I like to thank the SenBetas list for their help, especially Sheila for her thorough read through.

This story is a sequel to: Charlie

"I finally have a new advisor," Blair said as he cast his line. The Cree Fishing Spear was staying in the truck. "We're going to have to do a dog and pony show."

"Why?" Jim stood in the lake waiting for a pull on his line.

"Dr. Blumenthal needs to see that enhanced senses are verifiable under test conditions."

"I hate being your guinea pig."

"It's only one test that I can't know the results ahead of time. Taste is easy to verify by parts per a million, but sound can be measured by decibels."

"I can tell your Blumenthal that after I lost my vision I started hearing dog whistles. On a hearing test, they look for physiological reactions. That can't be fooled."

Blair started laughing.

"I hear dog whistles and he thinks it's funny," said Jim. Good, he was starting to pick up Yiddish speech patterns and Blair didn't even speak the language.

"Pitch, loudness and location are all verifiable and anyone can test you without me present."

"Let's get back to enjoying the fresh air." Jim felt the water splash on his waders, saw the golden light on the water, heard the birds chirping and smelled the pine in the air and the algae in the water.

"I have a tug," yelled Blair. "I got one."

Jim's ears rang. "Reel it in." Jim dialed down his hearing. That taught him not to open his senses up around Blair.

"I got him," said Blair. "He's a big one."

After sticking his pole in the muddy shore, Jim followed the sound of the fish flopping in the shallow water and helped Blair put his fish in the plastic bucket.

"Thanks, man," said Blair.

Jim counted his footsteps back to his pole. His world was counting footsteps, keeping count of his bills, labeling food as he bought it and other procedures that if a person with normal visual did would be considered OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder). He cast his line away from Blair's smell and heartbeat to prevent Blair getting tangled in the line. He could hear small fish at his feet, probably minnows, not the river trout he hoped to catch.

No talk, just the flow of the water splashing on the lake's banks, the breeze on the leaves, the movement of small animals, this was therapy for a former sentinel. A tug on the line and Jim pulled in his own trout. Unlike Blair, he didn't have to alert the bears. He removed the hook and put the fish in bucket with a plop. His nose led him to the bait jar.

Jim sat down in the sandy shore to reworm his hook. "Blair, we caught dinner. Do you want me to catch breakfast or call it a day?"

"It's early in the day. I bet I can catch the next fish before you."

"Yeah," said Jim. "How much?"

"A week's worth of breakfasts." As Blair tossed out his line, Jim heard the ripples through the water.

"You prepare a week's worth of your pond scum shakes and I'll serve it to you in bed." Jim walked past Blair, giving him a safe distance, before casting his line.

"I drink pond scum in the morning." Blair teased.

"What's in that stuff?" Jim asked.

"Soy protein powder, algae flakes, wheat grass and orange juice. Big guy, getting prepared to lose?"

"You caught the first fish. I'm preparing mentally, OK?"

Blair's answer was silence. Blair knew Jim could hear a nod or a shrug of the shoulders over the sounds of the water, birds and the breeze. They were as free from noise pollution that they could be and still be in the United States. Except for planes overhead and cars far in the distance, all Jim could hear was Blair, himself and the sounds of nature.

The sun on his face told him that noon was approaching. Finally, Jim felt a tug on the line. He reeled in his second fish of the day. "You get to make me breakfast."

"Like any other week," Blair teased.

They collected their stuff and went back up the mountain to their tent. Blair started a campfire as Jim cleaned the fish.

"How are you doing?" asked Blair.

"Good. The fresh air is doing wonders." Jim heard the crackle of the fire and saw the golden light near Blair was sitting. One trout and a can of beans would be enough for lunch, especially since Blair had eaten a half dozen granola bars and two large bags of chips. They also had drunk over a six-pack of beer while setting up camp. Jim sprayed Pam on the frying pan. After he put the pan on the grill, he opened a can of baked beans with a mechanical can opener. The can also went on the grill. "Blair, do you want some coffee?"

"Are you offering?"

Jim put the coffee, water then filter in an old fashioned percolator and sat it on the grill beside the fish. Jim sat by the fire and put an arm around Blair.

Blair was unusually quiet. After getting trapped in an elevator then his advisor dying, Blair probably needed meditation space. He had a lot of processing to do. Now that he had a new advisor and would have to explain his work to a stranger.

Jim heard the fire's crackle, felt its warmth, and smelled the food cooking over pine, oak and birch kindling. However, part of the fire's charm was missing. The flames of a fire could be hypnotizing. Being unable to drive or read the packages and cans on the store shelf stole from Jim's independence, but it was the little things he missed. Blair's lithe body inched away from him as the younger man checked on the fish.

After Blair gave Jim his portion of the fish, Jim said, "If you don't want to move, Simon could hire you as an anthropological pathologist or something."

"I am looking forward to moving on," said Blair.

"Why the unnatural silence?"

"I was enjoying the fire."

"If you have your heart set on Santa Fe -."

Blair's voice perked up. "You mean it."

"The desert air will be great for my allergies."

"I haven't applied anywhere, yet. The Institute of Santa Fe is doing research on the nature of life, heavy stuff. They have a multi-disciplinary team. They won't have an opening for an anthropologist forever."

"It's your career."

"They will probably have the position filled before I can defend my diss."

"Other positions in other institutes will open up." Jim poured himself more coffee and held the percolator in Blair's direction.

"No more for me," said Blair.

Jim put the percolator back on the grill. "I'd like to go for a hike after the food settles."

"Is that a good idea?"

"You can be my eyes." Jim put his hand that wasn't holding his coffee mug around Blair. After he finished his coffee, he got his hiking boots from the tent.

Blair sat near to Jim in the tent. "You really want to go hiking?"

"Yes." Jim laced and tied his boots.

"I have some ground rules. You stay with me. You hold my hand and we use a rope. I won't be going to the ranger station, telling them that I lost my visually impaired friend in the woods."

"No rope like the kids at the school for the blind," said Jim. "I'll hold your hand."

"You better hold my hand. The mountain paths twist and turn. You could get lost real easy."

"I could check for moss."

"You check every tree for moss and you will find your way home in time for Christmas. Hold my hand or we stay connected by rope."

"I could feel the heat of the sun on my face."

"People that aren't blind climb mountains with rope. You stay with me at all times. I'm not a forest ranger or a professional guide."

"Fine." Jim gave in. Holding Blair's hand, Jim walked on the mountain trail. He felt the roots, twigs, decaying leaves and undergrowth under his boots. Blair was right about the ambiance. He could feel an openness that he couldn't feel in the city streets with the buildings fencing him in. He liked holding Blair's hand as they brushed against pine needles.

When they got back Blair cooked the fish and served it with the potato salad he had made at the loft. Jim sat by the fire. The food tasted better in the fresh air, less smog tainting the aroma. He leaned back on an elbow and drank his beer. Jim remembered when they went to Peru, Blair had looked so beautiful, sitting by the firelight, writing his notes. He now could only see vague outline of Blair in the golden haze of the fire. However, he had his memories.

Jim put his half-empty beer in the tent. He tiptoed over to Blair and shut his notebook. "What are you doing?" Blair yelled.

Jim put his arms around Blair and started kissing his neck as an answer. Jim unzipped and took down his pants then he reached for Blair's pants.

Blair took off his hiking boots then unzipped his pants. "They're coming off." He took off his jeans and briefs.

Jim pulled down his boxers and returned to kissing Blair. "You're so beautiful in the firelight."

"You can see me."

"Not anymore than usual, but I remember a night in Peru. You were writing in your notebook. You were so beautiful. The light played off your hair." Jim touched Blair's hair.

Blair rolled away from the fire and kissed Jim on the lips as his hands held onto Jim naked butt. When they got up for air, Blair said, "What you are doing here is fine, but it will be nicer in the tent without the bugs."

Jim removed his boots and went into the tent. Blair followed. Inside the small two-person tent, Jim kissed Blair a few times as he finished undressing. He kissed Blair's neck and shoulders, slowly moving down Blair's back, wanting to taste Blair without the Cascade smog. Not that Cascade had a lot of smog, it was a tree friendly city as cities go, but the air was much cleaner here. He made his way to Blair's perfect butt cheeks. He held onto Blair's waist as he kissed one cheek then the other.

Jim then tasted Blair's crack. Jim's tongue teased Blair's crack and his inner thighs. Blair squirmed under Jim's skillful mouth and hands. If Blair forgot to pack the lube, there was Wesson oil. Blair squirmed and handed Jim the lube.

"Thanks," Jim said, opening the small bottle of Astroglide.

In the morning, Jim got up early and sniffed the air. He saw Blair's outline a bit clearer. It must have been the mountain air. After climbing out of the tent, Jim rubbed his eyes a couple times and blinked. He saw the blue sky, the fluffy white clouds, and the green pine trees meeting the horizon. It was blurrier than he remembered, but it was all there.

He could see!

He went inside the tent and shook Blair. He couldn't make out Blair's features, but inside the tent was fairly dark and in shadow. "Blair, I can see."

Blair hugged Jim. "That's great." Blair then followed the excited man outside.

"I can see the pine trees, the blue sky, white clouds." Jim pointed to the greenish blue spot. "That's the lake where we fished."

Blair put a hand on Jim's back. "Can you see me?"

Jim looked at Blair's long curly hair, his pink face, the lump in the middle of his face that was his nose. Blair had long eyelashes. The red below the nose were his lips. If he squinted, Jim could see all the parts that make up Blair's face.

Blair said, "Well?"

Jim couldn't see Blair's face well enough at less than a meter to see if he was smiling. He didn't want Blair to know that. "Your hair is a mess. Other than that you are beautiful." Jim put a hand on Blair's cheek and chin and a reluctant tear made his vision even more blurred.

"You saw the lake." Blair wrapped his arms around Jim to give the larger man a hug.

"I thought I could see. I can't make out your beautiful blue eyes. All I can see is a flutter of eyelash."

Blair took Jim's hands in his, "The brain tracks movement. That means your vision is returning."

"I can't make eye contact if I need to squint to see someone's eyes."

"You were so happy a minute ago." Blair put his hands on Jim's shoulders and massaged out the building tension. "You can see the trees, the sky and the lake. No one can take that from you."

Jim looked out at the forest below. "I can see colors. The world is no longer a golden haze. I should be thankful for that. I'll be able to see the red and green traffic light."

"You won't have to depend entirely on your hearing when you cross the street," said Blair. "I'll make breakfast."

"Today and the next six days," Jim teased. "I'll clean the fish."

Like yesterday, Jim started to prepare the fish as Blair started the fire. However, today Jim could see the flames dance and change color as he scaled and cleaned the fish by touch. Jim put the fish in a greased pan and sat by the fire. Seeing Blair's arms, Jim handed him the pan. "Chief, knock yourself out."

Blair put the pan over the fire. "What's wrong?"

"I can see my hand now, but I can't make out the fingers," Jim explained. "I didn't look at the fish when I gutted it."

"If I had your sense of touch, I wouldn't look at a fish being gutted," said Blair. "I trust your sense of touch over most people's vision."

Jim put a hand around Blair's shoulders. "Is it psychosomatic? We get away from the kidnappers, madmen and killer spiders and I get some of my vision back."

"You're reading too much into this."

"We have an abnormal level of stress in our lives."

"You didn't will yourself blind. You got a dangerous chemical in your eyes."

"I spend a night in the mountains and some of my vision returns."

"Jim, stress interferes with healing." Blair put the pan on the grill. "You've gone nothing wrong."

"I'm just starting to accept that I'll probably be visually impaired for the rest of my life then I woke up and went outside, and I thought my vision had returned. I'm still legally blind, aren't I?"

"What are you feeling?"

"I'm not good with explaining my feelings. Carolyn would ask me how I feel, and I would shrug my shoulders."

Blair checked the fish and turned it. "I'm not looking for a dissertation. I wrote one of those. I don't need to read another. How do you feel about getting some of your vision back? Are you angry, happy? Do you feel betrayed? There are no right answers."

"Betrayed." Jim sat closer to the fire and smiled. "That says it all. My eyes are betraying me. I can see your eyelids flash or see your jaw move when you speak, but when I try to put it all together it's a blur."

"Jim, we still have a lot to learn about the brain. Marvin Minsky's wrote about The Society of the Mind. He described how our brains are made up of mindless agents that together produce thought. One of these agents isn't talking to another. Dr. Macmillan said that Golden effects neuro-transmitters." Blair put the fish on two plates.

Jim put his plate of fish on his lap. Suddenly, he was hit in the chest with an orange. "Why are you throwing fruit at me?"

"No blindsight," Blair said in his researcher voice. "You better pick up the orange unless you want barbequed fruit."

Jim looked at the orange blur and reached for it, fighting the temptation to close his eyes and feel for it. On the third try, he got the orange. "Why did you throw the orange?"

"Someone with blindsight will catch the orange and tell you they can't see. With blindsight, a person's eyes and optic nerves work, but they have a problem with the visual cortex. They can see, only they don't know it. Since the information goes straight to the brain stem, a person with blindsight has faster reflexes than a person with normal vision. You don't have it."

Jim cut the orange into wedges. "Do you want orange on your fish? It isn't lemon, but it's a citrus fruit."

"No, you can have it."

"My orange then. Nolan Ryan, how many people have you killed with your pitching arm?"

"No one. I knocked out a bank robber once."

"Do you want to take the raft out today?"

"What about your fear of water?"

"You'll be with me." Jim ate some orange wedges then a bit of fish. "That's only deep water. I don't generalize my fears." Jim had very specific fears for every occasion and Blair knew enough about his fears to fill a book. Jim ate his fish then made coffee for the raft trip. When they got out to the water, Jim asked, "What did you mean first and only?"

"I haven't gone all the way before. I've touched, licked, kissed almost everything, but no penetration in either direction." Blair put a hand in the water. "I went to what they call third base with men and women. More women than men though."

"You, the homerun king," said Jim.

"You take me out to the middle of the lake, so you can dump me into the water if I give you a wrong answer."

"You and Christine?"

"Willie, the one-eyed wonder snake, died," explained Blair. "He wouldn't rise to the occasion."

"Oh."

"The only time I saw you interested in a woman was that weird chemical thing you had with Laura." Blair shifted his weight a little. "As long as you were my test subject, I couldn't touch you. My lusty thoughts were ruining my objectivity, but as long as I didn't act on them, I could deny them."

"I wanted you since I set eyes on you."

"Nonsense."

"Since you pushed me on the ground in front of that garbage truck. You were so cute waving your arms talking to no one."

"You were with Danny."

"So? I cheated on Carolyn. I was working with you and we were doing all those tests. You looked so cute in your lab coat with your glasses falling down your nose. Danny was working undercover. I figured I see him after he was done the job. We would have spent three days on his boat and I wouldn't have needed to put up with your stupid tests."

"You cheated on Carolyn and would have cheated on Danny if he didn't die first. Would you cheat on me?"

Jim threw on his line into the sparkling water.

"Answer me," Blair said quietly.

"I'm a sleaze. I slept with Emily because Jack thought I was queer."

"You are."

"I hope I've grown up some since then. I never betrayed Danny and Danny slept with any man who looked his way. Don't act like I'm the bad guy." Jim looked at the gentle moving water in the lake. "Here I am in my thirties and openly gay for the first time in my life. I'm no longer in the military or married to Carolyn. It's uncharted water for me."

Blair put a hand on Jim's face. "Your vision is coming back?"

"Mind-body connection. Maybe, more of it will return if you can stay away from bombs and killer spiders. When that bomb went off, I thought you were dead. It took twenty years off my life."

"You were a mess when Danny died."

"I had you to pull me out of my slump. I'm not made of stone. Aren't you going to fish?"

"Maybe, later. Right now, I want to breathe in the fresh air and watch you fish." Blair rested in the raft. "Jim Ellison, you are a more complicated man than the one I wrote about in my diss."

"You wrote about Sam Hughes. If anyone asks, he's a composite," said Jim. "You can tell people he is based on me and some other people. I don't want people think I'm more of a freak than they already suspect."

Blair splashed his hand in the water some more. "You'll be alright doing a dog and pony show for my new advisor."

"Sure, I can listen to some ultrasonics for her."

When Jim went to work on Monday, he used his cane less than usual. However, he couldn't make out the traffic lights; they glared and he couldn't be sure which light was his. Jim still needed to listen for traffic, using his ears when crossing the street. He got to work bright and early because he had an appointment to show a new member the gym at seven-fifteen AM.

After his appointment, Jim collected the towels.

Harv said, "Jim, you're holding out on me."

"In what way?" Jim asked as he continued to collect the towels off the benches.

"You shook that man's hand. Don't tell me you can feel air currents."

"My vision improved on the camping trip. I can see hands now, but I can't see individual fingers." Jim thought back to the eye chart comment. "I can now see the eye chart."

"What about glasses?"

"My eyes are a hundred percent. My problem is with the optic nerve or the visual cortex itself. I can see movement better than stationary objects."

"You can't see the Big E."

"It's a blur and a magnifying glass would make it a bigger blur. My eyes can see. The information isn't getting to the brain or, when it gets there, it isn't being processed correctly."

"That's a real bummer. How could a chemical you got in the eye affect the optic nerve?"

"Golden goes for neuro-transmitters. Blair has residual nerve damage. It's minor and it could have been a lot worse. I'm glad the last thing I did before turning in my badge was get that shit off the street. It makes acid and PCP look like Tootsie Pops." Jim didn't want explain receptor sites to Harv. He didn't have a good understanding of biochemistry himself. All he really understood was the chemicals compounds in Golden attached themselves to sites in the nerve cells, in his case, the optic nerve. The Golden was long out of his system. His blindness was caused by residual damage that appeared to be healing.

He went to help a lady, who was straining, to do sit-ups. She was probably working the wrong muscles. All Jim needed to do was show her what muscles to use.

End Fishing Trip by Athena: athena@fateordestiny.com

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