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Disclaimers: Pet Fly Productions owns the characters and is making money off of them. I hope.

Other: Pre-slash. PG rating or something. Short. Very short. Conversation. No action.

I should stop and apologize to whomever owns the rights to that fine western television drama Bonanza. Thanks for telling it like it never was, but should have been! I feel no particular need to apologize to Texans. Those hats!

Canon is a starting point, but we should never lose sight of our roots. Set post-Vendetta.

It's another universe where it's possible Jim might actually reach out and put the moves on Blair at any moment. And where Blair might, in response, knock Jim down and fall on him, ravaging Jim's unresisting and delighted self. And where Blair might actually shut up long enough to hear Jim saying just how badly he'd like to have this happen.

I started to add a little thought about Jim ripping his clothes off, throwing himself on the couch, and demanding, pointblank, to be ravaged, since Blair doesn't seem to be getting the point any other way, but I won't. It's not relevant since nothing like that happens in this story.

Author: annezo @ fastmail . fm

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BONANZA

(or, are these Wagons Never Going to Ho?)

"It worked." Jim took the right-hand turn that led toward the loft. Home. "That was the point, right?"

"Yeah, but as an authentic Texas accent, it was still a disaster."

"You're jealous because I learned it from television instead of from a book. Or from you." Jim shook his head. "Lilt. Twang. Who knows the difference? Who cares?"

"People from the south do."

"Which didn't include the people we just arrested, right?"

"You couldn't know that," Blair said stubbornly. "You got lucky."

"Besides, I couldn't hear any difference. When you were lilting earlier. Sounded just like you always do."

"Come on," Blair insisted. "Anyone with your hearing should be able to hear and reproduce an accent. Easily."

"You think." Jim was a detective, not a parrot. "I told you. I couldn't hear any difference."

"There's a major difference."

"Okay. Do it again."

"What?"

"The lilt," Jim said impatiently. "Do it again."

Blair frowned and took a deep breath. "If you got yourself a lilt, then you sound like this."

Okay, so there was something a little different from his normal voice. Jim gave it his best effort, which was pretty bad.

You had to hand it to Sandburg. He didn't start laughing until the third time Jim failed miserably to catch the right emphasis. Then, of course, being Sandburg, he got carried away, laughing so hard he could barely squeeze out a bogus imitation of Jim's accent.

"Go ahead, Lilt Boy," Jim growled. "You'll get your turn."

"Don't get me wrong," Blair huffed. "You could learn to twang with the best of them. But as a lilter...well, don't give up your day job."

"I'm not planning to make a career out of masquerading as a Texas safecracker." Blair's laughter was comfortingly normal. Good to hear. "It worked. That's all."

"Why Bonanza, though?" The research junkie was back, probing for First Causes. "Why not Wagon Train or Gunsmoke?"

Jim had good memories of Bonanza. Sitting in a dark room with the volume turned down so his father wouldn't hear the television. Watching a family...no mother, but a father and his sons who loved each other. Supported each other. Stuck up for each other, no matter what. Partners.

"Or Death Valley." Blair continued his relentless listing of potential titles. "That was a good one."

"Hop Sing," Jim lied. "He was great."

"He was comic relief," Blair objected. "He wasn't even in most of the episodes."

Jim parked the truck. "Come on, Lilt Boy. There's a shower up there with my name on it."

Blair slid out of the truck, still laughing. "You know, there's a lot of controversy about whether or not lilters and twangers can peacefully coexist."

"I can see how that would happen."

"I'm serious." He looked it. "Many cultural stereotypes reveal fundamental assumptions that are important for successful social interaction. People from ostensibly similar cultures sometimes have very different world views, leading to confrontation and conflict. These differences can be signaled by something as...."

"That's a lilter kind of thing, isn't it?" The elevator wasn't running. Jim led the way toward the stairs. "I mean, the constant talking and using fifteen syllable words when two would do."

"I probably should have expected that from a twanger." Blair nudged him with a sharp elbow. "That tendency to view the world in short, declarative sentences probably reflects a simplified world view. You know, black or white. Good or bad."

"You know, with enough rest and medication, you could probably rejoin the real world. Even with the lilt."

"Ha. Ha."

"Feeble, Sandburg." Jim shook his head. "Another fact for your lilter encyclopedia. They pack all those syllables into the first five minutes, then they've shot their wad."

"You're perverting the subject."

"Probably an urge from one of the dark, perverse corners of my twanger psyche."

"You're aware of your psyche?" Blair skipped a step to keep up with Jim's longer stride. "It has dark, perverse corners?"

"Everyone has dark, perverse corners." It was good to unlock the door and know they weren't going to find any ugly surprises in the middle of the living room floor.

"Wow." Blair seemed to find that fascinating. "So, tell me more. What else lives in there?"

"Nothing I'd care to find in your book." Jim threw his jacket at the coat hook.

"Don't change the subject. What else lives there? Come on, give."

"You do." A sideswipe at part of the truth. Give him something to think about.

"Me?" Suspicion. "What kind of dark perversions?"

"You remember last week when the drain in the tub stopped up?"

"Hey, I was late for class," Blair objected. "I would have fixed it. I left you a note."

"When I get out of bed, after too little sleep because I spent the night staking out an empty warehouse where we had a two percent chance of catching a guy who's been leaving dynamite packages all over the docks, I want to take a shower, Sandburg. Not read a friendly IOU promising to fix the drain sometime before the next Jurassic Era."

"Where does the perversion come in?"

"I though about hanging you over the balcony by your hair until you screamed for mercy and promised to carry a plunger everywhere you went for the rest of your life."

"That's cold." Blair tucked a lock of hair behind his ear protectively. "But it's not perverse. I knew it was a lie."

"Your ass." Challenged, Jim had to respond.

"Your mama."

"No."

Sometimes you could see the synapses connecting in his head. "You have dark perversions that deal with my ass?"

"I don't have perversions," Jim corrected. "I have thoughts."

"Dark thoughts." It was almost a question.

"Dark," Jim confirmed. "And perverse."

Blair licked his lips. "Okay, I'll bite."

"No. But I might." With luck, that would buy him time to get to the shower first. Jim went upstairs for a change of clothes.

"I think this needs to be discussed," Blair said darkly. He glared up the stairway, but didn't quite stoop to barring Jim's way.

"Get your own perversions." Jim slid into the bathroom and locked the door safely behind him.

By the time Blair finished trying to patch lilters, twangers, and his ass into some kind of order that included the potential for an assault, potentially sexual, from his roommate, Jim would be clean and dry.

And ready for Round Two.

****

That's all.