Zoned

J/B pre-slash
warnings: none

kungfunurse@visi.com

***

Blair shook his head groggily, squinting to see through the multicolored haze in front of him.  His mouth tasted just nasty, and his skin felt two sizes too small.

What the hell had happened?  His first thought, instantly dismissed, was "Hangover".  But that was absurd.  Ridiculous.  Despite the party reputation that he allowed to grow around him at the PD, like protective coloration on a brightly greened gecko, Blair hadn't so much as sniffed at alcohol since discovering his Sentinel.  His Jim.  His intellectual drug of choice.  Nothing compared with the highs, the lows, the excruciating aliveness that he felt when plugged into Jim.

See, it wasn't that long ago that Blair would find himself running three or four different levels in his head all the time just to keep from being suicidally bored.  All his friends talked about what a great listener he was.  And he was.  They were simply mistaken about how much of Blair was listening to them at any given time.  Usually he'd give them the top level of attention, like the frothy whip of a moca.  But deeper there were the rich chocolate musings of life and memory, and even deeper, the bitter coffee tang of hopes and fears.

And then, yeah, Blair would indulge.  He'd score some pot or drink tequila shots with brazenly blissed freshmen.  Anything, anything to dull the acute, aching awareness of genius level isolation.

Then Jim came along and drank all of Blair in one gulp.  Threw him up against his office wall and stirred those mental layers up till he was churning and bubbling to the accelerant of Jim's senses.  Jim's fears.  Jim's rare, oh so precious smiles.  Blair's Sentinel had arrived, tipped that finely chiseled face towards the sky, and consumed Blair utterly.

So Blair knew this wasn't a hangover.  Which left, unfortunately, only a few options.  One was that he'd been involuntarily drugged, forced to go cold turkey from his daily Jimdose and made to imbibe some pale, poisonous cloud of rancid dreams from someone else's hand.  It had happened a few times.  Lash, the Golden, twisted realities without safe harbor and warm blue eyes.

Or, Blair though, or maybe I've been shot.  Or beat up.  Or drowned.  All possible, as could be demonstrated by the map of pain and blood loss called his hospital records.

'Course, that was all just anecdotal evidence.  There was no way, statistically speaking, that such evidence could even be given credence in a scientific fashion.  They were most definitely not a measurement that could be used to gauge the likelihood of repeated experiences.

Stop it, Blair!  he scolded mentally, making his head sob and splinter threateningly.  Focus!

Hurts,  a smaller, younger Blair whimpered.  Don't wanna.

Not good enough!  He hissed back at it.  For Jim, focus for Jim, focus, focus, focusfocusfocusfocus.

Blair wrapped his throbbing mind with the cool white bandage of his mantra.  Slowly he dared to open his eyes again.  Dared the world to blind him and stab at his control, at his need to find himself so he could find Jim.

But it was smell that opened up, sewer-like and rancid, almost choking him with its pungent aliveness of half digested sun-rot and teaming microbes.

He took a breath, then blew it out.  He was determined to rise above his body's frailties, so he gathered his courage and took another.

And now, oh now his eyes were open.  God help him, how wide he saw the world and all it's strange little jokes.  That rancid smell, his skin crawling to invisible shivery's, his head throbbing with the beat of Jim's life, Jim's heart....

Cruel, sharp memory exploded in the anthropologist's mind, fully formed like a goddess trying to birth herself from his moca stirred mind.

 Zoned.

 Jim had zoned.

 Routine, ordinary zone.  New deli down the street.  Let's take a chance, take a taste, take a whirling swirling madhouse funride.

And the paprika had surprised them both, surprised the zone right into Jim's head.

And Blair's.

"God, oh God help," he whispered in fearful awe.  It wasn't supposed to be like this.  Never, never should the lamb lie down next to the lion, or the sun catch his final embrace in the arms of his moon lover.

Because he'd zoned.  Jim had zone and he'd taken Blair with him.

Already Blair could feel the pain receding, feel his over-abused senses shudder sheepishly and shrug back into their mere mortal range and scope.

Jim lay breathing under Blair, grasping and holding gently, even in the depths of his lostness.

"Oh Jim," Blair breathed into his Sentinel's chest.  "What the hell do we do now?"



***to be continued....


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