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This story called me from my warm bed at 5 this morning, and wouldn't stop clamoring at me 'til I wrote it. It's not slash on the surface, but that doesn't bother me 'cos I'm not capable of writing something about Jim and Blair that doesn't involve them being in love somewhere down the line. It's pre-slash if you will, and if that bothers you, delete now.
This also deals with some disturbing issues like incest, so if that bothers you, the delete button is still there.
...I'll Show You The Man
by Gillian Middleton
The rain was falling gently onto his uncovered skull, not pouring down and pelting onto him, but just falling gently from the lowering sky. Steven turned his face up and felt the cold drops caress his exposed skin. Tilting his head slightly he could see the only other mourner at the graveside, standing opposite him with his eyes fixed firmly on the shiny lid of the coffin.
"It was good of you to come." Steven heard himself say.
"I guess I owed the old man that much at least." Jim turned his uniform coat collar up against the rain, falling more steadily now."
"Sure you just didn't want to make sure he was dead?"
Jim's gimlet stare turned on him and Steven shivered, that was just too much like the old man for comfort. Without another word Jim turned and began to walk away, shiny dress shoes squelching on the muddy sod.
"Jim!" Steven called, without knowing why.
Jim turned. "You still in school?" he said shortly.
"Yes. Law school. Another year."
"You need money?"
Steven shook his head. "Pops left me enough. He left me everything." And even though he didn't mean it to, it still came out like crowing.
Jim just grunted. "I figured." Then he turned on his heel and walked
away, and Steven stood in the gentle rain and watched 'til he got smaller
and smaller, then vanished altogether.
Steven woke in his bed and stared at the ceiling. The red glow of the clock radio told him it was 5 in the morning, par for the course these days. He sat up, nursing his aching head in his hands. Why on earth was he dreaming about that day now? He hadn't thought about it in years.
A little while later Steven was sitting on a deck chair on his veranda, watching the first rays of dawn appear over the horizon. Leaning back in his chair he closed his eyes and drifted into thought.
//The door opened and closed. That voice began whispering that endless litany that filled his head. Not the daytime voice that everyone else heard, this was the voice that was only used here, in the dark private night, behind that firmly closed door. Hey, Stevie boy. It's Pops. Yeah, that's right, come on over here. You know what Daddy wants, don't you? Mmm, good boy. You're my favorite, you know that, don't you. Now that mommy is gone, it's your duty to take her place in my bed. Good boy. Daddy loves you...//
With trembling fingers Steve brushed a shock of caramel hair from his eyes. It was no good. He had to know, and he couldn't wait any longer.
The suns rays kissed his damp cheeks and he raised his face to it,
absorbing it's healing glow.
"Why now?" His therapist asked reasonably.
"It's just time, that's all. We didn't speak for so long, when we met again I didn't want to risk driving him away. But know our relationship has settled down a bit more, I have to know. I have to know if he knew Pops was doing those things to me."
"And if he did? What will you do?"
"...I don't know."
Jim knocked on the door, and almost instantly heard his brothers rapid footsteps down the hall. The door swung open.
"Am I late?" Jim stepped into the foyer and pulled off his coat, hanging it on a hook by the door.
"No, I'm early. Beer?" Steven led the way down the hall.
"Always." Jim followed and perched on one of the stools by the counter, looking around at his brothers home with interest. This was only the second time he had been here. "You said it was important on the phone." Jim prompted, accepting an icy bottle of beer and twisting off the top.
"Yeah," Steven ran a hand through his hair. "I think we'd better sit for this." He indicated the sitting room off the kitchen and Jim obliging precede him in and took a seat.
"Are you in some kind of trouble, Steven?" Jim studied his brothers face carefully. It was still a bit of a shock to see him at 35, for the past 15 years his mind had recalled him as he had last seen him. A skinny 20 year old standing in the rain.
"No, no trouble." Steven looked down at the unopened beer in his hand and placed it carefully on a coffee table. "It's very hard to say this to you after all these years, Jim. It was a long time before I even told my therapist about this, although I think she had some inkling."
"I'm listening." Jim prompted helpfully.
"When I was 10, Pops started to... molest me."
The bald words hung in the air between them, and Steven let out a great gasping breath as if he had just finished running a long race.
Jim's face could have been carved of stone. Only his eyes were alive, glittering ice blue. "No." He said calmly.
"Jim-" Steven reached over and tried to touch his brothers arm but Jim was too quick for him, pushing out of the chair and away from Steven as if he was on fire.
"No." He said again, shaking his head.
"Please, Jim." Steven said a little desperately. "I'm not lying about this, if you'll just listen to me-"
"I said NO, you sonuva bitch!" Jim pounced on his brother and grabbed him by his shirt front, lifting him in the air and slamming him against the wall. "No no no no! He wouldn't have done that, do you hear me?"
"Jim... please." Steven was sobbing, his hands tangling with Jim's, trying to loosen the white-knuckled grip.
"He wouldn't have done that! He promised me!" Steven's eyes shot to his brothers and met them, two pairs of eyes the exact shade met wildly and exchanged secrets kept buried for 20 years.
"Oh, god." Jim said brokenly. Dropping Steven he turned and lumbered from
the apartment, disappearing down the hall and out the front door.
Jim had no clear memory of getting home, save for the pounding of his feet on the pavement as he ran. He didn't feel the cold, even though his coat and his keys and his car were all left behind him. His over-riding instinct was to get home. And then he was there.
//Leaning against the door, fingernails scraping the surface, oh god letmein.//
"Jim?" Blair's shocked tones reached him, and then the door opened before him and he fell into the room, onto his knees in the doorway. "Oh, my god, Jim!" Hands grasped his shoulders, gripped, and held tight. "Jim, talk to me, buddy. Is it your senses?"
//My senses?//
"Come on, man. help me here, you can't stay in the doorway. Can you stand? That's right, just over to the couch. Jim, did you eat anything that affected you? Drink anything?"
//Drink anything.//
"Jim, you're scaring me, buddy." Gentle hands were touching his, rubbing warmth back into cold fingers. "You're freezing!" The warmth and familiar scent of a blanket was wrapped around him.
"Jim, is it Steven? Did you see him? Did something happen to Steven?"
//Something happen to Steven?// "Steven." A great gasping sob broke out of Jim, shaking his chest, catching him in his throat. "Oh, god, Steven. He did it. That sonuva bitch did it! He promised me!" Jim reached out and grabbed Blair, hands biting into strong shoulders. Wide blue eyes met his. "Oh, god Blair, it hurts!" It was a wail of anguish, followed by tears released after years of confinement, decades, great sobbing shaking tears of pure agony.
"Jim, oh, Jim." Strong arms wrapped around him and Jim didn't fight them as they drew him closer. "It's okay, buddy, I'm here. I'm here, Jim. Cry it all out."
Soothing hands stroked his back, soothing words stroked his aching soul, Jim clutched hard at his anchor against the storm and poured his grief out against the firm wall of his chest.
The storm passed.
Jim unlocked the grip he had on Sandburg's shirt, feeling the bite of pain as his fingers uncramped and blood began to flow. He flexed his fingers, welcoming it.
"Jim, I'll be right back, okay?"
Nodding a heavy head Jim watched through swollen eyes as Blair trotted away. A few moments later he was back, laying a cool damp wash cloth over Jim's forehead. A glass of water was pressed into his hand.
Jim sighed in pure relief and pressed the wash cloth onto his puffy eyes, inhaling the slightly waxy odor of his unscented soap. Blair always knew exactly what he needed.
"Thank you." Jim mumbled.
"Now I know you've had a shock." Blair said gently. "You said thank you."
Pulling the wash cloth aside Jim studied his Guides anxious face. "I'm okay, Chief."
"I know." Blair urged the glass to Jim's lips. "Drink."
Jim took a few sips and handed the glass back to Blair.
"Can you tell me what happened?"
Jim pulled the cloth away and stared down at the rough blue fabric. "I freaked. I think I threw Steven against a wall."
"Ahh, Jim Ellison in crisis mode." Blair said thoughtfully. "I know from bitter experience you only do that in extreme circumstances. What happened between you guys?"
"I never told anyone in my whole life." Jim said simply. "For years I never even told myself, if that makes sense. I blocked it out, or thought I did. But it was always there, in the back of my mind."
"Well, there's no-one here now but us. Talk to me, Jim."
"I was 10 when my mother left. My dad was pretty hard to live with, and she was always... flighty. She packed up one day while he was at work, and told us she'd come back for us when she could. We never saw her again."
Blair sat silently, support shining in his eyes.
"After my mom left, my dad redecorated her room for me. I'd been sharing with Steven, and I thought it was pretty cool to have my own room. It even had it's own bathroom. Then one night dad came into my new room and closed the door behind him."
Almost absently Jim noted Blair's heartbeat speeding up. As if he knew what was coming.
"He said it was my duty to fill my mother's place in his bed, now that she was gone. He-" Jim broke off, shaking his head. A sudden pain in his shoulder made him look down in surprise. Blair's hand was gripping him there, fingers digging in.
"I'm sorry." Blair said croakily, releasing the tightness of his grip, but not moving his hand. "Go on."
Jim shook his head again, words backing up in his throat. What more was there to say? How to find the words? With all the tens of thousands of words in his vocabulary, all the clever/funny/witty/experienced words he used every single day to communicate with the world, how was he supposed to sort out a handful of them and offer them to his friend and even hope to tell the story of what had happened to him? What he had been through?
"It's okay." Blair was saying gently, his hand squeezing lightly. "It's okay, Jim."
"At first I didn't hate it so much. He was... gentle with me, and kind. And since my mom left I missed the contact of another person. He'd use this voice when he spoke to me, tell me I was his favorite. You know, the only times in my life I remember my father telling me he loved me was when I had his dick in my mouth."
The grip on his shoulder tightened, then released again. Jim welcomed the slight pain.
"But I knew it was wrong, the way a kid instinctively knows these things. When I was about 12 he came into my room and I was waiting for him in the dark, standing on the other side of the bed. I said no. Just... no. He looked at me for the longest time, then he turned and walked out. I thought it was over, but the next night he came back. He said..." Jim choked a little, then continued on, dry eyed. "He said it was my duty to take my mothers place in his bed. But if I wouldn't do my duty, then Steven would."
"Bastard." Blair hissed through clenched teeth.
"The weird thing was, even then, it was like he was pitting us against each other. He meant it like, if I didn't do what he wanted, then he wouldn't love me at all, even the twisted way he'd been showing it. That he would love Steven instead."
"But you saw it as a way to protect Steven." Blair said huskily.
"It was too late for me. He was only 8 years old. I thought I could spare him."
"But your father lied to you." Blair's understanding blazed in his eyes as he recalled Jim's' muffled words of grief. "And tonight Steven told you that."
Jim's head dropped back against the couch wearily. All of a sudden he looked ten years older, his eyes red and puffy, his skin pale and creased.
"You need to sleep." Blair said, "Yes you do." He over rode Jim's negative head shake. "Come one." He helped Jim haul himself to his feet and walked him up his stairs. "I'll put on the white noise generator, block out everything else, and you sleep 'til you can't sleep any more. Sleep is a great healer."
Jim sat on the side of the bed and watched Blair plug the generators adapter into the wall. "Will that thing block out the crap in my mind?" He slurred.
"Only time will do that." Blair lifted Jim's feet on the bed and pulled
off his loafers. "Sleep. I'll be here when you wake up."
Blair sat down on the couch, feeling the residual warmth of Jim's body heat beneath him. Jim was fast asleep, gone almost as soon as his eyes had shut, and Blair fervently hoped the white noise generator was doing it's job, because he was about to generate a little noise of his own. Picking up the sofa cushion Blair buried his face in it and released the tears he had been holding inside for the last hour.
//Oh, god, Jim.// That story, that sordid pitiful, terrible ugly little story. Told so matter-of-factly, as if just minutes before Jim hadn't been crying his eyes out on Blair's shoulder. Blair clutched the pillow close and sobbed into its padded surface, feeling the tight ache in his chest begin to ease a little as he released his grief.
Oh, but this was too hard, too hard to deal with. How was a man supposed to come to terms with something like that? Especially a man as proud and strong as Jim. Outrage replaced grief in Blair's cries, and now he was yelling into the pillow, muffling screams in the damp surface. Guiltily he pulled it away, taking deep breaths and listening intently. Jim did not stir.
//Okay, Blair. Calm down. it was a lot of years ago and Jim has enough to deal with now, without you falling apart on him too.// Blair wiped his eyes and rubbed his face, trying to gather his thoughts into some kind of order. From the first time Jim had talked about his father Blair had been nursing a severe dislike of the dead man. The kind of psychological head games he had used on his sons had struck Blair as very dark and sinister, even as Jim had shrugged them off as petty. But this evening severe dislike had crystallized into pure white hot hate in his belly, not an emotion he was accustomed too, but one he had no problem with in these circumstances. Anything other than hatred for that monster was impossible at this point.
Blair had a sudden longing to call his mother, to hear her voice, but he stifled it. He couldn't talk to her now without telling her this secret, and it was not his to tell. But, oh it would be good to hear Naomi's voice at this moment.
People often shook their heads when they spoke of his mother, his childhood, but all in all Blair knew he had been incredibly lucky. He'd seen a lot of the world in their travels, and met a lot of interesting people. And other than one or two potentially ugly incidents that he had closed his mind to, he had had a happy and safe childhood, although a far from conventional one.
Convention is vastly over rated.
The phone rang and Blair pounced on it before it could disturb Jim. "Hello." he whispered.
"Blair? It's Steven."
//Oh, god, I can't deal with this now.//
"Hi, Steven."
"Listen, is Jim there? Because he left his truck here. I thought he might come back." Steven's voice was shaky and Blair felt a wave of sympathy for him. Jim had said he had thrown him against a wall. Has Steven okay?
"He's here, Steven." Blair said lowly. "He's asleep now. He's pretty upset."
There was a long silence on the line. "He told you?" He sounded incredulous.
"I can't discuss this with you, Steven." Blair said reluctantly. He didn't want to brush Jim's brother off, but he couldn't betray a confidence.
"I'm coming over." Steven said firmly. "I'll drive Jim's truck back."
"Steven, I don't think that's a good idea. Jim-"
"Please, Blair." //Oh god Steven sounded like Jim when he murmured like that.// "I don't want to be alone now."
What could he say? Steven sounded bad, very bad. What if he did something crazy? Blair knew he would never forgive himself if something happened to Jim's brother because he had turned him away.
"Okay, Steven. I'll be here."
Blair had the door open before Steven could knock, his finger held to his lips. He took the keys and coat Steven proffered and gestured for him to come in.
"Is he all right?" Steven asked quietly, nodding to the bedroom.
"He's exhausted." Blair said honestly. "Actually you don't look much better. Are you okay?"
"I don't know." Steven sat down on the couch and Blair shook off the feeling of deja vu. He sat opposite him on an armchair.
"I can't believe Jim told you what I said." Steven said in wonder. "He's lucky to have a friend like you. I've never been able to tell anyone except my therapist."
"Sometimes it's easier to talk to a stranger than a friend." Blair suggested. "It's hard enough to deal with your own emotions sometimes, without someone else's getting in the way."
"It's haunted me for years you know? Not just what dad did. But whether or not Jim knew about it. Sometimes I would dream about killing dad, and then in my dream he'd have Jim's face. I would get so angry at him!"
"At Jim?"
Steven shrugged. "It was harder to get mad at dad. He wouldn't take much crap. But I'd cop so much of the 'why can't you be more like Jim' stuff, and I'd just get so mad. I thought he had everything going for him, and I was nothing. And to top it all off, I was being molested by dad and he was getting away scot-free! At least that's what I thought. I hated him for that."
"And now?" Blair prompted.
"And now I see what I knew all along. He was a victim too. No wonder dad turned us against each other. If we'd been close, maybe we each would have known about the other, and we could have stopped it."
"You can't blame yourself for that. Either of you."
"You know, I'm learning to live with what he did to me, what he stole away from me. But I will always regret that I let him steal those years away from me and Jim. I have one brother, and that's such a special relationship. We can never get back what he took from us."
"No. But you can stop him from taking any more!" Blair insisted. "That evil old bastard doesn't deserve one minute more of your thoughts and energies."
"But we should have been able to come together as adults." Steven persisted. "After the old man was dead."
"How could you?" Blair asked reasonably. "He spent too many years driving you apart. You know, you can't be messed up for the first 18 years of your life and then one day you reach adulthood and everything gets rosy. We carry the emotional baggage of our childhood with us forever. The Jesuits have a saying. 'Give me a boy 'til he's seven, and I'll show you the man.' "
"I think Jim would have been happier if I'd left this baggage in the closet." Steven said wearily.
"No."
Steven and Blair jumped as Jim's voice croaked out his denial. They swung around to see him standing swaying at the foot of the staircase. Blair stifled the urge to jump up and run to him. Perhaps it was best if he metaphorically stepped back now.
"No, it wouldn't have been better." Jim repeated. "We've both carried this secret too long as it is."
Steven looked down at his hands, clenched together in front of him. "All the years that was happening to me, I never dreamt it was happening to you too. You seemed so strong, so invulnerable."
Jim was studying his own hand where it clenched the stair rail. "I thought I was protecting you, but I have to admit I resented you too. I thought I was sacrificing myself for you, and you would never even know."
Blair studied the two brothers on opposite sides of the room and a million miles apart. //Go to him.// He urged mentally, not even sure which one he was talking to.
Jim took a step away from the stairs.
Steven clenched his fists and stood up.
Blair held his breath.
"I used that crap over the car as the excuse I needed to get away." Jim was saying, his eyes still focused anywhere but at Steven.
"It was Pops I was taking my anger out on with that crow bar." Steven took a hesitant step. "Never you."
Finally Jim looked up, meeting his brothers gaze, two pairs of eyes the exact same shade crossing the room and decades of darkness. Then Jim held out his arms out and his little brother flew into them and was crushed against a big broad chest.
"I'm so sorry, Steven." Jim choked, burying his face in his brothers caramel hair.
"It wasn't your fault." Steven wrapped his arms around Jim and wept. "It wasn't our fault."
Blair didn't try to stifle his tears this time as he watched the brothers reaching out to each other across the gap that had too long lay between them. If sleep could heal, then so could tears, they could dredge up pain from the depths of a soul and wash it clean. They could unite two people in grief and perhaps giving them a common ground to meet on. These two would be a long time healing, and Steven's therapist would hopefully be able to play a part in the process for both of them. But eventually, Blair fervently hoped, the worst of the damage could be repaired and they could truly come together as brothers.
The first, most difficult steps were taken.
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