Work Text:
Undertow
by J M Griffin
Author's disclaimer: Shouldn't they belong to those who love them best?
UNDERTOW
by J. M. Griffin
He swam up out of the darkness from time to time. Heard words and phrases and knew they were talking about him. In the heavier darkness that he thought perhaps was night, he would hear Jim's voice.
//"It's okay, Chief, if you want to go. I know you're just staying here because you think you have to... for me. But you don't. Have to, that is. You can let go. It's okay to let go, baby."//
He couldn't though. Just as he couldn't tell Jim. Couldn't tell him not to sob like that. Couldn't soothe him, hold him, love him. There seemed no way to navigate through the morass that separated him from his lover.
So he let the current take him away from the shore again, to where it was most quiet.
//"...turn off the respirator, Mr. Ellison. I know you don't want to hear this, but it is for the best. He'll either breathe on his own, or he won't. The time has come."//
He sank to the bottom of the big lake. The water was cold there and he gasped. His lover's voice penetrated the dark deep.
//"Breathe, baby, breathe."
"Oh my god, Jim. He's breathing on his own."
"No.... Yes."//
A ring of laughter filled the waiting air and he floated up on it, letting it bring him to the surface. It took a while to get there; when he arrived, Simon was gone. But Jim was still there. It seemed Jim was always there.
//"I wanted you to breathe on your own. I wanted it so bad. But now I don't know, sweetheart, maybe it's not such a good thing after all. It binds you to a place I don't think you want to be. You're free to go, love. You know that, right? I keep saying it because I want you to know it. But I wonder if you are hearing me at all. I know you don't want to live like this, but Blair, please, don't leave me... don't leave me all alone in the dark."//
He was moving towards the waterfall. He could hear it, the water rushing mightily, inexorably, toward the drop off.
"Jim, catch me. Save me!" he screamed, but the sound of the maelstrom at the bottom of the falls was too loud even for a Sentinel to hear through, he was sure. He went over the edge in slow motion, no one to catch him, wondering where Jim had gone. The pool at the bottom was as green as an old well and he stayed there for a time, spinning and spinning, until he started to move down the river.
//"It's been a year, my heart, since we first made love in my bed. You said it, remember? 'I wanna do it the first time in your big bed upstairs.' So we waited till we got home and I thought I'd die. You thought you'd burst. When he found out, Simon thought he'd kill us."//
He got caught in the river's eddy, and for a moment felt Jim's hand upon his arm. Big strong fingers, broad palms. He had soared on those hands, been taken to new and unaccustomed heights, lived a life time in a moment.
A good life, but not long enough. Was that why he was drifting here?
He reached the ocean finally. He knew it was the ocean. He could smell the brine of it, feel the undulation of the waves. But the deepness of it scared him. He hadn't minded the lake or the river. The ocean scared him too vast, too wild.
He wept, and then, feeling his own tears on his face, opened his eyes.
"Jim?"
His lover slept in a plastic recliner. It was an odd institutional pink, but it seemed to fit Jim like he'd been born to it. He'd obviously slept in it many nights.
"Jim?"
"Blair?" His partner lifted his weary head, the weight of the world held on his shoulders. "My god, I must be nuts. I thought I heard you call out my name."
"Jim."
It was like a dam breaking then and all the water that had been contained, held back for all the time in the world, came pouring from Jim's smile.
Blair was thrown to dry land then and, gasping like a beached whale, smiled into his lover's sea blue eyes.
End