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Here's the final part; hope you've enjoyed it all and thanks once again to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ponders_life for bidding and sharing it and t_verano for the beta reading :;hugs you both::
Boundaries Part Four
The fire had died to embers, the wood breaking apart only to flare red and then smolder to gray. Blair lay on his side in his sleeping bag and watched it, the painkillers Jim had pushed past his protesting lips with his thumb working with the exertions of the day to lull him into a drowse.
Jim lay nearby, already asleep, just out of reach.
Finding accidental symbolism in the placement of a sleeping bag had to be a new low for him.
Jim stirred, muttered something, and went back to sleep, if he'd ever really woken, and Blair closed his eyes. If being stared at was disturbing Jim, then he'd be considerate and not stare. Jim needed his rest; any digging to be done in the morning was going to be done by him; Blair's bandaged, swollen hands weren't going to be much use.
He rolled to his back, wriggled out of the way of something prodding him in his shoulder, and tried to go to sleep.
Right. Like that was going to happen when he was this worked up. His face was still stiff and stretched from crying, his throat still raw from screaming. It'd been years since he'd done either and it wasn't something he planned to do again soon. It was supposed to make you feel better but all it had done was add a myriad of physical pains to the emotional ones and make him feel vaguely ridiculous.
If Jim hadn't been right there with him, leaking tears, it would've been worse, though.
Except he didn't want to feel grateful to Jim for anything, not the crying, not the picking out, patiently, carefully, of every speck of dirt and shred of skin from the scrapes on Blair's hands, not the cold bowl of water that had numbed and cleaned and brought fresh tears welling up as his stressed-out body protested the initial pain.
Nothing.
No gratitude.
Jim had deliberately wrecked their lives on the basis of a few misconceptions and a whole lot of guilt. Hadn't discussed it, hadn't explained. Just kicked him out and spent seven years of self-flagellation being a martyr.
He wondered what Brother Marcus would have thought of that as a way of dealing. Not a lot. Marcus had been more practical about his penitence. He'd shut himself away from the world, sure, but he'd found peace and he'd been part of the small community.
Jim had, from the little Simon had said, alternated between moping, sulking, and snapping before settling down into a studied grayness.
And he'd lost his fucking senses and Blair didn't think it was egotistical to connect that loss with his own disappearance from Jim's life; not when his return had brought them back.
Jim didn't need him? On what fucking planet did Jim not need him? How many people had died because there was no Sentinel to save them? Okay, now he was starting to feel guilty…
"Stop it," Jim said drowsily. "Trying to sleep here, Sandburg, and you're muttering and I can hear you."
"Good." Blair remembered the digging. "I mean, sorry. I'm just --"
"Thinking. Loudly. Yeah, I know." Jim sighed. "I really don't want to talk about it. There's nothing to say. You know it all now and you think I was wrong. I get it."
"'Wrong' doesn't even begin to cover it, but, yes, that's about it."
"And it changes nothing, so go to sleep." Jim's voice softened. "Your hands hurting?"
"Little bit but I'll live." Blair turned his head and decided to give the bubble insulating Jim from reality a sharp prod. "Did you spill your guts because it was that or have sex with me? Hell of a choice to make, wasn't it? Think you made the right one?"
To his surprise, that got a chuckle out of Jim. "Honesty or sex and I went for honesty. Feels like a bad choice to some parts of me, but, yes, I think I did. Don't you?"
"If I say yes I'll feel older than I do now, which is about ninety."
"I hear that," Jim said with a groan. "I'm going to ache tomorrow. Let myself get out of shape."
He'd seen Jim's body. No way was that accurate.
"You let a lot of things go."
Jim grunted impatiently. "I've told you why when it comes to you and if you mean the senses --"
"Yeah, I mean the fucking senses! God, Jim…"
"I couldn't help that. They just… faded." The sleeping bag rustled as Jim turned to his back. "I thought -- I mean, you going, yes, and I guess that was partly it --"
"Partly?" Blair felt vaguely insulted. "What else could it have been?"
"I was getting older," Jim said simply. "Maybe Sentinels weren't meant to stay Sentinels when that happened. Maybe I should be passing the senses on or something, hell, I don't know. That was always your thing."
"They're not like a secondhand car," Blair said coldly. "And didn't Incacha tell you you'd always be a Sentinel if you wanted to be?"
"So I'm on my deathbed and I can still hear someone sneezing two streets away? What good is that to anyone?"
"I don't know." Blair felt tired now. "I just know the senses are yours. Part of you." He rolled over, facing away from Jim. "And so was I."
"Was?" Jim said after a pause.
"Happy now? I give up. We do this retrieval deal, we shake hands -- or maybe not -- and I walk away and this time I stay gone. No phone calls, no -- gone." Blair closed his eyes against the darkness. "Because you're right. We can't go back and I don't see a way forward. I thought I did. Had it all planned out. But I didn't know what you'd done and -- yeah. I do now, don't I?"
"You know everything," Jim said across the space between them. "I don't know what to say to make this better. I didn't think you were still missing me. All this time? You've been unhappy all this time? God, Blair, I never meant --"
"Yeah. And that ends now. Tomorrow I get on with my put on hold life." Blair hunched his shoulder irritably. "Now let me get some sleep, will you?"
***
"Looks like it's there," Jim said, rubbing a dirty hand across his sweaty forehead and making mud.
Blair peered into the side of the hill at the corner of a metal box. "Yeah," he said unenthusiastically. "So get it out."
"Yes, sir," Jim muttered. "Look, Sandburg, this isn't easy. The supports for the shaft have rotted and it's in deeper than I can reach but the hole's too small for me to crawl into."
"So make it bigger."
"It'll all collapse." Dirt was raining down into the space Jim had excavated, a gentle patter of it. "See? As fast as I get it out, more comes down. It's a miracle we can even see that corner."
"There has to be a way."
Jim pursed his lips and gave the hillside a long look. "Not seeing it. You try and blow it and the whole side comes down; not to mention that box is metal but it's not built to take stress like that. I'll radio in, tell them to send in a construction crew, but we're done."
"I can get in there."
"No, you can't."
"I'm smaller --"
"No. You're just shorter," Jim corrected him. "You're as wide in the shoulders as me and you're not going to go in there. If it collapses, I wouldn't be able to dig you out in time and you're sure as hell not dying for some loose change and some out of date intel."
"We have to get it out," Blair insisted. "Us. You and me."
"Why?" Jim stared at him, his expression puzzled. "Why it is so important to you?"
"Not me." He'd been in a foul mood all morning which made being an asshole automatic. "I've given up on the whole idea of an us, remember? Brother Marcus. He made me promise we'd do this. He matters to me even if you don't."
"Blair." Jim shook his head, sweat drops flying. "I get that you're pissed and I get that you want this over with so you can leave, but can you save the bitchy comments for your next boyfriend, huh? Because I'm getting sick of them."
"Give me the fucking shovel," Blair said through his teeth. "And get out of my way."
"Your hands --"
Blair snatched Jim's work gloves from the back pocket of Jim's jeans and pulled them on. They were hot and damp inside, gritty with dirt, and his palms stung fiercely. He'd taken off the bandages to let air get to the scrapes, which had seemed like a good idea at the time.
"Blair --"
"You lost the right to tell me what to do a long time ago."
"Oh, for fuck's sake." Jim threw the shovel to the ground and gave Blair a look of utter disgust. "Knock yourself out, kiddo. I'm going to radio in and then we're leaving for the rendezvous site. Damned if I'm walking out of here with you."
He walked away, favoring one leg. Blair frowned. Wrong leg for any injury he remembered Jim getting… but then, how many had Jim sustained that he didn't know about? And it might just have been a pulled muscle from the hike or the digging. He bent and picked up the shovel, hissing as his abraded skin protested.
He'd watched Jim do this and had a few thoughts on the project that he hadn't shared. Yeah, that'd been immature, but he'd woken up feeling like hell and determined to spread the misery. Every reconciliation scenario he'd dreamed up had always included the basic premise that he'd been fully committed to doing what it took to get Jim back.
With that central support knocked away, all that was left wasn't worth thinking about and so he wasn't.
He'd been on enough dig sites to know that Jim was right about the difficulties, but a higher shaft, angled down… yeah, that might work. He scrambled up above where Jim had been digging and looked around. Solid rock there, too close to the edge there…okay, here would do.
He began to dig into the soil, cutting through a thin skein of grass roots, and made sure to make the hole wide enough to crawl down. A space that large took time to excavate and he wondered idly after a while why Jim wasn't returning to yell at him. He paused to catch his breath, the hole a meager six inches deep, and scanned the clearing. No Jim.
Maybe he'd needed to go somewhere to get a better reception on the radio? Blair knew that the message was going to the closest park station and would be relayed to Cascade, but he was hazy on the details.
Or maybe he was taking in a dip in the stream. Blair dragged his mind off what was still an enticing image no matter how he felt about Jim as a person -- as a deceitful, high-handed, insane person -- and gave the disturbed earth a peevish jab with the shovel.
With what felt like an equal level of spite in response, the hillside shook, quivered, and caved in under his feet, a formerly buried piece of wood scoring a line along his thigh and ribs as he fell before the jagged tip tore through his shirt, missing his armpit by a whisker.
He screamed, but it had a name in it.
***
Blair spat soil out of his mouth, the taste one he knew from childhood when an older boy had convinced him earth was brown because it was made of chocolate and watched him eat some with a smirk on his freckled face. He was standing on the box, from what he could see when he looked down -- not much -- and praying it didn't get dislodged because if it did he wouldn't be standing, he'd be hanging, and until his shirt surrendered to gravity and tore completely, he'd be held up by what was left of a support beam and that wouldn't be comfortable. He was bleeding from what he hoped was a shallow gouge running up the side of his body and he probably had splinters in every place his jeans and shirt had been ripped.
For the fourth time he worked up some spit by thinking about lemons, moistened his lips, and howled Jim's name.
It bounced off the earth around him and clearly failed to rise the distance needed to reach the open air as no Jim appeared, breathless and panicked.
Except it didn't need to. Hell, he didn't even need to shout; Jim was back online, better than ever, capable of hearing him swallow from a mile away, let alone yell.
"Jim, you asshole, I need you," he said, as loudly as he could without straining his voice. "Cave-in and I'm trapped. Do the whole hero thing, will you and pull me out? And, yeah, I know if there's an asshole around, it's me, not you, but let's put that away for later. Bleeding here and yeah, I can breathe, and it's stupid because I'm not even in that deep, but I'm trapped and I'm scared. I don't do trapped real well, Jim, and it's cork in a bottle time. Did I mention I'm bleeding?"
No Jim. No sound of Jim charging to the rescue, not that he could hear anything but his heartbeat, rushing and receding. He was getting dizzy and seeing floating black spots now. In fact, he was going to pass out. He tipped his head back and stared up at the patch of sky above him, mentally reciting from the only part of 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol' that he could remember, something about a little tent of blue and clouds with sails like silver.
Which triggered the memory of another verse about each man killing the thing he loves and that -- no, he wasn't going there.
Hanging. The poem was about that and that was what he was doing and that was why he'd thought of it and he was trapped, just like the man in the poem, trapped, helpless, held down, pinned down, no escape, no reprieve, and Jim had left him, walked away, and he didn't want that, not really, and he loved him, and he didn't really think Jim had believed what he'd said last night but it didn't change the fact that it'd been said and Jim hadn't tried to change his mind and he was fucked, they both were, and it was all such a fucking terrible mess and Brother Marcus could take his stupid, fucking box and --
Blue.
***
He was lying in the jungle, his foreleg trapped under a fallen log. And, he supposed, his other body was dying, or he wouldn't be here, even though he couldn't really see why that would happen this fast unless he was going to panic to death. Maybe the damage from the piece of wood had been worse than he'd thought, and he was bleeding out?
He waited for Jim to show up, as human or cat, whining and nuzzling at his fur-covered leg as he squirmed in frustration.
After an endless while he threw back his head and howled, long and loud.
I'm here. Come and get me.
And he was answered by a weak growl, plaintive, mewling.
He snuffed the air, and found the scent trail, blood-marked and fresh. He wasn't sure how this worked exactly, and Jim had always been reticent when it came to describing his visions, but Blair knew who he was. Human. Scared. He also knew, with an equal certainty, that he was a wolf and opposable thumbs weren't included in the package. So he was trapped, Jim was off that way, hurt badly enough that he couldn't come running, walking, limping, or crawling to the rescue, and yeah, well and truly fucked covered it nicely.
The jaguar was purring now. Cats did that when they were in pain, as well as when they were getting their bellies tickled and their heads stroked. He didn't remember where he'd read that but it'd freaked him out because way to send a confused signal.
The purring was a low, exhausted, end of the line rumble and the message Blair was getting was coming through loud and clear.
He twisted his body and began to scrape a hole under his trapped limb, his claws clogged with dirt in a matter of moments, breaking off as they struck pebbles. It hurt and the ache from the crushed foreleg was a solid thump with every beat of his heart but it didn't matter.
He made a space big enough to give him room to ease his paw free and lay there, tongue lolling out, panting hard for a minute before scrambling to his feet.
Then he followed the trail in an ungainly three-legged scamper, yapping Jim's name, barking it out, knowing he'd be heard.
The jaguar lay still at the base of a tree, a green snake slithering in a sinuous wave over the dull black pelt. Literal or figurative a danger, it didn't matter. Stiff-legged and growling deep in his throat, Blair stalked the still figure of his mate, his eyes fixed on the snake.
Then he pounced, teeth meeting in a crunch and snap, and shook the creature until it hung limply from his jaws.
He let it fall and lay down beside the jaguar, whining and nosing at it, waiting for something to --
Blue.
***
Still stuck in the hole. Blair felt like complaining about that to some nameless someone, but decided petulance was a luxury. He had two choices; up or down.
Up, with nothing to hold onto as one arm was pinned by the wood and the other trapped against his side, would be tricky. Down didn't seem to lead anywhere; the tunnel Jim had dug had almost certainly collapsed and Jim had been right; it was too small for either of them to use.
Had to be up. He needed to get free of the wood and to work his other hand up over his head, then grab the edge of the hole.
Assuming it didn't crumble. Assuming he didn't bring more soil down on himself and suffocate with his head so close to the surface, as ironic a death as drowning in a bowl of soup.
He fought back sheer, unreasoning terror and began to talk to calm himself down. "Jim? Going to assume you can hear me, Mr. I can hear a worm burp a mile away. I just had a vision and you were in it so I guess you did, too. We get out of this and we're talking this through. You'll owe me that because I'm about to save your life. Just got to… uhn. Okay, that was me ruining a perfectly good shirt and ow, ow, fuck, God, when does a splinter get an upgrade, because there's a piece of wood in my arm and it's six inches long, maybe more… I'm not looking at it. I'm getting out."
He stopped talking for a while as he began the painstaking process of moving his hand a lousy three or four feet up in the air, something he did a dozen times a day to scratch his head, pick his nose, rub his eyes. Of course, he wasn't usually hampered by a ton of earth...
His arm got stuck, doubled up uncomfortably, and he felt the panic sweep back, inexorable, huge. In the moment before it struck he heard Jim's voice whisper 'Chief', faint and weak.
Hallucination, had to be, but it steadied him and he took a series of deep breaths, soil silting into his nose, his eyes, God, his ears, and then, when he was stuffed full of oxygen, giddy with it, every cell suffused, he did what every animal in a trap did and went berserk, fighting, kicking, biting, squirming.
Up, up, up to the light. The dimming, disappearing light…
Do not go gentle into that good night… rage, rage, against the dying of the light…
He was raging, a silent scream, a final desperate scrabble and kick off with the steel beneath his feet holding steady and his body straining to be free.
His head emerged and he ran out of strength, one arm still hanging down, his other arm resting against the soft, turned earth around the lip of the hole.
Jim was a few yards away, dragging himself toward Blair, a makeshift tourniquet of a handkerchief and a stick wrapped around his ankle.
Blair blinked and shook a scatter of soil out of his eyes. "Stay there," he croaked. "I'm coming to rescue you, dammit."
Jim stared at him blindly, grunted, pulled himself along another hard-won inch, and then collapsed, sprawled out on his belly, his labored breathing infinitely reassuring because breathing was something corpses rarely did.
"Stay there…" Blair repeated and this time meant 'don't go'.
***
"I've used the anti-venom kit, Sandburg," Jim said irritably. "And the snake didn't get a chance to do much damage. Glancing strike."
"Which is why you were crawling, not running." Blair batted at Jim's hand. "Let me do it, will you?"
"You can't reach." Jim's hand -- Jim's trembling, shaking hand -- moved closer, tweezers glinting between his thumb and finger, and Blair snarled at him.
"You're not getting my splinters out when you can barely hold your hand steady. Forget it. We'll get picked up soon and whoever's flying the chopper can do it."
Jim studied his palsied hand, sighed, and put the tweezers away. "I could suck them out," he offered.
"I'll pass, thanks."
Blair stood up and swayed giddily before getting his balance. "I'm going to wash. I've got dirt in every crack and crevice."
Jim leaned back against the tree behind him, his face drawn and pallid. "I can't believe we took something this simple and fucked it up so badly. Simon's going to have my ass for breakfast."
"Yeah, he probably will."
"Thanks for the sympathy."
"You don't need it. He'll yell, you'll be reasonable until he really loses it and it'll be over a few minutes later."
Jim grinned sourly. "That was the old Simon. The softened up by Sandburg Simon. These days he just writes something nasty in my file and lands me with enough paperwork to bury an elephant."
"No yelling?"
"Not much."
Blair considered that. "Doesn't sound like Simon."
"Maybe if I ask nicely and remind him I almost got a civilian killed he'll go back to yelling."
Blair studied the hillside. "It would help if we had what we came for."
"Chief, as far as I'm concerned that box can stay there for another thirty, forty years, until I'm dead and buried."
Suppressing the shiver that gave him, Blair walked over to the hillside and picked up the shovel.
"Blair, what the hell do you think you're doing?" Jim called.
"What I came here to do."
"You fall in again and --"
"You can save me this time."
He dug carefully, with a strength born of sheer stubbornness, each spadeful of earth lifting a weight from him. He wasn't worried. Jim had his back.
And maybe somewhere Brother Marcus was watching as the box he'd buried was brought out into the light. Blair wasn’t sure about that but it couldn't hurt to believe it was true.
The beat of the chopper's wings came with the triumphant clang of metal on metal as the blade of the shovel struck the box.
***
"So, when will you be back this way again?" Simon inquired. He took a gulp of beer and looked expectant.
Blair glanced around the bar. Still a cop bar, and he was still getting curious, unfriendly glances, even with his hair cut. They knew he wasn't one of them.
"Oh, you know how it is, Simon. Someday. Nothing planned."
Not after the ride back in the chopper had seen his optimism and determination seep away, water into sand, as Jim had steadfastly refused to meet his eyes. Conversation had been impossible over the clatter of the engine, but he'd been prepared to wait. He hadn't expected Jim to bark out some terse orders to the security detail waiting for them when they landed, and then walk away after the briefest of nods to Blair. They'd been interviewed separately and Blair had been told he could leave whenever he wanted to, with enough force behind it to make it more than a suggestion. Maybe they'd thought he was angling for a finder's fee. Maybe word had gotten around about who he was, and the ranks were closing, excluding him, protecting Jim.
"You're only a few hours away," Simon objected. "And, hell, we arrange to met in the middle to go fishing, and it's even less."
"Sometime," Blair said flatly.
Simon gave him a shrewd, not unkind, look. "Jim's still digging his heels in, is he?"
"Not Jim. Me." He supposed Simon was owed an explanation but Jim would have to give it. He wasn't going to put himself through that. "I came here thinking I could just step back into something and it turns out it doesn't exist."
"Blair, if I was any good at discussions like these, I wouldn't have gotten divorced. I don't want details and I won't give you my advice --"
"But," Blair prompted dryly.
"But you and Jim need to face the fact that no one else wants you so you're stuck with each other." Simon laughed, the heh-heh of his chuckle unchanged. "Now, me, I loved Joan and I'm going to be just as happy with Lorna, but you two…"
"He pushed me away, Simon. For seven years."
"So you keep saying." Simon rubbed his thumb up the side of his glass, interrupting the downward slide of a bead of condensation. "I know that. I just don't know why you let him."
"I had no choice. Phone calls, letters; he wouldn't listen."
"They were easy to ignore." Simon's expression was pitying. "Why didn't you come back if you wanted him that badly, Blair? He would have listened if you got in his face."
"He wouldn't open the door," Blair said, frustrated by the need to explain.
"How many times did you knock?"
"What?"
"How many times did you go to that door and knock? And why didn't you wait for him at work, by his truck, in this bar? Get him to look at you; hell, if you'd asked me for help, I might even have cuffed him to a chair and made the stubborn son of a bitch give you ten minutes to talk sense into him." Simon sighed. "You gave up. Not like you."
"Gave up? I didn't -- I've been waiting -- I called him, once a year, I --"
"Jim's good at waiting. You're not. He'd never have gone to you, Blair. You know that." Simon drank from his glass. "You weren't sure, were you?"
"I'm not now," Blair said. "He told me stuff -- he made choices for me, Simon. Didn't ask me, just went ahead and rearranged my life…"
"Meant it for the best?"
"Oh, yeah."
"Ouch," Simon said, not unsympathetically. "You're both fools."
"I love you, too, Simon," Blair muttered.
"He'll be here soon and I'll have a drink with you both and then fade," Simon said. He patted Blair's arm, a smugly certain Cupid. "It'll work itself out, Blair. Count on it."
Blair stood and tossed some money on the table. "I can't wait any longer, Simon. Tell Jim I'm sorry I didn't get to say good-bye."
"He'll be here soon," Simon protested, visibly jolted out of his complacency . "The Feds have had him all day and it's not like he can tell them more than you did. I expected him to be here an hour ago."
"I don't think he's coming," Blair said. He held out his hand and then, as Simon got to his feet, looking bewildered and upset, pulled Simon to him for a one-armed hug. "Thanks, Simon. Take care."
"Blair, wait…"
He didn't look back and the crowd at the bar parted easily to let him leave.
***
Blair found himself wanting to pick up the phone after he'd returned home -- they could talk, couldn't they? Now they'd broken the years of silence, they could have a simple, friendly conversation -- but he didn't.
Better this way. A clean break.
Except gnawing your leg off to escape a trap left a bleeding, gaping wound, left you crippled at best.
He buried himself in work for the upcoming semester and watched the summer wear itself out in a series of hot nights and wild storms, rain lashing down on baked earth. He was dreaming in blue and forgetting the substance of the dreams within moments of waking, walking restless through the day.
And he was flashing on Jim's body, wet from the shower, every time he came, Jim's name mixed in with the hoarse, sharp pants and moans accompanying his climax.
His body had forgiven Jim easily, would have welcomed him back with a traitorous warmth, opened to him, pierced him. He dreamed of that solid, smooth body beneath his hands, hard-muscled, strong; rubbed his shoulder where Jim's leg had rested, slung high. He woke with the taste of Jim's come breaking like a wave across his lips, pungent, earthy, male.
Dream-fucked, ghost-ridden, and lonely.
This wasn't a new beginning; it was stasis. It was hell.
And he wondered, with a dull curiosity, if Jim's senses had gone again.
***
Blair stared down at the table. A bright piece of metal. A key. A piece of paper, a single sheet, folded once, and marked with a single line of writing followed by Jim's signature.
This one fits, Blair.
He stroked his finger across the inked letters of his name on the envelope, remembering dozens of notes to him Jim had left on tables, stuck to the fridge, tucked in his current book; once, as he slept off a hangover, placed in his hand without waking him.
This one fits…
He added it to his key ring and watched the circles of metal snap back into place as the inserted sliver of his fingernail slipped away, holding the key safe.
And wished adding himself back into Jim's life was that simple, but it wasn't.
It'd been so much easier when he thought it was Jim's fault they were apart.
***
Jim opened the door when Blair knocked, the space of time between the two long enough for Jim to have crossed from the window to the door. Blair pictured Jim standing there, staring out, maybe watching him cross the road.
"You knocked," Jim said, a question in the words.
Blair held up his key ring with the loft key hanging from it and nodded down at the small overnight bag he carried. "I'm visiting, that's all. Just passing through, so I thought…"
Jim stepped back and when Blair walked in he gave him a slow, grave smile, bewildered but happy. "It's good to see you."
Blair smiled back and put his bag just inside the door. "Yeah." He gave Jim a hug, wanting to close the final distance between them, and found that he hadn't because it had ceased to exist when he'd crossed the threshold.
Whatever happened, they were friends again, a gulf bridged by an inch or two of shaped, purposeful metal; and that realization, when it had finally come, had made this visit something he had to do.
Jim held him for a moment, his breathing quiet and steady, his heart pounding in a contradictory beat against Blair's chest, and then stepped back. "You hungry, Chief?"
"Later, I could eat, sure, but not right now. I've been dreaming of a beer for the last fifty miles, though."
"One beer coming up. And you know where the takeout menus are when you're ready."
They moved across the room and sat down, Jim on a chair, Blair on the couch, beer in hand. Silence settled around them. Blair was used to silence now. It didn't need painting over with words and it didn't need filling. It had a color and a shape of its own.
"Are you staying the night?" Jim asked finally.
"Long drive back."
"So are you staying?" Jim persisted.
Blair nodded but that still wasn't enough.
"Are you staying here?" Jim's fingers tightened around the slippery glass of the beer bottle he held. "With me?"
No room for mistakes, misunderstanding… Blair could appreciate the need that drove Jim to be that precise.
"For the night? Yes. Maybe two?"
He watched Jim relax, and then followed Jim's gaze up to the railing, and beyond it, Jim's bed. "That's not inevitable," he said. "If it's more than you want, I'll understand. But, yes, I'd like to sleep up there. With you."
"It can be however you want it to be," Jim said, leaning forward, hands on his knees. "When I gave you a key the first time, I gave you your own space, too." He nodded toward the small room Blair had used. "It's yours. Whenever you want it. Whenever you visit. But you're welcome in my -- you're always --" His voice faltered. "Blair?"
Blair relaxed against the couch cushions and tilted his head back, exposing his throat. They hadn't had time to build up the shorthand of a relationship, the understood cues and unspoken messages, but that gesture had always worked and he let Jim's intake of breath stand as an answer to a question he hadn't really asked.
The walls were still white, but the setting sun was painting them gold.
There was something green in a pot on the patio and next time he'd use his key.
Jim was walking over to him, kneeling in front of him, his hands warm and heavy in Blair's clasped fingers, talking in a hurried stumble of words Blair didn't need to remember because they were ones Jim would say again, often.
Blair had a key to give him, too. Later, afterwards.
There was no rush now and seven years had taught him patience.
He stood, took Jim's hand, and they walked over to the stairs.
Still not rushing.
Just moving quickly.
ponders_life for bidding and sharing it and t_verano for the beta reading :;hugs you both::Boundaries Part Four
The fire had died to embers, the wood breaking apart only to flare red and then smolder to gray. Blair lay on his side in his sleeping bag and watched it, the painkillers Jim had pushed past his protesting lips with his thumb working with the exertions of the day to lull him into a drowse.
Jim lay nearby, already asleep, just out of reach.
Finding accidental symbolism in the placement of a sleeping bag had to be a new low for him.
Jim stirred, muttered something, and went back to sleep, if he'd ever really woken, and Blair closed his eyes. If being stared at was disturbing Jim, then he'd be considerate and not stare. Jim needed his rest; any digging to be done in the morning was going to be done by him; Blair's bandaged, swollen hands weren't going to be much use.
He rolled to his back, wriggled out of the way of something prodding him in his shoulder, and tried to go to sleep.
Right. Like that was going to happen when he was this worked up. His face was still stiff and stretched from crying, his throat still raw from screaming. It'd been years since he'd done either and it wasn't something he planned to do again soon. It was supposed to make you feel better but all it had done was add a myriad of physical pains to the emotional ones and make him feel vaguely ridiculous.
If Jim hadn't been right there with him, leaking tears, it would've been worse, though.
Except he didn't want to feel grateful to Jim for anything, not the crying, not the picking out, patiently, carefully, of every speck of dirt and shred of skin from the scrapes on Blair's hands, not the cold bowl of water that had numbed and cleaned and brought fresh tears welling up as his stressed-out body protested the initial pain.
Nothing.
No gratitude.
Jim had deliberately wrecked their lives on the basis of a few misconceptions and a whole lot of guilt. Hadn't discussed it, hadn't explained. Just kicked him out and spent seven years of self-flagellation being a martyr.
He wondered what Brother Marcus would have thought of that as a way of dealing. Not a lot. Marcus had been more practical about his penitence. He'd shut himself away from the world, sure, but he'd found peace and he'd been part of the small community.
Jim had, from the little Simon had said, alternated between moping, sulking, and snapping before settling down into a studied grayness.
And he'd lost his fucking senses and Blair didn't think it was egotistical to connect that loss with his own disappearance from Jim's life; not when his return had brought them back.
Jim didn't need him? On what fucking planet did Jim not need him? How many people had died because there was no Sentinel to save them? Okay, now he was starting to feel guilty…
"Stop it," Jim said drowsily. "Trying to sleep here, Sandburg, and you're muttering and I can hear you."
"Good." Blair remembered the digging. "I mean, sorry. I'm just --"
"Thinking. Loudly. Yeah, I know." Jim sighed. "I really don't want to talk about it. There's nothing to say. You know it all now and you think I was wrong. I get it."
"'Wrong' doesn't even begin to cover it, but, yes, that's about it."
"And it changes nothing, so go to sleep." Jim's voice softened. "Your hands hurting?"
"Little bit but I'll live." Blair turned his head and decided to give the bubble insulating Jim from reality a sharp prod. "Did you spill your guts because it was that or have sex with me? Hell of a choice to make, wasn't it? Think you made the right one?"
To his surprise, that got a chuckle out of Jim. "Honesty or sex and I went for honesty. Feels like a bad choice to some parts of me, but, yes, I think I did. Don't you?"
"If I say yes I'll feel older than I do now, which is about ninety."
"I hear that," Jim said with a groan. "I'm going to ache tomorrow. Let myself get out of shape."
He'd seen Jim's body. No way was that accurate.
"You let a lot of things go."
Jim grunted impatiently. "I've told you why when it comes to you and if you mean the senses --"
"Yeah, I mean the fucking senses! God, Jim…"
"I couldn't help that. They just… faded." The sleeping bag rustled as Jim turned to his back. "I thought -- I mean, you going, yes, and I guess that was partly it --"
"Partly?" Blair felt vaguely insulted. "What else could it have been?"
"I was getting older," Jim said simply. "Maybe Sentinels weren't meant to stay Sentinels when that happened. Maybe I should be passing the senses on or something, hell, I don't know. That was always your thing."
"They're not like a secondhand car," Blair said coldly. "And didn't Incacha tell you you'd always be a Sentinel if you wanted to be?"
"So I'm on my deathbed and I can still hear someone sneezing two streets away? What good is that to anyone?"
"I don't know." Blair felt tired now. "I just know the senses are yours. Part of you." He rolled over, facing away from Jim. "And so was I."
"Was?" Jim said after a pause.
"Happy now? I give up. We do this retrieval deal, we shake hands -- or maybe not -- and I walk away and this time I stay gone. No phone calls, no -- gone." Blair closed his eyes against the darkness. "Because you're right. We can't go back and I don't see a way forward. I thought I did. Had it all planned out. But I didn't know what you'd done and -- yeah. I do now, don't I?"
"You know everything," Jim said across the space between them. "I don't know what to say to make this better. I didn't think you were still missing me. All this time? You've been unhappy all this time? God, Blair, I never meant --"
"Yeah. And that ends now. Tomorrow I get on with my put on hold life." Blair hunched his shoulder irritably. "Now let me get some sleep, will you?"
***
"Looks like it's there," Jim said, rubbing a dirty hand across his sweaty forehead and making mud.
Blair peered into the side of the hill at the corner of a metal box. "Yeah," he said unenthusiastically. "So get it out."
"Yes, sir," Jim muttered. "Look, Sandburg, this isn't easy. The supports for the shaft have rotted and it's in deeper than I can reach but the hole's too small for me to crawl into."
"So make it bigger."
"It'll all collapse." Dirt was raining down into the space Jim had excavated, a gentle patter of it. "See? As fast as I get it out, more comes down. It's a miracle we can even see that corner."
"There has to be a way."
Jim pursed his lips and gave the hillside a long look. "Not seeing it. You try and blow it and the whole side comes down; not to mention that box is metal but it's not built to take stress like that. I'll radio in, tell them to send in a construction crew, but we're done."
"I can get in there."
"No, you can't."
"I'm smaller --"
"No. You're just shorter," Jim corrected him. "You're as wide in the shoulders as me and you're not going to go in there. If it collapses, I wouldn't be able to dig you out in time and you're sure as hell not dying for some loose change and some out of date intel."
"We have to get it out," Blair insisted. "Us. You and me."
"Why?" Jim stared at him, his expression puzzled. "Why it is so important to you?"
"Not me." He'd been in a foul mood all morning which made being an asshole automatic. "I've given up on the whole idea of an us, remember? Brother Marcus. He made me promise we'd do this. He matters to me even if you don't."
"Blair." Jim shook his head, sweat drops flying. "I get that you're pissed and I get that you want this over with so you can leave, but can you save the bitchy comments for your next boyfriend, huh? Because I'm getting sick of them."
"Give me the fucking shovel," Blair said through his teeth. "And get out of my way."
"Your hands --"
Blair snatched Jim's work gloves from the back pocket of Jim's jeans and pulled them on. They were hot and damp inside, gritty with dirt, and his palms stung fiercely. He'd taken off the bandages to let air get to the scrapes, which had seemed like a good idea at the time.
"Blair --"
"You lost the right to tell me what to do a long time ago."
"Oh, for fuck's sake." Jim threw the shovel to the ground and gave Blair a look of utter disgust. "Knock yourself out, kiddo. I'm going to radio in and then we're leaving for the rendezvous site. Damned if I'm walking out of here with you."
He walked away, favoring one leg. Blair frowned. Wrong leg for any injury he remembered Jim getting… but then, how many had Jim sustained that he didn't know about? And it might just have been a pulled muscle from the hike or the digging. He bent and picked up the shovel, hissing as his abraded skin protested.
He'd watched Jim do this and had a few thoughts on the project that he hadn't shared. Yeah, that'd been immature, but he'd woken up feeling like hell and determined to spread the misery. Every reconciliation scenario he'd dreamed up had always included the basic premise that he'd been fully committed to doing what it took to get Jim back.
With that central support knocked away, all that was left wasn't worth thinking about and so he wasn't.
He'd been on enough dig sites to know that Jim was right about the difficulties, but a higher shaft, angled down… yeah, that might work. He scrambled up above where Jim had been digging and looked around. Solid rock there, too close to the edge there…okay, here would do.
He began to dig into the soil, cutting through a thin skein of grass roots, and made sure to make the hole wide enough to crawl down. A space that large took time to excavate and he wondered idly after a while why Jim wasn't returning to yell at him. He paused to catch his breath, the hole a meager six inches deep, and scanned the clearing. No Jim.
Maybe he'd needed to go somewhere to get a better reception on the radio? Blair knew that the message was going to the closest park station and would be relayed to Cascade, but he was hazy on the details.
Or maybe he was taking in a dip in the stream. Blair dragged his mind off what was still an enticing image no matter how he felt about Jim as a person -- as a deceitful, high-handed, insane person -- and gave the disturbed earth a peevish jab with the shovel.
With what felt like an equal level of spite in response, the hillside shook, quivered, and caved in under his feet, a formerly buried piece of wood scoring a line along his thigh and ribs as he fell before the jagged tip tore through his shirt, missing his armpit by a whisker.
He screamed, but it had a name in it.
***
Blair spat soil out of his mouth, the taste one he knew from childhood when an older boy had convinced him earth was brown because it was made of chocolate and watched him eat some with a smirk on his freckled face. He was standing on the box, from what he could see when he looked down -- not much -- and praying it didn't get dislodged because if it did he wouldn't be standing, he'd be hanging, and until his shirt surrendered to gravity and tore completely, he'd be held up by what was left of a support beam and that wouldn't be comfortable. He was bleeding from what he hoped was a shallow gouge running up the side of his body and he probably had splinters in every place his jeans and shirt had been ripped.
For the fourth time he worked up some spit by thinking about lemons, moistened his lips, and howled Jim's name.
It bounced off the earth around him and clearly failed to rise the distance needed to reach the open air as no Jim appeared, breathless and panicked.
Except it didn't need to. Hell, he didn't even need to shout; Jim was back online, better than ever, capable of hearing him swallow from a mile away, let alone yell.
"Jim, you asshole, I need you," he said, as loudly as he could without straining his voice. "Cave-in and I'm trapped. Do the whole hero thing, will you and pull me out? And, yeah, I know if there's an asshole around, it's me, not you, but let's put that away for later. Bleeding here and yeah, I can breathe, and it's stupid because I'm not even in that deep, but I'm trapped and I'm scared. I don't do trapped real well, Jim, and it's cork in a bottle time. Did I mention I'm bleeding?"
No Jim. No sound of Jim charging to the rescue, not that he could hear anything but his heartbeat, rushing and receding. He was getting dizzy and seeing floating black spots now. In fact, he was going to pass out. He tipped his head back and stared up at the patch of sky above him, mentally reciting from the only part of 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol' that he could remember, something about a little tent of blue and clouds with sails like silver.
Which triggered the memory of another verse about each man killing the thing he loves and that -- no, he wasn't going there.
Hanging. The poem was about that and that was what he was doing and that was why he'd thought of it and he was trapped, just like the man in the poem, trapped, helpless, held down, pinned down, no escape, no reprieve, and Jim had left him, walked away, and he didn't want that, not really, and he loved him, and he didn't really think Jim had believed what he'd said last night but it didn't change the fact that it'd been said and Jim hadn't tried to change his mind and he was fucked, they both were, and it was all such a fucking terrible mess and Brother Marcus could take his stupid, fucking box and --
Blue.
***
He was lying in the jungle, his foreleg trapped under a fallen log. And, he supposed, his other body was dying, or he wouldn't be here, even though he couldn't really see why that would happen this fast unless he was going to panic to death. Maybe the damage from the piece of wood had been worse than he'd thought, and he was bleeding out?
He waited for Jim to show up, as human or cat, whining and nuzzling at his fur-covered leg as he squirmed in frustration.
After an endless while he threw back his head and howled, long and loud.
I'm here. Come and get me.
And he was answered by a weak growl, plaintive, mewling.
He snuffed the air, and found the scent trail, blood-marked and fresh. He wasn't sure how this worked exactly, and Jim had always been reticent when it came to describing his visions, but Blair knew who he was. Human. Scared. He also knew, with an equal certainty, that he was a wolf and opposable thumbs weren't included in the package. So he was trapped, Jim was off that way, hurt badly enough that he couldn't come running, walking, limping, or crawling to the rescue, and yeah, well and truly fucked covered it nicely.
The jaguar was purring now. Cats did that when they were in pain, as well as when they were getting their bellies tickled and their heads stroked. He didn't remember where he'd read that but it'd freaked him out because way to send a confused signal.
The purring was a low, exhausted, end of the line rumble and the message Blair was getting was coming through loud and clear.
He twisted his body and began to scrape a hole under his trapped limb, his claws clogged with dirt in a matter of moments, breaking off as they struck pebbles. It hurt and the ache from the crushed foreleg was a solid thump with every beat of his heart but it didn't matter.
He made a space big enough to give him room to ease his paw free and lay there, tongue lolling out, panting hard for a minute before scrambling to his feet.
Then he followed the trail in an ungainly three-legged scamper, yapping Jim's name, barking it out, knowing he'd be heard.
The jaguar lay still at the base of a tree, a green snake slithering in a sinuous wave over the dull black pelt. Literal or figurative a danger, it didn't matter. Stiff-legged and growling deep in his throat, Blair stalked the still figure of his mate, his eyes fixed on the snake.
Then he pounced, teeth meeting in a crunch and snap, and shook the creature until it hung limply from his jaws.
He let it fall and lay down beside the jaguar, whining and nosing at it, waiting for something to --
Blue.
***
Still stuck in the hole. Blair felt like complaining about that to some nameless someone, but decided petulance was a luxury. He had two choices; up or down.
Up, with nothing to hold onto as one arm was pinned by the wood and the other trapped against his side, would be tricky. Down didn't seem to lead anywhere; the tunnel Jim had dug had almost certainly collapsed and Jim had been right; it was too small for either of them to use.
Had to be up. He needed to get free of the wood and to work his other hand up over his head, then grab the edge of the hole.
Assuming it didn't crumble. Assuming he didn't bring more soil down on himself and suffocate with his head so close to the surface, as ironic a death as drowning in a bowl of soup.
He fought back sheer, unreasoning terror and began to talk to calm himself down. "Jim? Going to assume you can hear me, Mr. I can hear a worm burp a mile away. I just had a vision and you were in it so I guess you did, too. We get out of this and we're talking this through. You'll owe me that because I'm about to save your life. Just got to… uhn. Okay, that was me ruining a perfectly good shirt and ow, ow, fuck, God, when does a splinter get an upgrade, because there's a piece of wood in my arm and it's six inches long, maybe more… I'm not looking at it. I'm getting out."
He stopped talking for a while as he began the painstaking process of moving his hand a lousy three or four feet up in the air, something he did a dozen times a day to scratch his head, pick his nose, rub his eyes. Of course, he wasn't usually hampered by a ton of earth...
His arm got stuck, doubled up uncomfortably, and he felt the panic sweep back, inexorable, huge. In the moment before it struck he heard Jim's voice whisper 'Chief', faint and weak.
Hallucination, had to be, but it steadied him and he took a series of deep breaths, soil silting into his nose, his eyes, God, his ears, and then, when he was stuffed full of oxygen, giddy with it, every cell suffused, he did what every animal in a trap did and went berserk, fighting, kicking, biting, squirming.
Up, up, up to the light. The dimming, disappearing light…
Do not go gentle into that good night… rage, rage, against the dying of the light…
He was raging, a silent scream, a final desperate scrabble and kick off with the steel beneath his feet holding steady and his body straining to be free.
His head emerged and he ran out of strength, one arm still hanging down, his other arm resting against the soft, turned earth around the lip of the hole.
Jim was a few yards away, dragging himself toward Blair, a makeshift tourniquet of a handkerchief and a stick wrapped around his ankle.
Blair blinked and shook a scatter of soil out of his eyes. "Stay there," he croaked. "I'm coming to rescue you, dammit."
Jim stared at him blindly, grunted, pulled himself along another hard-won inch, and then collapsed, sprawled out on his belly, his labored breathing infinitely reassuring because breathing was something corpses rarely did.
"Stay there…" Blair repeated and this time meant 'don't go'.
***
"I've used the anti-venom kit, Sandburg," Jim said irritably. "And the snake didn't get a chance to do much damage. Glancing strike."
"Which is why you were crawling, not running." Blair batted at Jim's hand. "Let me do it, will you?"
"You can't reach." Jim's hand -- Jim's trembling, shaking hand -- moved closer, tweezers glinting between his thumb and finger, and Blair snarled at him.
"You're not getting my splinters out when you can barely hold your hand steady. Forget it. We'll get picked up soon and whoever's flying the chopper can do it."
Jim studied his palsied hand, sighed, and put the tweezers away. "I could suck them out," he offered.
"I'll pass, thanks."
Blair stood up and swayed giddily before getting his balance. "I'm going to wash. I've got dirt in every crack and crevice."
Jim leaned back against the tree behind him, his face drawn and pallid. "I can't believe we took something this simple and fucked it up so badly. Simon's going to have my ass for breakfast."
"Yeah, he probably will."
"Thanks for the sympathy."
"You don't need it. He'll yell, you'll be reasonable until he really loses it and it'll be over a few minutes later."
Jim grinned sourly. "That was the old Simon. The softened up by Sandburg Simon. These days he just writes something nasty in my file and lands me with enough paperwork to bury an elephant."
"No yelling?"
"Not much."
Blair considered that. "Doesn't sound like Simon."
"Maybe if I ask nicely and remind him I almost got a civilian killed he'll go back to yelling."
Blair studied the hillside. "It would help if we had what we came for."
"Chief, as far as I'm concerned that box can stay there for another thirty, forty years, until I'm dead and buried."
Suppressing the shiver that gave him, Blair walked over to the hillside and picked up the shovel.
"Blair, what the hell do you think you're doing?" Jim called.
"What I came here to do."
"You fall in again and --"
"You can save me this time."
He dug carefully, with a strength born of sheer stubbornness, each spadeful of earth lifting a weight from him. He wasn't worried. Jim had his back.
And maybe somewhere Brother Marcus was watching as the box he'd buried was brought out into the light. Blair wasn’t sure about that but it couldn't hurt to believe it was true.
The beat of the chopper's wings came with the triumphant clang of metal on metal as the blade of the shovel struck the box.
***
"So, when will you be back this way again?" Simon inquired. He took a gulp of beer and looked expectant.
Blair glanced around the bar. Still a cop bar, and he was still getting curious, unfriendly glances, even with his hair cut. They knew he wasn't one of them.
"Oh, you know how it is, Simon. Someday. Nothing planned."
Not after the ride back in the chopper had seen his optimism and determination seep away, water into sand, as Jim had steadfastly refused to meet his eyes. Conversation had been impossible over the clatter of the engine, but he'd been prepared to wait. He hadn't expected Jim to bark out some terse orders to the security detail waiting for them when they landed, and then walk away after the briefest of nods to Blair. They'd been interviewed separately and Blair had been told he could leave whenever he wanted to, with enough force behind it to make it more than a suggestion. Maybe they'd thought he was angling for a finder's fee. Maybe word had gotten around about who he was, and the ranks were closing, excluding him, protecting Jim.
"You're only a few hours away," Simon objected. "And, hell, we arrange to met in the middle to go fishing, and it's even less."
"Sometime," Blair said flatly.
Simon gave him a shrewd, not unkind, look. "Jim's still digging his heels in, is he?"
"Not Jim. Me." He supposed Simon was owed an explanation but Jim would have to give it. He wasn't going to put himself through that. "I came here thinking I could just step back into something and it turns out it doesn't exist."
"Blair, if I was any good at discussions like these, I wouldn't have gotten divorced. I don't want details and I won't give you my advice --"
"But," Blair prompted dryly.
"But you and Jim need to face the fact that no one else wants you so you're stuck with each other." Simon laughed, the heh-heh of his chuckle unchanged. "Now, me, I loved Joan and I'm going to be just as happy with Lorna, but you two…"
"He pushed me away, Simon. For seven years."
"So you keep saying." Simon rubbed his thumb up the side of his glass, interrupting the downward slide of a bead of condensation. "I know that. I just don't know why you let him."
"I had no choice. Phone calls, letters; he wouldn't listen."
"They were easy to ignore." Simon's expression was pitying. "Why didn't you come back if you wanted him that badly, Blair? He would have listened if you got in his face."
"He wouldn't open the door," Blair said, frustrated by the need to explain.
"How many times did you knock?"
"What?"
"How many times did you go to that door and knock? And why didn't you wait for him at work, by his truck, in this bar? Get him to look at you; hell, if you'd asked me for help, I might even have cuffed him to a chair and made the stubborn son of a bitch give you ten minutes to talk sense into him." Simon sighed. "You gave up. Not like you."
"Gave up? I didn't -- I've been waiting -- I called him, once a year, I --"
"Jim's good at waiting. You're not. He'd never have gone to you, Blair. You know that." Simon drank from his glass. "You weren't sure, were you?"
"I'm not now," Blair said. "He told me stuff -- he made choices for me, Simon. Didn't ask me, just went ahead and rearranged my life…"
"Meant it for the best?"
"Oh, yeah."
"Ouch," Simon said, not unsympathetically. "You're both fools."
"I love you, too, Simon," Blair muttered.
"He'll be here soon and I'll have a drink with you both and then fade," Simon said. He patted Blair's arm, a smugly certain Cupid. "It'll work itself out, Blair. Count on it."
Blair stood and tossed some money on the table. "I can't wait any longer, Simon. Tell Jim I'm sorry I didn't get to say good-bye."
"He'll be here soon," Simon protested, visibly jolted out of his complacency . "The Feds have had him all day and it's not like he can tell them more than you did. I expected him to be here an hour ago."
"I don't think he's coming," Blair said. He held out his hand and then, as Simon got to his feet, looking bewildered and upset, pulled Simon to him for a one-armed hug. "Thanks, Simon. Take care."
"Blair, wait…"
He didn't look back and the crowd at the bar parted easily to let him leave.
***
Blair found himself wanting to pick up the phone after he'd returned home -- they could talk, couldn't they? Now they'd broken the years of silence, they could have a simple, friendly conversation -- but he didn't.
Better this way. A clean break.
Except gnawing your leg off to escape a trap left a bleeding, gaping wound, left you crippled at best.
He buried himself in work for the upcoming semester and watched the summer wear itself out in a series of hot nights and wild storms, rain lashing down on baked earth. He was dreaming in blue and forgetting the substance of the dreams within moments of waking, walking restless through the day.
And he was flashing on Jim's body, wet from the shower, every time he came, Jim's name mixed in with the hoarse, sharp pants and moans accompanying his climax.
His body had forgiven Jim easily, would have welcomed him back with a traitorous warmth, opened to him, pierced him. He dreamed of that solid, smooth body beneath his hands, hard-muscled, strong; rubbed his shoulder where Jim's leg had rested, slung high. He woke with the taste of Jim's come breaking like a wave across his lips, pungent, earthy, male.
Dream-fucked, ghost-ridden, and lonely.
This wasn't a new beginning; it was stasis. It was hell.
And he wondered, with a dull curiosity, if Jim's senses had gone again.
***
Blair stared down at the table. A bright piece of metal. A key. A piece of paper, a single sheet, folded once, and marked with a single line of writing followed by Jim's signature.
This one fits, Blair.
He stroked his finger across the inked letters of his name on the envelope, remembering dozens of notes to him Jim had left on tables, stuck to the fridge, tucked in his current book; once, as he slept off a hangover, placed in his hand without waking him.
This one fits…
He added it to his key ring and watched the circles of metal snap back into place as the inserted sliver of his fingernail slipped away, holding the key safe.
And wished adding himself back into Jim's life was that simple, but it wasn't.
It'd been so much easier when he thought it was Jim's fault they were apart.
***
Jim opened the door when Blair knocked, the space of time between the two long enough for Jim to have crossed from the window to the door. Blair pictured Jim standing there, staring out, maybe watching him cross the road.
"You knocked," Jim said, a question in the words.
Blair held up his key ring with the loft key hanging from it and nodded down at the small overnight bag he carried. "I'm visiting, that's all. Just passing through, so I thought…"
Jim stepped back and when Blair walked in he gave him a slow, grave smile, bewildered but happy. "It's good to see you."
Blair smiled back and put his bag just inside the door. "Yeah." He gave Jim a hug, wanting to close the final distance between them, and found that he hadn't because it had ceased to exist when he'd crossed the threshold.
Whatever happened, they were friends again, a gulf bridged by an inch or two of shaped, purposeful metal; and that realization, when it had finally come, had made this visit something he had to do.
Jim held him for a moment, his breathing quiet and steady, his heart pounding in a contradictory beat against Blair's chest, and then stepped back. "You hungry, Chief?"
"Later, I could eat, sure, but not right now. I've been dreaming of a beer for the last fifty miles, though."
"One beer coming up. And you know where the takeout menus are when you're ready."
They moved across the room and sat down, Jim on a chair, Blair on the couch, beer in hand. Silence settled around them. Blair was used to silence now. It didn't need painting over with words and it didn't need filling. It had a color and a shape of its own.
"Are you staying the night?" Jim asked finally.
"Long drive back."
"So are you staying?" Jim persisted.
Blair nodded but that still wasn't enough.
"Are you staying here?" Jim's fingers tightened around the slippery glass of the beer bottle he held. "With me?"
No room for mistakes, misunderstanding… Blair could appreciate the need that drove Jim to be that precise.
"For the night? Yes. Maybe two?"
He watched Jim relax, and then followed Jim's gaze up to the railing, and beyond it, Jim's bed. "That's not inevitable," he said. "If it's more than you want, I'll understand. But, yes, I'd like to sleep up there. With you."
"It can be however you want it to be," Jim said, leaning forward, hands on his knees. "When I gave you a key the first time, I gave you your own space, too." He nodded toward the small room Blair had used. "It's yours. Whenever you want it. Whenever you visit. But you're welcome in my -- you're always --" His voice faltered. "Blair?"
Blair relaxed against the couch cushions and tilted his head back, exposing his throat. They hadn't had time to build up the shorthand of a relationship, the understood cues and unspoken messages, but that gesture had always worked and he let Jim's intake of breath stand as an answer to a question he hadn't really asked.
The walls were still white, but the setting sun was painting them gold.
There was something green in a pot on the patio and next time he'd use his key.
Jim was walking over to him, kneeling in front of him, his hands warm and heavy in Blair's clasped fingers, talking in a hurried stumble of words Blair didn't need to remember because they were ones Jim would say again, often.
Blair had a key to give him, too. Later, afterwards.
There was no rush now and seven years had taught him patience.
He stood, took Jim's hand, and they walked over to the stairs.
Still not rushing.
Just moving quickly.
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