Disclaimer: Pet fly, etc.

This story is mainly a gift for Gail Gardner, SentinelAngst list member (her 
website is Ship’s Cat), in thanks for putting me up (and putting up with me) 
on a week’s visit to Finland this Easter, however, please read the Author’s 
Note at the end. This story has a serious point to make. If you are a male 
fan fiction writer, or a male reader of fan fiction, I would particularly 
encourage you to read this. 


FINNESSE

“Come on, Jim,” Sandburg’s voice floated up, “How can it take a guy so 
much time to comb so little hair?”

Jim walked down the steps from his bedroom, his steps slowing and his 
expression changing from annoyed to confused as he took in his room-mate 
and Guide, Blair Sandburg. Today it was Sandburg’s turn to cook breakfast, 
but nothing was happening. There was no coffee percolating in the machine, 
no bacon sizzling on the grill, no bread in the toaster. Blair, instead of being 
busy rustling up food for his hungry Sentinel in his usual sleep wear of vest 
and boxers, was standing fully dressed and wearing his jacket, boots and 
backpack at the door, clearly ready to leave.

“Come on, Jim.” Blair repeated with impatience. 

“Where are you going? You’re supposed to be making breakfast?” Jim was in 
no mood to enter the Sandburg Zone this morning. They’d cracked two big 
cases in the last thirty-six hours, both of which had resulted in little if any 
sleep during that time. Which was just tough – they were due on the twelve-
hour shift that all MCU personnel pulled once every two weeks and the fact 
that they’d had no rest in the preceding thirty-six hours was their problem. 
Jim wanted lots of awesomely strong coffee, an entire pig’s worth of bacon 
rashers and California’s entire corn crop of toast and biscuits inside his 
gullet before he ventured forth. 

“I’m buying you breakfast.” Blair urged. “Anything you want. Go wild. Just 
hurry up.”

“Buying breakfast,” Jim folded his arms and regarded his room-mate 
steadily, perfectly well aware that they had more than adequate yummy 
breakfast foodstuffs in the loft kitchen. “Where?”

“That new place that’s just opened at the end of the block.” Blair recited 
the words in a clearly irritated sing-song. “I got talking to Hilka, the lady 
that owns it and said we’d stop by for breakfast. Look Jim, I. Am. Buying. 
Then we can go straight into the station.”

Damn, if I’ve been sucked into the vortex that is the Sandburg Love 
Connection I’ll kill him, Jim glared at his room-mate even as he plucked his 
jacket from the coat hook by the door and prepared to put his boots on. 
“Sandburg, if this place tries to pass off tofu and hikers trail mix as real 
food, then I swear –”

Blair snorted. “I wish, man. Hilka is Finnish. They don’t believe anything is 
properly cooked unless it contains a minimum of a pound of butter and a 
pint of cream.”

Finnish? As they left the loft, Jim wasn’t reassured. Flaxen haired Nordic 
Goddess or no, if she offered him fried rasher of Rudolph, he was out of 
there…

Luckily there was a parking slot directly outside the new café, which had 
been named Finnesse rather than Finesse; very droll, thought Jim sourly. 
They were the first customers as Hilka had just opened the café; she turned 
out not to be a six-foot-four Wagnerian Valkyrie a la The Ring Cycle but a 
short, plump brunette with a happy grin and a wicked laugh. 

Naturally, Blair had learned her life story in the first ten minutes of their 
initial meeting and briefed Jim in an undertone as they took seats at a 
window table. Her mother was a stereotypical Finn in looks but her father 
was an American of Anglo-Amerindian descent, from whence she got her 
dark hair and brown eyes; she’d been born in Seattle but from the age of six 
months had lived in Finland. All Finns were at least trilingual, speaking 
Finnish, Swedish and English, plus usually Russian. Her father’s job had 
taken Hilka’s family all over the Scandinavian Peninsula with the net result 
that she spoke Danish, Inuit, French, Italian and German as well. In the 
melting pot that was Cascade, Hilka was finding that despite its newness, 
her fledgling business was taking off. This corner block was at the juncture 
of Little Italy and the Russian Quarter and she was already getting regular 
customers from these ethnic groups.

“Okay, Sandburg,” Jim grumped, “I’m sold. But I swear if she tries to make 
reindeer any part of this –”

Blair glared at him then redirected his attention as Hilka came back bearing 
two large mugs of coffee with hot, frothed milk. As she placed them on the 
table, Blair switched his glare to a smile and said to her what Jim swore 
sounded like, “Kitty, Kitty” before launching into a conversation utterly 
incomprehensible to Jim; the only thing he knew that he didn’t before was 
that Blair was fluent in Finnish. 

“What did you order?”

“Rudolph, Prancer, Dancer and Blitzen…” sniped Blair, adding two sugars to 
his coffee and taking a large slurp.

“Blair, I swear if she serves us fried reindeer –”

“Oh relax your anal-retentive self,” Blair rolled his eyes, good humour 
apparently restored by the coffee. “No reindeer were harmed during the 
making of this breakfast. Besides, you don’t fry reindeer; you should sauté 
it with bacon…”

Jim hesitated on the verge of taking issue with the ‘anal-retentive’ crack, 
aware that so far this morning his own attitude has been even less stellar 
than Blair’s, and the younger man looked even more tired. Just like Jim, 
Blair had spent the last day and a half working to bust those two big-league 
drug smuggling rings, but unlike Jim, in the brief periods he wasn’t at the 
station, Blair was in his ‘office’, that cubby-hole joke of an artefact storage 
room, pulling all-nighters to catch up on his work and ensure that when the 
students and other staff arrived at Rainier, they found fully prepared 
information and graded essays. 

The whole Ventriss saga had highlighted just how much of his teaching job 
Blair had missed over the past four years due to being with the MCU and the 
attitude of Dean Marcia Bug-Up-My-Ass Edwards had proven that when it 
came to ethics, academic principles and supporting her staff, she would 
drop them like hot rocks in kow-towing to spoilt brat students with rich 
daddies. Since then Blair had been anal-retentive himself in not asking 
others to cover his classes and so forth. If he was vertical and walking, he 
did the work. But now Jim guiltily realised that Blair was, as usual, taking a 
quart out of a pint pot when it came to energy.

His intention to be conciliatory went the way of all good intentions as Hilka 
reappeared bearing two plates on each of which resided what looked like a 
mound of scrambled eggs on top of two oval puff-pastry objects.

“Carrellian Pancakes.” Blair rubbed his hands with glee.

Jim glared at a description that sounded like it came straight off the Star 
Wars bar-scene menu. “What?” He looked down at the mixture suspiciously 
as Hilka placed it in front of them and disappeared again.

“A Carrellian pancake is short-grain white rice inside a puff pastry case. You 
hard-boil eggs, chop them up, and mix butter into them while they’re still 
hot, then serve on the pancakes…just try it, Jim.” Blair said with a hint of 
snap in his tone.

Aware that Blair was moving from “morning blues” to genuine anger, Jim 
obediently cut off a corner slice and placed it in his mouth, chewing 
stoically and trying not…to…think…about the taste - which was great. He 
looked down, cut a huge slice off and tried again just to make sure.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner,” Blair muttered with only a 
soupçon of sarcasm as he grinned involuntarily at Jim’s enjoyment before 
tucking into his own breakfast. 

Jim polished both pancakes off in short order, and the mug of strong but 
excellent coffee. Since Sandburg was springing, he decided on another 
round of both, and Hilka was only too happy to comply, topping up Blair’s 
mug at the same time as the younger man ate more slowly.

Jim started on round two, ignoring Blair’s amused chuckle, and bent his 
mind to the task of how to make sure they came here regularly without 
having to admit to Mr Smugly Smirking Guide that okay, he had called it 
right. However, as he ate, savouring the pleasant textures and tastes, Jim 
never left ‘cop mode’, which was why he’d chosen a seat that gave him a 
clear view of the sidewalk. He constantly scanned his surroundings both 
inside and out, being aware at all times of the people passing outside and 
the automobiles at the junction. 

Due to his position, he had a perfect view when the bus drew up at the stop 
light right outside the café window; he glanced up and therefore saw 
Sandburg stark naked. He blinked; not 99% naked with tastefully arranged 
fig leaf, sheet, etc. One hundred percent au naturel, butt nekkid.

“Jim!” Blair yelled frantically, skidding back his chair as semi-masticated 
egg, rice and mashed up flecks of pastry sprayed all over the table, him and 
his own breakfast. But instantly he forgot his ire as Jim gagged and hacked. 
“Jim?!”

Leaping up, Blair instantly moved to support Jim’s torso as the man coughed 
and choked. Instinctively rubbing his hand in concentric circles at the top of 
Jim’s back as the big man wheezed, Blair grabbed the glass of water he’d 
poured and held it to Jim’s lips so he could sip it. 

“Easy, easy,” he soothed in desperate worry, completely bewildered. Part 
of the reason why he’d brought Jim here was because Carrellian Pancakes 
were the ideal Sentinel breakfast – rice, eggs, butter and puff pastry were in 
the top ten “no danger to the Sentinel” food list and as long as Hilka hadn’t 
poured several pounds worth of salt and pepper into the mix Jim would 
never have a problem. “Jim, what is it? What’s wrong?” He raised his head 
and glared furiously at Hilka, even more enraged when she merely stood, 
seemingly frozen, as Blair snarled, “What did you do? What did you put in 
it?”

His hand trembling from the attack, Jim slowly raised it and gripped Blair’s 
chin like a vice. Blair instinctively tried to pull back as his lips and cheeks 
were squeezed together in what would have been a humorous way in any 
other circumstance but Jim deliberately tightened his hold till it was painful 
and forced Blair’s head to the right. The light changed to green and outside 
Blair saw his own nude body down the length of the bus as it slowly pulled 
away.  

“Oh,” Blair said without any modicum of surprise never mind shock, “that.”

“What the hell did you do Sandburg?” rasped Jim, his throat still sore from 
the choking bout as he glared at the younger man.

Blair shrugged, blatantly unconcerned, “I did some modelling.”

“Some modelling?” Jim repeated the phrase loudly as shock gave way to 
anger.

“Yes, some modelling! It’s not like you haven’t seen it all before –” he 
winced as he realised what he’d just said.

Hilka’s tiny squeak was drowned out by Jim’s outraged bellow of 
“Sandburg!!”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Blair addressed Hilka in an attempt at damage 
control, “We’re just room-mates.”

She made another tiny squeak as if in answer while her eyes never lifted any 
higher than about two inches below his belt buckle. Mostly concentrating on 
the large, fuming cop invading his personal space, a small part of Blair’s 
mind acknowledged that her action was probably some sort of cosmic 
payback for every guy who spent ages talking “to” a woman but never raised 
his gaze above her cleavage.

Jim was still glaring furiously, though Blair’s statement had been true in the 
literal sense. From the age of eighteen until thirty-three, Jim had been in 
the U.S. Army, used to living in barracks with a large number of other men 
and where personal space and privacy for hygiene was non-existent. Blair 
likewise had grown up in communes and cultures with liberal attitudes to 
clothing and nudity. Whatever their other neuroses, hang-ups about nudity 
weren’t on the list for either Jim or Blair; neither man exactly paraded 
around the loft in the altogether, but it wasn’t uncommon for them to be in 
a “two men, one bathroom and both late for work” situation, wherein each 
was more concerned about getting ready as fast as possible than being 
precious about the fact that the other wasn’t wearing any clothing.

“And you never thought it worthwhile to mention to me that naked posters 
of you were going to be splashed all over the city?” Jim barked.

Blair blinked. “How on earth could I have known – wait a minute. Obviously 
you were too busy ogling to look at my head.”

“Oh I saw your head!” Jim snapped.

There was a moment of charged silence then Hilka whirled on her heels, her 
face flaming, and hurried into the back. Both men could hear her laughing 
hysterically. 

“I meant you didn’t look at my face.” Blair reiterated, clearly trying not to 
laugh himself.

Jim sucked in a deep breath as the fury surged anew; he hadn’t really taken 
in anything other than his Guide’s nudity, but having perfect recall courtesy 
of his Sentinel senses enabled him to extract the subliminally absorbed 
image of Blair’s face from the poster. His righteous anger stuttered a bit as 
his brain compared the face on the poster to that of the man standing not a 
foot away and – “Your hair. You had short hair...”

“I was twenty-two when that photograph was taken, and I was living in 
Finland.” Blair stated. “I knew they were using one of the images when I got 
the royalty cheque last week, but I had no idea of which one, or where it 
would be. It could easily have been London or Rome as Cascade.” He 
dropped the money for breakfast plus a large tip on the table as even he 
could hear from the muffled gurgles that Hilka was still in no condition to 
come back out of the kitchen. “If you’ve finished freaking out, we need to 
be in work.”

Jim winced as he and Blair left the café. Cops were merciless at the best of 
times; the taunting that would result from his partner’s nude body being 
plastered across Cascade’s public transport did not bear thinking about. To 
his astonishment, they walked back to Sweetheart without incident.

“I can’t believe nobody’s looking at us.” Jim muttered.

Blair heard him and shrugged. “Of course not, as far as everyone’s 
concerned a fashion model is a glamorous person who lives on the beach in 
Malibu or Waikiki. They don’t expect to see the guy on the poster walk past 
them a minute later. Although if everyone’s like you very few people will be 
noticing my face, apparently.”

Jim flushed, hating being on the defensive. “So how many more of these 
posters are likely to show up?”

“Relax, I only did that one shot in the nude.” Ignoring Jim’s loud sigh of 
relief, Blair explained, “I lived in Finland for a while on a project for 
Rainier. They were looking for fashion models and paying a good rate. I 
couldn’t afford to pay for professional photos to be taken, so I hired the 
equipment for an afternoon and did them myself. Fortunately my portfolio 
passed muster and since I’m also the photographer I retain the image rights, 
so I get a small royalty fee whenever one of them is used.”

Jim nodded understanding; Blair had had numerous articles published in 
various periodicals and scientific textbooks, and sometimes received small 
royalty cheques whenever any of his work was reproduced. If Blair had done 
the modelling in Finland it was highly unlikely any more of his photographs 
would turn up being used in the States; it could only be the Sandburg Zone 
at work that the only nude shot he’d done was the one chosen for use in 
Cascade…or knowing the Sandburg Zone the entire Pacific Northwest. 
Please god, no, Jim prayed as he pulled Sweetheart in the Cascade PD’s 
parking garage.

Any hopes the big detective had that nobody noticed anything were almost 
instantly extinguished. Lorraine Kovacs, one of Vice’s few female 
detectives, flirted outrageously with Blair while her partner Dan Freeman 
glared in the background. By the time the elevator had ridden up to the 
seventh floor, Blair had been hit on by every female cop and glared at by 
every male cop.

They entered the MCU bullpen and immediately an outraged cry rang out, 
“Sandburg! You’re getting my cleaning bill!”

“H.?” Blair asked in disbelief as the grunge-dressing Detective Henri Brown 
approached with a scowl, wearing unheard of attire of conservative navy 
slacks, white shirt, tie and jacket. “What happened?”

“You’re what happened.” Henri glared at them as the MCU’s other 
detectives grinned. “I never got to taste my vanilla Frappucino; I spilled it 
all down my favourite Hawaiian shirt and my pants when a bus sailed past 
the diner window with you plastered naked all down the side. If Mr GQ here 
hadn’t had an account at that fancy tailor’s on 5th and Vine,” he jerked a 
thumb at his partner, Rafe, “I would have been the one in the altogether.”

“Sandburg!” Simon Banks came out of his office with his glare cranked up 
full. “You mind explaining what the hell you were doing?”

“Looks like I wasn’t the only one who didn’t notice your face, Chief,” Jim 
cracked but subsided as Simon’s face became deadly.

Once again, Blair reiterated his explanation, finishing, “The nude shot was 
for a good cause, a cancer charity, which was why I did it. Read the wording 
on the poster,” he advised them slyly.

Simon gave a snort of irritation. “Sandburg, from now on I intend to keep 
my eyes closed whenever I leave this building.” He glared, “Back to work, 
people! Unfortunately I doubt we can count on the criminals in this city 
being stunned into honesty by the sight of Sandburg in his birthday suit.”

* * *

The answer machine kicked in just as Jim entered the loft; since his hands 
were full of Chinese food, he ignored the call, which was for Sandburg from 
Rainier anyway. Depositing the food on the counter top, he removed his gun 
and badge and went into the bathroom for a quick wash to freshen up 
before coming back out and starting to lay out the food as his ears locked 
onto Blair’s Volvo about two blocks away.

Technically it was Blair’s turn to cook but mid-terms were looming and Blair 
seemed to be in a dozen places all at once with sleep and food being 
removed off his schedule. In comparison, Jim had spent most of the last 
week, and today, twiddling his thumbs in court. So while he was fed up, he 
wasn’t weary. To Jim’s relief, Blair had taken the tormenting of the cops at 
the PD with good grace and wry humour over the poster, such as the 
anatomically correct series of balloon animals made out of condoms that 
kept appearing on the observer’s desk; Jim recognised the handiwork of 
Bernardo Bertorelli in Vice. 

By some miracle, Jim had only ever seen the dreaded poster once more in 
the past month, and he had been prepared for the shock. What had 
surprised him more was the stark line in white capitals above the nude 
image: WHAT TERMINAL TESTICULAR CANCER LOOKS LIKE. However, Blair 
had said that the nude shot was for a cancer charity, and it was typical of 
Blair to leap right in and help if asked regardless of how out in left field the 
cause might be.

Familiar footsteps approached the loft and Blair entered, sniffing loudly and 
grinning as he sighted the Chinese food. “You got dinner? Thanks, man.” He 
placed his jacket on the hook and dropped his backpack by the couch, 
coming straight over to the breakfast bar.

They ate in companionable silence, Jim noting how Blair devoured the food 
like a starving wolf and so, despite his own love of Chinese goodness, he 
actually ate less than he made it appear, allowing Blair to consume a good 
two thirds of the food, which the younger man practically inhaled. Obviously 
the kid had been skipping lunch as well as practically any sleep if the entire 
Louis Vuitton collection of bags under his eyes was anything to go by. Blair 
finished and quickly rinsed their crockery as Jim grabbed a beer and headed 
to watch the early evening news. The detective raised one bottle 
questioningly but Blair shook his head, hefting the backpack and making for 
his room.

“Oh, wait, Rainier left a message for you about a meeting.” Jim told him.

“Thanks.” Blair hit play, listening to the message about a change in time 
with a strange lack of expression, before lifting the cordless phone off the 
cradle and hitting the speed-dial button for Rainier while he walked into his 
room out of deference to Jim watching the news. He heard Blair tell 
someone the change of time was not a problem then tuned his friend out as 
the news came on. Blair returned to replace the phone in the cradle and 
then went back into his room, the familiar scratching of his pen indicating 
he was grading papers.

Jim grinned as the local news came on and his court case was the headline. 
Whilst it was irritating to sit there every day while the legal weasels 
wrangled, in this case it was worth it. They had Edward Lascelle six ways 
from Sunday on so many drugs charges the guy would never see the outside 
of a jail cell and the increasingly pasty pallor of his defence attorney 
showed the guy knew he was fighting a lost cause. As the lead detective in 
the case, Jim had taken carefully hidden pleasure in getting up on the stand 
and putting as many extra nails as he could in Lascelle’s already well-sealed 
coffin – 

The phone rang in the middle of the segment and Jim scowled as he picked 
it up, drawing in a breath, but before he could demonstrate his irritation 
with a sharply barked, “Ellison!”, the caller spoke without preamble and he 
blinked as he heard the acid tones of Dean Marcia Edwards.

“Sandburg, I shall come straight to the point. I am calling to offer you the 
chance to resign with immediate effect, rather than drag the good name of 
this institution through the mud at the Special Review tomorrow. Before you 
answer this offer, I should make it quite clear that I have a copy of that 
quite disgusting…tape…and I am shocked and appalled. You are of course 
within your rights to attend the Special Review tomorrow, but let me make 
it quite clear that the morals clause in your contract enables me to 
terminate your employment with immediate effect. I am absolutely –”

“Talking to the wrong guy,” Jim interrupted. “I am Detective James Ellison, 
Mr Sandburg’s room-mate. I certainly hope that I’m not hearing the Dean of 
Rainier University making threats against a member of her staff?”

The woman spluttered incoherently on the other end of the phone. A hand 
reached over and tugged the phone from Jim’s hand as Blair took it, having 
come out of his room in time to hear Jim identify the caller. “Dean 
Edwards, this is Blair Sandburg speaking. What can I do for you?”

Without utilising his aural abilities, Jim easily heard the woman’s strident 
tones as she reiterated to Blair what she’d just said, and his eyes narrowed 
at the way she sneered, “room-mate” twice in a derogatory tone that 
clearly implied she thought the term was a euphemism.

“I don’t think so.” Blair’s tone was cool. “I’m quite aware of the tape’s 
existence, Ms Edwards. I shall see you at the Special Review meeting 
tomorrow.” Without saying goodbye or allowing her to reply, he terminated 
the call, looking tired.

“What’s going on, Chief?” Jim frowned at Blair’s weary face. “What tape, 
and what’s this Special Review?”

Blair gave a sigh. “I think I’ll have that bottle of beer after all.”

Jim muted the sound on the TV as Blair headed for the kitchen and popped 
the top of a bottle of beer before coming back into the living area and 
slumping on the couch. “The Special Review meeting has been called as an 
emergency session by the university’s Board of Governors, they’re 
considering firing me because of the morals clause in my contract.”

“Morals clause, you?” Jim raised both his eyebrows. For all his cracks about 
table-legs and Blair’s revolving door love-life, Jim never for a moment had 
any worries about Blair having an inappropriate affair with one of his 
students or doing anything morally unethical. Blair was an honourable man. 
“Is that the tape she was going on about?”

“Yeah-huh,” grunted Blair. “See, when I did that nude shot for the cancer 
charity, it sold really well, so at the same time these porn-flick producers 
illegally used my photograph to promote their movie. They picked a guy 
with curly brown hair who superficially looked like me from the back and 
made out it was me with a lot of soft-focus lens shots and stuff. By the time 
anybody found out what was going on and stopped their little game the 
damage had been done. As part of damage control I stipulated that the nude 
image could only be used in medical and cancer based charity campaigns to 
take the glamour away. Mostly it works but every so often when they use 
the photograph the movie pops up again hanging on its coat-tails.”

“But you can prove the guy in it isn’t you?” Jim persisted.

Blair gave a snort of laughter as he stood up off the couch to head back to 
the pile of papers waiting to be graded. “Jim, my name is Sandburg. 
Sand…burg…” he drew out the word, “if necessary you just freeze-frame 
one of the close ups and it’s very clear that the guy is not a Jew. Anyway, 
you don’t even have to go that far. If you freeze-frame the guy’s face when 
he’s turned towards the camera it’s clearly not me even to normal 
eyesight.”

“So why is the Dean trying to fire you on morals grounds?”

“She isn’t. Chadwick Preston IV is.” Blair paused at the doorway of his room 
and scored a perfect shot of the beer bottle into the trash can. “He’s one of 
the jocks in my Anthro’ 101 class, and unfortunately he’s Brad Ventriss 
reincarnated. He combines arrogance and stupidity with a rich daddy who 
throws money at him like confetti out of guilt for never being around.”

“You flunked him.” It wasn’t a question but a statement; those same ethics 
that meant Jim didn’t worry about Blair being fired due to some contractual 
morals clause meant that Blair insisted on each of his students pulling their 
weight in his classes; nobody got a free ride because of a Congresswoman 
mother or a Fortune 500 Company CEO daddy. 

“Yeah, he cribbed an entire essay from the ’Net word-for-word, didn’t even 
change the date.” Blair explained. “Then he ordered me to change his grade 
to an A when he saw that poster. I kicked him out of my class and reported 
him to the Ethics Committee, so he ran straight to daddy and now Chadwick 
Preston III is trying to get me fired on moral grounds.”

“How much of a problem is it?” Jim asked.

“Not one,” Blair reassured over his shoulder, waving a hand to indicate Jim 
was missing the start of the Jags game on the muted TV as he went back 
into his room. “It’s easy to prove the porn guy isn’t me and it’s easy to 
prove Preston plagiarised the essay. When she fired me during the Ventriss 
case Dean Edwards made a huge mistake and left Rainier wide open to me 
suing them. I only have to point out how once before she sided with a 
murderer for money and she’ll back-pedal for all she’s worth.”

“So she can’t even hold the poster against you?” Jim raised his voice slightly 
as he turned the sound up to the threshold of his hearing.

“Only theoretically,” Blair called back as he sat down at his desk, “and if 
she does, I have the perfect defence that it wasn’t gratuitous but for a 
worthy cause.”

“Okay, Chief, but if you need any help, let me know.” Jim offered firmly. “I 
defy even that woman to object to a cancer charity, but even if you had to 
pick that particular one to model for, like you said, it was still for a good 
cause.”

Yeah, well, having cancer of the balls is a great motivator. Blair picked up 
his pen with a smile, feeling better for having Jim’s support even if only in 
an emotional sense.

He yelped as he was hauled unceremoniously out of his chair by a big hand 
grabbing his arm. “Jim! What the hell - ” he broke off as he looked into 
Jim’s alarmed face.

“You don’t have…You look normal…” Jim didn’t release his grip on Blair’s 
arm.

For a moment Blair was utterly flummoxed and then it suddenly dawned on 
him. “I actually said that out loud, didn’t I?”

Jim wasn’t listening. “I would know…” his voice faded and his expression 
became concentrated.

With a sense of shock, Blair realised that Jim was using his senses to check 
out Blair’s…oh, ick. “Hey! No way! Ick, Ellison. Don’t even think about it. 
It’s icky enough knowing I can’t even jack off in the shower in case you hear 
it.” He pulled away from Jim’s grip on his arm. “I don’t have testicular 
cancer and I never did.”

“You just said…” Jim persisted, even though his sensory input indicated that 
Blair was a normal, healthy adult male.

“Okay, look I thought I had it…” Blair blew out a breath as Jim folded his 
arms in that immovable nobody-is-going-anywhere-until-Ellison-gets-answers 
stance.

Sitting down on his futon, Blair rubbed his hand wearily over his eyes, 
despite his reluctance to have this conversation feeling comforted in the 
way that Jim’s sole focus was on him; that total concentration could be very 
reassuring even as it was intimidating. “You know I started Rainier in my 
early teens on a scholarship for gifted kids?”

“Yes?”

“Well I wracked up a zillion hours in the classroom but because of my age I 
couldn’t do fieldwork; Rainier was frightened of being sued. So as soon as I 
reached eighteen I went wild. You name the expedition and I signed up for 
it. It wasn’t too hard because I’d already lived on every continent bar 
Antarctica by the age of ten and I already spoke nineteen languages. 
Anyway, at twenty I was in Berlin when the Wall came down and jumped at 
the chance to do a long-term study in Scandinavia and Western Russia on 
the anthropological effects of Glasnost.”

Jim listened patiently as Blair talked of how he’d lived in Lapland, Sweden 
and finally Finland, aware of his Guide’s elevated temperature and vital 
signs, all indicators of his distress.  

“Anyway, I’m twenty-one and living in Punkailaden, a small village about 
forty kilometres outside Tampere in southern Finland.” Blair explained. 
“One morning I wake up and well, I’m sore, down there. I have a tiny lump 
on one of my balls.”

“What did you do?” Jim asked in concern.

“Absolutely nothing,” Blair snorted in self-derision. “I was terrified to my 
bone marrow. I’d spent most of my time at Rainier as underage jailbait 
surrounded by delectable co-eds who weren’t going to get a corruption of a 
minor-stroke-statutory rape rap for anything. By the time I was legal I’d 
been a walking maelstrom of hormonal lust-mush for years just waiting to 
explode. I went straight into a gibbering panic that I was going end up 
having to be medically castrated and I was never going get laid again. I 
spent every day desperately ignoring the terror in my hind-brain. I was 
twenty-two by the time the lump had grown too big and the pain too severe 
to ignore.”

“Damn it, Sandburg,” Jim whispered it as he took in Blair’s haunted face 
and the pallor resulting from that remembered terror.

Blair shuddered. “I went to a doctor in Tampere. He took one look at me 
and sent me straight to the hospital where they did tests and kept me in for 
observation. The test results came back within twenty-four hours and this 
very polite Finnish consultant, Dr Haakala, sat me down in his office and in 
excellent English went through how they had an excellent treatment 
procedure and that my prognosis was very positive, yadda, yadda, yadda, 
and then at the end of about forty minutes of me sweating and shaking he 
casually mentioned that I hadn’t got testicular cancer, just a very large cyst 
that had formed over an abscess.”

“Cyst?” Jim repeated the word in relief.

“My reaction was a lot less polite.” Blair confessed. “As in why he couldn’t 
have told me straight away and how I’d spent the past eight months 
convinced I was going to spend the rest of my life singing soprano. At that 
point the good doctor retorted he hadn’t told me immediately because he 
wanted to impress upon me how stupid I was and that if I had had testicular 
cancer I would have been dead about two months before I went to a 
doctor.”

“Chief…” Jim found himself lost for words.

“I never thought about death.” Blair admitted with a shrug. “The idea that I 
might die had honestly never occurred to me. My sole focus was that the 
doctors might have to remove one or both of my balls and I’d never get laid 
again. D Haakala told me that it was an even 50-50 chance as to whether I’d 
got a cyst or cancer and I was just extremely lucky. He was angry with me 
because he said that if it had been cancer, it would have been terminal, 
whereas if I’d gone to the doctor right at the beginning, if I had had cancer 
it could have been successfully treated and left me a healthy, fertile young 
man.”

“But because you waited eight months…” Jim’s stomach twisted as he 
realised how lucky Sandburg had been.

“Yeah. I had a very painful, much more difficult to treat cyst, but if it had 
been cancer, it would have been terminal – unnecessarily so.” Blair 
reiterated. “It was that consultant, Dr Haakala, who was part of the 
campaign running at the time in Scandinavia to highlight reproductive organ 
cancers amongst men. The only way to tell whether I had a tumour or a cyst 
was by medical tests, you couldn’t tell just from looking. Hell, I’d still been 
having sex with my long-term Scandinavian girlfriend until she left me for 
one of those post-Communist Russian millionaires a month before I went to 
the doctor’s and she never noticed anything unusual.”

“You volunteered to do the poster.” Jim knew his friend well. Once the 
consultant’s chastisement imprinted on the young man how foolish his delay 
in seeking treatment had been, Blair would immediately put aside his own 
personal discomfort and offer to assist in preventing others from making the 
same mistake.

“Yeah, I wanted it to be a photograph of me before I started my treatment 
to make the point. Medical professionals with forty years experience have 
looked at that poster and never realised that I wasn’t perfectly healthy.” 
Blair explained, “I felt I owed it to Dr Haakala. He was a great consultant 
and really took the time to reassure me. He was so sad when he explained 
how many times he’d seen terminal youths and young men come to his 
office when if only they’d sought treatment right off they’d have been 
curable.”

Jim sat down next to Blair, laying his hand gently on the other’s forearm 
since his only other habitual display of affection, the noogie, was clearly not 
appropriate. “I’ve never even given it any thought, Blair. What you went 
through so young…I’m sure you helped save lives.”

“I can only hope.” Blair shrugged. “It just makes me so mad that slime like 
Chadwick Preston IV would use this to try and get me kicked out of Rainier 
because he’s a spoilt rich brat and Marcia Money-is-God Edwards is helping. 
How that woman got to be Dean is beyond me.” He gave Jim a reassuring 
smile. “Don’t worry, I have Right, both morally and legally, on my side. It 
just pisses me off that I have to waste a day jumping through the hoops.”

* * *

In the end, Blair decided to come into the precinct first as Jim was going in 
for six-thirty in the morning. He would have to leave at ten, but as he said, 
three and a half hours of work would make him feel less wretched about 
losing the afternoon to the Preston-Edwards circus. 

Jim waited until he heard the Volvo pull out of the parking garage and then 
went into Simon and asked for permission to take an hour or so of personal 
time which the Captain, in an expansive mood over the cracking of two big 
drug rings, happily granted.

In Sweetheart, Jim made his way across town to the Cascade address of the 
medical charity that had reproduced the poster of Blair preparatory to 
running a new campaign. He entered the big warehouse building and found 
large numbers of people dashing about like disturbed ants. By the time he’d 
drawn breath to ask a question, half a dozen people had shot past at speeds 
liable to induce whiplash. 

Cautiously Jim made his way through the chaos. Over in the far corner was a 
large cordoned off area that had been painted ivory with a huge fur-covered 
bed and very expensive photography equipment all round it; nearby there 
was a long line of young men about Daryl Banks’ age who, despite being of 
all ethnic groups, had handsome features and “ripped” physiques. Over in 
another corner, an earnest-looking man in his late thirties wearing a white 
lab coat was practising an interview with a TV crew whose equipment 
sported the logo of Cascade’s most popular regional station; he recognised 
Molly Stone, their eye-candy interviewer. Jim tuned in and just as quickly 
lost interest. The guy was reeling off stats and using words like “co-
efficient” and had clearly lost Molly if her glazed expression was anything to 
go by.

Standing nearby to King of the Nerds was another guy who looked vaguely 
doctorish, who kept wincing every time Nerd-guy launched into another 
recitation of facts and figures. Since this man, who looked to be somewhat 
younger, say about thirty, was also the only guy who had stayed in one place 
for longer than ten seconds, Jim homed in.

“Excuse me,” Jim approached, “Are you the one in charge here?”

“Apparently,” the man replied dryly. “I’m Doctor Madsen. Can I help you?”

“I’m detective Ellison from Cascade PD -”
 
Dr Madsen frowned. “All our paperwork’s in order, Detective, we’ve used 
this warehouse to produce our cancer awareness calendars without – ”

“No, it’s okay. It’s just that…I know Blair Sandburg, I work with him… He 
told me what he went through at the time, and I wanted to make a 
donation.”

“Oh. That’s great.” Dr Madsen smiled. “I knew Blair too, in Finland. It was 
very courageous of him to do the poster. That desk over there. Thank you.”

Jim nodded and headed in the direction indicated. He’d never been a big 
spender and was prudent with his money, so could afford to make a 
generous donation. He did support some charities, mostly police and 
military, but was very particular about where he gave his money, as a lot of 
charities spent inordinate amounts of money on administrative costs and so 
forth. Although Blair would never know about what he’d done, it would 
make Jim feel as if he’d somehow done something to make up for not being 
there when Blair had been so alone and distressed those years before, 
illogical as that was.

He waited for the harassed woman to notice him as she was trying to deal 
with a mound of paperwork and six phone calls all at once. Idly he cast his 
sight and hearing out carefully, aware Blair wasn’t present to haul him out 
of a zone, just to make sure the warehouse was structurally sound and there 
were no problems.

One of the men interviewing the long line of presumably would-be models 
stood up and took a bunch of what looked like portfolios over to Dr Madsen, 
who flicked through them and then looked at the waiting line with what, to 
Jim’s surprise, was a mixture of resignation and disappointment rather than 
gratitude for getting so many young studs willing to bare all. 

Curiously Jim listened as the first man said, “These are the top candidates 
so far. We’ve got eight definite ones and four probables, unless any of these 
others turn out to be the next Brad Pitt in disguise.”

“Are any of them not students?” Dr Madsen asked wearily.

“Sorry.” The first man shrugged, “I promise that’s the first question I ask – 
what is your occupation? But there’s not a cop, fireman, soldier or sailor 
amongst the lot of them.”

“Damn. Thanks anyway.” As the first man left to go back to his 
interviewing, Dr Madsen pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and 
forefinger in a gesture of weariness.

“What’s wrong with none of them being cops?”

Madsen jerked his head up and blinked at Jim’s question, fortunately too 
startled to realise that the other man must have somehow heard him over 
the cacophony from the other side of the room. “I’m sorry?”

“I heard you say that you want police officers, fire fighters and military 
men. What’s wrong with these guys?” Jim asked indicating the line of hunks 
behind him.

“They’re not real men.” Dr Madsen blurted and then sighed as Jim frowned. 
Stepping back out of the way of the various people scurrying past to give 
them a modicum of privacy, Dr Madsen said, “Sorry that wasn’t what I 
meant. You said you know Blair?”

“Yes, we work together; he’s my partner at the PD.” Jim didn’t go into the 
extraneous details.

“I was a med student in Helsinki, studying under Dr Haakala. He’s one of the 
world’s foremost consultants on male cancers. Anyway, I met Blair when he 
was referred to Dr Haakala. What he did was very brave in doing that 
poster, and I have to admit it was our best selling calendar campaign ever, 
but the problem was that Blair was a student, just like all these guys.”

“So what?”

“So the impact of what we’re trying to do is lost.” Dr Madsen shrugged. “We 
include a brief three-line tag at the bottom of each month’s photograph. 
But after the purchaser has read, “Joe Bloggs is a twenty-one year old 
student at X University studying X” for the third time they know that the 
models are just college students making a little extra cash and they stop 
taking the reason for the calendar seriously. They buy it, make a donation, 
but the calendar is bought for the hunk factor, and not because it’s made 
them more aware of the dangers of cancers such as testicular cancer.”

“So what good would having cops and firemen and soldiers as models do?” 
Jim enquired.

“Detective, did you ever work in Vice?” Dr Madsen asked.

“Yes, for a year before I joined the Major Crimes Unit.” Jim admitted.

“Well, maybe you’ll understand then when I say that testicular and other 
reproductive organ cancers in men are the HIV and AIDS of the cancer 
world.” Dr Madsen said with the passion of sincere conviction and some 
obvious frustration. 

“How so?” 

“All over the world millions of young heterosexual men are dying slowly and 
painfully of AIDS because they were convinced that HIV was a fag disease 
that real men were immune to.” Dr Madsen continued earnestly, “As far as 
most men are concerned, testicular and the thankfully much rarer penile 
cancers are the same. Guys are convinced that testicular cancer or cancer 
of the penis is something that red-blooded males and real men don’t get. 
When anything does go wrong “down there” they react exactly as your 
friend Blair Sandburg initially did – with blind panic and total denial. 
They’re so terrified at the nightmare of having to have something surgically 
removed and being not a “real man” anymore that the notion they could 
actually die doesn’t occur until it’s too late and that’s the tragedy, because 
if they go to a doctor straight away, what they have is usually curable and 
treatable with the minimum of invasive procedures.”

“I think I get where you’re coming from,” Jim acknowledged.

“I hope so.” Dr Madsen sighed. “Just one photograph on one month of a 
ripped U.S. Navy Seal or a macho fireman would be worth a dozen of these 
calendars in making the point that any man can get these types of cancer, 
up to and including Medal of Honour recipients, 9/11 fire-fighter heroes, 
members of the thin blue line and so forth. Just one steely-eyed U.S. Marine 
on our calendar would make it cool to go to the doctor instead of being 
viewed as a wimp act.”

Jim Ellison wasn’t an impulsive man, nor an exhibitionist; however, he 
looked at the line of laughing, preening, cash-hungry college students and 
thought that if he was responsible for just one terrified youth going to a 
doctor in time to save his life, then it would be worth it. “How about an 
Army Ranger Medal of Honour recipient and three-time Cop-of-the-Year 
winner?”

Madsen did a passable impression of a goldfish as his eyes bugged out and 
his jaw dropped. “Are you kidding?”

“Like I said, Blair Sandburg is my best friend. If he can do it, I can.” Jim 
replied firmly and then paused as another inspiration struck. “Oh, and if 
you’re willing to bump Mr Speaking-By-Numbers over there, I’ll do the 
interview segment too.” 

Dr Madsen closed his eyes and drew in a shuddering breath. “We need to go 
to Canada.” He intoned.

“Why?” Jim was nonplussed by this non sequitar.

“Because I can marry you there,” Dr Madsen answered with a grin the 
Cheshire Cat would have been proud of. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but 
you’re a beautiful man, detective. Wait right there.”

Dr Madsen shot off like he was rocket-propelled and Jim grinned despite the 
butterflies that had suddenly hatched in his stomach as he absorbed the 
import of what he was about to do. However, he would never have survived 
his Army career or his stint in the Vice Division if he’d been the shy type. 
Besides, whilst he may not quite have the sculpted six-pack abs of the young 
Turks in the queue over there, Jim was confident in his pleasing physical 
appearance. He did his Army PT callisthenics every morning for thirty 
minutes before hitting the shower, used the PD gym every other day and 
(okay, thanks largely to Blair “Champion Nagger” Sandburg) ate healthily 
with low fat, sugar and salt intake. Without boasting he knew he had a body 
that men who were a good decade younger than himself envied.

“Detective Ellison?”

Jim looked up as the TV interviewer, Molly Stone, came over with her crew. 
He bit back a grin as he saw the glazed look dissolve as she finally realised 
he was going to be photographed in the buff and then do an interview with 
her. Dr Madsen was coming back also with the photograph and the lighting 
people, so Jim turned up the charm as he saw several ladies checking out 
the package. Blair was always telling him he would enjoy stuff if he relaxed 
and stopped fretting, so this would be as much fun as he made it…

* * *

“Another beer, Chief?” Jim asked from the fridge. 

“Yeah, thanks man.” Blair accepted the bottle gratefully from his position 
slouched in the armchair as Jim passed him. 

Jim sat down on the couch and turned the sound on again as the adverts 
preceding the news came on. Blair ignored the essays on the coffee table 
still to be graded as he eyed his Sentinel thoughtfully. True to his 
pessimistic prophecy, the Special Review meeting had taken all afternoon, 
but Blair had emerged victorious, routing all before him. A freeze-frame of 
the impostor porn actor’s face, thankfully right at the start of the sleazy 
movie, had shown clearly it wasn’t him. He had also produced copies of the 
letter from Dr Haakala thanking him for his courage and willingness to make 
the poster in view of his painful illness, and finally he had taped Chadwick 
Preston IV’s threats. 

Blair had finished by bringing up the Brad Ventriss situation and stating how 
disappointed he was that for a second time the governing body of Rainier 
University seemed positively eager to discard academic principles and 
ethical conduct in a desperate pursuit of cash. That had ruffled some 
feathers but fortunately their ire had quickly settled on Dean Edwards 
rather than Blair. Chadwick Preston IV had been expelled on the spot, Blair 
exonerated and Dean Edwards formally censured. 

Blair had returned home and related all this to Jim who seemed inordinately 
pleased at the news. In fact, Jim’s mood in the five days since had been 
persistently ebullient. While Jim was far from the sourpuss he used to be, 
humming to himself at work had never been his style and yet twice Blair had 
noticed him whistling cheerfully to himself. It was kind of scary.

Jim straightened up as the local news came on. Blair also began to watch in 
a vaguely desultory manner whilst reading the topmost essay with the other 
eye. Usually Jim watched the later news but Blair wasn’t really bothered 
until…

“We’re back after the break. Please be aware that the next segment 
contains scenes of full-frontal male nudity and viewer discretion is 
advised.”

Huh? Blair stared at the screen, wondering what on earth that was about. 
He looked at Jim, expecting the big man to change channels, but Jim just 
sat there with a knowing smirk on his face. Blair’s radar began to ping. 
Something was going on here. He waited patiently for the adverts to finish 
and the news to come back on, blinking as he recognised the cancer charity 
that Dr Haakala was patron of. This year’s calendar was being shot in 
Cascade, which was why they’d reused Blair’s image as publicity.

All the breath seemed to leave Blair’s lungs as the scene cut to the city’s 
buses. Down the entire length of the bus was the giant image of a 
completely naked man. A naked James Joseph Ellison, whose only attire 
other than a smile was the gold detective shield hanging around his neck. 
He was stretched out on his left side in a pose identical to what Blair’s had 
been. Propping his head on his hand, the shield dangled down next to his 
left nipple; his left leg was stretched straight out, the right drawn up so his 
right foot rested just behind his left knee. His genitals were clearly 
displayed between his open thighs, his penis resting on his inner left thigh. 
Dimly aware that he was making high-pitched unnh-unh noises, Blair 
absently noticed the stark white lettering above the image that said: 
HAVING TESTICULAR CANCER IS NOT A CRIME.

“Breathe, Chief.” Jim’s tone was not outraged or furious, just vastly 
amused.

Blair opened and closed his mouth helplessly as his brain refused to compute 
the images. Jim. Naked. TV. Jim. Naked. Jim naked on TV. Error. Does Not 
Compute…

Molly Stone, the station’s top interviewer, appeared on screen as the bus 
faded out. Seated across from her was none other than Jim, dressed in 
beige pants and his favourite sky-blue round-neck sweater. The same 
sweater he’d worn to the precinct on the day of Blair’s Special Review. He 
hadn’t worn it since because it was in the wash after a suspect tried to 
make a run for it from the MCU bullpen and ran straight into Ellison, sending 
coffee all down the irate detective’s front. The suspect had then tried to 
run back into the MCU bullpen for protection.

As always, Molly Stone introduced herself and then explained about the 
testicular cancer awareness campaign currently running. “And with me now 
is one of Cascade’s finest. James Joseph Ellison is the Senior Detective in 
Cascade’s elite Major Crimes Unit, and a three-time Officer of the Year 
Award winner. A former U.S. Army Ranger with the 731st Airborne, he 
achieved the rank of Captain, winning two purple hearts, the Military Cross 
and being a Medal of Honour recipient in his fifteen-year military career. 
Five days ago, however, Detective Ellison volunteered to quite literally be 
the new poster-boy for the current awareness campaign on testicular 
cancer. Detective, in a word: why?”

Obviously the segment had been pre-recorded, but Blair couldn’t tear his 
eyes from the screen as Jim smiled his most charming smile at the woman 
and leaned very slightly towards her in a way that pulled the soft silky 
material of his sweater tight across his torso and round his biceps, giving 
clear definition. Not that anybody needed to use their imagination, in view 
of that up-close and lingering view of the bus!

“Well, Molly,” Jim caressed her name as he said it, “as you know, the 
previous poster-boy that has been adorning Cascade’s public transport is my 
partner Blair Jacob Sandburg, who is a Civilian Consultant to the Police 
Department as well as being a TA at Rainier University. Now I admit it was a 
hell of a shock when I looked up from my breakfast pancakes at the Finnesse 
café and saw, well, that bus…”

The studio audience and Molly chuckled and Jim smiled and paused. Then he 
continued, “However, Blair had a cancer scare when he was twenty-one. He 
was too scared to visit a doctor and endured many months of pain and 
distress before he plucked up courage to go. Mercifully he had a treatable 
cyst, but when Blair admitted to me that if it had been cancer, it would 
have been terminal by then, I realised how important this campaign is.” 

Molly nodded, her face changing to a look of concern. “So you decided to do 
something beyond writing a cheque for a good cause?”

Nodding, Jim lost the smile and looked grim. “In the four years since Blair 
began consulting with the MCU and became my partner, he has proven an 
invaluable asset to both me and the PD. I certainly wouldn’t have made Cop 
of the Year for the third time without him. His extraordinary intelligence 
and innovative insights have been directly responsible for the Major Crimes 
Unit preventing terrorist attacks and major criminal operations. The people 
of this city owe Blair Sandburg their lives several times over. But I realised 
just how close we came to never being fortunate enough to work with 
Blair,” Jim explained earnestly. “All because he was too scared to go to a 
doctor for eight months, if he had had testicular cancer, he would have died 
long before any of us knew him.”

Molly Stone nodded, “Yes, you mentioned that Blair was twenty-one when 
he became ill but twenty-two when he sought medical intervention? But 
surely someone of Mr Sandburg’s IQ would have realised –”

“IQ has nothing to do with it, Molly.” Jim interjected, “Unfortunately it has 
everything to do what men perceive as a threat to their masculinity. If 
you’re male, you could develop testicular cancer. Whether black, white or 
brown, whether you’re seven or seventy, whether you live in Bel Air or on 
Skid Row. I’m a cop and I was a soldier so my hope is that by doing the 
poster I can help at least one guy to understand that it isn’t weak or 
unmasculine or unmacho to go to a doctor if he finds that something is 
wrong “down there” as it were. That’s the real tragedy of testicular cancer, 
Molly,” Jim wound down in a tone of suitable gravitas, “you see, the disease 
is almost always curable if it’s treated in time. Hundreds of men die 
needlessly from testicular cancer through no other reason than fear, 
because they wait far too long to seek medical advice.” Jim looked straight 
at the TV cameras, “Not going to a doctor if you have a problem is not being 
a real man; it’s being stupid.”

“Thank you, Detective Ellison.” Molly smiled. “The campaign starts with a 
vengeance on tomorrow morning, Saturday the third. So look out for those 
buses, I know I will!”

The segment faded to the end credits of the news and Jim leaned back on 
the couch, grinning at Blair’s stupefied expression. 

Blair spluttered, “You…I…you…”

“Coherence through connectives, Chief,” Jim advised.

“Aw, man, you didn’t have to do anything like that…” but Blair’s face was 
flushed with pleasure at the praise Jim had uttered on the segment.

“Yes I did.” Jim interposed firmly. “If it prevents any other guy having to go 
through the emotional torment you went through, it will be worth it. 
Besides, it wasn’t that horrendous to do.” He smirked. “There was this 
blonde chick with the baby oil for the close up shots…”

Blair grinned in response, but then groaned. “Oh man, Jim!”

“What?”

“We only just got Bertorelli to stop with those damn condom-balloon 
animals…”

THE END

© 2005, Catherine D Stewart

AUTHOR’S NOTE:

Yes, this story was fun to right, but it has a serious point. Once I knew a 
young man named Ben. When Ben was 16 he discovered a lump on his 
testicles and experienced increasing physical pain, but was so scared that 
he kept it a secret from his parents and siblings for two years until he finally 
went to a doctor. By then the cancer had spread up into his stomach and 
was inoperable. Ben was 18 when he died.

When Sentinel Angst list member Gail Gardner invited me to Finland this 
Easter, I accepted and took along my The Sentinel episodes for her to view. 
It was clear that her favourite was the scene in Season 2’s The Rig where 
the villainess earns our eternal forgiveness by ordering Ellison to drop the 
towel. (The chants of: Naked Burgi! Naked Burgi! were also a big clue 
<snerk>.) 

That is when the seed for this story began to grow as a thank you to her. It 
had to involve Finland, Reindeer, Carellian Pancakes and both our heroes in 
the buff. I could manage most, but I wanted a plausible reason for the 
nudity. In the words of Star Trek’s Tuvok, a character’s actions must not be 
contrary to their personality characteristics, which meant that someone like 
Jim Ellison would certainly never strip for something frivolous. 

That brought to mind Ben. Ben was a real person, and Ben was his real name 
and he really was just 18 when he died of secondary stomach cancer 
resulting from primary testicular cancer. Ben spent the last two years of his 
life in constant mental and emotional anguish as well as physical pain, but 
the true tragedy is that within the first three months of his illness, back 
when he was 16, if he had confided in his dad, his granddad, one of his 
uncles or gone to see a male doctor just to be on the safe side, the disease 
would have been treatable and today he would be a healthy 28-year-old. 

I did ponder about writing the story in this manner instead of going for a 
quick PWP snippet. I know most fan fiction writers are female (Bruce Alan 
Wilson, whose Jacob’s Ladder series is on Susan Foster’s GDP site is the 
only fan-fic writer I definitely know of who is male). I know most fan-fiction 
readers seem to be female. However, I hope that the ladies will read this 
and gain an awareness of how this disease can strike. I also know that 
(perhaps thankfully) most actors never read the stories based on characters 
they’ve played in the past. In the unlikely event however, I would hope 
Richard Burgi and Garrett Maggart would accept this story in the spirit it 
was written and approve of the cause I wish to highlight.

I believe that this story can be relevant to everyone, regardless of gender. 
Due to environmental and industrial pollution, cancers of the human 
reproductive organs and other fertility problems are epidemic in the 
Western world. Far more Western couples are likely to suffer fertility 
problems, far more Western women are likely to suffer from endometriosis. 
In the last fifty years the quality and quantity of male sperm has plummeted 
in the Western hemisphere.

Breast cancer, ovarian cancer, cancer of the womb, uterus and cervix, 
testicular cancer and cancer of the penis are increasingly common in our 
society. However, a man is far more likely to die of testicular or penile 
cancer than a woman is to die of cervical or breast cancer. Not because 
these cancers are more aggressive or more difficult to treat necessarily, but 
because in Western society when a man is ill, he reacts like Blair did in this 
story – with panic and denial. Going to a doctor is seen as weak and that 
attitude will kill you.

You shouldn’t worry about every little thing, but be aware of your partner’s 
body. Checking out your lady’s breasts or your man’s balls can be a whole 
lot of fun, but take the point – use the fun to get to know their usual shape, 
size and colouration; be aware of their usual temperature, of how they 
usually feel to the touch and how sensitive they are to touch. Be ready to 
note any area that appears to be red or inflamed or painful when you touch 
or if he or she flinches away from contact that is normally pleasurable not 
painful. 

If in real doubt, consult a medical professional. Remember, Ben was sixteen 
years old when he developed testicular cancer. Not forty-six or seventy-six. 
He wasn’t even out of high school. If that seems a little melodramatic ask 
yourself this – wouldn’t you rather feel a little foolish after being told 
you’re worrying about nothing, than be sat in front of some doctor telling 
you, or your beloved one, that you/they wouldn’t be dying if only…