A Fair Distance: Ball and Chain. Chapter Twelve
Challenge 102 conscious/unconscious
Fandom: The Sentinel
Title: A Fair Distance: Ball and Chain. Chapter Twelve
Author: Laurie
Type: Slash
Rating: PG-17
Pairing: Jim Ellison/Blair Sandburg
Warnings: none for this chapter. See overall warnings for the story.
Beta’ed by t_verano Thank you so much for everything you've done for me.
Summary for A Fair Distance: A year after Blair left Jim, and Cascade, they meet again in a small Tennessee town where Blair's been arrested and is being held for questioning at the request of the Cascade PD.
A Fair Distance can be found at my LJ here or at 852 Prospect here, if you prefer one text file(but it only has the first arc A Fair Distance: Running on Empty, and not Ball and Chain or at Artifact Storage Room 3 here, to read chapter by chapter, including other stories in the series.
Ball and Chain is the second arc of A Fair Distance.
A Fair Distance: Ball and Chain. Chapter Twelve
“Sandburg, I think you should eat breakfast first before doing all this hoodoo-voodoo stuff.”
I shook my head. Fasting was one of the shaman’s tools, like drumming, and I had the feeling I was going to need all the help I could get.
“I’ll be fine, and I need to do some preparation to get myself ready for entering the spirit plane. You should too, Jim.”
“I already ate my Wheaties. Chief, are you sure this is a good time to try this? I mean, according to you this bad energy has been in me a long time, so what does it matter if we wait to try this healing when things aren’t up in the air so much? Why not wait until after we’ve got Bergman behind bars?”
Jim looked honestly baffled, but I was feeling almost a compulsion to stop any more damage from happening to my lover. My lover… still was a little hard to wrap my head around the fact that Jim was my lover again. I walked over to where Jim was standing by the island kitchen counter and placed my arms around his neck. Gently, I urged him to bend down and I kissed him. Jim was my lover. I could do this now, I could kiss him like this - but just when we were private. Alone. We’d keep things to ourselves - like we did before. Jim hadn’t thought it was anybody’s business but our own that we were sleeping together. That’s what he had told me the first time we hooked up.
I cupped my hand under his jaw, smooth from shaving this morning. “It bothers me - a lot - now that I know the damage you’re carrying. I saw it, Jim. You know, Incacha recognized something in me, something that made him pick me to learn shamanic tradition. He trusted me to help you. I want to heal you, man.” I dropped my hand and waited for Jim to agree to the healing or to put me off. I couldn't begin to do this unless he wanted it.
Jim looked at me intently for a moment, and then gave a sigh of agreement. Bringing up Incacha’s name made me wonder…
“Hey, Jim? I just had an important thought. Man, I can’t believe I never asked this before. Did you participate in any rituals when you were in Peru? Why didn’t Incacha do a healing extraction for you when you lived with the Chopec? Did he ever talk to you about it? Surely such a powerful shaman would see the same thing a beginner like me noticed. Or... did he do a ceremony but it wasn’t successful? Jim, this is important. You should tell me about these things -- ”
Jim brought his finger to my lips to shush me. “Well, maybe I would, Sandburg, if I could get a word in edgewise.”
I waved my hands in a ‘get-along-with-it' gesture and arched my eyebrows at him.
“Yeah, let me think... you know my memories are kind of fuzzy about Peru.” Jim was silent for a few minutes, brow furrowed, eyes shut. Then he spoke tentatively. “He… ah… Yeah. He told me that my… I guess soul… was unbalanced. He asked me if I wanted to be cured. I didn’t really know what he was talking about… I don’t remember having any blue dreams back then. So, I told him thanks, but no thanks. Anyway, Incacha told me it was my choice but that I should observe him helping others for a while. Which I did. Then I was found and taken back home. There was no time for a ceremony even if I had changed my mind.”
“You’ll do it for me?”
He stared at me, then nodded his head, muttering, “I was more accurate than I realized when I called you a witch-doctor jerk, the day the garbage truck almost creamed me.”
“Punk.”
“Hey, who you calling a punk?” Jim said that in his mock-growl that always made me want to grin.
“Me. You called me a punk that day, not a jerk.”
“Oh. I must have been thinking it instead. All right, my little punk, go do ritual preparation stuff. I’m going to pack up the truck.”
“Okay, but then you should do something to put yourself in a quiet frame of mind. Ummm... leave me Dave’s guitar. You’re going to need it.”
“For what? Sandburg, I can’t play the damn thing.”
“I want you to set up a drumming rhythm on the body of it. It will resonate just fine and help both of us go into a trance.” Jim frowned. “Just a light trance, Jim.”
“You sure about this, Chief?”
I gave him my sideways-aura-look, then nodded. “The colors of your aura, in places they’re starting to go dull and grayish again. C’mon. It’s not western medicine, but it’s a valid way of healing. You need to have faith, man. Trust me.”
Jim stepped over to me and hugged me again. “And you feel up to it? You haven’t run a fever since yesterday morning, which is good, but you aren’t too tired, are you?”
“I slept great and I’m not too tired. I’ll be fine. Hmmm. I think I’ll do some yoga, then meditate quietly for a while by myself. The actual ceremony… I think will be done on the patio. Yeah. Earth to ground me, and water - the hot tub - to transmute the energy when it’s removed. Wind as the representative of the third element. We need fire. I’ll see if this place has any candles.” I moved over to the island and started pulling open drawers.
“There’s one of those outdoor portable fireplace heaters out on the patio. You probably missed it yesterday when we were out there. Go take a look and see if that will work. I’ll make a fire in it now if it does.”
I did as Jim suggested and grinned back at him.
“It’s perfect.”
~oo~oo~oo~oo~
I closed my eyes, listening to the harmonic beat of the drumming rhythm that was filling my consciousness. My body felt loose, relaxed from the yoga and meditation I’d done to prepare myself. I sat upon the stone flag floor of the patio, and acknowledged the elements that surrounded me. Water to my left, fire to my right, earth under me, and air above me. I mentally chanted a mantra in time to the deliberate sounds coming from the guitar Jim held across his lap.
‘Fire, water, earth and air.’ Time lost meaning and I fell into the pounding rhythm that echoed my slow heartbeat. I asked for help from the spirit plane, and again visualized myself, naked, walking into a tunnel formed by trees arching over my path. I pictured the trees and air gradually shifting from the normal greenish hue to blueish green to the blue I associated with Jim’s spirit plane. The path went into Blue Jungle Land, and I followed it, sure of where I was heading.
I came to the little pool where Jim’s sentinel spirit had talked to me, and saw the ashes of the campfire we’d made of the Holy Wood. The flower bloom I’d picked to meditate upon had withered. I was alone. The sentinel spirit had said he’d be waiting for me, but he wasn’t there.
I sat down by the cold, dead fire and settled myself in a lotus position. I closed my eyes and thought about the love I had for Jim. I asked for his animal spirit to come to me. I practiced being patient.
Soft growls made me open my eyes. Jim’s panther spirit was facing me. He circled around me, then moved behind me. I could feel his warm breath on the back of my neck. I stayed calm. This was Jim and he wouldn’t hurt me. The big cat started licking my stigmata bite. I bent my head forward a little more and the cat gave a purr of approval. My bite was soothed, the itch I refused to acknowledge satisfied. The long tongue shifted to give me a warm swipe on my ear, then I felt two hands on my shoulders and the sentinel spirit was standing behind me.
I rose and turned to face him. I wanted to bow to him but we were standing too close together for me to manage it, so I nodded my head respectfully.
“Shaman, you have returned.” The words were breathed in my face, warm across my skin.
“I have, and I ask for your aid. Jim has agreed to let me remove the energy that weighs so heavily on him. I have never done this before. Jim has said that he watched Incacha do healings. Will you assist me, spirit of my sentinel?”
The Sentinel spirit kissed me on the forehead. “I will, Little Shaman.”
He indicated the beautiful small pool with his eyes. “Refresh yourself. I will return shortly.”
I did so, and enjoyed the feel of the cool water on my naked skin as I floated on my back, watching the clouds, content for the time being. Relaxing, I pictured what I must do to free Jim from the residual effects of the grief and anger he’d carried for so many years.
Jim’s spirit self returned, set a small bowl down on the ground, and beckoned to me. “Build the fire with me, Munay.” I left the pool, water running down my body in rivulets, and I helped feed small pieces of Holy Wood from a modest stack into the fire that the sentinel spirit started, glad that we had gathered enough on my prior visit. The fragrant smoke drifted through the clearing, and I breathed it in deeply and felt it settling on my skin.
The spirit guide turned me to face him and took my arm and held it out, parallel to the ground. He picked up the bowl and showed me the liquid. “This is Huitol. I will mark you with it.” He took a small, delicate brush from the bowl and began to draw sweeping lines, turning my arm over at times so the pattern - a vine - encircled my arm. He continued the design across and down my back, to the bottom of my spine, back up and down my other arm. It was pretty. It was blue. In the physical world, Huitol could take a couple of weeks to wear off. Idly, I wondered if it would remain on my skin when the healing was completed and I left Blue Jungle Land.
“Has the vine a name?”
“You know it as ayahuasca - the vine of the dead. Incacha used it to journey. I am drawing it for protection when you perform the healing.”
He painted a spiral on each of my cheeks; I recognized the shape of the design from the pressure of the brush. He painted a large spiral on my front, with my belly button serving as the center of the spiral. I loved that he chose spirals to symbolize this healing. Spirals were way cool, and they were found as a pattern throughout the universe, from galaxies to flowers to our own DNA. A symbol of searching, of journeying, but with the center holding fast. Yeah, very cool.
Finally, he put the bowl down. “Call your guide, Little Shaman. It is time.”
I had to slap down a quick irreverent thought of giving a whistle for my wolf spirit guide. This was a sacred ceremony; similar ones were utilized by shamans of many different cultures. I really shouldn’t let my sense of humor loose.
I thought on my own spirit guide, the blue-eyed wolf I had seen merging with Jim’s panther spirit when I died. My first self-aware journey into the spirit plane, but not my first presence there. From what Jim had told me, I’d showed up in his blue dreams in both my wolf and my naked form before Alex killed me. Jim had told me all the details after we were lovers.
I heard a friendly sounding whine and my spirit guide walked out from the jungle to the campfire, brushing against my bare legs. He jumped up and put his paws on my shoulders and looked me in the eyes. He merged with me, becoming transparent as he and I shared the same space. I felt the influx of power within me. I felt strong. Aware. My vision changed as I experienced vertigo. Once again, I could see and feel the spirit world and see and feel the physical world. It was a strange, strange sensation to see my outstretched arm painted with the Huitol designs and at the same time see my sweatshirt-clad arm in the physical world.
“Spirit of my sentinel, I begin,” I said to Jim’s spirit guide. In the physical world I rose from my lotus position and circled around Jim, who was methodically slapping his hand on the guitar’s body. The beat was slow, a delta rhythm enticing the brain to relax. I found myself looking at Jim's aura, at the different chakras that spiraled in his body. I knelt behind him, and slowly touched the crown of his head, his brow, and trailed my fingers down his back to the base of his spine. I saw where the gray, muddied shades were returning to his aura. I saw within him the heavy blackness of negative energy that was attached to his body.
On the spirit plane, I had also risen and gone to Jim’s spirit guide, who calmly stood before me wreathed in the smoke from the Holy Wood.
“Take what does not belong, Little Shaman. But protect yourself as Incacha would do. Do not allow the energy to enter you; place it in the pool, so the element of water may free it.”
I took a deep breath - on both planes of my existence - and on the physical side I pressed my hands hard against Jim’s lower back, while in the spirit world I reached through Jim’s aura and into his body, grasping the blackish-gray weight that was alien to his being. I pulled, hard, willing the energy to separate from Jim’s body and slowly it came away, becoming almost intolerably heavy. I put every ounce of strength I possessed into holding onto it, not letting it flow back to the spirit guide standing before me - or Jim sitting on the patio - so he could be free of it.
The design on my arms and back began to glow as I finished shifting the heavy energy from Jim to me. I could feel Jim’s black pain trying to find space within me to flow to, to fill up vulnerable areas of my body. The area around my heart was exerting a kind of attraction to it - like a magnet to iron - and I remembered the sentinel spirit advising me that my own healing from sexual abuse was not complete. I began to chant what flowed in my head - well, gasp it, really - and a distant part of me felt like rolling my eyes.
‘Stop - In the name of love, before you break my heart.’ I sang the phrase over and over as I staggered to the jungle pool. Back in the mortal world, I was lumbering over to the hot tub, both my biceps knotted as if I was lugging an anvil in my outstretched arms.
The drawing of the ayahuasca vine on my skin started to pulse, and I could feel its effect on the energy I’d taken from Jim. It was forcing the energy to not enter my body, and I was grateful the sentinel spirit had given me this extra protection.
I plunged my arms into the cool waters of the pool - and the steaming water of the hot tub -- and the weight in my arms was gone. The water had neutralized it, had absorbed it safely. I gave a sigh of relief. I was suddenly exhausted, and I wanted to end this dual existence and leave the spirit plane. I stood on wobbly legs and prepared to bow to the sentinel spirit and end this spirit walk. At the same time I was standing by the edge of the hot tub, holding onto it for support, my sleeves dripping wet and starting to turn cold. This double vision would no doubt cause me a headache now that this healing ritual was over.
Then I froze, thinking furiously.
I was an idiot. A class one, absolute moron.
Man, I knew that nature abhorred a vacuum -- I understood that concept -- but I hadn’t applied it to the state of Jim’s being, now that I taken that old pain-energy away. The ritual wasn’t complete yet. I needed to do something to protect the spaces I’d opened in Jim’s spiritual body. If I didn’t fill the opening with something positive, then other, harmful energy might find its way to him. This was Shamanism 101 and I knew this stuff - well, as much as reading up on the subject could teach someone. But I’d forgotten to plan for it. I’d have to fix my mistake, now, before any mishaps happened to Jim.
I centered myself, and walked unsteadily to the sentinel spirit. In the physical world, I stumbled to my knees in front of Jim, who was still slowly beating the guitar, the sound - a combination of a drumming sound with an echo from the guitar strings - reverberating through me. I clumsily slid the guitar away from Jim and put my hands on his shoulders.
Then I pushed with my own life energy. I shook with contractions as I expelled my life-force out of my body, following the spiral path painted on my belly, the healing force exiting through my belly button - the place where I had once been physically connected to my mother. I pushed my life force into Jim. I gave over everything I could, because it had to be enough to keep Jim safe.
I shifted my vision and saw his aura brightening back up into the vivid, healthy rainbow colors that meant he was balanced and whole. I looked carefully - with fading sight- at his inner self, and saw no gaps where he could be damaged by energy that didn’t belong there.
This was Karma. Giving my energy to him felt like the right thing to do. We’d shared our life force before - bonded, in a way - when I’d died. When his animal spirit had jumped into mine, Jim had given me his life force and anchored me to this existence. I had given him mine just now, and it would protect him and complete his healing. Yeah, Karma. But I was tired now… So tired.
I dropped down to the jungle floor and curled up in a fetal ball. I needed to rest… I couldn’t move. My doubled sight was darkening, but I vaguely saw that I had slumped onto the patio near Jim. I was shivering from my wet clothes. I closed my eyes - on the spirit plane - and when I opened them again I no longer had the twin vision.
The Sentinel spirit sat beside me, and stroked my hair.
The last thing I heard was his voice, murmuring sounds that I couldn’t understand.
~oo~oo~oo~oo~
I was flying. That was bad. Bad things happened after I was in the air and moving. Wait… I wasn’t flying… I’d been mixed up. I was being carried. I could feel arms under my legs and around my back. Jake? Nononono - he wasn’t supposed to do that anymore. I started to kick out and move against his chest, trying to make him put me down.
‘Lemme go! Naomi stopped working for you. I don’t have to anymore. Let me go!’ I struggled more while Jake spoke unintelligible words to me. Bastard. He’d gotten me to be ‘nice’ to him lots of times before but… wait… Wasn’t he dead? So who had me now? Bad things happened when I was picked up and carried. I kept on struggling, but I was so weak. I was trying as hard as I could to get free and I could barely wiggle.
Jim! Jim would help me. He’d freed me before when Lash… Wait. Open your damned eyes and use your brain. It was hard. My eyelids were so heavy. Too heavy.
Shit, who had me? Was it Jake or was it the bogey man? Oh, God, was it Lash? Or some other thug? Whoever was carrying me was talking again.
Listen. Listen.
“Chief? God, wake up, Blair. I am never letting you talk me into doing this again. Your ass is going straight to the hospital.”
I tried very, very hard and croaked out, “J’m?”
He stopped. Jim was carrying me. Okay. No bad guys. Just Jim. I relaxed against him. Jim.
“Blair. Can you talk?”
I snuggled against him, rubbing my face on his warm flannel shirt. Jim. ‘No. Too much trouble.’
I wanted to go to sleep. I was really tired, and I hadn’t asked Jim to carry me to bed. That’s kid stuff. But since this was all his idea, he could just keep on going. I’d yell at him tomorrow for picking me up, instead of just waking me wherever I’d fallen asleep. A bed sounded really good right now. He could carry me upstairs to our bed. I liked our bed. I liked the big skylight above it. But he wasn’t moving.
I made an effort. “Gid’y up.”
“What the fu-- Giddy up? Jesus Christ, you’d better be all right.” He started walking again.
When he stopped, I opened my eyes. No bed. I swallowed my disappointment. I was put in the new truck, not Sweetheart -- Sweetheart was taking a vacation in Tennessee -- but our get-away truck. Our cold truck. I started to try and complain about that to Jim, and the events of the morning started coming back to me. Oh, fuck! I’d overextended myself with the extraction and passed out. I’d better talk to Jim and make some sense this time - giddy up? sheesh - or my ass would be sitting in the ER before I could say, ‘Blessed Protector.’ I so regretted ever telling Jim that’s what he was after he had saved me from Lash. Jim played that card whenever he did something that he said was for my own good.
I licked my lips and opened my mouth. “Jim.”
I sounded weak to my own ears, so I tried again, and said a little louder, “Jim.”
He looked over at me from where he was starting the truck. “We’re going to the hospital, so just relax, buddy.”
No! I didn’t want to go there. I shook my head at him, and felt a stabbing pain in my head.
“Yes, we are, Sandburg. You were unconscious. Unconscious and unresponsive. You’re probably borderline hypothermic, with the wet clothes you have on. They need to come off. Damn this lousy heater anyway.”
Jim pulled off my wet shirts, then helped me put on a couple of dry sweatshirts. He placed a blanket over me and buckled me in.
Then he went back to the patio, and I watched him douse the fire and return carrying my guitar. He stowed it in the back of the truck before climbing in the cab and fastening his seat belt.
I tried again to get through to him that I was okay. Tired, sure, but I was all right.
“I’m fine, Jim.” There. That came out much better.
He just looked at me, assessingly.
“I’m not hurt.” I tried a rueful smile at him. He didn’t relax. “There’s no point in going to a hospital; they’ll just say I need to rest. What would we tell them anyway? That I’d made a mistake in calculating the limits of my endurance while I was doing a curing ceremony in the spirit world? Jim, they’d restrain me and call for a psych consultant.”
“Blair, I want to make sure you haven’t made your mono worse or, or damaged something internally.”
“You do it, Jim. You can check me out. I’m just really tired and need to go to sleep. I let my batteries drain down and I need to recharge. I can sleep in the truck. Besides, you don’t want to leave a trail, do you?” I doubted very much anybody was tracking us, but I wasn’t above using Jim’s sense of - well, it’s not paranoia if they are after you - overdeveloped worry to ditch the hospital idea. Besides, I didn’t need another damn bill to pay off.
Jim snorted. That was good. That meant he was starting to drop out of hyper-vigilant mode.
He reached over and felt my forehead. He slid his fingers to the side of my neck and felt my pulse. He slid his hand over my belly and probed, but he didn’t touch anything that felt tender.
“You seem orientated. Count backward by sevens from one hundred.”
I dutifully proved that my mind was still working.
“Jim, I’m okay. I’m sorry I scared you.”
Jim let out a long sigh. “Your vitals are acceptable. You’ve stopped shivering. You’re making as much sense as you ever do. Okay, the hospital is on hold. But, if I can’t wake you up then you’re going to the ER. End of discussion.”
I nodded my agreement and I unbuckled my seat belt and slid over to him, and he helped me fasten the middle belt. My eyes were already shutting. It had been hard to keep myself from falling asleep as we talked. I leaned against Jim and made miniscule wiggles to get comfortable. I breathed deeply of Jim’s scent and felt myself start to drift off.
“Go to sleep, Chief. We can discuss what happened to us during that ceremony later.”
~oo~oo~oo~oo~
I let Sandburg sleep till we got back to Billings from the small cabin we’d rented near Pictograph State Park. Blair would have enjoyed stopping at the park and looking at the prehistoric cave art, and if he hadn’t been so out of it, I had planned to let myself be talked into a little side trip to check out the ancient drawings.
We had to skip it. He was too tired to do anything but sleep. However, he needed to eat, so I was going to go through a drive-thru, if I could get him to wake back up. If I couldn’t then we were headed to the hospital instead, and I wanted to know which direction I was taking before leaving a town where there was a hospital.
He came awake with about as much grace as he usually exhibited, but he did wake up enough to be fed and watered and dosed with meds. He asked for Tylenol, saying he had a headache. No fever. Yet. I fully expected him to be set back after he’d passed me his life force. When he’d recovered some of his strength, I’d tell him how I knew what he’d done. But not now, he’d get too worked up and excited and not rest like he should.
I held him securely as he slept leaning against me, and I’d tucked the blanket around him to make sure he stayed warm. He’d come too close to hypothermia for my peace of mind.
I’d called Findley after we’d eaten and asked him to find us something close to Lolo, Montana. God, the mountain ranges we were driving through were majestic. It was too bad Blair was mostly missing the scenery. Tonight would be our last night on the road. We could make the rest of the drive to Cascade in about eight hours tomorrow. We’d drive today for six or seven hours, then call it a night.
Tomorrow we’d meet up with Simon.
Tomorrow -- I would have to decide to be out with Blair or keep us both in the closet.
Did he want to come out? He might prefer not to, after all.
I’d put off doing what my spirit guide had asked. I hadn’t talked to Blair about what he’d felt before when we were together regarding being in the closet - at the time he’d said he understood and was okay with us being private. Had he been trying to accommodate me, telling me what he thought I wanted to hear? I wouldn’t put it past him to do that. What about now? Did he want me to openly acknowledge he was my lover?
Did I want to tell my family about Blair? What about my friends? Co-workers? The cashier at the grocery store? Nobody or everybody?
I didn’t really give a hoot in hell what casual acquaintances thought or strangers who might see us holding hands or touching each other in a way that couldn't be seen as a straight-guy-hug-your-best-friend-way.
Coming out at work… Hopefully I’d built up enough creditability with the department that I wouldn’t be unduly harassed. Still, it was a strong possibility. There were gay cops across the U.S. who had filed lawsuits for being harassed and not being backed up on the job. I wasn’t afraid to mix it up with any bigoted idiots on the force. It’d be a hassle, sure, but I could handle it.
Friends. Well, if they couldn’t accept us being lovers, then they weren’t really friends, were they?
Family. Blair had the better deal than me. Naomi would be accepting of Blair having a male lover, I was sure of it. Now, having a cop for a lover, well, she probably would have to ‘process’ that for a while. She would come around, though. My family… Rucker, my cousin, would be amused, but he’d be accepting. Steven would be awkward about it at first, but he was basically a tolerant guy and would give Blair a fair chance. It was important to Steven that he and I stay on on good terms, so he'd make an effort to get along with us.
Dad.
Dad would be a problem. He hadn’t ever been coarse about voicing his opinions about homosexuality, but I knew he didn’t approve of the idea. Dad would take some talking to, and if I had told him years ago that I sometimes had relations with men as well as women, he’d have pushed me away. But our separation had changed him. Age had changed him. He really wanted me to be his son, and I thought he would overlook things he found distasteful. Besides, my Blair was a charmer, and if anybody could get my father to relax about his son being lovers with a man, Blair could manage it. All he would need was time to talk with Dad.
What about everybody else that fell between family and strangers? There had to be a sensible way to deal with that. If they ask, then tell? Break the good news to a few friends? Ask them to keep it to themselves or just let the gossip mill run with the news? I didn't know if people who knew us would really care. If it were me, learning about, say, Rafe, being gay, I wouldn’t give a shit about it. And Lord knows, a lot of people had speculated about Blair and me over the years. Maybe people wouldn’t be surprised at all.
What the hell, I'd planned on telling Simon and my family about Blair the first time we were together, after I was sure we were going to make it. I hadn’t shown much faith in Blair’s ability to commit, that’s for sure. It was fear of embarrassing myself with news of our breaking up within weeks of getting together that had made me cautious before. I wasn’t worried about that anymore.
Simon would be okay with knowing, after he got over the fact that I hadn’t told him when Blair and I first got together. He would be pissed at me for not trusting him enough to tell him. He wouldn’t yell at Blair, though. Me, he knew I could take a reaming out as just him venting his frustration. If he exploded at Blair, the kid would look stricken and go mute, after initially trying to explain himself, and Simon would end up feeling like a horse’s hind end for hurting him. Simon had learned that the hard way. The power of the Sandburg eyes - they were great for invoking guilt.
It would be nice to be able to show Blair the kind of affection in public that a man wants to show his mate. Holding his hand on this trip - it had felt right. Blair had been a little awkward about it, which was endearing, but he had let me do it. He was getting better about trusting me - physically and emotionally.
I thought that touching him and holding him, like I was doing now, had helped fill a deep well of loneliness in Blair. I had a strong hunch that Blair’d had some bad experiences in the past, which made it even sweeter that he would relax when I touched him.
He’d come clean about a lot of things since I’d come to Tennessee. I appreciated that he was trying to be more open with me. Hell, he had only kept things from me because he’d been trying to protect me from worrying about him - just like he'd done with his mother. He’d never really had a real relationship before ours, and we’d both made mistakes, but I knew we could learn from them and things would be okay. He still had his secrets, though. Maybe he would someday tell me why he’d developed the dating system that divided casual sex from emotional intimacy. I had promised him I wouldn’t push - I’d keep that promise.
My stomach rumbled, interrupting my thoughts. I was hungry, but I’d been putting off stopping anywhere while Blair was still sleeping off his exhaustion from his efforts on the spirit plane. I did feel a sense of acceptance when I thought about some of the things that had torn me up in the past. My father’s misguided actions when I was a kid and a young man, for instance. Bud’s murder. The deaths of my team in Peru. Losing Danny, who’d been like a little brother. Incacha’s pointless death, far away from his home and people. The ancient hurt I’d felt because of my mother’s abandonment - the feeling that it was my fault she left us - was tempered with the understanding that her decision was not based on what either of her children had done. Intellectually, I had known that for a long time, but now, I felt it was true.
Blair had done this for me. My Little Shaman. My Munay. I was keeping him. And I was keeping him safe.
Blair hadn’t realized when he named me his Blessed Protector that it was a job description as well as a title.
I would be his backup. I wouldn’t stop him from doing the things he felt were his to do, but I was going to make damn sure he would survive doing them. Then I would take him home and make love to him till he knew in every molecule of his body that he was loved.
My lover started stirring next to me and I started whispering endearments to him. I loved to tease him with the cornball names he would object to when he was fully awake, during this time of balancing between consciousness and unconsciousness. He never could quite remember if I’d really called him babe, or short stuff, or any of the other hundred goofy names I had for him.
I felt contented.
I whispered my thanks to him, and felt myself smiling as Blair reached out in his half-asleep stage and gave me a one-armed hug around my chest.
Blair had made his decision to be my partner and my lover.
Life was good.
~oo~oo~oo~oo~
Continued in A Fair Distance. Ball and Chain. Chapter Thirteen.
Fandom: The Sentinel
Title: A Fair Distance: Ball and Chain. Chapter Twelve
Author: Laurie
Type: Slash
Rating: PG-17
Pairing: Jim Ellison/Blair Sandburg
Warnings: none for this chapter. See overall warnings for the story.
Beta’ed by t_verano Thank you so much for everything you've done for me.
Summary for A Fair Distance: A year after Blair left Jim, and Cascade, they meet again in a small Tennessee town where Blair's been arrested and is being held for questioning at the request of the Cascade PD.
A Fair Distance can be found at my LJ here or at 852 Prospect here, if you prefer one text file(but it only has the first arc A Fair Distance: Running on Empty, and not Ball and Chain or at Artifact Storage Room 3 here, to read chapter by chapter, including other stories in the series.
Ball and Chain is the second arc of A Fair Distance.
A Fair Distance: Ball and Chain. Chapter Twelve
“Sandburg, I think you should eat breakfast first before doing all this hoodoo-voodoo stuff.”
I shook my head. Fasting was one of the shaman’s tools, like drumming, and I had the feeling I was going to need all the help I could get.
“I’ll be fine, and I need to do some preparation to get myself ready for entering the spirit plane. You should too, Jim.”
“I already ate my Wheaties. Chief, are you sure this is a good time to try this? I mean, according to you this bad energy has been in me a long time, so what does it matter if we wait to try this healing when things aren’t up in the air so much? Why not wait until after we’ve got Bergman behind bars?”
Jim looked honestly baffled, but I was feeling almost a compulsion to stop any more damage from happening to my lover. My lover… still was a little hard to wrap my head around the fact that Jim was my lover again. I walked over to where Jim was standing by the island kitchen counter and placed my arms around his neck. Gently, I urged him to bend down and I kissed him. Jim was my lover. I could do this now, I could kiss him like this - but just when we were private. Alone. We’d keep things to ourselves - like we did before. Jim hadn’t thought it was anybody’s business but our own that we were sleeping together. That’s what he had told me the first time we hooked up.
I cupped my hand under his jaw, smooth from shaving this morning. “It bothers me - a lot - now that I know the damage you’re carrying. I saw it, Jim. You know, Incacha recognized something in me, something that made him pick me to learn shamanic tradition. He trusted me to help you. I want to heal you, man.” I dropped my hand and waited for Jim to agree to the healing or to put me off. I couldn't begin to do this unless he wanted it.
Jim looked at me intently for a moment, and then gave a sigh of agreement. Bringing up Incacha’s name made me wonder…
“Hey, Jim? I just had an important thought. Man, I can’t believe I never asked this before. Did you participate in any rituals when you were in Peru? Why didn’t Incacha do a healing extraction for you when you lived with the Chopec? Did he ever talk to you about it? Surely such a powerful shaman would see the same thing a beginner like me noticed. Or... did he do a ceremony but it wasn’t successful? Jim, this is important. You should tell me about these things -- ”
Jim brought his finger to my lips to shush me. “Well, maybe I would, Sandburg, if I could get a word in edgewise.”
I waved my hands in a ‘get-along-with-it' gesture and arched my eyebrows at him.
“Yeah, let me think... you know my memories are kind of fuzzy about Peru.” Jim was silent for a few minutes, brow furrowed, eyes shut. Then he spoke tentatively. “He… ah… Yeah. He told me that my… I guess soul… was unbalanced. He asked me if I wanted to be cured. I didn’t really know what he was talking about… I don’t remember having any blue dreams back then. So, I told him thanks, but no thanks. Anyway, Incacha told me it was my choice but that I should observe him helping others for a while. Which I did. Then I was found and taken back home. There was no time for a ceremony even if I had changed my mind.”
“You’ll do it for me?”
He stared at me, then nodded his head, muttering, “I was more accurate than I realized when I called you a witch-doctor jerk, the day the garbage truck almost creamed me.”
“Punk.”
“Hey, who you calling a punk?” Jim said that in his mock-growl that always made me want to grin.
“Me. You called me a punk that day, not a jerk.”
“Oh. I must have been thinking it instead. All right, my little punk, go do ritual preparation stuff. I’m going to pack up the truck.”
“Okay, but then you should do something to put yourself in a quiet frame of mind. Ummm... leave me Dave’s guitar. You’re going to need it.”
“For what? Sandburg, I can’t play the damn thing.”
“I want you to set up a drumming rhythm on the body of it. It will resonate just fine and help both of us go into a trance.” Jim frowned. “Just a light trance, Jim.”
“You sure about this, Chief?”
I gave him my sideways-aura-look, then nodded. “The colors of your aura, in places they’re starting to go dull and grayish again. C’mon. It’s not western medicine, but it’s a valid way of healing. You need to have faith, man. Trust me.”
Jim stepped over to me and hugged me again. “And you feel up to it? You haven’t run a fever since yesterday morning, which is good, but you aren’t too tired, are you?”
“I slept great and I’m not too tired. I’ll be fine. Hmmm. I think I’ll do some yoga, then meditate quietly for a while by myself. The actual ceremony… I think will be done on the patio. Yeah. Earth to ground me, and water - the hot tub - to transmute the energy when it’s removed. Wind as the representative of the third element. We need fire. I’ll see if this place has any candles.” I moved over to the island and started pulling open drawers.
“There’s one of those outdoor portable fireplace heaters out on the patio. You probably missed it yesterday when we were out there. Go take a look and see if that will work. I’ll make a fire in it now if it does.”
I did as Jim suggested and grinned back at him.
“It’s perfect.”
~oo~oo~oo~oo~
I closed my eyes, listening to the harmonic beat of the drumming rhythm that was filling my consciousness. My body felt loose, relaxed from the yoga and meditation I’d done to prepare myself. I sat upon the stone flag floor of the patio, and acknowledged the elements that surrounded me. Water to my left, fire to my right, earth under me, and air above me. I mentally chanted a mantra in time to the deliberate sounds coming from the guitar Jim held across his lap.
‘Fire, water, earth and air.’ Time lost meaning and I fell into the pounding rhythm that echoed my slow heartbeat. I asked for help from the spirit plane, and again visualized myself, naked, walking into a tunnel formed by trees arching over my path. I pictured the trees and air gradually shifting from the normal greenish hue to blueish green to the blue I associated with Jim’s spirit plane. The path went into Blue Jungle Land, and I followed it, sure of where I was heading.
I came to the little pool where Jim’s sentinel spirit had talked to me, and saw the ashes of the campfire we’d made of the Holy Wood. The flower bloom I’d picked to meditate upon had withered. I was alone. The sentinel spirit had said he’d be waiting for me, but he wasn’t there.
I sat down by the cold, dead fire and settled myself in a lotus position. I closed my eyes and thought about the love I had for Jim. I asked for his animal spirit to come to me. I practiced being patient.
Soft growls made me open my eyes. Jim’s panther spirit was facing me. He circled around me, then moved behind me. I could feel his warm breath on the back of my neck. I stayed calm. This was Jim and he wouldn’t hurt me. The big cat started licking my stigmata bite. I bent my head forward a little more and the cat gave a purr of approval. My bite was soothed, the itch I refused to acknowledge satisfied. The long tongue shifted to give me a warm swipe on my ear, then I felt two hands on my shoulders and the sentinel spirit was standing behind me.
I rose and turned to face him. I wanted to bow to him but we were standing too close together for me to manage it, so I nodded my head respectfully.
“Shaman, you have returned.” The words were breathed in my face, warm across my skin.
“I have, and I ask for your aid. Jim has agreed to let me remove the energy that weighs so heavily on him. I have never done this before. Jim has said that he watched Incacha do healings. Will you assist me, spirit of my sentinel?”
The Sentinel spirit kissed me on the forehead. “I will, Little Shaman.”
He indicated the beautiful small pool with his eyes. “Refresh yourself. I will return shortly.”
I did so, and enjoyed the feel of the cool water on my naked skin as I floated on my back, watching the clouds, content for the time being. Relaxing, I pictured what I must do to free Jim from the residual effects of the grief and anger he’d carried for so many years.
Jim’s spirit self returned, set a small bowl down on the ground, and beckoned to me. “Build the fire with me, Munay.” I left the pool, water running down my body in rivulets, and I helped feed small pieces of Holy Wood from a modest stack into the fire that the sentinel spirit started, glad that we had gathered enough on my prior visit. The fragrant smoke drifted through the clearing, and I breathed it in deeply and felt it settling on my skin.
The spirit guide turned me to face him and took my arm and held it out, parallel to the ground. He picked up the bowl and showed me the liquid. “This is Huitol. I will mark you with it.” He took a small, delicate brush from the bowl and began to draw sweeping lines, turning my arm over at times so the pattern - a vine - encircled my arm. He continued the design across and down my back, to the bottom of my spine, back up and down my other arm. It was pretty. It was blue. In the physical world, Huitol could take a couple of weeks to wear off. Idly, I wondered if it would remain on my skin when the healing was completed and I left Blue Jungle Land.
“Has the vine a name?”
“You know it as ayahuasca - the vine of the dead. Incacha used it to journey. I am drawing it for protection when you perform the healing.”
He painted a spiral on each of my cheeks; I recognized the shape of the design from the pressure of the brush. He painted a large spiral on my front, with my belly button serving as the center of the spiral. I loved that he chose spirals to symbolize this healing. Spirals were way cool, and they were found as a pattern throughout the universe, from galaxies to flowers to our own DNA. A symbol of searching, of journeying, but with the center holding fast. Yeah, very cool.
Finally, he put the bowl down. “Call your guide, Little Shaman. It is time.”
I had to slap down a quick irreverent thought of giving a whistle for my wolf spirit guide. This was a sacred ceremony; similar ones were utilized by shamans of many different cultures. I really shouldn’t let my sense of humor loose.
I thought on my own spirit guide, the blue-eyed wolf I had seen merging with Jim’s panther spirit when I died. My first self-aware journey into the spirit plane, but not my first presence there. From what Jim had told me, I’d showed up in his blue dreams in both my wolf and my naked form before Alex killed me. Jim had told me all the details after we were lovers.
I heard a friendly sounding whine and my spirit guide walked out from the jungle to the campfire, brushing against my bare legs. He jumped up and put his paws on my shoulders and looked me in the eyes. He merged with me, becoming transparent as he and I shared the same space. I felt the influx of power within me. I felt strong. Aware. My vision changed as I experienced vertigo. Once again, I could see and feel the spirit world and see and feel the physical world. It was a strange, strange sensation to see my outstretched arm painted with the Huitol designs and at the same time see my sweatshirt-clad arm in the physical world.
“Spirit of my sentinel, I begin,” I said to Jim’s spirit guide. In the physical world I rose from my lotus position and circled around Jim, who was methodically slapping his hand on the guitar’s body. The beat was slow, a delta rhythm enticing the brain to relax. I found myself looking at Jim's aura, at the different chakras that spiraled in his body. I knelt behind him, and slowly touched the crown of his head, his brow, and trailed my fingers down his back to the base of his spine. I saw where the gray, muddied shades were returning to his aura. I saw within him the heavy blackness of negative energy that was attached to his body.
On the spirit plane, I had also risen and gone to Jim’s spirit guide, who calmly stood before me wreathed in the smoke from the Holy Wood.
“Take what does not belong, Little Shaman. But protect yourself as Incacha would do. Do not allow the energy to enter you; place it in the pool, so the element of water may free it.”
I took a deep breath - on both planes of my existence - and on the physical side I pressed my hands hard against Jim’s lower back, while in the spirit world I reached through Jim’s aura and into his body, grasping the blackish-gray weight that was alien to his being. I pulled, hard, willing the energy to separate from Jim’s body and slowly it came away, becoming almost intolerably heavy. I put every ounce of strength I possessed into holding onto it, not letting it flow back to the spirit guide standing before me - or Jim sitting on the patio - so he could be free of it.
The design on my arms and back began to glow as I finished shifting the heavy energy from Jim to me. I could feel Jim’s black pain trying to find space within me to flow to, to fill up vulnerable areas of my body. The area around my heart was exerting a kind of attraction to it - like a magnet to iron - and I remembered the sentinel spirit advising me that my own healing from sexual abuse was not complete. I began to chant what flowed in my head - well, gasp it, really - and a distant part of me felt like rolling my eyes.
‘Stop - In the name of love, before you break my heart.’ I sang the phrase over and over as I staggered to the jungle pool. Back in the mortal world, I was lumbering over to the hot tub, both my biceps knotted as if I was lugging an anvil in my outstretched arms.
The drawing of the ayahuasca vine on my skin started to pulse, and I could feel its effect on the energy I’d taken from Jim. It was forcing the energy to not enter my body, and I was grateful the sentinel spirit had given me this extra protection.
I plunged my arms into the cool waters of the pool - and the steaming water of the hot tub -- and the weight in my arms was gone. The water had neutralized it, had absorbed it safely. I gave a sigh of relief. I was suddenly exhausted, and I wanted to end this dual existence and leave the spirit plane. I stood on wobbly legs and prepared to bow to the sentinel spirit and end this spirit walk. At the same time I was standing by the edge of the hot tub, holding onto it for support, my sleeves dripping wet and starting to turn cold. This double vision would no doubt cause me a headache now that this healing ritual was over.
Then I froze, thinking furiously.
I was an idiot. A class one, absolute moron.
Man, I knew that nature abhorred a vacuum -- I understood that concept -- but I hadn’t applied it to the state of Jim’s being, now that I taken that old pain-energy away. The ritual wasn’t complete yet. I needed to do something to protect the spaces I’d opened in Jim’s spiritual body. If I didn’t fill the opening with something positive, then other, harmful energy might find its way to him. This was Shamanism 101 and I knew this stuff - well, as much as reading up on the subject could teach someone. But I’d forgotten to plan for it. I’d have to fix my mistake, now, before any mishaps happened to Jim.
I centered myself, and walked unsteadily to the sentinel spirit. In the physical world, I stumbled to my knees in front of Jim, who was still slowly beating the guitar, the sound - a combination of a drumming sound with an echo from the guitar strings - reverberating through me. I clumsily slid the guitar away from Jim and put my hands on his shoulders.
Then I pushed with my own life energy. I shook with contractions as I expelled my life-force out of my body, following the spiral path painted on my belly, the healing force exiting through my belly button - the place where I had once been physically connected to my mother. I pushed my life force into Jim. I gave over everything I could, because it had to be enough to keep Jim safe.
I shifted my vision and saw his aura brightening back up into the vivid, healthy rainbow colors that meant he was balanced and whole. I looked carefully - with fading sight- at his inner self, and saw no gaps where he could be damaged by energy that didn’t belong there.
This was Karma. Giving my energy to him felt like the right thing to do. We’d shared our life force before - bonded, in a way - when I’d died. When his animal spirit had jumped into mine, Jim had given me his life force and anchored me to this existence. I had given him mine just now, and it would protect him and complete his healing. Yeah, Karma. But I was tired now… So tired.
I dropped down to the jungle floor and curled up in a fetal ball. I needed to rest… I couldn’t move. My doubled sight was darkening, but I vaguely saw that I had slumped onto the patio near Jim. I was shivering from my wet clothes. I closed my eyes - on the spirit plane - and when I opened them again I no longer had the twin vision.
The Sentinel spirit sat beside me, and stroked my hair.
The last thing I heard was his voice, murmuring sounds that I couldn’t understand.
~oo~oo~oo~oo~
I was flying. That was bad. Bad things happened after I was in the air and moving. Wait… I wasn’t flying… I’d been mixed up. I was being carried. I could feel arms under my legs and around my back. Jake? Nononono - he wasn’t supposed to do that anymore. I started to kick out and move against his chest, trying to make him put me down.
‘Lemme go! Naomi stopped working for you. I don’t have to anymore. Let me go!’ I struggled more while Jake spoke unintelligible words to me. Bastard. He’d gotten me to be ‘nice’ to him lots of times before but… wait… Wasn’t he dead? So who had me now? Bad things happened when I was picked up and carried. I kept on struggling, but I was so weak. I was trying as hard as I could to get free and I could barely wiggle.
Jim! Jim would help me. He’d freed me before when Lash… Wait. Open your damned eyes and use your brain. It was hard. My eyelids were so heavy. Too heavy.
Shit, who had me? Was it Jake or was it the bogey man? Oh, God, was it Lash? Or some other thug? Whoever was carrying me was talking again.
Listen. Listen.
“Chief? God, wake up, Blair. I am never letting you talk me into doing this again. Your ass is going straight to the hospital.”
I tried very, very hard and croaked out, “J’m?”
He stopped. Jim was carrying me. Okay. No bad guys. Just Jim. I relaxed against him. Jim.
“Blair. Can you talk?”
I snuggled against him, rubbing my face on his warm flannel shirt. Jim. ‘No. Too much trouble.’
I wanted to go to sleep. I was really tired, and I hadn’t asked Jim to carry me to bed. That’s kid stuff. But since this was all his idea, he could just keep on going. I’d yell at him tomorrow for picking me up, instead of just waking me wherever I’d fallen asleep. A bed sounded really good right now. He could carry me upstairs to our bed. I liked our bed. I liked the big skylight above it. But he wasn’t moving.
I made an effort. “Gid’y up.”
“What the fu-- Giddy up? Jesus Christ, you’d better be all right.” He started walking again.
When he stopped, I opened my eyes. No bed. I swallowed my disappointment. I was put in the new truck, not Sweetheart -- Sweetheart was taking a vacation in Tennessee -- but our get-away truck. Our cold truck. I started to try and complain about that to Jim, and the events of the morning started coming back to me. Oh, fuck! I’d overextended myself with the extraction and passed out. I’d better talk to Jim and make some sense this time - giddy up? sheesh - or my ass would be sitting in the ER before I could say, ‘Blessed Protector.’ I so regretted ever telling Jim that’s what he was after he had saved me from Lash. Jim played that card whenever he did something that he said was for my own good.
I licked my lips and opened my mouth. “Jim.”
I sounded weak to my own ears, so I tried again, and said a little louder, “Jim.”
He looked over at me from where he was starting the truck. “We’re going to the hospital, so just relax, buddy.”
No! I didn’t want to go there. I shook my head at him, and felt a stabbing pain in my head.
“Yes, we are, Sandburg. You were unconscious. Unconscious and unresponsive. You’re probably borderline hypothermic, with the wet clothes you have on. They need to come off. Damn this lousy heater anyway.”
Jim pulled off my wet shirts, then helped me put on a couple of dry sweatshirts. He placed a blanket over me and buckled me in.
Then he went back to the patio, and I watched him douse the fire and return carrying my guitar. He stowed it in the back of the truck before climbing in the cab and fastening his seat belt.
I tried again to get through to him that I was okay. Tired, sure, but I was all right.
“I’m fine, Jim.” There. That came out much better.
He just looked at me, assessingly.
“I’m not hurt.” I tried a rueful smile at him. He didn’t relax. “There’s no point in going to a hospital; they’ll just say I need to rest. What would we tell them anyway? That I’d made a mistake in calculating the limits of my endurance while I was doing a curing ceremony in the spirit world? Jim, they’d restrain me and call for a psych consultant.”
“Blair, I want to make sure you haven’t made your mono worse or, or damaged something internally.”
“You do it, Jim. You can check me out. I’m just really tired and need to go to sleep. I let my batteries drain down and I need to recharge. I can sleep in the truck. Besides, you don’t want to leave a trail, do you?” I doubted very much anybody was tracking us, but I wasn’t above using Jim’s sense of - well, it’s not paranoia if they are after you - overdeveloped worry to ditch the hospital idea. Besides, I didn’t need another damn bill to pay off.
Jim snorted. That was good. That meant he was starting to drop out of hyper-vigilant mode.
He reached over and felt my forehead. He slid his fingers to the side of my neck and felt my pulse. He slid his hand over my belly and probed, but he didn’t touch anything that felt tender.
“You seem orientated. Count backward by sevens from one hundred.”
I dutifully proved that my mind was still working.
“Jim, I’m okay. I’m sorry I scared you.”
Jim let out a long sigh. “Your vitals are acceptable. You’ve stopped shivering. You’re making as much sense as you ever do. Okay, the hospital is on hold. But, if I can’t wake you up then you’re going to the ER. End of discussion.”
I nodded my agreement and I unbuckled my seat belt and slid over to him, and he helped me fasten the middle belt. My eyes were already shutting. It had been hard to keep myself from falling asleep as we talked. I leaned against Jim and made miniscule wiggles to get comfortable. I breathed deeply of Jim’s scent and felt myself start to drift off.
“Go to sleep, Chief. We can discuss what happened to us during that ceremony later.”
~oo~oo~oo~oo~
I let Sandburg sleep till we got back to Billings from the small cabin we’d rented near Pictograph State Park. Blair would have enjoyed stopping at the park and looking at the prehistoric cave art, and if he hadn’t been so out of it, I had planned to let myself be talked into a little side trip to check out the ancient drawings.
We had to skip it. He was too tired to do anything but sleep. However, he needed to eat, so I was going to go through a drive-thru, if I could get him to wake back up. If I couldn’t then we were headed to the hospital instead, and I wanted to know which direction I was taking before leaving a town where there was a hospital.
He came awake with about as much grace as he usually exhibited, but he did wake up enough to be fed and watered and dosed with meds. He asked for Tylenol, saying he had a headache. No fever. Yet. I fully expected him to be set back after he’d passed me his life force. When he’d recovered some of his strength, I’d tell him how I knew what he’d done. But not now, he’d get too worked up and excited and not rest like he should.
I held him securely as he slept leaning against me, and I’d tucked the blanket around him to make sure he stayed warm. He’d come too close to hypothermia for my peace of mind.
I’d called Findley after we’d eaten and asked him to find us something close to Lolo, Montana. God, the mountain ranges we were driving through were majestic. It was too bad Blair was mostly missing the scenery. Tonight would be our last night on the road. We could make the rest of the drive to Cascade in about eight hours tomorrow. We’d drive today for six or seven hours, then call it a night.
Tomorrow we’d meet up with Simon.
Tomorrow -- I would have to decide to be out with Blair or keep us both in the closet.
Did he want to come out? He might prefer not to, after all.
I’d put off doing what my spirit guide had asked. I hadn’t talked to Blair about what he’d felt before when we were together regarding being in the closet - at the time he’d said he understood and was okay with us being private. Had he been trying to accommodate me, telling me what he thought I wanted to hear? I wouldn’t put it past him to do that. What about now? Did he want me to openly acknowledge he was my lover?
Did I want to tell my family about Blair? What about my friends? Co-workers? The cashier at the grocery store? Nobody or everybody?
I didn’t really give a hoot in hell what casual acquaintances thought or strangers who might see us holding hands or touching each other in a way that couldn't be seen as a straight-guy-hug-your-best-friend-way.
Coming out at work… Hopefully I’d built up enough creditability with the department that I wouldn’t be unduly harassed. Still, it was a strong possibility. There were gay cops across the U.S. who had filed lawsuits for being harassed and not being backed up on the job. I wasn’t afraid to mix it up with any bigoted idiots on the force. It’d be a hassle, sure, but I could handle it.
Friends. Well, if they couldn’t accept us being lovers, then they weren’t really friends, were they?
Family. Blair had the better deal than me. Naomi would be accepting of Blair having a male lover, I was sure of it. Now, having a cop for a lover, well, she probably would have to ‘process’ that for a while. She would come around, though. My family… Rucker, my cousin, would be amused, but he’d be accepting. Steven would be awkward about it at first, but he was basically a tolerant guy and would give Blair a fair chance. It was important to Steven that he and I stay on on good terms, so he'd make an effort to get along with us.
Dad.
Dad would be a problem. He hadn’t ever been coarse about voicing his opinions about homosexuality, but I knew he didn’t approve of the idea. Dad would take some talking to, and if I had told him years ago that I sometimes had relations with men as well as women, he’d have pushed me away. But our separation had changed him. Age had changed him. He really wanted me to be his son, and I thought he would overlook things he found distasteful. Besides, my Blair was a charmer, and if anybody could get my father to relax about his son being lovers with a man, Blair could manage it. All he would need was time to talk with Dad.
What about everybody else that fell between family and strangers? There had to be a sensible way to deal with that. If they ask, then tell? Break the good news to a few friends? Ask them to keep it to themselves or just let the gossip mill run with the news? I didn't know if people who knew us would really care. If it were me, learning about, say, Rafe, being gay, I wouldn’t give a shit about it. And Lord knows, a lot of people had speculated about Blair and me over the years. Maybe people wouldn’t be surprised at all.
What the hell, I'd planned on telling Simon and my family about Blair the first time we were together, after I was sure we were going to make it. I hadn’t shown much faith in Blair’s ability to commit, that’s for sure. It was fear of embarrassing myself with news of our breaking up within weeks of getting together that had made me cautious before. I wasn’t worried about that anymore.
Simon would be okay with knowing, after he got over the fact that I hadn’t told him when Blair and I first got together. He would be pissed at me for not trusting him enough to tell him. He wouldn’t yell at Blair, though. Me, he knew I could take a reaming out as just him venting his frustration. If he exploded at Blair, the kid would look stricken and go mute, after initially trying to explain himself, and Simon would end up feeling like a horse’s hind end for hurting him. Simon had learned that the hard way. The power of the Sandburg eyes - they were great for invoking guilt.
It would be nice to be able to show Blair the kind of affection in public that a man wants to show his mate. Holding his hand on this trip - it had felt right. Blair had been a little awkward about it, which was endearing, but he had let me do it. He was getting better about trusting me - physically and emotionally.
I thought that touching him and holding him, like I was doing now, had helped fill a deep well of loneliness in Blair. I had a strong hunch that Blair’d had some bad experiences in the past, which made it even sweeter that he would relax when I touched him.
He’d come clean about a lot of things since I’d come to Tennessee. I appreciated that he was trying to be more open with me. Hell, he had only kept things from me because he’d been trying to protect me from worrying about him - just like he'd done with his mother. He’d never really had a real relationship before ours, and we’d both made mistakes, but I knew we could learn from them and things would be okay. He still had his secrets, though. Maybe he would someday tell me why he’d developed the dating system that divided casual sex from emotional intimacy. I had promised him I wouldn’t push - I’d keep that promise.
My stomach rumbled, interrupting my thoughts. I was hungry, but I’d been putting off stopping anywhere while Blair was still sleeping off his exhaustion from his efforts on the spirit plane. I did feel a sense of acceptance when I thought about some of the things that had torn me up in the past. My father’s misguided actions when I was a kid and a young man, for instance. Bud’s murder. The deaths of my team in Peru. Losing Danny, who’d been like a little brother. Incacha’s pointless death, far away from his home and people. The ancient hurt I’d felt because of my mother’s abandonment - the feeling that it was my fault she left us - was tempered with the understanding that her decision was not based on what either of her children had done. Intellectually, I had known that for a long time, but now, I felt it was true.
Blair had done this for me. My Little Shaman. My Munay. I was keeping him. And I was keeping him safe.
Blair hadn’t realized when he named me his Blessed Protector that it was a job description as well as a title.
I would be his backup. I wouldn’t stop him from doing the things he felt were his to do, but I was going to make damn sure he would survive doing them. Then I would take him home and make love to him till he knew in every molecule of his body that he was loved.
My lover started stirring next to me and I started whispering endearments to him. I loved to tease him with the cornball names he would object to when he was fully awake, during this time of balancing between consciousness and unconsciousness. He never could quite remember if I’d really called him babe, or short stuff, or any of the other hundred goofy names I had for him.
I felt contented.
I whispered my thanks to him, and felt myself smiling as Blair reached out in his half-asleep stage and gave me a one-armed hug around my chest.
Blair had made his decision to be my partner and my lover.
Life was good.
~oo~oo~oo~oo~
Continued in A Fair Distance. Ball and Chain. Chapter Thirteen.