Jim Ellison was angry. Royally angry. Angry enough to consider
stuffing his partner into a smallish cardboard box and shipping him to
Calcutta, except he was pretty sure Blair would *enjoy* Calcutta, and
right now Blair didn't deserve to enjoy *anything*.

The monkey--fine, the "Barbary ape"--had trashed the loft getting out of
it, and trashed the loft getting back into it, and now--now--now the
stupid thing was watching *Barney*.

Sandburg had cleaned up last night, and gotten Larry back in the cage,
and then crashed on his bed in the spare room--and then, at 7am, had
woken up, popped a Barney the Singing Dancing Annoying
Must-Die-Now-Please-Dear-God Purple Dinosaur tape in the VCR before
showering and disappearing into wherever it was that Sandburg
disappeared to.

Jim calculated how much he'd have to fold Blair to fit him in the moving
boxes he kept in the basement. Too much, he realized, just as he also
realized that Sandburg would put up a heck of a fight--he was a tough
kid, under that bizarrely serious, bizarrely flaky exterior. A really
tough kid.

Idly, Jim wondered what had happened to *make* Blair so tough, but Larry
was rattling the bars of the cage and Barney was...ugh...singing. And
following the singing with demented chuckling. Which Larry, curse his
furry body, was *imitating*.

Hoo-hoo-hoo-hooHOOHOO.

"I love you, you love me, will Blair kill me if I kill Larry?" he
mumbled to himself, heading for the kitchen. Larry shook the bars of
his cage and shrieked the entire time Jim was cooking breakfast.

Eggs demolished, Jim headed for the couch. He had the morning off, and
it was only 8:30. Somehow, the idea of watching six million episodes of
Barney (who was now singing "Here We Go Loopty Loo") did not appeal.
Judging by Larry's increasingly violent and hyperactive behavior, it
didn't appeal much to him, either.

"The worst he can do is kill us," Jim told Larry, solemnly.

Larry rattled his cage.

"I bet I could get him into a packing box and shipped off someplace
satisfyingly anthropological before he actually *succeeded* in killing
us."

Larry shrieked and chuckled in apparent agreement.

"So why don't we watch something else?"

Larry covered his face with his hands and peeked at Jim through his
fingers.

Humming happily to himself, Jim dug out his copy of "Die Hard" and
replaced Barney with Bruce Willis.

There. Much better.

Larry settled down and chuckled happily at the explosions and gunfire on
screen.

"Yeah," Jim said, in complete agreement.

---

The End