wild_words

The Bright Touch of the Moon
~
Forever
Part 2 ~

(Please note that you will need to read Forever ~ Part 1 to understand this story)

Ring-around-a-rosy ... ashes, ashes ... “all fall down.”

“Blair?”

Blair’s head jerked up from where it rested on the back of the seat. “All fall down,” he repeated, the words of the nursery rhyme Naomi used to sing to him as a child skipping through his head like the unbroken chain it represented – until they all fell down.

“You’re not going to fall, Blair.” Jim’s arm was now draped around his shoulder. “I won’t let you.”

Letting his head relax again, awareness slowly filtered back into Blair’s world. Sitting in the front seat, squeezed in between Jim and Pete, he felt the closeness of them both. His head rested against Jim’s arm, leaving a feeling of warmth against the back of his skull – a warmth doubled by the hand that was tracing a light pattern across the top his shoulder. He wondered briefly what Jim’s fingers were feeling. Was his skin warm to the touch and, if so, what was it conveying? Was it telling a tale of hope, of a man with a life and a future? He closed his eyes. How could it? How could a heart that was essentially dead possibly pump anything but ice?

Then his body, as if recanting his thoughts, set his limbs afire. Pain, intense and seemingly set with a purpose, left him with no option but to feel, and in no doubt of the fact that he was indeed very much alive. He arched off the seat, unable to bear the pressure on his tailbone. His hands betrayed him next, sending what felt like short, sharp jolts of electricity from the pads of his fingertips to the base of his wrists. “Jim,” he rasped, but Jim was one step ahead of him. The arm that provided a drop of warmth in an ocean of cold was now wrapped around him. His legs were drawn up onto the seat and settled across another pair of legs and Pete’s hand squeezed his calf muscle. The pain flared again and he tried, without success, to bite back the pitiful sound which escaped his lips. Jim’s arm tightened its grip and, like a babe cradled in his mother’s arms, he was drawn in and held. His cheek settled against Jim’s chest and a waft of deodorant, as well as a scent that was far more familiar, engaged his sense of smell. He breathed in deeply, wanting more, needing more. As if their thoughts were in sync, Jim tugged on the collar of his shirt, exposing more of his skin. Blair reacted on instinct, burying his face in the nape of Jim’s neck and breathing in the essence of the only tenable hold he had left on life.

Pete pulled to a stop, yanked on the handbrake and pushed open the car door. He rounded the front of the jeep quickly, pulling open the passenger side. “Gently,” he said, his hands now supporting Blair’s torso, as Jim aided in sliding Blair’s body across the seat. As soon as Pete became responsible for all of Blair’s weight, Jim pulled himself from the car. There was an urgency to his movements and he didn’t attempt to take Blair from Pete’s arms. Blair was panting – quick, short, successive bursts – which, combined with the fine stream of sweat that was now trickling down from his temple, told them both that Blair was fighting a battle with pain. Grabbing the medical bag from the back of the jeep, Jim bounded up the front stairs. “Key in the same place?” he called.

“Yeah.” Pete paused at the bottom of the front stairs and readjusted Blair’s weight. It would have been a hell of a lot easier to throw the kid over his shoulder, but Blair’s breathing was a little erratic and somewhat constricted; at this point he didn’t want to put any pressure on Blair’s diaphragm.

Jim flung open the front door and bounded down the stairs. He placed a supporting hand on Pete’s back as the older man made his way up the stairs. “Which bedroom?” he asked.

“Your room,” Pete answered. While those two simple words had been unconsciously spoken, it suddenly brought home to Jim the very real significance of the time he’d spent in this house. But now was not the time to focus his thoughts on anything but Blair; his hand remained on Pete’s back as they made their way to the bedroom at the end of the passageway. He opened the door to the smell of clean sheets and the unmistakable perfume of frangipani. “Neighbour at the other end of the beach came by to stock the place up,” Pete said by way of explanation. “You wanna pull back the sheets? And I got a feeling it’d be a good idea to grab that towel.”

Snagging the towel from the end of the bed, Jim yanked down the quilt and then scooted back up the length of the bed. “Easy, Chief,” he said, as Pete lowered Blair into his arms. Blair groaned miserably and Jim managed, just in time, to get the towel between Blair’s mouth and his lap before the younger man’s stomach muscles contracted, bringing up a mixture of bile and water.

Jim shifted his hand to Blair’s face and palmed away the sweat that was now making his hair damp. “Pete?” he said, not even trying to mask the concern in his voice.

“It’s been a long day, son.” Pete’s bag was now open and he was preparing a needle. He placed it on the bedside table and reached down to touch Blair’s leg. “Kiddo, I’m going to give you something for pain, but first I need to know where it’s hurting.”

Blair’s eyes were closed and, although he was still conscious, Jim doubted that he was fully up to comprehending what was happening to him. His doubt was immediately repudiated and his gut feeling about Blair’s growing dependency on pain medication was reinforced when Blair answered Pete without hesitation. “Everywhere,” Blair panted. “Need a shot, now.”

Pete briefly met Jim’s eyes before running his hand up the length of Blair’s leg. “Blair, I need you to be a little more specific.”

The tone of Blair’s voice left little doubt that he was in pain and, as if to prove as much, he pulled his legs up and wrapped his hand around his stomach. “Just inside,” he rasped, burying his head further into Jim’s lap. “Please, Pete, make it stop.”

“It’s gonna be okay,” Pete replied softly. He moved his hand to the top of Blair’s cargo pants, snapped open the button and pulled down the zipper. His eyes once again met Jim’s. “Tomorrow,” he said, and Jim nodded in agreement. Tomorrow they would all start afresh.

Pulling Blair’s pants down just enough to expose the fleshy part of his rump, Pete inserted the needle. Blair flinched and Jim reacted by tangling his fingers in the now damp strands of Blair’s hair. “How long?” he asked.

“A few minutes.” Capping the needle, Pete got to his feet and pulled open the window. The ocean breeze swept through the room and, although it carried with it the afternoon heat, Jim instinctively shivered.

“You okay?” Pete asked.

“Yeah.” Jim briefly closed his eyes. “I’m fine.”

Sitting on the mattress again, Pete trailed his hand up Blair’s back. “Kiddo, I’m going to have to examine you and chances are that you’re going to be a little out of it when I do. Do I have your permission, Blair?”

Blair didn’t turn his head, choosing to leave his face where it couldn’t be seen, in the security of Jim’s lap. “Don’t care,” he muttered. “Just make me stop feeling.”

“It won’t be long, now.” Pete continued to rub Blair’s back until his breathing finally slowed and his shoulders dropped, releasing the tension they’d been holding.

“Jim, he’s pretty much out of it now. You don’t have to stay, son. I can handle it myself.”

“Yes, I do,” Jim replied quietly.

Rising to his feet, Pete reached for his bag and started to unpack what he would need. “You have nothing to prove, Jim. Not to Blair and certainly not to me.”

“But I still have to prove it to myself.” Jim’s fingers massaged Blair’s scalp. “I can’t fail him, Pete.”

With what he needed now neatly lined up on the table beside the bed, Pete retook his seat. “And you won’t.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because I know you.”

“Then you must know the thoughts that still go through my head.”

“I do.” Pete reached out and tapped Jim’s chest. “But I also know that the feelings you carry in your heart for this kid will eventually win out against any demons lingering in your head.”

“And what happens if ‘eventually’ is too long?”

“Then you rely on me to bridge the gap.” Pete’s hand settled over Jim’s. “Son, this is not going to be easy, but for you to get through this, you know that you’re going to have to let go.”

Jim shook his head. “No. No way ... no way I let him go.”

“I’m not talking about him, I’m talking about yourself, Jim, and that anger that’s churning your insides like a witch’s brew.”

If it wasn’t Pete sitting before him, Jim would have quite freely responded that he had no anger left; that his rage had been left back at the hospital, back on the shower room floor the day he’d told himself that he’d been freed from his self-doubt and self-recrimination. The day he promised to show Blair nothing more of himself than love. But while he’d made a lifetime career out of lying to himself, lying to Pete never seemed to work. “Are you so sure?” he asked. Lifting his hand, he scrubbed his thumb across the scar over Pete’s left eye – a natural action because, just as it was with Blair, when it came to Pete, society’s artificial boundaries didn’t exist. “Look what I left behind the last time I let it go.”

Pete smiled. “Yeah, well, middle age has made me grumpy, so I wouldn’t be expecting me to let you off so easy this time, if I were you.”

“Easy?” Jim replied, lightly. “Last time you broke my knuckle.”

“Well, you should have known better than to take a swing at someone with such a hard head.” The smile fell from Pete’s face and his attention returned to Blair. “I’m going to do the hardest part first, Jim, so if you feel the need to get some fresh air, now’s the time.”

Jim let his hand drop back on to Blair’s head. “No,” he said, his fingers winding themselves once again in the strands of Blair’s hair. “I’m staying.”

Without another word, Pete took hold of the top of Blair’s pants, manoeuvring them past Blair’s hips, down the length of his legs and over the bandages on his feet. He looked up as the word ‘fuck’ left Jim’s mouth, seeing instantly the reason for the reaction. The back of Blair’s boxers were dotted with blood and, while the amount staining the material gave Pete no undue cause for concern, his examination would now have to be far more personal. He’d been hoping to avoid that situation, especially with Jim in the room. He was on the verge of suggesting, once again, that perhaps Jim should leave, but the look on the other man’s face told him that it would be a futile attempt. The Ellison mask was firmly in place but, while the exterior was calm and almost unemotional, Pete knew that the interior was waging a war. If he wasn’t careful, Jim would end up being the major casualty.

“It’s nothing to be overly concerned about,” Pete said, attempting to make some impact on Jim’s inner turmoil. “It was a long flight and the road up here wasn’t exactly all that smooth.” Pulling Blair’s boxers completely off, Pete slipped on a latex glove and removed a tube of antibiotic cream from his bag. Without saying a word, he angled Blair’s leg up and began his examination.

Blair let out a small moan at the intrusion into his body, but his breathing remained steady and his eyes stayed closed. “It’s okay, kiddo,” Pete soothed, as he concentrated on feeling for any new damage. Finding nothing more than a slight tear near one of the internal stitches, he withdrew his finger and pulled off the glove. Donning another with practiced ease, he lowered Blair’s leg and continued his examination. The irritation from the hospital catheter was minimal, and as he pressed down on Blair’s groin and manipulated his damaged testicle, he felt no undue swelling or reason for concern.

He glanced at Jim to get an indication of how he was doing, and his internal alarm bells started to clamour. Jim had paled considerably and, although his eyes were now closed, Pete had the distinct feeling that Jim’s other senses were more than compensating for the lack of sight. “Jim?” he asked, but the only response was a change in Jim’s breathing pattern. It was low, calm and strangely ominous, making Pete feel like he was about to step into the eye of a hurricane.

Turning his focus back to Blair, Pete un-bandaged, examined and re-bandaged the wounds on Blair’s feet and his left hand. His right hand was more of a concern; it had been x-rayed again the day before they’d checked out of the hospital, because it hadn’t responded as well to treatment. Due to the nature of the damage, his hand was encased in a half cast and the moment Pete unwound the bandage, exposing the palm of Blair’s hand, Jim’s eyes shot open. Blair’s hand was still red and inflamed and, for a man with Ellison’s senses, the smell of infection would have been enough to push him from the eye of the storm and straight into the fray. “Jim, I need your help,” Pete said, already on the offensive. When there was no answer, Pete spoke again, with a little more authority. “Jim! I need your help.” He didn’t get an answer, and he wasn’t really expecting one, but the look in Jim’s eyes told him that, at the very least, he had Ellison’s attention. “In the storage room you’ll find an IV pole, and there are IV antibiotics in the refrigerator. I need you to bring me both.”

A secluded house on a pristine Hawaiian beach didn’t come cheap. A high court judge, a defence lawyer, and a retired neurosurgeon made up the list of neighbours who shared the twenty-mile stretch of paradise. The retired surgeon, who these days simply went by the name of Murray, and whom Pete had known for more years than either of them cared to remember, had stocked the house and provided the list of medical supplies that he had asked for.

“He needs to be taken back to the hospital.” Jim eased Blair’s head out of his lap. “He should never have been discharged.”

“Maybe not,” Pete agreed. “But who was going to keep him there? You would have failed and so would I, so that leaves the guard at the door and a handcuff on the bedrail.” While he knew he was over-dramatizing, sometimes sharp and straight to the point was the only way to get Ellison’s attention. “I need those supplies, now, Jim.”

The moment Jim stepped from the room, Pete repositioned Blair on the bed, giving him better access to the wound. He examined the edges where the nail had been driven through. The wound was more tender, more swollen and, judging by Jim’s reaction, more infected than the day before. Snapping open the buttons on Blair’s shirt, he pressed against the lymph nodes under Blair’s arms and repeated the same with the glands in his neck. Both areas were showing signs of a body fighting infection.

When Jim returned to the room, it was as if he were functioning on autopilot. He had retrieved everything Pete had asked for, and he was now methodically and meticulously going about preparing the IV. The only real indication to the depths of his anger were the hands that refused to stop shaking.

Pete drew himself off the mattress. He took the capped needle from Jim’s hand. “Go,” he said.

“No,” Ellison replied.

“Not a request, son.” Pete moved to stand in front of Blair, blocking Jim’s view. “Get out of here and get rid of everything you need to get rid of before you come back.” He held up his hand. “And before you decide to fight me on this, you just stop and think what your emotions are doing to him. It’s bad enough that you could destroy yourself, but don’t take him down with you, Jim. Right now he doesn’t have the strength to fight back.”

Reality hit Jim like he’d been stabbed in the gut. He sucked in a gulp of air that never seemed to reach his lungs and then, without a second glance, he turned and left the room. Strong, decisive steps quickened in pace and, by time he’d reached the end of the passageway, those steps had broken into a run.

As Pete inserted the needle into Blair’s arm, he heard the screen door slam. As he taped the tubing down and checked the pace of the drip, he heard nothing but silence. Then, as he applied the last bandage to Blair’s hand and pulled the sheet up to cover Blair’s chest, he heard the breaking of glass. “Damn you, Ellison.”

Pinching the bridge of his nose, Pete mentally prepared himself for what was coming. As he got to his feet and made for the door, he knew that he was about to fight a war – but the only objective was to save Jim from himself.

“Stop.” Ignoring the blood-tipped shards of glass that lay on the deck, Pete reached out and roughly grabbed Jim by the arm, before spinning him around. Instinctively, Jim’s hand balled into a fist and without any real comprehension of what he was doing, he raised it, ready to strike. Acting before Ellison had the chance to lash out, Pete encased Jim’s knuckles within the palm of his hand, spun him back around and slammed him, hard, into the timber-clad wall. “I mean it, Ellison,” he warned as he brought his knee up and dug it firmly into the small of Jim’s back. “Get it under control.” The sound of Jim’s heavy breathing kept a rhythm with his own and, as he waited for a response, Pete could feel Jim’s muscles straining against his own. For the moment, he had the upper hand, but it wouldn’t take long for Jim to work his way out of the hold, so he added more pressure in the hope of keeping Ellison contained for a few moments longer. While he had, in the past, been guilty of teaching Jim a lesson or two with the power of his fists, that was a long time ago and under an entirely different set of circumstances. The last thing he wanted to do now was to hurt Jim any more than he’d already been hurt.

“Are you with me?” he asked, steadying his own voice. Receiving an answer, not in words, but by the slight release of tension in Ellison’s shoulders, he lowered his knee and leaned in until his chest was heavy against Jim’s back. “Jim, I’m going to step back and when I do, I want you to go.” Taking the chance, he unfolded his hand from around Jim’s, his thumb briefly pressing against the bleeding cuts across the width of Ellison’s knuckles. “I want you to take off down that beach and I don’t want you to come back until you’ve got this out of your system.” Jim’s shoulders dropped even further, and Pete played his trump card. “He needs to heal, son, and he needs to do it on his own terms. Those terms don’t include being swallowed up in your anger.” Pete took a single step back; the only physical connection he now had with Jim was the hand he settled in the middle of Ellison’s back. “Go,” he said, with a slight tap. “Go and run this down.”

The moment Pete removed his hand, Jim took off. Without a single word or any kind of acknowledgement, he bounded down the stairs and hit the sand running. Pete tracked him down the length of the beach and, although he lost sight of him when Jim rounded the base of the bluff, he didn’t divert his gaze until Jim’s blood, wet and slick and settling in the creases of his palm, stirred his memories. Drawing his eyes away, he turned and went back into the house, making his way slowly into the kitchen. Stopping at the sink, he turned on the faucet and ran his hand under the water. Jim’s blood washed away easily, but there had been a time when that wasn’t the case, when it pooled in his hands in such copious quantities that he thought he’d never be able to remove the colour of it from his skin. But, as time did what time is meant to do, it had passed through his life, taking the punch from the bad, and leaving behind the strength within the good.

Picking up a kitchen towel and drying his hands, Pete unconsciously rubbed at the scar over his left eye. He’d fought back against the bad, both physically and emotionally. But, while he might have gained a brief reprieve from the war being waged, there had never been total victory because, at the end of the day, it was Jim who was supplying the ammunition. Turning his gaze toward the passageway, his thoughts settled on the man who lay in the bedroom beyond. For the first time in a very long time, he felt hope. Blair would have a long way to go in conquering his own demons, but he was stronger than Jim and he was certain that Blair’s strength would eventually become Ellison’s silver bullet.

In Pete's eyes the beauty of a Hawaiian sunset had always held a sense of magic. No matter if it were the first, or the hundredth, it had the power to hold and captivate the observer, never giving them the chance to become accustomed to its awe-inspiring beauty. For a few precious moments at the end of each day, it would keep the night sky at bay and paint the colour of life against a canvas of fading blue. And on the cusp of darkness, seconds before being forced to retreat to the waters of the horizon, it threw out one last burst of radiant energy that revitalized the soul and recharged the senses. As he sat on the top step of the porch, waiting for Jim to return, Pete closed his eyes and let the sunset weave its magic upon his tired soul.

“It never ceases to amaze, does it?”

Pete’s eyes remained closed, stealing a few more precious moments. “And it never will.” He opened his eyes and watched as Jim took his own seat, two stairs down. “Blair hasn’t woken.”

“I know.” Jim held out his hand, ready to catch the beer Pete now held in his. “Sorry about the window. I’ll fix it tomorrow.”

“You're right about that, and lucky for you, there’s still a pane of glass in the shed from last time you broke it.”

Jim’s interest shifted from the horizon and toward the darkening sky. The first star, the evening star, shone dimly in the twilight, making him wonder what would happen if he did make a wish.

“You feel like sharing?” Pete asked, quietly.

“You really think it’s wise to open Pandora’s Box any more than it’s already been opened?”

“Oh, I think I’m wise enough and just about tough enough to handle anything Pandora throws my way.”

Jim swivelled around until his hip hit the kickboard. He stretched his leg out along the length of the step and looked up at Pete. “I don’t doubt it.” He paused for a moment, his head once again tilted towards the heavens. “It makes me angry.”

“What does?”

“The thought of what’s been done to him and what he’s going to have to go through, not just to heal, but to be able to live the rest of his life with some semblance of normality.”

“Jim, Blair will be fine.”

“Fine?” Pete was not an ill-considered man and, normally, neither were his statements. He’d seen what Blair had already been put through and he knew damn well what lay ahead and ‘fine’ wasn’t a word to be associated with either.

“Fine?” Jim repeated again. “How the hell did you come to that conclusion?”

Pete took a slow swig from his beer bottle, considering with care his next statement. “Blair will be fine because he’s strong.”

The tone of voice said it all. “You mean stronger than me.”

“Yeah,” Pete replied simply.

For a surreal moment, time stood still before speeding up and leaving Jim with a profound sense of failure. After all this time and after everything he’d put Pete through, he couldn’t blame the man for reaching the end of the line, for finally realising that their friendship was essentially made up of a set of weights and balances. Pete was the balance and he was the weight that would eventually drag them under. He shifted his leg again to the stair below and turned back to face the setting sun. He’d already heard the words and he didn’t need to see it reinforced by the look on Pete’s face.

“Jim.” The stair creaked, settled and creaked again. Pete reached out and touched Jim’s shoulder. “When I say he’s gonna be fine, I don’t mean that tomorrow he’ll wake good as new and go tiptoeing through the tulips, because he won’t. He needs to heal, both emotionally and physically, and I have no doubt that between now and then, we’ll both be put through the wringer dealing with his anger and his hurt.” Pete’s touch increased as he began to work at the tension Jim was so good at storing in his muscles. “But what Blair won’t do is allow himself to wallow in the past. He’ll move on, son, and when he does, his past won’t follow.”

“He’ll never forget, Pete. No matter how much time passes, he’ll never forget.”

“I’m not saying he will, but he will embrace an ideal stronger than memories.”

“Which is?”

“He’ll realise that what happened was an event beyond his control and beyond his burden of responsibility. None of it was his doing and none of it was his fault. The memory will always be there, but it will be part of his past and he won’t let it define his future.”

“Unlike me?”

Pete hesitated. While Jim and Blair might share a close, cohesive relationship, they were men who looked at the world through very different sets of eyes. Blair lived for the here and now, and for the future. He looked for the positive, not letting the negatives of the world ever become heavy enough to hold him back for long. Jim, on the other hand, was a thinker, although Pete realised it wasn’t a label many would attribute to Ellison. But no one knew Jim as well as he did and no one knew just how profoundly Jim’s thoughts affected him, or how badly these same thoughts kept him trapped, at times, within his memories.

“I’m getting better, you know,” Jim said, as if somehow reading Pete’s mind. “I can go weeks, even months, without thinking about it.”

“That’s what time is meant to do, son.”

“Not time, Blair. The closer I let him get to me, the harder it is for the memories to catch me.” Jim rolled the beer bottle between the palms of his hands. “Kind of ironic, isn’t it? Ever since I’ve known him, he’s been fighting an enemy he never even knew existed.”

“He knows,” Pete answered. “He might not know the details, but he knows.” Slapping Jim lightly on the back, Pete slowly got to his feet and stretched his muscles. “Why don’t you hit the shower and when you’re done, I’ll patch up your hand.”

“Pete,” Jim said, before Mitchell moved away. “I don’t think I’ve ever told you.”

“And you don’t have to.” Making his way up the stairs, Pete once again turned his attention toward the sky. “You might be the centre of Blair’s dissertation Ellison, but you’re already my degree.”

Jim smiled. “Nice to know I’m good for something.”

As the screen door slammed shut, Jim heard Pete’s quiet words. “More than you know, son.”

Blair had been restless. He had kicked off the sheet, leaving him naked from the waist down and forcing Jim to confront the uncomfortable nakedness of his memories. Reaching for Blair’s bag, he unzipped it and riffled through the contents until he found a pair of shorts which, in effect, would serve to cover them both.

Blair stirred the moment his leg was touched. He rolled from his back to his side, making Jim’s task more difficult, but not difficult enough to deter. With gentle patience, he manoeuvred the shorts over Blair’s bandages and pulled them up the length of his legs, stopping briefly when Blair moaned. “It’s just me, Chief,” he comforted as Blair’s eyes struggled to open.

Balancing on the fine line that separated awareness from confusion, Blair mumbled. “What ... doing?”

“Just putting your boxers on.”

Awareness stayed at arm’s length. “Why?”

“Why what?”

The warmth of Jim’s hands on his skin and the touch of material sliding up his legs and over his hips brought no additional clarity; he’d laid down with his boxers on. “Didn’t take ... ‘em off,” Blair finally managed.

Jim rested his hand on Blair’s thigh. “Pete did.”

Blair’s eyes now struggled to focus. “Why?”

Not really wanting to recall earlier events, Jim grabbed the sheet and began to pull it back up. “You need to rest. Close your eyes.”

Indignity and humiliation finally broke through the confusion and Blair rolled onto his back, relying now on anger to protect him from the harsh reality of both emotions. “Why?”

As the events of earlier in the day flashed across Blair’s vision, the full impact hit him as, unmercifully, the scenes replayed in lifelike detail. Then his feelings intensified, as if a deaf man had been left in charge of the remote, turning up the sounds and sensations to a deafening volume with no second thought to the chaos they were creating. Intellectually, he realised with unquestioned certainty that the hands which had touched him on such a personal level belonged to a man whose only intention was to heal. His emotional responses, however, allowed for no such distinction. Pete’s hands were Forsythe’s hands, and his fingers were so very much more. He sat up abruptly and swung his legs over the side of mattress. “He had no right.”

“Chief.”

Acutely aware that Jim was sitting directly behind him, Blair resisted the urge to pull away when Jim’s touch brushed across his shoulder.

“He did ask you, Blair. He asked you if he could examine you, and you gave him permission.”

Blair shook his head “No,” he replied. “He didn’t and no, I wouldn’t.”

Jim’s hand settled on Blair’s shoulder. “Blair, do you really think for one moment that I would have let him touch you if you had said no?” Jim inched his body closer. “And do you really think he would have gone against your wishes?”

“I don’t have to think, I know!”

Blair had unwittingly explained the problem. He didn’t have to think because all his reactions were ruled by his heart, not his head. As if to further demonstrate his mindset, Blair’s next thought was ruled by his desperate desire to forget. “Where is he? I need to see him.”

“He’s asleep, Chief. He’s exhausted.”

“Wake him. I need to see him.”

Jim placed both hands on Blair’s shoulders. “Why? What’s so urgent that it can’t wait until morning?”

Blair’s head dropped and his hair fanned out, covering his face. “I need his help,” he said softly.

“His help, or the help of what he has in his syringe?”

Blair shook his head and drew in a ragged breath. “Don’t. Just don’t.”

Jim closed the gap which separated them. “Chief, this is not the way. Believe me, it’s not the way.”

“It’s the only way.” Blair’s voice trailed off into a whisper. “I can’t do it alone.”

“Then don’t.” Jim slid backward to sit completely on the mattress, and pulled Blair back against his chest. “Lean on me.”

Blair’s body didn’t resist the action, but his mind resisted the idea. He shook his head. “No.”

“Why?” Jim wrapped his arms around Blair’s chest. “Why won’t you let me help?”

“Because,” Blair whispered, “you can’t. You have no idea.”

The muscles in Jim’s arm flexed as he tightened his hold. “No idea of what?”

“Of what it feels like to be me,” Blair replied, softly.

The moment of truth had arrived and, while Jim yearned for nothing more than to share his truth with Blair, his own demons held strong. “I might not know how you feel, but I do know you,” he said.

Blair looked up and fixed his eyes on the wall. “Then you know I’m not strong enough.”

“That’s where you’re wrong.” Without releasing Blair from his arms, Jim started to move up the length of the bed.

“No. I just need Pete.”

Jim didn’t stop moving. “Let’s just try this first, okay?” Slowly he lay down on his back, taking Blair down with him.

“No,” Blair protested. “I don’t want to lay down.”

“Just be for a minute,” Jim replied.

With one arm still wound around Blair’s chest, Jim’s shoulder effectively became a pillow and, when Blair didn’t put up any physical resistance, it didn’t take too much effort to get him to turn to his side.

“Why are we doing this?” Blair whispered, his breath warm against Jim’s skin.

Making sure the IV was still flowing freely, Jim took hold of Blair’s hand and settled it against his chest. “Because you need to feel.”

“I do feel,” Blair said flatly.

Jim ran his hand down Blair’s arm. “What do you feel, Chief? Tell me what you feel.”

The silence seemed vast and cavernous and Jim held his breath until Blair finally broke, choking out the words he so desperately didn’t want to hear. “Nothing ... I feel nothing.”

All I want to do is to take Blair away, lay him down on a bed, cocoon him in safety and stay perfectly still until we are both strong enough to move. Jim’s thoughts came flooding back and now was his chance; his chance to not only implement those thoughts, but the chance to hold on for both their lives. His cheek came to rest upon the top of Blair’s head. “You will,” he said. “If I promise you nothing else in this lifetime, I promise you that you will feel.”

It was only a single drop, one solitary tear, hot against his shoulder, but for Jim, it was a pool deep enough in which to drown. How could he even begin to save Blair when he wasn’t even strong enough to save himself? His only chance lay in the hope that Pete was right. Blair didn’t need saving because he was strong enough save himself. Jim himself was head deep and out of his depth, but Blair was the man with two feet firmly planted on the shore.

Without a word, Jim reached down and pulled up the sheet to cover them both. Blair’s only reaction was a shaky inhale of breath and a tenseness which seem to band in every muscle.

“Close your eyes,” Jim whispered. “I promise tomorrow will bring a new day.”

Jim’s heart beat against the pads of Blair’s fingers and his breath, light and soft, touched his forehead. Blair tried as best he could to resist the urge to close his eyes, but the pull of sleep was too great. His eyes drifted shut and he floated, as did his thoughts. In the distance, close enough to see clearly, was Forsythe. His steel blue eyes were piercing while his face held an air of sympathy, of compassion. As he drew closer, Forsythe’s blue eyes turned brown and his face sharpened, his expression now indicating a man who possessed no soul. Tick tock, Blair drifted deeper into the night and into the blackness of the jungle. Tick tock, the clock struck one and the beat began. Tick tock, five seconds, wood branded flesh. Tick tock, five seconds, hard, but dull, numbing. Tick tock, it struck again. Tick tock, and again. Tick tock, the pain increased. Tick tock, one hour turned to two, no reprieve, no change in the rhythm. Tick tock, five seconds, the pain barley tolerable. Tick tock, five seconds, unbearable. Tick tock, “No!” he shouted. Tick tock, “Tell me where,” he was ordered. Tick tock, his eyes turned cold. “Fuck you to hell.” Tick tock, “Tell me.” Tick tock, five seconds. “No.” Tick tock, “Tell me!” Tick tock, five seconds. “NO!”

“No!” Blair screamed. He rolled onto his back, breaking all contact with Jim. “No!” he cried out in a voice filled with heart-wrenching pain. “Stop, no more. Please just stop.”

Startled awake from a deeper sleep than his body normally afforded him, it took Jim a few seconds to get his bearings. As his eyes adjusted to the dim light of the room, the rest of his senses sought out Blair. “Chief?”

Blair’s breathing was rapid and uncontrolled, reminding Jim of a freight train, out of control and headed for certain disaster. Before he even had a chance to offer Blair comfort, some reprieve from his nightmare, Blair turned to his side and drew his leg up, clasping his thigh with his injured hand. “Hurts.”

Concerned, Jim reached out. “What hurts?”

Blair’s eyes were squeezed shut, his face tense with pain. “My thigh.”

Jim covered Blair’s hand with his own. “Let me look,” he said, lifting Blair’s hand away and replacing it with his own. The skin beneath his touch was cool and the muscle relaxed, giving no indication of cramping or any other type of injury. “How exactly does it hurt?”

“Just hurts,” Blair mumbled, his eyes now closed. He drew in a deep breath, his body relaxing as he exhaled. “Tick, tock,” he muttered, before falling deeply asleep.

Tick, tock. Blair’s last words niggled at Jim’s peripheral memory; they seemed important, but weren’t quite strong enough to help him reach deeper to connect the meaning. Removing his hand from Blair’s thigh, his gaze turned toward the window. The night was still; the only disturbance was the call of a lonely gull far out to sea. Pulling himself from the mattress, he moved to his own bed. Dawn was still hours away, and he was wide awake. Given the stress of the past week, he should have been exhausted but, as he settled down and laid his head on the pillow, he felt completely rested. Going through the motions, he turned to his side and snaked his hand under the pillow before forcing himself to close his eyes. The gull’s cry shifted his attention away from Blair and toward the ocean. The waves lapped softly at the shoreline and, as the hours wore on, their gentle lullaby lured him into a light doze.

“Tick, tock.” The voice was haunting. As he slept, it drew him ever closer to his memories.

“Tick, tock.”

The kettle whistled and Jim pulled himself from the deckchair. As the sun tracked its way slowly across a cloudless sky, the morning shadows that lingered on the deck would soon be gone. If only all shadows were so easy to erase, he thought, swinging open the door and making his way into the kitchen.

The hot water infused the herbs, and Jim cocked his head toward the bedroom. Blair had been on the verge of waking for the past few minutes; now, by the ruffling of sheets and the sound of a foot hitting the floorboards, it was obvious he was fully awake.

“Hey, Junior, what do you think you’re up to?” Moving into the room and placing the tea on the side table, Jim knelt down and brushed Blair’s hair away from his face. “You’re not supposed to bear weight on that foot yet.”

Blair looked up, his exhausted expression suggesting that every inch of his body and soul had been starved of sleep for a lifetime. His movements were random, uncoordinated, as if he were detached from his body, a fair match for the head full of jumbled images and thoughts that made no sense. Somewhere in there was a stranger peeking through a window, invading his privacy, but oddly protective. Finally, with great effort, his eyes met Jim’s. “I need to use the bathroom.”

Jim’s hand left the side of Blair’s face and briefly patted his knee. “You just hang tight while I go get the wheelchair.”

The second Jim broke contact and moved away, Blair gasped as his heart started pounding with an intense feeling of panic. The thoughts and images that moments before had consumed his mind disappeared, leaving an empty void in their place, which was quickly filled with thoughts of a more ominous nature. “No,” he blurted. “You can’t go. I need you here.”

Jim returned, as did his touch, and immediately the stranger at the window returned to protect him from his own thoughts and emotions.

“Chief, I’m just going out into the hall. I won’t be gone two seconds.”

“No,” Blair said again, this time reaching out with his injured hand to try and grasp Jim’s. “Where’s Pete? I need Pete.”

Jim assumed that they were back to where they left off last night. “He’s gone for a swim. He’ll be back soon.” He gently took hold of Blair’s wrists, stilling the frantic movements of his hands. “What do you need him for?”

Blair ignored the question, instead turning his attention to the IV line running into his arm. “What’s in this?”

“Saline and antibiotics.”

“Painkillers?”

“No.”

“Why?” Blair questioned. “I still need them.”

“You sure about that?” Jim asked. “Because I’ve got a feeling that if you were really honest with yourself, you’d admit that you don’t need anything stronger than Panadol.”

Blair’s anger flared, but his rage felt off kilter, as if it didn’t truly belong to him. “How the hell do you know what I need?” he spat. “You’re not a doctor. I need to see Pete, not listen to your half-assed advice on what you think is good for me.”

Jim remained calm. “It was Pete who made the call, not me, but I have to say that I agree with him.”

Blair pulled his hands free from Jim’s. “Get it out.” He tugged at the IV. “I want it out.”

“Okay, okay.” Aware that Pete had planned to remove it as soon as Blair awoke, Jim took hold of Blair’s wrist, and worked on loosening the edge of the tape before peeling it completely away. Then, with practised ease, he removed the needle. “That better?”

Blair was on a seesaw. One minute he hated everyone and everything around him, including Jim, and the next, all he hated was himself and what he had become. Although he may not have needed the aid of drugs for his physical pain, his emotional pain was writhing. An inner voice, foreign to his own, insisted that if Jim was going to help Pete deny him what he needed, then it were only fair that Jim become his next best substitute. Without questioning the voice, Blair once again reached for Jim’s hand. “Yeah,” he said with an audible sigh.

Although a little bewildered by Blair’s sudden need for physical contact, Jim had no intention of denying the connection. Blair needing him was a better scenario than the kid pushing him away. “You still need the bathroom, Chief?”

Blair nodded.

“Can I go get the chair?”

Blair shook his head.

“You’re kind of leaving us between a rock and a hard place here, kiddo,” Jim said gently.

Blair dropped his gaze, his hair once again falling to obscure his face. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, not knowing how to explain his almost obsessive need to feel Jim’s skin touch his.

Jim hooked his fingers under Blair’s chin and lifted it, forcing Blair to look at him. “It’s okay. Hard places might be a challenge, but they’re not all together impossible.” Thinking for a few seconds, Jim moved to sit on the bed. He took hold of Blair’s arm and hooked it around his shoulder. “Think you can manage this way?”

Blair remained silent, a nod his only response.

“Okay then. We go up on three.”

On the count of three, Jim drew them both to their feet, stopping briefly to gain a steady balance as Blair’s injured foot hung limply between them. Taking responsibility for most of Blair’s weight, they crossed the bedroom to the bathroom. Jim flicked on the light and led Blair over to the toilet, torn with what to do next. Blair’s heart rate was still elevated and it was obvious that his emotions were all over the place. Question was, if he left to give Blair his privacy, would he get the same reaction he’d received a few moment before? His only real answer was to leave the decision in Blair’s hands. “Blair, do you want me to leave or do you want me to stay?”

Blair couldn’t answer. His voice was gone, leaving only shame and guilt to speak for him. Could he actually become any more pathetic than he already was? The answer was easy, a simple yes. He was a grown man about to subject his best friend to potty training 101 because, right here, right now, he couldn’t cope with Jim leaving his side. The thought of breaking contact with Jim scared the shit out of him, but what scared him even more was that he didn’t know why. Jim’s touch was giving him the ability to be the stranger looking through the window. When Jim moved away, Blair Sandburg took the stranger’s place and the reality of facing up to that was simply too much for him to bear.

“Blair?”

Still unable to answer, Blair just stood, still and silent, hoping and praying that Jim would take the decision from his hands. And as if on cue, Jim did. He moved to stand behind him, lowered his boxer shorts and waited while he took care of the rest. Before he knew it, he was sitting on the closed toilet seat lid, his shirt removed with Jim trailing a washcloth across his chest and down the length of his arms.

“May as well kill this bird while we’re in here,” Jim said. “And then, after you’ve had something to eat, how about we hit the sun deck and –”

“It scares me,” Blair said suddenly, interrupting Jim midway.

Jim stopped, giving Blair his full attention. “What does?”

A small part of Blair wanted desperately to unmask the stranger. “Hiding from who I am and knowing that I’m too weak to try and stop it.”

“You’re not hiding, Chief. You just need some time out to take a break. Once all the drugs are completely out of your system and you start to think straight again, you’ll realise just how exceptionally strong you are.”

“And the stranger,” Blair whispered. “When will he realise?”

“What stranger?”

The stranger stopped Blair’s confession in its tracks. “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “Not important.”

“Hey, it does matter. Talk to me kiddo, please.”

Blair didn’t know whether he wanted to laugh or cry, or simply give in and let himself go mad. He was so tired he couldn’t even string more than a handful of words together, let alone explain to Jim the complex power struggle going on in his head. “I’m tired, Jim,” he breathed. “So very, very tired.”

Blair was pale and drawn and, when Jim took a moment to really study Blair’s face and look deep into his eyes, he could see and sense an exhaustion that would take more than one good night’s sleep to fix. Blair needed to rest, not just his body, but his soul. “Come on,” he said, encouraging him to stand. “You need to rest.”

“Will you stay?” Blair asked.

“Wild horses, Chief,” Jim replied. “Wild horses.”

“Tell us”

“No,” he said in a voice now raspy with the strain of protest.

“Tell us and we stop.”

His head shook from side to side. “Fuck you.”

And then it continued. Rolling up and down his shin, the hard metal rod never broke rhythm. Over and over it continued along the exact same path, shedding away his skin and peeling away flesh. The pain was excruciating, unbearable, but he wouldn’t break. He’d die before he’d tell them. He’d die before they broke him.

Jim looked up as the screen door slammed shut. “How was the water?”

“Revitalising. You should head down there.”

“Maybe,” Jim shrugged, snapping the lid down on a container of fruit salad. “Think I might turn my hand at fixing a window first.”

Pete reached for the container as well as a bowl from the cupboard above Jim’s head. “Blair manage to keep any of that down?”

“We didn’t really get that far.”

“How’d you mean?”

“He got up to use the bathroom and that was about it. The minute his head hit pillow again, he was out.”

“Did he sleep okay last night?”

“Fine, for the most part. Woke up once with a pain in his thigh, and then a little awhile ago he was complaining that his shin was on fire, but both times, as soon as he rolled over, he was out like a light again.”

“I’ll go take a look.” Placing the bowl on the table, Pete roughly ran the beach towel over his hair before securing it around his waist. “Which leg was hurting?”

“Pete, I’d honestly let him sleep for a while. He’s exhausted and he looks like he hasn’t slept in months.”

Mentally forming a list of rudimentary diagnoses, Pete pulled out the kitchen chair and took a seat. “Jim, the window can wait. Why don’t you hit the water for awhile?”

Half tempted, Jim’s gazed turned to the window and the crystal blue water beyond.

“Go on,” Pete encouraged. “I’ll keep an eye on Blair and if he wakes, I’ll yell.”

Training his focus back toward the bedroom, Jim could easily tell that Blair’s sleep pattern was deep. “Maybe just a quick dip,” he finally conceded.

“Go,” Pete said again, digging through the container of fruit salad with his spoon. “And how come there are no strawberries left in here?”

Jim smiled and tapped Pete on the back as he past. “Wasn’t me,” he said, letting the screen door slam shut behind him.

“Yeah, it never is,” Pete called out after him.

Following Jim’s lazy trek to the water’s edge, Pete waited until Ellison dove under the water. Making his way silently into the bedroom, he took a seat on the mattress and, without disturbing Blair, pulled the sheet down. Gently, he ran his hands across Blair’s thigh, working his way down to his shin. Finding nothing abnormal to the touch, he repeated the same with the other leg. Blair stirred, rolling onto his back and flinging his arm up to rest against the pillow. Pete stilled his motion as Blair muttered a garbled sentence. Thrown momentarily off balance, Pete pulled up the sheet, his hand now coming to rest upon Blair’s brow. “What was that, son?” he asked, not really certain he wanted to hear the answer.

“Tick, tock,” Blair mumbled and Pete’s blood ran cold.

Anger. As the days turned to weeks, it haunted Blair’s dreams and consumed his days. It lashed out at Jim without justification and, although he despised himself for the hurt he knew he was causing, he couldn’t stop because the anger didn’t belong to him. He was being pulled along by the stranger, who had deftly stripped him of his own emotions and replaced them with feelings that were far more sinister than he’d ever experienced. He’d been raped, yes, he’d been beaten – put a checkmark in box number two – and he was fully aware that his feelings might not slot neatly into the compartments he’d spent a lifetime building. But never in his wildest dreams could he have imagined the hurt, the humiliation and the pain he was suffering right now. Physically, he was on the mend. He could hobble sufficiently to get from place to place without help. His left hand, though still painful, offered him enough range of movement that he no longer needed Jim’s help with personal tasks. But help with his personal demons was an entirely different matter. If he were in control of them, by now they’d be processed and on their way to being put under lock and key, but he wasn’t in control and, to make matters worse, they had Jim in a stranglehold with no intention of him letting go. In his waking hours Jim could barely move out of his sight before the stranger reined him in, and at night, his need to feel Jim’s skin touching his was not just an obsession, it was a lifeline.

And then there was Pete, who seemed to be tracking his every thought like a bloodhound on the trail. The way the older man looked at him, observed him, studied him, it was as if Pete were reading a leather-bound manuscript of his life.

Pete could not only see the stranger, he seemed to know him like an old friend.

Turning his gaze away and avoiding Pete’s eyes, Blair limped from the doorway to the fridge, his journey coming to a sudden end when Jim took hold of his shoulders. “I got it, Chief. Ham and mustard okay?”

Throwing off Jim’s hands, Blair could feel the frustration growing dangerously high. “I can do it.”

“I know you can, but I’m up and...”

“And what Jim? Able fucking bodied?” The words that left his mouth weren’t his and, for the life of him, Blair couldn’t control the poison that pumped through the stranger’s veins. “And before you come up with that bullshit line of how you understand and how you know how I feel, don’t, because you have no fucking idea, do you?” Ignoring the look in Jim’s eye, Blair moved right into his personal space; the stranger was out for blood. “Do you know what it feels like to be raped Jim? To be tied down and have so many dicks and fingers shoved up your ass that you can’t differentiate one from the other? Or do you know what it feels like to be beaten? To have your skin, your flesh, beaten hour after hour with the same intensity and the same force until you can literally feel your muscles turn to liquid? Tell me!” Blair yelled in a voice so detached from his own he didn’t even recognise it. “Tell me how it feels to have your skin stripped away and your flesh raked clean from your bone. TELL ME!” he yelled again. “Tell me how the fuck you know how I feel, Jim, because I, for one, would love to know!”

“Enough.” Hooking Blair roughly by the arm, Pete pulled him backward and shoved him down onto a kitchen chair with more force than intended. “Don’t move and do not say another single god damn word,” he warned. Turing back toward Jim, he moved quickly. Jim stood like a man in shock, or like a sentinel on the edge of a zone. “Hey,” he said, placing both hands on the side of Ellison’s neck. “You with me, son?”

“How?” Ellison’s eyes were vacant. “How does he know?”

“I don’t know,” Pete replied, softly. “But I intend to find out.”

Jim swallowed hard, working to get himself under control. Being weak, being at the mercy of his emotions, was a crippling feeling. Worse still, leaving Pete once again to pick up the pieces was paralysing.

“Jim, it’s okay.” Pete’s hands tightened their grip against the tense muscles of Jim’s neck. “You need to go, son. You need to get outa here and give me some time to work this out.”

Jim’s eyes drifted across Pete’s shoulder and settled on Blair, who was watching them both with intense scrutiny. Pete’s touch became gentle. “I’m not going to ask you to trust me, son, but I am going to ask that you place your trust in me to do the right thing.”

Certain that if he spoke, his voice wouldn’t be the only thing to crack, Jim simply nodded his head. He was running away again, but he had no other choice.

“Good.” Giving Jim’s neck one last, hard squeeze, Pete released his grip and watched in silence as Jim moved past Blair and headed out the door. Drawing in a deep breath, he briefly closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose in an effort to not only get his thoughts under control, but also to rein in his anger. Finally, breaking the heavy silence that had settled in the room, Pete pulled out a chair. “You care to fill me in on the game you’re playing?”

Blair stared at Pete as if he were profoundly stupid. “There’s no game. I’m just sick to death of him hovering. Sick to death of him treating me like an invalid.”

“So you thought the best way to address this was to attack his vulnerabilities. Focus on his weakness and if that wasn’t enough, you thought, just for kicks, that you’d stick the knife in and give it a little twist.”

Blair’s look suggested Pete had jumped from ‘profoundly’ to ‘overwhelmingly’ stupid. “Since you seem to know Jim up close and personal, you should know that he doesn’t have any weak spots. The Ellison armour is as thick as they come. What I said to him would have been like water off a duck’s back.”

“You know that’s not true,” Pete stated calmly. “Where’s this coming from, Blair? Or maybe I should ask, ‘who’ is this coming from?”

The stranger tightened his grip and Blair let out a short, sharp laugh. “I don’t need this shit and I’ll be fucked if I need one of your backyard therapy sessions.”

Blair pushed forward in the chair, about to get to his feet, only to have Pete’s hand shoot out and force him back down. “I thought I told you not to move.”

Blair’s eyes turned cold. “You don’t scare me, Pete.”

“Then what does?” Pete asked. “What does scare you, Blair?” Mitchell didn’t wait for an answer. “Normally I’d say pain, humiliation, degradation, but that’s not the case is it? That’s not where your fear is based, is it?”

Blair’s eyes remained cold.

“Want me to take a stab?” Again, Pete didn’t wait for an answer. “Maybe what you’re afraid of, what really scares you shitless, is having to face up to these emotions?” Pete’s voice grew quieter. “Maybe it’s easier to hide behind someone else’s pain rather than having to confront your own.”

Blair shook Pete’s hand from his arm. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“No? Then maybe I should be more specific. Tick, tock,” he said, studying Blair’s face intently for a reaction. “Ever heard of it, Blair? Ever felt what it’s like?”

Blair surged to his feet, “You asked me what game I was playing, but you know what? I’d really like to know what fucking game you’re playing?”

“The game of life.” The chair toppled over under the force of Pete’s upward motion. “Tick, tock,” he said again, his eyes burning into Blair’s.

“I think the good doctor may need a head doctor.” Blair began to turn away. The stranger needed to regroup.

Pete’s touch wasn’t gentle. It couldn’t afford to be. He didn’t know how exactly Blair was doing it, but he recognised that the kid was drowning in Jim’s pain. Hooking Blair by the elbow, he spun him around and pushed him up against the nearest wall. “Tick, tock,” he said again. “Not the first on the laundry list, but I get the feeling you already know that.” His voice dropped, becoming almost ominous. “Generally they start off slow, take things nice and easy. If they’re not rushed for time, they normally like to talk for a while, relate, get to know you. If that goes nowhere then they add a touch of sleep deprivation to the mix and take away a few of the basics, nothing much, just food and water. When that fails, then they turn up the heat. Beatings are normally the next step and depending on where you herald from, determines the method.” Pete moved closer, whispering the words again in Blair’s ear. “Tick, tock.”

The stranger took a single step back, making Blair shiver.

“Basic concept really.” Pete placed his hands on the wall, one to each side of Blair’s head, keeping him trapped. “And all you need is a piece of wood and a good sense of timing. You wouldn’t think,” he continued, his focus remaining sharp and alert, “that a small piece of wood hitting flesh would make all that much of an impact, but it’s surprising what you can achieve by hitting the same muscle hour after hour, without a break.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Blair’s voice was still strong.

“Oh, I think you know.”

The stranger added another shield and regained ground. “I do? Well if that’s the case, please continue to enlighten me,” Blair spat, sarcastically.

“Okay,” Peter replied without so much as a flinch. “Let’s move away from this particular method for a bit, shall we? Concentrate on another. Why don’t we move onto the subject of an iron rod being rolled up and down the length of your shin. Let’s imagine that this rod has the same patience as the piece of wood. Up and back, hour after hour, without a single break in rhythm. Up and back until it flays away your skin and tears the muscle from your bone.”

Blair didn’t move and Pete didn’t relent. “Next item on the list comes mixed with frustration. You see, they don’t like failure, Blair – tends to make them lose their temper. And that temper results in broken bones and ruptured organs.”

The stranger felt strangled by Blair’s pain, the weakness pushing at his anger. He reared up, daring Pete to break through his resolve.

Pete took the challenge. “Rape,” he said. “You’ve done everything you can think of to make the man break, but he hasn’t. He’s tough, a hard nut – a real man, if you like. So how do you make a man like this break, Blair?” Pete now fought hard to control his voice. “You rape him,” he stated. “And while I wish to God that I could say to you that you have no idea what that’s like, I can’t.” Pete stalled. Even after all this time, the memory of what he had found at the scene that day still had the power to impact like a fist to the gut. “And I wish to God I could also say to you, that being unconscious saved you from the worst, but I can’t do that either, can I?” Pete’s voice grew quiet. “Even though you were unconscious, you know. Somehow you know what it’s like to feel the power of the pack, to be the victim of their hate and the object of their frenzy.” Pete’s voice finally broke. “You know what it’s like to be torn apart by an invasion that you can’t stop and you know what it’s like to be left on a dirt floor, covered in human waste and left praying to God that he would let you die from shame.”

The pain was incomprehensible, unfathomable, impenetrable ... or was it? By rights, the stranger should have been revelling in it. Now should have been his defining moment, his prize of glory, the moment where Blair immersed himself in another man’s pain with such strength and vigour that his own pain would be erased for all eternity. But, Blair Sandburg was fighting back. Blair Sandburg was too strong. The stranger was no longer a faceless ghost haunting his thoughts and his dreams.

The memory, the pain and the stranger, was Jim.

“Oh, god,” Blair stammered. Pete was right. Somehow he’d defied the impossible. Somehow he’d managed to burrow a way into Jim’s psyche and bury himself so deeply in Jim’s pain that his own pain had become irrelevant. Jim’s pain was his shield and he’d let it wrap around every inch of his skin.

Pushing Pete roughly out the way, Blair made for the kitchen sink, unable to spare the breakfast dishes from the onslaught that followed. He retched violently and, with every spasm of his gut, could feel his knees giving way under a heavy, oppressive blanket of guilt. An arm wound its way around his middle, helping to keep him physically on his feet, but mentally he’d hit the ground. Pete reached over, turning on the faucet and, through the sting of tears that blurred his vision, Blair watched the remainder of his breakfast swirl around the crockery, before succumbing to the force of the water and gurgling down the sink. “God, what I have done?” The retching had stopped, but still, Blair’s chest shook with short, uneven breaths as he his emotions wreaked havoc on his body. He was suddenly turned around and gathered to Pete’s chest as if he were a small child needing protection from the harsh realities of the world and, like a child he accepted without question every inch of comfort that was given.

“It’s not your fault,” Pete whispered and Blair’s resolve broke. He had no way of reining in the sorrow that followed. The result of his actions, whether intentional or not, was that he’d profoundly hurt the one person who meant more to him than any other soul on the face of the earth. For that, he knew there could be no forgiveness – not from himself and certainly not from Pete. But Pete didn’t seem to realise that there was a grudge to be held or a friend’s hurt to be revenged. His action spoke only words of comfort, of caring and – most surprisingly to Blair – of friendship.

“It’s okay, kiddo,” Pete comforted. “I know that right now that it seems like an impossible task, but I promise you that it will all be okay.”

Blair’s sobs were powerful, stripping away his breath, barely leaving him able to speak. He wrapped his arms around Pete’s neck, knowing that he had no right to burden Pete like this; but unable to stop the escalating need to immerse himself in the comfort Pete was so freely offering to him. “... pain,” he rasped. “God, so much pain.”

Pete tightened his grip and, given that there was not an inch of room separating their bodies, he seemed to defy the impossible and pull Blair even closer. “I know, kiddo,” he said. “I know.”

He couldn’t stop shaking. No matter how much he willed his body to stop, the tremors were firmly in control. The kitchen chair he was sitting on was facing Pete’s and pulled so close that his knees touched the wooden seat.

“Small sips,” Pete ordered, his hands encasing Blair’s whose, in turn, were wrapped around a warm mug of tea.

Blair drank slowly, making no complaints that the tea was far too sweet. His eyes met Pete’s. “How?”

Pete brushed the hair away from Blair’s face. “I was hoping you could tell me that.”

“I can’t,” Blair answered feebly. “I have no idea how I did it.”

“It’s okay,” Pete assured. “We’ll work it out.”

“He’s hurting so badly Pete ... he was hurt so badly.”

“I know,” Pete answered quietly, thumbing away the silent tears that trickled down Blair’s face.

“What they did to him, the pain they caused, you can’t measure it and you can’t even begin to describe it, let alone cope with it.” Blair didn’t even try to stop the tears that now ran freely; his emotions were far too raw to allow for that. “How the hell is he still standing? Still functioning? How on God’s earth do you survive being tortured like that?”

“He’s standing because he’s a fighter, Blair, and he’s functioning because it’s the only way he can cope. The only way he can move forward.”

Blair grew silent in a desperate effort to wrap his mind around thoughts that appeared too enormous to ever resolve. Finally, he settled on a thought that did have a solution; a question with an answer. “When you found Jim, did you kill them? Did you kill the men who did this too him?”

For Pete to be able to answer, he needed Blair to understand that the answer wasn’t black and white. Yes, they died, and some by his hand, but whether their deaths were to be attributed to revenge or from the perils of conflict was the grey area he’d never reconciled. But the guilt he felt didn’t come from not knowing the answer, it came from not caring. “Is it important to know the answer?” he finally asked.

Blair didn’t take time to consider Pete’s response. “Yes,” he simply stated.

Pete nodded. He couldn’t fault Blair’s reply. Just like he did, Blair held Jim’s heart within his hands. “I didn’t want Jim in my unit,” Pete began, deciding that if Blair wanted to know the answer, he should also know the prelude. “My first marriage was in tatters and I was going through what was shaping up to be a pretty messy divorce. I was harbouring a lot of hate and resentment at that time, and the last thing I needed was to have deal with some silver-spooned kid who was suffering from a hate thy father complex. Long story short, he pushed me and I pushed back – a hell of a lot harder, mind you – and somewhere in the middle of all this push and shove, anger turned into respect and respect eventually grew into a friendship. When I was offered command of a Ranger unit, Jim requested to be transferred with me. I don’t like to throw around the term ‘band of brothers’ but, as a unit, that’s what we eventually became. We wore each other like a well worn coat and although it’s hard to explain, somehow the relationship between Jim and I ran even deeper. I would have done anything to keep that kid safe, and the day we lost him, that’s exactly what I did.”

“So the answer’s yes,” Blair stated.

“The answer is that we were given orders to meet with a chopper at sixteen hundred hours. Jim had been on a twenty-hour solo recon and due back at fourteen hundred. When he didn’t show, we knew something was wrong. The chopper landed, but we never met it.”

“You disobeyed orders to find Jim?”

“I like to think that, due to communication problems, the final orders were never received.” The look in Pete’s eyes grew distant. “It took us three full days to find their camp, and despite being outnumbered, we didn’t hesitate. We either left with Ellison or didn’t leave at all. When I think back to that day, bloody-minded is the term that best describes it. Bloody-mindedness on behalf of every man in that unit to achieve what was strategically impossible to achieve and bloody-mindedness on behalf of Jim to survive.

Blair hesitated, a part of him suggesting he shouldn’t ask. “Survive how?”

“He died, Blair. Twice on the trek out, I thought I’d lost him, and twice that stubborn son of a bitch defied odds and fought his way back.” Although the memory was as fresh in his mind as if it had happened yesterday, there was no reason to share with Blair the details of how, on a mosquito-infested track in the middle of hell’s jungle, he’d cut open Jim’s stomach and sewn up his spleen. And there was also no reason to share, that in spite of his military and medical training, he still woke in the middle of night, bathed in sweat with his hands soaked wrist deep in Jim’s blood. “And despite a road fill with physical pain, mental anguish and setbacks too numerous to mention, Jim’s never given up fighting. Yes, there’ve been times when he’s been beaten down to the ground, but every single time he’s picked himself up. Even if it was only a minuscule step forward, he still fought like hell to take that step. So the answer to your question, Blair, is yes. We went in with only one objective – to get Jim out and take no prisoners – and to this day I have no regrets that we achieved that objective.

“No regrets,” Blair whispered.

Pete flashed a look at the clock on the wall. “What’d ya say, kiddo? Feel up to bringing a stray solider back to the barracks?”

The scrape of the chair against the floor and Blair awkwardly struggling to his feet were Pete’s answer. “How do we find him?”

“I’ve got a pretty fair idea of where he’s gone.” Before they moved toward the door, Pete hooked Blair by the elbow. “Blair, do you remember me telling you that Jim and I lost contact for a while?”

Blair nodded. “But you never said exactly why.”

“We lost touch because there came a time when he needed to move on and the only way for him to do that was to detach himself from the past.”

Blair felt his world once again crashing down around him. “So you’re saying now that I know Jim’s past, he’ll detach himself from me?”

“No, he’s stronger than that now, but what I am saying, or rather what I’m asking from you, is not to question. You know Jim and you know how much he cares about you, but you also know how he operates. When the eyes of the world turn upon him, his steel trap snaps shut so tight that a nuclear explosion wouldn’t have a hope of tearing it apart. Right or wrong, shrink approved or not, Jim needs to heal on his own terms. If he wants help, he’ll ask for it, but you can be as sure as hell he won’t accept it uninvited.” Pete paused for a moment to gather his thoughts. “I guess what I’m saying, Blair, is that he might open up to you or he may never say a single word. Either way, it’s a decision you need to respect and a decision that has no bearing at all on how much he loves you or how much he trusts you.” Pete lightly squeezed Blair’s arm. “Someone once said that life isn’t about how you survive the storm, it’s about how you dance in the rain. If there’s one thing in this life I know for certain, it’s that Jim will always dance to the beat of his own drum. If you try and stop him, Blair, there’s a chance he won’t dance at all.”

Blair nodded his head, showing understanding, but Pete didn’t miss the look of apprehension and uncertainty that flashed across his face. “Be proud of how far he’s come, Blair, and when you embrace this pride, remember that he’s the exact same man who left this kitchen two hours ago.” His next words were directed closer to home and he hoped that Blair would take their meaning to heart. “Knowing a man’s past doesn’t change the man you know.”

The words did strike a nerve. In the midst of everything that had happened, one of his greatest fears was how he’d be perceived when he re-entered the world. When his friends, his colleagues, his students saw him, would they see Blair Sandburg, or would he forever need to shoulder the label of ‘Blair Sandburg, rape victim’?

Once again, Pete was studying him, making Blair feel a little uneasy at the obvious ease with which Pete could read his thoughts.

“You know, kiddo, being a victim is essentially all about control. While initially it may be taken away from you, strength lies in the ability to get it back. You have that strength, Blair, and because you do, you’ll never let yourself be a victim to anyone.”

Pete’s arm found its way to Blair’s shoulder. “Come on. Let’s go bring the big idiot home.”

The view could only have been described as a ‘little piece of heaven on earth’, but not once did Blair notice its beauty. And the road up the mountain pass could only have been described as ‘hell on four wheels’, but not once did Blair flinch as the bone-jarring potholes sent bolts of pain shooting through his arms and legs. His concentration was centred only on Jim and the potential ramifications of his actions. Despite Pete’s words of reassurance that everything would be okay, he wasn’t so sure. He was dealing with a phenomenon he was struggling to understand, but what he did know, with a deep certainty, was that what had happened was linked to touch. Touch, which had always been so natural to them both, was now encumbered with restrictions. The consequences of that fact scared the shit of him.

Pete’s voice cut through the silence. “This is a far as we can go in the jeep. We’ll have to go the rest of the way by foot.”

Blair was already out of the car. “Which way?”

“This way.” Pete pointed to a small track, which wove through the rain forest. “But you’re gonna have to lean on me, kiddo. It gets a bit slippery in parts.”

The rainforest was alive with song, but the sweet melody of the I’iwi and the Apapane high in the canopy above did nothing to soothe Blair’s soul. Neither did the sight that confronted him as the path grew wide and the clearing came into view. Jim should have heard them coming. Even if he’d chosen to ignore their presence, his body language would have demonstrated his awareness. But there was nothing. No sound, no movement, no recognition; Jim was in a world of his own. While the situation wasn’t foreign to Blair, or one to cause undue panic, Pete’s next action did. The doctor’s movements were quick, decisive and aimed at achieving only one outcome – to aid the airway of a man who was barely breathing.

By the time Blair had dropped to his knees, Pete’s hands had practically run over the entire length of Jim’s body. He locked eyes with Blair. “I can’t help him,” he said, the helplessness showing in the look on his face. “This is out of my league.”

“What do you mean out of your league?” There was panic in Blair’s voice, which grew into full-fledged horror as his eyes shot to Ellison's face. Jim’s lips were turning blue.

Blair’s world suddenly became a mixture of perceptions. His peripheral vision clouded while his central vision became as clear and as luminous as the brilliant Hawaiian sky. Then, with a flick of a switch, his body and mind connected to autopilot. Blair Sandburg disengaged and the guide within emerged.

Straddling Jim’s body, Blair pulled Jim’s shirt apart. Buttons snapped free from their cotton binding and flew through the air. Using his teeth, Blair ripped off the tape that kept the bandage on his left hand in place. Trapped in a world where he existed with Jim alone, he didn’t notice that his other hand was now within Pete’s, and being freed from the cast.

With hands now bare, Blair placed skin against skin. The touch upon Jim’s chest was not gentle or delicate; it was firm and it was rough and it held only one purpose – to make Jim feel. As Jim remained in stasis, Blair hands continued their work. Like a sculptor moulding and shaping a beautiful piece of art from a lump of shapeless clay, Blair’s fingers pressed and worked at Jim’s torso. From the hard, taut muscles of the sentinel’s abdomen to the sensitive skin surrounding his nipple – nothing was spared, but nothing reacted. The sentinel remained trapped.

With his damaged right hand, numbing and beginning to swell under the pressure, Blair changed tactics. Leaning down until his face was less than an inch from Jim’s, Blair breathed in and breathed out. His scent drifted across the sentinel’s sense of smell, but it wasn’t enough to draw Jim from the prison in which he was locked. Closer now, Blair’s lips touched Jim’s forehead and, feather light, traced a path down the side of his face.

The intake of breath was tiny, barely sufficient, but to Pete it was a beacon of hope, and a light of understanding. What Blair was doing was infusing Jim’s senses with his scent, with his touch, and, as Blair leaned in and brushed his lips across Jim’s, he was also anointing him with his taste. Right here, right now, they were no longer Jim Ellison and Blair Sandburg, and as the kiss deepened, becoming almost sensual, Pete realised that he was witness to the instinctual bond that existed between a Sentinel and Guide.

And mingled with feelings of hope and trepidation, Pete Mitchell also realized that each man held the other’s life in the palm of his hands – in more ways than one.

“Sandburg, did you just kiss me?”

Blair collapsed, his full weight bearing down against Jim’s chest. “God, I thought I’d lost you this time, Jim.” Blair’s breath was warm and it wisped across the nape of Jim’s neck. “This can’t happen again,” he whispered. “I won’t let it happen again.”

“Hey,” Jim lifted his arms and wrapped them around Blair’s body. “It’s okay. I’m okay ... thanks to you.”

Blair pushed himself up, breaking the bond. “Thanks to me? Are you serious? Thanks to me, you nearly died.” He pulled himself completely off Jim and sat down heavily on the grass, making certain to leave several feet between them.

“Blair?”

Jim attempted to pull himself up into a sitting position, only to have Pete’s hand force him back down. “Be still, I need to check you over.”

“I’m fine,” Jim grated. He pushed Pete’s hand from his shoulder, sat up and immediately swayed to the side.

“Fine my ass.” Pete reached out, one hand grabbing Jim by the arm to keep him upright, the other making straight for the pulse point on his neck. “As I said, be still.”

It took several minutes for Jim’s dizziness to subside and for his pulse to creep back up to normal. Through it all, Blair sat quietly on the grass, his knees bent and his head cradled in his hands.

“I think you’ll survive,” Pete finally said. Not even trying to control the urge, he cuffed Jim across the top of the head. “And if you ever decide to die in front of me again, think very carefully, my friend, because next time it won’t be Blair giving you the kiss of life. I can be very creative when it comes to clearing airways and it’s not something I think you want to experience.”

“Ah, yes sir,” was the only answer that came to Jim’s mind. He’d been put in his place more than once by Pete’s threats and this particular one brought up connotations he really didn’t want to think about.

“I’m gonna take the jeep and head back down.” Pete glanced briefly over at Blair. “You two gonna be okay?”

Jim’s eyes wandered in the same direction. “I sincerely hope so.”

Slapping Jim on the shoulder, Pete pulled himself to his feet. “I’ll leave it on the beach near the creek.”

“Thanks,” Jim muttered, his eyes still on Blair.

Gathering up the bandages and the discarded fibreglass cast, Pete headed for the path, but not before stopping in front of Blair and lightly running his hand across the top of his head. “I think you just proved how strong you really are, kiddo.” Breaking contact, he continued his journey, calling back over his shoulder “And if you’re thinking of drowning on the way down, Ellison, don’t. Remember the airway!”

Jim sat, waited and listened until the time-worn engine of the old jeep finally turned over. “You okay, Chief?” he asked.

Blair’s posture remained unchanged. “Aside from the fact that I nearly killed you,” he replied, quietly, “yeah, Jim, I’m fine and dandy.”

“Killed me? Where’d that notion come from, Einstein?” Jim shuffled closer and – not realising his mistake, doing what came perfectly natural to him – he reached over and touched Blair’s leg. The moment their skin made contact, Blair jumped back and scrambled to his feet.

“Jim, what the hell are you doing, man? Have you got a death wish or something?”

Startled, Jim pulled himself off the ground, cautiously guarding the distance between them. “Blair, what’s going on?”

“Touch, Jim. Touch is what’s going on, and the fact that you can’t touch me.”

“Okay,” Jim replied cautiously, mentally assessing the situation. He was fairly certain that Blair’s sudden aversion toward touch had nothing to do with his attack, so that left only two things that had changed between them; his zone and Blair’s obvious knowledge of his past. He could, if he had the guts, confront issue number two, but knowing and actually talking about his past were two worlds he was still not ready to bring together. For the time being, he’d bank his chance on the zone being the root of Blair’s distress. “You care to tell me why?” he asked.

Blair stood shaking his head in disbelief. “Have you not been listening to a word I’ve said?”

“Believe it or not, Chief, I listen to most things you say, it just gets a little hard sometimes when you’re brain is running faster than your mouth.”

Although hindered by his injuries, Blair began to pace. Pacing is good, Jim surmised. Processing usually came after pacing and not far behind was venting and, unlike himself, Blair was a man who needed to vent.

Blair suddenly stopped in his tracks. “That’s the problem. I don’t know why. All I know is somehow I got inside of you, Jim, and because of that you nearly died. My touch took what it had no right to take and it nearly killed you.”

“I think you’ve got it a bit skewed there, Chief. Your touched didn’t nearly kill me – it saved my life.”

“Jim, you nearly zoned yourself to death because of me. Any way you want to look at it, I was the catalyst. I was the one who made it happen.”

“No, Chief, you weren’t. I was. I zoned because of me, not you. I zoned because I don’t have the strength that you do.”

“God, Jim, no.” Blair moved forward but stopped short of reaching out. “That is so far from the truth that I don’t even know where to begin to make you see that –”

“Then, don’t,” Jim interrupted. “Don’t give me anything that you haven’t already given me.”

“Which is what? Being partnered with a pathetic screw-up?” Blair asked somewhat ruefully.

“Faith,” Jim held out his hand for Blair to take. “Faith in us.”

"Faith doesn't explain what just happened, Jim. I was in your head. I lived your life. I knew what it was like to be you. Doesn't that scare the shit out of you, man? Don't you need to know how it happened?"

"Can you read my mind now?" Jim asked, his hand still waiting for Blair to take.

Blair concentrated before shaking his head slightly. "No," he answered.

"Faith," Jim said again. "Whatever happened, Blair, happened for a reason, and right here, right now, I get the feeling that knowing the 'how' is far less important than embracing the 'why'.

Their eyes locked, and Blair realised that Jim was right. To have any hope of understanding the journey they were on, he'd have to put his faith in their relationship as Sentinel and Guide, and as he read the emotion in Jim's eyes he understood that faith wasn’t the only thing he was prepared to give. Taking a chance on faith and on hope, he reached out. “Now what?” he asked, tentatively.

“Now we take a day out for ourselves.” With a tug on Blair’s hand, Jim encouraged him to follow. “A day, Chief, where we do nothing else but enjoy being alive. A day," he said, in a hushed tone, "where we forget about the past and concentrate on the now."

The view from the top of the waterfall was both majestic and magical and the cool, clear waters below offered the promise of a day to do just that. As Blair leaned into Jim’s body, Pete's words came flooding back. Jim needs to heal on his own terms. If he wants help, he’ll ask for it, but you can be as sure as hell he won’t accept it uninvited.” Blair closed his eyes briefly, letting the sounds of the forest fill his senses. “A day to dance in the rain,” he whispered.

“A day to dance in the rain,” Jim repeated, softly.

“Here.” In one hand Pete had a glass of water and in the other, a pill.

Blair shook his head. “I’m good, thanks.”

Hooking a chair with his foot, Pete dragged it across the deck. “No, you’re not good, you’re hurting.” He tried again. “It’s only Panadol, Blair. Nothing addictive.”

“Aren’t all drugs addictive to some point?” Blair replied.

“Only if you’re an addict, kiddo, which you are not.”

Blair looked down at his hands. He couldn’t deny that they hurt. While yesterday had been a chance to regain some emotional footing, his physical recovery had taken a step back. Pete, in his wisdom, had been extremely low key when he’d re-cast and re-bandaged his hands, and thankfully Jim had been none the wiser. Finally Blair muttered a small ‘okay’, his own wisdom telling him that if Jim even got the slightest hint that he was in pain, then guilt would be another cross that the sentinel would have to bear.

The pill slid down Blair’s throat the same moment Jim emerged from the water. Snagging a t-shirt off the chair to his right, he settled back on the sun lounge and placed it over his face, content to let the sun warm his body and the shirt be his camouflage.

“I’m starving.” Jim bounded up the stairs onto the deck. “You guys up for an early lunch? I’ll cook,” he offered.

“Now there’s a threat if ever I heard one,” Pete muttered. “I’ve got a better idea. What d’ya say to one of Mack’s char-grilled steaks?”

Ellison’s attention was piqued the moment Pete mentioned the word ‘steak’. “Oh yeah.” He practically drooled, his thoughts straying to an exquisitely tender prime rib fillet, smothered in Mack’s secret recipe sauce. “I’m there, doc. Let’s go.” He plucked his T-shirt from Blair’s face. “What do you say, Chief? Feel like indulging in gluttony?”

“Does it mean I have to get dressed?” Blair’s comment was off the cuff, but the thought of venturing into populated territory wasn’t quite so casual.

“It’s not five star, son, but a shirt wouldn’t go astray.”

Taking Blair’s nod as confirmation, Jim slapped him on the leg before heading into the house. “I’ll grab a quick shower and then we’ll haul ass.” Jim’s footsteps slapped against the floorboards as he headed down the hall. “I could eat the wings off a low-flying duck.”

“Maybe a quick trip to the vet to stock up on some worming tablets wouldn’t be a bad idea,” Pete quipped.

This time, without Jim as an audience, Blair’s nod was less decisive.

“You gonna be okay, kiddo?”

Now attuned to Pete’s questions, Blair answered honestly. “I’m gonna try and be.”

“One step at a time is all you need to take, Blair, and if that step gets too rough, pull back for a bit and I’ll take lead for a while.”

Blair pulled himself into a sitting position and swung his feet to the deck. “Pete, can I ask you something?”

“‘Course you can. Ask away.”

“How come you don’t resent me?”

For the first time in a long while, Pete was taken aback. “Blair, why would I resent you and why on earth would you think that I would?”

To Blair, the question and answer were obvious. “Because of what I did to Jim. That couldn’t have been easy for you, given what he means to you.”

“Okay, you have me there,” Pete admitted. “No, it wasn’t a walk in the park. Watching someone you care about getting hurt is never an easy thing to handle.”

“Hence the resentment,” Blair stated.

“Blair, I went to hell and back with that man and while I know it sounds absurd, what Jim and I experienced left behind a feeling that can only be described as a sense of ownership over that relationship. You’re not stupid, kiddo, and you’re not naïve. You know what he went through and knowing that, you should also know what I went through to keep him alive, and what I’m prepared to do to make sure he stays that way. I love the big idiot. I’m not ashamed to admit that, but I also love him enough to realise that what you mean to him is just as important. I don’t resent you Blair, far from it. You’ve given Jim so much more than I could ever give him.”

“Which is?” Blair asked, not really convinced of Pete’s final statement.

“The chance to feel again.”

Blair still wasn’t persuaded. “Pete, I don’t think I have that ability. Sure, I’m his guide, I get that, but that’s all I get. Even after all the research you shared with me, I still have no idea what I’m meant to be or how I’m meant to specifically help him. I’ve been at this for three years, now, and in that entire time I’ve never uncovered any text, any reference as to the exact role I’m meant to play. I’m floundering here, Pete. I hate to admit it, but I think I’m at a stalemate.”

“Blair, you’re a scientist and I’m a scientist and – scientifically speaking – there just may not be any hard evidence to back up the existence of a guide. As you said, son, you’ve been at this for three years. While I know you have case studies upon case studies documenting anomalies with regard to the human senses, you don’t have any specific evidence proving that a relationship between a guide and sentinel actually exists.”

“Exactly my point. Scientifically speaking, I don’t exist.”

“And that’s why you need to forget science and head straight for mysterious, because in my educated opinion, that’s where the answer lies.”

Blair paused, thinking for a moment about Pete’s last statement. “An educated opinion relies on being educated on the subject, and that begs to ask the question. What do you know that you’re not telling me?”

Finally a glimpse, Pete thought. And a glimpse that told him that Blair was getting stronger – strong enough to deal with the information that, until now, he’d kept to himself. “When I gave you my research, I didn’t fill you in on everything I knew.”

“Which is?” Blair pushed.

“Which is knowing another sentinel and guide and being trusted enough to know the intimacies of their relationship.” Although Blair was staring at him like a man who had just caught a live grenade in his hands, Pete still held up his hand, halting the questions Blair undoubtedly had. “And the reason I didn’t tell you is because, as a scientist, it could be theorized that their relationship is based on nothing more than who they are. However, taking the mysterious to heart and taking in the beliefs of their tribe, their relationship could also be based on their connection as a Sentinel and Guide.”

“When you say ‘relationship,’ you mean a sexual relationship, don’t you?”

“I do,” Pete answered. “But what you also need to remember is that this is one sentinel and guide pairing, Blair. Whatever journey these two men are on doesn’t mean it’s the same journey you and Jim will take. There doesn’t appear to be a standard rule book, for want of a better description. From what I’ve been able to ascertain to date, different cultures, different tribes, all have different traditions. None are standard and none appear to be typical.”

“And the other reason you didn’t tell me ... it was because of ... because of what happened to Jim and also what happened to me, wasn’t it?”

Pete was honest with his answer. “Yeah, it was part of the reason. An attempt, I guess, to shield you both from any outside pressure. I really do believe, kiddo that whatever ends up happening between you and Jim needs to be worked out without any preconceived ideas of what your relationship should or shouldn’t be.” Pete gave a half hearted smile. “And while I’m desperately trying not channel Doris Day here, I do have faith in that when it comes to you two, it will come down to a case of ‘whatever will be, will be’.”

Blair’s thoughts immediately went back to yesterday and the words Jim had said to him as they stood on the edge of the cliff. Faith ... have faith in us. And in reality, faith was all he had, because in real terms, he was still no closer to answering the countless questions that were wandered aimlessly around inside his head.

“Guys!” Freshly showered and raring to go, Jim burst back onto the deck, putting a halt to their conversation. “Famine’s just about to knock at the front door. Let’s hustle.”

“Hey,” Pete said, his smile now warm. “You think that’s a definite yes on the worming tablets?”

Blair’s expression broke into a grin, and then turned to a laugh. “I’d say so.” He watched Jim bound down the stairs, keys in hand, already muttering sweet nothings to the old girl, encouraging her to turn over on the first try. “You know Pete, while everything you told me might be based purely on speculation, you’ve hit the bull’s-eye about two things.”

“Yeah, what’s that?”

“Him being an idiot.”

“And the other?” Pete laughed.

“That he’s worth loving.”

The closer they got to their destination, the more unsettled Blair became. “Hey,” Jim said, briefly glancing sideways. “You okay?”

“Yeah, just a little nervous, I guess. It’s been awhile since I’ve had to deal with a crowd.”

From the backseat, Pete tapped Blair on the shoulder. “You won’t find many crowds around here, son. Just a few locals, and the odd fisherman and surfer.”

Pulling into a parking spot right in front of an old wooden sign that proudly displayed the words, ‘Mack’s Shack’, Jim hosted himself from the jeep. “And from what I can remember from last time, Chief, odd is right.”

“Hey don’t knock the locals.” Using the roll bar as support, Pete jumped the short distance to the ground. “If it wasn’t for them, we’d be eating food right now that wouldn’t even pass for slop.”

“There you go with the cooking insults again.” Yanking open Blair’s door, Jim hooked him under the elbow, leaving his hand in place until he was certain that Blair’s feet were the only part of his body going to hit the ground “Sandburg, will you tell him that I’m not that bad a cook?”

“Jim, last time you asked that question I was on top of a mountain pretty damn close to heaven’s door. This time I’m in the man upstairs’ personal paradise. Again, I’m taking the fifth.”

“And again, ‘some backup’,” Ellison muttered.

As Jim moved slightly ahead, Blair stopped for a moment to find his centre. “You can do this,” he said quietly. “All it takes is one step at a time.”

“Mitchell, I thought I told you I didn’t want to see your scrawny, good for ‘nothing carcass in this place again.” A thunderous voice was forewarning to the huge figure that bore down upon them. “I’m still paying for the damage you caused last time you were here.” A giant slap landed on the centre of Pete’s back, and a rumbling noise that could be best described as a sound of satisfaction made its way past a beaming smile. “So what brings you back to the island this time of year, you old sawbones?”

“Just a little R‘n’R, Mack.” Pete rolled his shoulders in an effort to alleviate the sting in the centre of his back. “You remember Jim, don’t you?”

“I sure as hell do.” He took Jim’s hand in his large bear paw, shaking it firmly. “You’re looking a hell of a lot better than the last time I saw you. Still with the military?”

“No, got out a long time ago,” Jim replied, wondering how he was going to extricate his hand from Mack’s metal grip without causing offence. “I’m with the Cascade PD now.” He stood aside and luckily his hand came with him. “And this my partner, Blair Sandburg.”

“Shit, kid,” Mack exclaimed. “You have a fight with a brick wall or something?”

“Something like that,” Blair answered, in a voice that didn’t carry as much gusto as he would have liked.

“Blair was in a car accident,” was all that Pete offered. “Now how about a drink before we all die of thirst?”

“Yeah, yeah, of course, come on over and take a seat at the bar.”

Dragging a stool out from under bar, Jim’s hand drifted lightly across Blair’s back as Sandburg took a seat. “So Pete, you gonna fill us in on exactly what you got up to last time you were here?”

“Nothing much,” Mitchell shrugged, casually. “I just helped Mack escort a few lively patrons off the premises.”

“An escort which I had under complete control,” Mack cut in.

“Pssst,” Pete scoffed. “You were about two seconds away from Mack and his shack ceasing to exist, my friend.”

“That’s all in the re-tell, Colonel, and if I remember correctly, which I do since I’m still paying the bills, I managed to escort more of them out than you did.”

“Only because you literally squashed three of them. As I remember, sitting on your opponents does not count as a fair fight.” Pete slapped his hand down on the bar. “Now, enough talk, where’s my beer? A camel, I am not.”

“Three beers, coming right up.”

“Um, I’ll just have water if you don’t mind.” Blair interrupted.

“Son, you sure? You’re off all medication. A beer won’t hurt.”

“I know, but my hands aren’t really up for much today and I’d kinda look like a dork drinking beer through a straw.”

“You feeling okay?” Jim asked, nudging Blair’s arm.

“I’m good and there’s nothing to worry about. Just some days go better than others, that’s all.”

“Well you know what, young fellar? There’s not been a problem yet that old Mack hasn’t been able to solve. How about a Tropical Itch?”

“A tropical what?”

“A blend of the island’s exotic fruits, with just a dash or two of rum, topped off with a cherry and sipped leisurely through a straw.”

“A tropical itch it is then.” Although he was sitting directly between two fairly impenetrable shields, Blair wasn’t feeling at ease. Pretence, he thought, is my only chance of getting through this. Fit in with your surroundings, be one of the boys and no one be will any the wiser. “Hey Mack,” he said. “You got some menus? I’m so hungry I could eat the wings off a low flying duck.”

When Jim’s brow furrowed, Blair knew he’d been sprung. In formulating the equation of pretence, he had neglected to factor in one crucial element – a sentinel, the man who knew him better than he knew himself. “Don’t,” he said softly. “Please, don’t.”

Blair felt Jim’s hand once again drift casually across his back. “Got any low flying ducks on that menu, Mack?”

Mack’s ‘surf and turf’ was one of the best meals Jim had ever eaten. Tender steaks topped with prawns, scallops and crabmeat, all smothered in a rich garlic cream sauce had Jim practically preparing to propose to the big Hawaiian. Mack had told him that it cost him a week of free drinks to drag the recipe out of an Australian seaman and it was a recipe he now guarded zealously – even under the threat of marriage.

“Hoy, surfboards outside, you lot.” Dumping their plates back on the bar, Mack’s voice boomed across the room. “I thought I told you before. Next time I see one of those things come through my door, I’ll break it in half.”

A muttering of profanities and a few discreet hand gestures followed, but Mack’s orders were obeyed.

“Trouble?” Pete sized up the new arrivals. “I could help you escort them off the premises, if you want.”

Mack’s double barrel finger cut through the air. “You move from that seat, doc, and I’ll sit on you myself.”

Smiling, Pete lifted his glass. “Now that’s a threat no sane man would dare to ignore.”

“Hey, bartender!” A chorus of hands drummed the bar at the other end. “How about some service?”

Grumbling, Mack threw the bar towel over his shoulder and headed toward the surfers. “And I mean it, Mitchell,” he called back over this shoulder. “You move and I asphyxiate.”

“Still making friends and influencing people, I see.” Jim took a sip of his beer. “I’ve always meant to ask you whether it’s a skill you were born with, or one you learned?”

“That’s rich,” Pete responded. “Especially coming from a man where the only place the sun shines is from a place the sun doesn’t shine at all.”

Jim smiled, placing his beer back down on the bar. “I bet you ten to one that I could get that lot to move on in a more peaceable fashion than you could.”

“Tell you what,” Pete retorted. “You distract Mack for at least five minutes and I’ll take you up on that bet.”

“Can I have the truck?”

Jim’s attention turned toward Blair. “What?”

“The truck. Can I have it?”

“What do you want my truck for?”

“To help me get the new furniture to the loft.”

“What new furniture?” Jim asked, confused.

“Well I’m assuming that since not too many people seem to like you, you’d probably end up leaving the loft to me and since your furniture’s a little on the dull side, I need the truck so I can shift some more vibrant pieces in. Liven the place up a little bit.” Leaning down, Blair placed the straw to his lips and drained the last of his drink. “Hey, but you know what? Since I’m getting the loft, chances are the truck’ll be thrown is as well.”

“Um, I hate to shatter your interior decorating aspirations here, Chief, but I don’t plan on going anywhere for a while yet.”

Mack was back; even though there was no direct sunlight shining in through the windows, he still managed to cast an enormous shadow. “Oh, you will be,” Blair stated resolutely. “Can’t imagine that being a diversion ‘round these parts would be all that good for your health.” Scanning his eyes up the entire length and breadth of Mack’s gargantuan frame, Blair smiled, “Mack, I think I could do with another itch to scratch.” Still smiling, he hopped off the stool and headed toward the bathroom. “Actually, make that a double, since Jim’s driving.”

Jim’s smile was as broad as Mack’s shoulders and, although his internal voice screamed the word ‘pretence’, he didn’t care. Blair could claw his way back any damn way he chose, just as long as he kept on clawing. “Hey, Sandburg,” he called, not wanting the charade to end “What’d ya mean, hardly anyone likes me?”

Indicating to Mack to refill their glasses, Pete slapped Jim on the back. “I’ll bet ya ten to one you can’t name two.”

“Ellison, would you give the kid some privacy.”

“I am.”

“No you’re not. You’re listening to everything that’s going on in there.”

“Yeah, well I wasn’t. At least not until the drunken idiot from over there ended up in there,” he said, nodding his head toward the bathroom.

“Is he causing Blair any problems?”

“He’s talking to him.”

“And the problem with that is?”

“Because he’s drunk and he’s asking dumb ass questions.” Jim pushed himself away from the bar. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

Pete’s hand shot out and grabbed Jim’s arm before he had a chance to move away. “Just hold up there a second, Rocky. Before you go busting heads ... these dumb ass questions? Is Blair handling them?”

“He’s ...” Jim paused for a moment, homing in once again on the conversation in the bathroom “... he ... well he’s prevaricating.”

“Then leave him be.” Pete tugged on Jim’s arm, pulling him back to the bar. “I know it’s hard to just sit back and watch, but give him a chance to work things out on his own. He’s not gonna get far if he’s got a round-the-clock bodyguard watching and protecting his every move.”

Ellison may have had his mission plan thwarted, but his eyes stayed trained on the restroom door. With his arms now folded across his chest, he continued to watch; it wasn’t long until the guy came stumbling out and made his way back to the group who had taken their festivities out to the deck.

“So, now what’s he doing?” Pete asked, his back to the door.

“He’s ... processing,” Jim stated.

A few minutes passed and there was still no sign of Blair. “Maybe you should go and see if he wants dessert?” Pete finally suggested. “Mack’s lava mud cake’s nearly as good as his steak.”

Ellison didn’t need to be told twice. The moment the words left Pete’s mouth, he was off the barstool and headed toward the bathroom, only to be stop short when Blair pulled open the door. “Oh, hey, Chief. I was just coming to see if you wanted desert.”

“Right,” Blair answered, not buying a word.

“I was,” Jim protested. “Pete said that Mack’s lava cake is pretty damn good.”

Relenting, Blair made his way back across the room. “Sounds good.”

“Great,” Jim confirmed once again taking the seat at the bar. “Hey, Mack, how about dishing up some of your world famous mud cake?”

“Coming right up.” Mack pushed his way through the door into the kitchen and Jim looked around for Pete. There was only one men’s room in the bar, and he hadn’t gone there, so that left only ... “The deck.”

It took Jim a split second to find Pete and no effort at all to hear what Mitchell was saying to one particular drunken reveller. “And you lecture me about a round-the-clock bodyguard,” he muttered. Draining the last of his beer just as Mack came back with three plates in his hand, he held up his glass.

“Another of the same?” Mack asked.

Jim nodded his head, not missing the furrow forming in Mack’s brow. “Okay, where is he?”

Feigning innocence, Jim just shrugged his shoulders.

Mack’s eyes darted around the room, before settling on the scene outside. He slammed Jim’s glass back down onto the bar. “MITCHELL!” The bellow that reverberated across the room sounded more like a charging bull than a man on the run. “If you cost me one more god damn cent, your bones are gonna end up as broke as my wallet.”

“Come on.” Jim grabbed his beer and snatched Blair’s plate from the bar.

“Hey!” Completely missing his mouth, Blair watched a forkful of his dessert hit the ground.

“Chief, come on,” Ellison urged, again.

“Come on where?”

This time Jim rounded Blair up, nudging him in the back with his elbow to get him moving. “Outside.”

“Outside why?” Blair protested.

“Front row seats, Chief. Why else!”

Like clockwork – the exact same time, the exact same route and the exact same destination. The drill wasn’t foreign to him; after all, he’d made the same trek many a time in the past. But it felt foreign because this time it was Blair’s journey, and it was unnerving that, despite a shared experience, he was unable to help.

The sand was cool beneath his feet and, as he stepped onto the pier, his footsteps remained silent. The moon, settled low above the ocean, cast a glow upon the rippled waters that almost looked as if it were trying to construct a stairway to the heavens. Blair was still; if it were another place, another time, he could have been easily mistaken for a man finding solace in meditation. But it wasn’t another time, or another place and, to a sentinel, Blair had no place to hide.

“Nana ka maka, ho‘olohe ka pepeiao, pa‘a ka waha.” Jim’s words were hushed and Blair’s body remained still, not startled by the intrusion. “Observe with the eyes, listen with the ears, don’t talk.”

Dressed only in loose fitting, cotton pants, Jim took a seat on the pier, settling his back against the pylon. He could see from Blair’s profile that his eyes were open and lost within the vastness of the ocean waters. “Do you think they may have had me in mind when they made up that proverb?”

Blair remained lost.

“One man’s pain should never take precedent over another’s.” Jim’s gaze turned to the water, following Blair’s invisible path. “While it may not be quite as eloquent, I think there’s something to be said for Jim Ellison’s homespun advice.”

Blair’s eyes flickered and Jim knew he had the stage. “Talk to me, Blair. Don’t make my pain more important than your own.”

So desperate to talk, but so hauntingly scared of causing Jim any more pain than he already had, Blair remained silent, his conscience not affording him the peace that comes from reaching a decisive answer.

“I’m sorry, Blair,” Jim said, his eyes still cast out to sea. “I’m so sorry that I’ve put you in a place where you think you can’t confide in me. I never meant for that to happen and if I could fix it, I would.”

As Jim’s words sank in, Blair reached a decision. “I don’t know if I’ll ever get it back,” he finally whispered.

“Get what back?”

“There were a lot of things stolen from me that day, most of which, I think, I’ll eventually come to terms with, or at the very least, learn to manage, but there’s one thing I’m not sure I’ll ever adjust to. Something I’m not sure I’ll ever regain.”

“Which is?” Jim asked.

Blair’s turned his head, seeking Jim’s eyes. “I wasn’t unconscious, you know.”

“I know.”

“For the most part ... for the worst of it, I was awake. I felt the nails spike through my hands, through my foot. I felt every one of his punches as he took his rage out on my body, and I felt the sting of his hate and also the profound sorrow in each and every one of his words.” Blair’s gaze returned to the sea. “I also felt him inside of me, and while I know it’s an insane notion, I swear to god I felt him come, and when he did I felt the pain.”

“That’s not an insane notion, Blair.”

“The pain wasn’t mine, Jim. It was his. His guilt, his grief, and his regret were so real they were almost palpable.”

Blair drew in a breath, giving Jim time to absorb, and giving him time to collect his own thoughts.

“I fought, you know. It’s important to me that you know that. I fought with everything I had, and when I saw the rope and the pulley and finally realised exactly what he had in mind, I fought for – and with – my life.”

Jim broke his silence. “I never expected anything less from you, Blair.”

Blair’s face became almost expressionless, and once again he was struggling with his thoughts. “Being in control is important to me, you know, and while I may not advertise it with a flashing neon sign like you do, it’s still an integral part of who I am. My way might be more subtle and it might be achieved through words rather than actions, but I’ve become pretty good at controlling my surroundings and pretty damn good at controlling my life. But Forsythe stripped me bare, and I don’t mean that literally. He took my control completely out of my hands, placed it in his own and I’m afraid that when he died, he took it with him.”

Jim pushed himself off the pylon and sat up straight. “No, Blair, that’s not true. Yes, the bastard took the control away from you, but it didn’t die with him. You still have it, Chief. You proved that the other day at Mack’s.”

“No.” Blair shook his head. “I felt it. I was in a restroom with a harmless drunk, but the feelings I felt, the way he made me feel, were exactly the same as what I felt with Forsyth. God, Jim, you have no idea how badly I wanted to call out to you to come and make it stop. You have no idea how badly I needed it to stop.”

“I do know, Blair. I know more than most, but the point is that you didn’t. Don’t you see, despite your hesitations, you still came with us to Mack’s and despite being challenged by that feeling, you didn’t call out for my help. You, Blair, you – your words and your power of control handled that situation. You need to take credit for that, kiddo, because it’s worth more than you could ever imagine.”

“If that’s true, then how come it left me feeling so irrelevant, so inconsequential? How come it left me feeling that I no longer have ownership over who I am? I feel like a shell, Jim. I feel like I’m walking around in a body that’s been hollowed out and all the important parts that made me who I was have been drained away. I feel like I’m an empty vessel, just going through the motions.”

“Small steps,” Jim answered. “Small steps are the key. Some days they let you move ahead, some days they’ll kick your ass and drag you backward, but as long as you continue to take them, they’ll eventually balance out and you’ll get where you’re meant to be.”

“What happens if they don’t? What happens if they break into a run with no way to ever stop running?”

“Then I’ll do to you what Pete did to me.”

“Which was?” Blair asked quietly.

Now on his feet, Jim moved to sit behind Blair. He lifted his arms, encircled Blair’s chest and pulled him back against his own. “He held me still until the world stood still with me.”

Words were no longer important because they weren’t the key to unlocking the reassurances Blair was seeking; that assurance came from the strength of character of the man sitting behind him and the strength he knew had within himself.

Time stood still, the night cast into limbo and it seemed like a lifetime until Blair spoke again. “How come Hawaiian nights feel so alive?”

“O ka pa konane a ka mahina,” Jim replied, lazily resting his cheek against Blair’s hair. “The bright touch of the moon.”

Small steps. Physically they were letting him forge ahead, and if weren’t for the cast that still supported his right hand, he was nearly back to normal. Emotionally, however, being ‘normal’ left him with higher hurdles to jump and striving to be ‘normal’ left him with another problem to try and overcome. With a frustrated sigh, Blair pulled himself off the mattress and wandered down the hall and into the kitchen. There was no sign of Jim, but Pete was clearly visible through the door that led out onto the deck. “Good read?” he asked, now leaning against the doorframe.

“If you can call the subject of antibiotic resistance and avoidance good reading, then yeah, it’s a good read.”

Moving out from shadows of the kitchen into the sunlight, Blair took a seat at the end of the sun lounge. “I think I might leave that one to you,” he said.

Pete rested the journal against his chest and studied Blair for a brief moment. “What’s up?” he asked.

“Nothing” Blair mumbled. That’s the problem.

Snapping the book shut, Pete swung his legs off the lounge and onto the deck, “Come on.” He gave Blair’s leg a light tap. “Why don’t we take a walk?”

The stroll from the house to the foreshore didn’t take all that long; when they reached the water’s edge, Pete turned left, steering them towards the pier. “You know you can ask me anything, don’t you?”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Well, I’m all ears, kiddo.”

“It’s not exactly that easy,” Blair replied, mumbling again. “What’s wrong doesn’t exactly come without embarrassment.”

“An embarrassment relating to something physical?”

“You could say that.”

“Well in that case, it’s probably nothing I haven’t heard before.” Pete stopped walking. “You know, I really hate that line. Makes no difference to the patient; the problem is unique to them no matter how many times their doctor may have heard it.” He lowered himself to the sand. “How about we start this off on a friend to friend basis?”

Blair flopped down onto the beach. He was embarrassed, yes, but there was no point in pussy-footing around. The problem didn’t appear to want to go away by itself. “I’m having trouble .... I mean, I can’t seem to...” He paused, then sighed, before scrubbing his hand through his hair. “I can’t get an erection,” he finally blurted.

“Ah, I see,” Pete replied.

“‘Ah, I see.’ That sounds like a standard doctor line to me,” Blair responded disparagingly. “Maybe you should add it to the lines you hate.”

“You’re right, and I’m sorry. What I meant to say was that it’s not uncommon and without the risk of sounding too much like an old quack, your body has been through an enormous amount of stress lately and it needs time to adjust to that. Impotency is not unusual in this situation, Blair.”

“Impotency!” He’d known he had a problem, but hadn’t ever considered the possibility that he was impotent. That word seemed so drastic, so final. “Great,” he said. “I’m not even out of my twenties and my sex life is over.”

“I think that deduction is a little drastic, kiddo and I’m sorry, but I think I’m going to have to slip into doctor mode for this one.”

“Slip away.”

“Impotency can have a physical or a psychological cause, and since there was no permanent damage to you physically, looking at the psychological cause is where we should start.”

“Wonderful.” Blair picked up a handful of sand, letting it run through his fingers. “Not only am I impotent, but I’m also nuts.”

“Son, you are not nuts and I very much doubt you’ll have this problem for long. Just give yourself time, Blair.”

“Time, yeah I know and I know that I still have a lot to work through, but I just didn’t associate the rape with sex. Okay, physically yes, what happened was sexual, but emotionally it was so far detached from how I view sex and the emotions that I associate with sex, that I honestly thought that when I started thinking about it again, it would have no bearing on the issue. Pete, I honestly thought that they’d be strung so far apart from each other that they’d never interconnect. What Forsythe did, his rape, was violent and born out of hate. Having sex, at least the way I have sex, is the complete and total opposite. One shouldn’t have any bearing on the other.”

“You’re right, Blair, they shouldn’t; but obviously they do. Whatever is stopping you from getting an erection isn’t physical and from what I gather, has never been a psychological issue for you either. That leaves the dominators of rape and sex. The link’s there kiddo, you just haven’t connected it yet.”

“Did Jim ever have the same problem?”

“Blair, that’s not my place to say. If you want to know the answer to that question, you’re gonna have to ask Jim yourself.”

“Ask Jim what?” Ellison was standing directly behind them both. He hadn’t eavesdropped on their conversation, just naturally overhead the last part of their discussion as he drew closer.

Blair scrubbed his hand once again through his hair. Living with a sentinel didn’t allow for the keeping of too many secrets and living with a sentinel and a detective cut the odds down considerably. “I’m impotent,” he blurted “with the likely cause being psychological, which in turn means I’m nuts.”

Jim planted himself on the beach next to Blair. “Chief, you are not impotent,” he assured.

“Wanna bet? It doesn’t go anywhere but down, Jim.”

“Okay, but before you declare yourself ready for a lifetime of celibacy, why don’t we examine a few of the facts here?”

“Jim this is not a case and even if it were, all the evidence points to one thing, and unfortunately, that thing is still down!”

“Chief, come on, cut yourself some slack. Give yourself time to get back into the swing of things. Aside from everything else you’ve been through, you’re not exactly sharing a house with two Baywatch babes.”

This conversation is so not one I’m really up for, Blair decided. If Pete was right and the cause was psychological, then the only one who could fix it was himself. Discussing it further with Pete might have helped eventually, as the older man seemed to have the knack of getting to the root of a problem, but discussing with Jim wasn’t an option; discussing it with Jim brought it all too close to home. Deciding to opt out, Blair brushed the sand off this hand. “Well I have always found Pete kinda cute, in an elderly kind of way, but I can’t say I’m attracted to you, though, Jim. Too dowdy. Not enough dazzle.”

“Elderly! Maybe I heard wrong, Ellison but I distinctly thought I heard the words elderly and my name used in the same sentence.”

“No,” Jim replied. “You heard right. Apparently Junior thinks you’re old.”

“Yup, that’s what I thought.” Pete got to his feet and brushed the sand off his shorts. “I think that he also implied that you were drab, Jim.”

Jim lazily drew himself to his feet. “Now that, I really don’t understand, given some of the skirts he’s dragged through the front door. Actually now that I think about it, I’ve just been insulted in a big way.”

“Just calling it like I see it, guys,” Blair smiled.

Jim had to force himself not react to Blair’s expression. God, it’s so good to see that smile again, Chief. “So, doc, you want the arms or the legs?”

Before Blair could move, he was dangling off the ground and being carted to the end of the pier. “Hey, guys, come on. I was only joking.”

“All fun and games until someone get hurts, buddy-boy,” Jim deadpanned. Now at the end of the pier, they dumped Blair on his feet and Jim quickly peered over the edge, gauging the drop to the water below. “As far as I see it, you have two choices, Sandburg. Jump voluntarily or jump involuntarily.”

“Jump! Jim, come on man, be reasonable. You said it yourself. All fun and games until someone gets hurts and by the look of it, I’m the one who is gonna get hurt.”

The tide was on the turn and the drop to the ocean below couldn’t have been more than six feet. “I think you’ll survive, son,” Pete cut in. “Depending on how you land, that is.”

Blair threw in a last ditch effort. “I might, but what about my cast?”

“It’s fibreglass Sandburg,” Jim pointed out. “And like you, I’m sure it will survive ... depending on the trajectory of the impact that is.”

“I guess a sorry’s not gonna cut it?” Blair asked.

Both men shook their heads.

“In that case, I’ll stick by my original observation.” Moving before either man could react, Blair launched himself off the pier “Old and dreary!” he shouted, before hitting the water feet first.

The water was warm and the day lazy and seemingly carefree. Time had become irrelevant, brought only to task by the pangs of hunger reminding them that lunch had long since passed. Pete had left to heat up the grill, leaving Jim and Blair to laze in the shallows. “So,” Jim began. “What did you want to ask me?”

“Nothing,” Blair shrugged.

“Nothing as in ‘nothing’ to do with me having the same sort of problem that you’re having at the moment?”

“Jim, there’s no need for us to go there, okay?” Blair flipped over onto his stomach, letting the waves lap the shallow water over his back. “As Pete said, given time, it’ll all work itself out.”

“The answer is no. I didn’t have a problem getting an erection, but for a very long time, I had no desire to have one.” Jim flipped over, his body bumping into Blair’s as he did so. “And again, I’m sorry that my answer’s probably not going to be any more detailed than that, but hey, at least it’s an answer.”

Blair smiled. “That it is,” he said.

“But not the exact one you wanted to hear, I’m guessing?”

“Not exactly. I mean, don’t get me wrong man, I’m really happy that it wasn’t a challenge you had to overcome; it’s just that it doesn’t take me any closer to working out what’s behind this invisible barrier that I’ve built. The logical answer would be that it has everything to do with what Forsythe did to me, but the more I think about it, the more I move away from that conclusion. I lost my virginity when I was fifteen years old, and man it was like ‘wow’ and it’s been a ‘wow’ that’s been wowing me ever since – ever since up until now that is.”

“U-turn for a second, Chief, if you don’t mind. You lost your virginity at fifteen? Fifteen as in underage fifteen?” Jim turned over and sat up. “Mind if I inquire as to where and with whom and ask where the hell was your mother while her fifteen-year-old son was bumping illegal uglies?”

Blair laughed. “Illegal uglies, that’s funny man; but if you had seen Rosalie, ugly doesn’t come anywhere near it.” He laughed again. “You can be such a cop at times, man.”

“Cop all the time, Lothario.”

“Jim, it was completely consensual. No coercion at all was required by either consenting party.”

“Newsbreak for you, Chief. Fifteen was and is underage. Consensual or not, it was illegal. And where the hell was your mother, I ask again?”

“She was around and honestly, it was no biggie. Mom had already given me the safe sex talk and you know Naomi, she’s not exactly one to rule with an iron fist. As long as the decisions I was making weren’t putting me in any danger, she let me be free to make them by myself.”

“She knew?”

“Oh course she knew. Rosalie and I had been making gaga eyes at each other for months. When we both felt we were ready, we took the step.”

“And this Rosalie, she was how old?”

“Rosalie was my older woman. She’d just turned sixteen. A sixteen year old Latin beauty who...”

“Heard enough.” A cascade of water flew in Blair’s direction. “If I hear anymore I might be inclined to go track down this older woman of yours and let the long arm of the law deal with her.”

Blair rolled his eyes. “Again I remind you that it was one hundred percent consensual.”

“Again I remind you – cop and illegal.”

“Jim?”

“What?”

“Don’t ever change, man.” Blair turned over and lazily got to his feet. “Even when you’re in the middle of one of your irrational cop moments, don’t ever change.” He held out his hand. “Come on, by the smell of things, the hamburgers are nearly done.”

Jim took Blair’s hand, letting Sandburg drag him to his feet. “What about your problem, Chief? We kinda got sidetracked, there.”

Blair moved ahead. “Maybe I’ll dream of Rosalie tonight. She’s never let me down before and with Rosalie, the possibilities are endless.”

“Sandburg!” Jim called, hiding his smile. “I’ll call in the Feds if I have to.”

Blair’s smile turned into a full-fledged grin. Don’t ever change, Jim. I love you just the way you are.

“You’re leaving, aren’t you?” Pete was sitting on the top stair, beer in hand, and lost in the beauty of the Hawaiian sunset – a pose that Jim had become very accustomed to seeing. At the end of each day, without fail, Pete would take up the same position, simply content to let nature do its thing; satisfied to let nature help soothe his soul from some of the horror he’d witnessed in his life.

“It’s time,” Pete answered quietly. “He doesn’t need me any longer.”

Jim took a seat on the same step. “That’s not true. He’ll always need you ... I’ll always need you.”

“And I’m only a phone call away, son. For both of you, that’s all it will take.”

“I better pull some serious overtimes shifts then, in order to cover that phone bill.”

Pete smiled. “I’ll hold you to that, Ellison.”

“I have no doubt about that, Colonel.” Jim uncapped his beer, squashing the flimsy metal cap between his fingers. “When are you going?”

“Tomorrow. Murray’s driving me to the airport.”

“I don’t know how to thank you, Pete. Not just for now, but for everything.”

“Jim, this is us. You don’t have to thank me son, you know that.”

Jim turned his attention back toward the sunset. “It never ceases to amaze, does it?”

“And it never will,” Pete replied, quietly.

Words were a very poor substitute for the emotion that Blair felt and, try as he might, they were failing miserably to express his gratitude toward Pete. Pete had shown him friendship from the first time they’d met, but never in his wildest dreams had he ever imagined the depth of commitment that this man would be willing to give to him.

“You call me, okay? Doesn’t matter what time of day or night, you need me, you phone.” All Blair could do was nod and force himself to hold back the tears that were so very close to falling.

“Ellison.” Words once again failed the day, but the fierce embrace that followed told a very poignant story of its own. “You remember that the kid’s got my number. You give him any trouble and I’ll be back, kicking your ass from here to the badlands of New Mexico.” Like Blair, all Jim could do was nod and tether his emotion.

A short, rough kiss to the side of Jim’s head followed and then Pete was gone. He grabbed his bag, bounded down the stairs and made his way across the beach.

Jim found his voice. “Hey Colonel,” he called, “I don’t think I’ve ever told you.”

Pete stopped and turned back around. “And you don’t have to. I already have my degree, remember.”

“I remember,” Jim replied softly.

Just as Pete’s figure faded out of sight, whisper-soft words carried on the trade winds to touch his ears. “I love you, you big idiot. Don’t you ever forget that.”

“Do you think it’s possible for a house to hold on to a little piece of a person?” They were both now sitting in Pete’s position. Top step, beer in hand, watching the sun dip its toes into the Pacific ocean.

“How do you mean?” Jim asked, his eyes never leaving the sunset.

“Well, essentially a house is nothing more than bricks and mortar, plasterboard and timber. All materials that don’t have a soul, yet when you walk into some houses – houses like this one – you can feel their soul. You can hear the laughter, sense the warmth, the friendship and the love. In every room you go into in this place, it’s all there.”

“You got me there, Chief.” Jim shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe they do.”

“What about the other side of the coin? Do you think it’s possible for a house to absorb hate ... to absorb evil?”

“Blair, I –”

“Jim, it’s time,” Blair interrupted. “It’s time to make plans to go home.”

Jim had known this fate was coming, but he had been hoping to ignore it – just for a little while longer. “You sure?” he finally asked.

Blair hesitated. “No, and if I had my way I’d stay here – on this beach, in this house – forever. But I can’t have my way, and I can’t spend the rest of my life hiding. I need to start taking steps.”

“Okay.” Jim hid the hesitation in his voice. ‘Home’ was no longer an agreeable destination. Home and the last memories of home had left him with a scar. It had left him with the fear that, no matter how hard Simon had worked to erase all traces of what had happened, he’d never be able to erase Forsythe from the essence of their home. Plucking another two beers from the bucket on the deck, Jim passed one to Blair. “Here’s to steps,” he said, tentatively.

As their bottle clinked, Blair fought to control the feeling that had haunted him since the attack. The question, his question, Do you think it’s possible for a house to absorb hate ... to absorb evil? ran through his mind. He turned his attention back toward the sunset, knowing in his heart that the answer was ‘yes’.

“Hey.” Jim hooked Blair by the elbow just before he ducked out the door. “Feel like a change of destinations tonight?”

Holding onto the door handle, Blair’s gaze remained focused on the pier. Some nights he’d found solace there and some, he’d done battle with his demons. Tonight, with their time at the beach house drawing to an end, he feared was a night for demons.

Jim moved in, placing his hands on Blair’s shoulder. “Come on.”

“Come on, where?”

“I thought you could bunk in with me tonight.”

“Jim, you don’t have to.” Blair answered quietly. “I’m okay.”

“I know, but I’m not.” Jim swung Blair around and draped his arm across the width of his shoulders. “I could use the company.”

Giving in, Blair let himself be led. Led back through the kitchen, back down the hall, past his room and into the room next door. He let himself be guided past the single bed and didn’t resist when he was pushed down onto the bed were Jim slept. Then, with his head on the pillow and a sheet pulled up to his chest, he felt two fingers tap against his forehead. “What’s going on in here tonight, Chief?”

Blair drew in a deep breath and held it for a few moments before releasing it slowly. “My future ... I don’t know what my future holds.”

“Well, unless you have a crystal ball and a psychic connection, I’d say you’re in the same boat as the rest of us, Junior.”

“I know, it’s just that before ... before any of this happened, I had a plan. I had my degree to focus on, I had my teaching and I had my work at the station with you. It was all laid out ... maybe not in black and white, but the basics were there.”

“So why alter your plans?”

Blair was honest. “Because I’m afraid. I’m afraid of dealing with peoples’ reactions toward me. I don’t want to hear the whispers, or look into eyes that are filled with sympathy and pity. And worst of all, I don’t want to face the guys at the station. Simon, Rafe, Brown, they all saw, they all know exactly what happened. I know these guys are my friends, but I think that just makes it more difficult. Friends are harder to fool than strangers, and I know these guys will see straight through me.”

“Blair, I understand, believe me I understand, but you’re forgetting one very important factor here.”

Blair didn’t need Jim to tell him what that factor was. He already knew. “You can’t be my shadow, Jim.”

“No I can’t, but I can start being what I’m meant to be. I can start being your sentinel.”

Once again weighted with the need to lessen Jim’s burden of guilt and responsibility, Blair flashed a small smile. “The job doesn’t happen to come complete with a cape and red lycra, does it?”

“No,” Jim stated emphatically. He punched his pillow, creating a comfortable mound in the middle. “If I was going to wear lycra, it would have to be green.”

Blair raised his eyebrows. “Green?”

“Yeah ... cool jungle green.”

“Oh man.” Blair groaned and flipped over to face the wall. “That is something I don’t think I’ll ever be ready to see!”

As the minutes passed and the night grew silent, Jim reached out, laying his hand on Blair’s arm. “I am ready, Blair. Of all the things that have pulled me up short in this life, you’re not one of them – we’re not one of them.” He squeezed Blair’s arm. “Sleep tight, kiddo.”

“Hey, Chief.” Jim moved to free his arm, which during the course of the night had ended up under Blair’s pillow.

Blair stirred, muttered an unintelligible sentence and then settled back down.

“Chief,” Jim tried again.

This time Blair groaned before rolling onto his back. “Jim, what’s up man?” he grumbled.

“Ah, that would be you, Junior.”

“Huh?”

Deciding not to spare Blair any embarrassment, Jim pulled down the sheet and whispered in his ear. “Sandburg, you have a boner.”

This time the ‘huh’ turned into a ‘what’ which in turn, changed to an expression of surprise – which didn’t last long once he saw the look on Jim’s face. “Oh my God!” He snatched at the sheet, pulling it up. “Please don’t tell me I ...” When Jim’s smile turned into a devilish smirk, the ‘oh god’ grew louder as he begged, “please, please tell me that I didn’t...”

“Hump my leg?” Jim cut in. “Let’s just say that the nickname ‘Rover’ isn’t without justification.”

“Oh god,” Blair groaned one more time. He flung his arm over his face. “You’re never going to let me live this down, are you?”

“It’s unlikely.” Still smiling Jim got out of the bed and pulled a towel off the chair. “I’m gonna go hit the shower since I assume you’re anxious to hit something else.”

“Very funny,” Blair grumbled.

“And Sandburg,” Jim said, reaching the doorway, “congratulations.”

Ellison looked up as Blair wandered onto the deck. “So can I use spanking and monkey safely in the same sentence?”

“You certainly can,” Blair replied, not even bothering to hide his smile. He nodded toward the paper Jim was reading. “Where’d you get that from?”

“It was on the deck. I guess Murray must have dropped it over.” He tossed the front section in Blair’s direction. “You want coffee?”

“I’ll get it, you stay.” Blair hovered in doorway, undecided. “Jim, I’m sorry about what happened in there, man. Humping your leg was definitely not on my to do list.”

“In all fairness, you didn’t exactly hump, Chief. Poke a little maybe, but no humping.”

“So poking is less embarrassing than humping, how exactly?”

“It’s not, but either means that your little problem has obviously found a solution.”

Blair walked back out onto deck, sinking heavily down into a chair. “Which brings me to my next ‘conflict of interest’, problem, for want of a better description.” He stared at Jim for a few minutes as he formulated his thoughts. If Jim was really prepared to be in it for the long haul, then he had the right to know exactly where that long haul might lead. “You know how Pete told us that he’d been spending time with a native community back home.”

“Yeah, I remember.”

“Well, apparently this community has a sentinel and guide living within their tribe.”

“You sure?” Jim folded the paper. “He would have told me ... why didn’t he tell me?”

“Telling me wasn’t intentional. We kind of fell into the discussion and the reason he didn’t say anything before was because he didn’t want to force any pre-formed ideas upon us.”

“Ideas such as?”

“Ideas such as these men don’t just share a sentinel and guide bond, they also share a sexual relationship.”

Jim saw exactly where this was going and resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “Chief, just because you had a little humping incident doesn’t automatically mean that we’re going to be doing the horizontal tango together.”

“Jim, man, would you just be serious for five minutes and think about this?”

Jim tossed it down on the table. “Okay,” he agreed. “I’ll give you five minutes of deep and meaningful contemplation.”

“Alright,” Blair said, again gathering his thoughts. “Let’s go back to the other week when you zoned. I went through all the standard motions I go through, but nothing was really working ... that is until I tried something a little out of left field.” Blair paused for another moment. “You asked me that day if I kissed you and answer is yes. And it wasn’t just a peck on the check or a brush of the lips. It was a kiss that was deep and sensual and a kiss designed to make you feel.” Blair scrubbed his hand through his hair. “I felt it, Jim. I felt what that kiss was really meant to mean and I’m wondering if you felt the same thing?”

Jim locked eyes with Blair but didn’t answer.

“Okay then, maybe not.” Blair looked away from Jim’s scrutinizing stare. “But that still doesn’t cast off this morning’s little episode as having no relevance. Yesterday I couldn’t get so much as a twinge, but the very morning I wake up next to you, it’s standing up like a regular regimental solider. I very much doubt that’s just a coincidence.”

“You’re probably right.” Jim shrugged, getting to his feet. “I’m off for a swim, you want to come?”

Blair sat, dumbfounded. “You are unbelievable, man. Here I am just getting through telling you that it’s very likely we could end up in a sexual relationship, and your response is that you’re going for a swim!”

“Well what do you want me to say, Sandburg?”

“I want you to say that you agree, that you disagree, that it scares the shit out you or that you’re fine with it. I don’t know,” Blair said, his voice on the rise. “You’re a heterosexual man; hell, I’m a heterosexual man. At the very least I’d expect you to freak out.”

“Chief, if you want to freak out, be my guest, but I’m not going to fight this.”

“Jim I know you from the top of your steel-capped skull all the way down to the tip of your steel-toed boots. Fighting comes as natural to you as taking a leak in the morning. Why are you backing down on this so easily?”

“Because I ignored what it was to be a sentinel once before and I nearly lost you because of it. I’m not going to risk losing you this time, that’s why.”

“At a risk of losing yourself? You sure that’s worth it?”

“And are you sure I’m so lost? In all your little hypotheses and analyses here, Chief, have you ever stopped to consider one important point?”

“Such as?”

“Such as that maybe I felt it too. Maybe that kiss had just as much meaning for me as it did you. Maybe I felt that deep, sensual kiss and maybe I wanted more. Maybe I want more!”

Blair didn’t have time to answer before Jim grabbed his hand and pulled him out of the chair. “Now come on. We’ve got two days left and I intend to spend as much of it as possible in that ocean.”

“Jim!” Blair pulled back. “You can’t just do that”

“Do what?”

“Shut down the conversation like that.”

“Yes I can; I’m an expert at it.” He tugged at Blair again. “But I do have one question for you.” He looked down at their hands. “What hand did you use to jerk off with this morning?”

“Totally unbelievable,” Blair muttered again. As if to prove a point, he pressed his palm further into Jim’s hand. “Well, considering that my right is still in this cast, what do you think?”

Jim looked down at their tightly-joined hands. “I’m thinking that I really hope you washed your hand!”

As they headed down the beach and toward the water, Blair knew that it would be useless to push Jim any further on the subject at this point. Jim had shut him down for whatever reason he felt relevant. Pete was definitely right about one thing; Jim would talk only when Jim was ready. And as they hit the water, Blair realized that Pete was also on target with another point. Neither was in charge of steering the ship and, when it came to their relationship, it would end up being a case of ‘whatever will be, will be’.

“I’ve got some time off at the end of the semester, which I know I should be using to work myself up to going back to the station, but I’m just not sure I’m quite there yet.”

“You’ll get there, kiddo. You’ve only been home a few weeks and look how far you’ve already come. Back to your studies, back to teaching.”

“Yeah, I guess, it’s just that I don’t want to let Jim down. I mean, he says he’s doing okay, but I also know that Simon’s not piling him up with too much. But that’s not gonna last forever.”

“Ellison’s a tough nut, Blair. I’m sure he’ll cope just fine. Hey, listen, why not think about using the time off you have at the end of semester to come on a field trip with me? I promised the tribal elders I’d come back and see them before winter set in, and I’m sure there’d be one or two people who’d be interested in meeting you.”

There was silence on the end of the line, prompting Pete to speak again. “Maybe you could see if Jim can tack a few days of comp time onto the end of the long weekend? That way he could come down too.”

“Yeah, maybe. I’ll talk to him tonight.”

“Alright then, I’ll leave it with you. You take care of yourself, kiddo and say hello to the big idiot for me.”

“Will do, and thanks Pete. I’ll talk to you later.”

Blair hung up the phone just as there was a tap on the door. “Chief, it’s just us.” Jim turned the key in the lock and waited for Blair to unlatch the chain.

Standing in the hall, waiting for Blair to open the door, Simon pushed down the edgy feeling that had been growing from the moment they’d left the station. Ever since Blair had returned home there’d been an uneasy vibe between them. He’d been nervous picking them both up from the airport, not knowing what to expect, how to act and what he should say to the kid. The moment Blair walked out of the arrivals lounge, looking tanned and healthy, he was relieved to find the only physical evidence remaining from the attack were the scars on Blair’s hands and the weak grip of his hand shake. Wanting nothing more than to pull Sandburg in and hug the stuffing out of him, he resisted, taking heed of Jim’s forewarning. So instead he slapped the kid on the back and told him that he hoped he didn’t expect him to carry his bag.

Understanding that Blair needed to be treated no differently than he’d always treated him, and despite thinking he’d managed to pull it off, the odd look and comment from the kid here and there made Simon suspect that Sandburg was seeing right through him. Nonetheless, he’d continue to act like he was meant to act, hoping that the vibe between them would eventually revert back to how it had always been. “Sandburg,” he said gruffly as soon as the door swung open, “I’ll warn you straight up that I’m not the world’s best house guest.”

“And I would expect anything else because why?” Blair asked, already playing the game. He took Simon’s bag from his hand. “You can take my room; I’ll bunk on the couch.”

“Sandburg, I’m not going to kick you out of your room. I’ll take the sofa.”

“Simon, you can’t sleep on the sofa, it’s way too small. Besides, I’ve just spent the last hour picking my dirty clothes up off the floor.”

“Let me guess. Jim’s turn to do the laundry, huh?”

“You beta’cha.” Ducking a half-hearted swiped aimed at his head, Blair headed into his room and tossed Simon’s bag on the bed. He then grabbed a pair of sweat pants and a t-shirt and plucked his towel off the chair. Making his way back into the living room, he walked past Jim, his arm brushing against the sentinel’s as he did so. “Now that you’re home, I might go grab a quick shower. Keep an eye on the chili?”

“Will do, Chief.” Jim dumped the grocery bag he was carrying on the counter. “Beer, Simon?”

“Yeah thanks,” Simon replied, his gaze following Blair into the bathroom. “Jim,” he began, once he was certain Sandburg was out of earshot, “I can’t kick the kid out of his room. Look, maybe I should book into a motel for the night after all.”

“Simon, take his room. He hardly sleeps in there anyway.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Jim replied, not wanting to say too much but also wanting to let Simon know that his concern was appreciated. “Most nights he makes up some excuse about still having work to do, stays up until he thinks I’m asleep, and then nods off on the sofa.”

“So I’m guessing the revamp didn’t make any difference, then?” Just as promised, Simon and the guys had completely stripped and renovated the bedroom. Improvements included a new bed, new paintjob and a full-length shelving system that completely covered the wall from which Blair had been hung. Stacked full with books and artefacts, you had to struggle to see the wall at all.

Jim moved past Simon and grabbed two beers from the fridge. “It does, to a point. He’ll spend time in there during the day when he’s busy working, but when he’s in bed with time to think, he doesn’t last long.”

“Have you thought of moving?”

“Yeah, it’s an idea we’ve been tossing around, but it always comes back to him feeling that if we move, then Forsythe’s won ... that he’s letting the bastard control his life.”

“And how about you?” Simon asked. “How are you coping with being here? It can’t be easy.”

“I’m not the point, am I?”

“I’m not sure Blair would see it that way.”

“And he’s not gonna get the chance to see it any other way, because at this stage he’s going to be none the wiser.”

“Jim, give the kid some credit. He may be a lot of things, but stupid isn’t one of them.”

“Hold that thought.” Putting his beer down on the counter top, Jim headed toward the bathroom. “Keep an eye on the chili, will ya?” he called back, distracted.

“Chief?” Without bothering to knock or use the excuse that he needed to wash his hands or take a leak, Jim made a beeline into the room. “You okay?”

Blair was perched on the toilet seat lid with his elbows resting on his knees, fingers pressing small circles into his temples. “Just having a private, crazy, meltdown moment,” he replied flatly.

“Don’t say that,” Jim replied a little too harshly. “You’re not crazy.” He moved to stand in front of Blair before squatting down on his haunches. “Whatever it is, we’ll work it out.”

“I already have.” Blair lifted his head. “Or at least narrowed it down to two possibilities.”

“Which are?”

“Which are either me not coping with having another person in the loft for the night, or me not coping with having the door shut while I take a shower. Either way I don’t suppose it really matters, as they’re both linked to my insecurities. Pretty pathetic, don’t you think, given that I know you’re right outside that door and given that Simon’s a friend, not a threat.”

“No, I don’t think it’s pathetic, but what I do think is that your survival instinct is letting you know that the bathroom door is the only way outta here and it’s telling you to be cautious of that.”

Blair’s brow furrowed for a moment as he thought about Jim’s comment. It made sense to a certain degree. The bathroom was where Forsythe had got the initial jump on him. He hadn’t closed the door since they’d been home, but now he was trapped by four walls, just as he’d been on the day of the attack. “And Simon?” he asked finally.

“Simon ... Simon’s in our space.”

“Our space?”

“Yeah, this place, this apartment is our space, yours and mine, and while Simon isn’t a threat directly, him being here is the same as having the security of that space breached. He’s made you raise your shields because you don’t want him to see more than he needs to see – you don’t want him to see what you consider is still a failing.”

This time, Jim’s words hit a little too close to home. “And you think that’s wrong?"

“No I don’t,” Jim reinforced. “Nobody has the right to tell you how to deal with this. You’re getting there, Chief, and you’re getting there with more guts and determination than most. You just have to keep focusing on the positives, and when the negatives do slow you down, all you need to do is to take time out and do what you’re doing now.”

“Which is what? Sitting on a toilet contemplating the meaning of life!”

“Facing up to it and dealing with it.”

As if taking Jim’s last words as gospel, Blair got to his feet, leaned over and flicked on the faucet in the shower stall. “Here’s to dealing,” he told himself, firmly.

“You want me to stay?”

Blair didn’t immediately answer ‘no’. He hesitated. Having Jim in the room would have made the process a whole lot less stressful, but knowing that Simon was just outside in the living room, cancelled the thought. “No, I’m good,” he replied.

“How about I leave the door open then? Simon can’t see into the bathroom from the living room; and besides, he’s just turned on the news so I doubt if he’ll even notice.”

Blair nodded and Jim squeezed his arm. “And remember, Chief. I’m just in the other room. All you gotta do is give the word.”

Blair nodded again and, as Jim made for the door, he peeled off his clothes and adjusted the faucets. Stepping under the spray he closed the curtain – leaving just enough gap to keep the door and hall beyond in his line of sight. His sense of security may have been threatened, but he was going to do his best to fight the feeling and hopefully declare this small attempt to take a step forward, a victory.

The chili was a success and as Simon leaned back in his chair and patted his stomach, his eyes caught Blair’s. “Okay Sandburg,” he said, curtly. “I know you’ve been dying to ask, so out with it.”

Blair held his hands up in defence. “Hey, I haven’t said a word.”

“With you, it’s not what you say, it’s what you don’t say that worries me.”

Blair smiled. “Alright, then. I know you’re here because your bathroom flooded, but I was just kinda wondering how that might have happened?”

Under the table, Simon’s foot connected with Jim’s shin. “As if you don’t know?” he stated.

“Hey, don’t blame me. I didn’t say as word,” Jim declared, rubbing the sting out of his leg.

“So, thick as thieves has no relevance when it comes to you two, then,” Simon muttered.

“So,” Blair asked, now smiling broadly. “How’d it flood and how did it manage to flood so badly that all your carpets have to be pulled up?”

Simon sat up straight and squared his shoulders. “Well if you must know, I fell asleep on the can while the bath was filling.”

Simon’s glare cut across the table directly at Ellison. Sandburg’s reaction was a little too instantaneous, putting a heavy cloud of doubt over Jim’s declaration of innocence. The kid’s laughter or, more aptly, belly-deep guffaws, had obviously been pre-planned. Although Banks went through the motions of being the disgruntled and peeved butt of their joke, he was secretly savouring every precious decibel of sound coming out of Blair’s mouth.

Finally, after the laughter continued to a point where Blair’s eyes watered and his face turned crimson, Jim slapped him on the back. “I can save you from a lot of things Chief, but saving you from yourself is not one of them.” He gathered up their plates and dumped them down directly in front of Blair. “A wise man once said that when your life is danger from the scorpion sting of your boss, doing the dishes is the best way to save one’s own skin.”

“Hey!” Blair swiped at his eyes, clearing the tears from his vision. “That’s not fair. I cooked!”

“When you’re lower down on the food chain than the boss, Sandburg, life doesn’t have to be fair.” Reaching back, Simon plucked a dishtowel from the counter and threw it at Ellison. “That rules also applies to detectives.” Getting to his feet and smoothing the creases from his trousers, it was now Simon’s turn to smile – smugly. “I’ll be over there ... on the couch ... the one in charge of the remote!

Ellison was right, Simon noted. The kid had practically set up camp on the sofa and, by the number of books, folders, and notepads that surrounded him, it looked as if he were there for the duration.

The reading, note taking and waving of a large red marker kept pace throughout the first movie but, as the second in the Jaws trilogy was about to start, the signs of weariness began to take hold. Simon noticed Jim’s hand drift across and settle on Blair’s knee.

“Chief, why don’t you go and bunk down in my room? I’ll wake you when the movie’s over.”

Simon flicked his eyes back to the television before Blair realised he was being watched. Jim’s voice resounded softly once more. “I’ll even play housemaid and set up the couch for you before I come up.”

“You sure?” Blair asked, keeping his voice low.

Jim tapped his knee. “Go,” he said.

Pulling his feet out from underneath him, Blair stood, stretching out the muscles in his shoulders. Quietly he gathered up his books and his notes and headed toward the stairs. “I guess I’ll see you in the morning, Simon.”

Simon just waved his hand through the air, his attention not leaving the television screen.

“And just give me the boot when you come up, Jim.”

Jim’s response mimicked Simon’s and – if it had been another time, another place and a scenario that didn’t involve him as the lead player – Blair would have applauded their acting skills. He knew damn well that Jim had no intention of waking him up, and he also knew that Simon was more than well-acquainted with Jim’s version of the script.

Without saying another word, Blair headed up the stairs and dumped his books on the dresser. As he crawled into Jim’s bed and turned off the light, the uneasy feeling that had been plaguing him all evening lessened its grip. Turning to his side and closing his eyes, his contemplation of the reason behind the relief didn’t last long and, for the first time in a very long time, Blair slipped into a dreamless sleep.

“Well, look at that – it rises.” Jim glanced up from the paper as Blair made his way down the stairs from his room. “By the looks of that ‘bed head’, I’d say you had a good night’s sleep.”

“Which was meant to be on the sofa if I remember correctly.” Hitting the bottom stair, Blair made a beeline for the coffeepot. “Why didn’t you wake me?”

“I tried, but you were being difficult.”

“Liar,” Blair responded, filling his cup and bringing it over the kitchen table. “Where’s Simon?”

“He’s gone to meet the insurance guy.”

“So he obviously knows that I didn’t spend the night on the sofa?” Blair opened and shut his hand a few times, before pressing the fingers of his left hand into his palm. “Which means he obviously knows I spent the night in your bed?”

“Obviously so. Is there a problem with that?”

Blair just shrugged his shoulders before pressing his fingers once again into the centre of his palm.

“By my reckoning,” Jim began, “the only problem there would be is if you choose to make it one.” He leaned over and tapped Blair on the forehead. “In here.”

“Mountains and molehills,” Blair muttered.

“Right on, Chief,” Jim replied. “And what’s up with your hand?”

“I dunno, I must have slept on it funny or something.”

Pushing the chair back and getting to his feet, Jim moved into the kitchen and rummaged through a basket on the countertop. Finally finding what he was looking for, he headed back to the table. Without asking, he took hold of Blair’s arm by the wrist and poured the sweet-smelling massage oil into the palm of his hand. “This should help.”

Trying not to wince as Jim’s fingers worked at his muscles. Blair scrunched up his nose. “Did you have to buy one that smells so sickly?”

“I like it. It’s sweet ... just like you, my little pumpernickel.”

“Pumpernickel?” Blair eyed Jim suspiciously, “Okay, what gives?”

“Nothing gives. Can’t a guy just be in a good mood?”

“Not at seven-thirty on a Saturday morning, and not when my delta waves are still adjusting to gamma.”

“My point exactly,” Jim replied. “At one stage there you were so dead to the world I thought about putting a mirror under your nose just to see if you were still breathing.” He squirted more oil onto Blair’s palm. “Maybe there’s something in that.”

“In what?”

“Sleeping upstairs with me.” He didn’t look up to catch Blair’s expression. “You can’t deny that we both had the best night’s sleep we’ve had since we’ve been back here.”

“Jim, I’m not going to take over your bed every night.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’d be weird, that’s why, and besides, I have to start dealing with things. I can’t go running to you every time I have a nightmare.”

This time, Ellison did look up. Blair had said nothing, up until now, about being plagued by nightmares. “But what if it’s something you ... something we can’t avoid?” he asked. “What if it’s a sixth sense kinda deal?”

Blair’s voice held an air of caution. “A sixth sense deal how, exactly?”

“Same deal as why birds fly south and bears hibernate for the winter. Instinct Chief – an instinct that will most likely lead us toward a different relationship ... a sexual relationship.”

“Okay,” Blair breathed, not at all expecting to have this conversation again with Jim quite so soon. “So you’ve obviously thought this through. It’s not just a revelation you’ve had over coffee on a dull Saturday morning?”

“No.” Jim’s tone was deadly serious. “I’ve actually been thinking this over for some weeks now, and the more I think about it, the more I come to the realisation that this is not going to be conscious decision. When it happens, it’ll happen the same way a salmon knows it’s time to swim upstream and wildebeest know it’s time to mate.”

Blair’s voice was light, joking, as he attempted to buy himself some time to wrap thoughts around what Jim was saying. “Great ... that’s great, Jim. Of the instinctual behavioural traits you could have cited, you had to go with the mating ritual of the wildebeest! Couldn’t you have chosen one with more flamboyance? Maybe a peacock?”

Jim wasn’t buying it. His fingers resumed the massage and were vigorously digging into the scar on the centre of Blair’s palm. “Sandburg, I’m trying to be serious here. This relationship is not a joke.”

Jim’s tense body language and the heaviness in his voice told Blair he’d made a mistake. He reached out, touching Jim’s hand. “Hey ... I’m sorry.”

Ellison’s fingers continued to dig into his palm.

“Jim.” Blair applied more pressure, attempting to still the sentinel’s actions. “That scar’s not gonna go away by you rubbing it, you know.”

Jim kept up his pace until his actions were finally brought to a stop by Blair’s hand engulfing his own.

“And the impact of our relationship, whatever that may turn out to be, is not going to be any easier to come to terms with just because you’ve decided that it’s all going to be based on instinct.” The pad of Blair’s thumb drifted across the top of Jim’s knuckles. “While instinct might give you an explanation or even a justification for what could happen, labelling it as instinct won’t make the act or the feelings involved any less intimate. If we do end up in a relationship that’s deeper than the one we have already, it’s gonna be a big deal, Jim ... for both of us.”

Jim lifted his head and met Blair’s eyes dead on. “I’m not scared, Chief, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“You’re not? Well you’re a better man than I am James Ellison, because ‘scared shitless’ doesn’t even begin to cover what I’m feeling.”

Jim’s eyes dropped and refocused on Blair’s hand. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I should never have brought this up.”

“Yes, you should have, because it’s very possible that you’re right. But you know what? My instinct is telling me that, scared shitless or not, everything’s gonna be okay and whatever happens between us will happen for the right reasons ... not just because instinct dictates it.” He paused, making sure Jim was still listening. “What’s yours saying to you?”

Ellison didn’t answer immediately. He had no doubt that Blair knew how much he loved him, but as far as his personal quota of shared feelings went, his had already run dry.

“Jim?” Blair pushed. “You can’t stop now, man.”

In his heart, Jim knew Blair was right; he couldn’t stop now. Digging deeper, he breathed out slowly. “Mine’s telling me to stop running and to start committing. It’s telling me that I shouldn’t be afraid to let you know how much you mean to me – how much I love you.”

Feelings of inadequacy mixed with embarrassment, leaving Jim with a desperate need to cap the well before it turned into a full-fledged geyser. He resorted to the defence mechanism Blair had opted for a few moments earlier. “But that doesn’t mean there’s gonna be any ‘Sweet Pea’s or ‘Honey Pie’s coming your way, Sandburg. And if you’re after any candlelit dinners, count me out.”

Blair let Jim have his out. In the last few minutes Ellison had revealed more of himself than he had in the past couple of years. “No dinners, huh?” he replied, keeping the smile from his face. “Well if that’s the case, I think the very least I deserve is a ‘Snuggle Bunny’ or a ‘Sweetheart’.”

“There’s only ever been one ‘Sweetheart’ in my life, Chief, and ain’t been you.”

“Okay then, if it’s a no go on the ‘Sweetheart’, how about a ‘Babe’? That shouldn’t be too difficult for you to spurt out.”

Jim worked at keeping his expression staid. “Not likely, buddy boy. I’m just in it for the sex, not the endearments.”

Blair broke ranks and burst out laughing. “You’re a harsh man, Ellison, but you know what? Pete was right about two things.”

“Like what?” Jim asked cautiously.

“Like you being an idiot.” Picking up his coffee cup, Blair got to his feet and, moved toward the stairs.

“Hey, where do you think you’re going?”

“I’m going back to bed until the rain stops.”

“I thought your bed was downstairs ... in your room.”

“It is, but your room has better vibes.”

“So, better vibes means that you’ll be sleeping up there more often?”

“You just never know your luck, Detective.”

“Hey,” Jim called again as Blair disappeared up the stairs and out of sight. “You said Pete was right about two things. What was the other?”

There was a rustle of sheets and the sound of a book being picked up off the side table.

And then words, so soft Jim could barely hear them, made their way down the stairs. “That you’re worth loving.”

~Matthew Taylor~

What a difference a year makes. It was an age-old saying, but in a time of new hope and new beginnings, it held a particular relevance for an older and somewhat wiser Matthew Taylor. It had been a year since he’d left the Cascade PD, a year since he’d handed in his resignation. And while the year had presented him with more challenges to overcome than he’d ever thought possible, it had been year for seeking and receiving forgiveness, and a year to realise that sometimes forgiveness would never be granted.

A year ago to the day, his life had been in turmoil. His childhood dream had been shattered, his career was in ruins and, just when he’d thought life couldn’t get any worse, he’d learned that Blair Sandburg had paid the price for his actions. While he would never forget that day, and could still cite each and every one of Blair’s injuries as if by rote, everything else was a blur. He’d run – that much he remembered – and for a time his life had been reduced to nothing more than surviving on a full tank of fuel and gas station food. From one town to the next, one state to another, he kept on running until one day, somewhere deep in America’s heartland, he finally came to a crashing halt. A pickup truck and an old vet named Harry put a stop to his running – literally. During the next few weeks, while laid flat on his back, ‘time on his hands’ became his nemesis, forcing him to reflect upon the kind of man he’d become and the type of man he wanted to be.

The path to retribution hadn’t been an easy one for Matthew to take, but a shining light, in the form of Harry’s daughter, had taken him by the hand and illuminated his way. With Lesley by his side, Matthew had found his strength. He’d found the courage to contact Blair and ask for forgiveness, and found the strength to deal with rejection from a man who he’d once been so desperate to emulate. Jim Ellison’s denunciation had taught him, finally, not to see his failings as a curse, but to learn from the lessons they were there to teach.

The kettle whistled, drawing Matthew from his thoughts. He adjusted his collar to help ward against the cold and, with one long, last glance, he looked out over the fields and pastures that stretched across his land from mountain to mountain. Careful not to let the screen door slam, he made his way into the kitchen, flicked off the kettle and poured the water into the pot, leaving the tea to steep. With quiet footsteps, he made his way across to the fire, adding another log and taking the time to give a pat to the world’s laziest golden retriever.

A noise from the bedroom hastened his movements and, with tea now in hand, he made his way down the hall. “You’re supposed to be sleeping,” he said quietly, setting the tea down on the side table. “Harry’s coming over this morning to feed the horses and Betty’s not bringing Misty in to the clinic until ten, so you don’t have to rush.”

“But I still have rounds and patients to check on ... even if they are of the four-legged variety,” Lesley murmured from under her cocoon of blankets.

“Your dad’s one step ahead of you, and Mandy said she’d hold the fort till you made it in.”

Lesley stirred, turning onto her back. “Now if we could just get Junior to start behaving.”

Matt placed his hand gently on Lesley’s pregnant belly. “You listen up here, tadpole,” he growled. “You start bein’ a good li’l whipper-snapper and give yore mama a break.”

Lesley smiled. “You still need to work on that country twang, cowboy.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he smiled back, bending down to give her a kiss. “I gotta get going. Apparently old Hurley and Tubbs are feuding again.”

“Over what this time?” she asked, stifling a yawn.

“Hurley’s randy rooster.” He kissed her again, pulling the blankets up to cover her shoulders. “I’ll see you tonight.”

“Hey, Deputy,” she said just as Matt reached the door. “I love you.”

He smiled and pretended to tip his hat. “Why thank you ma’am. I reckon the same goes right back at’cha.”

“Get outta here,” she laughed. “And thanks for the tea.”

Grabbing his hat and giving the dog another quick pat, Matt headed for the front door. As he glanced back toward the bedroom, he realised finally that partners and best friends come in many different forms. He’d spent most of his life chasing a dream that was always one step ahead of him – one step ahead until the day he slowed down and let the dream catch him.

The End

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