A Fair Distance: Ball and Chain. Chapter 13
Challenge 85 Secret (Sentinel Thursday)
Title: A Fair Distance: Ball and Chain. Chapter Thirteen
Author: Laurie
Type: Slash
Rating: PG-17
Warnings: Past Child Abuse
Beta’ed by the lovely t_verano, who has been my rock ever since I started this story.
Summary for A Fair Distance: A year after Blair left Jim, and Cascade, they meet again in a small Tennessee town. 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 Artifact Storage Room 3 here, to read chapter by chapter, including other stories in the series.
This chapter concludes Ball and Chain, the second arc of A Fair Distance. The final arc,Comes a Time is mostly completed in rough draft and chapters will be posted as they are beta'ed.
A Fair Distance: Ball and Chain. Chapter Thirteen
I woke up and was a little surprised that we'd been driving for hours. Jim said he was hungry, so we pulled off Interstate 90 for a late lunch at Ryan’s Steakhouse. I was just going to order some clam chowder, but Jim insisted that I eat a steak and baked potato. I protested that I’d had the same thing the night before, but he told me that after the exertion I’d put into helping him, I needed more protein and carbs. It was sweet, in an annoying way, that he was giving me nutritional advice, and I ate my he-man meal to make him feel better. I was feeling a little guilty that I’d given him a scare this morning by passing out.
I’d really missed being able to cook and eat good food this past year, except for the times I’d stayed with organic farmers or friends who liked things like lentil soup. I’d found out that scrounging nutritional food that was affordable while I was on the road wasn’t easy to do. A lot of times I wouldn’t eat the available crap - hot dogs at gas stations or white-bread sandwiches that had been sitting in a cooler for who knows how many days -- and I supposed that had contributed to me getting skinny. Well, that and being broke most of the time. Jim didn’t like it that I’d lost weight. He kept giving me bananas to eat.
I was full when we hit the road again, and my intentions of staying awake and keeping Jim company fell by the wayside when I took another unscheduled nap. When I woke up this time, Jim said we were close to our stopping point. I watched the gorgeous Montana scenery roll by and felt… happy? Yeah. I felt happy. Wow. I looked up to study Jim’s face and he seemed serene.
“Jim. How are you doing, man?”
“I’m good, Chief. Things are finally straightening out, and I’m looking forward to going home. With you, buddy; the loft’s been way too boring without your jungle music and stuff scattered around for me to trip over. Where do we send for your belongings, anyway?”
I eyed him. I thought he knew…
“Jim, I’ve got everything important to me right here.”
“That’s really nice of you to say that, Blair, but I meant your stuff. Do you have it stashed at a friend’s house or in a storage unit somewhere?”
I patted Jim’s thigh. “No, Jim. I wasn’t quoting a Hallmark card, although yeah, absolutely, I have everything I need sitting right next to me. I don’t have any other belongings. I sold them, gave them away, or they were stolen from me. There wasn’t any sense in accumulating things when I traveled so much. What’s in my backpack is it, except for Dave’s guitar. Mine was stolen, and Naomi’s going to be sad when I tell her about it. Jimi’s ax. It was a real rite of passage when she gave it to me when I turned twelve. She made a little speech about the end of childhood and entering adulthood. My guitar and when I was given my Bar Mitzvah knife later, symbolized that change of status. Hey, I guess I can have my knife back now, right?”
“You don’t have anything but your backpack? What about your photos, your books, your masks and --”
“Gone. Don’t worry about it, Jim. I mean that.”
“Blair - anything you need, you just tell me. Anything at all.”
Jim looked troubled. Shit. I’d better clear this up pronto. I nudged him with my elbow. Right in the ribs.
“Look, Jim. I don’t want you trying to replace stuff I used to have. I’ll do that when I’m working again. I’m your partner; you aren’t going to be my sugar daddy. And I like to think that being free of possessions is a liberating Zen life lesson. I’m sure there’s a quote out there that would sum it up.”
“Christ, this is my fault. If I hadn’t run you off --”
“Cut it out right this minute, Ellison! It is not your fault. It’s nobody’s fault, except maybe a couple of thieves'. Do I need to kick your ass again, because I will if you don’t stop making with the mea culpa noises. You got that?!”
Jim fell silent and I sighed.
“Let it go. it’s not the first or even the second time I’ve had to pretty much start over. Most of the stuff in the warehouse fire ended up unusable, and there were times Naomi and I had to cut our losses and leave. I’m used to it.”
Jim glanced down at me, concern plain on his face, and I snuggled in tighter to his side. The big galoot.
“Look, let's compromise. I’ll replace my stuff when I can afford it and if I think it's necessary. You can be in charge of making sure I don’t starve. Okay, Jim?”
“Add in that I’m allowed to indulge in buying you presents and you’ve got a deal. I believe you said it yourself. Christmas is coming.”
“I’m Jewish.”
“That never stopped you from enjoying Christmas. And I’m fine with giving you Hanukah gifts, too. Uh... you don’t have to spend money on me, Chief. Make me up some of those coupons like you did the first year you lived with me. Only this time, besides ‘will cook on your turn for dinner for a week’ you could put down something like ‘will give morning blow-jobs for a week.’ You’re creative; surprise me.”
I snorted, but I liked the idea. I was pleased that Jim was shifting back to the relaxed state he’d been in when I woke up from my last nap. I wondered how long it would be before naps wouldn’t be part of the daily routine. At least I hadn’t run a fever today.
“If you want your knife back you can slide it out of my pocket. Just don’t make me wreck this truck.”
“Don’t tell me which pocket it’s in! Searching should be half the fun.” I glanced at Jim, feeling mischievous. “Man, sometimes I fantasize Brackett doesn't give you a choice about how to pull the wire out of your pants. Instead of letting you pull it out, he makes me put my hand down the front of your boxers and although I know the wire is there I can’t seem to find it and my hand keeps nudging your dick, which is getting harder the more I’m rooting around down your pants, and… well, you can guess how it ends.”
“There’s no way I would let myself put on a show for that prick Brackett. I’d think about Mrs. Murphy -- the oldest, meanest, ugliest teacher I ever had -- and imagine her hands fondling me instead of yours, to keep from throwing a boner for him to smirk about.” Jim looked disgruntled. Well, I couldn’t leave him like that.
“Jim, Jim. Fantasy, my man. But let's change it to your hands are handcuffed behind your back and he leaves the room, tells me I’ve got an hour to remove the wire -“
“And have the surveillance team listen to an hour’s worth of you sticking your hands down my pants and jerking me off. I seriously doubt that you could keep quiet, Chief, and I probably would at least make some sounds. Then we’d have to deal with the fallout of everybody at the P.D. knowing we had sex. Crap, it was hard enough to shut them up with just Brackett’s comment about you and --”
I interrupted him. “What? Wait a minute. In real life, are you telling me you were given shit about Brackett asking you if you wanted me to remove the wire? Jim, you never told me anything about that!”
“I took care of it.”
Yeah, I’ll bet. The Ellison intimidation technique was scarily effective.
“That must have really bothered you, your colleagues thinking we were together. Even if we weren’t at the time, Brackett must have picked up a vibe from me to make that assumption. Sorry, Jim.”
Jim shook his head. “You’ve got nothing to be sorry about. But what if some of the guys at the P.D. did know we were lovers - what would you think about that?”
What would I think about that? Why was Jim even asking me? It wasn’t my decision. I really had nothing to lose, except possibly some friendships that I’d drifted away from anyway.
“Does anybody know? Did you spill the beans while I was gone?”
“No. But my spirit guide said to find out what you really thought back then about the secrecy we kept. He seems to think you probably went along with what I wanted, without telling me how you really felt. Tomorrow we’ll be in Cascade. We need a game plan about coming out or not, and this time tell me what you really want, Blair.”
Well, shit. The teasing game I’d planned on playing by 'searching’ for my knife in Jim’s jean pockets just gotten dropped like a hot potato. I straightened up a little and wiped both of my hands on my thighs.
“Jesus, Jim. I… I’m not sure what would be the right thing, except it’s really you who would be most affected and I’ll go along with whatever you decide.”
Jim turned slightly and assessed me with narrowed eyes. “Score one for the jungle-cat-guy. You’re going to go first because I don’t want to influence you. So, how did you feel when you couldn’t tell Naomi that we were lovers? What about when the guys would tease you during poker nights about any new girlfriends? How about having to maintain the fiction that you still slept in your own room instead of my bed, except… well, after things started spiraling downward you did sleep in there a lot, so I guess technically that wasn’t fiction, was it?”
I reached over and grabbed Jim’s hand. “Let me think on it before I just spout off. This is our future you’re talking about and Jesus, Jim. You think I didn’t research what coming out has meant to other gay cops? We’re talking about how the private and public areas of our lives intersect and it’s not a god-damn math problem; it’s not a fucking Venn diagram. It’s… not as clear-cut as dividing friends, family, and strangers into groups on paper and seeing who should know and who shouldn’t. And I get that there is a price that’s paid by keeping silent. The denial of something fundamental about our lives can feel rejecting, like who we are to each other is something wrong, since it has to be hidden. I… I’m not sure what the right thing to do is, Jim. I’ve already cut my ties with almost everybody I knew in Cascade, but… you’ve got family there and friends like Simon, and you’re respected at the P.D. and it could be dangerous for you.”
Jim squeezed my hand. “Let me ask you something, Blair. How did you feel when I held your hand in public the last couple of days?”
I slumped in the seat, not letting go of his hand. “I felt…like I wasn’t alone anymore. And a little nervous.”
“Do you want to meditate before deciding what you want to do, babe?”
“Yeah, I think so. Maybe later this evening.”
“You know, before we broke up, I had planned on eventually telling my family and Simon, at least, that we were together, after I was sure we wouldn’t self-destruct. But I never explained that to you. I was testing your commitment to me; I thought if we made it for six months then we could come out of the closet. I didn’t think about the lack of commitment to you I was showing by having that condition. I’m sorry.” Jim raised my hand to his mouth and kissed my knuckles.
“Wow. You were going to tell your Dad? I don’t think he likes me very much. He looks at me like I’m from another planet. And how do you think Simon would’ve reacted to hearing we were sleeping together?” The thought of those conversations made me feel kind of twitchy.
“Simon would’ve been okay about it. I even offered to tell him over the phone back in Sweetwater, if it would’ve helped Findley decide to trust me with your custody.”
Jim gave a low laugh. “If I'd spilled the beans back when we first got together, I think Simon would’ve taken me out for a drink and in his very unsubtle way made sure I knew that he expected me to treat you right. Not that he’d ever tell you he’d said anything like that. I don’t think he’d have had the same chat with you, though. Probably wouldn’t think it was necessary since he’d witnessed you sacrificing yourself for me on TV. He probably would have told you to let him know if you were being harassed by anybody in the P.D. No, Simon won’t be a problem if we decide to tell him. Although he might be peeved that we - meaning me - didn't tell him last year.
Jim moved to drop the visor down to block out the sun, then put his arm, warm and heavy, reassuring, back across my shoulders.
“Dad would come around if we confided in him, and you are underestimating your ability to soothe savage Ellisons. We’d spend time with him, which is something I’ve done a lot this past year while you were gone, and he’d get to know you better. You’re very likable, Blair. He’d grow to be fond of you, and he’d end up accepting us because he wants me on good terms with him. My brother would be okay after a few awkward get-togethers. So don’t worry about my family.”
Jim turned onto the county highway that would take us to our cabin for the night, and I fell silent, thinking about the ramifications of coming out. I’d had plenty of friends who were bi, like me, or gay, and I thought about their experiences in being out. Not that I’d hidden my bisexuality from anybody except the cops, and that was to protect Jim from any fallout from associating with me. Still, people died every year due to their sexual orientation. I’d run into prejudice because of being Jewish or a hippie - although I still hadn’t been able to pin down what exactly made a person be tagged as a hippie - and from being a bastard. Jake had managed to insinuate I was inferior for all three reasons, although he was careful to say things in such a way that if I’d complained to Naomi, it wouldn’t have sounded like anything at all. There'd been something in his body language and tone of voice that let me know he considered me beneath him, and that he was doing me a great favor by allowing me to redeem my second-class self by sucking his dick or being fucked by him. He’d fucked with my head as much as he’d fucked with my body, and it took years before I was really able to sift through his lies and manipulations and see him for the power-hungry pedophile he really had been. I was glad he was dead, and I didn’t care if feeling that way meant I’d sent my Karma down a notch.
Jim nudged me and I focused back on the road as he slowed the truck to a stop. There were elk meandering across the blacktop, and I marveled at the size of them. I supposed Jim had stopped a good distance away in case they got too interested and charged us.
God, Montana was beautiful. I wanted to come back here someday with Jim and really spend some time in this wilderness. Nobody here would care if two gay men camped or rented a cabin together or if we were seen kissing or holding hands. Sure. I remembered a news story from a couple of years ago. A young man who’d been beaten and tied to a fence in imitation of a scarecrow had slipped into a coma from his injuries surrounded by beautiful Wyoming scenery. Matthew Shepard, twenty-one years old, died because of a hate crime. He'd been openly gay.
Jim’s job was already dangerous. Did I have the right to put him into more danger?
On the other hand, were we mice or we were men? Living in fear of being outed was bound to be soul-sucking in its own right and at the end of the day, could I look in the mirror and like the person I saw standing there if I denied to others such a basic part of myself? Could Jim?
Man, I did need to meditate. Maybe he sensed my trepidation, because Jim reached down and held my hand tightly as we waited till it was safe to drive again.
~oo~oo~oo~oo~
After checking into the cabin, we both put off discussing anything else relating to our future in favor of taking care of mundane chores. I did laundry while Jim made spaghetti. After supper, I was banished to the couch and Jim washed up the dishes. I lay down and stared at the ceiling, listening to him sweep the kitchen floor and plotting how to finagle a massage out of him. I could have just asked outright for one, but it would be more entertaining to artfully wince a couple of times and rub my lower back. I made a bet with myself that I would find myself face down on the bed with Jim’s big hands seeking out the knots in my muscles within ten minutes of my first groan. That plan was put on hold when Dave’s cell phone rang.
Jim carried the phone into the living room and made himself comfortable on the couch by lifting my legs and sitting down, my lower legs and sock-covered feet now cradled in his lap. He asked me if I wanted to explain to Simon what we had in mind to trap Bergman. I was feeling lethargic and lazy, though, so I told him to go ahead.
Jim outlined the points of our campaign succinctly and gave Simon a list of what we would need in the way of electronic equipment, Kevlar vests and backup. He and Simon discussed having Bergman’s office already staked out when I made the phone call, in case Bergman did something unexpected. Jim told Simon that we should wait another couple of days before setting our trap, but I interrupted and said that I wanted to do it tomorrow. I knew what Jim was thinking, that I was recovering from being sick and I’d exhausted myself this morning doing the extraction, but I had some counter arguments all warmed up and ready to go. I held out my hand for the phone and he reluctantly passed it over.
“Hey, Simon. Besides the fact that I really want to wrap this whole protective custody thing up as fast as possible, I’ll still look the part tomorrow of a down on my luck hitchhiker. I’m going to save the clothes I wore today and I’ll change into them before meeting Bergman. I’ll look and smell a little stale from being on the road; it’ll lull him into believing I’m the desperate guy with no resources he thinks I am. That, and the fact that I’ll look washed out and pale and stiff from driving eight hours. But I’m not sick enough to have to wait a couple of days. We’ll meet our backup at the truck stop on the loop exit - Roady’s - and get the vests and the wire set up, then they can go ahead and get in place at the Petro place on the Main Street exit. That’s the closest exit to Rainier. Jim and I will go there, and I’lI call Bergman from the pay phone.”
Simon had a few questions about some of the details and reported that no hit men had taken the bait with the false safe house addresses. So far, then, the leak hadn't sprung from any of the P.D. departments Simon had spoken to. Maybe the person responsible for passing along my being stuck in Sweetwater hadn't been notified I was supposedly in a safe house in Cascade right now. Simon was still carefully baiting that trap.
I handed the phone back to Jim and made myself comfortable again. I gathered that Simon was grilling him about whether I really was well enough to pull this off, but Jim backed me up. He said he trusted me to know my limits, and it made me really feel like his partner again.
I’d dozed off when the phone rang a second time. It was Jack Kelso. Jim talked to him briefly, then ended the call.
“Blair, are you awake?”
“Yeah… So, um… Jack find out anything?”
“There was no grievance filed by Blair Sandburg. Bergman played you, partner.” Jim went back to massaging my foot.
“I’m not surprised. I am going to file one after we get Bergman behind bars. Actually, Bergman’s behavior should make it easier for a genuine grievance to be awarded to me.”
I got up awkwardly and stumbled to the bathroom, making sure to rub my back where Jim could see me. Sure enough, when I came out, Jim intercepted me and felt down my spine and laid his warm hand on the back of my neck.
“You’re a devious little shit, Sandburg. I could smell you plotting mischief earlier and just now. But, you’ll get your backrub anyway. C’mon.”
~oo~oo~oo~oo~
The backrub led to Jim’s hands massaging other parts of my body, which led to some exploring by my hands of Jim’s anatomy and ended with some mutually satisfying exchanges of bodily fluids and spiking of dopamine levels, followed by prolactin inundating the pair of us into a near coma.
God, I’d missed having sex.
I slipped off to sleep contemplating how connected I felt to Jim today. I wondered if our bodies had produced high oxytocin levels when I’d given my… life force, my energy, my… love to Jim this morning to protect him from any intrusive energy zeroing in on his exposed vulnerabilities from the extraction. Oxytocin -- bonding hormone - maybe… a connection between the physical and spiritual planes… just so interesting…
~oo~oo~oo~oo~
Sandburg was having a nightmare. He’d woken me up with his fearful mutterings and when my shushing him and stroking his back didn’t ease him into restful slumber, I gently shook him awake.
He sat up in bed, holding his body rigid, then with an annoyed sigh slumped back down onto the mattress. I waited to see if he would roll over and go back to sleep, but he didn’t. He just lay there. Thinking.
“Sandburg, do you want to talk about it or go back to sleep?”
“What?” He sounded bewildered, not petulant.
“Your nightmare. Do you want to analyze it to death or just divert yourself from thinking about it? I’ll help distract you, if you want.” If it was me, I’d pick door number two, but this was Blair, so Mr. Psychology might want to expound on dream analysis.
Blair sat up in bed again and ran his hands through his hair, his curls becoming even more abandoned- looking as he scrunched fistfuls of his hair before dropping his hands onto his lap.
He started to slide out of bed, but I stopped him.
“Where are you going?” If it was just to pee, no problem; if it was to brood by himself, no way.
“I don’t think I can go back to sleep and I don’t want to keep you up. I’ll be all right, Jim. Don’t worry about me.”
“I’m citing the sixth commandment of the relationship rules. ‘Thou shalt share what is bugging you with your partner.’ So start sharing.”
Blair stared at me for a long moment, then murmured, “I guess now is as good a time as any.” But he just sat there. Brooding.
I pulled him down and snugged his back against my belly. I tightened my arms around him and said, “I’ve got you. Go on, tell me what’s on your mind.”
He let out a long, drawn-out breath, his body still tense. I waited.
Finally, Blair relaxed against me and said, “It happened a long time ago. I thought that I had dealt with it but apparently I’m still a little confused from the fallout. And thinking about how I reacted to having had a real, honest to god serious relationship, I have to agree with myself on that one.”
I had a sudden mental image of several Blairs nodding their heads together in agreement. I tossed that ridiculous image out of my head and made a supportive grunt.
“What triggered my dream tonight was probably a combination of some recent thinking of mine about the past and being picked up and carried this morning. I have some bad memories about having somebody hauling me around. Although once I knew it was you that had me, I was okay.”
“Carried, huh? Lash?” I flashed on Blair’s recounting to me of how he’d been trussed up and thrown over that crazy fucker’s shoulder and conveyed around that deathtrap of a warehouse. That was one shooting that I’d never regret doing.
“He was sorta icing on the cake. One more bad guy, like Maya’s father’s thug, carting me around before trying to kill me. But I wasn’t talking about them. It was… Shit, Jim. This is hard to do. I never wanted you to know this stuff about me.”
Blair’s heartbeat was picking up and he was tensed up again. I’d have to watch him carefully to make sure he didn’t slip into a panic attack. He took a couple of deep, slow breaths, and then gave a sigh.
“I don’t see myself as a victim; I survived being abused and I always thought that I’d done a pretty good job with getting my head together. Only -- not good enough. I see that now, after meditating and talking with you this week. I’m telling you because I don’t want to mess up this second chance we’re taking with each other. You asked me the other day why I thought letting strangers touch me - molest me -- was acceptable. Shit, I did think it was okay and that sounds so weird…”
Blair trailed off and I couldn’t say I was surprised at what he was tap-dancing around telling me. I’d known for a long time that he’d been high risk for being abused because of the unstable home life he’d had and the constant moving around.
I hugged him hard and kissed the back of his head. “Chief, I get that you were abused in some fashion, probably sexually. Why don’t you just start at the beginning and tell me what happened.”
Silence for a moment, and then another sigh.
“I’ve told Brother Marcus about me. And therapists. So it shouldn’t be so hard to tell my lover. Okay. Well, when I was five years old, Naomi and I moved into her boyfriend’s home. It was a pretty big house, at least to a kindergartener, and his fifteen-year-old son lived there, too.”
Blair’s voice had gone flat and monotone, like he was reading the instructions on how to assemble shelving.
“The son, uh… well, we played games together. And those games shifted from him tickling me to him molesting me. He didn’t try any penetration, but he did do oral sex and taught me to do it on him. He gave me stuff as a reward for playing with him, and he made me promise not to share our secret.”
Blair give a little shiver, then took a couple of deep breaths again before he began to speak.
“But even back then I had a big mouth and I chattered to my teacher about the new games I’d learned from him. All kinds of shit hit the fan then. I remember the screaming and crying my mother did when she was told and how angry and sad she was when we moved out. Her boyfriend didn’t believe me, and his son denied the allegations. There was an investigation, but the son never was actually charged with anything. However, Naomi’s ability as a parent to be protective of me was questioned. I was sent to counseling, and I learned I shouldn’t play those games. I only went maybe three or four times before Naomi and I moved away. Of course, I didn’t put all of that together when I was five, but I understood it later when I was at Rainier and I went back into counseling for the third time.”
“Ah, Chief. I hate that you had to go through that. Naomi was what? Twenty-one? When did you have counseling for the second time? Seems like something’s missing from your story.”
Blair laughed, and it was a mirthless sound.
“There’s more. See, what I got out of the first experience was that it was my fault that we had to move away and I shouldn’t have upset my mother. I should have kept the games secret and not told anyone.
“Fast forward to my thirteenth year. We had moved to Seattle, and I was the smallest boy in my class. By then I’d lived a lot of places and I wanted to have friends, which, of course, is natural for teenagers. That meant I didn’t want to travel around; I wanted to be able to stay in my school and keep the friends I’d made. Not too long after I had my Bar Mitzvah, Mom met a guy named Jake Boles and started working for his company. She really liked him. I really liked him, too, because he did cool stuff with me, and treated me like an adult friend.”
Blair was shaking his head very slightly. “I know now that he was grooming me, and that probably he’d targeted Naomi because she had a son -- a son who looked years younger than his actual age. We moved in with him and for a while nothing happened. Then he made Mom a buyer for his company. It was called… Fair Exchange. He bought unique third world crafts and marketed them, giving the native craftsmen a fair price. Naomi could really get behind that philosophy, and she started traveling -- just short trips at first, then longer and longer as she explored new sources of craftwork for the business. She got paid to do what she loved, and Jake was very effective at making me see how much my mother wanted that job. He convinced me that it would be selfish of me to want her to stop traveling and reinforced that I was grown up and didn’t need my mother to be with me all of the time. After all, I’d been given Jimi’s guitar and I’d celebrated my Bar Mitzvah. And I wanted to stay in Seattle where my friends were. So I was set up just where Jake wanted me.”
The flat, dead, rehearsed tone of voice Blair was using made my heart ache for him because I knew where this story was heading. I'd heard too many similar ones as a cop not to know.
“He was just as good at convincing Mom that it would be the best thing for me to stay with him and let him take care of me while she was gone because he was such a good male role model and I needed stability.”
Blair swallowed audibly. “At first, I enjoyed his attention. He let me drink with him when Mom was gone, because I was growing up, but I had to keep it a secret. Apparently I passed that test, because he upped the ante. We started watching adult movies together. One movie night he got me drunk, maybe he slipped something else in the drink, too, because when I was practically out of it he picked me up and carried me to his bed.”
I tightened my arms around him again, letting him know I was there, I'd be his anchor.
“That was the first time. He had a real fetish about cradling me in his arms while he took me to his room and a lot of times he’d get me from my bed and I’d wake up while I was being carried. That’s why I started to freak out this morning until I knew it was you.”
Blair was still speaking like the life had been sucked out of him. I wanted him to stop… and I wanted him to proceed. Spill all the poison out of him. Go back in time and find him and take care of him and not let that emotional vampire Boles anywhere near him. I could only listen and let him tell me the rest.
“He was excellent at seduction; he made me enjoy what was happening to my body. I didn’t know anything back then about the prostate gland or involuntary bodily responses. He mixed in the seduction with mind-fuck games, too. He told me, and I believed him, that he could tell I really wanted him to mess with me and said the proof was evident when I’d get aroused and have an erection.
“He said it was my fault that he was forced to touch me and… and… perform penetrative sex and oral sex on me. Listen to me here, I’m using clinical terms to distance myself from what happened, like it happened to someone else. Penetrative sex - he fucked me, Jim, and made me blow him. He sucked my dick, too.
“He got me to buy into my own victimization by telling me if I told anyone then I’d be in trouble; everybody would agree that I was just telling lies for attention. They would take me away from Mom and put me in detention where I’d get raped. I didn’t know that what he was doing to me was rape also. I just knew it was wrong, and I felt trapped.
“Jim, I didn’t have anybody I could ask about that stuff and trust that they were telling me the truth. And I remembered when Child Protective Services had talked to Mom before, about Jeremy molesting me, and I could tell that they hadn’t approved of her very much. I didn’t want her to be in any trouble.”
Blair shivered, and I covered us up with another blanket from the foot of the bed, and resumed holding him against me. I whispered to him that I was sorry he'd been hurt and that I loved him. Blair squeezed my arm back, and was silent for a moment, then haltingly began to talk again.
“Jake kept telling me how much Naomi liked her job and how nice it was for her to have a home to come back to after her buying trips. He told me how she would hate me for spoiling everything for her if I told anyone what the two of us were doing.
“He didn’t act so charming towards me anymore; he’d pretty much switched to plain blackmailing me -- Naomi’s happiness for my sexual services. He started isolating me more and more, so I could be available and under his thumb. He took me out of public school - away from my friends and any teachers I might have told about what he was doing - and home schooled me. He wouldn’t let me see my buddies. He always had a plausible story to tell Naomi - I wasn’t being challenged in public school; I’d outgrown my friends.
“I felt sick and angry and trapped. I wanted to protect my mother and I remembered all too well what had happened when I was five. I figured I was grown up and I could handle it. And I lived for the day that Naomi would decide that it was time to move on. Except she didn’t. She’d come back and Jake would charm the socks off of her and I’d have to pretend everything was fine. I wasn’t fine, though, and after the sex became a regular occurrence - and he always told me that he loved me while we were having sex - I started having panic attacks. Luckily, I never had one in front of Naomi.”
Blair repeated that ugly laugh.
“Things came to a head the day that I stole a microscope from a store and was caught. I lied about stealing it; said Jake was supposed to have made arrangements to pay for it. Nobody believed me and I had to go to court. I almost told the truth to the judge, but I didn’t. I think… I wanted to get caught. I remember feeling so reckless before I did it and so angry about everything, including Jake not letting me finish my school science project.
“I didn’t go to Juvie. Instead, I had to do community service - a lot of it - at the library and the Burke Museum. That was great, actually. It kept me away from Jake. I had a probation officer, too, and he was a good man. He had me play basketball twice a week with his probation group, even took us boys up to Cascade to see Orville play - the tickets were donated - and he’d just show up sometimes at the house. Jake didn’t like that, and it cut down on the number of times I had to have sex with him. But I never told anybody what he was doing with me -- not even the counselor I had to see for a year. Mrs. Johnson would ask me if anybody was molesting me. I always denied it. I was afraid of the repercussions if I did tell."
I almost bit my tongue so I wouldn't say anthing right now that would derail Blair from telling me what had happened to him, but how I wished all those well-meaning people had been able to put Blair's abuser behind bars. Nowadays they might have a kid in Blair's situation examined for physical signs of abuse, but back then an exam was less likely, especially if the child denied he was being sexually abused.
“So, that was the second time I had counseling, and it helped in a round about way. But since I wouldn’t talk about what was happening, their hands were tied. It wasn't their fault Jake kept on abusing me,” he said briskly. Hmmm... he sounded like he wanted to rush past what he'd just said, and all of a sudden it clicked in my head why. Damn it. Even after all the counseling he'd had, he still had some doubts about whose fault it was that he'd been abused.
"Chief, it wasn't your fault. You were just a kid. Kids think like kids, not adults. Your reasons for not telling made sense to you, don't beat yourself up about it now. The only one responsible for what that asshole did was him."
He fell silent for a little while and I felt so sad for him. I kissed him softly on the back of his head again. He shouldn’t have been in such a vulnerable position, and I wondered how Naomi could’ve been so blind and not seen that something was wrong. But it wasn't her fault, either.
He cleared his throat and went back to speaking in a detached manner. “I think my counselor and probation officer suspected Jake was fucking me. They recommended I go back to public school, which was a relief, but that I also take extra courses through the home schooling program. They knew I wanted to go to college - I saw it as a way out for myself, without having to tell Naomi why I wanted to leave home so young. I took some classes for dual credit at North Seattle Community College, after I turned fifteen, to help finish up my high school credits. I stayed very busy and very much away from home. I spent time with my friends again and I had fun, but I couldn’t be honest with them. Any friendships I kept stayed on superficial levels.
“Counseling ended a year after I went to court, but Mr. Wells kept me on probation till my sixteenth birthday. He also insisted that Jake put a lock on my door, once I admitted that I had nightmares about somebody breaking in. It was as close as I could come to telling the truth. Jake still made me have sex with him, but at least I wasn’t being snatched out of my bed.”
I promised myself that unless he was passed out to be sure he was awake if I needed to carry him. At least now I knew why he might panic if he woke up like he did this morning, cradled in a man's arms.
Blair shivered again and pushed against me, his back to my front. He cleared his throat before going on.
“I graduated and turned sixteen in May. Scholarships and financial aid had been awarded to me from Rainier - I didn’t want to stay in the same city as Jake -- and I planned to move out to a dorm when the first term began in August. Not that Jake wanted me to leave. He was trying to get me to enroll at Washington State University and commute, but I knew leaving to go to school was my ticket out of hell with him.
“Then Jake was killed in a car accident. I knew I shouldn’t be glad about that, but I was relieved the son-of-a-bitch was dead.”
Blair stopped then and I craned my neck to look at his face. He was chewing his lip.
“I was too old for magical thinking and I knew the car accident had nothing to do with me, but still… I felt guilty that I’d wished him dead so many times. And in the beginning he was nice to me, took me to the Super Bowl right after he met mom. I thought if things had been different, if I hadn’t caused him to want to have sex with me, then he’d have stayed a fun guy.” Blair shook his head, making a swishing sound on the pillow. “Pedophiles are so manipulative. I didn’t understand back then that I didn’t make him do anything. He’d only been nice to me to get me to trust him. Taking me to games had been the bait on his hook.”
I made a sound that I hoped was soothing, but evidently was more like a growl, because Blair patted me on the arm. “It’s okay, Jim. I pretty much did get my head straightened out about what he’d done, and he’s dead, man.”
“Saves me the trouble of going after him,” I said, not bothering to keep the anger out of my voice. “So, you were free. Did you tell Naomi then what had happened?” I suspected he hadn’t.
“No. I’m never going to tell her and I want your promise that you won’t either. It would only cause harm to her and it wasn’t her fault.” Blair had a determined tone to his voice and I promised him I wouldn’t tell her.
I thought that Naomi did bear some responsibility for giving Blair the mindset as a child that he was supposed to protect his mother, not the other way around. That bastard Boles had picked up on Blair’s protectiveness about his mother and used it to his advantage. Still, I would respect my partner’s wishes. I might have to have some quality time with a punching bag when we got back to Cascade, but I’d practice some self control and I wouldn’t blow up at his mother.
“Was Naomi home when he died?”
He shook his head. “Till Naomi came home, I stayed at a friend’s house, my friend whose family had a Chinese restaurant. I already worked part time for them in the kitchen - that’s where I learned to make some of those Chinese dishes. The company fell apart and Naomi’s job was over, so we spent the rest of the summer traveling together until I started Rainier -- to help us both heal from our loss. And I was a total mess, Jim. Naomi thought my attitude was from grief and that in time I would return to being the cheerful kid I had always been careful to seem. I didn’t. I was a brat when I first went to Rainier. I was socially awkward with the older kids, and I tried to bolster my self-esteem by being an obnoxious know-it-all. And I didn’t have sex at all. For years, Jim. I felt like anybody who showed an interest in me would be getting a bad deal. I was dirty and no amount of washing was going to make me feel clean again. I didn’t trust my body anymore, since it had kept betraying me with Jake.”
I thought of all those times I’d called Blair a table leg and I felt ashamed. But he must have gotten over his decision to not have sex, because I knew he’d had plenty of sex after I met him. Although, his late entry into the whole dating scene did explain why sometimes he’d acted so immaturely. He’d reminded me of a kid in a candy store at times when we’d have dealings with beautiful women. A sticky-handed kid whose gawking seemed out of place with the sensitivity and intelligence that was his usual M.O.
“I threw myself into my school work and I took as many classes as they would let me. Things started changing for me when I took a psychology class that covered the effects of sexual abuse. I recognized some of my own behaviors and feelings.”
I noticed that Blair began sounding more animated as he told me more.
“I read as much as I could about boys being abused and about pedophiles. Hell, my getting a minor in psychology was entirely motivated by my desire to understand myself better and to figure out a way to be normal. And I wanted normal. I wanted to be able to kiss a girl or let a guy touch me again. See, I also figured out that I was bisexual, and I was so relieved to learn that being sexually abused by a man couldn’t turn me gay. Any feelings of desire I experienced for, oh, rugby players or a male TA were just part of my normal sexual orientation. Man, I devoured Kinsey’s research. And I began really listening to the professors who gave me suggestions on how to act in class. And out of class.”
Blair added, “More than one prof suggested I check out the student counseling service. And in my junior year, I finally did. I told my counselor the truth. And it was very hard and it took a long time to make that decision. But it was also freeing. We explored my feelings and I had a lot of misconceptions straightened out. Everything that son-of-a-bitch had lied to me about got neutralized and I started to feel better about myself. I felt like the old me was back, and I started making good friends, friends I cared about and who cared about me.
“Dating was hard but learning to be sexual was a part of my recovery. I found that I could have sex, and that I was good at it. I felt relieved and I… uh, maybe overdid it. Soon after I began going out with people, my counselor left her job, and I was transferred to a new counselor. By the time I got some trust and rapport going with him, he also left for another job. I figured I was doing pretty well by then and I didn’t want to start over again with a new person, so I ended my sessions. In hindsight, that was probably a mistake. I guess my little system of not dating friends, and not getting emotionally involved with my lovers was part of the damage from being sexually abused. Talking with you has shown me I’ve still got some blind spots. I’m sorry, Jim.”
“What have you got to be sorry about? None of that was your fault! You do know that, right? I know that!” I felt fiercely protective of him and be damned if I was going to let him blame himself.
“I’m sorry because I should have told you a long time ago. I was quick enough to want you to talk about the times in your life when you were a traumatized kid or about your repressed memories of Peru.”
“The important thing is that you did decide to trust me with your secret. Thank you, Blair.”
Blair wiggled away from me far enough to roll over so that he was facing me. “Jim, I didn’t tell you before because I was worried knowing about me would change how you treated me. I didn’t want you to feel sorry for me or to handle me like I was going to break.” He gave me a look that was half serious and half joking. “I will kick your ass if you try, so I’m giving you fair warning -- I’m a survivor, not a victim. And us survivors are tough.”
I moved so that I was on top of him, and I slowly bent my head to kiss him. He was warm and pliant under me, and, yeah, this was a test. After Blair brought up the abuse he’d suffered, I wanted to see if he could handle physical sensations. The first hint of anxiety and I would stop. But he just opened his mouth and invited me in. I kissed him until I was satisfied he wasn’t reacting badly to my touch.
“Did I pass, Jim?” Blair was looking up at me with a knowing look.
“Yeah. But I know that being carried is a trigger for you --”
“Only if I’m asleep and wake up. You could pick me up right now and it wouldn’t bother me.”
Well. I couldn’t let that pass. Besides, I thought Blair would welcome a bit of joking around after all that heavy shit he’d talked about. He wanted normal, and normal for us included clowning around.
I rolled off of him and the bed, and stood up. I dragged him across the bed, ignoring his screech of “Jim!” as I reached down and hauled him into my arms.
I tuned out his demands to put him down since they were said with an undertone of laughter. After a minute, I pretended to drop him and he grabbed me tight around the neck.
I carried him through the dark bedroom easily and went to the living room window. One thing all these cabins had in common was nice, big picture windows so renters could see why they’d ponied up for the scenic view instead of Motel 6. Dawn was just starting, the sky lightening up, but the sun wasn’t in sight quite yet.
Blair was blushing. I could feel the heat from his face as he said to me, “What now, Rhett Butler?”
I snorted. “You’re no Scarlett O’Hara, Chief. I just couldn’t resist teasing you when you threw down that challenge.”
“I didn’t - Oh. I guess I did. Okay. Hey, I might as well make the best of this undignified and unmanly position I landed myself in.” He tugged at my head until he could meet my lips and kissed me again. Several times. I was contemplating acting out the rest of Gone With the Wind and carrying him back to bed, when the sun bursting over the horizon caught our attention.
“No matter how often I see the sun rise, it’s always like the first time,” Blair said, almost dreamily.
“What you just said? That’s how I feel about making love with you.” I kissed him again before letting his feet slide to the floor. We kissed in front of the window in the light of a new dawn, and I felt like we were blessed.
We watched the sun move on its path into the sky, Blair in front of me, his back against my front, his hands covering mine. We’d both gone silent, but we were communicating without words. I felt his trust and contentment and I knew he could sense the commitment and trust and love I felt towards him.
There was something I wanted to do. Something that would capture this moment for us and give us a tangible reminder of how we felt about each other. Things would get crazy when we returned to Cascade later today and I wanted him to have something of this calm before the oncoming storm to help anchor him -- and me. I wanted to be able to look at him and see my gift to him.
“There’s something I need to do. Will you stay here a moment and wait for me?”
Blair nodded and I strode into the bedroom and opened his backpack. I found what I needed and tucked it into my fist so it was hidden. Then I returned to his side. He looked so beautiful to me, naked in the morning light.
I faced him and showed him what I held. “I gave this to you once, in friendship and gratitude for your help. You kept it, even if you couldn’t bear to wear it, while we were apart.” Blair’s eyes told me that I’d gotten that part right.
“Will you wear it for me, again, Blair?” He softly said yes and started to reach for it, but I gave a small shake of my head to halt him.
“I love you, Blair Jacob Sandburg. You’re my friend, my lover, my guide. You’ve been my lodestar ever since you saved me from death by garbage truck. I don’t want to live without you anymore. Will you wear this as a symbol that we’re together again - for the rest of our lives?
Blair’s eyes looked shiny and wet, and he cleared his throat before answering me. “Yes, I will. I tell you three times, James Joseph Ellison, that I love you and I’ll be with you till death do us part.”
I raised his necklace to my lips and kissed it, then slid it over his head. It gleamed on his naked chest, the many-pointed star resting a few inches below the hollow of his throat.
He drew me to him, the lodestar necklace between us. I could feel its imprint on my skin. We touched each other, and I wrote my love for him on his body with my hands and mouth. He bent his head at an angle, like a bright-eyed bird, and laughed as he said our auras were glowing.
And while the sun filled the room with a brilliant dazzle, we sanctioned this covenant, these sacred promises to each other, with cries of joy and completion.
~oo~oo~oo~oo~
Continued in A Fair Distance:Comes a Time. Chapter One
Laurie
Title: A Fair Distance: Ball and Chain. Chapter Thirteen
Author: Laurie
Type: Slash
Rating: PG-17
Warnings: Past Child Abuse
Beta’ed by the lovely t_verano, who has been my rock ever since I started this story.
Summary for A Fair Distance: A year after Blair left Jim, and Cascade, they meet again in a small Tennessee town. 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 Artifact Storage Room 3 here, to read chapter by chapter, including other stories in the series.
This chapter concludes Ball and Chain, the second arc of A Fair Distance. The final arc,Comes a Time is mostly completed in rough draft and chapters will be posted as they are beta'ed.
A Fair Distance: Ball and Chain. Chapter Thirteen
I woke up and was a little surprised that we'd been driving for hours. Jim said he was hungry, so we pulled off Interstate 90 for a late lunch at Ryan’s Steakhouse. I was just going to order some clam chowder, but Jim insisted that I eat a steak and baked potato. I protested that I’d had the same thing the night before, but he told me that after the exertion I’d put into helping him, I needed more protein and carbs. It was sweet, in an annoying way, that he was giving me nutritional advice, and I ate my he-man meal to make him feel better. I was feeling a little guilty that I’d given him a scare this morning by passing out.
I’d really missed being able to cook and eat good food this past year, except for the times I’d stayed with organic farmers or friends who liked things like lentil soup. I’d found out that scrounging nutritional food that was affordable while I was on the road wasn’t easy to do. A lot of times I wouldn’t eat the available crap - hot dogs at gas stations or white-bread sandwiches that had been sitting in a cooler for who knows how many days -- and I supposed that had contributed to me getting skinny. Well, that and being broke most of the time. Jim didn’t like it that I’d lost weight. He kept giving me bananas to eat.
I was full when we hit the road again, and my intentions of staying awake and keeping Jim company fell by the wayside when I took another unscheduled nap. When I woke up this time, Jim said we were close to our stopping point. I watched the gorgeous Montana scenery roll by and felt… happy? Yeah. I felt happy. Wow. I looked up to study Jim’s face and he seemed serene.
“Jim. How are you doing, man?”
“I’m good, Chief. Things are finally straightening out, and I’m looking forward to going home. With you, buddy; the loft’s been way too boring without your jungle music and stuff scattered around for me to trip over. Where do we send for your belongings, anyway?”
I eyed him. I thought he knew…
“Jim, I’ve got everything important to me right here.”
“That’s really nice of you to say that, Blair, but I meant your stuff. Do you have it stashed at a friend’s house or in a storage unit somewhere?”
I patted Jim’s thigh. “No, Jim. I wasn’t quoting a Hallmark card, although yeah, absolutely, I have everything I need sitting right next to me. I don’t have any other belongings. I sold them, gave them away, or they were stolen from me. There wasn’t any sense in accumulating things when I traveled so much. What’s in my backpack is it, except for Dave’s guitar. Mine was stolen, and Naomi’s going to be sad when I tell her about it. Jimi’s ax. It was a real rite of passage when she gave it to me when I turned twelve. She made a little speech about the end of childhood and entering adulthood. My guitar and when I was given my Bar Mitzvah knife later, symbolized that change of status. Hey, I guess I can have my knife back now, right?”
“You don’t have anything but your backpack? What about your photos, your books, your masks and --”
“Gone. Don’t worry about it, Jim. I mean that.”
“Blair - anything you need, you just tell me. Anything at all.”
Jim looked troubled. Shit. I’d better clear this up pronto. I nudged him with my elbow. Right in the ribs.
“Look, Jim. I don’t want you trying to replace stuff I used to have. I’ll do that when I’m working again. I’m your partner; you aren’t going to be my sugar daddy. And I like to think that being free of possessions is a liberating Zen life lesson. I’m sure there’s a quote out there that would sum it up.”
“Christ, this is my fault. If I hadn’t run you off --”
“Cut it out right this minute, Ellison! It is not your fault. It’s nobody’s fault, except maybe a couple of thieves'. Do I need to kick your ass again, because I will if you don’t stop making with the mea culpa noises. You got that?!”
Jim fell silent and I sighed.
“Let it go. it’s not the first or even the second time I’ve had to pretty much start over. Most of the stuff in the warehouse fire ended up unusable, and there were times Naomi and I had to cut our losses and leave. I’m used to it.”
Jim glanced down at me, concern plain on his face, and I snuggled in tighter to his side. The big galoot.
“Look, let's compromise. I’ll replace my stuff when I can afford it and if I think it's necessary. You can be in charge of making sure I don’t starve. Okay, Jim?”
“Add in that I’m allowed to indulge in buying you presents and you’ve got a deal. I believe you said it yourself. Christmas is coming.”
“I’m Jewish.”
“That never stopped you from enjoying Christmas. And I’m fine with giving you Hanukah gifts, too. Uh... you don’t have to spend money on me, Chief. Make me up some of those coupons like you did the first year you lived with me. Only this time, besides ‘will cook on your turn for dinner for a week’ you could put down something like ‘will give morning blow-jobs for a week.’ You’re creative; surprise me.”
I snorted, but I liked the idea. I was pleased that Jim was shifting back to the relaxed state he’d been in when I woke up from my last nap. I wondered how long it would be before naps wouldn’t be part of the daily routine. At least I hadn’t run a fever today.
“If you want your knife back you can slide it out of my pocket. Just don’t make me wreck this truck.”
“Don’t tell me which pocket it’s in! Searching should be half the fun.” I glanced at Jim, feeling mischievous. “Man, sometimes I fantasize Brackett doesn't give you a choice about how to pull the wire out of your pants. Instead of letting you pull it out, he makes me put my hand down the front of your boxers and although I know the wire is there I can’t seem to find it and my hand keeps nudging your dick, which is getting harder the more I’m rooting around down your pants, and… well, you can guess how it ends.”
“There’s no way I would let myself put on a show for that prick Brackett. I’d think about Mrs. Murphy -- the oldest, meanest, ugliest teacher I ever had -- and imagine her hands fondling me instead of yours, to keep from throwing a boner for him to smirk about.” Jim looked disgruntled. Well, I couldn’t leave him like that.
“Jim, Jim. Fantasy, my man. But let's change it to your hands are handcuffed behind your back and he leaves the room, tells me I’ve got an hour to remove the wire -“
“And have the surveillance team listen to an hour’s worth of you sticking your hands down my pants and jerking me off. I seriously doubt that you could keep quiet, Chief, and I probably would at least make some sounds. Then we’d have to deal with the fallout of everybody at the P.D. knowing we had sex. Crap, it was hard enough to shut them up with just Brackett’s comment about you and --”
I interrupted him. “What? Wait a minute. In real life, are you telling me you were given shit about Brackett asking you if you wanted me to remove the wire? Jim, you never told me anything about that!”
“I took care of it.”
Yeah, I’ll bet. The Ellison intimidation technique was scarily effective.
“That must have really bothered you, your colleagues thinking we were together. Even if we weren’t at the time, Brackett must have picked up a vibe from me to make that assumption. Sorry, Jim.”
Jim shook his head. “You’ve got nothing to be sorry about. But what if some of the guys at the P.D. did know we were lovers - what would you think about that?”
What would I think about that? Why was Jim even asking me? It wasn’t my decision. I really had nothing to lose, except possibly some friendships that I’d drifted away from anyway.
“Does anybody know? Did you spill the beans while I was gone?”
“No. But my spirit guide said to find out what you really thought back then about the secrecy we kept. He seems to think you probably went along with what I wanted, without telling me how you really felt. Tomorrow we’ll be in Cascade. We need a game plan about coming out or not, and this time tell me what you really want, Blair.”
Well, shit. The teasing game I’d planned on playing by 'searching’ for my knife in Jim’s jean pockets just gotten dropped like a hot potato. I straightened up a little and wiped both of my hands on my thighs.
“Jesus, Jim. I… I’m not sure what would be the right thing, except it’s really you who would be most affected and I’ll go along with whatever you decide.”
Jim turned slightly and assessed me with narrowed eyes. “Score one for the jungle-cat-guy. You’re going to go first because I don’t want to influence you. So, how did you feel when you couldn’t tell Naomi that we were lovers? What about when the guys would tease you during poker nights about any new girlfriends? How about having to maintain the fiction that you still slept in your own room instead of my bed, except… well, after things started spiraling downward you did sleep in there a lot, so I guess technically that wasn’t fiction, was it?”
I reached over and grabbed Jim’s hand. “Let me think on it before I just spout off. This is our future you’re talking about and Jesus, Jim. You think I didn’t research what coming out has meant to other gay cops? We’re talking about how the private and public areas of our lives intersect and it’s not a god-damn math problem; it’s not a fucking Venn diagram. It’s… not as clear-cut as dividing friends, family, and strangers into groups on paper and seeing who should know and who shouldn’t. And I get that there is a price that’s paid by keeping silent. The denial of something fundamental about our lives can feel rejecting, like who we are to each other is something wrong, since it has to be hidden. I… I’m not sure what the right thing to do is, Jim. I’ve already cut my ties with almost everybody I knew in Cascade, but… you’ve got family there and friends like Simon, and you’re respected at the P.D. and it could be dangerous for you.”
Jim squeezed my hand. “Let me ask you something, Blair. How did you feel when I held your hand in public the last couple of days?”
I slumped in the seat, not letting go of his hand. “I felt…like I wasn’t alone anymore. And a little nervous.”
“Do you want to meditate before deciding what you want to do, babe?”
“Yeah, I think so. Maybe later this evening.”
“You know, before we broke up, I had planned on eventually telling my family and Simon, at least, that we were together, after I was sure we wouldn’t self-destruct. But I never explained that to you. I was testing your commitment to me; I thought if we made it for six months then we could come out of the closet. I didn’t think about the lack of commitment to you I was showing by having that condition. I’m sorry.” Jim raised my hand to his mouth and kissed my knuckles.
“Wow. You were going to tell your Dad? I don’t think he likes me very much. He looks at me like I’m from another planet. And how do you think Simon would’ve reacted to hearing we were sleeping together?” The thought of those conversations made me feel kind of twitchy.
“Simon would’ve been okay about it. I even offered to tell him over the phone back in Sweetwater, if it would’ve helped Findley decide to trust me with your custody.”
Jim gave a low laugh. “If I'd spilled the beans back when we first got together, I think Simon would’ve taken me out for a drink and in his very unsubtle way made sure I knew that he expected me to treat you right. Not that he’d ever tell you he’d said anything like that. I don’t think he’d have had the same chat with you, though. Probably wouldn’t think it was necessary since he’d witnessed you sacrificing yourself for me on TV. He probably would have told you to let him know if you were being harassed by anybody in the P.D. No, Simon won’t be a problem if we decide to tell him. Although he might be peeved that we - meaning me - didn't tell him last year.
Jim moved to drop the visor down to block out the sun, then put his arm, warm and heavy, reassuring, back across my shoulders.
“Dad would come around if we confided in him, and you are underestimating your ability to soothe savage Ellisons. We’d spend time with him, which is something I’ve done a lot this past year while you were gone, and he’d get to know you better. You’re very likable, Blair. He’d grow to be fond of you, and he’d end up accepting us because he wants me on good terms with him. My brother would be okay after a few awkward get-togethers. So don’t worry about my family.”
Jim turned onto the county highway that would take us to our cabin for the night, and I fell silent, thinking about the ramifications of coming out. I’d had plenty of friends who were bi, like me, or gay, and I thought about their experiences in being out. Not that I’d hidden my bisexuality from anybody except the cops, and that was to protect Jim from any fallout from associating with me. Still, people died every year due to their sexual orientation. I’d run into prejudice because of being Jewish or a hippie - although I still hadn’t been able to pin down what exactly made a person be tagged as a hippie - and from being a bastard. Jake had managed to insinuate I was inferior for all three reasons, although he was careful to say things in such a way that if I’d complained to Naomi, it wouldn’t have sounded like anything at all. There'd been something in his body language and tone of voice that let me know he considered me beneath him, and that he was doing me a great favor by allowing me to redeem my second-class self by sucking his dick or being fucked by him. He’d fucked with my head as much as he’d fucked with my body, and it took years before I was really able to sift through his lies and manipulations and see him for the power-hungry pedophile he really had been. I was glad he was dead, and I didn’t care if feeling that way meant I’d sent my Karma down a notch.
Jim nudged me and I focused back on the road as he slowed the truck to a stop. There were elk meandering across the blacktop, and I marveled at the size of them. I supposed Jim had stopped a good distance away in case they got too interested and charged us.
God, Montana was beautiful. I wanted to come back here someday with Jim and really spend some time in this wilderness. Nobody here would care if two gay men camped or rented a cabin together or if we were seen kissing or holding hands. Sure. I remembered a news story from a couple of years ago. A young man who’d been beaten and tied to a fence in imitation of a scarecrow had slipped into a coma from his injuries surrounded by beautiful Wyoming scenery. Matthew Shepard, twenty-one years old, died because of a hate crime. He'd been openly gay.
Jim’s job was already dangerous. Did I have the right to put him into more danger?
On the other hand, were we mice or we were men? Living in fear of being outed was bound to be soul-sucking in its own right and at the end of the day, could I look in the mirror and like the person I saw standing there if I denied to others such a basic part of myself? Could Jim?
Man, I did need to meditate. Maybe he sensed my trepidation, because Jim reached down and held my hand tightly as we waited till it was safe to drive again.
~oo~oo~oo~oo~
After checking into the cabin, we both put off discussing anything else relating to our future in favor of taking care of mundane chores. I did laundry while Jim made spaghetti. After supper, I was banished to the couch and Jim washed up the dishes. I lay down and stared at the ceiling, listening to him sweep the kitchen floor and plotting how to finagle a massage out of him. I could have just asked outright for one, but it would be more entertaining to artfully wince a couple of times and rub my lower back. I made a bet with myself that I would find myself face down on the bed with Jim’s big hands seeking out the knots in my muscles within ten minutes of my first groan. That plan was put on hold when Dave’s cell phone rang.
Jim carried the phone into the living room and made himself comfortable on the couch by lifting my legs and sitting down, my lower legs and sock-covered feet now cradled in his lap. He asked me if I wanted to explain to Simon what we had in mind to trap Bergman. I was feeling lethargic and lazy, though, so I told him to go ahead.
Jim outlined the points of our campaign succinctly and gave Simon a list of what we would need in the way of electronic equipment, Kevlar vests and backup. He and Simon discussed having Bergman’s office already staked out when I made the phone call, in case Bergman did something unexpected. Jim told Simon that we should wait another couple of days before setting our trap, but I interrupted and said that I wanted to do it tomorrow. I knew what Jim was thinking, that I was recovering from being sick and I’d exhausted myself this morning doing the extraction, but I had some counter arguments all warmed up and ready to go. I held out my hand for the phone and he reluctantly passed it over.
“Hey, Simon. Besides the fact that I really want to wrap this whole protective custody thing up as fast as possible, I’ll still look the part tomorrow of a down on my luck hitchhiker. I’m going to save the clothes I wore today and I’ll change into them before meeting Bergman. I’ll look and smell a little stale from being on the road; it’ll lull him into believing I’m the desperate guy with no resources he thinks I am. That, and the fact that I’ll look washed out and pale and stiff from driving eight hours. But I’m not sick enough to have to wait a couple of days. We’ll meet our backup at the truck stop on the loop exit - Roady’s - and get the vests and the wire set up, then they can go ahead and get in place at the Petro place on the Main Street exit. That’s the closest exit to Rainier. Jim and I will go there, and I’lI call Bergman from the pay phone.”
Simon had a few questions about some of the details and reported that no hit men had taken the bait with the false safe house addresses. So far, then, the leak hadn't sprung from any of the P.D. departments Simon had spoken to. Maybe the person responsible for passing along my being stuck in Sweetwater hadn't been notified I was supposedly in a safe house in Cascade right now. Simon was still carefully baiting that trap.
I handed the phone back to Jim and made myself comfortable again. I gathered that Simon was grilling him about whether I really was well enough to pull this off, but Jim backed me up. He said he trusted me to know my limits, and it made me really feel like his partner again.
I’d dozed off when the phone rang a second time. It was Jack Kelso. Jim talked to him briefly, then ended the call.
“Blair, are you awake?”
“Yeah… So, um… Jack find out anything?”
“There was no grievance filed by Blair Sandburg. Bergman played you, partner.” Jim went back to massaging my foot.
“I’m not surprised. I am going to file one after we get Bergman behind bars. Actually, Bergman’s behavior should make it easier for a genuine grievance to be awarded to me.”
I got up awkwardly and stumbled to the bathroom, making sure to rub my back where Jim could see me. Sure enough, when I came out, Jim intercepted me and felt down my spine and laid his warm hand on the back of my neck.
“You’re a devious little shit, Sandburg. I could smell you plotting mischief earlier and just now. But, you’ll get your backrub anyway. C’mon.”
~oo~oo~oo~oo~
The backrub led to Jim’s hands massaging other parts of my body, which led to some exploring by my hands of Jim’s anatomy and ended with some mutually satisfying exchanges of bodily fluids and spiking of dopamine levels, followed by prolactin inundating the pair of us into a near coma.
God, I’d missed having sex.
I slipped off to sleep contemplating how connected I felt to Jim today. I wondered if our bodies had produced high oxytocin levels when I’d given my… life force, my energy, my… love to Jim this morning to protect him from any intrusive energy zeroing in on his exposed vulnerabilities from the extraction. Oxytocin -- bonding hormone - maybe… a connection between the physical and spiritual planes… just so interesting…
~oo~oo~oo~oo~
Sandburg was having a nightmare. He’d woken me up with his fearful mutterings and when my shushing him and stroking his back didn’t ease him into restful slumber, I gently shook him awake.
He sat up in bed, holding his body rigid, then with an annoyed sigh slumped back down onto the mattress. I waited to see if he would roll over and go back to sleep, but he didn’t. He just lay there. Thinking.
“Sandburg, do you want to talk about it or go back to sleep?”
“What?” He sounded bewildered, not petulant.
“Your nightmare. Do you want to analyze it to death or just divert yourself from thinking about it? I’ll help distract you, if you want.” If it was me, I’d pick door number two, but this was Blair, so Mr. Psychology might want to expound on dream analysis.
Blair sat up in bed again and ran his hands through his hair, his curls becoming even more abandoned- looking as he scrunched fistfuls of his hair before dropping his hands onto his lap.
He started to slide out of bed, but I stopped him.
“Where are you going?” If it was just to pee, no problem; if it was to brood by himself, no way.
“I don’t think I can go back to sleep and I don’t want to keep you up. I’ll be all right, Jim. Don’t worry about me.”
“I’m citing the sixth commandment of the relationship rules. ‘Thou shalt share what is bugging you with your partner.’ So start sharing.”
Blair stared at me for a long moment, then murmured, “I guess now is as good a time as any.” But he just sat there. Brooding.
I pulled him down and snugged his back against my belly. I tightened my arms around him and said, “I’ve got you. Go on, tell me what’s on your mind.”
He let out a long, drawn-out breath, his body still tense. I waited.
Finally, Blair relaxed against me and said, “It happened a long time ago. I thought that I had dealt with it but apparently I’m still a little confused from the fallout. And thinking about how I reacted to having had a real, honest to god serious relationship, I have to agree with myself on that one.”
I had a sudden mental image of several Blairs nodding their heads together in agreement. I tossed that ridiculous image out of my head and made a supportive grunt.
“What triggered my dream tonight was probably a combination of some recent thinking of mine about the past and being picked up and carried this morning. I have some bad memories about having somebody hauling me around. Although once I knew it was you that had me, I was okay.”
“Carried, huh? Lash?” I flashed on Blair’s recounting to me of how he’d been trussed up and thrown over that crazy fucker’s shoulder and conveyed around that deathtrap of a warehouse. That was one shooting that I’d never regret doing.
“He was sorta icing on the cake. One more bad guy, like Maya’s father’s thug, carting me around before trying to kill me. But I wasn’t talking about them. It was… Shit, Jim. This is hard to do. I never wanted you to know this stuff about me.”
Blair’s heartbeat was picking up and he was tensed up again. I’d have to watch him carefully to make sure he didn’t slip into a panic attack. He took a couple of deep, slow breaths, and then gave a sigh.
“I don’t see myself as a victim; I survived being abused and I always thought that I’d done a pretty good job with getting my head together. Only -- not good enough. I see that now, after meditating and talking with you this week. I’m telling you because I don’t want to mess up this second chance we’re taking with each other. You asked me the other day why I thought letting strangers touch me - molest me -- was acceptable. Shit, I did think it was okay and that sounds so weird…”
Blair trailed off and I couldn’t say I was surprised at what he was tap-dancing around telling me. I’d known for a long time that he’d been high risk for being abused because of the unstable home life he’d had and the constant moving around.
I hugged him hard and kissed the back of his head. “Chief, I get that you were abused in some fashion, probably sexually. Why don’t you just start at the beginning and tell me what happened.”
Silence for a moment, and then another sigh.
“I’ve told Brother Marcus about me. And therapists. So it shouldn’t be so hard to tell my lover. Okay. Well, when I was five years old, Naomi and I moved into her boyfriend’s home. It was a pretty big house, at least to a kindergartener, and his fifteen-year-old son lived there, too.”
Blair’s voice had gone flat and monotone, like he was reading the instructions on how to assemble shelving.
“The son, uh… well, we played games together. And those games shifted from him tickling me to him molesting me. He didn’t try any penetration, but he did do oral sex and taught me to do it on him. He gave me stuff as a reward for playing with him, and he made me promise not to share our secret.”
Blair give a little shiver, then took a couple of deep breaths again before he began to speak.
“But even back then I had a big mouth and I chattered to my teacher about the new games I’d learned from him. All kinds of shit hit the fan then. I remember the screaming and crying my mother did when she was told and how angry and sad she was when we moved out. Her boyfriend didn’t believe me, and his son denied the allegations. There was an investigation, but the son never was actually charged with anything. However, Naomi’s ability as a parent to be protective of me was questioned. I was sent to counseling, and I learned I shouldn’t play those games. I only went maybe three or four times before Naomi and I moved away. Of course, I didn’t put all of that together when I was five, but I understood it later when I was at Rainier and I went back into counseling for the third time.”
“Ah, Chief. I hate that you had to go through that. Naomi was what? Twenty-one? When did you have counseling for the second time? Seems like something’s missing from your story.”
Blair laughed, and it was a mirthless sound.
“There’s more. See, what I got out of the first experience was that it was my fault that we had to move away and I shouldn’t have upset my mother. I should have kept the games secret and not told anyone.
“Fast forward to my thirteenth year. We had moved to Seattle, and I was the smallest boy in my class. By then I’d lived a lot of places and I wanted to have friends, which, of course, is natural for teenagers. That meant I didn’t want to travel around; I wanted to be able to stay in my school and keep the friends I’d made. Not too long after I had my Bar Mitzvah, Mom met a guy named Jake Boles and started working for his company. She really liked him. I really liked him, too, because he did cool stuff with me, and treated me like an adult friend.”
Blair was shaking his head very slightly. “I know now that he was grooming me, and that probably he’d targeted Naomi because she had a son -- a son who looked years younger than his actual age. We moved in with him and for a while nothing happened. Then he made Mom a buyer for his company. It was called… Fair Exchange. He bought unique third world crafts and marketed them, giving the native craftsmen a fair price. Naomi could really get behind that philosophy, and she started traveling -- just short trips at first, then longer and longer as she explored new sources of craftwork for the business. She got paid to do what she loved, and Jake was very effective at making me see how much my mother wanted that job. He convinced me that it would be selfish of me to want her to stop traveling and reinforced that I was grown up and didn’t need my mother to be with me all of the time. After all, I’d been given Jimi’s guitar and I’d celebrated my Bar Mitzvah. And I wanted to stay in Seattle where my friends were. So I was set up just where Jake wanted me.”
The flat, dead, rehearsed tone of voice Blair was using made my heart ache for him because I knew where this story was heading. I'd heard too many similar ones as a cop not to know.
“He was just as good at convincing Mom that it would be the best thing for me to stay with him and let him take care of me while she was gone because he was such a good male role model and I needed stability.”
Blair swallowed audibly. “At first, I enjoyed his attention. He let me drink with him when Mom was gone, because I was growing up, but I had to keep it a secret. Apparently I passed that test, because he upped the ante. We started watching adult movies together. One movie night he got me drunk, maybe he slipped something else in the drink, too, because when I was practically out of it he picked me up and carried me to his bed.”
I tightened my arms around him again, letting him know I was there, I'd be his anchor.
“That was the first time. He had a real fetish about cradling me in his arms while he took me to his room and a lot of times he’d get me from my bed and I’d wake up while I was being carried. That’s why I started to freak out this morning until I knew it was you.”
Blair was still speaking like the life had been sucked out of him. I wanted him to stop… and I wanted him to proceed. Spill all the poison out of him. Go back in time and find him and take care of him and not let that emotional vampire Boles anywhere near him. I could only listen and let him tell me the rest.
“He was excellent at seduction; he made me enjoy what was happening to my body. I didn’t know anything back then about the prostate gland or involuntary bodily responses. He mixed in the seduction with mind-fuck games, too. He told me, and I believed him, that he could tell I really wanted him to mess with me and said the proof was evident when I’d get aroused and have an erection.
“He said it was my fault that he was forced to touch me and… and… perform penetrative sex and oral sex on me. Listen to me here, I’m using clinical terms to distance myself from what happened, like it happened to someone else. Penetrative sex - he fucked me, Jim, and made me blow him. He sucked my dick, too.
“He got me to buy into my own victimization by telling me if I told anyone then I’d be in trouble; everybody would agree that I was just telling lies for attention. They would take me away from Mom and put me in detention where I’d get raped. I didn’t know that what he was doing to me was rape also. I just knew it was wrong, and I felt trapped.
“Jim, I didn’t have anybody I could ask about that stuff and trust that they were telling me the truth. And I remembered when Child Protective Services had talked to Mom before, about Jeremy molesting me, and I could tell that they hadn’t approved of her very much. I didn’t want her to be in any trouble.”
Blair shivered, and I covered us up with another blanket from the foot of the bed, and resumed holding him against me. I whispered to him that I was sorry he'd been hurt and that I loved him. Blair squeezed my arm back, and was silent for a moment, then haltingly began to talk again.
“Jake kept telling me how much Naomi liked her job and how nice it was for her to have a home to come back to after her buying trips. He told me how she would hate me for spoiling everything for her if I told anyone what the two of us were doing.
“He didn’t act so charming towards me anymore; he’d pretty much switched to plain blackmailing me -- Naomi’s happiness for my sexual services. He started isolating me more and more, so I could be available and under his thumb. He took me out of public school - away from my friends and any teachers I might have told about what he was doing - and home schooled me. He wouldn’t let me see my buddies. He always had a plausible story to tell Naomi - I wasn’t being challenged in public school; I’d outgrown my friends.
“I felt sick and angry and trapped. I wanted to protect my mother and I remembered all too well what had happened when I was five. I figured I was grown up and I could handle it. And I lived for the day that Naomi would decide that it was time to move on. Except she didn’t. She’d come back and Jake would charm the socks off of her and I’d have to pretend everything was fine. I wasn’t fine, though, and after the sex became a regular occurrence - and he always told me that he loved me while we were having sex - I started having panic attacks. Luckily, I never had one in front of Naomi.”
Blair repeated that ugly laugh.
“Things came to a head the day that I stole a microscope from a store and was caught. I lied about stealing it; said Jake was supposed to have made arrangements to pay for it. Nobody believed me and I had to go to court. I almost told the truth to the judge, but I didn’t. I think… I wanted to get caught. I remember feeling so reckless before I did it and so angry about everything, including Jake not letting me finish my school science project.
“I didn’t go to Juvie. Instead, I had to do community service - a lot of it - at the library and the Burke Museum. That was great, actually. It kept me away from Jake. I had a probation officer, too, and he was a good man. He had me play basketball twice a week with his probation group, even took us boys up to Cascade to see Orville play - the tickets were donated - and he’d just show up sometimes at the house. Jake didn’t like that, and it cut down on the number of times I had to have sex with him. But I never told anybody what he was doing with me -- not even the counselor I had to see for a year. Mrs. Johnson would ask me if anybody was molesting me. I always denied it. I was afraid of the repercussions if I did tell."
I almost bit my tongue so I wouldn't say anthing right now that would derail Blair from telling me what had happened to him, but how I wished all those well-meaning people had been able to put Blair's abuser behind bars. Nowadays they might have a kid in Blair's situation examined for physical signs of abuse, but back then an exam was less likely, especially if the child denied he was being sexually abused.
“So, that was the second time I had counseling, and it helped in a round about way. But since I wouldn’t talk about what was happening, their hands were tied. It wasn't their fault Jake kept on abusing me,” he said briskly. Hmmm... he sounded like he wanted to rush past what he'd just said, and all of a sudden it clicked in my head why. Damn it. Even after all the counseling he'd had, he still had some doubts about whose fault it was that he'd been abused.
"Chief, it wasn't your fault. You were just a kid. Kids think like kids, not adults. Your reasons for not telling made sense to you, don't beat yourself up about it now. The only one responsible for what that asshole did was him."
He fell silent for a little while and I felt so sad for him. I kissed him softly on the back of his head again. He shouldn’t have been in such a vulnerable position, and I wondered how Naomi could’ve been so blind and not seen that something was wrong. But it wasn't her fault, either.
He cleared his throat and went back to speaking in a detached manner. “I think my counselor and probation officer suspected Jake was fucking me. They recommended I go back to public school, which was a relief, but that I also take extra courses through the home schooling program. They knew I wanted to go to college - I saw it as a way out for myself, without having to tell Naomi why I wanted to leave home so young. I took some classes for dual credit at North Seattle Community College, after I turned fifteen, to help finish up my high school credits. I stayed very busy and very much away from home. I spent time with my friends again and I had fun, but I couldn’t be honest with them. Any friendships I kept stayed on superficial levels.
“Counseling ended a year after I went to court, but Mr. Wells kept me on probation till my sixteenth birthday. He also insisted that Jake put a lock on my door, once I admitted that I had nightmares about somebody breaking in. It was as close as I could come to telling the truth. Jake still made me have sex with him, but at least I wasn’t being snatched out of my bed.”
I promised myself that unless he was passed out to be sure he was awake if I needed to carry him. At least now I knew why he might panic if he woke up like he did this morning, cradled in a man's arms.
Blair shivered again and pushed against me, his back to my front. He cleared his throat before going on.
“I graduated and turned sixteen in May. Scholarships and financial aid had been awarded to me from Rainier - I didn’t want to stay in the same city as Jake -- and I planned to move out to a dorm when the first term began in August. Not that Jake wanted me to leave. He was trying to get me to enroll at Washington State University and commute, but I knew leaving to go to school was my ticket out of hell with him.
“Then Jake was killed in a car accident. I knew I shouldn’t be glad about that, but I was relieved the son-of-a-bitch was dead.”
Blair stopped then and I craned my neck to look at his face. He was chewing his lip.
“I was too old for magical thinking and I knew the car accident had nothing to do with me, but still… I felt guilty that I’d wished him dead so many times. And in the beginning he was nice to me, took me to the Super Bowl right after he met mom. I thought if things had been different, if I hadn’t caused him to want to have sex with me, then he’d have stayed a fun guy.” Blair shook his head, making a swishing sound on the pillow. “Pedophiles are so manipulative. I didn’t understand back then that I didn’t make him do anything. He’d only been nice to me to get me to trust him. Taking me to games had been the bait on his hook.”
I made a sound that I hoped was soothing, but evidently was more like a growl, because Blair patted me on the arm. “It’s okay, Jim. I pretty much did get my head straightened out about what he’d done, and he’s dead, man.”
“Saves me the trouble of going after him,” I said, not bothering to keep the anger out of my voice. “So, you were free. Did you tell Naomi then what had happened?” I suspected he hadn’t.
“No. I’m never going to tell her and I want your promise that you won’t either. It would only cause harm to her and it wasn’t her fault.” Blair had a determined tone to his voice and I promised him I wouldn’t tell her.
I thought that Naomi did bear some responsibility for giving Blair the mindset as a child that he was supposed to protect his mother, not the other way around. That bastard Boles had picked up on Blair’s protectiveness about his mother and used it to his advantage. Still, I would respect my partner’s wishes. I might have to have some quality time with a punching bag when we got back to Cascade, but I’d practice some self control and I wouldn’t blow up at his mother.
“Was Naomi home when he died?”
He shook his head. “Till Naomi came home, I stayed at a friend’s house, my friend whose family had a Chinese restaurant. I already worked part time for them in the kitchen - that’s where I learned to make some of those Chinese dishes. The company fell apart and Naomi’s job was over, so we spent the rest of the summer traveling together until I started Rainier -- to help us both heal from our loss. And I was a total mess, Jim. Naomi thought my attitude was from grief and that in time I would return to being the cheerful kid I had always been careful to seem. I didn’t. I was a brat when I first went to Rainier. I was socially awkward with the older kids, and I tried to bolster my self-esteem by being an obnoxious know-it-all. And I didn’t have sex at all. For years, Jim. I felt like anybody who showed an interest in me would be getting a bad deal. I was dirty and no amount of washing was going to make me feel clean again. I didn’t trust my body anymore, since it had kept betraying me with Jake.”
I thought of all those times I’d called Blair a table leg and I felt ashamed. But he must have gotten over his decision to not have sex, because I knew he’d had plenty of sex after I met him. Although, his late entry into the whole dating scene did explain why sometimes he’d acted so immaturely. He’d reminded me of a kid in a candy store at times when we’d have dealings with beautiful women. A sticky-handed kid whose gawking seemed out of place with the sensitivity and intelligence that was his usual M.O.
“I threw myself into my school work and I took as many classes as they would let me. Things started changing for me when I took a psychology class that covered the effects of sexual abuse. I recognized some of my own behaviors and feelings.”
I noticed that Blair began sounding more animated as he told me more.
“I read as much as I could about boys being abused and about pedophiles. Hell, my getting a minor in psychology was entirely motivated by my desire to understand myself better and to figure out a way to be normal. And I wanted normal. I wanted to be able to kiss a girl or let a guy touch me again. See, I also figured out that I was bisexual, and I was so relieved to learn that being sexually abused by a man couldn’t turn me gay. Any feelings of desire I experienced for, oh, rugby players or a male TA were just part of my normal sexual orientation. Man, I devoured Kinsey’s research. And I began really listening to the professors who gave me suggestions on how to act in class. And out of class.”
Blair added, “More than one prof suggested I check out the student counseling service. And in my junior year, I finally did. I told my counselor the truth. And it was very hard and it took a long time to make that decision. But it was also freeing. We explored my feelings and I had a lot of misconceptions straightened out. Everything that son-of-a-bitch had lied to me about got neutralized and I started to feel better about myself. I felt like the old me was back, and I started making good friends, friends I cared about and who cared about me.
“Dating was hard but learning to be sexual was a part of my recovery. I found that I could have sex, and that I was good at it. I felt relieved and I… uh, maybe overdid it. Soon after I began going out with people, my counselor left her job, and I was transferred to a new counselor. By the time I got some trust and rapport going with him, he also left for another job. I figured I was doing pretty well by then and I didn’t want to start over again with a new person, so I ended my sessions. In hindsight, that was probably a mistake. I guess my little system of not dating friends, and not getting emotionally involved with my lovers was part of the damage from being sexually abused. Talking with you has shown me I’ve still got some blind spots. I’m sorry, Jim.”
“What have you got to be sorry about? None of that was your fault! You do know that, right? I know that!” I felt fiercely protective of him and be damned if I was going to let him blame himself.
“I’m sorry because I should have told you a long time ago. I was quick enough to want you to talk about the times in your life when you were a traumatized kid or about your repressed memories of Peru.”
“The important thing is that you did decide to trust me with your secret. Thank you, Blair.”
Blair wiggled away from me far enough to roll over so that he was facing me. “Jim, I didn’t tell you before because I was worried knowing about me would change how you treated me. I didn’t want you to feel sorry for me or to handle me like I was going to break.” He gave me a look that was half serious and half joking. “I will kick your ass if you try, so I’m giving you fair warning -- I’m a survivor, not a victim. And us survivors are tough.”
I moved so that I was on top of him, and I slowly bent my head to kiss him. He was warm and pliant under me, and, yeah, this was a test. After Blair brought up the abuse he’d suffered, I wanted to see if he could handle physical sensations. The first hint of anxiety and I would stop. But he just opened his mouth and invited me in. I kissed him until I was satisfied he wasn’t reacting badly to my touch.
“Did I pass, Jim?” Blair was looking up at me with a knowing look.
“Yeah. But I know that being carried is a trigger for you --”
“Only if I’m asleep and wake up. You could pick me up right now and it wouldn’t bother me.”
Well. I couldn’t let that pass. Besides, I thought Blair would welcome a bit of joking around after all that heavy shit he’d talked about. He wanted normal, and normal for us included clowning around.
I rolled off of him and the bed, and stood up. I dragged him across the bed, ignoring his screech of “Jim!” as I reached down and hauled him into my arms.
I tuned out his demands to put him down since they were said with an undertone of laughter. After a minute, I pretended to drop him and he grabbed me tight around the neck.
I carried him through the dark bedroom easily and went to the living room window. One thing all these cabins had in common was nice, big picture windows so renters could see why they’d ponied up for the scenic view instead of Motel 6. Dawn was just starting, the sky lightening up, but the sun wasn’t in sight quite yet.
Blair was blushing. I could feel the heat from his face as he said to me, “What now, Rhett Butler?”
I snorted. “You’re no Scarlett O’Hara, Chief. I just couldn’t resist teasing you when you threw down that challenge.”
“I didn’t - Oh. I guess I did. Okay. Hey, I might as well make the best of this undignified and unmanly position I landed myself in.” He tugged at my head until he could meet my lips and kissed me again. Several times. I was contemplating acting out the rest of Gone With the Wind and carrying him back to bed, when the sun bursting over the horizon caught our attention.
“No matter how often I see the sun rise, it’s always like the first time,” Blair said, almost dreamily.
“What you just said? That’s how I feel about making love with you.” I kissed him again before letting his feet slide to the floor. We kissed in front of the window in the light of a new dawn, and I felt like we were blessed.
We watched the sun move on its path into the sky, Blair in front of me, his back against my front, his hands covering mine. We’d both gone silent, but we were communicating without words. I felt his trust and contentment and I knew he could sense the commitment and trust and love I felt towards him.
There was something I wanted to do. Something that would capture this moment for us and give us a tangible reminder of how we felt about each other. Things would get crazy when we returned to Cascade later today and I wanted him to have something of this calm before the oncoming storm to help anchor him -- and me. I wanted to be able to look at him and see my gift to him.
“There’s something I need to do. Will you stay here a moment and wait for me?”
Blair nodded and I strode into the bedroom and opened his backpack. I found what I needed and tucked it into my fist so it was hidden. Then I returned to his side. He looked so beautiful to me, naked in the morning light.
I faced him and showed him what I held. “I gave this to you once, in friendship and gratitude for your help. You kept it, even if you couldn’t bear to wear it, while we were apart.” Blair’s eyes told me that I’d gotten that part right.
“Will you wear it for me, again, Blair?” He softly said yes and started to reach for it, but I gave a small shake of my head to halt him.
“I love you, Blair Jacob Sandburg. You’re my friend, my lover, my guide. You’ve been my lodestar ever since you saved me from death by garbage truck. I don’t want to live without you anymore. Will you wear this as a symbol that we’re together again - for the rest of our lives?
Blair’s eyes looked shiny and wet, and he cleared his throat before answering me. “Yes, I will. I tell you three times, James Joseph Ellison, that I love you and I’ll be with you till death do us part.”
I raised his necklace to my lips and kissed it, then slid it over his head. It gleamed on his naked chest, the many-pointed star resting a few inches below the hollow of his throat.
He drew me to him, the lodestar necklace between us. I could feel its imprint on my skin. We touched each other, and I wrote my love for him on his body with my hands and mouth. He bent his head at an angle, like a bright-eyed bird, and laughed as he said our auras were glowing.
And while the sun filled the room with a brilliant dazzle, we sanctioned this covenant, these sacred promises to each other, with cries of joy and completion.
~oo~oo~oo~oo~
Continued in A Fair Distance:Comes a Time. Chapter One
Laurie