Work Text:
Exit Wound
by Brighid
Author's disclaimer: Not mine. Not for profit. And I guess I'm no kinder to them than TPTB.
Exit Wound
by Brighid
Part One: Penetration.
The tissue through which the projectile passes, and which it disrupts
or destroys.
Today we have naming of parts. Yesterday, We had daily cleaning. And tomorrow morning, We shall have what to do after firing. But today, Today we have naming of parts. Japonica Glistens like coral in all of the neighboring gardens, And today we have naming of parts
)0(
Most cops go their whole careers without ever having to draw their gun. They never have to stare someone down, make the conscious decision to pull the trigger, make the conscious decision to incapacitate, possibly even kill their target.
Blair has always had a knack for blowing the odds to hell. Finding a Sentinel in modern Cascade. Taking a leak and missing the actual 'hostage taking' of a hostage crisis. Being the first one at the pizza. Having a mother who was friends with a major publisher. Ending up in a shoot-out with a seventeen-year old gangster wannabe his first month as the newest detective of Major Crimes.
We're having a bad day, here, no two ways about it. Sandburg's had to draw his piece for the first time, outside of practice, and me...
Me, I'm in pretty deep shit here: the gangster wanna-be punk managed to wing me pretty fucking good, and I think he hit an artery because I'm pumping out bright red in pretty steady spurts. I'd try to staunch it except two of his buddies have me down, trying to curb-stomp my head and I'm dizzy and I keep slipping in my own goddamned blood. Too much fucking blood on the ground, not nearly enough inside of me, I'm thinking. And I dropped my gun. Shit.
I hear Blair's voice; it's steady and cool as he identifies himself. It's the same voice he uses to focus me, to keep me here, keep me real. It helps. Then I hear the sound of the punk's gun, the sound of Blair's gun, the sound of the little shits scattering as a body falls just behind me. Next thing I know Blair is holding me, his hands straightening out my neck, steadying it with something; I fade in and out, only to come around sharply to him pressing into my upper arm, so hard I holler, try to push him away. He just says hush, hush, as his free hand fights to put a pressure dressing over the wound. I can hear the sirens screaming in the distance, and the hammer of his heart, and mine, too. It's too fast, and I can feel my lungs kicking up, start howling for air. I'm gasping, breathless. He takes my good hand, makes me pinch my nose with it, contorts himself around so that his mouth is over mine even as he fights to stop the bleeding.
I can taste the turkey sandwich he had for lunch. I can taste my blood on his lips. I can taste his sweat, and the subtly different tang of his tears. He's pushing air into me, pushing life into me, and I think,
pushy little bastard.
hope I get a chance to tell him how much I appreciate that in him.
I'm fighting against blackness when he hands me over to the EMT's, but I can hear when he politely tells one guy about twelve anatomically impossible things to do to himself when it's suggested it might be better if he gets a ride some other way. Sandburg rides with me, and he's always touching me, and I've got the taste of him in my mouth to hold onto. Somewhere along the way we end up in Emergency Trauma.
From here on in, it's just all a mess. Lots of lights, lots of poking, lots of machines. I focus in on Sandburg's heartbeat, and the quiet, almost sub vocal mantra he's been keeping up since we got in the ambulance:
"You die, I'll fucking kill you."
Pushy little bastard.
And then everything is just pretty much gone for a long time; Sandburg would probably say I've got the whole experience recorded, somewhere in my Sentinel brain, but I'm pretty sure God invented unconsciousness for a reason. I'm going with that, anyway.
So here I am again, mostly out of it with a tube in my throat and the sound of my heart beat echoed by a tinny, fucking annoying little monitor. I reach out, trying to find Sandburg's heartbeat out in the waiting room, only to find him right beside me, in recovery, probably breaking all the rules there are.
And he's bawling like a baby.
)0(
I want Jim to see what this has done to me, not just the last few weeks, but the last few fucking years. Blair Sandburg is dead, long live Blair Sandburg, y'know? Not to punish him, 'cause a lot of it has been good, all that shit about death aside, but just for him to understand that I have changed, that I have changed and I am having this fucking identity crisis over everything. I mean, he's just being too goddamned civilized and understanding and supportive and he keeps making me noodles and fucking tea and I just can't stand it any more. He never knows what to do with me.
Join the club.
And so we're here, fighting but not-fighting, in that special dysfunctional way we've had ever since the whole dissertation fiasco, and he's just not getting it, not hearing despite those high-powered ears he's got. I'm not sure what I'm going to do until I do it. I just leap at him, and I think maybe I'm gonna kill him, but instead, oh, man, I kiss him, so fucking hard our teeth clack and I cut his lip and he bleeds and it tastes, oh fuck, it tastes good, and he goes all still for a second, deer-in-headlights still and then he's kissing me back, tearing into me like I'm tearing into him and there is nothing sweet or seductive or sensual about it.
We are goddamned animals on each other, biting, pulling, clawing, sucking, chewing, howling...somehow we end halfway up the stairs, halfway naked and more than a little bruised, and suddenly he's just looking at me, and his eyes are bleak and beautiful and he just leans forward and rests his forehead against mine.
"This isn't going to change anything at all, is it?" he asks quietly, his voice ragged and breathless and verging on wild; he makes my knees weak. He's always made my knees weak.
And I want to lie to him, because the lie would be so close to the fucking truth; this doesn't change anything, yet everything is different now, but how can you explain that when your dick is aching and you've got the taste of Jim Ellison on your tongue?
So I just tell him, "No," and then, "get us into bed," and he bites down on my shoulder and we don't make it to the bed for a few minutes more, but he understands the answer, because he closes his eyes and doesn't look at me for the longest time after that.
But it's there between us, even if we can't face it, and it has a name. I think: yesterday was one thing, and tomorrow will be something else entirely. Today, we have this.
It will have to be enough.
)0(
Part Two: Permanent Cavity.
The volume of space once occupied by tissue that has been destroyed by
the passage of the projectile. This is a function of penetration and
the frontal area of the projectile. Quite simply, it is the hole left
by the passage of the bullet.
This is the lower sling swivel. And this Is the upper sling swivel, whose use you will see, When you are given your slings. And this is the piling swivel, Which in your case you have not got. The branches Hold in the gardens their silent, eloquent gestures, Which in our case we have not got.
)0(
I come to for the second time a few hours later, hurting like hell and pissed as hell and with a mouth like I've got a sock in it. Blair is beside me, in scrub greens. He's staring out the window, just staring, and it scares the hell out of me. Not that Blair plays the Energizer Bunny 24/7; he's got his quiet moments, more so as he's gotten older, but this is different. This is fucking terrifying at some level I can't even begin to understand. I shift on the bed, grunt through a dry throat. He hears that and moves jerkily, leaning over and wetting my mouth and tongue with a cloth and pitcher that are close at hand. He is helpful and considerate and he does all the usual patter about dials and he gets me back online just right, but he doesn't make eye contact, he doesn't bring up the shooting, he doesn't harass me about 'the sensory experience' or dropping my gun or anything. He's here, helping me, but at the same time, Blair is ...
Blair is just kind of gone. It's like being assisted by the Stepford Guide. I mean, he says all the right things and does all the right things, but hello, where's my Blair? The pushy bastard? And then he leans out into the hallway and calls Simon in and then he's out of here, with some comment about getting a cup of coffee, taking a leak, warning the nurses about me.
Simon watches him go, shaking his head. "He shot the Pointer boy," he says at last, and everything clicks into place. Simon sees the question I barely have enough spit to ask, and he just sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose tightly, like he can somehow accomplish something through that, maybe cut off his headache, maybe his thoughts. "He killed him. One shot in the shoulder, one in the heart. The kid arrested on the scene, never woke up. It was a freak shot, Jim. I've never seen anything like it. Never want to again."
"Sandburg knows?" but I already have the answer, don't need Simon's nod, or the details that follow. Of course he fucking knows. He's going to spend the rest of his life knowing.
I remembered the first time I knew. Sometimes, I still wake up to his face, but not so very often. Not for a long time. But it's still there. Always will be.
"Get Sandburg into Degrassi," I say, and Simon is suddenly whooping, laughing his ass off. "What's so goddamned funny?" I rasp, even as the nurse comes in, starts working me over.
"You talking about getting someone in to see a shrink, that's what's so funny," Simon gasps, and he has to sit down. "What makes you think the kid'll go in any easier than you ever did?"
I sigh. "He's spent half his life in therapy, to hear him talk. It shouldn't be that big a problem." Simon just looks at me, this blatant "you haven't got a goddamned clue, do you?" look . "Just get him in to Degrassi. He's probably going PST on us even now, but he's bright, he'll recognize the pattern if someone older and wiser," I lean on the words as best I can, and Simon grimaces at me, "points it out to him. It shouldn't be that hard."
Simon just sits there and shakes his head, and yeah, okay, maybe there is a certain irony in me being the one to say all this.
But I want my Blair back, ASAFP.
)0(
In all the times I had pictured us, it was never like this. It never played this way in my head, you know? And I've played it often. In bed. In the shower. In the locker room. In the cab of Jim's truck.
It's been there between us, pretty much from day one. Jim cracking wise about courtship rituals that first breakfast with me living here ... he wasn't so far wrong. I've always preferred girls, but sometimes, there had been guys. Hand-jobs and blowjobs and fucks in tents on long, long trips. You take what's available, you enjoy the moment.
But Jim never goddamned made himself available, never offered the moment, and then there was too much of everything between us and the courtship became, oh, whatever the fuck, I don't know what it became but he was suddenly so much more than what was available, more than just a moment. And so I thought about seduction and romance and sex on the couch and on the kitchen counter and in the shower and thought about touching the back of his neck, slipping my tongue along it, just to feel the short, prickly hairs, just to taste his sweat.
I jerked off a lot.
It was never supposed to be what this is -- hard and angry and despairing. I mean, I actually fucking like foreplay, and kissing and touching and, y'know, learning the goddamned landscape.
But that takes time, and we've wasted it all, wasted four goddamned years, and so instead we have me, pushing him down on the bed, biting him and clawing off the last of his clothes while he grabs me, holds me, keeps trying to kiss me like he's swallowing me.
And some part of me fucking hates this, wants the time and the space to just fucking adore him. Worship him. Wants to love him, slowly, eloquently, letting my body speak for me. I want that time back. Want that second chance that everyone seems to get in the movies, that storybook second chance.
Which we haven't got.
)0(
Part Three: Temporary Cavity.
The expansion of the permanent cavity by stretching due to the transfer
of kinetic energy during the projectile's passage.
This is the safety-catch, which is always released With an easy flick of the thumb. And please do not let me See anyone using his finger. You can do it quite easy If you have any strength in your thumb. The blossoms Are fragile and motionless, never letting anyone see Any of them using their finger.
)0(
Blair sees Degrassi once a week. He's been cleared by IA. But he's not even on desk duty yet. Degrassi doesn't say much, but what he does say isn't encouraging. I've seen him a couple of times, and I'm still on medical leave, going through way too much PT.
This whole thing, it's played a lot with Blair's sense of self. The Blair Sandburg I first met didn't like it when he had to deck a bad guy. Not that he was some sort of hippy-dippy pacifist. He's always done what had to be done, for the greater good. But he's never gone looking for it, and he's never been quite in this place before. There was no way to really prepare for it.
I think the hardest part was when the Pointer kid's mom called, through the station, and forgave him. Told him that she understood that he'd done what he had to do, and that she forgave him. Said she didn't want him to carry that burden around. He accepted her forgiveness, said goodbye and then he just sort of disappeared into the bathroom. I could hear him in there, puking, but I didn't go to him, because in between bouts he kept telling me to stay away.
That part is what's killing me. That he's hurting, and there's not a fucking thing I can do about it. I can't fix it with chicken soup or chamomile, though God knows I'm trying. Even went to that herbal apothecary he likes, got the ginger blend for his stomach, hoping to get him to keep food down.
He's lost some weight.
I tried telling him about my first time, but he just told me it wasn't the same, and he's right it isn't, not really. It never is.
He's hurting, and I can't do anything at all.
It's killing us both.
)0(
Jim's all tense and loose at the same time, and it's goddamned beautiful. He rolls me over, holds me down, that body of his spread out over mine like heaven over earth, and, shit, he just buries his face in my hair, my armpits, my groin, breathing deeply, like he's memorizing me. I want this, but there just isn't any damned time, we haven't got the time for this. I push him over, hold him down, his wrists over his head, and I bite his shoulder, his good shoulder, hard enough to draw blood. I want to mark him, want him to feel me for a long while after.
I grab him, hand fisting around him, hard around him, and he yelps and surges up and I work him hard, mercilessly. I want to see him lose it, I want him to be open and lost and naked in front of me, like I've been these last few weeks in front of him. He reaches up, grabs my shoulders, so hard I can feel the bruises come up, but it's okay, it's all right, it's all good. His face just sort of screws up, contorts, and he's there, he's right fucking there because his dials are up, right up, and he arches up, bowstring taut, and he's going, going, gone. I release his arms, take my other hand, even as he's coming, and I push into him, breach his body, penetrate him.
And he let's me in.
He opens like a flower underneath me, and the moment is fragile. For one, perfect moment, we are together, suspended, motionless.
I want the moment to last forever
)0(
Part Four: Fragmentation.
Projectile pieces or secondary fragments of bone which are impelled outward
from the permanent cavity and may sever muscle tissues, blood vessels,
etc., apart from the permanent cavity.
And this you can see is the bolt. The purpose of this Is to open the breech, as you see. We can slide it Rapidly backwards and forwards: we call this Easing the spring. And rapidly backwards and forwards The early bees are assaulting and fumbling the flowers: They call it easing the Spring.
)0(
He's resigned from the force. And enrolled in a forensic anthropology program. On the other side of the goddamned country. Without even discussing a single word about it with me.
He went into Rainier and demanded they clean up his record, and endorse his application. Had a lawyer with him, apparently, who explained how the University couldn't charge him with fraud, as he'd never actually submitted his paper. Threatened them with a lawsuit. Apparently there was enough weight behind the threat to get them to settle. So Blair's heading to some small college back east. Far enough so the taint of what's happened here might not ruin his chances. Far enough so that no one's going to be connecting him to Rainier. It's the only place that'll take him. So he's moving there. For a couple of years.
And he's leaving next week.
And you know, I'm trying real hard to be reasonable here, but it just isn't right, you know? I understand what he wants -- he wants to do this on his own terms, in a way he can live with. He wants to help, be my partner, but he can't be that by being a cop. Not the kind of cop I am, at any rate. He's been a cop for years. It's the killer part that's tearing him up inside. Because, I think, he knows he'd do it again, if he had to. And he would probably have to, the way our world works.
He doesn't put it quite that way, but that's what he means. And he's right, you know? But it doesn't make it suck any less. Doesn't make me any less pissed that he never said a goddamned word to me until it was all said and done.
"And how the hell is that any different from the way you operate?" he finally yells, after I try to point this out to him. "For chrissakes, Ellison, I've spent the last few years playing catch-up to you, running after you, trying to figure out just where you were at and what you wanted. Cut me some goddamned slack!" He makes a really, really vulgar hand gesture he picked up from some tribe or other, and stomps into the kitchen, goes looking for a beer.
"But," and hell, he's right, but it doesn't make it hurt any less. "But I thought things were ... different, now." Weak, Ellison, damn weak, but I thought they were. I thought we'd gotten past this. I follow him into the kitchen.
He just stops, beer halfway up to his mouth. "Different? How? Why?" he asks, and I shrug helplessly.
"Different," I sputter. "You know, we're together on this Sentinel thing, we've become ... what we had to become, you know?"
He slams the bottle down, and I lose sight of him for a second, focusing in on the bright amber arc of beer, but then he's in my space, poking me in the chest. "No, I don't know! You tell me what you think we are, 'cause I don't fucking know, and that's the goddamned problem. I mean, I know I chose you but I can't find a way to make. It. Fucking. Work." He jabs me in the chest with each word. "I know I've got a job to do, but I've gotta find a way to do it that lets me be me and I've found your way didn't work and this is the only other way I could think of and I still don't know if it'll work." He's in my space, breathing hard, and God, he smells good, and it occurs to me that I won't be able to smell him, or see him, or touch him all the way across the country. Or taste him, a little voice whispers, remembering the taste of him by the fountain, the taste of him breathing for me, after the shooting.
I have no words for this, I just have no words. I just keep breathing him in.
"What the hell do you want me to do?" he says at last, and he's this terrible mixture of anger and despair. I just shake my head, because I haven't got any answers at all. His lips pull back, and I can't tell if he's snarling or smiling or just trying to get a decent breath.
And then he's at me, he's on me, and for a second I think he's gonna kill me, but instead he's kissing me. And I can taste my blood again, maybe because we've both been bleeding inside ever since it happened. This seems the natural outcome, that everything shatters and remakes itself.
I'm in and out, lost in the taste of him, the terrible, wonderful things he's doing to my body. Somewhere halfway up the stairs, some last vestige of reason surfaces. I pull back from his mouth, look at him, see the truth in his eyes. I lean forward and rest my forehead against his.
"This isn't going to change anything at all, is it?" I know the answer, I know he's still leaving, but I still have to ask.
His eyes are dark, and deep, and there are lines around them that weren't there when I met him. There's silver in his hair, too, just a little bit. He tastes like sweat and fear and desire.
"No," he says at last. "Get us into bed."
And we get there, and it's not at all pretty but it's real, it's everything, and I'm falling up into him, losing everything, getting ready to lose everything, and then he breaches my body, pushes into me, and it's like being shot all over again, only infinitely deeper. Infinitely sweeter. Much more fatal.
)0(
He's got lube in his drawer, and condoms, and I damn near pull the drawer out trying to get at them, trying to get at him., house rules be damned. Somehow I manage to get the bottle open, spilling it all over the sheets and us but then it's in him, it's on me, and the stillness erupts into sound and motion. He grabs the railing, lifts his legs up high, over my shoulders, opens himself wide and I'm touching him, I'm inside Jim, and it's just
it's just
jesus
and he surges up, kisses me, sucking me in at both ends, pulling me into the darkness, sliding back and forth and back and forth and there's this single breath, circling through us, and there's
oh god
and he's breathing me, deep, gasping lungfulls
and I'm breathing him, sobbing and shuddering
and I'm falling into him, and he's let go of the railing, got his hands in my hair and he's breathing into me and breathing from me and I can taste his blood and his sweat and his tears and he's
we're
noise, and fury and it hurts to be this deep inside each other, to go to this place, knowing we have to leave it
but it's
we're
oh god ohgodohgodoh god
And then we're breathing separate again, and he's speaking to me, but it's like distant thunder, the buzz of bees, and the urgency, it's gone, there's just here and now.
)0(
Part Five: Exit Wound
Striking bones causes the bullet to become misshapen, flattening out.
The bone shatters, creating splinters that themselves can become lethal
weapons, and altering the path of the bullet in an unpredictable manner.
Sometimes the final resting place of the bullet in the body or the place
where it exits is very unexpected. As a general rule, exit wounds are
larger than entrance wounds - sometimes inches larger, if the bullet's
shape has become distorted by the structures hit.
They call it easing the Spring: it is perfectly easy If you have any strength in your thumb: like the bolt, And the breech, and the cocking-piece, and the point of balance, Which in our case we have not got; and the almond-blossom Silent in all of the gardens and the bees going backwards and forwards, For today we have naming of parts.
)0(
I don't want to move. Don't know if I can. He's sprawled out over me, still inside of me, and he's dazed and drenched and beautiful. Too much, too late, too little ... the phrases circle around in my head, but I don't say any of them, can't say any of them because they're none of them true, not really.
"Maybe this is what we are," I say at last. He shifts up onto his forearms, stares sleepily down at me. His hair is all over the place, and his eyes are soft, unfocused.
"Bear down," he says softly, his voice slurred by emotion and exhaustion, but he's still a pushy little bastard, always telling me what to do. And I do it; he slips out, rolls off to the side, gets rid of the condom. Curls up beside me again, pulling the quilt up over us. "Maybe," he says at last. "It would be just like us, to save this for a crisis moment, y'know?" He yawns, sleepy against my shoulder, the one he's marked.
I can feel where he's been on my body, in my body. There's a hollowness there, an emptiness that marks his passage. I can feel the echo of him, still. He hasn't moved cleanly through, didn't manage to slip out unchanged. We're something new here, something we've never been before.
And he's leaving, in a week, because all things have their ... trajectory. He's got to see it through. So we can see this through. I lean over, lick him, sniff him deeply, and he makes this tired little noise, but I'm not having any of it, because we've got a week to get our fill, and I'm not sure that I ever can.
)0(
He drives me to the airport. It's raining. It's a pretty typical day.
We sent my boxes overland, Greyhound, about four days ago. I'm flying out to get my dorm assignment, settle in before the new semester starts.
We've spent the last few days packing, and talking, and fucking.
Making love.
He's back on active duty soon, paired with Megan. We've taken her through, spent a whole day training, imprinting her on him enough that she has a hope in hell of helping him, providing a baseline for him.
My flight is doing the whole pre-board song and dance, so I've got to leave the waiting area where we're allowed to be with our loved ones, and move to the holding area where we have to wait alone.
I feel the emptiness inside where he'd filled me, just a few hours earlier. I feel the fullness inside me, where I carry him, still, and oh, man, I'm gonna cry in the fucking airport, and I haven't done that since I was six.
He stands there, just looking at me, and then he leans in and hugs me hard, so hard ribs pop and vertebrae try to relocate, and then he kisses me, hard and fast and hit and run on the mouth. In the middle of Cascade Airport, domestic flights.
"Maybe," he says, and he's all soft and uncertain, and he's looking anywhere but at me. "Maybe I can get a few days off after New Years," he says. "Use up my Air Miles."
"That'd be nice." They call my flight to pre-boarding again. "I've got to go, Jim." There are people all around us, muttering and droning pointlessly, but we are lost in the silence of the moment, this fragile point of balance between us.
"I know," he says at last, for the first time, really. "But you're coming back." He's warning me, reminding himself.
He hands me my carry-on, kisses the top of my head, shoves me through the gateway, beyond his reach, as though he's afraid he'll grab me and not let go. "You're coming back," he says again. And he watches me leave; I can feel his gaze between my shoulders.
"I love you," I say, and I know he hears, and this is what we are, then.
This is what we are.
)0(
An end.
The poem quoted is 'Naming of Parts' by Henry Reed. The article quoted is "Handgun Wounding Factors and Effectiveness" for the FBI by Special Agent Urey W. Patrick.