Exorcism via fic
I haven't had the best of weeks and apparently I have decided that because I'm not having a good time nobody else should either.
Jim and Blair, vaguely pre-slash not that it matters given the story, 3,000 words. Much of what's here is implied rather than graphic, but what's implied is still rape, torture and death. There's maybe a micron of comfort to go with all the hurt I pile on our boys. Assuming you go in having read the warnings, I can assure you that as a reader you're unlikely to be more disturbed by this than I was as the author.
elymraemilie has promised me fluffy kitties on her Flickr account. I think I might need some of those. Sorry, people...
The giant sits at the edge of a now silent jungle where there are no bird calls, no cries of beasts. The light is dim as if the moon itself is trying to hide. The jungle is silent, but the giant grunts occasionally as its body changes. Its hair lengthens and curls, its eyes change colour from brown to blue. When the giant first came to this place, it had breasts and a smooth pudenda. Now, its chest is flat and hairy and a pale, limp penis and balls hang at its groin. The jungle remains silent; even the very insects creep stealthily away. The giant no longer grunts, but sound comes, muffled, from its gut - the snarl of a wolf, trapped and blind in the giant's belly. The snarling stops, because the wolf is chewing, trying to free itself, digging its teeth into the stinking flesh that surrounds it. But the giant is too large, too foul, too *much*. The wolf could chew and gag and spit a long, long time before it reached the light, and the wolf doesn't have that time to spare.
***
Blair staggers through a silent jungle, his mind stumbling as much as his feet. There's something he's looking for, something he needs to do, and he just wishes that he could remember. He looks nervously behind him. The jungle is silent, hushed, except when it isn't. Sometimes, there's a rustle of sound, the breath of wind through the foliage around him, but no sigh of dancing air against his cheek. Something is following him and Blair knows that there's danger here, and he needs to move on, to do something important - if he could just *remember*.
***
The giant wears the face of a man called Blair Sandburg, just like before now it wore the face of a woman called Rangimarie Kingi, just like before that it wore the face of a woman called Sabai Idrus, just like before it wore the face of a man known only as Pukara, just like it's worn the faces of a great many men and women. It's very cosmopolitan, the giant, and anticipatory, because it holds in its right hand something very precious - a jaguar. It examines the jaguar with delight, and then, with great delicacy it uses the very edge of its finger nail, sharp as a razor, to begin skinning the jaguar alive.
***
There's a weight in Blair's chest, pushing hard against his breastbone and it hurts him to breathe. His eyes prickle with tears and his skin prickles with cold and he's afraid, so he keeps pushing on, even though the ground is uneven and the branches flick him in the face when he misjudges his way. There's something he needs to do, and its important, and he just hopes that he'll have enough strength when he remembers what the hell it is that's so important because his legs feel like lead.
He's so caught up in the need to keep moving, to find that important something or someone or someplace that he doesn't notice the movement beside him until it's too late. He throws up his hand in feeble defense and shouts out something incoherent until he realises that what he sees (who he sees) is Jim. Jim, whom he'd forgotten until just this moment, which is astonishingly strange because how could he forget Jim?
Jim's pale and tired looking and he catches hold of Blair's upheld hand and grabs it hard. "You have to promise me something, Chief. You have to promise not to let go." Blair hesitates. It's a surprisingly difficult promise to make, even when Jim begs him. "Please. Promise me you won't let go." Finally, Blair nods.
"Good," Jim says. "Good. Come on, we have to go this way." He drags Blair off in a direction that looks the same as all the directions in the jungle. It's dark, and every leaf and tree and vine looks the same as any other, and Jim's hand is cold and sweaty wrapped around his.
"Where are we going?" Blair asks.
"Somewhere important."
"Important how?" Blair asks breathlessly. Jim is setting quite the pace, even though he trips tiredly the way that Blair does sometimes. But however Jim might stumble, his grip on Blair's hand never falters or slips.
"I'll tell you later," Jim replies. Blair digs his heels in almost literally, hauls back against the hold that Jim has on his hand.
Jim looks panicked. "You can't let go."
"The hell I can't."
"You promised, Sandburg."
Blair pauses, his chest heaving for breath. "Why?" he asks and he can hear the tears behind it. "I was going to go anyway." And he was, he remembers that now at least, the phonecalls that he made on his cell phone when Jim wasn't around, both of them pretending that Jim didn't know what he was planning.
"I know, Chief, and I don't blame you, but this time, you have to promise to hold on. You promise?"
There's a reason behind all this, a bad reason, and Blair rebels. Now the son of a bitch wants him to hang on. *Now* he wants it. Blair stares at their hands, at Jim's cold, sweaty hand holding his and fights a battle until eventually he nods. "Okay."
Jim lets out a long breath. He looks sick, Blair realises, and is ashamed that he's only just noticed that. "Okay," Jim says, and he drags Blair on through that dark, silent forest.
***
The giant is very careful about its work but not careful about the mess it makes. The giant has always been like that. It marks off tiny squares, four cuts there and there and here and there, and then it peels furred skin away with a surgeon's precision. The skin sticks to its nails and hand sometimes and impatiently it flicks its hand in the air, shaking off the detritus. The tiny pieces of skin swirl away, like dust on the wind, like seeds waiting for fertile soil, like insects seeking a place to land and rest; tiny patches of skin and hair twisting in the air and coming to land on the canopy, caught on the rough branches, glissading their way through the networked boughs to find the earth.
***
They've been walking a while and Blair is tired, and he's scared because he's seen Jim like this before, the intense focus of a man on a mission and since Jim's missions are all too often dangerous, Blair would really like to know what's going on. Jim, however, is apparently in lock-down mode.
Blair is sweating and his hair occasionally sticks to his skin to be irritably wiped back with his free hand. Something, a leaf maybe, drifts down from above to flutter against Blair's eye. He brushes at it, irritated all over again because it still feels like some tiny fragment is stuck in his eye - and then he stops short.
Memory: dropping three pills into a cup of tea that he's made for Jim, nattering away about its soothing properties like everything is okay, like everything is just fine but why the hell would he drop those pills into the tea, staring at them as they disappear below the surface, stirring the liquid with fierce concentration and spine-tingling anticipation? Why would he do that? Why would he smirk when Jim complains about the taste, and snark, "Don't be a baby, just drink the damn thing," and why would he want to punch the air in exultation when Jim looks at him confusedly when he realises that he's been drugged. It's not like he's ever wanted to see Jim like that, dazed, struggling, waiting to have everything that he is stripped away from him....
"Jim, man, what's going on?" His voice is tremulous. He ought to sound angry, strong, a grown man taking no bullshit, but that's not what he sounds like at all. Jim looks at him, and his desolately determined expression terrifies Blair.
"It's a mess, Chief. But it's okay, I know what to do."
"How? How do you know what to do? What the hell is going on?" He twists his hand, tries to pull away because suddenly he's suspicious, he's scared, he wants the truth. Jim clenches his jaw, and his eyes blaze with something that Blair can't understand as his hand closes even more sternly on Blair's.
"You don't let go! You understand me?"
"Then answer me! Tell me what's going on!" Jim's face twists, like he hurts, and he takes a long shaky breath and swallows.
"You have to trust me here, okay?"
It's not like that's not a loaded request. Once upon a time... once upon a time Blair would have shrugged and said, 'Sure', and waited, but there's history between them now, and Blair knows that all the meditation in the world hasn't shifted that childish resentful voice that wants to know why he should trust Jim when Jim didn't trust him. All the second-guessing they've done of each other, and that was why Blair was getting ready to go, because he couldn't stand it any longer, not the way that they talked at each other, knowing that day to day was a solid crust of ice they walked on over a depthless lake; too much was hidden under the surface and there wasn't going to be thaw any time soon.
"How do you know, Jim? What do you know?" He tries to keep it reasonable, an academic enquiry.
"I've been here before, Chief, that's all. You can know things without wanting to think about them. You know?" Jim's face and voice are abashed at this point, almost ashamed.
"I guess." Blair has been here before too, once, even if the memory is blurry now, melding into a flash of light and the heave of his gut as he threw up water. "But I wish you'd tell me, Jim. You know me, I want to know things *and* I want to think about them." He tries for a winning smile, but his face doesn't want to do the moves. Jim just shakes his head and leads them on.
The ground is starting to rise now, and the trees are growing smaller, shrubbier, although the ground is still littered with mulch and grass and vines. Jim trips, and Blair can't even be sure that he takes advantage, that he is breaking that promise not to let go, but the result is the same in the end. His hand slips free from Jim's grip, and Blair has no time to wonder about the consequences because they're on him like rabid dogs.
Not memory, real time, a projection on his eyes like a PowerPoint on a screen: Jim's bedroom in the loft, Jim's bed, Jim naked under him, Blair astride him looking down with ecstatic joy at the ruined man lying between his straddled legs. Jim opens the one eye left to him and he mouths, "It's okay, Blair." Blair hears him clearly, and that shouldn't be possible because he can see the blood and the vacant space inside Jim's mouth.
He's on his knees, a thin wail coming out of his mouth and all he can see is black because his eyes are closed and his face is mashed into Jim's shirt, and Jim is still speaking, and holding him tight, muttering over and over, "It's okay, it's okay, Blair, it's okay." Blair struggles to be free, frantic because, god, this is his fault, it's his fault, it's his hands and his mouth and his dick that the monster is using to hurt Jim, and he fights to get away, god, how can Jim bear to touch him.
Jim sets him free - up to a point. He lets Blair out of his arms but the hold on his hand is renewed. Blair stares at this joining; stares at Jim's hand, as cold and sweaty as Blair's own; stares at the way that his arm shivers and spasms.
"I have to go back." It's flat, a statement, and Jim needs to let go of Blair now. Right now.
"There's no point. It's too late."
"No way, no way." Blair's voice shakes. "I'm not wandering through the pretty jungle while that thing uses me ..." he swallows, "come *on*, I have to go back, I have to fight this, I have to stop this, Jim, come on, *please*..."
Jim shakes his head. All this time he's looked sick, scared, distracted (and well he might be fucking distracted, and Blair feels rage burn in his gut and it's not rage at the monster wearing his skin) but he hasn't looked angry until now.
"Could you fight it when it bought the pills, Sandburg? Or when it dropped them in the tea or when it put the cuffs on me or when it carried me up the stairs to my bedroom? Because, trust me, if you couldn't stop it then you sure as hell can't stop it now."
"I'm killing you, you fuckwit!" It's a scream. If there were any birds here, they would have scrambled for the sky but the only noise is Blair.
"No, no you're not, it's not you, it's not." Jim's hand is still locked around Blair's and he looks just as distraught as Blair and what the hell is this, what the hell is going on, how did they end up here?
"Yes it is, I let it in and now it's hurting you - "
He stops because Jim has pulled him in close again, a hug, but Jim's voice is hard. "Listen to me. I know. I know that it found a little crack somewhere in you and it forced its way in, I know that because it's taking a fuckload of pleasure in stripping you down as much as me." Blair understands what that means; it means his possessor taunting Jim with Blair's voice after futzing around in Blair's darkest heart like someone who's found forgotten boxes in a cellar. "You think it couldn't have been me instead, and you bleeding on that bed?" Jim's voice roughens, takes on an odd, strained rhythm. "You little shit, you make a labrat out of me, you make a freak out of me to my city and then you think that you can make it all better? You wanted my dick, Chief, you've got it now. You like it?" And then Jim stops, and he and Blair are on their knees and crushed together and Blair can feel how Jim's gut heaves, like he'd throw up if only he could, if only it would do any good.
"Listen to me," Jim says, in his own voice now, breath hot against Blair's skin. "I know what we have to do, and I don't like it, and I *know* you won't like it either, but Incacha told me." A long, shuddery sigh passes over Blair's skin. "Incacha told me, and he was pretty damn pissed with me. We both screwed this one up, I promise. You don't get to take all the blame, not this time, not any other."
"What do we have to do?" Damn it, he's crying. Stupid, pointless thing to do, but Blair can't stop.
"Come on." Jim gently disengages himself from the hold they have of each other, but his hand never leaves Blair's body, until finally they stand hand in hand again. "We're still heading uphill here, Chief."
Blair nods, and tries to wipe at his eyes and his nose with his sleeve. He's a mess. Everything is a misbegotten, awful mess, but at least he's sure that he won't let go of Jim's hand again.
"Why me?"
"What?" Jim asks.
"You said it could have picked you. Why me?" Aside from the fact that he was a resentful, perverted asshole.
Jim shrugs. He looks shamed again.
"Because...."
"Yeah? Because?" Blair snaps.
"Because it knew that the minute it left me that I'd eat my fucking gun or step under a fucking bus or whatever. I would have been better in one way, sentinel, it could have made me something a thousand times worse than Barnes, but you... you wouldn't do that, you'd keep hoping that there was something that you could do to get back at it, to stop it, and you'd keep thinking that, wherever you were, dead man walking, or in a cell at Conover, and that would be just be the frosting on the cupcake for it. So it picked you."
"And what if it's right, what if I could - "
"You can't," Jim spat. "It ate that part of you, it's sitting in its belly right now, but watching you try..." He pulled Blair along after him up the slope. "Sorry."
Blair knew what the 'sorry' was for. For the looks, for the eyerolls, for the trenchant comments about 'metaphysical crap', for the books left unread, the conversations derailed. "So Incacha was pissed, huh?" he asks softly.
"I have an attitude problem," Jim says. Blair can't help himself. He laughs, a tiny, bitter chuckle.
Jim grins; death's-head amusement. "Yeah. Yuk it up, Sandburg. Here we are."
Here is the top of the slope - a promontory looking down, way down over miles of jungle.
Blair gasps, and then coughs. His throat is too dry. "Oh no."
Jim nods.
"Oh, come *on*."
"Said you wouldn't like it."
"This is it?"
"Yeah, baby, this is it."
Blair looks out over the land spread out below, but he doesn't look out over the drop. Jim's always been better with heights than he has.
"Jim..." he begins.
"All you have to promise, Blair, is not to let go."
Blair nods, tenses half his face trying to keep his mouth steady. "Hey," he says.
"Yeah?"
"I guess if we're going to do this properly, we should take a few steps back, and get a real run-up and flying leap going."
Jim smiles then, one of his sweet smiles, and how long is it since Blair saw one of those?
"Guess you're right. Good idea, Chief." They take a few steps back with their hands locked together, and they look at each other. Last time. Maybe not.
"You ready?" Jim rasps.
"As I'll ever be, which is to say, not very fucking ready at all." But Jim has already started running, and it's natural to run beside him, even seeing where they're going, so Blair gives it his all, like it's a race and they reach the edge and they leap.
Blair doesn't let go.
Jim and Blair, vaguely pre-slash not that it matters given the story, 3,000 words. Much of what's here is implied rather than graphic, but what's implied is still rape, torture and death. There's maybe a micron of comfort to go with all the hurt I pile on our boys. Assuming you go in having read the warnings, I can assure you that as a reader you're unlikely to be more disturbed by this than I was as the author.
elymraemilie has promised me fluffy kitties on her Flickr account. I think I might need some of those. Sorry, people...
The giant sits at the edge of a now silent jungle where there are no bird calls, no cries of beasts. The light is dim as if the moon itself is trying to hide. The jungle is silent, but the giant grunts occasionally as its body changes. Its hair lengthens and curls, its eyes change colour from brown to blue. When the giant first came to this place, it had breasts and a smooth pudenda. Now, its chest is flat and hairy and a pale, limp penis and balls hang at its groin. The jungle remains silent; even the very insects creep stealthily away. The giant no longer grunts, but sound comes, muffled, from its gut - the snarl of a wolf, trapped and blind in the giant's belly. The snarling stops, because the wolf is chewing, trying to free itself, digging its teeth into the stinking flesh that surrounds it. But the giant is too large, too foul, too *much*. The wolf could chew and gag and spit a long, long time before it reached the light, and the wolf doesn't have that time to spare.
***
Blair staggers through a silent jungle, his mind stumbling as much as his feet. There's something he's looking for, something he needs to do, and he just wishes that he could remember. He looks nervously behind him. The jungle is silent, hushed, except when it isn't. Sometimes, there's a rustle of sound, the breath of wind through the foliage around him, but no sigh of dancing air against his cheek. Something is following him and Blair knows that there's danger here, and he needs to move on, to do something important - if he could just *remember*.
***
The giant wears the face of a man called Blair Sandburg, just like before now it wore the face of a woman called Rangimarie Kingi, just like before that it wore the face of a woman called Sabai Idrus, just like before it wore the face of a man known only as Pukara, just like it's worn the faces of a great many men and women. It's very cosmopolitan, the giant, and anticipatory, because it holds in its right hand something very precious - a jaguar. It examines the jaguar with delight, and then, with great delicacy it uses the very edge of its finger nail, sharp as a razor, to begin skinning the jaguar alive.
***
There's a weight in Blair's chest, pushing hard against his breastbone and it hurts him to breathe. His eyes prickle with tears and his skin prickles with cold and he's afraid, so he keeps pushing on, even though the ground is uneven and the branches flick him in the face when he misjudges his way. There's something he needs to do, and its important, and he just hopes that he'll have enough strength when he remembers what the hell it is that's so important because his legs feel like lead.
He's so caught up in the need to keep moving, to find that important something or someone or someplace that he doesn't notice the movement beside him until it's too late. He throws up his hand in feeble defense and shouts out something incoherent until he realises that what he sees (who he sees) is Jim. Jim, whom he'd forgotten until just this moment, which is astonishingly strange because how could he forget Jim?
Jim's pale and tired looking and he catches hold of Blair's upheld hand and grabs it hard. "You have to promise me something, Chief. You have to promise not to let go." Blair hesitates. It's a surprisingly difficult promise to make, even when Jim begs him. "Please. Promise me you won't let go." Finally, Blair nods.
"Good," Jim says. "Good. Come on, we have to go this way." He drags Blair off in a direction that looks the same as all the directions in the jungle. It's dark, and every leaf and tree and vine looks the same as any other, and Jim's hand is cold and sweaty wrapped around his.
"Where are we going?" Blair asks.
"Somewhere important."
"Important how?" Blair asks breathlessly. Jim is setting quite the pace, even though he trips tiredly the way that Blair does sometimes. But however Jim might stumble, his grip on Blair's hand never falters or slips.
"I'll tell you later," Jim replies. Blair digs his heels in almost literally, hauls back against the hold that Jim has on his hand.
Jim looks panicked. "You can't let go."
"The hell I can't."
"You promised, Sandburg."
Blair pauses, his chest heaving for breath. "Why?" he asks and he can hear the tears behind it. "I was going to go anyway." And he was, he remembers that now at least, the phonecalls that he made on his cell phone when Jim wasn't around, both of them pretending that Jim didn't know what he was planning.
"I know, Chief, and I don't blame you, but this time, you have to promise to hold on. You promise?"
There's a reason behind all this, a bad reason, and Blair rebels. Now the son of a bitch wants him to hang on. *Now* he wants it. Blair stares at their hands, at Jim's cold, sweaty hand holding his and fights a battle until eventually he nods. "Okay."
Jim lets out a long breath. He looks sick, Blair realises, and is ashamed that he's only just noticed that. "Okay," Jim says, and he drags Blair on through that dark, silent forest.
***
The giant is very careful about its work but not careful about the mess it makes. The giant has always been like that. It marks off tiny squares, four cuts there and there and here and there, and then it peels furred skin away with a surgeon's precision. The skin sticks to its nails and hand sometimes and impatiently it flicks its hand in the air, shaking off the detritus. The tiny pieces of skin swirl away, like dust on the wind, like seeds waiting for fertile soil, like insects seeking a place to land and rest; tiny patches of skin and hair twisting in the air and coming to land on the canopy, caught on the rough branches, glissading their way through the networked boughs to find the earth.
***
They've been walking a while and Blair is tired, and he's scared because he's seen Jim like this before, the intense focus of a man on a mission and since Jim's missions are all too often dangerous, Blair would really like to know what's going on. Jim, however, is apparently in lock-down mode.
Blair is sweating and his hair occasionally sticks to his skin to be irritably wiped back with his free hand. Something, a leaf maybe, drifts down from above to flutter against Blair's eye. He brushes at it, irritated all over again because it still feels like some tiny fragment is stuck in his eye - and then he stops short.
Memory: dropping three pills into a cup of tea that he's made for Jim, nattering away about its soothing properties like everything is okay, like everything is just fine but why the hell would he drop those pills into the tea, staring at them as they disappear below the surface, stirring the liquid with fierce concentration and spine-tingling anticipation? Why would he do that? Why would he smirk when Jim complains about the taste, and snark, "Don't be a baby, just drink the damn thing," and why would he want to punch the air in exultation when Jim looks at him confusedly when he realises that he's been drugged. It's not like he's ever wanted to see Jim like that, dazed, struggling, waiting to have everything that he is stripped away from him....
"Jim, man, what's going on?" His voice is tremulous. He ought to sound angry, strong, a grown man taking no bullshit, but that's not what he sounds like at all. Jim looks at him, and his desolately determined expression terrifies Blair.
"It's a mess, Chief. But it's okay, I know what to do."
"How? How do you know what to do? What the hell is going on?" He twists his hand, tries to pull away because suddenly he's suspicious, he's scared, he wants the truth. Jim clenches his jaw, and his eyes blaze with something that Blair can't understand as his hand closes even more sternly on Blair's.
"You don't let go! You understand me?"
"Then answer me! Tell me what's going on!" Jim's face twists, like he hurts, and he takes a long shaky breath and swallows.
"You have to trust me here, okay?"
It's not like that's not a loaded request. Once upon a time... once upon a time Blair would have shrugged and said, 'Sure', and waited, but there's history between them now, and Blair knows that all the meditation in the world hasn't shifted that childish resentful voice that wants to know why he should trust Jim when Jim didn't trust him. All the second-guessing they've done of each other, and that was why Blair was getting ready to go, because he couldn't stand it any longer, not the way that they talked at each other, knowing that day to day was a solid crust of ice they walked on over a depthless lake; too much was hidden under the surface and there wasn't going to be thaw any time soon.
"How do you know, Jim? What do you know?" He tries to keep it reasonable, an academic enquiry.
"I've been here before, Chief, that's all. You can know things without wanting to think about them. You know?" Jim's face and voice are abashed at this point, almost ashamed.
"I guess." Blair has been here before too, once, even if the memory is blurry now, melding into a flash of light and the heave of his gut as he threw up water. "But I wish you'd tell me, Jim. You know me, I want to know things *and* I want to think about them." He tries for a winning smile, but his face doesn't want to do the moves. Jim just shakes his head and leads them on.
The ground is starting to rise now, and the trees are growing smaller, shrubbier, although the ground is still littered with mulch and grass and vines. Jim trips, and Blair can't even be sure that he takes advantage, that he is breaking that promise not to let go, but the result is the same in the end. His hand slips free from Jim's grip, and Blair has no time to wonder about the consequences because they're on him like rabid dogs.
Not memory, real time, a projection on his eyes like a PowerPoint on a screen: Jim's bedroom in the loft, Jim's bed, Jim naked under him, Blair astride him looking down with ecstatic joy at the ruined man lying between his straddled legs. Jim opens the one eye left to him and he mouths, "It's okay, Blair." Blair hears him clearly, and that shouldn't be possible because he can see the blood and the vacant space inside Jim's mouth.
He's on his knees, a thin wail coming out of his mouth and all he can see is black because his eyes are closed and his face is mashed into Jim's shirt, and Jim is still speaking, and holding him tight, muttering over and over, "It's okay, it's okay, Blair, it's okay." Blair struggles to be free, frantic because, god, this is his fault, it's his fault, it's his hands and his mouth and his dick that the monster is using to hurt Jim, and he fights to get away, god, how can Jim bear to touch him.
Jim sets him free - up to a point. He lets Blair out of his arms but the hold on his hand is renewed. Blair stares at this joining; stares at Jim's hand, as cold and sweaty as Blair's own; stares at the way that his arm shivers and spasms.
"I have to go back." It's flat, a statement, and Jim needs to let go of Blair now. Right now.
"There's no point. It's too late."
"No way, no way." Blair's voice shakes. "I'm not wandering through the pretty jungle while that thing uses me ..." he swallows, "come *on*, I have to go back, I have to fight this, I have to stop this, Jim, come on, *please*..."
Jim shakes his head. All this time he's looked sick, scared, distracted (and well he might be fucking distracted, and Blair feels rage burn in his gut and it's not rage at the monster wearing his skin) but he hasn't looked angry until now.
"Could you fight it when it bought the pills, Sandburg? Or when it dropped them in the tea or when it put the cuffs on me or when it carried me up the stairs to my bedroom? Because, trust me, if you couldn't stop it then you sure as hell can't stop it now."
"I'm killing you, you fuckwit!" It's a scream. If there were any birds here, they would have scrambled for the sky but the only noise is Blair.
"No, no you're not, it's not you, it's not." Jim's hand is still locked around Blair's and he looks just as distraught as Blair and what the hell is this, what the hell is going on, how did they end up here?
"Yes it is, I let it in and now it's hurting you - "
He stops because Jim has pulled him in close again, a hug, but Jim's voice is hard. "Listen to me. I know. I know that it found a little crack somewhere in you and it forced its way in, I know that because it's taking a fuckload of pleasure in stripping you down as much as me." Blair understands what that means; it means his possessor taunting Jim with Blair's voice after futzing around in Blair's darkest heart like someone who's found forgotten boxes in a cellar. "You think it couldn't have been me instead, and you bleeding on that bed?" Jim's voice roughens, takes on an odd, strained rhythm. "You little shit, you make a labrat out of me, you make a freak out of me to my city and then you think that you can make it all better? You wanted my dick, Chief, you've got it now. You like it?" And then Jim stops, and he and Blair are on their knees and crushed together and Blair can feel how Jim's gut heaves, like he'd throw up if only he could, if only it would do any good.
"Listen to me," Jim says, in his own voice now, breath hot against Blair's skin. "I know what we have to do, and I don't like it, and I *know* you won't like it either, but Incacha told me." A long, shuddery sigh passes over Blair's skin. "Incacha told me, and he was pretty damn pissed with me. We both screwed this one up, I promise. You don't get to take all the blame, not this time, not any other."
"What do we have to do?" Damn it, he's crying. Stupid, pointless thing to do, but Blair can't stop.
"Come on." Jim gently disengages himself from the hold they have of each other, but his hand never leaves Blair's body, until finally they stand hand in hand again. "We're still heading uphill here, Chief."
Blair nods, and tries to wipe at his eyes and his nose with his sleeve. He's a mess. Everything is a misbegotten, awful mess, but at least he's sure that he won't let go of Jim's hand again.
"Why me?"
"What?" Jim asks.
"You said it could have picked you. Why me?" Aside from the fact that he was a resentful, perverted asshole.
Jim shrugs. He looks shamed again.
"Because...."
"Yeah? Because?" Blair snaps.
"Because it knew that the minute it left me that I'd eat my fucking gun or step under a fucking bus or whatever. I would have been better in one way, sentinel, it could have made me something a thousand times worse than Barnes, but you... you wouldn't do that, you'd keep hoping that there was something that you could do to get back at it, to stop it, and you'd keep thinking that, wherever you were, dead man walking, or in a cell at Conover, and that would be just be the frosting on the cupcake for it. So it picked you."
"And what if it's right, what if I could - "
"You can't," Jim spat. "It ate that part of you, it's sitting in its belly right now, but watching you try..." He pulled Blair along after him up the slope. "Sorry."
Blair knew what the 'sorry' was for. For the looks, for the eyerolls, for the trenchant comments about 'metaphysical crap', for the books left unread, the conversations derailed. "So Incacha was pissed, huh?" he asks softly.
"I have an attitude problem," Jim says. Blair can't help himself. He laughs, a tiny, bitter chuckle.
Jim grins; death's-head amusement. "Yeah. Yuk it up, Sandburg. Here we are."
Here is the top of the slope - a promontory looking down, way down over miles of jungle.
Blair gasps, and then coughs. His throat is too dry. "Oh no."
Jim nods.
"Oh, come *on*."
"Said you wouldn't like it."
"This is it?"
"Yeah, baby, this is it."
Blair looks out over the land spread out below, but he doesn't look out over the drop. Jim's always been better with heights than he has.
"Jim..." he begins.
"All you have to promise, Blair, is not to let go."
Blair nods, tenses half his face trying to keep his mouth steady. "Hey," he says.
"Yeah?"
"I guess if we're going to do this properly, we should take a few steps back, and get a real run-up and flying leap going."
Jim smiles then, one of his sweet smiles, and how long is it since Blair saw one of those?
"Guess you're right. Good idea, Chief." They take a few steps back with their hands locked together, and they look at each other. Last time. Maybe not.
"You ready?" Jim rasps.
"As I'll ever be, which is to say, not very fucking ready at all." But Jim has already started running, and it's natural to run beside him, even seeing where they're going, so Blair gives it his all, like it's a race and they reach the edge and they leap.
Blair doesn't let go.