Rating: ‘R’ if you’re sensitive; ‘PG-15’, otherwise.
Genre: Horror/Supernatural phenomenon. Religious and
irreligious discussion
Information:
Familiarity with the other stories in the series is
sort of recommended. But if you don’t want to wade through them, all you really
need to know is that the boys have gone through the:
“My god, it’s a demon!”
“Demons don’t exist.”
“Try telling that thing that!”
terror/denial/acceptance/gub-the-evil-beastie
scenario.
Thank yous… Olwyn saw the first draft a wee while ago.
There then was a considerable lag as I tried to get other folk (who could add
an American twang) to beta the darn story. Then I found Susan (HMG), who made
time in her busy, busy schedule to go over it with a fine tooth comb. Lisa gave
it a quick overview ‘cos I couldn’t see any booboos by then ‘cos I was so
tired. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. Any booboos left belong to me.
However, the boys belong to someone else
apparently,
Watchman eye and watchman hand
are spun of water, air and sand.
Darkness
where I find my sight,
Shadowless and burning night,
here where death and life are met
is the fire of being set
Watchman eye and watchman hand
are spun of water, air and sand.
These will crumble and be gone,
still that darkness rages on
As a plant in winter dies
down into the germ, and lies
leafless, tongueless, lost in earth
imaging its fierce rebirth;
And with the whirling rays of the sun
and shuttle-stroke of living rain
weaves that image from its heart
and like a god is born again
Fire of Being
by
Judith Arundell Wright (1915-2000)
Prologue
“Where have you been?” Jim
demanded.
Blair froze in the
doorway, in one hand he held the morning paper and in the other a paper bag
emblazoned with the local bakery’s logo. He held them up.
“Guess.”
“Why didn’t you tell me
where you’d gone? Where were you?” Jim stomped down the final two steps from
his loft bedroom.
“I don’t normally, Jim.”
Shaking his head, he crossed to the kitchen to start breakfast.
“I got up and you weren’t
here,” Jim continued.
Turning his back to the
Sentinel, Blair crossed his eyes and stuck out his tongue as he popped the
split croissants in the toaster. Jim had always been committed when it came to
guarding his tribe of one, but since the incident in the fountain he had been a
tad overboard.
“Has Philip called?” Jim
asked surprisingly.
“No.” Blair slowly turned
and leaned on the kitchen counter. “Were you expecting him to?”
“Croissants?” Jim settled
at the kitchen table and glowered at the preserves and cream cheese set on the
table.
The pastries popped out of
the toaster. Distracted, Blair snagged the warm croissants and dropped them on
a plate.
“You woke up on the wrong
side of the bed.” Blair set the breakfast in front of Jim.
Grumbling under his
breath, Jim concentrated diligently on buttering his croissant. Ignoring the
moody, unpredictable Sentinel, Blair settled in his chair and applied himself
to his own breakfast.
~*~
Watchman eye
and watchman hand
are spun of water, air and sand.
By Sealie
The bluebook exam papers
always took so long that Blair had prepared himself for a prolonged session. He
had coffee, candy and Oysterband’s latest CD playing on auto-repeat on his
stereo. The mess of answers ranged from perfect, through amusing and into the
pathetic. He saved the best for the beginning and the end of the marking marathon.
While the exam books bore only numbers to identify the writers, after several
years of marking their essays he could easily tell one student from another.
Making a filling of the worst offerings in a sandwich of halfway decent exam
papers made marking palatable.
His office door slammed
open, bouncing against the wall, and a large figure filled the space. “Why the
hell didn’t you call?” Jim yelled.
Blair jerked back in his
chair. “What?”
“Why the hell didn’t you
call?”
“You’re nuts, it’s only…”
Blair cast a glance at the clock on the bottom corner of his computer screen
and winced. “Ah.”
“Yeah, ‘Ah’; it’s after
“Well, it’s only just
after
“They can’t expect you to
work after
“Jim! I’m a TA; it’s my
job. And I take the time to do it when I can,” he finished pointedly.
Immediately subdued, Jim
backed off, both physically and figuratively. “How long?”
Caught by surprise, Blair
hemmed and hawed, “Uhm, ten to fifteen minutes a book -– an hour and a half.”
“So
“Give or take five
minutes.”
“Right.” Jim fired a
gimlet stare at him and strode out of the office.
Blair sagged in his chair.
That was bizarre. There was something seriously off kilter with Jim; he was
obviously going nuts. Jim was watching him like a possessive father. Whatever
the cliché, he was as irritating as heck.
Blair sighed deeply. He
knew that the fountain was never far from the Sentinel’s thoughts.
Barely a click of a
clock’s second hand later he was standing in the corridor outside his room.
There was no sign of his Sentinel. Grinding his teeth (a la Ellison), he raced
down the corridor. Jim must have run all the way. Unless… Blair made an abrupt
about turn, ran past his office and up the staircase to the postgraduate coffee
room. It, too, was empty. It was now pointless trying for the parking lot,
since Jim would have had time to drive away.
Looking out of the coffee
room window, he could see that the parking lot was empty except for his lone,
beloved car, sitting under a single street light.
“We’re going to talk,
Ellison, the minute I get home.”
He had to get the exams
marked and put in the database before his supervisor -- who was threatening to
cut off important body parts if he was late -- acted.
He had barely put pen to
paper when he paused, his gaze drifting to the door. Jim was acting weird.
Blair could understand the hyper-alertness. He contained a shudder. He had
died, the paramedics had given up on him and Jim had called him back.
The water had been lovely.
Blair wiped feverishly at
the sweat beading on his forehead. No matter how hard he tried, Jim refused to
talk about the meeting of the spirit guides on the spirit plane. Jim now oscillated
between whacked-out over-attentiveness and cool dismissal. The Sentinel had always blown hot and cold,
but this was making Blair seasick.
Camping was probably the
solution. Jim needed to relax into the elements, touch base with his inner
sentinel.
Blair ground his teeth,
frustrated. Part of him wanted to quit marking and hash out Jim’s weird
behaviour, and the other part needed to finish the marking or he’d be up to his
neck in trouble with Professor Roberts.
‘And,’ he admitted to himself, ‘getting
Jim to open up is like getting blood from a stone.’ Blair nodded sagely,
dwelling on his inner monologue. ‘Camping.
Camping this weekend. That will straighten him out.’
~*~
Blair typed the last mark
into his computer file – saving the best for last, he gave Vicki Cuts an
exceptional ninety four percent. With something close to relief, he closed down
his computer and stretched a lugubrious stretch. He now had to face Jim. And an
hour and a half later, he now had the time to face Jim. The first step would be
to interrogate him about his diet over the last few weeks, specifically what he
had consumed at lunch.
He stuffed his backpack
haphazardly and slung it on his shoulder. Yawning, he lumbered out of his
office, concerned only with Jim and finding his bed.
He tripped over a pair of
outstretched legs.
“Fuck. Jim!”
The Sentinel glowered up
at him. “Careful.”
“What the hell? Where the
hell were you? Where did you hide the truck?”
“It’s parked on the other
side of the building.”
“Why didn’t you go home?
“Your car might have
broken down.”
Derailed, Blair stared at
the Sentinel open-mouthed. “My car is running fine,” he said eventually. “Have
you been sitting outside my office?”
“Yes.” Jim shrugged, as if
to say ‘stupid question.’
“Don’t you think that’s a little
bit obsessive?”
“Hey.” Jim was suddenly
intensely interested in a cobweb in the far corner of the corridor. “I was just
concerned.”
Blair sighed inwardly.
“Thanks, Jim, but--it’s…weird.”
The detective bristled.
Blair rushed to reassure
Jim before he could reinterpret his words to something desperately negative.
“Jim…Jim…I’m flattered
that you’re concerned. But hiding and then hovering outside my office is just
creepy.” Blair shifted his backpack uneasily.
Jim shrugged excessively,
rolling his shoulders as if to loosen a colossal weight of tension. Blair resisted the temptation to cuff him
casually over the back of his head. That was Jim’s personal habit, it didn’t
belong to him.
“Unless there’s some
reason? You don’t think that something’s up?” The thought came unbidden. Jim
hadn’t told him about his premonitions of Alex’s attack. Jim playing
closed-mouthed, both of them not communicating, had led to his death. Alex had
drowned him in
What if another Sentinel
was prowling at the edges of Jim’s territory?
“Jim?” Blair said with
shadings of fear.
“No.” Jim erupted to his
feet, hands outstretched to clasp Blair’s shoulders. “I would tell you.”
“So what is it?” Blair
demanded. “Why are you sitting outside my room?”
“Because…” Jim could only
verbalise. “Because.”
“Gee, that helps,” Blair
clamped down on the sarcasm in his tone. “I don’t get it; you’re like a
paranoid… something.” He flung his hands in the air, inexplicably lost for
words.
“Shoot me for being
concerned.” Jim’s fine nostrils flared. He turned and stomped away down the
corridor.
“Jim!” Blair chased after
him. “Jim, it’s not like that. I just-- I dunno. There’s something wrong.”
The detective stopped
abruptly and Blair barrelled into his back. Reeling, he fell back and large
hands automatically steadied him.
“Jim,” he tried again, his
tone beseeching.
“Sandburg, I just thought
I’d check on you; it’s nothing to be concerned about.”
“And wait for an hour and
a half?”
Jim flashed a cavalier
smile. “I thought you’d be faster.”
Blair knew that he was
lying through his teeth.
“So are you ready to go
home now?” Jim asked casually. “It is getting on to three-thirty and I have to
be at work in four hours.”
Blair had a lecture to
give in five and a half hours.
“Do you want to go camping
this weekend?” Blair said half desperately. “Just you and me and the great
outdoors? We could toast marshmallows.”
“Sounds like a good idea.
I’ll check with Simon.” Curiously relaxed, Jim threw an arm over Blair
shoulders. “How about we do some fishing, little Guppy?”
“Yeah, that would be
great.”
Filled with consternation,
Blair allowed Jim to draw him along the corridor. They would get back on an
even keel -- that, he promised.
~*~
Blair lay on his bed,
hands clasped behind his head, staring up at the ceiling. Sleep eluded him, or
to be more frank, he didn’t seek it. He didn’t have a handle on Jim’s parental
behaviour. Yes, Jim had reason to be over-protective, but his heart and head
told him that Jim should have relaxed this long after the event. His only
answer was to show Jim that they were fine, that they were still partners. Jim
didn’t need to be watching him as if he were a child.
“Sandburg!” Jim yelled
down from the loft above.
“What?”
“Stop thinking and go to
sleep!”
“How did you know I was
thinking?” Blair asked softly.
“You breathe deep and slow
when you’re asleep and if you’re not asleep you’re thinking.”
“Well, there is that.”
“Good night, John Boy.”
Determined to get the last
word in, “Good night, Mary Ellen.”
~*~
Jim stood over his Guide,
allowing his Sentinel senses to dwell on the sleeping form. Blair, in sleep,
was a peaceful figure. Jim catalogued each well-known facet of his Guide.
Deeply asleep his amber tipped lashes lay quiescent on his cheeks. His full
lips were parted, slightly dry as he breathed with his mouth open. The vibrant
hair was tightly tangled waiting to burst forth with the wake of day, to leave
snarls of hair in the shower drain, motes floating in the air and strands
between his teeth. Blair’s long fingers curled around the edge of his thick
fleece blanket, holding it against his chest as if he expected someone to pull
it away or seeking comfort. The skin revealed at the line of his neck and
shoulder was pale and cool to the senses. Blair chilled when he slept. His
breath ebbed and swelled. On the deepest breath, Jim felt –- sympathetically --
the telltale hitch of abused lungs.
It was Blair.
Smiling now, Jim pulled
the trailing edge of Blair’s blankets and laid them about his neck and
shoulder. With a final pat, he crept back up to bed.
~*~
His bladder punching at
his gut woke Blair. Eyes at half-mast, he staggered to the bathroom. Hugging
his arms against his chest, he whined, “Cold. Cold. Cold.”
It was frigid. To speed up
dealing with his insistent bladder, he didn’t bother closing the bathroom door.
“So cold,” he complained
as he finished.
Splashing a minuscule
amount of water on his hands, he trotted into the corridor. It shouldn’t be
this cold. His warm bed beckoned, but Blair stopped dead just outside his room.
The moonlight cascaded over the living area, sending deep, impenetrable shadows
into the corners.
He canted his head to the
side, but he was at the wrong angle to see up into Jim’s bedroom. He would have
to climb the stairs. A swathe of dark shadows crossed the skylight above Jim’s
head. Blair shivered involuntarily.
“Jim?” he whispered.
There was no answer from above.
Blair licked his lips, then crossed to the kitchen sink. Turning the tap, he
leaned over to sip straight from the faucet. The water was warmer than the
room.
The shadows were filled
with demons. Blair rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand. His imagination
was going overboard. But he knew that vampires and nasties did slink along at
the edge of the world’s mundane existence. And occasionally they did threaten
both Sentinel and Guide.
Was that what was making
Jim act like an overprotective mother on steroids? Jim had sworn that another
sentinel wasn’t making him act so weird.
Blair was nearly at the
top of the stairs to Jim’s loft before he realised that he was moving.
“What?” Jim rolled over on
his king-sized bed and peered through the railings down at him. The moonlight
bleached his skin to a pearly grey, making his eyes shine.
“Jim, do you sense
something? You know--” Blair wiggled his fingers. “--supernatural?”
Jim froze. His eyes slid
to the left. Blair imagined his sentinel senses like questing fingers, casting
forth to analyse the environment around him.
“No,” Jim said
laconically.
“No?” Blair echoed.
“Nothing?”
“Nothing. Go back to
sleep, Blair; you had a bad dream or something.” He turned onto his back.
“Aw, come on, Jim. No
wiggins? Nothing like a feeling of mass but no heartbeat or warmth?”
“You mean like the sofa?”
Jim’s voice smiled.
Blair sighed. “You know
what.” He reached through the railings and mock-punched in Jim’s direction.
Jim rose smoothly into a
sitting position, the single sheet on his chest falling to his waist. Blair
held his breath as Jim bowed his head. He didn’t know if he was listening or
extending his sixth sense -– not that Jim admitted to possessing one.
Now that the Sentinel was
awake, the darkness in the loft wasn’t as menacing. Jim was probably going to
tease him in the morning for wandering around half asleep.
Jim blew out a resounding
sigh and then yawned. “I think you’re sleepwalking, Blair.” He slid out from
under his sheet and before Blair could blink, he had joined him on the stairs.
“Jim?”
“Come on, Chief, back to
bed.”
Blair winced as Jim’s
ice-cold hand cupped his elbow. “You’re freezing, man. I hope you’re not
turning down the dial so you can sleep.”
“I’ll throw a blanket on
my bed,” Jim acquiesced easily.
Blair stumbled down the
stairs, but Jim kept him upright. He allowed the Sentinel to conduct him to his
room.
“No tucking me in, man.”
“Yeah, sure.”
Blair dove into his
blankets. Even they felt chilled. He burrowed in deeply, hoping his body
temperature would cocoon him in warmth. He wriggled around until he could watch
Jim standing over him.
“You want some aspirin or
something? Maybe you’re catching the flu.” Jim’s hand twitched towards Blair’s
forehead.
“Nah, I’m just cold. Are
you sure there’s nothing weird?”
“Positive. I’ll check the
doors and windows. Philip blessed the apartment and didn’t you smudge the place
with sage, last time I was away at an arraignment?”
“Yeah, Naomi said it was
good for negative energies.”
“Well, the stench would
drive off anything.” With the parting shot, Jim slipped out of Blair’s
cubby-hole.
The oppressive feeling of
impending horror was gone now. Maybe he had been dreaming? Maybe he should talk
to Philip? Ask him what kind of beast was as dark as a shadow? Confused and
over-tired, with the now warming blankets dragging him to sleep, he decided
that his thoughts had been dream-driven. He was asleep a heartbeat later.
~*~
His alarm went off far too
soon. The clamouring across his room echoed painfully through his head. He was
warm; he didn’t want to face the day. Muttering imprecations, he struggled out
of bed and killed the alarm on his dresser with a heavy slap. Putting it on the
other side of the room had been one of Jim’s brainstorms: he had to get out of
bed to switch it off. When the clock sat on the table beside his bed, he had
reached the point where he could lean out and switch off the incessant beeping
in his sleep. He only set it on the far side of the room when Jim was up first;
otherwise the Sentinel would rip his head off.
Yawning and scratching his
butt, he staggered to the coffee pot beckoning in the kitchen. Jim was long
gone and not even a crumb marked his passing. Blair grabbed a bagel, split it
and popped it in the toaster. The coffee was cold. Blair peered down his nose
at it, not believing that it was dead. Jim liked his coffee in the morning; he
wouldn’t leave without a mug. For a second he wondered if Jim was still asleep,
but his coat was gone and his truck keys.
“Jim went without
breakfast?” he asked the world at large. Jim liked a decent breakfast, since
most days were unpredictable and he didn’t know when he would fit lunch and
dinner in.
Curious now, Blair peered
in the refrigerator. It was full. The food that he had purchased last weekend
was untouched. It looked as if Jim hadn’t eaten in days. That made no sense.
Jim had an active metabolism, he was a busy man -– he needed food. Blair had
even postulated that the Sentinel senses had a heavy energetic demand.
The toaster popped,
startling him.
On autopilot, he buttered
his bagel and stuffed a fingerful in his mouth. He had been busy at school, but
how had he not noticed that Jim wasn’t eating? Pensive now, he abandoned his
bagel and moseyed over to the big windows overlooking the bay.
He had his own concerns at
the moment. Recovering from the debacle with Alex had taken a lot out of him,
emotionally and physically. He had the Ph.D. panel breathing down his neck. They
were happy with the draft chapters he had given them, although they were
concerned that he hadn’t named his principle subject and they wanted him to
finish. His second draft -– intended for Jim -– was going much better.
Jim was walking on
eggshells around him. Unable to verbalise an apology, he settled for the little
things that meant so much: checking on him at the university or searching the
loft after being woken from a sound sleep.
Their camping trip had to
be the right idea. After he’d put his hours in at the university, he would go
see Jim at the police station and then drag him out to Wonder Burger.
They were partners, but
they weren't acting like partners.
~*~
Jim scanned the people in
the bullpen, making sure that they were all in their respective places. No one
was invading his personal space. That was good. He dotted the ‘I’s’ and crossed
the ‘T’s’ on his report. Simon would find nothing to complain about. Rafe stood
up and Jim tracked him walking across the bullpen to Henri’s desk. Without a
word Jim returned to his writing.
His ears pricked and he
heard Blair bounce into the main reception area. The kid started chatting to
the police officer in the kiosk, asking her about her son’s school homework. He
sounded a bit off his stride, though, as if he was only going through the
motions.
Blair had been acting
strangely recently. Jim couldn’t put his finger on it, but he was off. There
was something on Blair’s mind and he wasn’t talking. Normally when something
was bothering him, Blair examined, discussed and twisted the problem on its
side, and that meant that he talked, incessantly.
Dwelling on the vagaries
of his Guide, he extracted Blair’s file from the back of his miscellaneous
papers. He’d pulled together the file when he had first met the energetic
graduate student. He had copies of Blair’s State of
“Hey, Jim, what are you
reading?”
Jim jumped in his seat
caught by surprise by Blair’s voice. “What?” He glanced back down at the file
in his hands. “Nothing. Just a report on a potential perp.” He dropped it back
in its drawer.
Blair pasted a patently
false smile. “I was thinking we should get a bite to eat. You feel like Wonder
Burger?”
‘Wonder Burger?’
“Who are you and what have
you done with the real Blair Sandburg?” Jim was only half joking.
~*~
“So do we have any cases,
or anything?” Blair asked as he poked at his limp lettuce. He had pulled the assorted
salad bits from the chicken burger with profound dissatisfaction and set them
on the side of his plate.
Jim smirked, his cheeks
bulging with a mouthful of pre-formed chicken nuggets covered in barbecue
sauce. Blair’s skin crawled; at least he supposedly had a chicken breast
burger.
“Hmmm, a couple of home
invasions.” Jim swallowed mightily. “A suspicious death on the docks. And that
murder/suicide pact.”
It was a weird sort of
conversation, as if they were friends who had been parted for months and
weren’t slipping into the familiar groove of comradeship. Yet they had both
walked together the night before.
Blair was tempted to give
up, to concentrate on swallowing his sandwich, but Jim was playing with his
food. Blair could have sworn that he actually spat a mouthful of food into his
paper napkin. If Jim wasn’t eating, that
touched a core of concern in Blair’s gut. Jim’s moods were -– for lack of a
better word –- childish at times. He felt strongly. On the other hand, his
emotional detachment could be total: if he didn’t like something, he could
ignore it. There was no wish to understand the unknown.
Empathy was not Jim’s
middle name.
Blair gnawed at the
problem like he chewed on the fatty gristle in the nasty sandwich. Jim was
bothered by something and he wasn’t talking. That was hardly unusual. But the
other things worried Blair: that Jim was not eating and Jim seemed paranoid
about his comings and goings.
“If your face scrunches up
any more, it’ll turn inside out.”
“It tastes smooth, sort of
like, well, fatty.” Blair grabbed his napkin and delicately spat out the
contents of his mouth.
“Why are we here, Chief?”
Jim asked directly.
“I thought you were off
your feed. You like Wonder Burger.” Blair shrugged.
A faint blush touched
Jim’s high cheekbones. “I hadn’t noticed.”
“Yeah, right.” Blair
smiled wryly as Jim munched purposely on a chicken nugget.
“You going to make dinner
tonight?” Jim asked in familiar short hand.
“Yeah, pasta and grilled
salmon?”
Jim screwed up his nose.
“Nah.”
“How about my special
lasagne?”
“With the cheese from that
speciality shop?”
“With the cheese from the
speciality shop.” Blair confirmed.
The twisted smile turned
as true as his heart. Blair was warmed by Jim’s smile and promised that he
would take proper care with the herbs for his most sensitive Sentinel.
“So,” Blair changed the
subject, “tell me about our cases.”
“The home invasions are
pretty straightforward. When I was on the crime scene, I noticed that liniment
odour for muscle strains – a lot of it. I interviewed the victim in the
hospital and he said that the gang-members were wearing some kind of football
jerseys, and I’m fairly sure that they’re an actual team from a local high
school.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I figure they were hiding
in plain sight.”
Blair shook his head,
appalled by the idea that high schoolers were capable of such acts and could be
so stupid.
“The murder/suicide
doesn’t make sense.” Jim set his uneaten lunch to the side. “Young professional
couple. The woman had just finished her Ph.D. in lipid biochemistry; she gutted
her boyfriend with an axe and then threw herself off the roof of
“What were their names?”
“Monica Symmonds and Gavin
McGuire.”
“Monica? I don’t know
her.” Blair breathed a sigh of relief. “Not that that means that I don’t, you
know, sympathize. I just don’t know her.”
“It’s okay, Chief.” Jim’s
expression took on a paternal cast.
Blair smiled sheepishly.
“So what’s wrong about it?”
Jim considered his next
words carefully. “There was no reason. Most suicides have a history of attempts
or depression and there wasn’t any.”
“You went over the scene
with, you know.” Blair rotated his index finger and thumb.
Jim shrugged
infinitesimally. “A little; I didn’t pick up anything strange, but…”
“You picked up something
you didn’t like? Was it supernatural?”
“No!” Jim rapped.
“So what got you--” Blair
paused, searching for the right word, “--dwelling on it?”
Jim leaned back in his
plastic seat and crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m not dwelling on it. You
asked what cases I was working and I told you. I’m also working on a burglary
and a suspicious death in the park.”
“I though you were in
Major Crime and not Homicide,” Blair cracked.
Jim shot him a leery eye.
“I’m a detective; I go where my captain sends me,” he deadpanned.
“So tomorrow you’re going
to be dragging me in at the crack of dawn to work on all your cases?” Blair
moaned theatrically.
“If you want, you can take
the day off.”
“Can I? Can I, please?” He
bounced maniacally.
Jim’s hand shot across the
table and grabbed his wrist, stopping his bouncing dead. Blair flashed an evil
smile at his Sentinel, knowing that the exaggerated super-bounce drove Jim up
the proverbial wall. But Jim was serious.
“If you don’t want to come
in, Chief, you don’t have to.”
“Aw, man, you know I’m
kidding. I have a few errands to run. I can get down at about eleven.”
Jim looked down his fine
nose at him. “Only if you limber up those typing fingers.”
Blair pulled his hand free
from Jim’s grasp and pretended to play a piano scale on the formica tabletop.
Jim smiled gently at his antics.
“You still up for going
camping? You are free this weekend?” Blair paused on the final note and looked
hopefully at him.
Jim froze, consternation
played across his face. The worried glance that the Sentinel then threw his way
was profoundly disturbing. It wasn’t hard to guess what was on Jim’s mind.
Blair coughed experimentally and saw Jim pale.
“I’m okay, man; I can go
camping.”
Jim shook his head
slightly.
“Aw, come on. I’m fine.
You know I’m fine.”
Jim tried to cover his
unease by concentrating on shredding his napkin to little pieces. “No, I have
some paperwork that I have to get finished for Monday.”
“Look, I swear to God that
I’m one hundred percent. The doc said that I had to be careful, and I have and
I’m fine. I really would like to go camping. I think it will do us a world of
good. Fresh air, de-stressing, good wholesome food – it’s just what the doctor
ordered.”
“You really want to go
camping?”
Blair rolled his eyes
heavenward. “Yes.”
“We’ll see,” Jim
pronounced. “Work. Weather.”
Blair knew that that was
as far as the Sentinel would go. If the weather forecast changed significantly,
they wouldn’t be leaving the city limits. Blair felt the imperious need to sit
down with a notebook to list all the things he thought were bugging the
Sentinel. But his gut told him that Jim needed a serious de-stressing vacation.
If Jim didn’t have the presence of mind to decide for himself, he would go over
Jim’s head and talk to Simon. There was an explosion on the horizon; Blair
could feel it in his bones.
~*~
Blair curled his body over
Jim’s report as he read it from cover to cover, incidentally hiding it from
view. He was trying to get ahead on the ins-and-outs of Jim’s casework because
of the madness that was the end of term.
“Whatcha doing?” Henri’s
bass tones were warming. “You look like a little kid.”
“What?” Blair looked up.
Henri was across the bullpen working on his own files.
He imitated Blair, his arm
curled to hide block his writing from prying eyes. “You should be sticking the
tip of your tongue out too.”
Blair immediately poked
his tongue out.
Henri laughed.
“I’m just catching up on
Jim’s files.” The files were piled high.
“Are you going to Simon’s
barbecue this weekend?”
“Barbecue?”
“Yeah, didn’t Jim tell
you?”
“No,” Blair said
hesitantly. “Jim and I were thinking about going camping this weekend. He must
have forgotten.”
Automatically, he focussed
on the Sentinel. Through the slates of the blinds in Simon office, he could see
Jim pacing as he expounded on a report. It was the most vibrant that Blair had
seen Jim in weeks. He spun on one heel, jabbing a finger at his superior. Simon
was less than impressed, sitting straight in his chair. The cigar in his mouth
worked back and forth. Jim growled loud enough to get the attention of the rest
of the bullpen. Henri rose up in his chair to better see the
fight-in-the-making.
Jim slapped the mahogany
desk hard. Simon erupted to his feet like a force of nature.
The bile spewing between
them tasted like acid in the back of Blair’s throat. They were going to come to
blows, Blair could tell.
He was halfway across the
bullpen before he knew that he was moving. He flung open the door.
“What!” both men demanded
simultaneously.
Blair coughed nervously.
“Uhm… you all right?”
“Yes,” Simon snarled.
“Detective Ellison and I are discussing a case.”
“You can’t close it,” Jim
leaned over the tabletop. “There’s something…”
“Detective,” Simon said
warningly. He did not lean away from
Jim. They froze, their noses almost touching.
The air between them
seemed to crackle. Blair could see the cusp on which they stood, both big men
were determined to be in the right. Jim’s fist was clenched and his fair skin
was flushed with anger. That was wrong, they were simply arguing cases.
Violence was out of bounds. Another wrong word, and Jim could overreach and
their relationship would be in the dust.
“No,” Blair said weakly.
“Chief?” Jim spun on him.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, it’s…” Blair
couldn’t verbalise it.
Jim's warm hand cupped Blair's elbow. “You’ve gone as white as a sheet. Simon, can I--?” He canted his head to the long sofa agains