Summary: Blair had lived in a lot of places but the Loft was the first he'd actually called home.

Blair had lived in a lot of places, most of them far from what one would consider normal society. For the most part Blair had loved it, the places, the people, the stories he'd been able to tell.

But there was still something that he'd never had, never got while travelling around the world.

A lot of people, when he told his stories, were envious, they'd call him lucky with a grin, especially his fellow Anthropology students. He came into the field with so much experience with other cultures that it made some of them jealous and hateful.

Jim would laugh at the idea of Anthropology students being capable of hating anything or being cruel but Blair had had T.A.s 'lose' papers that he had turned in or marking down his grades from what the teacher had given, he'd spent several of his semesters making sure his grades were properly recorded after that first one where he hadn't realized that some people were just spiteful.

His mother had tried to use it as an excuse to leave school but Blair had stuck it out and had made a promise to never let his personal opinions effect a student's work or grades.

Blair liked to tell his students real stories, most of them from his own experiences, it was one of the things that he'd had students tell him was so enjoyable about his class, that so few of his stories were second hand, most of them from his childhood, some of them tinged with a child's simplicity and focused on an aspect that an adult wouldn't care for.

Blair had told stories about the games Aboriginal tribes in Australia had played, he didn't talk much about their mythologies except to tell them how they'd been told in deep rumbling voices that sounded like cascading thunder with smoke all around the children gathered that was reminiscent of the Dreamtime. He told them about sleeping under the stars because the Tribes didn't use structures.

There were other stories of places Blair had slept, the stone structures of Europe, the ones made from Adobe in the Mexican desert, mud huts in Africa, huts made from twigs and mud there too. Log houses and brick mansions that dated back to the beginning of the U.S. and how if one talked to the right person there were still secret passages to wander.

What he didn't say was that it was one of these secret passages that he'd been shown in Italy that he'd discovered a secret study. It had been there that Blair had found Richard Burton's Book on Sentinels, there had been handwritten notes everywhere and Blair had spent the summer of his eleventh year carefully going through them and copying them down as he was afraid to take them out of the room. He'd never been so glad that his mother's current beau didn't want to give him the time of day.

He'd been so disappointed and sad when his mother had quietly told him that it was time to detach with love at the end of the summer. He'd taken the book that Burton had writen on Sentinels and his copied notes and bid the house in Italy farewell. Years later he had been devastated to learn that a fire had burned the old house down, Burton's notes and papers with it, turned to ashes, never to be read again.

Blair had carried that book in his backpack everyday until Jim had let him stay at the Loft, when it had been placed gently and reverently on the shelf that Jim had put in his room after moving most of his books to one of the other ones in the living room, it was the first of many to grace the shelf and Blair never analyzed why he took it from his bag that night after the Warehouse burned, never even gave it a second thought.

Blair had lived a lot of places and with a lot of different people, some who were law abiding citizens and some who weren't, not that their abidance of laws had made them good or bad people.

His mother had dated a Mob Boss in New Jersey for almost a year, not that Naomi had known who her boyfriend was and when she found out she'd had a surprisingly reasonable argument that she had given him before she had packed Blair up and left. Blair had been thirteen and Naomi had told him the exact reasons they were leaving this time and while Blair had loved Mister Ivanov he'd also understood why it would be safer far from them, so he had said his goodbyes to Mister Ivanov and Illya, who had looked after him, and left with a hundred dollar bill in his pocket and two hundred dollars in small bills in an envelope in his backpack, 'Just in case, Pasha.' Illya had told him as they hugged for the last time.

That two hundred was still in his backpack, replaced if he ever used it, just like the hundred in his wallet.

He'd used them both a few times, when his mother had gone another retreat that didn't allow kids and the people he'd been staying with thought he'd worn out his welcome and told him to beat it.

There had been a few stories told about Homeless culture as a result of those times and before then, not that Blair ever let Jim or even Simon hear those stories, they already thought little of Naomi's parenting Blair didn't want to hear more about how bad she'd been at it if they heard about him having lived on the streets, especially as Naomi had been nowhere to be found most of the times Blair had been making his way on the streets of whatever city he'd been left in.

But he had made so many friends, still talked to some of them once they'd gotten back on their feet and off the streets.

It was this reason that Blair tried not to judge people by their circumstances, he'd had prostitutes find him of the street after running away from an abusive foster home and give him a place to sleep safely, they had fed him and kept the foster mother from finding him until his mom had come back to get him and then they had handed over the bruises they had documented to the police when Naomi had filed charges and more paperwork to get him back from the system.

There had also been the drug dealers that had found out the prostitutes were keeping a kid around and offering to keep an eye on him while the girls worked and had threatened a few human traffickers against trying to take him from the girls.

But Blair tended not to tell those stories, and if he did he tried to never mention professions and if he could get away with it he never mentioned names either, it had been one of the prostitutes' regular Johns that had taught him to drive a Semi, he'd take him across the state when he went and no one else could keep an eye on him, Blair had called him uncle by the end of that summer and the man stopped in on him when he was in state, he'd married the woman that he use to pay to sleep with and they had three kids now.

Blair knew he'd been lucky about not meeting many creeps that would prey on children, though he'd run across a few of those as well, he'd always managed to escape them or hide from them before they could hurt him more than mental trauma and a bit of bruising.

Some of his favorite places to live had been where cultures were clashing together, it always made for an interesting study and when Blair had decided at twelve to pursue Anthropology he'd made a point of taking notes one everything he'd seen in those places and all the others, he'd had to leave the notes behind when Naomi got bit by her wandering bug and he often wondered what had become of his notes after he'd left, if the people had read them and dumped them or if they had kept them in the off chance that Blair would find his way back.

Knowing how often Naomi and Blair had disappeared into the night when everything was quiet, often without an explanation or note Blair wondered if some people that they had left behind wondered what happened to them, it had to be jarring to go to sleep next to the woman you were loving, her kid asleep in the guest room or on the couch only to wake in the morning alone and all the things but the most important still scattered all over the place.

But Blair didn't know that for sure, his mother had always warned him she was leaving him behind or he was the one doing the leaving. Most of the time Blair had been able to prepare for Naomi's vanishing or his own, if he had been leaving a place without warning when he was younger Blair had been doing so for his own safety.

Even his time in Cascade he'd lived a lot of different places, the Warehouse being the last of more than a dozen in just the two years.

He'd lived in the dorms as a minor student and had been given a curfew which had required a mandatory check in by the resident at eight to make sure he was in bed or getting ready to go to bed, not that they had checked everyday after his first semester, by the time he'd turned eighteen the resident had only been checking in on him twice a month randomly to make sure he was doing okay and Blair hadn't minded so much, he'd gotten more supervision in his first year at Rainer than he had during most of his childhood.

But he had left the dorms as soon as he hit eighteen and had gone through over twenty apartments with various roommates, some of them women that wanted a relationship with him and some who just weren't comfortable living alone in the city or even just with only girls in the house, some of them just felt safer when Blair lived with them and Blair hadn't minded playing the gay friend when their boyfriends asked him why he lived with a bunch of girls, it made the boyfriends feel more secure in their relationships with their girlfriends and if sometimes they ended up talking out an issue with Blair to get another guy opinion well Blair thought it was kind of fascination that they thought he could see both sides of the argument and somehow translate girl speak to guy speak and help them understand just what their girlfriend was actually angry about, there had been several times that Blair had been tempted to write a paper about it.

He saw some of those guys around the Police Department, some of them had even pulled him aside outside of the police department to ask if there was something between Jim and him, promising him at the start of the conversation that they would say nothing about it if there was. All of them would glare at the people who gossiped about it and some of them had even given Blair opportunities to escape hassling when he was still new around the Department, before Major Crimes had adopted him as their mascot.

Not that they knew that Blair knew they called him that.

There had even been six months where Blair had bounced between couches and a couple shelters if they could squeeze him in, if they hadn't then Blair had found a place to sleep with the rest of the homeless people on the streets, Blair had been lucky that it had been summer, when Cascade was at it's warmest, not that that was very warm but it was better than being homeless in Cascade in winter, he still wandered around sometimes after he was done with classes and gave out blankets he picked up and washed at the thrift stores at his old haunts, some faces familiar and some new, he'd also take the extra clothes and wash them at Jim's and then bring them back. There was even a time or two that Blair had bought interview outfits for someone.

Blair knew that if he ever asked around for information on a case he'd get some nearly instantly but no one ever asked him to source information at a crime scene and Blair never offered, even if he recognized some of the looky-loos.

Blair even knew some of the richer people in Cascade, some of them had huddled with him for warmth that summer he'd spent living on the streets of Cascade and Blair had helped them prepare for that interview and they'd gotten it and moved up and Blair had grinned proudly, refusing the offers of help because he'd gotten a grant to write a paper on the Homeless culture in Cascade and it was easier to get information for it when he was submersed in it.

Some of them had even bought a building and made another shelter for them to go and Blair would tell people about it and send them over and they could get either the help they needed or a place to sleep and a meal.

Blair volunteered at the Shelter when he had the time or made volunteering there and writing a paper on the culture that the students noticed among the homeless or the workers extra credit when he couldn't.

Blair had even camped at the Police Department for a couple nights when the Warehouse owner had told him to stay gone for a week, the reason why Blair hadn't known. But it had been terrifyingly easy to keep the men of Major Crimes from finding out that he was sleeping at the department, even Jim and Simon, Vera from Human Resources had discovered him there but Blair had gotten her some chocolate from Paris, sent from an old friend that he knew lived there, and a perfume that the friend's wife favored and she'd promised to keep her silence about it.

But somehow it was different now, the Loft was different than any other place Blair had stayed and Blair had no idea why it was different.

Blair hadn't even planned on staying longer than the promised week, he had already made plans for Larry, sending notice to the person he'd borrowed Larry from that he would be bring Larry back then and then during the week seeing what availability there was among the students for a roommate for a couple of months.

He'd had to break into his backpack money for food and to replace the things Larry had trashed in the Loft and gas but that was fine, he'd skate by like he always did.

Then the week had been over and Larry was back where he belonged and Blair had looked around the little room that he'd been sleeping in, packed most of his stuff before leaving to go to his morning class at Rainer, he'd collect his things when he got back before Jim got back from the station.

After his classes were over, Blair returned to the Loft and paused before the small room, someone had put doors in the doorway instead of the curtains that had hung there for the last week. He opened the French doors and peeked into the room.

The boxes that had been within were gone and there was a futon in the room now against the wall, folded up into a couch position rather than a bed and next to the book shelf Jim had cleared off for his use was a small desk. His packed bags were set on top of the futon along with the bedding he'd been using.

Blair stepped into the small room and stood in the center of it silently, his eyes landing on the shelf, bare of all of the books he'd replaced or borrowed, all but one.

Blair lifted the book from the shelf, 'The Sentinels of Paraguay' by Sir Richard Burton. He sat down in the chair that had appeared with the desk and opened the book, turning the pages carefully.

"I thought you'd be more comfortable with a bed." Jim said from the door.

Blair looked up startled, he hadn't even heard the door open.

"I... my week is over." Blair said.

Jim shrugged, "Yeah, but you know, it isn't so bad having you around."

Blair stared at him, mentally translating Jim's nonchalantness and realizing that maybe the man wanted him to stay but didn't want to make it seem like he wanted Blair to stick around.

Blair shut the book gently and stood, placing the book back on the shelf and walking over to Jim.

"That would be great, I'd really like that." Blair grinned up at Jim.

"Good, unpack your stuff and I'll order Thai." Jim said and walked out of the room, shutting the door behind him.

Blair smiled after him and turned around, looking at everything that Jim had put in his room, he'd have to figure out what every thing had cost or at least who Blair should thank for everything.

Blair had lived a lot of places, stayed in a lot of rooms very similar in size, style and even had the same things in it, but this, this all felt different...

It felt like more.

It felt like home.

"Hey, Chief, what did you want?" Jim asked as he opened the door a crack.

Blair turned to Jim and smiled and followed Jim to the living room telling him what he wanted as they went.

Yeah, Home was a good word for it.

So with all Blair's travels and his friendliness I find it hard to believe that he wouldn't know people at the Police Department other than the ones he met through Jim, he just never really mentioned it and Blair nods and waves to everyone.

I was having a Blair moment and thought I would write something about all the places he lived but never called home.

I don't know, enjoy.