SquidgeWorld Archive

The Good Life

You stand at the window.
There is a glass cloud in the shape of a heart.
The wind's sighs are like caves in your speech.
You are the ghost in the tree outside.

The street is quiet.
The weather, like tomorrow, like your life,
is partially here, partially up in the air.
There is nothing you can do.

The good life gives no warning.
It weathers the climates of despair
and appears, on foot, unrecognized, offering nothing,
and you are there.
--Mark Strand

His mind is quiet tonight, his thoughts as somnolent and subdued as the sooty darkness sliding like velvet across the dome of sky beyond the window. For now he is alone; but as he stands in barefoot reverie within the cradling warmth of the loft, undisturbed by the faint sounds of other lives being lived in the building around him, Blair senses Jim's presence close by on the night-lit streets of Cascade and knows that very soon his ephemeral illusion of solitude will end.

Tonight it all begins anew, he thinks to himself as his eyes take in but do not really see the view out beyond the balcony; for awhile after the first-draft copy of his doctoral dissertation (complete with unedited, majorly sensitive information about his partner) was accidentally leaked to the public, he wasn't sure he and Jim would make it through the nightmare events that followed. Even now, almost a year later, he has no words to describe just how rough their journey together became in the immediate aftermath of the public revelation concerning Jim's heightened senses. Faced with the insatiable attention of innumerable, scandal-hungry news people and sneeringly sceptical academics, Jim had reacted first with clenched-jaw anger and barely suppressed violence when confronted by reporters and their ilk, followed by a grim, stoic silence and a withdrawal deep into himself--a withdrawal that had shut Blair out as well, leaving him stranded alone and desolate on the other side of his roommate's emotionally impenetrable wall.

Nothing, not even the ruination of his career and his reputation as a scholar and an anthropologist, had hurt Blair as much as being so completely shut out of Jim's life during those awful days. Losing the unique friendship they'd built in their brief time together was a killing blow to Blair's heart and spirit that made the whole dissertation fiasco seem less than nothing in comparison. Going on live television to proclaim himself a fraud had seemed a small price to pay in exchange for the salvaging of some modicum of privacy and normality in Jim's beleaguered life; and if it took Jim awhile to fully appreciate all that his younger partner had sacrificed in order to give him back his life, Blair supposed he couldn't fault the detective for taking a bit of time to fully process all that had gone before.

After all, Blair had often thought to himself in those first, stressful days after all hell had broken loose; if he hadn't entered Jim's life in the first place with all his talk of helping to manage Jim's senses in return for clinical observations of a real, live sentinel, the whole media circus with its unwanted attention never would have happened. And though some part of Blair wanted to believe that Jim never could have learned on his own to manage his senses as well as he had under the anthropolgy student's eager supervision, Blair also had to admit that there was no way to prove that Jim couldn't or wouldn't have figured out the intricacies of dealing with his abilities for himself at some point in time. I was useless all along, Blair had mused mournfully to himself more than once during those dark, dark days of isolation away from the warmth of Jim's smile and the comfort of his friendship.

It had taken Jim almost too long to see, to realize, just how deep into the abyss of despair and disillusionment his one-time best friend had fallen, so caught up had the detective been in his own feelings of pain and betrayal. But once he'd fully returned to his senses, if such a bad pun might be excused, Jim had come to understand just how terribly Blair had suffered as well in the aftermath of the infamous dissertation. Feelings of shame and regret had assailed the sentinel as he'd forced himself to put his own feelings aside and focus not only his highly vaunted senses but his whole heart on his partner's quiet anguish; and it was only then, when both men sat down and truly communicated, that the near-irreparable rift between them had begun to close over and to heal.

Some things had changed; there was just no avoiding it. Blair, though offered a detective's badge and the promise of working alongside Jim as a full partner, had felt himself unable to commit to a fulltime vocation as a cop. He knew he couldn't return to his 'glory' days at Rainier University in the same old capacity as before, either; but with a bit of research and lots of late-night, heartfelt discussions with Jim, a compromise of sorts was struck between his need to be close to Jim at work and to forge his own unique career path. Blair now works as a paid consultant to the Cascade PD, most especially in the Major Crimes division, while also pursuing his private interest in anthropology as an assistant to Eli Stoddard on occasional field trips with university students. So it seems that after almost a year of turmoil, upheaval, and untold emotional pain, things in the Ellison-Sandburg universe are back on an even keel.

Well, not quite even, Blair thinks to himself now as the shadows of this late fall evening slip across the screen of the limited world his eyes can see from this side of the glass. For awhile now he's been sensing--been feeling--something new and different and tremulously exciting humming just beneath the fairly tranquil surface of his friendship with Jim; and that nebulous something has been building steadily over the past few weeks, offering frustratingly obscure bits of amorphous sentiment that neither Jim nor Blair can quite seem to get a firm grip on. More and more in recent days Blair has felt the intimations of something astoundingly deep and good coalescing somewhere just at the edges of his soul's perception, and something tells him tonight will see the culmination of this strange tension that has been building in the atmosphere. If he's honest with himself, he knows good and well what form the denouement will take later on tonight; he thinks Jim knows it, too. Now it's just a question of being able to shift their parameters and joint world view once again to accomodate this next new reality between them.

For his part, Blair feels ready; more than ready, if the slow, hard, anticipatory thumping of his heart inside his chest is any indication. His body forms a strange dichotomy as he stands waiting for Jim's arrival--his arms and legs feel heavy and lethargic, his stomach light and fluttery and nervous, while simultaneously the blue gaze he sends out over the city reflects the infinite certainty of a mind becalmed and yet invigorated by the knowledge of a love freely given and returned in equal measure. So interesting are the myriad emotions and sensations coursing through Blair's body, mind, and soul that he is caught up, enthralled by the wonder of his own imaginings, and flinches in startled, briefly panicked reaction when two strong, warm arms suddenly wind themselves around his chest from behind. Shock gives way to quick recognition and a feeling of melting and falling and soaring all at once with the sensations coursing through him at the incredibly pleasurable pressure of those arms around him. Feeling drunk and disoriented, Blair totters backwards the tiniest bit and is cradled, steadied, and cherished by the man who has always had his back when it matters most.

"Jim!--" Blair begins on a rueful, somewhat shaky laugh, his voice low and almost unrecognizably throaty as Jim snuggles his chest against Blair's back with the ease he might display for an action he's done a hundred times before rather than never. But Jim won't allow any further comments to fall from his roommate's suddenly breathless lips; his own mouth breathes a soft, skin-tingling gust of warmth against the nape of Blair's neck as those long, strong sentinel fingers begin a slow, investigatory trek up and down the length of Blair's shirt-covered torso. Blair finds it too difficult to stifle the needy moan rising up from his chest at Jim's touch, so he doesn't even try; his soft vocalizations echo in counterpoint to the low, secret murmurs of Jim's lips against his ear, and a slow, incandescently beautiful smile lights up Blair's eyes from deep inside at the words flowing from Jim's heart to his own. In the past two minutes the world has suddenly tilted on its axis, but Blair feels that for the first time ever he's finally standing on stable ground. And as Jim enfolds him ever more closely against his own delicious warmth and the peace of his slow and steady heartbeat, Blair realizes that the good life he has known with Jim till now has been but a faint prelude to the bright fulfillment that lies ahead.