Author's disclaimer: No profit made, no infringment intended.

Author's notes: This one is for Wolfling who not only won the story at auction, but also gave me the idea. A jewel among women, that Wolfling. :)

Illumination
by Charlemagne

The first kiss is like death: Naomi told me that. What she meant, which I didn't understand until I had my first real kiss at the ripe old age of thirteen, was that just before you have that kiss, when your breath is mingling with the other person's and you're both leaning forward by increments so small you'd need a microscope to find them, in that eternity between the time you know you're going to kiss and the time the kiss actually begins the whole relationship will flash before your eyes. You will see what has lead you to this moment, this kiss, with a perfect clarity.

Since what has brought me to this kiss has been upwards of three years of friendship and caring and what I had assumed was unrequited lust, I'm glad the moment has a kind of timeless quality to it. It makes this easier.

When I came in Jim was reading the dissertation. He was sitting there at the kitchen table, my laptop propped open in front of him, a beer in the hand that wasn't operating the scroll bar. He didn't look up.

Not when I cleared my throat, or when I left my shoes on the floor in front of the door, not even when I pulled a beer out of the fridge and opened it by whapping it hard against the edge of the counter, a trick that almost got me exsanguinated a year and a half ago. Not this time. El hombre no responde.

"Hey Jim, " I said finally, pulling up a chair.

"I'm reading, Chief."

"Really? That's a relief, man. I thought you were having some sort of zone out on internet pornography." My laugh died in my throat when Jim didn't look up. I didn't even get one of those "I'm bigger than you and you know it" looks that warn me when I'm not behaving according to the Jim Ellison code of conduct.

"Jim?" I waved my hand in front of his face.

"Chief, I said, I'm reading."

"Anything good?"

He glanced up just long enough to glare at me, then his eyes went right back to the screen. "Let you know when I'm finished."

School dismissed. I may be just a flaky anthropologist, but I know when to take a hint. I took my beer and my sudden case of the stomach butterflies into my room and laid down on the bed, trying not to think to hard about what was happening in the kitchen.

Of course, I had always planned for Jim to read it. I even promised him more than one time that he would get to see it before it went anywhere outside my director, and I meant it when I said that. I even always wanted him to read it--I just didn't want him to read it now.

It had only recently become clear to me that in order to actually finish, to submit that thing, and defend it, and hopefully publish it, I would have to do a lot of obsfucating. Not just Jim's name, but his location, maybe even his profession. I was going to have to edit out any specific examples of Sentinel ability that linked up specifically to Jim, and I was going to have to make up some of my own past history so that I could have discovered this Sentinel somewhere else. Shit, anyone who knew the slightest bit about me who read it as is, even with the names changed, would hook "Sentinel X" to Jim. Who else would I have had the time to observe so closely, to know so much about? I hadn't been this up close and personal with anyone since . . . since ever.

So, anyway, of course Jim was supposed to read it. Then it leaked out with some help from my do-gooder of a mother and I thought that was it--no more Jim. I could have understood it, even after I had invalidated the whole thing in that news conference.

That had unnerved me: not the news conference standing in front of a hundred cameras throwing my whole academic future away. For Jim, I would have done that a thousand times over. What scared me was doing without knowing if it could ever repair the damage. A man can only take so much, and Jim has always taken more than his fair share as far as I am concerned. But he didn't boot me out and he even made me his partner, his official partner, because that too is the type of person Jim Ellison is. He's crabby and annoyingly rigid and squinty as hell, but he is also generous to a fault, especially where I am concerned.

So generous, in fact, that he would actually read the document that made him not only a celebrity but a target. Amazing.

I just wanted to let sleeping dogs lie, to bury my head in the sand, to not stir a hornet's nest with a stick-- pick your cliche. In other words, had Jim asked me if he could read the diss, had he come up and said "hey Chief, can I see it?" I would have dissembled and taken him out to dinner, before coming home and encrypting the whole thing. Jim is a lot of things, but he will never be computer jockey.

I just didn't want him, this, us to get all messed up again by a document that had become suddenly irrelevant.

I was thinking all these things when he rapped lightly on the open door to my room.

"Can I come in?"

"What, you're done?"

He nodded. "I've been at it for a while." Jim sat down on the side of the bed near my feet, staring back out through the door into the brightly lit living room. I could see his profile gilt-edged by the light.

"So," I said, "what'd you think?"

"Lemme ask you something, Chief." He turned to face me, and I knew that even though his face was in shadows, he could see me perfectly. It's one of those things you have to get used to living with a Sentinel: the possibility of constant scrutiny. I put that in the dissertation in the chapter on Sentinel/Guide relations. One more thing I would have had to change before it saw the light of day. "D'you really believe all that stuff you put in there?"

"Sure, Jim. It's all the results from our tests and--" He waved me into silence.

"That's not what I mean. Not the scientific stuff, the other stuff. The 'leader to the next millenium' stuff. The stuff about Sentinel insight illuminating the 'connection between all things.'"

"Well, yeah, Jim. Of course. Of course I do."

He sighed, face falling into his hands.

"Jim?"

"I'm fine, Chief."

"Yeah, you seem like it."

He turned to look at me again, squinting in the darkness, until the only thing I could hear was the sound of his breath and the beating of my own heart.

"Jim," I said again. "Is something wrong? Was it something with the dissertation, cause that isn't going anywhere now, man, you know that. I am purely damaged goods in the publishing industry, I give you my word." I held up both hands, under arrest.

"You really think all those things?" he asked again.

I had already answered that question so I just sat and looked at him, or tried to in the faint light coming through the door. He shifted on the bed, no longer at my feet but near my waist. I could feel his hand pressing down on the mattress, pushing at the edge.

"Chief . . . I'm not sure how do say this, but . . . I think you're wrong."

"Jim, what are you talking about? That stuff that I put in the dissertation is all true, all based on my conclusions as an anthropologist. What do you mean it's not true?"

"I mean I'm no hero, Chief. I'm not the guy you've got in that computer; I'm just a cop. You make me sound like some sort of human candle, but this Sentinel thing is just, what . . . a side benefit. A bous. It doesn't make me an 'illumination' Blair. It doesn't make me anything."

I stared at him, stared at the blackness that Jim took up in my room.

"What?" I said. "Jim . . . what?! After all of the things that you've seen, after all the things you've done for this city, you're telling me that you're just a cop? Well, remember what you said to me about self-deprecation? You better wake up and smell the deprecation, buddy--" I stopped, struck dumb by my own horrible pun. Jim was already chuffing with suppressed laughter. "I'm sorry, man."

"You should be. Smell the deprecation? Geez, Chief."

"That's not the point, man! You know what I'm trying to tell you."

"You're trying to tell me that I'm not just a cop. That being a Sentinel is more than that." He sounded like a school boy reciting a lesson, but I smiled. He got it.

"Sentinel of the Great City, man." I said. I couldn't really see him, but I knew that he was smiling too, smiling at me.

"Blessed Protector of the Shaman," he said. "I sure blew that one, hmm? You were the one protecting me this time."

"Hey, Jim," I said.

"Hmm?"

I cuffed him upside the head. "Get over it, you fucking masochist!"

Obviously, the smartest thing to do right after you've whacked Jim Ellison upside the head is to run like hell, which is exactly what I tried to do, but somehow, I had forgotten pre-whack to make sure my getaway path was clear of all large and buffish cops. He had me pinned to the bed in a second. Less, if that's possible.

He growled a little, smiling into my face. "A masochist wouldn't enjoy this, Chief," he said. After that, there was silence for a little while. A little while which, nonetheless, was plenty enough time to realize that my partner was looming over me, his hands clasped loosely on the wrists he pinned above my head, his face inches from mine. Enough time to realize that this was a very good place to be, with his thigh lined up against mine and his breath on my skin and his stomach pressed across my chest because of his reach. Enough time to realize that Jim realized it, too.

"Blair?" he said.

"Jim," I said back, which brings me back to where I started, with the first kiss that Jim is leaning down in slow motion to give me, a kiss which, incidentally, I hope involves tongue, a kiss which will mark the separation between the life I am living now an the one that I will be living with Jim's arms around me and his mouth on mine. I can hardly wait to find out what happens.