Pet Fly and Paramount own them. I don't. Just release the damn DVDs already.
Many thanks to Audra Rose and EE for their good advice. I played with this quite a lot after they looked it over. Any booboos are mine.
Lots of angst, a little sex. Mild violence. Everything I know about Maine I learned from the internet and Stephen King.
This story is a sequel to: Cloudbusting

He'd zoned again. He knew it at one level, and didn't care much. It was far more interesting (comforting) to follow the scent, the pattern and structure that made it up, almost a synaesthesia because damned if he couldn't see how everything fit together to make just that particular smell. He wanted to turn it over in his mind, to admire the complicated 3D puzzle of it all. He wanted to ignore the familiar (hated) sound just teasing at the edge of awareness, but sluggishly he realised it wasn't safe. He tried to come back but it was slow. The sharp pain that bit at his inner thigh brought him back more speedily.

"Mr Brackett," the lab tech protested, but not that strongly

"A good pinch always worked to get my big sis's attention too. How are you, Jim?"

Facing Brackett while still confused from a zone, strapped to a couch, and wearing a back-opening paper gown did not count as a position of strength.

"You freaked out the good Dr Ames. She's tied you up and trotted off for reinforcements. You should be grateful to me."

"Put a bullet in your brain. Then I'll be grateful."

"Jim, Jim, Jim. And when I'd come specifically to see you and engage you in intercourse. Verbal and social, naturally."

Jim flicked his eyes elsewhere. Brackett's penchant for smut and innuendo always pissed him off. He would say that it embarrassed the tech as well.

"Real nice legs you've got there. Think that Sandburg appreciated them?"

Jim schooled his face. In this place he always tried to react to Blair's name with a carefully judged level of disdain. Blair Sandburg was a wannabe user who hadn't bothered to think through the ramifications of who might be interested in his research, and had dumped both research and subject in a panic when the ramifications had been made clear to him. That was Jim's position. He had no desire to deal any further with the little dweeb. If the Group had Blair Sandburg's research, then they had more than enough. That was Jim's public persona.

"I think that Sandburg prefers legs attached to something a little more feminine than I am." Jim infused his tone with weary tolerance for the young who can't keep it in their pants.

"I think that you might misjudge Mr Sandburg."

Jim's heart thumped sickeningly. He was grateful that he wasn't hooked up to much in the way of monitors right now.

"I think that you might want to talk to your therapist."

The conversation was interrupted by the arrival of Dr Ames and Dr Tillotson. It wasn't often that Jim could say he was pleased to see either of them.

"Oh," Ames said in confusion. Tillotson looked at Brackett in displeasure. Brackett offended a good many of Tillotson's sensibilities.

Brackett flashed Ames one of his most charming smiles. "It's easy enough. Dr Ames. You just need to find the right stimulus." He stressed `stimulus' just subtly enough to get at Jim without offending the other two.

"He pinched him," the tech said.

Ames frowned. "He wasn't responsive to mild discomfort before."

Brackett grinned. It would be an engaging expression in someone else. "That's because he really, really dislikes me. It's the little things that make the difference."

Tillotson watched all this with carefully measured judgement. "Well, I'm clearly not needed here. Carry on, Dr Ames." He left.

"So, Charlotte, can I have my little chat with Jim now that he's returned to us?"

Ames looked unsure. "Oh, Lee, I don't know. It's not really appropriate."

"There's dinner in it for you. Come on, you know that I've got a proprietary interest in our Sentinel there. I can escort him back to his quarters, save security the work. I promise he'll be absolutely undamaged as long as he behaves himself."

Ames put up no more than a token struggle. "We were nearly finished," she said grudgingly. "It had better be the Sakura, Lee, or your favours from me will be well and truly used up."

He bowed her and the tech out. "Could you doubt me?" As soon as the door shut, the expression of amiability dropped. Brackett pulled up a chair, and sat astride, arms resting on the backrest.

"Her intelligence has a fairly limited focus, but she's not a bad little lay. Oops, sorry, I shouldn't mention that sort of thing to someone with your lack of opportunities, should I?"

Brackett always rubbed Jim the wrong way, but right now he was fast becoming intolerable. His scent, his attitude, the fact that he was free to walk out the door while Jim wasn't - all those things stirred Jim to a helpless fury. His hands clenched, and his heart felt as if it could burst with the need to hit Brackett's smiling face.

"But, to business. I can't keep you too long, or Charlotte will start wondering about my intentions. Sandburg no doubt bored you senseless with the glories of Sir Richard Burton? Did you ever bother to read that precious monograph that he put so much store by?"

Jim struggled to regain some equilibrium. Brackett was going somewhere with this, and he had to be ready.

"Some of it."

"Can't blame you, Jim. It's turgid stuff. Did you know that it was published posthumously?"

"Your point?"

"Sir Richard's wife was embarrassed by the richness of her husband's life experiences, and she edited his papers pretty vigorously. But since I became interested in Sentinels I managed to track down a draft copy of Burton's intended book. It was hard work, but I'm sure you know that I can be tenacious, Jim. Excuse me a moment."

He got up and left, leaving Jim fuming. Knowing that Brackett was needling him didn't make it any easier to endure.

Brackett returned with a glass of water from the hall water-cooler. "Thought I might need this. I'll be doing most of the talking." He resettled himself in the chair.

"Burton made a lot of interesting observations about the relationship between sentinel and guide."

He paused, ostentatiously sipping his water, and Jim braced himself, suddenly sure where this was going. Blair's face, alight with passion, shadowed with despair, was clear in his mind. Jim could hear the small sounds, the gasps that Blair made under his touch, but the memory wasn't an arousing one. Lying helpless, looking at Brackett's knowing face, Jim was terrified.

"I'd bet he was a damn sight more interesting than you are."

"Burton waxed lyrical about the sacred bond between the two, and indicated that it was, and I quote, `of a nature well known to the warrior lovers of the ancient Peloponnese.'"

Jim dragged a laugh out of his gut.

"Let me guess. You've been getting your kicks trying to figure out whether Sandburg and I were doing the nasty."

Brackett cocked his head like an especially curious dog. "Well, were you?"

Jim shook his own head.

"You and Sandburg are both red-blooded American heteros, huh?"

Jim kept his voice level, dismissive. "I never made any claims to be as red-blooded as Sandburg." For all the appearance that this was a private conversation, he was well aware that everything he said and did was monitored - something that Dr Ames of the limited focus seemed to have trouble grasping. He had no intention of giving Brackett anything.

"He's certainly cut his swathe through the women of Keepston County. So, you'd be surprised to learn that the adorable Mr Sandburg has branched out into little weekend trips where he goes through the faggots of Portland like a hot knife through butter?"

Jim's jaw dropped, but he recovered. "It would be a surprise, sure. He was always sniffing around women at Rainier." He gathered his strength for yet another calumny. "Maybe he was - you know - compensating." It wasn't hard to sound a little sour. He'd have sworn that Blair was straight. But then, he'd thought the same about himself, right up to when he willingly, enthusiastically, took Blair to bed.

Brackett looked him over.

"Did you know that they're a little disappointed in your results? Oh, it's a comparative thing. You've been very useful, and you're well motivated to keep on being useful. But you just don't seem to be hitting those heights that you reached under Mr Sandburg's `tuition'."

"I'm sure that everybody's read the part about the psychosomatic component to my abilities. Here I am, against my will, under duress. Maybe that might affect my mental attitude. What do you think?" Jim had no particular beliefs, but he was outrightly, albeit silently, praying. Not in this place, not Blair, no, please.

"Tillotson's certainly inclined that way. You're not a very accommodating personality, are you, Jim? But you're trying. Must be hard. All that low level physiological stress. Headaches. Skin complaints. Stomach disorders. Insomnia. You must have been hell for Sandburg to live with. Or were you?"

Jim struggled to sound wearily irritated.

"I had plenty of weird ups and downs. God knows that Sandburg documented enough of them."

"But Sandburg helped a lot. Just told you what to do, and it worked. Did you ever wonder whether it makes a difference? Not just any guide, but one particular guide?"

"One particular flake was more like it. And I have more pressing things on my mind than your weirdo theories."

"It's certainly a romantic notion. Tillotson's not a man for romance, but me, Jim, I like the idea of fated love. And I do love to see a man reach his full potential. So, just a little heads up for you, some food for thought. And maybe for Vasquez as well; they're thinking of partnering the two of you."

Jim shrugged, as best he could, his mind frantically turning over the implications of what Brackett was telling him.

Brackett grinned. "Yeah, I know, Vasquez doesn't have to keep his back against the wall. You'd never think of it, would you now? Not with him, anyway."

He got up, began to undo the straps that held Jim to the couch. He stood back with careless assurance, as Jim cautiously stretched, and told himself `not now'. Now was not the time. There would be a time. This wasn't it. He got up. He couldn't reach his clothes without turning his back on Brackett, and reflexively grasped the back of the gown, before turning to face the other man as he dressed. Brackett's face was almost gentle.

"Sometimes it's the petty humiliations that are the worst ones, aren't they? There's just no grandeur to having your ass peep out from a disposable robe. Well now, let's get you back to your quarters."

The two of them walked the corridors. It was early evening and it was quiet. Brackett spoke into the intercom to request access when they reached the elevator, and as they entered he began to hum in a vaguely familiar rhythm. The sound wasn't intrinsically unpleasant, but Jim was at his limits by now.

"Will you quit that?" he ground out.

"Not a blues fan, Jim? It's a fine old standard. Back Door Man."

And that was that. Brackett was up against the wall of the elevator, Jim's forearm across his throat. Brackett wheezed.

"Am I worth their lives?" he choked out.

The elevator had stopped, the doors opening and then shutting again as Jim stared into Brackett's face, which began to darken with the lack of air. Jim pulled away, and with a loud cry, threw his fist into the wall. Brackett fumbled for the `open' button, his hand at his throat. The doors slid open, to reveal two men standing in front of the door, guns drawn.

"It's fine," Brackett coughed out. Jim moved into the corridor, his hands in a pose of surrender, sentinel hearing well able to hear Brackett's ironic, "see you later, Jim".

The two men escorted Jim to his room, locked him in. Jim dropped onto the bed, and passionately hated everything about him. He hated this room, surely the most comfortable jail cell he'd ever seen, with its carefully painted matte green walls, its bed with its hypoallergenic mattress and pillows, and expensive pure cotton, high thread-count linens. The Group took care of him the way that stables and kennels took care of valuable animals.

He hated the muted hum of the air-conditioning, especially tuned to be as unobtrusive as possible. He hated the monitoring devices set into walls and ceilings. He'd twice trashed this room in the past, as much as was possible, but he was past the first mindless anger now. He just had to be patient. Be a good little prisoner, and wait for a chance. There had to be one.

He went into the tiny bathroom, filled a paper cup with water and drank it thirstily. He wondered if he'd see supper tonight, or if it would be withdrawn as punishment for the attack on Brackett. He drank again, and then returned to the larger room and began a round of exercise, careless of his bruised and grazed knuckles. He took a shower. Supper made no appearance. And then there was nothing left to do but think, which he did in the dubious shelter of his bed.

He especially hated Brackett, and this evening's revelations had only fuelled that hatred. Brackett delighted in his own cynicism, and Jim could almost taste Brackett's pleasure in the words that he'd used to describe Blair. If it was true. Brackett was a clever liar. Nothing like Blair, then, Jim's own cynicism returned, before he was heartily ashamed of himself. But Jim had spent too much time in Brackett's company not to know when even that accomplished deceiver was telling the truth.

What, he told himself, you thought that Sandburg was going to live like some monk? Even if there some predestined crap between us? He looked that idea in the face. Was that all that everything between Blair and him had been? Some convenient genetic match? He remembered Blair's voice as he tried to explain the debacle with Laura McCarthy - "It's kind of like when people say that you got chemistry with somebody. Well, we actually do have chemistry." And there had always been chemistry of a sort between Jim and Blair. He'd been surprisingly easy in Blair's company from the first. They'd been good friends despite their differences. But most men didn't react to the news that their best friend was leaving town by seducing him as if it was their last ever chance for sex with anyone; not that Blair had needed much convincing. And while it wasn't the last sex he'd had before his abduction, it was, ironically, the last sex he recalled as worth the having.

"Your sentinel powers exaggerate pheromones to the point of irrationality. It's the only logical explanation for what's going on with you." Was the stress of the disaster with the dissertation some sort of weird catalyst? Had it exaggerated a few vague leanings brought about by affection and constant proximity to a flashpoint? Laura had been a flash-fire of feelings, speedily ignited, intensely hot, and regretfully extinguished as soon as he had understood what was happening. Now, she was hardly ever in his mind, except as an occasional chagrined memory. It had all been too embarrassing to even use as the stuff of fantasies, any more than he could have used memories of the dream-like rut he'd felt for Alex Barnes. Blair - Blair was a different story. Blair was the subject of scarily carnal dreams, and the occasional conscious fantasy; but not too often, because Jim was straight. Jim was - he turned restlessly under the covers. He didn't know what the hell he was, and this was an old, unresolved topic of thought for him. Identifying jealousy - jealousy, not envy - at the idea of Blair screwing everything on two legs was nothing like resolution.

Whatever Jim's confusion about Blair cast in the role of lover, he wasn't in any confusion about intensely missing Blair the friend. He missed the small stupid things; the fussing over Jim's health, the scatter of belongings, Blair's tendency to enjoy his own jokes far more than anyone else did. He missed Blair's cheerful nature, the chatter that never seemed to stop, the dogged determination to figure out Jim's sentinel senses. He missed the way that Blair would smile at him as if Jim was the one person in the world he was waiting to see, the affection and loyalty that Jim had never quite understood and so never quite trusted until it was too late. Restless movement further destroyed the neatness of his bed covers, and irritated his throbbingly sore hand. He missed Blair, all the time, but he was glad that he wasn't here. Jim contemplated Brackett's information and his insinuations. Another set of threats, another bale of nightmare fodder. He rolled over, and willed Tillotson to regard any ideas brought to him as one more manifestation of Brackett's smutty turn of mind. There would be no need to bring Blair in, because Jim would perform, he would jump through all the hoops that they could find.

"Hurry it up, guys. I can't tell you what's happening on six because someone with half a brain finally took out the cameras. If Rasmussen's not heading for the helipad then I'm the incredible hulk, so move it, huh?" It was disorienting, splitting his hearing between the headset and the complex ahead, but tonight he could do anything because, one way or the other, he was going to be free and Rasmussen would be dead.

"It's clear ahead," Jim told Michael, and they ran, pounding up the stairwells, Michael muttering levels into the headset, warning Andy that he would need to unlock doors soon. Tillotson was gone, and Rasmussen had to go as well. Anyone else was collateral damage, but Rasmussen and Tillotson were the ones who knew the codes to set off the hits on William and Stephen Ellison, and Peter and Diana Jankowski, and anyone else whose safety was being used to blackmail the more unwilling employees of the Group.

They were at the door. Jim pushed through the headache that was beginning to really screw with his concentration and listened. "Somebody's by the door to the other stairwell." There was the sound of a shot. "Getting a little frustrated by the way that Andy won't open that damn door for them." Michael nodded. "You deal with them, old man; I'll cover the other direction. That's the quicker way to the bastard." That always had been how Michael referred to Rasmussen - the bastard. Jim nodded in turn. "Now," Michael murmured into the set. They went through hard and fast. And there he was, the good soldier risking a ricochet to attempt to open the solid security door for his employer. It would have to be Luis.

He'd been down low, trying to be as small as possible. He pivoted towards the two men, his aim faltering briefly when he saw Jim. Jim didn't think about it, didn't think once, let alone twice, about shooting Luis, who was an honest man if you judged that in the cynical old way of a man who, being bought, stayed bought, who liked Thai food, who had a sense of humour as dry as Death Valley. Who could have been Jim's friend in another place and time where he didn't work willingly for the Group.

Jim stepped over Luis's sprawled body, checked doors and rooms down the corridor. Invincibility had fled, and sure of his mortality, he needed to be certain that there were no surprises waiting. He turned back the way Michael had gone, was barely past Luis and the stairwell doors when he heard gunfire ahead, and then Andy spoke again.

"They know it's just me in here, and some bright boy's got some tools from a janitor's closet." His voice was panicky. "Hurry up and come and get me."

"Hold your horses," Jim growled into the set. "We finish Rasmussen first."

"Damn it, Ellison, you and Mike come and get me now!"

"When we're done!"

Michael came around the corner, his face calm. "We can go," he said. "He's finished."

"Get your stuff together and get ready to unlock the elevators. We're coming now, by the stairs."

"It's okay, Andy," Michael muttered into the headset. "There's no more trouble, so don't give yourself a conniption."

They reached the third floor, ignoring the occasional heads that popped out of doorways and then just as speedily withdrew. At the corner of the corridor to the computer suite they stopped.

"Recognise the voices?" Michael whispered.

"Kim, but not the other." A whiff of expensive scent tainted with fear and frustration reached Jim. "Spends a fortune on his cologne."

"Jackson," said Michael. "They should both be sensible if we give them the chance, and it feels okay. " He turned the corner, gun ready. "Drop everything, gentlemen."

Kim had turned. He was the only one with a gun even half ready, the other man was still trying to break in the door. "Ah, come on, Michael, not you."

"Put it down, William." He was obeyed, and Andy's nervous voice said, "Put them in with the others and then get me the fuck out of here."

Kim protested. "You're needed, Michael. Jim too. Don't do this."

Michael was silent and simply gestured with his gun. Kim and Jackson moved unwillingly.

"People won't forget this. You owe your country." Kim's argument was overlaid by Andy's, "Door's unlocked," as Jim shoved both men in and slammed the door shut.

Michael sighed. "Like my pop would say, tell it to the marines. It's just us now, Andy, time to go."

The computer suite opened at a turn of the door handle. Andy was a little stooped in his chair, his good hand fumbling at the head wand. Michael dragged it off without any ado, ignoring Andy's wince as it caught at his hair.

"Discs," Andy said. Jim picked up the pile of discs and dropped them in the small bag by the desk, which he slung over his shoulder as Michael swept Andy up and out of the chair.

"Hey," Andy protested.

"Speed's of the essence, Scarlet. Don't worry, we'll get you a nice shiny new chair when we're free men. After you, old man."

Jim grinned and led the way to the lifts, still alert despite Michael's assurances. The safe passage he foresaw might be dependent on care, and Jim wasn't going to risk everything in over-confidence on the home stretch.

They entered an elevator for the first time since they'd openly armed themselves, after shooing out two bug-eyed admin people. Once in, Jim punched buttons for the garage. "To the batmobile, dude," Andy crowed. "Shit, I can't remember the last time I went out except for fucking physical therapy."

"Yeah, you'll still be having that. dude," Michael told him. The elevator doors opened. "The blue TownCar." The three men made their way to the car, and Michael sat Andy on the hood of a neighbouring car, supporting him with one arm, while his free hand reached into his pockets to hand Jim a wallet, a remote and a set of keys, smeared with dark stains. Jim lifted the things closer to his face, inhaled as if he could smell sweet perfume.

"Tell me this isn't Rasmussen's car."

Michael's grin was feral. "We'll dump it soon enough. Just humour me."

Jim felt a grin, equally feral, and maybe even a little demented, stretch his face until he thought it might split.

"I can do that." He unlocked the vehicle. "Gentlemen, our chariot awaits."

"So, Mr McKinlay," Andy looked smug, "all you have to do is tell your sob story of the lost wallet, get your `replacement' ID and hey presto, thanks to my personal mojo, you're good to go."

"Uh huh." Andy's face turned a little offended. "Yeah, it's good, thanks." Carl James McKinlay, according to the birth certificate, born in Oregon.

"You have to be a little more trusting, Jimbo." Andy awkwardly patted the nearest computer tower, his eyes far away in a way that always creeped Jim out. "Me and the government databases are good friends."

Jim looked at Andy's bony face with its frame of lank dark hair, and could think of no-one he was inclined to trust less. He didn't trust Andy's discretion, or the hubris the young man had in his `touch' with computers. If Michael hadn't struck up an unlikely friendship with him, and appointed himself the younger man's caregiver and putative brother, Jim would have had even more misgivings. As it was, he had more than once pushed away the notion that it would be a great deal safer to humanely and efficiently dispose of Andy; although Michael presented both a physical and moral barrier to that particular course of action.

"Hey. Earth to Ellison? I said do you want the discs?"

"What's on them?"

Andy sighed. "What do you think? There's your friend Sandburg's book for a start. The data from the scans they did of you. Medical tests, psychological evaluations..."

"You said that you wiped that crap."

"Of course, but the thought occurred that maybe you might need to review what they had for yourself. Never know, you might learn..."

Andy broke off as Jim stood and leaned down, his hands resting on the arms of the wheelchair. Andy's skin, always pale, whitened perceptibly.

"You look at any of that?" Jim's voice was low and ambiguously calm.

"I, uh, read a bit of your friend's diss - interesting stuff, but no, no I didn't look at any of the other files, except as far as I had to put what was relevant on - will you get the fuck out of my face!"

Michael stepped out of the kitchen.

"There a problem here?"

Jim stood up, crossed his arms. "Just making sure that the genius there understands the concept of privacy."

"Don't worry about it. I'm continuing his education."

The two men locked eyes, and then Jim shrugged.

"Great. So, which discs?"

"On the desk - left of the monitor." Jim picked up two thin plastic cases, and stuffed them in the pocket of his jacket.

"Use that account Andy set up for regular contact. We'll do ditto. Cell for emergencies. He's still looking. We'll let you know if we find anything."

Andy was looking for any references to sentinels, ESP, clairvoyance - anything that looked like serious research, rather than loony tunes, anything that looked like it might have come out of Group information. And if they found any evidence of that, all three were agreed that the research should be investigated and, if need be, destroyed. Blair would go to town on them all if he knew that. Jim pushed the thought away, offered an informal but respectful salute to Michael, and left.

He visited various agencies and offices, setting in train the process for all those necessary little pieces of plastic. He drove for a while afterwards, no particular destination in mind, taking a mindless comfort in the action of controlling the car. Just driving round and round in circles, before returning to his cheap room, and looking at the notes he'd made, the information he'd managed to obtain without any input from Andy. Stephen's name had appeared in the occasional web search, enough that Jim knew he was doing well. His father was still alive. Blair's home address - still the same as it had been three years ago, or five years ago for that matter. Carolyn's address, the record of the birth of Robert James Plummer. Jim ran his finger across the boy's name, as if he could caress the child via his identity.

He remembered a time just before their marriage, when he and Carolyn had sat lazily on a couch, building castles in the air. Her brother, Rob, had died of leukaemia at eighteen. She'd half jokingly pronounced that if they ever had a son, that he would be her brother's namesake. He acquitted his ex-wife of purposely trying to get pregnant, but wondered at her maternal opportunism. He'd have imagined Carolyn the first to hotfoot it to an abortion clinic.

He sighed, and shut his eyes, put the child's rounded face in the front of his mind. The dream of six months ago was still clear in his mind, but the one he'd had three weeks ago was a better memory. He liked remembering Robbie's pleasure that he could help someone, more than the child's frantic frustration that his hearing prevented a decent night's sleep. He turned over uncomfortably - he couldn't regret knowing about the boy, but dreaming of him when he thought it was some crazy metaphor was a lot less disturbing than knowing that he was real, and suspecting that the dreams were mutual. He hoped he could be a better father in the occasional dream than his own had been in the flesh.

"Yeah."

"This is your fellow Ringling Brothers attraction. Andy's found something. A man called Wallace, in Palo Alto - he has some of the sentinel research on his home pc. Question is what he's got in the way of hard copy and backups."

"Palo Alto? Why me - you're closer." And Palo Alto was way too close to Carolyn and Robbie for him to be proof against temptation.

"Andy's having respiratory problems again. We're this close to a hospital admission and no way I'm leaving him with some hired caregiver. And I presume that you don't want any delays."

"No. You're right. I'll get on it." He memorised the address Michael gave him, and turned back to the cheap room he was renting to collect what few belongings he'd bothered to amass. Nothing that couldn't comfortably fit in his car. He planned to drive. It was anonymous, and it wasn't as if he slept that much anyway. There was time.

He supposed it wasn't that surprising. It was, no doubt, part of his `territorial imperative'. Wasn't that how Blair had expressed it? Maybe that lack of a defined territory was a reason for the rootless wandering he indulged right now. There were three places he knew he could belong, and he couldn't be any of them. The urge to travel cross-country to Maine kept at him, as if he was denying some ancient migratory urge.

He drove into San Francisco, still brooding, and still trying to convince himself that there was no harm to his intentions. He was just going to look, just confirm to his physical senses that the boy was real, and that he and Carolyn were okay. He spent the evening, after he'd swum myriad steady laps at a nearby pool complex, looking at street maps and guides, figuring out routes. The morning of the next day was spent driving streets and working out vantage points. Robbie's school wasn't even that hard to figure out, and he chose to be outside it at school's end, figuring that someone hanging around the school when parents were doing the pickup would be less obvious than trying to catch a glimpse of him at recess or lunch.

He thought he'd been ready to see the boy, and instead was scoured by the wave of mixed emotion that surged through him. He looks just like me, he thought in amazement, taking in the long face and slightly lanky body, the clearly defined brows. Robbie's grandmother bent over him, hugging him warmly, and the child wrapped one arm quickly around her neck before bouncing into the car. He must have bounced like that sometimes, surely, Jim thought, but all his memories of his childhood were of emotional caution. He wished desperately that Carolyn had told him, and then was just as desperately grateful that she hadn't. He was angry at her, and angry at himself for coming anywhere near them. But that didn't stop him from getting into his car and driving to a vantage point on the hill streets above Carolyn's house where he could just see the entrance way, and where sentinel hearing could easily tune in.

He put on the car radio, hoping that it might provide enough distraction to prevent a zone. Then he listened as hard as he could, focused all his attention on Carolyn's home. There was the buzz of adult voices - familiar voices, most of them male. He came back to himself, to the inside of the car, in abrupt astonishment. That was his father, and Stephen. He could hear Blair. Jim shut his eyes, denying the prickle of heat that ran under the lids, denying the way that his throat closed and his heart leaped. He could hear Blair.

Dry-mouthed in shock, he returned to his eavesdropping. All of them were discussing dinner plans, his father at his most persuasive, convincing Carolyn and Blair that their respective prides would survive his buying them a meal. Negotiation concluded, William and Stephen Ellison left, and Jim abandoned hearing for sight. Stevie looked good, he thought. Jim had dealt with the fact that his father was old now some years ago, but it was still difficult to watch the thin, white haired man who carefully lowered himself into the car seat. Stephen drove off.

With the realisation that his entire family had been in one place came a sudden rush of paranoia and fear. His son and Blair were in that house together, and however desperate he was for even this distant contact with them, first he had to check his surroundings again. He used everything that he'd learned, everything that Blair had tried to reinforce, to sweep the broader area with his senses, to feel for enemies with the instincts of a sentinel and a trained soldier and agent, to look for anything suspicious. But he was the only suspicious thing he could discover. He started up the car, and made his way to another point about one hundred yards from Carolyn's home. Once there, he stopped and listened once more, trying unsuccessfully not to feel like a stalker.

He was listening, fascinated, to Blair's tests on Robbie, proud of his son, soothed as always by Blair's voice, when someone's car alarm went off further up the street. He came back to himself with a painful start, hands over his ears, and then realised that an elderly woman was glaring at him through her window. He sighed, and returned his attention to the car. He pulled out, and drove down the street, looking for a spot to park that would enable some surveillance of the house without being too close. The car alarm kept on blaring into both the street and Jim's concentration, and he muttered under his breath at the owner to hurry up and shut it down. He was getting a killer headache and regretfully abandoned his listening. After a time, Blair came out of Carolyn's house, and began to walk in the opposite direction to Jim. It was purest instinct, an act completely without thought, to get out of the car and follow him.

Blair was thinner. The quick glimpse that Jim had of Blair's face showed a visage that had lost the last trace of young man's roundness. The square, sharp lines of cheek and jaw were more pronounced. His hair was still long, still the rich mix of browns that Jim could occasionally lose himself in. Blair moved with a speedy, jerky stride that Jim remembered was a sign of distress. He wondered if anything had gone wrong and cursed whoever or whatever set the car alarm off.

Tension blossomed in Jim as he walked past Carolyn's house. He had a cap pulled over his eyes, nondescript clothes on. The odds of her even looking out her window were tiny, the risk was small. And what if Robbie's room faces the front, he asked himself, and lost all pleasure in the proximity to them, simply picked up his feet and walked faster. He was walking over ground already covered by Blair, and it was easy to pick up his spoor, the smell of deodorant and shampoo and Blair. He could shut his eyes and pick Blair's route now. It was quite impossible to not scent him, and Jim focused his gaze on the figure walking briskly ahead, afraid that he was risking a zone. He nearly choked on an overwhelming urge to call out to Blair. He could imagine the incredulous shock, the sun-rise of welcome, Blair's arms wrapped around his back.

He was crazy. He'd been crazy to come anywhere near Carolyn and Robbie, and the thought that Blair was in contact with them, could be associated with them, became a dreadful pressure in his chest. Blair's name and research had been noted in dangerous places. Someone might see and note it again and they could then connect a sentinel and guide together if Blair kept up contact with Robbie and Carolyn.

So, Blair had to be convinced to stay away, for his safety as well as everybody else's. It wasn't as if Jim didn't know how to push Blair away from what didn't bear too close examination. Blair never did cope well with his disapproval. Jim felt a little sick all the same. He followed Blair all the way to his destination, noted the address, before heading back to his car. He drove some distance and found a coffee place, where he wrote the curtest note he could. He dropped it off on the reception desk of what was not a bad little B&B. Trust his father not to stint. Money was never an object. Then he got into his car and drove again, shook the metaphorical dust of San Francisco from his feet, pushed away the thought of Blair's face when he realised that one written sentence was all the contact that Jim deigned to grant him, and tried to ignore the queasy guilt that jiggled in his gut. But he knew with bleak clarity that, sometime soon, somewhere private, he would jerk off thinking of Blair.

He took a long slow circuitous trip which included two weeks working on bikes in a town in Iowa where the owner of the garage had just broken his leg. He knew that his internal argument that he didn't have to end up in Keepston was a bust about the time that he crossed the Maine state line. When, with the intent of finally knocking on Blair's door, he once more drove past the sign welcoming visitors to Keepston, he was containing all sorts of terror in a tiny pressurised ball inside him. Five years was a very long time. And while he didn't doubt Blair's affection and genuine sacrifice, there was a niggling fear that the press conference fiasco had offered a silver lining - the ultimate in no-fault escapes from Blair's good friend, Jim; the friend who had lusted after Alex, the friend who'd accused Blair of selling him out to Sid Graham, the friend who'd jumped Blair's bones and then hardly spoken to him until the last strained words of parting.

`Our town, our future' the sign proclaimed. He hoped that the town council hadn't paid any PR company too much for that little gem, and wiped sweaty palms on his pants.

He'd had all his life to practice maintaining a neutral face in a state of fear, and he needed all that practice when he rapped his knuckles on Blair's green painted front door. But as soon as the door opened, he could feel his face falling into other defensive defaults - anger and cynicism. He needed all the defences he could find. Blair stared up at him, eyes huge in the palest of pale faces, silent as the grave. "So, can I come inside?"

Flustered, Blair stood out of the way. "Yes, of course, come in." Jim took that step over the threshold, into Blair's house. There was a couch, a big desk with a computer that was nearly overwhelmed by papers and discs, a compact music centre with a whole heap of CDs in racks, a small television. There were roughly put-together book shelves, and several artefacts that he recognised from loft days. The plate and cup on the coffee table and the pile of laundry in an armchair were familiar as well. Home like.

"I see that some things don't change."

"You came here to comment on my housekeeping?"

Blair's voice was strangled. Acutely aware that he'd had weeks to work up to springing this, Jim told him to sit down, and Blair plonked clumsily down onto the couch, a yard sale find if Jim had ever seen one. Then he stood, waiting Blair's judgement.

"Jim, what the hell are you doing here? Where have you been?" Trust Blair to ask the questions that Jim had no idea how to answer.

Blair stood up. "Can I get you anything? Coffee?"

"Coffee would be fine." Blair disappeared into the kitchen and Jim looked around the room a little more. Didn't look like Blair was earning much, but then, Jim supposed that he had debts left over from his Rainier days. He picked up the pile of laundry, shirts and socks and underwear, and shifted it to the corner of the couch before settling into the armchair. Blair reappeared with mugs of coffee, and handed one to Jim with a nervous, hopeful expression, before seating himself on the couch.

"So," Blair said, "this is quite a surprise."

I'll bet it is, Jim thought. Any more surprised and I'd have been putting you into the recovery position. He sipped at the coffee, breathing the bitter richness of it, well aware of the way his sense of smell was investigating Blair's house, - stale food smells, touches of incense and candle wax, the scent of detergent and fabric softener from the clothes he'd moved.

"Yeah, I can imagine. But I felt I owed you an explanation after San Francisco." Although he wasn't quite sure what it was. He couldn't apologise for the basic message that Blair should stay away from Robbie. That was a given. Except that it left his son without any help except for the advice that Jim tried to offer in those occasional visions.

"You didn't think that I'd just want to see you? God, everyone thinks that you're dead."

"That was their intention." He admired, in a strange way, Rasmussen's patience. He was a long-term thinker and he'd liked tidy set-ups. Really, Jim's abduction had been beautifully done. And Jim and Michael and Andy had put a lot of thought into getting themselves out. Their set-up hadn't been tidy. But it had been efficient.

"Underground?" Blair was asking.

"I'm still Jim, just not Ellison..." He ignored the way that Blair looked when he realised that Jim wasn't going to give him his new name. He hadn't talked at this length in what - years? Except for debriefings after Group work, but that was different.

"Are they still looking for you?" Ah, the big question.

"Maybe, the ones who are still alive." He kept his eyes on his coffee. "As joint government-private sector investments go, we went pretty sour on them. This is good coffee." Yes, of course. Tell Blair the important things.

"Who's we?"

"Some guys. Good guys." Hell, they'd all got out together, hadn't they?

"Sentinel type guys?" Blair asked. That nearly made Jim laugh. There are stranger things, Sandburg...

"Hey, this is top secret stuff. I can't go around telling secrets."

Clearly it didn't sound nearly as devil-may-care, `Man from Uncle' as it was supposed to. Blair sounded as if he'd just been told someone was dead.

"Oh, Jim, what the fuck did they do to you?"

He didn't mean to hurt Blair. There'd been times when that was the intention, but this wasn't one of them.

"Hey, it's okay. But I can't - there are other people at stake here, you know? I shouldn't even be here. They were watching you for a while. I saw some of the files, after."

Blair stood up and began to pace.

"God, so it was all for nothing."

Yes, Jim thought, yes it was. You left me and it was for nothing. And I let you go because I was a stupid fuck.

"Yep, waste of a promising career there."

And he was still a stupid fuck. Blair exploded into shocked fury, and Jim let it buffet him. He hadn't been prepared for this level of grief. He'd heard the competent enthusiasm Blair had used on Robbie. He'd known that Blair was holding down a job, screwing both men and women. He'd watched him from a distance for two painful weeks, while searching for any evidence of anyone else watching, and somehow he'd imagined an older version of the relaxed, hedonistic young man who used to ride with him. He hadn't imagined this thin, stark-faced man staring miserably at the floor.

Jim made his apologies somehow, and Blair convinced him to stay the night somehow. He didn't quite know how that happened, but he was leaving his bag in Blair's tiny spare-room, and taking advantage of Blair puttering in the kitchen to sweep the house for any evidence of bugs or surveillance. And when Blair brought out macaroni they ate it sitting on the couch because he didn't own a proper dining table.

Jim made his excuses and went to bed early. He was tired, he was exhausted. He couldn't remember a time in the last few years when it wasn't his natural state. When he jerked upright and awake, he didn't remember the dream, but clearly he'd been noisy, because there was Blair sitting on the edge of the bed.

"What the fuck are you doing here?" Oh yes, he was as gracious as ever.

"Radio Ellison was broadcasting at top volume. You were having one hell of a nightmare."

"Sorry." He turned down the offer of water. Jeez, did he look like he was five years old?

"Who's Luis?"

"What?"

"You were calling out to somebody called Luis?"

His stomach roiled. "I worked with Luis, sometimes. He helped me with the senses."

He watched the jealous anger cross Blair's face with a certain satisfaction. What, Chief, worried that somebody might do a better job? Should have hung around.

"Come on, Sandburg, don't look like you just found your best girl in bed with your best friend." Jim reminded himself of unpleasant facts. "Besides, you should be grateful. If I hadn't proved that I could work with other people, they would have brought you in too."

That information pushed Blair away, as he'd half hoped. It was too hard to sit there in intimate darkness with the other man close enough to touch, if only Jim chose. But then Blair stopped at the door.

"Jim, you won't just disappear into the night? If you're going to go, you'll say good-bye first."

He struggled against that command. "Jim," Blair's voice came again.

"No sneaking off. Check." Resignedly, he gave up the option of surreptitious retreat. Then he lay down in the narrow bed and tried not to think about the morning, which came soon enough, and was punctuated with the sounds of Blair working in the kitchen. Jim was wandering the living room, eyeing the mess on the desk when he saw the envelope. Letter paper sized, reasonably thick and addressed to Carolyn. There was an iron coldness inside him. Wasn't that just like Blair? You told him, you told him, you pushed him away, and like a rubber ball he continued to bounce through the middle of everything that wasn't his damn business. Jim picked up the envelope and stalked to the tiny kitchen where Blair was fussing over a pan of eggs.

Jim held the envelope up, so that Blair could exactly see the problem. "What is this?" Comprehension, but no guilt, crossed Blair's face. He tried to speak, but Jim forged ahead.

"I thought I made it very clear that you were to have nothing to do with them." He tossed the offending envelope onto the counter as Blair moved away from the stove. Not that he had anywhere to go. He certainly wasn't getting away from Jim, who ignored Blair's wince as his fingers gripped hard against the smaller man's arms, and tried to make sense of the bullshit explanation Blair was making.

"... about how much to tell Robbie's doctor and his teachers - "

Jim's panic was very nearly a living, gibbering creature. "Tell?" he ground out. "Tell? What the fuck do you two think you're doing? Jesus, what do you think you're doing?" He shook Blair, hard.

Blair twisted in his grip. "Damn it, let go of me!"

"You can't tell people about him!" Jim let go of Blair and stormed into the living room. Blair followed him, as Jim spun around to face him once more. "If people know about him...Fuck, do you want what happened to me to happen to him?"

And Blair kept on talking, damn it, and all Jim could think was that his father, bastard that he was, still had the right of it. Score one for old Dad.

"Jim, he's just a kid. I mean, maybe they were so interested in you because you had a - a proven record in the sort of work they wanted done?"

As an effort at comfort, it didn't work. "That a subtle way of saying that they knew that I could kill people, Sandburg?"

Blair carried on. He had no idea, no idea at all. "What the hell is Carolyn supposed to do? Go into hiding?"

Jim got a grip. "Nobody's watched you recently. And there's no evidence of any surveillance devices around here." And of course Blair jumped on that. Jim nearly laughed at the way Blair's voice rose when Jim confessed to two weeks' of watching him. He could see that adding more fuel to this little `discussion' they were having, when he registered the smell of burning from the kitchen. Blair yelped, "The stove!" and charged in, swearing as he considered whether he could save the pan or not. Looked like they were eating out - the smell was way too disgusting to stay put. They could get out, in the fresh air, and leave the disagreement behind them.

Blair seemed to feel the same and was in a mood to clown as they walked down the street. Jim tried to imagine his brilliant, very urban friend living in this small town. Maybe he regarded it as some sort of anthropological study? Instead of the wilds of Borneo, he'd substituted Maine? And then Blair was back to the serious conversation again.

"You were watching me for two weeks?" Jim wanted - whatever he decided, he wanted Blair to not think too badly of him. That much he was sure of. He shrugged in apology. "Precautions. And I was working up my nerve." Two weeks of watching from a distance, of driving past Blair's house but not ever daring to actually go in. "It's been a long time, and maybe I could have done things better in San Francisco." He tried to obliquely explain his earlier fury. "Jeez, I'm still getting my head around the idea that I have a kid. I dreamed about him, wondered if I was going crazy. But it was a soothing sort of crazy so I didn't fight it."

He half expected Blair to latch on to the idea of the dreams, but instead he asked, "They didn't know?"

No, they didn't know, he'd gone through the information that Andy gave him looking for any references to any other sentinels, or any children. There was nothing that indicated that they knew about Robbie, and it was going to stay that way.

"Maybe I'm paranoid about this, Sandburg, maybe I really am, but I don't give a damn."

"Your father and Stephen are involved now, as well. You don't think that your Dad isn't going to boast about his grandson at the country club? Look, either they're watching your family and friends, or they're not. If they are, then if they don't know about Robbie then they could still find out, whether you or I are there or not. Yes, there's a risk, but don't you think that your family would be glad to see you again? That Robbie would like to see his dad in more than the occasional dream? Where you're no doubt giving good advice about keeping his abilities under wraps."

Blair's voice was quietly impassioned, and there was a bitter tang to the end of his words. But at least Jim knew why Blair hadn't questioned about the dreams. It seemed that he already knew.

"Damn. He remembers that stuff. And he told you."

"He's seven, Jim. It just sort of slipped out of him."

The fear was coming back again. Who knew what a trusting small child might say, and to whom? "Because you were there, talking about the senses, putting it all in his head."

God, he was angry. So, what was one more home truth then? "If you're so damn eager to take chances and risks, then maybe you should have done that five years ago instead of fucking off and leaving me!"

Blair's voice wasn't quiet anymore as he angrily defended himself. Jim realised that he'd seen his easy-going Blair furious over the last twenty-four hours nearly as many times as he'd ever seen that emotion in him in nearly four years. Stress, he thought irrelevantly, as Blair ranted at him, before trying to pull back the fury. Blair's eyes flashed, but his voice sounded close to tears. "I'll stay away from your precious family. Happy now? At least I know how come I never got invited to any blue place dreams, huh?" And Blair turned and walked away, stiff with anger.

That was hard to watch. Watching Blair walk away in anger and hurt was a signal in the past that things weren't going to end well. Jim found that he was spinning in the opposite direction, raking down some gawking passer-by with a ferocious glare before trying to walk off some of his own adrenalin. So much for trying to repair whatever damage he'd done in San Francisco; and he knew that was no more than a weak excuse. What the hell did he think he was going to achieve with this anyway? He couldn't stay with Blair, certainly couldn't ask Blair to stay with him. He walked for a while in pointless directions, before making the conscious decision to head back to Blair's house. He should just get in his car and go, but last night he'd promised Blair a good-bye. That was a weak excuse too.

Blair's door was uncompromisingly shut, and there was no answer to Jim's knock. Either Blair was still out, or he wasn't answering. But the locks weren't worth much, and Jim justified the speedy break-in on the basis that his damn bag was still in there. If Blair didn't like it he could toss Jim out on his ass. There was silence inside the house. Jim went to get his bag, and stopped at the doorway. Blair was huddled under the covers of Jim's bed. Jim approached quietly, but Blair was clearly asleep. He reached out his hand to nearly rest it on Blair's head but drew back. "Damn it, Chief." Then he went to the living room to wait.

Blair emerged eventually, his bleary-eyed expression turning startled when he saw Jim sitting in the armchair. "Hey. I thought I'd let you sleep. Guess you needed it."

Blair blushed, but his face settled into studiedly neutral lines. "I don't know about you, but I still haven't had any breakfast. Toast and coffee?"

"Blair..."

Blair turned for the kitchen and said back over his shoulder, "No, man, it's all right. We'll get you fed and you can be on your way, no harm, no foul. It's cool."

That was it? And he was turning his fucking back to walk away again. Jim crossed the room without thought and grabbed Blair by the arm, spilled out everything that he could think of, because this was the last chance.

"I don't know why I could dream about Robbie and not you. You think that I wouldn't have wanted that? Why the hell do you think I'm here, if it wasn't because missing you made me nuts, and thinking about you in the middle of all the crap they made me do kept me sane. It's not cool, it's not fucking cool at all!" He looked at his hand, white-knuckled across Blair's arm, and his face heated. The only times he'd touched Blair were in anger. He stood there in shame, and realised that he'd fucked it up. He should never have come here.

He tried to explain.

"I didn't mean to even check on Caro and Robbie, I was in San Francisco for - for something else, and when I saw you coming out of her house I just - Jesus, if they ever knew, maybe they won't, but they knew that you and I hadn't seen each other for years, they just held Dad and Stephen over my head, but you and Robbie...Jesus. They could make me do fucking anything..."

Blair's voice was soothing "Jim, it's okay. It's over."

Jim shook his head. "You don't know that. I don't know that." They'd made it to the couch by now, and then Jim was folded up in the gentle weight of Blair's embrace.

"Maybe we could go fishing, play catch-up," Blair suggested. Jim shook his head. "No, really, man, just a quiet break, I can take cash, not use my real name, very covert." Blair had a plan. Nothing more dangerous than Blair Sandburg with a plan. Well, except maybe for James Ellison with a stupid hope.

"So, this'd just be for a week or so, Sandburg?"

"Yeah, sure Jim, just a week."

Jim leaned into Blair just a little longer, and then took a long, harsh breath.

"You said something about coffee?"

"Look, Bryce, I'm sorry, but I can't help the fact that Mom's health has gone to pot again." There was a pause. "I know, I know, but I'm her only child, man. I'm not moving her up here, the weather in Florida is definitely better. If it looks like this is going to be a regular thing I may have to look at relocating...yes, yes, I know that you guys need me, but this is family, yes, I know this sort of thing will stand against me in review...yeah, I'm sorry, I'll let you know. Yeah, bye."

Blair pushed `end' with great deliberation, and put his head back against the couch.

"This was your idea, Chief." He knew he sounded more amused than anything.

Blair flapped his hand dismissively. "I'm not guilting you, Jim. I'm just gathering my resources. Next thing is to try and get hold of the lady herself."

"So, how is Naomi?" The question hung in the air between them.

"Mom is pretty much the same as ever."

Jim had never heard that particular tone of wariness in anything that Blair had ever said about his mother. Maybe he was just thinking too much these days about relationships between parents and children.

Blair sighed, his head bowed. "I had kind of a blow up with Mom a couple of years ago. We're okay now, but the memory lingers on." He looked up at Jim, and apparently whatever he saw encouraged him to go on. "It was a year or so after you `died'," Blair's fingers made quote marks in the air, "and she was worried about me, and I didn't take well to the concern, and we had a hell of an argument." A rueful grin flashed across Blair's face. "Well, we didn't really argue - I just yelled a lot and she stood around looking shocked and scared." Blair's voice mixed penitence and amazed satisfaction. "I scared my mother, Jim."

"Naomi always said she was open to new experiences."

Blair jumped off the couch. "Oh, no, we are not talking about my mother any further. Coffee? I'm going to get a little dry with all the talking I'll be doing this afternoon."

"Yeah, I could stand coffee."

So Blair made coffee, and they drank it.

"You still buying that fair trade stuff?"

Blair grinned. "I'm earning, and it's not like I have that many luxuries. I don't have to compromise either my taste buds or my principles."

"It's not bad," Jim conceded. "You said Naomi was worried about you."

"And I said that I didn't want to talk about her."

Jim shifted in his chair. He had an opportunity to start figuring out a few things and he didn't plan on giving it up.

"I don't want to talk about Naomi, I guess I just want to know, you know, how you've been."

Blair looked at Jim uncomfortably. "Hey, I missed you. But I got on with my life. That about sums it up."

"So why was Naomi worried about you?"

Blair got up. "Jim, I'm not going to pretend that I was Mr Happy the last few years, but..."

"But what?"

"How the hell can I complain when I wasn't the person being detained and having god knows what done to them? It's not like I haven't got a sense of perspective here."

Jim wouldn't be put off.

"So, what was it about your perspective that bothered your mother?"

There was the tiniest shrug of surrender. "She noted that I was using sex to deal with issues that maybe more properly should have been dealt with through therapy and meditation." Blair's voice was flat.

"The fact that you thought I was dead issue? Or the sex thing issue?"

"That sex thing where you and I got naked with each other? Yeah, that. The other. Both." There was a pause, and then Blair's eyebrow lifted. "Sex `thing'?"

Jim played dumb. "You're the educated one here."

"Yeah, sure, they only take morons into officer training," Blair scoffed. Funny how Blair kept trying to deflect the conversation. Or maybe not so funny. Jim knew the Brackett version of what Blair was trying to avoid. And now he wanted the Sandburg version.

"So you used sex to cope with a bad time. It's a time-honoured strategy. Kept the women of Maine happy, right?"

There was nervous twitching happening on the couch now, one leg jouncing up and down on the ball of the foot.

"Jim, had you ever been with a guy before?"

Nearly there. "Sandburg, I've spent big chunks of my adult life communally showering with men, and you're the only one that I ever wanted to get naked with."

Blair's face twisted into the wide-eyed grimace that was sometimes the companion to new ideas. "Whoa! Well, that's interesting."

"You?" Jim asked.

Blair took a gulp of coffee. "It wasn't that I was screwing anybody that I thought would be accommodating. It's that I was being - well, compulsive about it. And not always very kind, or, or careful. And I always thought that I was basically straight, I knew that I could be flexible, hell, Naomi's kid, y'know, but the ladies were - nice. And then, when I finally admitted to myself that I could have climbed you like a tree, things were so damn - complicated.

"The dissertation," Jim said.

"Yeah, and Alex, and Veronica and the fucking dissertation again. And eventually I got in contact with a gay support group down in Portland, and started going down there on the weekends. And I found out that I was definitely more flexible than maybe I'd thought. But you were the first time." He took another gulp out of his cup. "Jeez, I thought it was alcohol, not caffeine, that made you yap on."

The original question was answered, but Jim latched on to a new consideration. "You said that you weren't always careful."

The coffee must be nearly all gone, but apparently Blair was trying to read the grounds like tea leaves.

"I got a little over-enthusiastic, and got a little dose of the clap. Tetracycline so does not agree with my stomach. And of course the clinic insisted on an AIDS test as well, which came clear, thank any powers you'd care to mention, and probably more than I deserved."

Jim looked at him in horror. Blair stood up, the movement as stiff as his expression. "Yes, Jim, I fucked quite a few men, and I wasn't always a good boy about condoms. I'm sorry if that grosses you out."

Jim hastily stood up too, his body nevertheless behind his mind and emotions. "No, no," he said, "but, god, Chief, I don't like the idea of you taking risks like that."

Blair shrugged, his hands still gripped around his coffee mug. "Hey, I got over myself. I stayed involved in the Portland gay community, just not with quite so much," he smiled wryly, "abandon. And then I met this woman up here, Celia, a nice woman, but that fell through, and so, here we are." He put the mug in the kitchen.

When he came out, he said, "I guess if we're going to do this little vacation of ours, I'd better ensure that Mom doesn't ring the College trying to track me down. That might be embarrassing." No questions in his words, but plenty in his expression.

"Yeah, Chief, go ahead and ring your Mom."

They didn't go fishing. They decided on a simple road trip instead; which was, when Jim thought about it, definitely ironic. He'd spent the last six months living out of his car and cheap rooms, staying away from any of the places that he could have settled, in any sense of that word. It wouldn't have been safe. He still didn't feel safe, didn't know if he would ever feel safe again. But driving down a back road with Blair Sandburg in the car beside him felt, if not safe, then at least safer. And he didn't know what to do with that feeling. It was completely illusory. Losing safety was as easy as a car in front, a car behind, and three men with guns.

He knew he was screwed. `Your lips say no, but your eyes say yes' as spoken in a very bad Pepe le Pew accent. One set of instincts was screaming at him to dump Blair's ass back on the sidewalk outside his tacky little house in Hicksville, and drive away never to be seen again. And another set of instincts demanded that he never let him out of his sight, ever again. The ongoing battle to reconcile his impulses promised to be tricky.

If the current lack of conversation was anything to go by, Blair was clearly having a little trouble as well. Or maybe he was just concentrating on reeling him in. Jim had never had any trouble reeling in women, but whenever he tried anything more complicated than catch and release, it had always meant trouble. His current situation, the one right here in this car, that was insanely complicated. He was still waiting to see just how much trouble it might be.

"You mind if I play some music?"

Jim looked sideways at the brightly coloured CD that Blair was sliding out of the travel-case.

"That depends. I know your taste in music."

"Come on, Jim, I swear, by world music standards, these guys are so mainstream they're practically Celine Dion."

"That's not an encouraging simile, Chief."

"They're Senegalese. They're great. Trust me, you may not love `em but you won't hate them either."

Jim sighed in acquiescence. Blair was right of course. The music, while unfamiliar, was melodic and percussive in equal parts, and pleasant to listen to.

Despite the relaxing sounds of his CDs Blair had been fidgeting for the last ten minutes and there was a faint, but discernible odour of anxiety wafting from him. Jim watched the road and hoped that Blair would gather his courage soon. It was distracting.

Blair cleared his throat. "So, how do you go about getting new identities these days?"

Jim couldn't even be surprised. He knew this was coming. If he hadn't wanted to hear it he should have eaten macaroni with Blair and waved good-bye the same night.

"In your case, we call a man I know, and he'll do a little hacking, and we pick up the paperwork through the usual channels."

"Uh huh."

There was silence.

"So," Blair said, "you're not going to try and talk me out of this?"

"Why? You want me to?"

"No! But - I thought that you might."

"Hey. You want to throw your life away again, your choice. But how about we have a cooling off period for a while? Before you do anything irrevocable."

"Right. So you are going to try and talk me out of it."

"No. I just think that when we've been in each other's company for all of three days that you shouldn't rush into things, that's all. We'll play catch-up, like you said, and then you can decide."

"I can decide. What about you, Jim? You do have a say in this."

"You're a big boy, Sandburg. You can make up your own mind."

Which was, he knew, an assholish thing to say. But if he said, `yes, of course I want you to stay with me,' it wouldn't stop there. It wouldn't ever stop, and desperate as he was to be with Blair, he couldn't find it in himself to encourage him, to draw Blair into the subterranean thing that his life was now. Blair had lost enough keeping Jim's secrets. Blair had chosen to lose things, god alone knew why. If Blair stayed, it had to keep on being by his choice.

The day passed without much more significant conversation, except for one occasion, after they'd bought lunch, and eaten it outside the car, stuffing wrappers into an overflowing trash bin. Blair had said, "I'm not saying you have to tell me anything about what's been happening the last few years, but if you want to, that's okay." Jim had nodded, and then Blair drove for a while, while Jim dragged CDs out at random, and let the familiarly foreign rhythms fill up the occasional empty spaces when Blair exhausted his fund of small talk.

They were driving through a small town on the approach to Rangely lakes, nestled in hills, when Blair pointed out a small strip motel.

"Want to try that for the night?"

"Might as well."

The buildings were presentable, and the office was tidy. An older woman came out to greet them, short and rotund, with pixie-cut white hair and shrewd eyes.

"I'm Betsy Stewart. And I guess you boys want a room? Well, let's get you signed up." She kept up a stream of amiable chatter and then insisted on showing them to their door.

"The units ain't much, but I run a clean business - you keep things clean and people come back. That's what I always say."

She opened the door and held it for them. Blair and Jim stepped in to a seventies time warp - tan carpet, two queen-size beds with matching spreads covered in melding orange and fuchsia pink flowers. A small lamp covered with a matching shade stood on a nightstand between the beds.

"Hope you boys'll be comfortable," Betsy said. As soon as she was gone, Blair turned to Jim in mock horror and said, "My god, we're in that seventies show."

The reference went over Jim's head but he got the gist. He smirked. "Have to admit that the idea of dialling back my sense of colour sounds good right about now."

Blair's head tilted in sudden attention. `Do you think you could? Dial back to monochrome vision?"

"Another time, Chief."

Aware that he'd been caught being gauche, Blair put down his bag and eyed Jim and then eyed the nearest bed. He turned and threw himself backwards, bouncing gently as he landed.

"Well at least the mattress is good, even if the spread is a horror," he said. He turned on his side and fingered the material. "You reckon that these are retro or did she just buy them in bulk thirty years ago and bring them out of storage when needed?" He was unconsciously sensual as he lay there, long lashes shadowed against his cheek. Yet another of whatever bulwarks Jim had crumbled.

"I couldn't say," he said dryly. "How about you get your feet off it?"

Blair grinned, cheerful, and suddenly quite consciously seductive. "Oops, sorry. Are you staking a claim?" `Maybe' Jim thought, but he maintained a stern face. "Let me guess. You want the bed nearest the door. Security and all that."

"Yeah. Look, I'm just going for a quick walk, check out the perimeter as it were. I'll be back soon."

He ignored the troubled look Blair gave him, and left, locking the door behind him. Outside he took a deep breath of air that didn't smell of car interior or Blair Sandburg. He finished noting the layout of the motel, the number of units occupied, the number of cars, the layout of the surrounding area, what vehicles were going past on the road - any number of things that were probably pointless, quite possibly useless, but necessary before he could even think of settling for the evening. After a few minutes he went back, announced, `It's me," before he let himself back in.

"So, are we undiscovered?"

"So far."

"Great. What we are going to do about food?"

"There's a bar and grill down the road. It'll do."

Blair grimaced. "If we must. Roll on civilisation and restaurants that do vegetables."

Jim refrained from commenting that Blair's kitchen had contained all the signs of bachelor cut and run eating. As it happened, the bar did a plain but adequate salad to go with the steaks.

It was still early enough when they got back to their room. They indulged a little perfunctory channel surfing. Then Blair asked, "Have you got any particular plans for the future? Or any plans at all?"

Jim was silent. He was vaguely ashamed of the way that he had drifted for the last six months. Now that Blair had asked the question, the answer was `none', and he knew that state of affairs couldn't go on forever. But something scared in him revolted at the idea of making any sort of normal life, knowing how easy it was to lose it all. And if Blair was with him...he could lose Blair again in so many ways.

"Jim."

"Sorry. I haven't really thought about anything much. Just wandered a little. Checked out Carolyn and Robbie. And you."

Blair smiled. "And very grateful I am too. But what do you want to do now?"

Jim found himself unreasoningly irritated by the enquiry.

"I don't know! Something, I guess."

"Well what? Are we buying a campervan, or putting a pin in the map and saying here we stay, or what?

And the betraying `we' pushed Jim's annoyance that notch higher.

"You're getting a little ahead of yourself there, again. Who says that `we' are going to do anything?"

Blair had got up from the bed where he'd been sprawling.

"Why the hell shouldn't it be `we', man?" Blair's voice was quiet, but no less intense for that. "Why come and find me otherwise? It's not like you've told anybody else that you're alive. Maybe that's a clue as to intentions, don't you think?"

"And you don't think that after we've been strangers for five years that you're being a little precipitate?

Blair chuckled wryly.

"Precipitate. Yeah that's a good word. You know, I don't care. I missed you, you missed me, why not at least try?"

"Because there's that little thing of me being a fugitive from a covert government organisation. Because five years is a long time."

Blair's voice dropped even more, and he said one low intimate word, Jim's name, and reached his hands up to grip Jim's shoulders. Jim shut his eyes, and he heard Brackett arguing that Blair should be brought in, Rasmussen's rebuttals of his arguments. "We have Sandburg's writing, and I for one wouldn't put it past that damn mother of his to have slept with half a dozen congressmen. Taking Ellison was risk enough." He came back to the here and now, which was Blair standing so, so close, and Jim lifted his arms between them and knocked Blair's hands from him.

"Will you give me a fucking break? You never know when to just leave things alone, do you? Just leave it, just leave it alone." He grabbed his coat and walked out the door (dj vu, Jimmy?) and took off across the parking lot. He felt - something - and looked behind. Blair stood framed in a rough triangle of pulled-back curtain. He looked angry and frustrated and scared. Jim had a flare of anger that Blair knew no better than to make a target of himself like that, before he turned away. He heard the slam of a door, and then Blair's voice calling "Jim! Damn it! Wait up." Resigned, but still angry, he waited until Blair had jogged up to him.

Blair's face was washed out and drawn under the street lamps.

"Was this a mistake?" he demanded.

"What?"

"This. This trip. Should I have just waved good-bye? You just have to say it."

"Chief...just - just go a little quieter. We don't have to go at this like a bull at a gate."

"Mixed messages time, Jim. You come and see me, and you act like an asshole. You make it clear you need to stay secret, you don't leave, but you're dragging the chain on accepting me changing my identity." The two of them stood hunched in the night chill. "When you know what the hell you want, let me know." Blair crossed his arms across his chest, a clear signal of emotional cold as much as physical, and turned back to the motel room.

Jim walked for a while, up and down quiet roads, before he went back. The room was dark, and Blair's breathing was steady. He might be asleep, and then again, he might not. Jim wearily dropped into bed, and tried not speculate on the likely restfulness of his own sleep.

It was the old dream, although the trappings of it changed with circumstances. The new wrinkle was the beginning now. These days he stood in the lab the afternoon he and Michael and Andy escaped. Vials of blood and semen lay smashed on the floor; the trays of embryos had been carefully removed from their storage and placed on a shelf where they could gently become `unviable'. Tillotson, already dead by then, would appear at the door and smile in his quiet abstracted way and say, "Well, Jim, that was a little unwise, don't you think?"

And then it would be the usual dream, except that he had to step over Luis's body. Luis lay in the middle of the broad street, but Jim still had to step over his body. The houses all lined the street, the houses where all the people whom Jim cared for lived. His father and Stephen, Sally, Simon, Carolyn and Robbie, Blair. He gulped, part of him trying desperately to wake up, redirect the dream, anything. But his mind insisted on moving in old, well grooved tracks. He began to run, up the tidily groomed suburban paths. He'd enter the houses, and every time it was the same. The neatly executed corpses lay in their homes, and even though he couldn't remember, he knew that he'd done it. He was stumbling in shock by the time he reached the last houses, knowing that Robbie would lie in the futile refuge of his mother's arms, that Blair's eyes would stare blankly, the filmed fading blue of their colour in no way complemented by the black and maroon of the neat bullet hole in the middle of his forehead.

He sat up in the middle of the bed, and bit his hand to try to choke back the cry. He looked at the other bed. Blair didn't stir, although his breathing caught a little, then steadied again. Jim sat still a few moments, but he knew it was no good. He was going to lose it, and the instinct for privacy drove him to the bathroom. He pushed the button lock and tried to control his breathing. The distress of the dream rode him hard, and unreasoning terror yammered in his chest and gut. It wasn't true, everybody was all right, but he was hollow with fear anyway. His breathing careened out of control, deep, harsh breaths that made him dizzy. His fingers started to tingle with the hyperventilation, and he put his hands over his mouth and nose, tried to slow his breathing that way.

The tingling of his fingers spread, became the sharp prickle of a sensory spike, his skin painfully hot and cold all over his body. His knees were weak and he leaned his face into the wall, shivering a little at its coolness. He could do this, he had done it by himself, although some other times he'd needed help, Luis's matter of fact compassion, or the impersonal care of Group staff. He told himself that he was calm, he imagined himself calm, but he was lying.

He saw the dial in his mind, spinning like the altimeter of a crashing plane He knew why he couldn't do it now, and despised himself for it. Because Blair was just on the other side of the cheap hardboard wall. Why do it on your own, his weakness whispered, when Blair's so close? He knows what to do. And sure enough, there was a knock at the door.

"Jim, you okay?"

Jim couldn't bring his breathing down to normal, but he found that he could hold it hard, his gut and throat tight. All or nothing.

"Sandburg. I'm forty-five. Sometimes I use the bathroom in the middle of the night." His voice was as shaky as his excuse. He shut his eyes, and imagined the dial under control, his skin no longer one desperate pain where the air passed across it, but all he could manage was a general numbing, as if a local anaesthetic blanketed all of him.

There was silence, and Jim's traitorous hearing reached out beyond the door.

"Well, gee. You know, the sound proofing in these places isn't worth shit, and given that I'm not hearing any tinkling noises that's one hell of a prostate problem that you've got there. You going to open this door or am I going to have to think up a good explanation for Betsy when we pay her for the damage?"

Jim was torn. He really did not want Blair to see him like this, but... He shuffled along the wall and resignedly reached out to twist the door knob. Perhaps it was better if Blair had the chance to truly see the man he was so determined to throw in his lot with - a grey-haired former assassin who had bad dreams more nights than not, who fell apart in pathetic exhibitions of stress disorder. His fingers fumbled but he twisted the knob enough to pop the lock.

Jim still leaned against the wall, sideways now, his chest heaving like a bellows, as Blair cautiously poked his head around the door. Blair's eyes took in everything there was to see.

"Oh, great, beautiful." His voice was low, despite the seeming irritation of his words. "You okay to be touched?"

Jim nodded. His skin felt nothing except a little pressure from his position against the wall - all or nothing time again. Blair quickly reached past him to drop the toilet seat, and gently guided Jim to sit. "Hate to say this but I really don't like your colour. Come on, slow the breathing down, you're gonna knock yourself out if you keep doing that."

Jim shook his head. Blair sighed and cupped both palms firmly across the side of Jim's head. It was pressure only; he couldn't tell if Blair's hands were warm or cool. "Where the hell's a paper bag when you need it? Come on, slower, steady it."

He was leaning over Jim, who in desperation threw his arms around Blair and pressed his face into the slight give of Blair's torso. Blair's voice was calmly competent, but his heart was beating hard and fast as he steadied his stance and rested his hands on Jim's shoulders. It was hardly the first time that Jim had noticed that Blair wasn't as calm as he tried to portray. Must be feeling a little out of practice with this, Chief, he thought. Blair was saying something, his voice low and serene, and Jim barely registered the words, just the low continuous rumble, soothing as the purr of a cat, soothing the way the warmth that he could barely feel should be. Slowly, very slowly, his breathing calmed, his heart stopped pounding, but his skin was still practically numb.

"You still using the dials, Jim?"

Jim pulled back, reluctantly let go and rested his hands in his lap. Blair's hands stayed on his shoulders.

"Yeah."

"So, they where they ought to be?"

"Touch is about minus three. I was spiking on the pins and needles I was getting."

There was a quick intake of breath from Blair. "You ready to lift that into positive numbers, man?"

"How positive?"

"Enough to get back to bed without falling over your own feet would be good. Come on, you doing it?"

Jim nodded, pictured the dial in his head, and very cautiously raised it to about two. He felt a little muffled, but close to normal, and in no pain. He pushed it a little higher again, and tried to distinguish between what was normal sensation in the wind-down of the bout of panic, and what wasn't. He felt more assured in what he was understanding from his body than he had in years. That son of a bitch, Brackett, was right when he'd smirkingly suggested to Jim that maybe it wasn't just having a guide, it was the particular guide that counted. Intuitive and intelligent, as well as a scumbag. What a combination.

"I'm okay," he told Blair.

"Come on, Jim, you're cold. Let's get you into bed. Ups-a-daisy, man. I'll even tuck you in."

"Don't push your luck, Chief."

"Sir, yes sir." Blair walked backwards to gently pull him out of the tiny bathroom, guided Jim to the bed and did indeed tuck him in. Jim huddled under the covers, trying to regain some warmth. He dropped into an exhausted but fitful sleep, breaking in and out of awareness several times. The last time there was a weight on the bed. His heart jumped in fear before he identified it as `safe' and then there was warmth in the bed with him. He pushed into it like a puppy amongst its litter-mates, and slept.

He woke to find himself warm, comfortable, and nose to nose with Blair, who was still asleep. Blair's face was youthfully relaxed, but there were more than enough signs of the passage of time - fine expression lines, a touch of silver in the hair at his temples. Jim reached out and touched the spray of curly hair on the pillow, rubbed it in his fingers. And then he realised that he really did have to use the bathroom, and got out of bed. When he returned, Blair was in the act of getting out of the bed, his feet still caught under the covers. Jim wondered if Blair had been aware of his silent consideration, and didn't know how to read Blair's attitude, which was defensive, belligerent even.

"I don't want any grief about this," Blair made a vague gesture at the bed, "I like my sleep as much as the next person and it calmed you right down."

"No," Jim replied, "no, it's okay." More than okay, although he could hardly expect Blair to be sure of that after last evening's disagreement. "I'm sorry. About last night. Arguing with you."

Blair sighed. "It's okay. I was being a pushy bastard."

"No. you were right. I know that I'm playing push-me-pull-you, but ..." How to say that of all the people he loved, that he was afraid to risk, that Blair only one that he felt that he could, and only because of Jim's own selfish need. "It's fucked up. I'm fucked up."

Blair ran a hand over his sleep-disordered hair.

"Hey. It's okay. How about we just get out and about today? They're some good hiking trails up the back of the town, if Betsy's brochures are anything to go by."

The idea of being out of doors, even in the uncertain weather of early fall, was a good one. He was free, after all. Why not enjoy a little freedom? First they enjoyed a little coffee in Betsy's office. The coffee was at least hot, although it was also overlaid with a slight taint from the strength of the air freshener that Betsy used. She and Blair engaged in a lively discussion about which trails were best, although, as Betsy put it, she had to save her knees for the work of the motel these days. Jim leaned against the wall and tried to decide if Betsy was actually flirting with Blair in a joking `yes of course I'm old enough to be your mother' way or not. He didn't begrudge either of them the fun, indeed, he appreciated the show. He put his cup down on the plastic tray and said, "Come on, Chief, time to get organised." He heard Betsy say, not quite quietly enough, "He doesn't say much, does he."

Blair caught up with him outside, and Jim muttered, in what he prided himself was a passable Maine drawl, "He doesn't say much, does he." Blair choked back a laugh. "Not fair, Jim. She's a nice woman."

Jim reached out to tousle Blair's hair. "Ayuh." There was another laugh. "And if she was thirty years younger you'd have to fight her off with a stick."

"Never fear, Jim, I only have eyes for you." It was spoken in humour, but Jim didn't doubt the underlying truth of it, and almost in reflex, he stroked down the hair he'd just ruffled.

The two of them loaded up small knapsacks and took off to the hills. It was a little too early for the famous colours of the Maine woods, but Jim found tremendous pleasure in sensations that the trail offered, after he'd performed the sort of surveillance sweep that was becoming second nature to him. He'd spent too much time in cities, and on the road, using the noise and habits of driving as physical and psychological white noise. He happily tracked the way that the plant-life made patterns as his vision travelled across the woods. The sounds of massed vegetation, the feel of moist earth beneath his feet, the way that his own movement released new scent and sounds - all of them were things he knew he must have missed, but he hadn't really felt it before. Blair saw his enjoyment, and smiled. Jim enjoyed that too. He had the feeling, that even allowing for the stresses of the last few days, that Blair hadn't done that much smiling recently.

There was a lookout area above a bluff, a spur off the main trail that escaped from the overhang of trees. The view was beautiful, and Jim settled himself in a loose cross-leg sit very nearly at the edge. Anyone without sentinel sight could see for miles - for him it was very nearly a universe instead of a panorama. Blair stood a little behind him, and even without seeing him it was easy to sense his nervousness.

"I never could figure out how you can climb trees like a monkey and still be afraid of heights."

"Handholds." Jim chuckled. "Besides..."

"Besides what?"

"You'll think it's dorky."

"Never stopped you before, Chief."

Blair settled into a sit behind Jim, but at an angle, so that Blair's shoulder leaned into Jim's back.

"Trees are connected to the Earth, so I feel sort of `anchored'. Not what I feel in your average helicopter or plane. And it was always hot pursuit or something similar that I wasn't getting any say in."

Jim shrugged. It made sense in a Sandburgian way. Blair had given him an answer, so he offered Blair the chance of one in return.

"You want to know what was done to me?"

It was easier to think about the Group, and his hypoallergenic cell, with all that landscape spread out before him.

"Yeah, if you're happy with telling me." Blair's tone was one that Jim recognised, the subordinate awaiting due punishment for an error. He sighed, but carried on anyway. Given a battle between Blair's guilty fear of what he might hear, and his need to know practically everything, Jim knew which one he'd back as winner.

"I got approached nine months after you left. A chance to serve my country, the usual stuff." He'd been contacted by one of Rasmussen's aides, an urbane, persuasive man. Jim had looked at him and seen only one of the dissertation scavengers who had forced Blair away from him. "I turned down the offer with my usual tact." That earned a small snort of laughter from Blair. Jim remembered the scorn he'd felt at the time, the idea that that might have been it, the great threat.

"They took me the next year. The thing is, they saw themselves as patriots, the good guys, if only the rest of the country would recognise it. I was going to work for the glory of my country." He stopped, bitterness welling up. "What I ended up doing, it wasn't so different in some ways from what I did when I was in the army. Intelligence, dealing with threats. Some of it I might even have agreed with if I'd been there out of choice."

"But it wasn't your choice." And then, "Might have agreed with?"

"Not everything has a liberal answer. You might want to keep that in mind if you decide to head off into the wild blue yonder with me."

"I guess." Blair's voice held a mulish note, and then he took a deep breath. "Did they hurt you? Experiment...?"

"They did tests, sure, but nothing extreme. They didn't torture me, unless you count doing an MRI scan." He tried to sound humorous. "It's pretty noisy." He didn't mention the mindless futility of running through his paces, the regular blood and semen samples required, or the fact that it was easy to tell the people who weren't there out of choice. Detainees were all known by their first names alone. Only willing employees had surnames. He didn't mention his certain knowledge that some of the pathetic embryos in their trays were his get.

"I don't know how you can bear to be anywhere near me." Blair had scrunched his knees up hard to his chest. The weight of his body still pressed into Jim's back. It was strangely comforting, despite Blair's distress. He was there, and there had been very few occasions in their time in Cascade that Jim hadn't liked having Blair nearby, even when he was angry with him.

"You want to know what I think about that?"

Blair's voice was hardly loud enough to be heard. "Yeah."

Jim looked out over the view. "The diss didn't help. Jesus, I was angry with you, and I wanted to wring Naomi's neck, and I could have emptied a clip into good old Sid, starting at the knee caps and very slowly working my way up." There was a shudder of what might have been amusement behind him. "But I told you the truth before. It wasn't the whole thing. Brackett - he had his own agenda and he found somebody who partly shared it. You weren't the person who gave the orders for what happened to me. I know who I blame, okay? I don't want you blaming yourself."

"I know, but I can't help it sometimes."

Jim sighed. Put not your Government to the test, he thought, lest you be fucking disappointed. "Blair, I never really thought that something like that would happen. Told myself I was too old and too well-known. Didn't want to think it. If I had I would have told you so and put a lid on the dissertation a lot earlier. Yeah, I wondered, but not enough to send you on your way. And that was dumb of me, because I put you at risk as well."

"I have the right to decide my own risks, Jim."

"And since when do you decide about risks? You just hurtle along like some damn trouble-seeking missile," Jim snapped.

Blair retained a tone of sweet reason.

"Still my choice, Jim."

Jim looked out over the vista in front of him. That was the question that kept at him. Choice, and how much of it people ever had. Did his mother have a choice to love or leave her family, could his father have been other than the distant, judgemental workaholic that Jim remembered, why the hell Blair didn't question that need in him to drop everything and be with Jim. Why it would be so very easy to turn and kiss Blair's full mouth.

"Did you have any theories about how the guiding thing worked? Whether some people would be better at it than others?" He couldn't tell if Blair was disconcerted by the change of subject or not.

"I had a few vague ideas. Given it was just you and me with a side helping of Alex, there wasn't a lot of data to theorise from. Why?"

"Something that somebody suggested. That it wasn't just any guide, but the right guide that mattered."

Blair shifted behind him. "Depends on how you define the `right' guide. Clearly if you've got any sort of close working relationship there has to be compatibility." There was a pause. "Do you mind talking about Alex?"

Jim shrugged, as old guilt popped its head out of the crypt and waved. "I can take it if you can."

"In some ways she was a lot more co-operative than you were. Well, that's not entirely fair. You griped, but you still did things, and you usually got things first time. She listened to everything, took the ideas on, but she struggled with the execution sometimes. I had several theories on that one: she was still a new sentinel; I had to work out her learning style; that there was some psychological barrier there because she knew that I was, well, expendable; that whatever convolutions in her brain that made her an evil bitch affected the processing of other things as well."

"How did you feel about her? Before you knew what she was?"

"Is this going somewhere, man?" Blair sighed. "I was fascinated by her. She had the senses. She had the body. But I never felt comfortable with her. Really should have listened to my instincts there."

"Instincts aren't always all they're cracked up to be." Jim shifted a little, stood up. "If we want to do the full trail and still get back in good time, guess we'd better get going."

Blair backed a little until the ground broadened out. "So, where's all this deep thought going? That I couldn't help Alex as much as you because I was your exclusive guide?"

"I don't know. It was just an idea that somebody mentioned. Decided I'd run it past you." So that I can figure out how much free-will you and I ever had in this, he thought.

"Run it past me. Fine." Blair energetically turned back onto the trail up the hillside, keeping that little bit ahead of Jim for about the next mile. At that point, he slowed down and grabbed his water bottle for a long swig. Then he wiped his mouth in a business-like manner and demanded, "Would it really be so bad if it was biologically determined? Or some sort of mystic manifest destiny?"

Jim was silent. "Come on, Jim, that's where all the questions have been going. And you're thinking about Laura and Alex and thinking, `not again, no way'."

"Something like that."

"The difference is that it's me. I'm basically sane and law-abiding. I know you; I care about your welfare." Blair canted a look up at him. "You could do worse."

The two of them walked on a little, before Jim spoke.

"Maybe I'm not sane or law-abiding. Maybe you could do better."

"Maybe I could at that."

"But you're not going to, are you?" His voice was hard with an uneasy mix of hope and anger combined. "Whether it's some damn sentinel thing or just a guilt trip."

Blair's breath grew shorter, and his skin flushed red, in a way that had nothing to do with the steepness of the rough trail. He stopped, and knotted his fists in the front of Jim's jacket. The slope left them very nearly at eye level with one another.

"If we do this, then we'll end up lovers, won't we?" The fists and jacket drew away and then batted back hard against Jim's chest. "Won't we?"

Jim nodded, unable to speak.

"That's a pretty massive mind-fuck, huh?" Blair's expression dared Jim to comment on the pun.

"Yeah."

"Not as massive as the first time I figured out that I'd crawl over broken glass for you. Yeah, I had friends, wondered if I'd been in love a couple of times, but you went so deep...I didn't know what to do with it, except just stick with you; and gotta say, man, you were mad, bad and dangerous to know way before this."

It was as if the air between them was heavy with memories; Blair's decisions to `just stick' with Jim after Sierra Verde and during the mess with the Archers, to stay put in the biting teeth of Jim's accusations of betrayal with the dissertation; the why of the breaking of that resolution.

Blair drew in closer still. "It's been you for a long time now. How about we just go with the flow, Jim? You never know, we might end up somewhere good."

"Like the middle of Maine?"

"Hey, anywhere's good when you're in good company."

Jim's body was reminding him, that best efforts to maintain his fitness or not, that it had been a while since he'd done anything like that either. They made the drive back to town in quiet. Blair kept up little sideways glances at him and finally Jim said, "What?"

"Sorry. Just, sometimes I don't believe that you really are here. That's all."

Jim nodded, and seemingly turned his attention back to the road. But he was working out what seemed to him some weird inverse geometric progression. From escape and a promise to himself that he'd stay away from his family and old friends to San Francisco- not quite four months. From seeing Blair there, to knocking on his front door - six weeks. From telling himself that it was just going to be a visit, to admitting that he would stay with Blair if he had the tiniest chance of it - four days. From admitting that to himself, to planning to take Blair to bed - a matter of hours.

He indulged his own sideways look. It was the same Blair that he remembered from a hundred times before - lean, jeans-clad legs stretched out as far as the car's space would permit. There was the not quite `turned' smell of sweat, underlain with the last efforts of deodorant, the same strands of hair escaping from the hair-tie. All the same and a million times different.

They made it back to the motel, organised themselves to shower, to put their clothes through the noisy washing machine in the tiny laundry, to go out to Paulie's for their meal. The waitress recognised them from the last night and there was a little friendly conversation about their day, the view from the top of the loop trail. She had a tendency to fidget with her hair when she was talking to Jim, and Blair caught his eye at one point with smug amusement.

Problem was that Jim wasn't feeling smug. He was feeling slightly nervous, in a way that was dismayingly like the night he stepped out of a hotel bathroom and greeted the woman who had just become his wife. He did not need his mind to take those sorts of tangents. Blair started scraping salad dressing off the top of the lettuce, carrot and tomato mixture, and looked up to ask, "Is your food okay?"

"Uh, yeah."

"Great. Then if it's not the food, then is it the company?"

Jim tried out a reassuring smile.

"Relax, Chief. We're fine."

They ate their food, discussed whether the small colonial museum further up the road would be worth the effort (Blair was all for it, Jim thought that once you'd seen one kettle on a bracket over an open fire, you'd seen them all), considered how much further they wanted to do on this route before heading back.

They walked back to the motel, Blair complaining about his feet. They were nearly at the door when he turned and said, "So, we're going to do this." His hands waved in an effort to express the inexpressible. "By which, I mean the wider `this' of us not going our separate ways, rather than any more specific `thises' which can wait on people feeling comfortable and uh, everything."

Jim caught at one of the flailing hands. "Sandburg, you wouldn't be a little anxious here?" Blair glared at him.

"It's okay, Chief, join the club. And yes, we're doing this." He hadn't, Jim realised, actually said it until now. Blair answered with a broad grin and a quick rocking motion on his heels. He practically bounced into the unit once the door was opened, and that enthusiasm fanned Jim's affection and encouraged him to pull Blair up in a clumsy hug. Blair returned it wholeheartedly, his arms wrapping around Jim, his face nuzzling into Jim's shoulder and neck. He lifted his face to smile up at Jim, and the two of them caught their breath together. The last time they had stood together like this, five years ago, shone in Jim's mind like a beacon. He pressed his palms across Blair's back and said simply, "I guess I'm feeling comfortable."

He didn't want this to be like the last time, their first time. That had been clumsy, desperate and unthinking, because they both knew that it had been an ending. This, he hoped, was not. He reached up and cradled Blair's jaw in his hands. It felt strange, a little scary even, but in a good way. It reminded him of trying new things when he was a child, approaching new skills as an adult - something that was maybe intimidating, but that would take him where he needed to be. And this was surely where he needed to be, with Blair looking at him with that damned `Yeah! Jim's about to do something amazing,' expression on his face. He just hoped that he could live up to expectations. Start at the beginning he told himself, and let his mouth meet Blair's, let the heat run through him at the contact, at the warmth and the smooth sweet run of tongue meeting tongue. Blair shuddered and hauled himself impossibly closer.

They stood together and kissed, while Jim let his hands explore; Blair's shoulders, the sturdy line of ribs and back, the way that Blair's buttocks fitted comfortably into his hands. Blair murmured approvingly, and let his hands conduct their own wanderings, before he pulled away. "It's okay, it's okay," he said, before starting to rummage through a bag, "it's just I don't know what you have in mind," he dragged out a small plastic bag, "but I thought that I'd bring some supplies, and then we can play it by ear, whatever..."

A tube of lubricant and some condoms tumbled out as he up-ended the bag over the top of the nightstand.

"Believe in being prepared, do you?"

Blair straightened, and said with humorous dignity, "Hey, living in hope." He switched on the lamp, and zipped across the room to turn off the main light, before returning to give serious attention to the buttons of Jim's shirt. When it hung open Blair reached out to place careful, reverent touches across Jim's chest, his abdomen. Jim steered him by the shoulders to sit them together on the edge of one of the beds, and pulled Blair's t-shirt over his head. He was distracted from returning Blair's touches by a sudden need to taste his friend's neck, to lightly rub his face against the demarcation between smooth and whiskered skin. They were leaning back across the bed, pushing themselves up the mattress in an ungainly way, when Blair asked, "Do you want to fuck me?"

Jim pulled back to look into Blair's face. Blair blushed a little and said, "I just thought that it would be something a little - well - more familiar." Jim perversely spared a moment's nostalgia for that first time where he and Blair had just pell-mell wanted and used each other, without thinking about preferences or choices. He ran his fingers through the silky spring of Blair's chest hair.

"Sandburg, if you think any of this is going to be familiar..." He bent down to kiss Blair. "Do you want it? Want that?" He presumed that the answer was `yes' but he needed to hear it.

"I want everything with you. I want you to fuck me."

"Yeah." Jim looked at Blair sprawled on the bed, and more heat flushed his skin, filled his cock to the point that he had to get the rest of his clothes off. He loosened buttons and zippers for both of them before dragging off the rest of his clothes and watching Blair do the same. Then it was warm skin against warm skin, and Jim buried his face in Blair's shoulder, gripped convulsively at Blair's body. God, how long was it since he'd touched anybody like this.

"Hey, hey, you okay?"

Blair lifted Jim's head, held a hand under his jaw.

"It's been a while, Chief. With anyone."

"You want to stop?"

Jim laughed, a little shakily. "Are you nuts?" He ran one hand down Blair's hip, and knew that he wanted to glut himself on how Blair's skin felt, the noises he made, the way that he moved in pleasure. Blair kissed Jim, undulated against him, all the while making little murmurs of appreciation. Then he pulled away a little to reach out for the things on the nightstand, fumbled at the cap on the tube of KY.

"Do you want to, or should I?"

This might have been new to him, but Jim had been educated enough by his time in Vice to know what Blair meant, even if the education amounted to dirty jokes about Crisco queens. Wordlessly, he took the tube, spread some on his fingers and reached around, down the line of Blair's ass, as Blair shut his eyes and gripped at Jim's shoulder and lifted his leg across Jim's thigh. Jim pushed his index finger inside - god - inside. Blair grunted and shivered, but one quick look confirmed that it was pleasure. "Love that. More." Jim could do more. He added his middle finger, fascinated by the way that inner flesh both gripped and gave way against him. Blair rubbed his face against him, his mouth restlessly rooting against Jim's skin, and Jim kissed him, awkwardly reached his free hand to hold Blair's head. He liked this, he realised, very much, this way that Blair was pinioned between Jim's mouth and his fingers, to make a circuit of pleasure for them both.

Blair's restless hands travelled over him, before moving between them to gather their cocks together, the warmth of his palm wrapped against Jim. Jim regretfully let go of the kiss.

"If you were serious about me fucking you then you'd better take that quietly, or it's going to be all over."

"Can't have that." Blair gently removed Jim's hand, and reached for a condom. "Can I put it on you? Think I'd like that."

Jim swallowed. "Can we go bare? I mean, you implied you were clean now? If it's okay?"

Blair looked uncertain, and then gave in. "Fine, just let's add a little more lube here." His hand moved in a few light touches over Jim's cock, and he grinned at the small noise that erupted out of Jim. Then he lay back, and pulled his legs back and wide. And if there was ever a moment for a little freak-out, this was it, with everything that was masculine about Blair, angular and hairy and erect, set out before Jim on the bed. And maybe Jim was a little freaked out, but it was mainly by how much he wanted this as he scrambled between Blair's thighs. He fumbled his way into Blair's body, encouraged on by a few muttered instructions. He settled his weight to his arms, as Blair's legs locked around him, and then he gathered his courage to move.

"Jesus." It very nearly was a prayer. And then to Blair, "You okay?"

"Yeah." The answer was breathless. "Yeah, just like that, it's good, Jim. Yeah."

Yes, it was good, the sweetest of sensations, the very best, and as Jim kept moving he knew that it was going to end soon.

`Touch yourself, babe," he gasped.

"I - " Blair's eyes were wild, lost. "It's really you. Jim..."

"Yeah, it's me. Please. Do it. Touch yourself."

Blair's hand fumbled down to curl around his cock in an almost painful looking grip. He stroked at himself mindlessly until semen spurted over his hand, over his belly.

"Yes," Jim hissed, and let everything go, the tension, the pleasure, let it all go, because Blair was there to catch him.

"Nice nap?"

"Sorry, man..."

"No, no, you looked very cute," Blair grinned wickedly, "and it gave me chance to clean up. I was kinda on the ooey-gooey side after that." He climbed back into the bed, and showed no surprise that Jim offered an arm to rest his head on, just took full advantage of the invitation.

"You're so damned pleased with yourself, aren't you?"

"Absolutely. But, to go back to an earlier question, what are we going to do from here?"

Jim sighed.

"I guess we'll have to brainstorm on that one. I haven't been doing a lot of thinking or planning the last few months. But I don't think that Blair Sandburg can disappear. Carolyn and Robbie might need you. And there's your mom."

The relaxed sprawl was gone. "Blair Sandburg can't be with you."

"Calm down, Chief. Some people maintain a couple of residences, other people keep two personas."

The rigid indignation eased. "Fair enough. And you're right - if I drop out without explanation it'll scare Carolyn. Your dad aired his unfortunately completely correct conspiracy theories over the dinner table. Did you know that they all thought we'd been a couple for like, forever? We even had Bill's blessing in his own stern patriarch way."

Jim's face froze.

" `What the fuck' is a good look on you. I did the landed fish impersonations too."

"Jesus."

"Ha! You should have tried being there, man."

Jim contemplated a world where his father regarded his son being in a homosexual relationship with any degree of complaisance, and found it even stranger than the Sandburg zone. He put the idea away for later, and turned back to more immediate concerns.

"I'll have to contact Andy and Michael. Maybe even go visit. That might be easiest, I never trust any sort of prolonged electronic contact anyway. I don't give a damn what Andy says."

"These are the guys that escaped with you?"

"Yeah. Andy's a hacker extraordinaire, it's why he was with the Group. Michael called us the Ringling Brothers attractions, one sentinel and two psychics."

"You're kidding me."

"Neither of them did Tarot readings, Chief. Michael has hunches, instincts, but real sharp, real specific. And as Andy put it, he and the computers are friends."

Blair's eyes were huge. And Jim couldn't resist.

"You ever see that movie, Tron? Damn near gave me an epileptic fit."

Blair nodded, completely engaged by what Jim was saying. Jim continued, as matter as factly as he could.

"Well, Andy assured me that it's absolutely nothing like that."

There was one brief moment where Blair's face stayed fixed in his expression of astonished wonder, before it creased in helpless laughter. He wheezed with it, head tilted to his chest, before he lifted his face to Jim's and declared in a shaking voice, "You are such a dick." He calmed a little, and rested one hand across the back of Jim's head. "But you're my dick, right?"

Jim was sombre again. "Sounds a little weird, but I guess so."

"Good." Blair's face grew thoughtful. "Guess I'll have to start thinking up names and backgrounds."

"Guess you will." Jim was moved with a sudden resolution. "I've got something for you." He got out of bed to hunt through the bottom of a bag for the disks Andy had given to him. He'd been tempted to destroy them but he'd held back. He looked up, to see Blair watching him with a look of blatant appreciation.

"I don't need candy and flowers." His hands indicated Jim's undressed state. "This is cool."

Jim handed over the disks.

"No gift-wrapping?" Blair teased.

Jim felt naked in a way that had nothing to do with skin. "I haven't read all the gory details, but it's the information they collected about me. Test results, MRI and CAT scans, the whole nine yards."

Blair stared at the plastic cases and then looked at Jim. His eyes were bright. "I - wow. Jim, are you sure you want me to have this stuff?"

"Why not?" he said roughly. "You can't tell me that you don't still get off on sentinels. I, uh, eavesdropped on some of the stuff you did with Robbie."

"Well, yeah, but this is a little like being handed a cure for cancer and then finding out that Mengele developed it."

"Who else should say who sees this stuff than me? Although some of it's probably - difficult." He didn't mean that in any academic sense, and Blair took his meaning immediately.

"It's okay. We'll figure it out. Now come back to bed."

So he did, slipped between the plain motel sheets and lay down on the pillow, and exulted in the tickle of long curly hair on his shoulders and face when Blair leaned down to kiss him.

End Crossing the Line by Mab: mabinbrowne@hotmail.com
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