Baby, It's You
by ~Silk
Part 1
"No, I don't
understand! Dammit!" Blair Sandburg slammed down the phone and met the
curious gaze of his partner, Jim Ellison.
"What? You don't
have anywhere else to look? Suddenly I'm better than watching TV?" Blair
snapped.
Jim raised an eyebrow,
as he often did when searching for an appropriate way to respond to Blair.
Sandburg could be so emotional sometimes. But he was seldom overtly angry. He
was a master at disguising his feelings. He had to be. He lived with a
Sentinel. Someone who could literally peel back the layers and reach inside him
with a single look.
"Are you
through?" Jim asked coolly.
"Yeah, hell, yeah,
I'm through, man. I've had it! I am so out of here!"
"Waitwaitwaitjustaminute,
Chief," Jim protested with a tremendous frown creasing his handsome
forehead.
"What?" Blair
shrieked, straining Sentinel ears to the breaking point. It wasn't like
Sandburg to forget how sensitive Jim's senses were. God, he was the frigging
Guide, for God's sake. How could he forget? Jim shrugged inwardly. He didn't
want to think it was deliberate. Or personal. But he had a feeling it was both.
Jim pointed the remote
at the TV and clicked it once. The room fell silent. Except for Blair's audible
breathing. Jee-zus, the kid sounded like he was having an asthma attack. What
was wrong?
Blair stood there, chest
heaving, pupils dilated until his smoky blue eyes were nearly black. He
couldn't catch his breath, dammit. He was having a fucking panic attack, he
just knew it. He couldn't seem to get himself back under control. Wonderful.
Now Jim would know. He would know everything.
Jim edged closer,
ironically treating Blair as if he were a strung-out perp, and Blair continued
to stand there, growing more unsteady by the moment, praying that he didn't
actually fall down. When he was close enough to touch Blair, Jim reached out a
hand to cup Blair's cheek. Blair's eyes slid shut, as he trembled under the
effort of holding back tears.
"Talk to me,
Chief," Jim demanded softly. "You can talk to me. Hell, you never
shut up normally, so--" Blair's eyes flew open, and the anguish in them
was so palpable, Jim immediately regretted the attempt at humor.
Humor was not going to
relieve Sandburg's mind. He wasn't sure what would.
"I can't,"
Blair whispered.
"You can't what,
Chief?"
"I c-can't t-talk
about th-this. Not to you."
Jim never betrayed how
much that hurt with so much as a flicker of an eyelash. Sandburg had taught him
well. Hide your real feelings. Maintain rigid control over your mind and the
body follows. Well, it wasn't like he wasn't used to burying the truth. I was
raised by a man who valued work more than his children. A man who made me an
emotional cripple. It was tragic, really. He could want and need and love...but
he could never know if his feelings were returned. Because he would never reveal
them.
Jim's hand fell away
from Blair's cheek, as if the touch of his skin burned him. Hell, maybe it did.
He was in so much pain now, he couldn't separate out the individual feelings
and their sources. He felt overwhelmed. Flooded with too much unspent emotion.
All tricked up, and no place to go. He would have laughed, but that way lay
hysteria. A muscle clenched and unclenched in his cheek.
He was so still, he
might have been carved from marble.
Blair stared tearfully
at Jim, wondering how it had ever come down to this. It wasn't about
friendship. Not anymore. It was about love. A love that neither one of them
could admit to the other.
He watched Jim's
nostrils flare, as if he were scenting something. Jim's eyes were clear and blue
and utterly blind to the outside world. Suddenly the quiet surrounding them
wasn't innocuous anymore.
Jim was about to...zone.
Blair could feel it, the
tension in his own body thrumming to the same energies that raced through
Jim's. How could they share this and nothing else? They were not just Sentinel
and Guide. They never had been. If one of them had been female, people would
have rejoiced at the Fate that brought them together. They were that right
together.
Instead, they were
trapped inside themselves, unwilling to risk everything they had to cross that
line. To make their love real. It was torture of the most surrealistic kind.
It was their life.