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Blair opened the door as quietly as he could. Not because he was concerned that anyone would hear him, but because the jangle of his keys against the doorknob was making him crazy. He hated migraines.
He stepped in the warmth and safety of the loft, and closed the door very gently behind him. The lights were on upstairs, which meant Jim was home. Blair leaned back against the door, letting it support him. He didn't think he could deal with Jim right now.
"Quando son solo
sogno all'orrizonte
e mancan le parole,
si lo so che no c'e luce
in una stanza quando manca il sole,
se non ci sei tu con me.
Su le finestre
mostra a tutti il mio cuore
che hai acceso
chiudi dentro me
la luce che
hai incontrato per strada."
The rich voice filled the loft, which suddenly seemed too small for the wealth of grandeur unleashed into it. Blair tilted his head back, and let the notes fill his soul, and he trembled with wonder. Who would have thought Jim Ellison was a baritone? A powerful, talented baritone? A baritone who could turn what had once been merely a place to work and live into a concert hall?
Suddenly the song stopped, and silence came out, slowly and shyly throwing a cloak of normalcy over the loft. Blair felt like his heart had just fallen away. It was so quiet, like death. He felt cheated and empty.
"Blair?"
"Yeah. Here." Blair hung his coat on the hook, and laid his keys gently in the basket. The sound was still too loud, and he winced in pain.
Jim walked slowly down the stairs, concern clearly showing on his handsome face. "I didn't expect you home so early. What's up?"
"Nothing." Blair looked up at his partner - work, only, of course. Of course. "I didn't know you could sing."
Jim blushed. "Oh, I was just making noise. I was bored, it was getting too quiet," he said quickly. His eyes fell to the carpet, like a child caught stealing a cookie.
"No," said Blair quietly. "That was music, Jim. That was wonderful."
Jim grinned at the compliment without looking up. "Thanks. My father made me take lessons when I was a kid. It was never anything important; I just liked it."
Blair spared a dark thought for all the evil that parents can do in the name of raising a normal child. "Not like sports or anything, right?" he said bitterly. Jim only shrugged. Blair passed a hand over his tired and tortured eyes.
"So what are you doing home?" asked Jim curiously.
Home. Blair fell his chest tighten at the word. "I have a headache. Stress, mostly."
Jim looked up sharply. He could hear Blair's heart pounding in his chest, driving blood through veins constricted too tightly. Curious, how it sounded like Blair was lying underneath the pain. "Are you okay? Do you want some tea or something?"
Blair considered. "I'm just gonna get some sleep." He threw his bag down into its appointed corner, and walked slowly into his room.
"Sure. I'll be quiet out here. Call me if you need anything."
"Finish the song." Blair's voice was quiet. He hadn't turned to speak to Jim, knowing full well that his Sentinel senses would catch every word. Blair lay down on his bed, and closed his eyes in the blessed darkness of his room. Outside, he could hear Jim walk back up to his room. Some papers were shuffled, then the next stanza drifted down to him, even richer and softer than the first.
"Con te partiro.
Paesi che non vissuto con te,
adesso s? li vivro.
Con te partiro
su nari per mari
che, io lo so,
no, no, non estino piu
con te io li vivro."
Blair felt the first tear escape him, then a full-fledged sob broke lose, and Jim came running down the stairs.
"Blair? My god, are you all right?" Without turning on the light, since there was more than enough illumination for a Sentinel's eyes, he reached out to touch Blair's forehead.
Blair threw himself into Jim's arms, sobbing hysterically, and cursing himself for being a romantic fool, for seeing a chance of heaven in his own personal hell. "All worked up over a song, and you didn't even mean it! Not to me, anyway," he hiccuped.
Jim's arms tightened around him. "What if I did?" Blair looked up, his blue eyes dull with pain and hurt. "What if I was singing to 'show everyone my heart which you set alight?' Singing because words failed me, and I just wanted to let the world know how damn happy I was?" Jim looked down into the eyes of the man he loved.
Blair's chin quivered. He was going to start crying again. Jim leaned down and kissed him. Blair imagined, for just a moment, that he could taste music on Jim's lips, and then it was gone, and he was just kissing Jim Ellison. His friend. His Sentinel.
Fervent heat met willing openness, and an elemental connection was completed between the two men. Despite the enjoyable shock of finding simple perfection in a kiss from Blair Sandburg, Jim drew away from the kiss.
Blair closed his eyes, fearing a sudden change of heart.
Jim could hear that heart he knew so well speed up, and could smell fear on his new love's skin. "Rest, you need to rest." He lay down on Blair's bed, and pulled the smaller man down next to him. "I'll be right here. With you."
"I'll go with you," Blair whispered softly, and drifted to sleep, cradled safely in Jim's arms.
Jim listened to Blair's heartbeat, and the longer he listened, the greater his fear grew. Bum, da-dum, click, whoosh. Jim knew what a heartbeat was supposed to sound like. Blair's heartbeat was imprinted so deeply on his senses that he could find it in a crazed shopping mall the day before Christmas Eve. It was so ingrained on his psyche that he often found himself tapping in rhythm with Blair's heart while at work. Bum, da-dum, click, whoosh. This was wrong. Blair's heartbeat was growing more wrong as he listened.
Only a few seconds went by before Jim pulled himself away from the tempting warmth of his Guide to find the phone.
Blair woke up to find a worried young man in the uniform of Cascade General's Paramedic Unit leaning over him. He was tired, too tired to deal with wondering why there was a paramedic in the loft, and closed his eyes again. Maybe he was dreaming; maybe when he woke up they would all just go away.
"Two, three lift!" Strong arms moved him from the bed onto the stretcher. "Are there any medications?"
Even in his dreamy fatigue, Blair felt he should respond. "Lanoxicaps."
"What?" said Jim shocked. "Lanoxicaps - digitalis?" He looked around the room, remembered that Blair had left his backpack in the other room, and nimbly dodged around the two emergency medical technicians to get it. A quick search brought out an empty prescription bottle, as well as two other maintenance drugs for someone with a serious heart condition. They were also empty.
The lead paramedic had followed Jim, partly because the EMTs were wheeling the stretcher out. Jim silently handed him the bottles, and the paramedic read them, quickly noting the names of the prescriptions, and the name of the doctor, and the fact that all three bottles were empty. "Do you have any idea when these ran out?"
"I didn't even know he was taking anything."
The paramedic shrugged. "Bring those to the hospital." They had already determined that Jim would be following in the truck. There wasn't going to be room for a passenger in the back of the ambulance, not with all the equipment required to keep Blair comfortable for the trip to the emergency room.
"Is he going to be okay?" whispered Jim quietly.
"We'll do our best," promised the paramedic.
Blair woke up later, and the antiseptic smell and the stark white walls immediately told him that he was in a hospital. He swore softly under his breath.
"Blair?"
"Hi, Jim," he replied dully. Ellison. Always there when you needed him, and even when you didn't.
"Was there a reason you didn't tell me?"
Blair sighed, but didn't reply immediately.
"Do you have any idea what would have happened if I hadn't been there? If you'd been alone?"
"I would have died in my sleep, a quiet peaceful death." Blair's voice was soft and gentle.
Jim stiffened. "So you knew what you were doing."
"Pain sucks, Jim. Being weak and dying sucks. Having to ingest an utterly vile poison on a daily basis just to keep your heart beating sucks. Add this together, and what do you get?"
Jim swallowed. "What kind of answer- what gives you the right? How could you!" he screamed. "How could you even think of doing that to me?" A terrible surge of emotions ripped through him. "After I told you - you were going to do it anyway." Jim's voice broke on the last words.
Blair turned his face away. "Leave me alone."
Jim got up and left. He didn't go very far; just outside the room to sit down on the hard uncomfortable bench. There he took in a deep breath, a shuddering breath, that couldn't hide or calm the turmoil inside him. He didn't look up as the emergency room doctor approached.
"He'll have to stay overnight for observation." The doctor, a tall blond man with tired grey eyes, spoke carefully, clearly aware of the larger man's grief. "His personal doctor has been contacted, and should be here tomorrow to take over the Mr. Sandburg's care." Jim nodded in understanding, and the doctor added on one last thought. "I think you need to go home and get some rest. Why don't you say goodnight to your friend?" Jim could hear a softening on the word, 'friend,' and knew that the tired doctor could see much more than simple friendship between the two men. "We'll call you if anything happens, I promise."
"Thank you," whispered Jim, and then walked back into the dark room where Blair lay. Under the influence of a direct infusion of a new batch of digitalis, Blair's heartbeat was stronger and steadier. But now that Jim knew what he was listening for, he could still hear that damning click-whoosh, as the permanently damaged left ventricle in Blair's heart failed to close completely, letting some blood slip back into the chambers his heart. Congestive heart failure, caused by untreated rheumatic fever contracted somewhere in India over fifteen years ago. Here in the stale air of the hospital, Jim's senses latched onto Blair's scent like a lifeline, comforting and warm. "I'm going now," he said softly. By the sound of Blair's breathing, he was almost asleep. "If you want me to come by tomorrow, call me. I'll come, if you need me." And if you don't? Jim thought to himself, then I'll leave you alone. Just like you told me to.
A week went by, and Blair was still in the hospital. Everyone was shocked by the discovery of Blair's illness; from his academic advisor, Dr. Fine, who stopped by to bring Blair his notes so that he wouldn't fall behind in the dissertation process, to Simon, who ran errands for Blair like a lovesick puppy, stopping by the loft five times a day to water plants, get notebooks, check messages - all the things that Blair wouldn't ask Jim to do.
Blair didn't call.
Jim kept the loft clean. He worked overtime, pulled double shifts, covered for people with family and friends. He left Blair alone.
The second week started, and Blair still had to stay in the hospital. He had been moved to a private room, and the doctors promised that he would be released by the end of that week. Blair lay in his quiet room, welcoming the steady stream of guests, searching for one familiar face, but too scared to make the first move. Blair didn't even know what the first move should be. All he knew was that he'd made a mistake, a terrible one. But he didn't know how to make it right. He didn't know if he could.
Jim never came, and Blair lost hope that he ever would.
Simon drove him home from the hospital on a cold Saturday afternoon. Rafe and Taggert were bringing all the cards and flowers and papers that a sick Blair accumulated in another car. Blair was quiet, despite Simon's attempts to draw him into conversation.
Finally Blair asked the question that Captain Banks had been dreading. "So, how's Jim?"
"I haven't seen him in a couple of days," Simon confessed. "He's been working overtime, and I took a couple of days off to deal with Joan and Darryl and to see you, of course."
Blair let that sink in. "So no one's seen him, or talked to him?"
Simon nodded, suddenly guilty. "Well, I expected him to be with you at the hospital...." Simon's voice trailed off into silence.
"I told him to leave me alone. Funny, the one time he listens to me without questioning," grinned Blair, but his voice was flat and empty. He left the bitter joke unfinished.
Simon looked curiously at the young anthropologist. "What happened?"
Blair shrugged. "Do you think he's at the station now?"
"He should be. Do you want to go there first?"
Blair nodded, unable to trust his voice. He was filled with a desperate need to see Jim, right away. Simon clicked on the radio, and told Rafe and Taggert that they were swinging by the station first, to pick up Jim Ellison.
They walked into the station, and Blair could somehow tell by the tone of the happy greetings that welcomed him that Jim wasn't there. No one feared the overprotective Sentinel's sharp hearing, and greeted Blair in a way that would have had Jim ripping out throats and stomping on wandering fingers. Nevertheless, Blair went to the desk that they shared, hoping for some sign of his Sentinel's presence.
What he found there frightened him more than any psychopath on his trail ever had. Jim's desk was clean, not obsessively tidy, but clean as if abandoned. As if Jim were covering his tracks. There was a note resting on the pile of papers that Blair had left there. Blair approached it, as if he feared that it would hurt him. Simon swore at the stack of papers on his desk, and went in to take a quick look at them.
Blair unfolded his note.
Simon saw a terrifying little envelope, official-looking, with the Cascade P. D. insignia, and ripped it open with an angry growl. He scanned the offensive lines quickly, then again in hope that he'd misread them the first time. He swore again, and continued to swear under his breath in a foul and frustrated monotone. He looked up, to demand that Blair explain what had happened to make his best detective resign without even talking to his captain about it first, and saw Blair sway, as if buffeted by fierce winds, and then Blair just collapsed.
Twenty officers all rushed to catch him, and Joel Taggert won, gently lowering Blair to the floor while Henri Brown slid a bunched-up jacket beneath Blair's head for a pillow. Someone called the hospital, and told them that they'd be bringing Blair back in a few minutes.
Blair's lips were blue, and his breathing was shallow with shock.
"You take him," snarled Simon. "I'm going to find Ellison and get to the bottom of this." Simon's eyes caught a glimpse of the note that Blair was clutching. 'I've re-enlisted,' was all he could read, and that was more than enough to drive him to run to his car at full speed. "Ellison wouldn't be that stupid," Simon muttered to himself. "He couldn't."
Jim shouldered his duffel bag and walked onto the transport plane, leaving his heart behind.
When I'm alone/I dream on the horizon/and words fail;/yes, I know there is no light/in a room where the sun is absent,/if you are not with me.
At the windows/show everyone my heart/which you set alight;/enclose within me/the light you/encountered on the street.
I'll go with you,/to countries I never/saw and shared with you,/now, yes, I shall experience them.
I'll go with you/on ships across seas/which, I know,/no, no, exist no longer;/with you I shall experience them.
'Con te partiro,' from Andrea Bocelli's album "Romanza."
End