Archive of Our Own ^beta

Author's homepage: http://trickster.org/radiofree/

Disclaimer: I didn't do it. I wasn't even near the place.

Notes: Thanks to Seah, Emily, Tanya and Katharine for beta reading, and to Nita (as always) for actually postponing a nap in order to beta read. As the summary says, this is very dark and weird and ambiguous and very much not my usual fare -- but it is a first time story. Some things never change. All manner of feedback welcome at [email protected]. Enjoy!

Summary: In which Jim and Blair deal with the aftermath of TSbyBS in a dark and angsty manner altogether non-representative of the author's actual feelings about how they might actually deal with the aftermath of TSbyBS if they were actual people or if they were, for instance, in some other kind of story.

Warnings: m/m, angst

Jim Ellison's world changes in the instant between one heartbeat and the next. It begins deep in his belly, a flush of heat and nausea, a dropping, as if he has taken sudden flight. They lead him to the television set and he focuses too quickly, narrowly, seeing pixels of individual color, many colors, all of them too red. He's been meaning to adjust the color for weeks now, but he is the only one who can see the problem and he has let it slide a hundred times. He feels pain behind his eyes and lets the lids fall shut, only for a moment, and the adjustment is instantaneous. He ignores the strange twinge of guilt, strange but not alien, ignores the empty space by his side, and opens his eyes again, and the image is clear. His focus was too narrow before, but now he sees the entire screen, a screen filled to bursting with Blair Sandburg, flannel and leather, two-dimensional, redder than he ought to be.

Between that one heartbeat and the next he sees the podium sprouting a chrome bouquet of microphones, he sees the lights as they shine down on the leather, on the crown of Blair Sandburg's hair, he sees a flashbulb that nearly takes his breath away. He knows what is coming and when Blair Sandburg's eyes come up from the podium and stare directly into the camera that's staring directly into his eyes, Jim no longer cares to breathe and the empty space by his side aches and burns. Another flashbulb and Jim sees another Sandburg in another place and hears his own voice flowing out of his mouth like bile, bitter, and his tongue turns to ashes in his mouth, and the more he says in that past instant the more he hurts. That Jim feels like a surgeon, scalpel gleaming in the grey overcast, excising a part of him that has grown wild, that's spreading into him, that's been spreading like wildfire into him for years, forever. That Jim cuts and cuts and never bleeds, but that Sandburg bleeds, and this Sandburg meets the camera's eye and cauterizes the wounds with words, fire to Jim's steel, voice jagged and hot.

The screen changes, but the red remains, and when Jim looks away from the screen it lingers, a red haze blurring over the dull metal counters and chairs and the others in the room. Their silence is red, respectful, they don't look at him, they don't think they want to see. They file past and out and away and Jim stands there like a sentinel, like The Sentinel, and looks down at his hands, which are not red but white at the knuckle and palm, and heavy. He clenches his fingers into fists and feels the weight and that weight is his life, transubstantiated from Blair Sandburg's life, a gift the way the senses never were, and a curse, a debt he can never repay.

He moves through the steps that lead him to the place he needs to go, and he doesn't question the hunch that takes him there, he just follows. He has a sense that his life has been given to him in return for something precious but he can't name the sacrifice and after long moments of contemplation as the wheels of his truck cut through the rain-drenched streets, it is easier to push that sense aside than to understand it. Jim Ellison knows in his mind that pushing things aside is his greatest talent and his greatest flaw, but his mind doesn't rule him and never has. He drives and drives and the traffic signals are all green for him, not red, and his hands are steady on the wheel, and his feet know the speed limits and how much touch to give the pedals.

If asked, Jim would say he's going to check on his friends, or more likely he would think he was going to check on his friends but would say nothing. Either way he would know himself for a liar and the shame of it would sink into his skin like mercury because it would be a compound shame, dishonesty and indifference at once, because he isn't going to see Simon Banks or Megan Connor. To be specific, he is going to see Blair Sandburg seeing Simon Banks and Megan Connor, because Jim Ellison is a Sandburg scholar of the first order, and he knows where to go if he wants to find him. His hands on the wheel and his feet on the pedals know where to take him, and his mind's participation is peripheral at best. His mind doesn't rule him, and never has.

Up through the floors to the place his fallen friends lie, and he waits there and Sandburg comes. Jim's eyes drink him down, water on the leather jacket, beads of rain drying in the sterile air, beads of water clinging to Sandburg's eyelashes, to his hair. He looks away when he knows Sandburg is going to look at him, he doesn't want to know what Sandburg's eyes will look like. For a moment before either of them speak Jim is simply glad to find the red is gone, and Sandburg's colors are his real colors, and he moves in the world and takes up space and smells of parking lot and rain.

And then they do speak.

Jim knows there are things he has to say, but the words choke him, and he's afraid, he checks for listeners and finds none and still he is afraid, fear growing in him like a cancer, swarming in his bowels and hardening in a thick, tight knot below his throat.

He speaks around it. The words don't want to come. He can't find his voice when Blair Sandburg's eyes are on him, but when he looks away, then he can try. He pushes against the wall in Sandburg's eyes, surprised and not surprised to find that there is a wall; it is not the wall that Jim built because those walls never last. Brick and glass and steel, this wall is of Sandburg design, it is the shine in eyes that won't look at him, it is the scrape of Sandburg's voice through a raw throat, and Jim senses no words will ever breach it, and he senses that it serves a dual purpose, keeping him out, keeping all of Sandburg in.

He keeps talking because that is all he knows to do, he pushes, he tries to penetrate. His words are inadequate, as are Sandburg's words, but both men are bound to honor the forms of conduct, and an apology has been offered and accepted, and the conversation is over, and nothing has been said.

Jim Ellison's fear rises, swamping him, rushing through his heart like a dark and treacherous river. And his world continues to change, more every instant, between one heartbeat and the next.

It gets better. He believes that it is getting better. Sandburg laughs at one of his own jokes and Jim Ellison tries to recover his smile. Amid gunfire he is preoccupied, he is afraid, he senses danger all around him and Sandburg is there, and they haven't said anything, they haven't said the right things, and this man has killed before. He is killing now. And Jim is preoccupied. And Zeller falls.

Jim no longer feels the ache in the space by his side, it is no longer empty. But the Blair Sandburg who fills it is a different Blair Sandburg from the one who walked on the docks, and he is a different Blair Sandburg from the one who lay down his life for a friend on the national news. He is more and less than he was, he is stronger and straighter, he doesn't bleed at the edges, he doesn't blur. He looks up at Jim Ellison as Zeller falls, before the impact he will not be able to hear, he looks up at Jim and he is a hand closed tight like a fist, all the non-essentials pared away.

Jim Ellison closes his eyes and makes a sound that has no meaning, and a hand touches his shoulder, and Sandburg says, "Hey, Jim, it's not your fault, man," and Jim trembles under that hand because it is, it is, all of it is, and the world has changed forever. He reaches for the hand on his shoulder and feels it and it is warm and solid and crazily unreal. He allows himself to be led down from the roof, into the building, and he allows himself to be congratulated, and he allows himself to smile and nod and almost, almost he allows himself to disintegrate into the routine.

Blair Sandburg remains beside him, and remains, and Jim Ellison knows he will never be alone again, and the knowledge lifts him and breaks his heart and makes him ashamed. Beside him, Blair Sandburg's pain throbs like the beat of heavy drums.

Their home is emptier with them in it. Sandburg is in the kitchen, heating soup out of a can. Jim is in the living room, and the television is on, and he is following the story about Zeller's untimely death until a clip from the afternoon's press conference is repeated and the clattering in the kitchen stops, and Jim tries to change the channel.

Sandburg, now behind him, changes it back. The color here is good. The sound here is good. The words burn into him, and into him, and he can't breathe, and behind him Sandburg takes in the breath that should've been his, takes it in with a choked and lost sound, a despairing sound, and then there is silence again, and Jim has not moved, and Sandburg has not moved, and the anchor is now reporting the sports scores for the day.

And Jim knows what he has to do. He knows. And he does it, because one of them has to, one of them has to, and it has to be him because it can't be Sandburg again if either of them is to survive, if both of them are to survive.

He comes up off the couch and turns and is back on the couch on his knees, pressing up against the back cushions, and his hand is wrapped around Sandburg's wrist hard enough to leave a bruise but he doesn't care. Jim is reaching out to his friend, because he can't let Sandburg be the one to reach out now, he can't make Sandburg be the one. The skin under his fingers is real, and the pain is distracting, and Sandburg still won't look at him, still won't meet his eyes, until Jim lets go of his wrist and reaches up, and up, so far it seems he can't possibly ever touch, but he does, he touches Sandburg's face and Sandburg makes that sound again, that horrible sound, and Jim breaks, he shatters, his strength is gone.

He says Sandburg's name once, his first name, "Blair," looking into Blair's eyes, and the fear swarms up and out of him and the moment changes, Jim's world changes, his friend is gone forever and with a shout of rage and hunger Jim takes the man standing in his friend's place, devours him, drinks him like water.

It happens on the floor, and it is the first time this has ever happened, and it is the last time it will ever happen, and the floor is the only place for it. Cold and hard against the backs of Jim's thighs, against his buttocks and his back, pain at his shoulder blades, more when Sandburg is on him, fighting him, working for and against him, using his teeth. Sandburg is trying desperately to strip himself bare but taking no help, offering no quarter, and then he is done, he is there, he presses down and down and down and the pain throbs, and Jim can almost hear the drums, and his body throbs, pulses in time with the pain. He knows in his mind there are no drums. There is only the blood in his own ears, only their breath ripped out of them, only pleasure so complete and wrong he screams with it, arches into it, sex, skin, heat, pain, flowing over him, through him, and underneath it the fear rising like a diseased moon in his heart, in his throat, and he can't look at this Blair Sandburg, Blair Sandburg in rut and pain and vengeance, lost and bound. He may never feel clean again.

Jim sobs once, his eyes wide open, and comes. The small, sharp teeth burrowed into his neck release him, and there is another sound, and heat on his belly, wet, slick, and the weight lifts off him instantly, and Jim closes his arms around nothing.

Jim Ellison lies on the floor of his home, his stomach and groin wet and sticky. He stares at the ceiling and prays, and prays, the Catholic in him is divided against itself so he prays with the heart of a broken child. The same child who prayed for his curse to go away prays now for his salvation to remain. And Jim Ellison stretches out a hand to the man next to him, and he finds his fingers gripped in fingers like iron, like a lifeline, and he squeezes hard, he squeezes and makes a cage of his hand and he will not let go, he will never let go. He turns to say it, he turns to make the promise, he says the words -- "Never again, Blair, I promise, I'll never, I'll never," and his voice breaks, and he never quite manages to say what he'll never do because Blair Sandburg turns to him and wraps arms and legs around him and says, "Hey, Jim, it's okay, it's really not your fault, man," in a whisper.

But it is, it is.

And Jim Ellison's world changes again, between one heartbeat and the next, and he puts both arms around Blair Sandburg and his eyes are wet, but Sandburg's eyes are not, and Jim's world has changed forever between one heartbeat and the next, but Blair Sandburg's world has not. It is the same world it always was, circling the same star, bound by oaths and gravity, always falling.

~

"Break me from my injured past
And make me over in your arms.
The pain that guided me before
Has no comfort anymore...
Let me enter in."

-- The October Project, "Falling Farther In"

End Falling Farther In.