Title: Coming Up For Air

Author: Ivy McAllister

Coming Up For Air
by Ivy McAllister

"Chief?" Jim looked up from his book when the loft door opened and Blair straggled in. His hair was lank and damp, his coat hung open and it was painfully obvious to Jim that the kid had been losing weight.

"Hey, Jim." Blair tossed his keys in the basket and started to cut a path straight to his room.

"Hey, hold up there a minute, Chief." Jim was off the couch and blocking Blair's path. "How'd it go with Dr. Kwan?"

Blair shrugged, refusing to meet Jim's eyes. "Nothing new, Jim, nothing new."

Jim was at a loss as to how to approach this. On one hand, he didn't like the fact that Sandburg was on antidepressants. His dislike of the situation went clear down to the *smell* of it all--the things made Blair smell. . . . wrong. And even though they called them *anti*depressants, they sure seemed to have a sedative effect on Sandburg.

Despite the depression, Jim really felt that Blair had been holding his own at the station and at the academy. It was the department shrink, Dr. Kwan, who had insisted on Sandburg getting "professional help" when he didn't score as well as she liked on the psych eval. Attributing his performance to stress, she referred Blair to a psychiatrist.

And so the downhill tumble began.

Jim had to give it to the kid--he'd fought taking the meds as long as he could, but when Dr. Kwan threatened to suspend his academy training, Blair had caved. He'd figured he'd toe the line for awhile, play the game, tell her what she wanted to hear and walk away.

Needless to say, he hadn't taken the pills.

Two weeks into his "treatment," a blood test to check his kidney and liver functions (and the amount of the drug in his system) revealed his deception. Another chat with the department shrink, and he was grudgingly popping Zoloft twice a day.

Now, nine months and six prescriptions later, Blair was a shadow of the energetic grad student who'd tossed Jim's life on its ass. Between the side effects of the meds and working his butt off to compensate for lost time at the academy, Blair was exhausted and unhealthy. And Jim wasn't sure what to do about it.

* * *

Two Weeks Later . . .

Graduation was over. Jim was sure Blair hadn't slept for more than a couple hours during his exam period. Now that things had calmed down, though, he figured it was time to give Blair back a little of the mother hen treatment he was always subjecting Jim to.

After the ceremony, Jim had pried a sagging Sandburg away from his well-wishers and dragged him back to the loft. After shooing his partner into the shower and herding him into bed, Jim starting to quietly pack up the truck for a weekend away. Just him, Blair and the fish for three whole days. He'd already cleared it with Simon, who heartily approved.

"The kid looks like shit, Jim," he'd growled around his cigar. "Get him the hell outta here for awhile." He's sighed grumpily, wishing he could join them.

As Jim packed some perishables into one of those gadgety car refrigerators--a gift from his brother last Christmas--he felt the hair on the back of his neck begin to prickle.

He dialed up instantly, attuned to the night sounds of the loft and his sleeping guide.

His guide. . . .

Something was wrong with Blair.

Rushing to his friend's room, Jim threw open the doors and saw. . .nothing unusual.

Blair, asleep, covers tossed to the side, chest rising and falling with each gentle breath. Hair fanned across the pillow, one arm thrown to the side and hanging off the bed.

Nothing wrong.

Jim frowned. He wasn't buying it. The Sentinel in him wasn't buying it. Despite the seeming normalcy of the scene before him, Jim *knew* something wasn't right. One sense at a time, Jim swept his awareness across Blair's supine form, searching for anything awry, no matter how small.

Finally, he picked it up. *Touch* picked it up, from five feet away--a frisson of electricity rippling lightly through Blair's body, almost like static.

Jim dialed up touch just in time to catch feel the wave of another static charge as it wrapped itself into, around and through Blair's lax muscles. Testing.

The hairs on Jim's neck prickled yet again, and his eyes were drawn to where one of Blair's fingers was twitching slightly in sleep.

*Probably dreaming,* Jim thought.

Then a smell, so faint and so biological--natural--he would have ignored it if he wasn't so alert. It was a normal smell--a human odor he encountered all the time, like pheromones, enzymes and sweat. But there was just too much of it. Jim was reminded of a particularly close gym locker room.

What did it mean?

The twitching finger was now a twitchy hand. Jim watched as the right side of Blair's face succumbed to a sleepy tic as well, followed by his head tossing restlessly on the pillow.

A hollow, distant growl echoed in Jim's ears, and Blair seemed to twitch more in response.

Something was very, very wrong.

Jim watched, dumbstruck, as Blair's body arched up off the bed and froze for a moment before collapsing back stiffly against the mattress, eyes wide and staring. Waves of shudders and spasms gripped Blair's muscles, twisting them, pulling them taught and squeezing the air out of his lungs and across his vocal cords to produce sounds that Jim would hear in his nightmares for years to come.

Acting on autopilot, Jim grabbed a book from the night table and shoved it into Blair's mouth, wedging it between the clenching teeth to keep Blair from biting his tongue.

He didn't want to leave Blair for even a second, but Jim made himself run to the kitchen, placing a terse call to 911 and grabbing his cell phone from where he'd let it sit on the charger in preparation for their trip.

Jim was only steps away from Blair's room when a thud made him move even faster.

Blair had fallen off the bed and was lying, panting on the floor. His eyes were closed tightly and the book had fallen from his mouth. Jim barely glanced at it, noting the frighteningly deep grooves left by Blair's teeth.

The seizure appeared to be over, but Blair was still far from okay. He was looking at Jim blankly now, unblinking and slackjawed in his post-seizure lethargy.

Jim sighed and rested his hand on the top of Blair's head, stroking lightly but never losing contact with his guide. He stifled the urge to kiss the sweaty forehead, contenting himself with patting Blair's arm reassuringly.

"You're okay, Sandburg. I'm right here. An ambulance is no the way."

Although he seemed unresponsive, Jim thought he could feel Blair relax when he was talking. So he kept it up, a stream of overdue praise and one-sided banter that buoyed them both through the curt efficiency of the paramedics before setting them down in the sterile, fluorescent nightmare that was Cascade General.

END PART 1
--TBC--