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Part Three... around 8,500 words.
Thanks for all the kind feedback! :;hugs::
Boundaries
Part Three
Sleep, when it came, which was late, left Blair bleary-eyed and sluggish at six in the morning. He checked out of his hotel room after making himself a pot of coffee; black, which he hated, but not as much as he hated the powdered creamer. The taste of the coffee lay acrid and sour at the back of his throat, combining with his toothpaste to make him feel sick to his stomach.
Or maybe that was just nerves because he was on his way to see Jim, and the drama of yesterday seemed ridiculous in the morning light. He blushed to think of what he'd done and said, even as his fingers curled tightly inward, a reflexive need to hold and take burning within.
Jim. He'd wanted Jim. Wanted to rip that towel away -- no, tug it gently, watch it fall -- no, use his teeth to -- oh, fuck.
He was just too used to fantasizing about the man; faced with the reality he still couldn't break the habit.
In his head, he'd made an agreeably compliant -- mostly -- Jim have long, involved, intense conversations with him, conversations the real Jim would have reduced to a single, disbelieving, incredulous stare. Jim could be eloquent and Jim could be insightful, but there was no way he was Laura Rossner, Blair's therapist from the age of fifteen to seventeen. When he'd put her words in Jim's mouth once too often he'd realized what he was doing.
The Jim in his head had reverted back to something approaching realistic after that, which meant Blair lost more of the arguments than seemed fair.
He'd come to conclusions; had insights. Seven years of working on one problem had squeezed it dry of meaning, a husk, empty and hollow.
Oh, it hadn't been all he'd been concerned about, no. Life had a way of making sure you were distracted from misery from time to time by the mundane and the necessary. He'd also been lucky to have found a job that was both absorbing and familiar, one he could lose himself in.
No. Naomi had found him a job. Still gentled with guilt to a dim reflection of her usual exuberance when she was around him, she'd shaken her tree of contacts and a rosy, sweet apple had rolled to Blair's feet.
He'd been at Bellingham College in a British Columbian town not far from Vancouver long enough to feel settled there, which was an odd feeling. Had finally gotten his doctorate, had published papers and one thin book, to a kinder reception than he'd expected. Had he set the academic world alight the way he once dreamed of doing? No. He'd settled for less.
He supposed he should feel ashamed of that; see it as a failure. Maybe it was, but he tried to see it as maturity. Only the young really thought fame and fortune was theirs for the wishing and Blair didn't feel young anymore.
Which left him knowing Jim better. There'd always been a gap between them, not so much of actual, counted years, but of experience. Jim had done all the adult, responsible things; had a career -- two, in fact -- had gotten married, had owned property, had a savings account, retirement plans…
Blair had owned boxes, filled with stuff, and had been perpetually poised on the brink when it came to work, neither fish nor fowl at Rainier, lacking credentials.
Well, he had them now. And he owned a small house, with a tiny yard whose size didn't matter because behind it was a wood, wild and rambling for miles, and he had a circle of friends, a routine of sorts, the occasional expedition to break the… No. It wasn't monotony. It was life and he was living it.
And if he was living it alone for the most part, that was by choice. He wasn't celibate and he rarely felt lonely.
There was just something missing, a void he'd learned to navigate expertly around, skirting the edges, even in his dreams.
Jim.
Jim was missing and it was all so fucking stupid.
Blair parked his car where he always used to and stared up at the lit windows of Jim's loft.
Seven years' worth of stupid.
***
Complete success, hair will grow back soon, yes, there's a bit of fuzz showing, I can see it, here let me show you with this mirror, oh, look, time for your pills, don't you want to finish your Jell-O, do you need a vase for those flowers, no, no calls from a Detective Ellison, no, but someone named Megan sent you this stuffed kangaroo…
He'd stopped asking Simon where Jim was, and why, in the two weeks of his hospital stay, his partner, his so-called fucking best friend, hadn't called or visited. Watching Simon fumble through excuses about pressure of work, big case, maybe he called and you were asleep, he asks after you, you know, wasn't all that amusing.
And Blair was fairly sure Jim wasn't asking because he wouldn't need to, would he? People would update him because everyone else he knew had tiptoed in to visit him, anxious, bright smiles mellowing to relief when they saw him sitting up, not dying.
Of course, they'd expect Jim to know about Blair's progress already, but Blair could see Jim letting them chatter and gleaning what he needed to know, allowing his taciturnity to be put down to his concern.
Only Simon knew that Jim hadn't visited; everyone else assumed he had, because why wouldn't he? Megan had told him how tired Jim looked; Joel how snappy he was. They'd put it down to worry and they were probably driving Jim crazy by being very, very kind to him.
Jim deserved that. He deserved worse. Blair put himself to sleep at night counting, not sheep, but painful ways for Jim to die.
Simon came in the night before Blair was due to be discharged, a bag with a change of clothes in his hand. He'd been to the loft, then.
"Got a meeting tomorrow morning," he said. "Won't be able to take you home." He scowled and finally asked the question Blair had been waiting for. "Just what's going on, Blair? Where's Jim?"
Hearing his own question echoed back at him was strange. It forced him to acknowledge that he knew the answer and hadn't needed to ask it.
He'd gotten a halfway truth rehearsed and ready.
He let his eyes show some hurt and bewilderment -- not much, Jim was his friend, just his friend, nothing more, just a friend -- and met Simon's gaze as he settled into the chair by the bed.
"I don't know!" Simon opened his mouth and Blair cut him off. He didn't want Simon making guesses that might come too close to the truth. "But you know it's been a hell of a year."
"You died," Simon said with a grunt. "I'd say that was a fair description."
"Yes… and then all the fuss about the diss and the book deal…" Blair spread his hands. "Jim and me, we're solid. We're friends. But it left us in a weird place, you know? And when this trip came up, well, he didn't want me to go."
"Worried about you?" Simon asked shrewdly.
Blair gave him a nicely judged rueful smile. "You know Jim. He takes the big brother thing seriously. I'm a rookie cop in his eyes and, well…" He let his smile fade. "He's lost partners before, Simon. More than one. I think --"
"I get it," Simon interrupted, with a sharp nod of his head. "So knowing you two, you left with a few words said on both sides you regret?"
"Hell, yes," Blair said fervently. "I've got a badge, done my training… it's not like I don’t know what it's like out there, now is it? And a trip to Lima; God, I wasn't going to turn that down! Fascinating city."
'Yeah," Simon said dryly. "I've been, remember?" He chewed his lip. "Okay. So you get back, collapse, and what? He's feeling guilty because he thinks he shouldn't have let you go, should have tried harder?" Simon stabbed his finger at Blair. "And we -- Jim and I -- we know what went down over there now. All the details about your little accident and who was behind it." Simon smiled, thin and cold. "Thought Jim was going to yell loud enough that they'd hear him in Peru the way he was carrying on."
Blair filed that proof of caring away to think about --gloat over -- later, and gave Simon an approving smile that wasn't at all fake. Perfect. It was Simon's theory so he'd want to believe it, and it was mostly true, so it felt right. "You know, I think that's it, Simon." He shook his head, moving from hurt to fond exasperation. "That overprotective big jerk. And if he thinks he's gotten out of buying me grapes, he can forget it. I'm going to send him out for a big bunch of them." He smirked. "Or maybe I'll make him treat me to dinner at that new Thai place on Second; the expensive one."
Simon grinned back at him, looking supremely relieved. "You do that. Now, while I'm here, I might as well sort out your sick leave. Rhonda sent over these forms…"
***
Blair raised his hand to knock on the door, dealing with the memories of doing this seven years earlier and getting turned away, and let it fall again. In a bare thread of a whisper he said, "Jim? I'm here."
The door swung open a moment later. "I heard you from when you left the car," Jim said. "Every footstep, the time you coughed, you saying hello to that stray cat." He spoke slowly, wonderingly. "I'd forgotten…"
"Yeah, well," Blair said awkwardly, relearning the way a Sentinel could make you feel like a specimen under a microscope. "Good. That's good, Jim." He smiled, a quick twitch of his lips. "Can I come in? Or do you just want to go?"
Jim stepped back. "I've got more than I can carry, so I'd appreciate a hand."
"I've got my own backpack in my car," Blair said. He eyed the stack of equipment dubiously. "I think we need to leave some of this behind. It's not like when we used to drive right to the fishing spot; we're going to be hiking in."
"Oh." Jim rubbed his hand over his chin in a well-remembered gesture. "Yeah, you mentioned that yesterday but I wasn't --" He shrugged. "You showing up like that; my senses coming back -- I wasn't really paying attention. Sorry."
He sounded indifferent, not apologetic, and Blair was willing to bet there were two tents in the pile of equipment.
"Leave the tents," he said. "Forecast is for warm and dry and it won't be the first time we've slept out. Same for the cooking stove; we can pack in enough food and build our own fire if we need it." He walked over to examine the gear more closely and then snorted. "And you can forget the fishing rod."
Jim's mouth tightened. He picked a backpack with a rolled sleeping bag attached to it out of the pile and raised his eyebrows. "Then I'm ready."
***
Blair made it to the loft door without stopping to catch his breath but his heart was pounding. Shit. He hated feeling this weak but he'd been told he could expect to feel this way for a few weeks while his body recovered from the stress it'd been under. At least the headaches had gone.
He got out his key and then slid it back into his pocket as the loft door opened.
Jim looked like hell, but at least he was home.
"Hey," Blair said, as neutrally as possible. "Simon tell you I was coming home today?"
Jim nodded, his gaze flickering over Blair without meeting his eyes.
"Can I come in, then?" Blair asked impatiently. "I want a shower and then I'm going to crash. Man, I'm wiped out just from the cab ride."
Jim stepped aside, a frown creasing his forehead.
"And you can start talking any time now," Blair told him, walking in and noting that it smelled a little fresher than the last time. Which he wasn't thinking about.
Jim cleared his throat. "I thought Simon was going to give you a ride. Blair --"
"Yes, I know," Blair said hurriedly, interrupting him. "Got a lot to talk about, I know, but God, I don't think I can right now. Can we just --"
"No."
Blair sighed and turned to face him. The words of complaint got stuck in his throat. His room was empty. He hadn't been sleeping in it much; with Jim waiting for him in their bed upstairs it didn't hold much appeal, apart from the odd time when he woke restless and hyper and padded down to his own bed where he could toss and turn without feeling that he was disturbing Jim.
Now it was empty. And the contents weren't in the loft because, spinning around slowly, he could see that nothing of his was.
"You’ve kicked me out again."
"Yes." Jim walked over to the table and picked up a form and some car keys. "It's all in a van parked outside. Here's the rental agreement -- I've paid for a week, unlimited mileage -- and here are the keys. I figured that would give you time to find somewhere." He tapped a stack of newspapers. "I've found some places that look good and circled them, but obviously, it's up to you. If you need help moving, I'm sure Simon or --"
"Tell me, Jim," Blair said, his voice shaking because so help him he was close to committing a major crime of his own right then. "Whole wheat or white bagel? Navy socks or black?"
"What?"
"If you're organizing my life, don't stop with the big stuff; go all the way." Deliberately crude, he patted his groin. "Want me to dress to the left or the right?"
"For God's sake, Blair!"
"Why have you kicked me out?"
"I knew you'd be leaving and I was trying to make it as easy as possible," Jim said. "I was trying to help."
"Help?" Blair heard his voice crack. "Help would have been coming to get me so I didn't have to spend twenty minutes waiting for a cab. Help would have been showing up at the hospital so I didn't spend two fucking days convinced you'd died and no one wanted to tell me."
"Died?" Jim looked incredulous.
"Yes. You're a cop and cops can die. We both know that."
"Everybody can die," Jim said. He looked at Blair directly. "You came close again, didn't you?"
"But not close enough to get a visit."
"I came once," Jim said. "I just didn't get close enough for you to see me."
"Nice," Blair said bitterly. "Very man of mystery."
"Don't make this harder than it has to be."
"Why? Why shouldn't it be hard? Why shouldn't it hurt?" Blair was yelling but he didn't care. "You're kicking me out again." He spaced the words. "Again. And I didn't do anything. Tell me what I did to deserve this."
"Nothing," Jim said with a terrifying gentleness. "I did. I fucked it up and it made me see that I can't do this. That I don't want this, not with you."
"So what about work? Huh? You going to ask for a new partner?"
"No. I'm going to go back to working alone."
"And what about me? You expect me to put in for a transfer?"
He wouldn't get one. No one would want him.
"Well, you don't have to -- I mean --" Jim was stumbling over the words. "If you're not with me, you don't need to be a cop anymore. You can get on with your life. Chief, this isn't a punishment, this is a second chance for you."
"Fuck this," Blair said. He stalked forward and jammed a finger into Jim's chest. "Unpack the fucking van. Get my stuff back in here where it belongs. And then tell me what the fuck you think you're doing screwing around on me like that with that stick up his ass loser -- oh, wait, did he have something more interesting up there? Like your dick?"
Jim closed his eyes. Looking sick. When he opened them again, they were cold and distant. "Sometimes, yes."
"Sometimes? You saw him more than once?" Blair choked over the outrage he felt. He'd been prepared to forgive a one-night stand. He knew how it could happen, regretted even as it was in progress, and he'd been prepared to be magnanimous, man of the world about it.
After ripping Jim a new one and some brutally hot make up sex.
Finding out that his own two-month old relationship -- if you didn't count the weeks abroad -- was threatened by one possibly half that length was a shock.
"I met him before you left," Jim said.
"Are you lying to me?" Blair asked after a long moment had gone by and those words still didn't make any sense.
Jim shook his head. "I'm not lying, I swear. Blair, you need to go. I'm late for work."
Blair walked out of the door Jim was holding open, a new set of keys jangling in his pocket, and down the stairs, holding back the emotions, refusing to give into the desire to punch walls, scream, vent.
Let Jim hear him walk away with some dignity.
He drove away, carefully, slowly, and didn't throw up until he was inside a motel room, crouched over a toilet, the sweet, chemical stink of the cleaner prompting his stomach to try and turn itself inside out.
The next day he found out that his key didn't work in the lock on Jim's door and by nightfall he was miles away from Cascade and heading south.
***
"Pull over here," Blair said, touching Jim's arm.
"Why?"
"Just do it."
Jim sighed and turned, bringing the truck to a halt in the middle of a parking lot, half empty since it was close to a row of shops, none of which would open for a few hours.
"Well?"
"You don't remember this place?"
Jim shrugged. "Driven past it a few times."
"It's where we left the truck when we did that boundary walk," Blair reminded him.
After a disinterested glance around, Jim nodded. "Yeah, I recognize it now. Don't see why you wanted to pull over, though."
"Since I left, have you ever done that walk again?"
"No."
"Ever felt you needed to?" Blair persisted.
"Where are you going with this, Chief?"
"Where am I going with it," Blair muttered to himself. He shoved his hands through his hair, a gesture he'd never lost even now, when there was nothing much to push back. "Jim -- just work with me here, will you?"
Jim sighed and turned the key, silencing the engine. "Five minutes and then we hit the road, okay?"
Knowing that the time limit was flexible and the difficult part was getting Jim to agree to listen -- or it always used to be -- Blair relaxed and chose his words without too much care. He was out of practice at this brand of persuasion and debate, but it was all coming back to him.
"You worked out where the boundaries were, but it's not really the place you protect, as much as the people." He watched Jim absorb that and give him a grudging nod. "Right, right; because if something happened and the tribe had to move; a flood, a drought, whatever, the Sentinel would move with them."
"Sure."
Okay, that had been easy.
"And so, if someone, one of the tribe, crossed the border, I'm guessing you'd still feel a responsibility toward them?"
"You mean you," Jim said, a not entirely friendly smile on his lips. "You need to work on subtle, Sandburg. You never used to be this easy to read."
"Yes, I mean me, " Blair snapped. "And I wasn't trying to hide where I was going." He took a calming breath. "What I'm asking is this; do you still think of me as one of the tribe?"
Jim turned away, staring out of the window at nothing Blair could see. "I guess."
It was better than nothing. He'd hoped for something a little more positive, a little more certain, but it wasn't no.
"So when I went away, the boundary shifted," Blair went on, talking fast, which he'd learned to do to keep people's interest, a habit he'd refined into a trademark.
An irritating one, according to a lot of his lecturers and Jim himself, but he'd sooner be annoying than ignored.
Jim glanced over at him at that, a familiar, 'what bullshit is this?' expression on his face.
"It shifted to encompass me," Blair said, aware that he sounded egotistical but the hell with it.
"If you say so." Jim yawned pointedly. "One minute."
"The hell it is! Another three at least," Blair said. He gathered his thoughts and let Jim have them. "Simon said you looked for me, and I dropped you in it by saying you didn't need to, but that's not quite true, is it? There was a time when you didn't know where I was. I was too pissed off at you to get in touch for a while, until after I'd settled down at Bellingham."
Jim gave him a terse nod without speaking.
"And that had to have killed you," Blair said steadily. "You built up your own tribe, people you were close to -- hell, no single Sentinel can know a whole city -- and I was part of that inner circle from the moment we met. And you didn't know where I was, did you? You'd forced me away, convinced yourself it was what you had to do to keep me safe, happy, but you needed to have a -- a focal point. You needed to know where I was."
His voice was gathering strength from Jim's silence and he was exulting in how right this felt, tumblers falling into place, a lock yielding.
"And you found me, didn't you, Jim?"
He hadn't known that before, but it made sense now.
"You looked for me and I wasn't hiding, not really, so you found me, you had to have found me."
The color was rising in Jim's face now and his fingers were clutching the wheel convulsively, flexing, squeezing.
"Oh, my God," Blair said, riding the revelation. "You came to see me, didn't you? You fucking walked the boundary and put me back inside it."
He felt breathless, winded.
Jim sighed, the tension leaving him. "Yeah. Not literally walked this time. But I went to -- I saw your house. I didn't see you, but I -- I heard you. It was enough."
"I'm trying to find the words here to describe just how much you suck," Blair said coldly. "Just drive, will you? Get us out of here."
"You've still got a couple of minutes to talk."
"I'm done."
"Maybe I'm not." Jim's hand turned Blair's face toward him, the tips of his fingers light and warm against Blair's jaw. Jim waited until Blair sighed, surrendering to the inevitable, and let his hand fall away.
"I didn't go in because you were with someone. A man. You were -- it was late and you were having sex. Laughing. Happy. I didn't plan to knock at your door anyway, but that kind of sealed it. I just needed to know you were okay, Blair. It was -- yes, it was killing me not being sure --" Jim gave him a pained smile. "I wasn't really in a good place right then. Wasn't sleeping, eating -- senses all over the place… I sat in the truck outside your apartment, across the road under this oak tree --"
"Suffolk Street," Blair said, remembering that tree. Shouldn't he have known Jim had been there? Had a dream, a fucking vision? Hell of a shaman he'd turned out to be. "I was only there a month; too far away from campus."
And the man he was with, well, that could have been one of half a dozen. It'd coincided with one of his manic, fuck anyone who smiled back phases.
"I don't remember the street name," Jim said. "I just remember falling asleep listening to your voice, then you sleeping. I was so tired. I'd been there a few hours when a cop tapped on the window. I didn't want it to get complicated so I didn't flash my badge, though I bet he ran my plate, and once he'd made sure I wasn't drunk he let me drive away, didn't pull me in." Jim sighed, contemplating his fingernails and then picking at a loose thread on the seam of his jeans. "Didn't want to go. Every mile, I felt the weight of it all settle back down on me. Everything on my shoulders; no one to help --"
"Whose fault was that?" Blair demanded. "Not mine!"
"None of it was your fault, Blair." Jim turned the key. "We should get going."
"Wait." Blair grabbed at Jim's sleeve. "Jim --"
"It's too late now." Jim sounded gentle but certain. "Whatever mistakes I made, I made them; it's done. I'm glad we can talk and you're not -- you don't hate -- but we can't make this right, so don't think anything's changed. It hasn't. And it won't."
"And you're happy with that?"
"I haven't been happy about much of anything since you left."
"At the risk of repeating myself, you kicked me out, remember?"
"Since you left for Peru," Jim clarified. "And, yes, that I do blame you for, Chief, partly, at least. Leave it now, will you?" He pulled out of the parking lot, his hands steady, his expression distant again. "I can't drive and argue at the same time."
"Since when?" Blair said incredulously, but he let it go as they left the city and drove north.
***
The woods welcomed them like water greets a stone, parting for them, a shoulder's width wide, and then closing around them. Within a mile, Blair was lost, the rough map he'd made and handed over to Jim a fading mess of pencil lines in his head.
It didn't matter. Once Jim got them to the clearing, Blair knew just what to do.
The sun was warm on his head, filtered through leaves and robbed of power. He trod softly on the ground, each snapped twig, each rustled leaf, a rebuke.
Jim was noiseless, drifting, lost in thoughts he wasn't sharing.
It had been a quiet drive.
Blair had a lot to think about. After years of nothing new, wearied to the point of nausea of going over old ground, he wasn't quite sure what to do with what Jim had told him.
If he'd known back then that Jim had been out there, outside his apartment, he'd have left his bed, and whoever was in it -- hell, he'd have stopped mid-fucking-orgasm -- and gone to him. He'd have made Jim see reason, explain -- which was why Jim hadn't given him the chance.
He still didn't get it. Oh, the initial reaction that had led to Jim packing up his stuff, sure. Jim was feeling guilty and overreacting. The man had a way of doing that which had sometimes made Blair marvel that he was seen as the dramatic one, the emotional one.
But to keep it up for years; to even now hold out no hope of a reconciliation -- Blair didn't get it. Didn't get it at all.
And this time he wasn't leaving until he did.
He couldn't force Jim to take him back, but he could get him to explain why they'd both spent seven fucking years apart.
Jim had better have a good reason because seven years was -- Blair frowned. Jim had paused, as he'd done before, but he wasn't scanning the trees and the sky and the compass in his head and then striking off a few degrees to the west or something.
No, he was standing still.
Zoned.
Blair eased his pack off his shoulders with a sigh and put it down. Rubbing at sweaty, chafed skin where the straps had dug in, he walked up to Jim and around him.
"Jim? Snap out of it, man. What is it this time?" He shut up and listened; couldn't hear or smell anything out of the ordinary, so that left sight. Unless Jim was zoning on something subtle, in which case, he'd have to dig deeper. He followed Jim's blank gaze to a wind-blown leaf tapping against a branch in a deceptively desultory rhythm. Why it'd caught Jim's eye, he didn't know, but it didn't matter. He moved to block it from Jim's sight and continued talking about nothing until, in a fit of exasperation, he went for a more traditional way to waken Sleeping Beauty and kissed Jim, full on his parted lips.
He'd meant it to be a quick peck, as brief and as impersonal as a kiss could be, and knew before their lips touched that it wasn't going to happen that way. Jim hummed at the first contact, a low, vibrant sound, caught in his throat, and Blair echoed it, his tongue flicking against Jim's upper lip, making Jim open wider for him.
Jim shrugged off his pack and it fell to the forest floor with a muffled thud. Freed of its weight, he pulled Blair closer, his eyes still hazy, and Blair let himself be taken and held cradled against Jim's chest even as he planted his feet wider, making sure he wasn't off-balance. He wasn't entirely sure Jim knew what he was doing, which meant he couldn't let this go far, but he wasn't going to step back.
He needed this. And he could quell any rising guilt with the conviction that Jim did, too.
How long since Jim had been touched, hugged, held? The most basic of comforts -- ask any crying child -- and it was withheld from adults as if it was something you grew out of, when you didn't, you never did.
He let his mouth move away from Jim's in a gradual way, punctuating the sweep of his lips down to the place where shoulder and neck met with light, dotted kisses. Then he stood and breathed in the scent of Jim's skin, the thin, clean cotton of his T-shirt and the waxy smell of his light jacket before nuzzling into Jim's neck. His hands moved over Jim's back in slow, soothing strokes.
Really needed this.
Jim sighed and turned his head. Blair felt the deliberate press of Jim's lips against his temple and then he was standing alone, his arms empty.
"We can break for food at the top of that ridge," Jim said, nodding off to the left. "Think you can make it that far, Chief? You're looking a little tired."
Blair retrieved his backpack in silence and waited for Jim to shrug his back on before replying.
"You know that promise I made Simon?"
Something flickered in Jim's eyes, a wary expectancy. "What about it?"
"I'm not going to break it until you ask me to."
"I'm not going to ask."
Blair smiled. Dangerous to taunt Jim; the guy was stubborn as hell. But sometimes he just couldn't help it.
"You need to practice saying that like you mean it, Jim."
"And you need to stop fucking pushing me," Jim snapped. "Jesus, Blair, what do you think this is doing to me?"
"I don't know. Tell me."
Jim licked his lips and then bit down on the lower one until Blair saw the skin turn white. "It's making me wish I could tie you to a tree and come back for you later."
"Well, you fucking can't," Blair snapped back. He felt his cheeks burn, humiliation and frustration building up. "You need me to find what we're here for."
"Not really." Jim hitched his pack higher and began to walk away. "You've told me where the clearing is. I can probably take it from there. See where the ground was disturbed… smell the metal of the box…"
"Zone again and get eaten by a bear…"
Jim grinned. His back was to Blair, but he just knew Jim was grinning. He picked up a pine cone and threw it at Jim's retreating head.
It missed.
Jim glanced back.
Oh, yeah. Grinning.
***
They reached the clearing in the early evening, with the sky darkening around them. Jim suggested that they make a start on locating the buried box but he did it half-heartedly and accepted Blair's exhausted, 'you're fucking kidding me, right?' without argument.
It had been a long day.
After eating and washing at a stream a short walk away, the cool water a delicious shock against Blair's hands and face, they settled down beside a fire, built less for warmth than for light and a deterrent for the bugs.
Blair knew that they were going to talk and he thought that Jim had accepted that inevitability, but there didn't seem to be any real urgency to start.
The wind rose, sending last year's leaves skittering over the tumble of rocks that lay across the eastern end of the clearing -- Jim had given them a speculative look and then raised his eyebrows at Blair, who'd summoned the energy to smirk and shake his head. Blair wondered what else Jim could hear, and how it felt after going without the senses for so long, and then shrugged and asked him. Why not?
Jim was there. He could reply. Not a conjured figment, a puppet.
"It's like waking up," Jim said, the prosaic words given a deeper meaning by the way he spoke them, slow, considering, certain. "And it… hurts. I'm stretched out. Spread thin." Too dark now, and the flickering flames and rising sparks of the fire were between them, but Blair could see the blue of Jim's eyes, translucent, light, captured behind his own eyelids, every time he blinked.
"I'm everywhere," Jim finished, his voice quiet because it didn't need to be loud out here, with nothing to fight but the crackle of fire and a distant breeze.
"No boundaries…"
"No place to hide, you mean. Not for either of us." Jim's gaze held Blair's. "It's been getting stronger since we came into the woods. My senses -- they don't just feel back online; they feel… intensified. I can control them but my range is just --"
He closed his eyes, and inhaled slowly and then released it, his expression peaceful but intent. Blair had seen too many people meditating not to recognize that look.
"I can hear your blood flowing, the beat of your eyelashes as you blink." Jim's voice was assured, strong. His lips curled upwards. "Your belly rumbling. Hell, I can hear your hair growing." His eyes opened. "And it's not because I've forgotten what it's like, Chief, so don't say it. You know my range, across the board. Test me all you want and you'll see I'm right."
"Tomorrow," Blair said. "If you still want to. Now dial it back and just listen to what I'm saying."
Jim picked up a stick and prodded the fire, making it burn higher for a moment. Through the transient trickery of the firelight Blair saw Jim's face as he remembered it, not as it was, and felt his throat close on a choking wave of love.
He bowed his head, riding it out, and prayed to whoever was listening that Jim had pulled back his awareness.
"I can't listen if you don't talk," Jim said mildly.
"Just give me a moment, will you?" Blair managed to say. He found a pebble in the grass beside him and picked it up, the hard, smooth lump cool against his palm. Using a stress management technique he'd picked up from his mother, he pushed all of his excess emotions into the pebble and then threw it away, as hard as he could.
Jim tracked it with a quick turn of his head and then glanced over. "Is that a test? You want me to find it in the morning?"
"Could you?" Blair asked. That would be way beyond anything Jim could have done in the past. The pebble -- hell, even he didn't know what it looked like, although he thought he'd know its weight and shape -- had gone a long way and fallen into grass, littered, as his body would probably discover firsthand once he tried to sleep, with similar pebbles.
"Think so. You held it, so it'll smell of you, and I remember where it went and what it hit on the way that changed its trajectory." Jim looked pleased with himself. "I'll do it when it's light. It'll be harder then because your scent will have faded."
"Over-achiever," Blair muttered.
"Yeah, yeah…" Jim waved his hand in a lazy dismissal. "Look who's talking, Doctor Sandburg."
"You know about that, too?" Blair demanded.
Looking as if he was regretting his words, Jim glanced away and then sighed and rubbed his hand over the back of his neck. "If it's in print or online about you, I know it. I've kept track of you."
"That doesn't make sense," Blair said. "You cared enough to do that and every time I called you wouldn't even talk to me? Not even to say 'fuck you, Blair' in words instead of letting me get the message when you hung up on me?"
"If you'd needed me, I'd have answered," Jim said, looking surprised. "If you were in trouble. But once a year, on my birthday… hell, I make those phone calls to people, too, and they're never to anyone I care about much."
"If I'd needed you?" Blair repeated, barely able to get the words out past his rising anger. "You thought I didn't?"
"You never sounded sad," Jim told him. "Just pissed off. I gave up on you getting over hating me and I just hoped you were dealing with life better than I was."
"I never hated --" Blair paused. "I never stopped loving you," he amended. "Yeah, there were moments when I'd have applied to be the president of the 'we hate Jim Ellison' club but I was usually drunk or drowning in loneliness and wanting to see you so much I --" He took a steadying breath. "That promise about not pushing is broken the hell and back, isn't it?"
"You haven't crawled into my sleeping bag yet," Jim said.
"True." Blair cleared his throat. "You're, ah, lying on it. Makes it tricky."
There was a lot he wanted to say to Jim. A lot of questions. A lot of persuasive, logical pointing out of the obvious.
Jim reached out, took the zipper of the bag in his thumb and forefinger, and tugged. The zipper ran smoothly down, exposing the pale lining. Jim shifted back, off the bag, and folded the top layer back invitingly. "All yours, Chief."
"I'm not crawling."
"I don't want you to. If you want me to, well, I'll --"
"I don't."
"Good." Jim's hand closed around the soft fabric, hard enough that Blair could feel the tension in his own hand and realized he'd made a fist, too. "Blair… I haven't changed my mind about us getting back together no matter what happens out here. We can't -- it's too late. We've moved on. You've got a perfect life, everything you wanted, everything you deserve -- and you do deserve it, Chief, you deserve every bit of it."
"God, will you shut up?" Blair muttered. He went to work on his bootlaces. "You just don't get it, do you? Everything I want I had for two fucking months and you know when they were."
"No, you didn't." Jim sounded surprisingly calm. "Selective memory. We were fighting all the time."
His boots came off and he hoped Jim got hit with a noseful of stink because he deserved it. "No, we weren't."
"Fucking to make up, not because we wanted to," Jim went on.
He skinned out of his jeans but left his shorts and socks on. "Speak for yourself, little buddy. I was in lust with your body, worshiping at the shrine. I'd have bent over for you or fucked your brains out any time you wanted it, anywhere we could get away with it."
"I was so fucking possessive. God, the way I acted when you looked at someone -- I knew what I was doing and how sick and fucked-up it was, I just couldn't --"
Jacket, shirt, leave his T-shirt on. Jim might have an access all areas pass to his body but it didn't mean the mosquitoes did. "Typical behavior of someone not used to a long-term relationship, and when you add in all the crap we'd gone through with Alex and your need to keep me close because of all the freaky Sentinel stuff… bound to get messy. You'd have calmed down, or I'd have smacked you around the head until you got the message I wasn't going anywhere --" His voice faltered. Shit. Two mistakes in one sentence. Shit.
Jim eyed him sadly. "Except I was the one who hit you. And you did go somewhere. You left me when I'd asked -- when I'd begged you not to."
"Because you were being unreasonable! And I don't give a fuck about you hitting me. Not when it was just once. Not then. I know you wouldn't have done it again -- and I've come close to punching you often enough to know it's a line that's easily crossed."
"Except you didn't." Jim's mouth twisted. "Okay, maybe the night you came back from Peru, you tried, but you weren't really yourself, were you, Chief?"
"I'm not programmed to fight the way you are. Forget it. I have." Blair decided that crawling actually wasn't a bad way of closing the distance fast and scrambled around the fire and into the cocoon of the sleeping bag. He put his hand on Jim's arm. Warm skin, tense muscles. "Why did it matter so much me taking that transfer? You didn't trust me out there? You didn't trust me to come back? What?"
"I'd been having visions of you dying," Jim said tiredly. "Every night. Those dreams where everything's blue and you're a fucking wolf."
"And you didn't tell me?" Blair said, too stunned to even feel angry. "Jim? Jim? You had a vision I was in danger and you didn't even --"
"I told you not to go."
"Not the same, man, that is just not the same." Blair kicked his way free of the sleeping bag and knelt up beside Jim. "I thought you were pulling more of the insecure crap! If you'd told me you were having visions, I'd have listened."
"Would you? I doubt Simon would be impressed by that as an excuse when it was all arranged, and you were all about being his blue-eyed boy those first months. You’d have decided forewarned was enough and you'd have gone."
"You didn't tell me," Blair said numbly, trying to process that betrayal. "You let me go --"
"I let you go," Jim agreed. "And I deserved to lose you for that."
"You already had," Blair said, bitterness from an old wound rising up, sour and acrid. "That guy you were with when I came back; you were already --"
"No." Jim swallowed. "I didn't -- I let you think that I was, but I wasn't."
"You swore that was true," Blair said tensely, leaning forward, getting in Jim's face. "You had to know it was the last fucking straw --"
"Of course I did," Jim said, sighing. "And I didn't lie. I said I met him before you left. I did. As a lawyer on a case I worked when you were at the academy. He made it plain he was interested; I made it really clear I wasn't, without admitting anything. When you went… I was drinking one night, trying to pass out more than anything, and he called and… I just, I --"
"There aren't enough words in the language to describe how I'm feeling right now," Blair said calmly, from the emptiness that had hollowed him out. "How much I want to --"
"Hurt me?" Jim shook his head. " No need, Blair. All taken care of. I did it for you."
And it was that simple in the end. A few minute's conversation and a few words and he knew why Jim had turned his back and stayed that way.
"Seven years. Seven fucking years --" His voice rose from a whisper to a tortured, anguished scream that ripped at his throat, on his feet by the time he'd finished, instinct taking him there to the higher ground, his body responding to the thick, heady musk of lust and violence swirling around him.
He wanted Jim's blood on his knuckles, wanted to rip and punch and tear at the man who'd done this to him -- to them both. Wanted it enough that he was sick with it. He was breathing in hoarse, ragged gasps, his heart pounding, his body shaken with fury.
And Jim sat there, his hands loosely clasped on his bent up knees, his head lowered, the bare, cool nape of his nape exposed.
It was as close as Jim would ever get to showing his belly in supplication to a predator and it sliced Blair's anger away from him cleanly and left only the vast sorrow at the waste.
He doubled over, going to his knees, and then his stomach, pounding his fists against the grass and earth and stone, tears and snot and noise pouring out of him, lost in the space around them, the miles of emptiness.
No one listening who cared, who understood, but Jim, and Blair was mourning for him as much as for himself.
He felt the skin on his hands shred and bleed, felt the jarring thud of each blow he dealt the earth, breathed in wet salt in place of air, and only stopped when his exhausted body betrayed him.
A hand fell onto his head in a clumsy caress and he rolled to his back and stared up through tears at Jim's face. "Blair --"
Jim was crying, too. He'd made Jim cry. Jim never cried.
"Please don't -- that was enough, please don't -- don't, Blair, don't. Don't hurt yourself, don't --"
The words were junk, garbled, stumbled over, broken syllables that reformed in Blair's mind, translated, comprehended.
Jim was touching him, hands on his face, wiping away tears and worse and not doing a good job of it, then cradling Blair's hands in his, which hurt, hurt like hell.
"Up," Blair said, as clearly as he could. "Help me up."
His hands were released and Jim pulled him into a sitting position with one arm around his neck and a fistful of Blair's shirt.
Then he put his forehead on Blair's shoulder. "I'm sorry."
The words were muffled but Blair heard them. He just couldn't answer them in any honest way. He settled for murmuring, "I know."
Because he did.
He just wasn't sure it was enough.
They stayed in an awkward hug, Blair's arms around Jim, his hands stuck out stiffly, throbbing painfully, Jim's head heavy on Blair's shoulder, unbalancing him, until Blair sighed.
"We need to get cleaned up. Emotional catharses -- well, the aftermath's a bitch."
Jim lifted his head and sniffed, a prosaic, necessary sniff that did as much as anything to draw a line under what had just happened. "You're still talking to me, then?"
"Looks like it." Blair unwound his arms from around Jim's body and examined his hands in the inadequate light. "Ow."
"Will you let me take care of them for you?"
"Sure." Blair frowned. "Why are you even asking?"
Jim picked away a pine needle clinging to the base of Blair's thumb. "Because it's going to hurt like hell."
"Oh." Blair looked away from the damage he'd inflicted on himself and watched Jim empty his backpack in search of the first aid kit. "It was that or hit you."
"I got that. Thanks, I guess."
"You guess?"
"You'd have hurt yourself less hitting me."
"Why is that?" Blair demanded. "Think I wouldn't have got past your guard?"
"I wouldn't have tried to stop you." Jim came back to him and dropped some supplies into Blair's lap. "I'm going to get some water. I'll be right back."
"Why would it have hurt less?" Blair persisted.
Jim glanced at him as he straightened. "I like to think you'd have stopped sooner."
Final part
Thanks for all the kind feedback! :;hugs::
Boundaries
Part Three
Sleep, when it came, which was late, left Blair bleary-eyed and sluggish at six in the morning. He checked out of his hotel room after making himself a pot of coffee; black, which he hated, but not as much as he hated the powdered creamer. The taste of the coffee lay acrid and sour at the back of his throat, combining with his toothpaste to make him feel sick to his stomach.
Or maybe that was just nerves because he was on his way to see Jim, and the drama of yesterday seemed ridiculous in the morning light. He blushed to think of what he'd done and said, even as his fingers curled tightly inward, a reflexive need to hold and take burning within.
Jim. He'd wanted Jim. Wanted to rip that towel away -- no, tug it gently, watch it fall -- no, use his teeth to -- oh, fuck.
He was just too used to fantasizing about the man; faced with the reality he still couldn't break the habit.
In his head, he'd made an agreeably compliant -- mostly -- Jim have long, involved, intense conversations with him, conversations the real Jim would have reduced to a single, disbelieving, incredulous stare. Jim could be eloquent and Jim could be insightful, but there was no way he was Laura Rossner, Blair's therapist from the age of fifteen to seventeen. When he'd put her words in Jim's mouth once too often he'd realized what he was doing.
The Jim in his head had reverted back to something approaching realistic after that, which meant Blair lost more of the arguments than seemed fair.
He'd come to conclusions; had insights. Seven years of working on one problem had squeezed it dry of meaning, a husk, empty and hollow.
Oh, it hadn't been all he'd been concerned about, no. Life had a way of making sure you were distracted from misery from time to time by the mundane and the necessary. He'd also been lucky to have found a job that was both absorbing and familiar, one he could lose himself in.
No. Naomi had found him a job. Still gentled with guilt to a dim reflection of her usual exuberance when she was around him, she'd shaken her tree of contacts and a rosy, sweet apple had rolled to Blair's feet.
He'd been at Bellingham College in a British Columbian town not far from Vancouver long enough to feel settled there, which was an odd feeling. Had finally gotten his doctorate, had published papers and one thin book, to a kinder reception than he'd expected. Had he set the academic world alight the way he once dreamed of doing? No. He'd settled for less.
He supposed he should feel ashamed of that; see it as a failure. Maybe it was, but he tried to see it as maturity. Only the young really thought fame and fortune was theirs for the wishing and Blair didn't feel young anymore.
Which left him knowing Jim better. There'd always been a gap between them, not so much of actual, counted years, but of experience. Jim had done all the adult, responsible things; had a career -- two, in fact -- had gotten married, had owned property, had a savings account, retirement plans…
Blair had owned boxes, filled with stuff, and had been perpetually poised on the brink when it came to work, neither fish nor fowl at Rainier, lacking credentials.
Well, he had them now. And he owned a small house, with a tiny yard whose size didn't matter because behind it was a wood, wild and rambling for miles, and he had a circle of friends, a routine of sorts, the occasional expedition to break the… No. It wasn't monotony. It was life and he was living it.
And if he was living it alone for the most part, that was by choice. He wasn't celibate and he rarely felt lonely.
There was just something missing, a void he'd learned to navigate expertly around, skirting the edges, even in his dreams.
Jim.
Jim was missing and it was all so fucking stupid.
Blair parked his car where he always used to and stared up at the lit windows of Jim's loft.
Seven years' worth of stupid.
***
Complete success, hair will grow back soon, yes, there's a bit of fuzz showing, I can see it, here let me show you with this mirror, oh, look, time for your pills, don't you want to finish your Jell-O, do you need a vase for those flowers, no, no calls from a Detective Ellison, no, but someone named Megan sent you this stuffed kangaroo…
He'd stopped asking Simon where Jim was, and why, in the two weeks of his hospital stay, his partner, his so-called fucking best friend, hadn't called or visited. Watching Simon fumble through excuses about pressure of work, big case, maybe he called and you were asleep, he asks after you, you know, wasn't all that amusing.
And Blair was fairly sure Jim wasn't asking because he wouldn't need to, would he? People would update him because everyone else he knew had tiptoed in to visit him, anxious, bright smiles mellowing to relief when they saw him sitting up, not dying.
Of course, they'd expect Jim to know about Blair's progress already, but Blair could see Jim letting them chatter and gleaning what he needed to know, allowing his taciturnity to be put down to his concern.
Only Simon knew that Jim hadn't visited; everyone else assumed he had, because why wouldn't he? Megan had told him how tired Jim looked; Joel how snappy he was. They'd put it down to worry and they were probably driving Jim crazy by being very, very kind to him.
Jim deserved that. He deserved worse. Blair put himself to sleep at night counting, not sheep, but painful ways for Jim to die.
Simon came in the night before Blair was due to be discharged, a bag with a change of clothes in his hand. He'd been to the loft, then.
"Got a meeting tomorrow morning," he said. "Won't be able to take you home." He scowled and finally asked the question Blair had been waiting for. "Just what's going on, Blair? Where's Jim?"
Hearing his own question echoed back at him was strange. It forced him to acknowledge that he knew the answer and hadn't needed to ask it.
He'd gotten a halfway truth rehearsed and ready.
He let his eyes show some hurt and bewilderment -- not much, Jim was his friend, just his friend, nothing more, just a friend -- and met Simon's gaze as he settled into the chair by the bed.
"I don't know!" Simon opened his mouth and Blair cut him off. He didn't want Simon making guesses that might come too close to the truth. "But you know it's been a hell of a year."
"You died," Simon said with a grunt. "I'd say that was a fair description."
"Yes… and then all the fuss about the diss and the book deal…" Blair spread his hands. "Jim and me, we're solid. We're friends. But it left us in a weird place, you know? And when this trip came up, well, he didn't want me to go."
"Worried about you?" Simon asked shrewdly.
Blair gave him a nicely judged rueful smile. "You know Jim. He takes the big brother thing seriously. I'm a rookie cop in his eyes and, well…" He let his smile fade. "He's lost partners before, Simon. More than one. I think --"
"I get it," Simon interrupted, with a sharp nod of his head. "So knowing you two, you left with a few words said on both sides you regret?"
"Hell, yes," Blair said fervently. "I've got a badge, done my training… it's not like I don’t know what it's like out there, now is it? And a trip to Lima; God, I wasn't going to turn that down! Fascinating city."
'Yeah," Simon said dryly. "I've been, remember?" He chewed his lip. "Okay. So you get back, collapse, and what? He's feeling guilty because he thinks he shouldn't have let you go, should have tried harder?" Simon stabbed his finger at Blair. "And we -- Jim and I -- we know what went down over there now. All the details about your little accident and who was behind it." Simon smiled, thin and cold. "Thought Jim was going to yell loud enough that they'd hear him in Peru the way he was carrying on."
Blair filed that proof of caring away to think about --gloat over -- later, and gave Simon an approving smile that wasn't at all fake. Perfect. It was Simon's theory so he'd want to believe it, and it was mostly true, so it felt right. "You know, I think that's it, Simon." He shook his head, moving from hurt to fond exasperation. "That overprotective big jerk. And if he thinks he's gotten out of buying me grapes, he can forget it. I'm going to send him out for a big bunch of them." He smirked. "Or maybe I'll make him treat me to dinner at that new Thai place on Second; the expensive one."
Simon grinned back at him, looking supremely relieved. "You do that. Now, while I'm here, I might as well sort out your sick leave. Rhonda sent over these forms…"
***
Blair raised his hand to knock on the door, dealing with the memories of doing this seven years earlier and getting turned away, and let it fall again. In a bare thread of a whisper he said, "Jim? I'm here."
The door swung open a moment later. "I heard you from when you left the car," Jim said. "Every footstep, the time you coughed, you saying hello to that stray cat." He spoke slowly, wonderingly. "I'd forgotten…"
"Yeah, well," Blair said awkwardly, relearning the way a Sentinel could make you feel like a specimen under a microscope. "Good. That's good, Jim." He smiled, a quick twitch of his lips. "Can I come in? Or do you just want to go?"
Jim stepped back. "I've got more than I can carry, so I'd appreciate a hand."
"I've got my own backpack in my car," Blair said. He eyed the stack of equipment dubiously. "I think we need to leave some of this behind. It's not like when we used to drive right to the fishing spot; we're going to be hiking in."
"Oh." Jim rubbed his hand over his chin in a well-remembered gesture. "Yeah, you mentioned that yesterday but I wasn't --" He shrugged. "You showing up like that; my senses coming back -- I wasn't really paying attention. Sorry."
He sounded indifferent, not apologetic, and Blair was willing to bet there were two tents in the pile of equipment.
"Leave the tents," he said. "Forecast is for warm and dry and it won't be the first time we've slept out. Same for the cooking stove; we can pack in enough food and build our own fire if we need it." He walked over to examine the gear more closely and then snorted. "And you can forget the fishing rod."
Jim's mouth tightened. He picked a backpack with a rolled sleeping bag attached to it out of the pile and raised his eyebrows. "Then I'm ready."
***
Blair made it to the loft door without stopping to catch his breath but his heart was pounding. Shit. He hated feeling this weak but he'd been told he could expect to feel this way for a few weeks while his body recovered from the stress it'd been under. At least the headaches had gone.
He got out his key and then slid it back into his pocket as the loft door opened.
Jim looked like hell, but at least he was home.
"Hey," Blair said, as neutrally as possible. "Simon tell you I was coming home today?"
Jim nodded, his gaze flickering over Blair without meeting his eyes.
"Can I come in, then?" Blair asked impatiently. "I want a shower and then I'm going to crash. Man, I'm wiped out just from the cab ride."
Jim stepped aside, a frown creasing his forehead.
"And you can start talking any time now," Blair told him, walking in and noting that it smelled a little fresher than the last time. Which he wasn't thinking about.
Jim cleared his throat. "I thought Simon was going to give you a ride. Blair --"
"Yes, I know," Blair said hurriedly, interrupting him. "Got a lot to talk about, I know, but God, I don't think I can right now. Can we just --"
"No."
Blair sighed and turned to face him. The words of complaint got stuck in his throat. His room was empty. He hadn't been sleeping in it much; with Jim waiting for him in their bed upstairs it didn't hold much appeal, apart from the odd time when he woke restless and hyper and padded down to his own bed where he could toss and turn without feeling that he was disturbing Jim.
Now it was empty. And the contents weren't in the loft because, spinning around slowly, he could see that nothing of his was.
"You’ve kicked me out again."
"Yes." Jim walked over to the table and picked up a form and some car keys. "It's all in a van parked outside. Here's the rental agreement -- I've paid for a week, unlimited mileage -- and here are the keys. I figured that would give you time to find somewhere." He tapped a stack of newspapers. "I've found some places that look good and circled them, but obviously, it's up to you. If you need help moving, I'm sure Simon or --"
"Tell me, Jim," Blair said, his voice shaking because so help him he was close to committing a major crime of his own right then. "Whole wheat or white bagel? Navy socks or black?"
"What?"
"If you're organizing my life, don't stop with the big stuff; go all the way." Deliberately crude, he patted his groin. "Want me to dress to the left or the right?"
"For God's sake, Blair!"
"Why have you kicked me out?"
"I knew you'd be leaving and I was trying to make it as easy as possible," Jim said. "I was trying to help."
"Help?" Blair heard his voice crack. "Help would have been coming to get me so I didn't have to spend twenty minutes waiting for a cab. Help would have been showing up at the hospital so I didn't spend two fucking days convinced you'd died and no one wanted to tell me."
"Died?" Jim looked incredulous.
"Yes. You're a cop and cops can die. We both know that."
"Everybody can die," Jim said. He looked at Blair directly. "You came close again, didn't you?"
"But not close enough to get a visit."
"I came once," Jim said. "I just didn't get close enough for you to see me."
"Nice," Blair said bitterly. "Very man of mystery."
"Don't make this harder than it has to be."
"Why? Why shouldn't it be hard? Why shouldn't it hurt?" Blair was yelling but he didn't care. "You're kicking me out again." He spaced the words. "Again. And I didn't do anything. Tell me what I did to deserve this."
"Nothing," Jim said with a terrifying gentleness. "I did. I fucked it up and it made me see that I can't do this. That I don't want this, not with you."
"So what about work? Huh? You going to ask for a new partner?"
"No. I'm going to go back to working alone."
"And what about me? You expect me to put in for a transfer?"
He wouldn't get one. No one would want him.
"Well, you don't have to -- I mean --" Jim was stumbling over the words. "If you're not with me, you don't need to be a cop anymore. You can get on with your life. Chief, this isn't a punishment, this is a second chance for you."
"Fuck this," Blair said. He stalked forward and jammed a finger into Jim's chest. "Unpack the fucking van. Get my stuff back in here where it belongs. And then tell me what the fuck you think you're doing screwing around on me like that with that stick up his ass loser -- oh, wait, did he have something more interesting up there? Like your dick?"
Jim closed his eyes. Looking sick. When he opened them again, they were cold and distant. "Sometimes, yes."
"Sometimes? You saw him more than once?" Blair choked over the outrage he felt. He'd been prepared to forgive a one-night stand. He knew how it could happen, regretted even as it was in progress, and he'd been prepared to be magnanimous, man of the world about it.
After ripping Jim a new one and some brutally hot make up sex.
Finding out that his own two-month old relationship -- if you didn't count the weeks abroad -- was threatened by one possibly half that length was a shock.
"I met him before you left," Jim said.
"Are you lying to me?" Blair asked after a long moment had gone by and those words still didn't make any sense.
Jim shook his head. "I'm not lying, I swear. Blair, you need to go. I'm late for work."
Blair walked out of the door Jim was holding open, a new set of keys jangling in his pocket, and down the stairs, holding back the emotions, refusing to give into the desire to punch walls, scream, vent.
Let Jim hear him walk away with some dignity.
He drove away, carefully, slowly, and didn't throw up until he was inside a motel room, crouched over a toilet, the sweet, chemical stink of the cleaner prompting his stomach to try and turn itself inside out.
The next day he found out that his key didn't work in the lock on Jim's door and by nightfall he was miles away from Cascade and heading south.
***
"Pull over here," Blair said, touching Jim's arm.
"Why?"
"Just do it."
Jim sighed and turned, bringing the truck to a halt in the middle of a parking lot, half empty since it was close to a row of shops, none of which would open for a few hours.
"Well?"
"You don't remember this place?"
Jim shrugged. "Driven past it a few times."
"It's where we left the truck when we did that boundary walk," Blair reminded him.
After a disinterested glance around, Jim nodded. "Yeah, I recognize it now. Don't see why you wanted to pull over, though."
"Since I left, have you ever done that walk again?"
"No."
"Ever felt you needed to?" Blair persisted.
"Where are you going with this, Chief?"
"Where am I going with it," Blair muttered to himself. He shoved his hands through his hair, a gesture he'd never lost even now, when there was nothing much to push back. "Jim -- just work with me here, will you?"
Jim sighed and turned the key, silencing the engine. "Five minutes and then we hit the road, okay?"
Knowing that the time limit was flexible and the difficult part was getting Jim to agree to listen -- or it always used to be -- Blair relaxed and chose his words without too much care. He was out of practice at this brand of persuasion and debate, but it was all coming back to him.
"You worked out where the boundaries were, but it's not really the place you protect, as much as the people." He watched Jim absorb that and give him a grudging nod. "Right, right; because if something happened and the tribe had to move; a flood, a drought, whatever, the Sentinel would move with them."
"Sure."
Okay, that had been easy.
"And so, if someone, one of the tribe, crossed the border, I'm guessing you'd still feel a responsibility toward them?"
"You mean you," Jim said, a not entirely friendly smile on his lips. "You need to work on subtle, Sandburg. You never used to be this easy to read."
"Yes, I mean me, " Blair snapped. "And I wasn't trying to hide where I was going." He took a calming breath. "What I'm asking is this; do you still think of me as one of the tribe?"
Jim turned away, staring out of the window at nothing Blair could see. "I guess."
It was better than nothing. He'd hoped for something a little more positive, a little more certain, but it wasn't no.
"So when I went away, the boundary shifted," Blair went on, talking fast, which he'd learned to do to keep people's interest, a habit he'd refined into a trademark.
An irritating one, according to a lot of his lecturers and Jim himself, but he'd sooner be annoying than ignored.
Jim glanced over at him at that, a familiar, 'what bullshit is this?' expression on his face.
"It shifted to encompass me," Blair said, aware that he sounded egotistical but the hell with it.
"If you say so." Jim yawned pointedly. "One minute."
"The hell it is! Another three at least," Blair said. He gathered his thoughts and let Jim have them. "Simon said you looked for me, and I dropped you in it by saying you didn't need to, but that's not quite true, is it? There was a time when you didn't know where I was. I was too pissed off at you to get in touch for a while, until after I'd settled down at Bellingham."
Jim gave him a terse nod without speaking.
"And that had to have killed you," Blair said steadily. "You built up your own tribe, people you were close to -- hell, no single Sentinel can know a whole city -- and I was part of that inner circle from the moment we met. And you didn't know where I was, did you? You'd forced me away, convinced yourself it was what you had to do to keep me safe, happy, but you needed to have a -- a focal point. You needed to know where I was."
His voice was gathering strength from Jim's silence and he was exulting in how right this felt, tumblers falling into place, a lock yielding.
"And you found me, didn't you, Jim?"
He hadn't known that before, but it made sense now.
"You looked for me and I wasn't hiding, not really, so you found me, you had to have found me."
The color was rising in Jim's face now and his fingers were clutching the wheel convulsively, flexing, squeezing.
"Oh, my God," Blair said, riding the revelation. "You came to see me, didn't you? You fucking walked the boundary and put me back inside it."
He felt breathless, winded.
Jim sighed, the tension leaving him. "Yeah. Not literally walked this time. But I went to -- I saw your house. I didn't see you, but I -- I heard you. It was enough."
"I'm trying to find the words here to describe just how much you suck," Blair said coldly. "Just drive, will you? Get us out of here."
"You've still got a couple of minutes to talk."
"I'm done."
"Maybe I'm not." Jim's hand turned Blair's face toward him, the tips of his fingers light and warm against Blair's jaw. Jim waited until Blair sighed, surrendering to the inevitable, and let his hand fall away.
"I didn't go in because you were with someone. A man. You were -- it was late and you were having sex. Laughing. Happy. I didn't plan to knock at your door anyway, but that kind of sealed it. I just needed to know you were okay, Blair. It was -- yes, it was killing me not being sure --" Jim gave him a pained smile. "I wasn't really in a good place right then. Wasn't sleeping, eating -- senses all over the place… I sat in the truck outside your apartment, across the road under this oak tree --"
"Suffolk Street," Blair said, remembering that tree. Shouldn't he have known Jim had been there? Had a dream, a fucking vision? Hell of a shaman he'd turned out to be. "I was only there a month; too far away from campus."
And the man he was with, well, that could have been one of half a dozen. It'd coincided with one of his manic, fuck anyone who smiled back phases.
"I don't remember the street name," Jim said. "I just remember falling asleep listening to your voice, then you sleeping. I was so tired. I'd been there a few hours when a cop tapped on the window. I didn't want it to get complicated so I didn't flash my badge, though I bet he ran my plate, and once he'd made sure I wasn't drunk he let me drive away, didn't pull me in." Jim sighed, contemplating his fingernails and then picking at a loose thread on the seam of his jeans. "Didn't want to go. Every mile, I felt the weight of it all settle back down on me. Everything on my shoulders; no one to help --"
"Whose fault was that?" Blair demanded. "Not mine!"
"None of it was your fault, Blair." Jim turned the key. "We should get going."
"Wait." Blair grabbed at Jim's sleeve. "Jim --"
"It's too late now." Jim sounded gentle but certain. "Whatever mistakes I made, I made them; it's done. I'm glad we can talk and you're not -- you don't hate -- but we can't make this right, so don't think anything's changed. It hasn't. And it won't."
"And you're happy with that?"
"I haven't been happy about much of anything since you left."
"At the risk of repeating myself, you kicked me out, remember?"
"Since you left for Peru," Jim clarified. "And, yes, that I do blame you for, Chief, partly, at least. Leave it now, will you?" He pulled out of the parking lot, his hands steady, his expression distant again. "I can't drive and argue at the same time."
"Since when?" Blair said incredulously, but he let it go as they left the city and drove north.
***
The woods welcomed them like water greets a stone, parting for them, a shoulder's width wide, and then closing around them. Within a mile, Blair was lost, the rough map he'd made and handed over to Jim a fading mess of pencil lines in his head.
It didn't matter. Once Jim got them to the clearing, Blair knew just what to do.
The sun was warm on his head, filtered through leaves and robbed of power. He trod softly on the ground, each snapped twig, each rustled leaf, a rebuke.
Jim was noiseless, drifting, lost in thoughts he wasn't sharing.
It had been a quiet drive.
Blair had a lot to think about. After years of nothing new, wearied to the point of nausea of going over old ground, he wasn't quite sure what to do with what Jim had told him.
If he'd known back then that Jim had been out there, outside his apartment, he'd have left his bed, and whoever was in it -- hell, he'd have stopped mid-fucking-orgasm -- and gone to him. He'd have made Jim see reason, explain -- which was why Jim hadn't given him the chance.
He still didn't get it. Oh, the initial reaction that had led to Jim packing up his stuff, sure. Jim was feeling guilty and overreacting. The man had a way of doing that which had sometimes made Blair marvel that he was seen as the dramatic one, the emotional one.
But to keep it up for years; to even now hold out no hope of a reconciliation -- Blair didn't get it. Didn't get it at all.
And this time he wasn't leaving until he did.
He couldn't force Jim to take him back, but he could get him to explain why they'd both spent seven fucking years apart.
Jim had better have a good reason because seven years was -- Blair frowned. Jim had paused, as he'd done before, but he wasn't scanning the trees and the sky and the compass in his head and then striking off a few degrees to the west or something.
No, he was standing still.
Zoned.
Blair eased his pack off his shoulders with a sigh and put it down. Rubbing at sweaty, chafed skin where the straps had dug in, he walked up to Jim and around him.
"Jim? Snap out of it, man. What is it this time?" He shut up and listened; couldn't hear or smell anything out of the ordinary, so that left sight. Unless Jim was zoning on something subtle, in which case, he'd have to dig deeper. He followed Jim's blank gaze to a wind-blown leaf tapping against a branch in a deceptively desultory rhythm. Why it'd caught Jim's eye, he didn't know, but it didn't matter. He moved to block it from Jim's sight and continued talking about nothing until, in a fit of exasperation, he went for a more traditional way to waken Sleeping Beauty and kissed Jim, full on his parted lips.
He'd meant it to be a quick peck, as brief and as impersonal as a kiss could be, and knew before their lips touched that it wasn't going to happen that way. Jim hummed at the first contact, a low, vibrant sound, caught in his throat, and Blair echoed it, his tongue flicking against Jim's upper lip, making Jim open wider for him.
Jim shrugged off his pack and it fell to the forest floor with a muffled thud. Freed of its weight, he pulled Blair closer, his eyes still hazy, and Blair let himself be taken and held cradled against Jim's chest even as he planted his feet wider, making sure he wasn't off-balance. He wasn't entirely sure Jim knew what he was doing, which meant he couldn't let this go far, but he wasn't going to step back.
He needed this. And he could quell any rising guilt with the conviction that Jim did, too.
How long since Jim had been touched, hugged, held? The most basic of comforts -- ask any crying child -- and it was withheld from adults as if it was something you grew out of, when you didn't, you never did.
He let his mouth move away from Jim's in a gradual way, punctuating the sweep of his lips down to the place where shoulder and neck met with light, dotted kisses. Then he stood and breathed in the scent of Jim's skin, the thin, clean cotton of his T-shirt and the waxy smell of his light jacket before nuzzling into Jim's neck. His hands moved over Jim's back in slow, soothing strokes.
Really needed this.
Jim sighed and turned his head. Blair felt the deliberate press of Jim's lips against his temple and then he was standing alone, his arms empty.
"We can break for food at the top of that ridge," Jim said, nodding off to the left. "Think you can make it that far, Chief? You're looking a little tired."
Blair retrieved his backpack in silence and waited for Jim to shrug his back on before replying.
"You know that promise I made Simon?"
Something flickered in Jim's eyes, a wary expectancy. "What about it?"
"I'm not going to break it until you ask me to."
"I'm not going to ask."
Blair smiled. Dangerous to taunt Jim; the guy was stubborn as hell. But sometimes he just couldn't help it.
"You need to practice saying that like you mean it, Jim."
"And you need to stop fucking pushing me," Jim snapped. "Jesus, Blair, what do you think this is doing to me?"
"I don't know. Tell me."
Jim licked his lips and then bit down on the lower one until Blair saw the skin turn white. "It's making me wish I could tie you to a tree and come back for you later."
"Well, you fucking can't," Blair snapped back. He felt his cheeks burn, humiliation and frustration building up. "You need me to find what we're here for."
"Not really." Jim hitched his pack higher and began to walk away. "You've told me where the clearing is. I can probably take it from there. See where the ground was disturbed… smell the metal of the box…"
"Zone again and get eaten by a bear…"
Jim grinned. His back was to Blair, but he just knew Jim was grinning. He picked up a pine cone and threw it at Jim's retreating head.
It missed.
Jim glanced back.
Oh, yeah. Grinning.
***
They reached the clearing in the early evening, with the sky darkening around them. Jim suggested that they make a start on locating the buried box but he did it half-heartedly and accepted Blair's exhausted, 'you're fucking kidding me, right?' without argument.
It had been a long day.
After eating and washing at a stream a short walk away, the cool water a delicious shock against Blair's hands and face, they settled down beside a fire, built less for warmth than for light and a deterrent for the bugs.
Blair knew that they were going to talk and he thought that Jim had accepted that inevitability, but there didn't seem to be any real urgency to start.
The wind rose, sending last year's leaves skittering over the tumble of rocks that lay across the eastern end of the clearing -- Jim had given them a speculative look and then raised his eyebrows at Blair, who'd summoned the energy to smirk and shake his head. Blair wondered what else Jim could hear, and how it felt after going without the senses for so long, and then shrugged and asked him. Why not?
Jim was there. He could reply. Not a conjured figment, a puppet.
"It's like waking up," Jim said, the prosaic words given a deeper meaning by the way he spoke them, slow, considering, certain. "And it… hurts. I'm stretched out. Spread thin." Too dark now, and the flickering flames and rising sparks of the fire were between them, but Blair could see the blue of Jim's eyes, translucent, light, captured behind his own eyelids, every time he blinked.
"I'm everywhere," Jim finished, his voice quiet because it didn't need to be loud out here, with nothing to fight but the crackle of fire and a distant breeze.
"No boundaries…"
"No place to hide, you mean. Not for either of us." Jim's gaze held Blair's. "It's been getting stronger since we came into the woods. My senses -- they don't just feel back online; they feel… intensified. I can control them but my range is just --"
He closed his eyes, and inhaled slowly and then released it, his expression peaceful but intent. Blair had seen too many people meditating not to recognize that look.
"I can hear your blood flowing, the beat of your eyelashes as you blink." Jim's voice was assured, strong. His lips curled upwards. "Your belly rumbling. Hell, I can hear your hair growing." His eyes opened. "And it's not because I've forgotten what it's like, Chief, so don't say it. You know my range, across the board. Test me all you want and you'll see I'm right."
"Tomorrow," Blair said. "If you still want to. Now dial it back and just listen to what I'm saying."
Jim picked up a stick and prodded the fire, making it burn higher for a moment. Through the transient trickery of the firelight Blair saw Jim's face as he remembered it, not as it was, and felt his throat close on a choking wave of love.
He bowed his head, riding it out, and prayed to whoever was listening that Jim had pulled back his awareness.
"I can't listen if you don't talk," Jim said mildly.
"Just give me a moment, will you?" Blair managed to say. He found a pebble in the grass beside him and picked it up, the hard, smooth lump cool against his palm. Using a stress management technique he'd picked up from his mother, he pushed all of his excess emotions into the pebble and then threw it away, as hard as he could.
Jim tracked it with a quick turn of his head and then glanced over. "Is that a test? You want me to find it in the morning?"
"Could you?" Blair asked. That would be way beyond anything Jim could have done in the past. The pebble -- hell, even he didn't know what it looked like, although he thought he'd know its weight and shape -- had gone a long way and fallen into grass, littered, as his body would probably discover firsthand once he tried to sleep, with similar pebbles.
"Think so. You held it, so it'll smell of you, and I remember where it went and what it hit on the way that changed its trajectory." Jim looked pleased with himself. "I'll do it when it's light. It'll be harder then because your scent will have faded."
"Over-achiever," Blair muttered.
"Yeah, yeah…" Jim waved his hand in a lazy dismissal. "Look who's talking, Doctor Sandburg."
"You know about that, too?" Blair demanded.
Looking as if he was regretting his words, Jim glanced away and then sighed and rubbed his hand over the back of his neck. "If it's in print or online about you, I know it. I've kept track of you."
"That doesn't make sense," Blair said. "You cared enough to do that and every time I called you wouldn't even talk to me? Not even to say 'fuck you, Blair' in words instead of letting me get the message when you hung up on me?"
"If you'd needed me, I'd have answered," Jim said, looking surprised. "If you were in trouble. But once a year, on my birthday… hell, I make those phone calls to people, too, and they're never to anyone I care about much."
"If I'd needed you?" Blair repeated, barely able to get the words out past his rising anger. "You thought I didn't?"
"You never sounded sad," Jim told him. "Just pissed off. I gave up on you getting over hating me and I just hoped you were dealing with life better than I was."
"I never hated --" Blair paused. "I never stopped loving you," he amended. "Yeah, there were moments when I'd have applied to be the president of the 'we hate Jim Ellison' club but I was usually drunk or drowning in loneliness and wanting to see you so much I --" He took a steadying breath. "That promise about not pushing is broken the hell and back, isn't it?"
"You haven't crawled into my sleeping bag yet," Jim said.
"True." Blair cleared his throat. "You're, ah, lying on it. Makes it tricky."
There was a lot he wanted to say to Jim. A lot of questions. A lot of persuasive, logical pointing out of the obvious.
Jim reached out, took the zipper of the bag in his thumb and forefinger, and tugged. The zipper ran smoothly down, exposing the pale lining. Jim shifted back, off the bag, and folded the top layer back invitingly. "All yours, Chief."
"I'm not crawling."
"I don't want you to. If you want me to, well, I'll --"
"I don't."
"Good." Jim's hand closed around the soft fabric, hard enough that Blair could feel the tension in his own hand and realized he'd made a fist, too. "Blair… I haven't changed my mind about us getting back together no matter what happens out here. We can't -- it's too late. We've moved on. You've got a perfect life, everything you wanted, everything you deserve -- and you do deserve it, Chief, you deserve every bit of it."
"God, will you shut up?" Blair muttered. He went to work on his bootlaces. "You just don't get it, do you? Everything I want I had for two fucking months and you know when they were."
"No, you didn't." Jim sounded surprisingly calm. "Selective memory. We were fighting all the time."
His boots came off and he hoped Jim got hit with a noseful of stink because he deserved it. "No, we weren't."
"Fucking to make up, not because we wanted to," Jim went on.
He skinned out of his jeans but left his shorts and socks on. "Speak for yourself, little buddy. I was in lust with your body, worshiping at the shrine. I'd have bent over for you or fucked your brains out any time you wanted it, anywhere we could get away with it."
"I was so fucking possessive. God, the way I acted when you looked at someone -- I knew what I was doing and how sick and fucked-up it was, I just couldn't --"
Jacket, shirt, leave his T-shirt on. Jim might have an access all areas pass to his body but it didn't mean the mosquitoes did. "Typical behavior of someone not used to a long-term relationship, and when you add in all the crap we'd gone through with Alex and your need to keep me close because of all the freaky Sentinel stuff… bound to get messy. You'd have calmed down, or I'd have smacked you around the head until you got the message I wasn't going anywhere --" His voice faltered. Shit. Two mistakes in one sentence. Shit.
Jim eyed him sadly. "Except I was the one who hit you. And you did go somewhere. You left me when I'd asked -- when I'd begged you not to."
"Because you were being unreasonable! And I don't give a fuck about you hitting me. Not when it was just once. Not then. I know you wouldn't have done it again -- and I've come close to punching you often enough to know it's a line that's easily crossed."
"Except you didn't." Jim's mouth twisted. "Okay, maybe the night you came back from Peru, you tried, but you weren't really yourself, were you, Chief?"
"I'm not programmed to fight the way you are. Forget it. I have." Blair decided that crawling actually wasn't a bad way of closing the distance fast and scrambled around the fire and into the cocoon of the sleeping bag. He put his hand on Jim's arm. Warm skin, tense muscles. "Why did it matter so much me taking that transfer? You didn't trust me out there? You didn't trust me to come back? What?"
"I'd been having visions of you dying," Jim said tiredly. "Every night. Those dreams where everything's blue and you're a fucking wolf."
"And you didn't tell me?" Blair said, too stunned to even feel angry. "Jim? Jim? You had a vision I was in danger and you didn't even --"
"I told you not to go."
"Not the same, man, that is just not the same." Blair kicked his way free of the sleeping bag and knelt up beside Jim. "I thought you were pulling more of the insecure crap! If you'd told me you were having visions, I'd have listened."
"Would you? I doubt Simon would be impressed by that as an excuse when it was all arranged, and you were all about being his blue-eyed boy those first months. You’d have decided forewarned was enough and you'd have gone."
"You didn't tell me," Blair said numbly, trying to process that betrayal. "You let me go --"
"I let you go," Jim agreed. "And I deserved to lose you for that."
"You already had," Blair said, bitterness from an old wound rising up, sour and acrid. "That guy you were with when I came back; you were already --"
"No." Jim swallowed. "I didn't -- I let you think that I was, but I wasn't."
"You swore that was true," Blair said tensely, leaning forward, getting in Jim's face. "You had to know it was the last fucking straw --"
"Of course I did," Jim said, sighing. "And I didn't lie. I said I met him before you left. I did. As a lawyer on a case I worked when you were at the academy. He made it plain he was interested; I made it really clear I wasn't, without admitting anything. When you went… I was drinking one night, trying to pass out more than anything, and he called and… I just, I --"
"There aren't enough words in the language to describe how I'm feeling right now," Blair said calmly, from the emptiness that had hollowed him out. "How much I want to --"
"Hurt me?" Jim shook his head. " No need, Blair. All taken care of. I did it for you."
And it was that simple in the end. A few minute's conversation and a few words and he knew why Jim had turned his back and stayed that way.
"Seven years. Seven fucking years --" His voice rose from a whisper to a tortured, anguished scream that ripped at his throat, on his feet by the time he'd finished, instinct taking him there to the higher ground, his body responding to the thick, heady musk of lust and violence swirling around him.
He wanted Jim's blood on his knuckles, wanted to rip and punch and tear at the man who'd done this to him -- to them both. Wanted it enough that he was sick with it. He was breathing in hoarse, ragged gasps, his heart pounding, his body shaken with fury.
And Jim sat there, his hands loosely clasped on his bent up knees, his head lowered, the bare, cool nape of his nape exposed.
It was as close as Jim would ever get to showing his belly in supplication to a predator and it sliced Blair's anger away from him cleanly and left only the vast sorrow at the waste.
He doubled over, going to his knees, and then his stomach, pounding his fists against the grass and earth and stone, tears and snot and noise pouring out of him, lost in the space around them, the miles of emptiness.
No one listening who cared, who understood, but Jim, and Blair was mourning for him as much as for himself.
He felt the skin on his hands shred and bleed, felt the jarring thud of each blow he dealt the earth, breathed in wet salt in place of air, and only stopped when his exhausted body betrayed him.
A hand fell onto his head in a clumsy caress and he rolled to his back and stared up through tears at Jim's face. "Blair --"
Jim was crying, too. He'd made Jim cry. Jim never cried.
"Please don't -- that was enough, please don't -- don't, Blair, don't. Don't hurt yourself, don't --"
The words were junk, garbled, stumbled over, broken syllables that reformed in Blair's mind, translated, comprehended.
Jim was touching him, hands on his face, wiping away tears and worse and not doing a good job of it, then cradling Blair's hands in his, which hurt, hurt like hell.
"Up," Blair said, as clearly as he could. "Help me up."
His hands were released and Jim pulled him into a sitting position with one arm around his neck and a fistful of Blair's shirt.
Then he put his forehead on Blair's shoulder. "I'm sorry."
The words were muffled but Blair heard them. He just couldn't answer them in any honest way. He settled for murmuring, "I know."
Because he did.
He just wasn't sure it was enough.
They stayed in an awkward hug, Blair's arms around Jim, his hands stuck out stiffly, throbbing painfully, Jim's head heavy on Blair's shoulder, unbalancing him, until Blair sighed.
"We need to get cleaned up. Emotional catharses -- well, the aftermath's a bitch."
Jim lifted his head and sniffed, a prosaic, necessary sniff that did as much as anything to draw a line under what had just happened. "You're still talking to me, then?"
"Looks like it." Blair unwound his arms from around Jim's body and examined his hands in the inadequate light. "Ow."
"Will you let me take care of them for you?"
"Sure." Blair frowned. "Why are you even asking?"
Jim picked away a pine needle clinging to the base of Blair's thumb. "Because it's going to hurt like hell."
"Oh." Blair looked away from the damage he'd inflicted on himself and watched Jim empty his backpack in search of the first aid kit. "It was that or hit you."
"I got that. Thanks, I guess."
"You guess?"
"You'd have hurt yourself less hitting me."
"Why is that?" Blair demanded. "Think I wouldn't have got past your guard?"
"I wouldn't have tried to stop you." Jim came back to him and dropped some supplies into Blair's lap. "I'm going to get some water. I'll be right back."
"Why would it have hurt less?" Blair persisted.
Jim glanced at him as he straightened. "I like to think you'd have stopped sooner."
Final part
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