was, indeed, on the mend.   

“You can be Cinderella in the living room,” Ellison said gruffly.  “I finished up the bathroom after I fixed that damned door.”  

“Ah, Jim, that was nice of you.”    

“Nice has nothing to do with it, Sandburg; I just figured you’d be more useful vacuuming than mopping the bathroom floor.  Besides, you’d probably find some other way of trying to maim yourself, if I let you go back in there!”  

Right, Jim…and the fact that vacuuming is a whole lot less strenuous than mopping has nothing to do with it, either!  Aloud, Blair merely said, “Okay, I can do useful!”  As he swung his feet to the floor and stood up, he added, “See?  I was right!”  

“About what?”  Jim kept a steadying hand on his partner’s arm as they moved into the living room to start their familiar routine.  

“About cleaning.  It’s hazardous to your health!”

Fini

Disclaimer:  The Sentinel is the property of Pet Fly Production and UPN.  We've only borrowed the characters for a few frolics in the sun.  
We promise to return them where we found them when we're done.