Back to the Main Page
Back to Sentinel Fic
Tremble
when i wake up my reflection looks so pained. god, i know there's
nothing gained if you don't get hurt a little, but i still tremble
--peter himmelman, tremble
That slamming sound was books hitting the floor. That scraping sound was books being shoved under Blair's futon. The clicking was the sound of cassette cases falling against each other. Mystery solved.
Jim opened the door to the loft and stepped inside. "Chief?"
"In here," Blair said, It wasn't a welcoming sound, but Jim wait to the door of Blair's room anyway.
"I know where you are," he said, not bothering to hide his amusement. Blair had developed a strange habit of forgetting that Jim was a Sentinel, at least during his down time.
"What are you doing?"
As soon as it was out, Jim realized it was the wrong question. It was obvious what Blair was doing. He was taking books and cassettes and films out of a cardboard box and stashing them under his bed. What Jim really wanted to know was, why? Fortunately, Blair seemed to understand.
"I don't think my research is safe in my office."
Jim thought of Blair's tapes and where they'd travelled in the past, and although it was wasted because Blair's back was turned, he rolled his eyes.
"You just figured that out?"
That convinced Blair to turn around.
"I don't normally leave people alone in my office. Just people I think I can trust."
There was a hardness to his feature that had had rarely displayed before he ... well, before. "Once," he added, "I was wrong. But I'm not too likely to make that mistake again."
He went back to pushing his books around. His shoulders were tense. They probably hurt.
"But you don't think your research is safe in your office."
"No." Blair shoved hair out his eyes and turned a little so that he could look at Jim over his shoulder. "Considering that I no longer have a lock on the door."
Jim slipped into a crouch and took a book from the pile. He liked the feel of that weight in his hands. It was reasonable and uncomplicated.
"Sandburg, I don't like this new thing where I have to drag information out of you. Back when you never shut up I thought it would be great, but it's not. It's more annoying."
Blair threw another book under the bed.
"Someone broke into my office last night. Kicked the door in. They broke the glass, too, but I think that just happened because they kicked the door."
Jim frowned. There had been a time when hold been able to predict Sandburg's behaviour with occasional accuracy, but that time was gone.
"Why didn't you call me?"
Blair smiled a little. "You get demoted without my hearing about it? It was a break and enter. I called the main switchboard."
Jim opened his mouth. What nearly come out was his first thought, that he simply expected Blair to turn to him for help. That he would've expected to hear from him even if he wasn't a cop, never mind a cop who didn't work in the appropriate department. The look on Blair's face kept him from speaking. More to the point, the absence of a look on Blair's face. No agitation, no curiousity ... no sign of life. It wasn't a face Jim was prepared to open up to. A moment's thought told him there was another lane open to him, and he took it.
"You are keeping one hell of a secret for me and most of it is in that office. I think I have a right to know if someone goes through your papers."
"They didn't," Blair said. He pulled last few folders from the box. "That was the first thing I checked. Nobody touched this stuff."
He put the folders away and reached for the book in Jim's hands. Jim felt an inexplicable desire to hang on to it, as if letting go would ruin any hope of getting the whole story out of Blair. Stupid. He handed the book to Blair.
"Was anything taken?"
"Just one thing." Blair pushed the box to corner of his room.
"Remember that drum I kept beside the filing cabinet?"
To Jim's surprise, he did. He didn't usually pay much attention to Blair's souvenirs, but that one had caught his eye. "It had designs carved around the outside?"
"Yeah. It was a gift from one of my old profs. He got it in Suriname."
That went a long way to explaining Blair's mood. He didn't give or receive gifts casually. He had some cockeyed notion that a gift was always a sort of talisman.
Jim phrased his next question with all the tact he could. "Outside of being a keepsake, was it valuable?"
Blair leaned against the futon. For the first time since Jim had arrived at the loft, his eyes were friendly.
"I don't know. It's not easy to get one of those drums, but I don't know if that makes it valuable. It's not well-made. That tribe isn't especially artistic, unless you consider thinking up new ways to torture and murder people creative work." He smiled. "I'm not supposed to judge other cultures, and if you ever tell anyone at Rainier that I said this I'll deny it, but this may be the most disgusting culture anyone has ever come up with. Those people are assholes."
Jim returned the smile.
"Has it it ever occured to you that your classes would be more popular if you just said what was on your mind?"
"There's a waiting list to get into my classes," Blair informed him. "Although that may be because they've heard that I'm away a lot." His eyes were still bright, telling Jim that he hadn't really taken offense. "The prof who gave me that drum received it as a gift from the tribe, and I've gotta tell you, I can't imagine what you'd have to do to warrant a gift from tribe Whatever it was, he can't have been too happy about it, because he ditched the drum as soon as he got back to the States."
"He was desperate to unload it and you said you wanted it. That's good thinking."
Blair shrugged "It's just a drum. To him it was a gift from that tribe but to me it was a gift from my prof. Besides, it impresses the hell out of first years when you tell them about that tribe and then pull out the drum."
Now, this was familiar territory in the Sandburg Zone
"Of course, you don't tell them where you got the drum."
Blair grinned.
"It's hard to got respect in the classroom these days."
Jim's back was starting to hurt. He sat down on the floor and leaned against the wall. "You think one of your students took it."
"Maybe." Blair" tilted his head back and shut his eyes. "But it's pretty weird to break into my office just for the drum. I mean, that's a lot of work to satisfy a whim. Might have been a fuck-you gesture, but then you'd think they'd make a mess of the place."
Neither of them said anything for a few minutes. Finally Blair lifted his head and looked at Jim. "I guess it's reasonable to think that anyone who identified with that tribe strongiy enough to want to steal the drum would also be viol4nt enough to kick in a door to get it. At least they didn't touch anything important."
Jim placed a hand on Blair's shoulder. "You were attached to that thing and someone walked off with it. That's important."
Blair didn't respond. God, he seemed unhappy so much of the time these days.
I'm going to come in tomorrow and have a look around," Jim said. In deference to Blair's mood, he added, "if that's okay with you."
Blair's smile wasn't enthusiastic, but it reached his tired eyes. "Sure. Thanks, man."
i have spent night with matches and knives ... leaning over
ledges only two flights up. cutting my heart, burning my soul
with nothing left to hold but blood and fire
--the indigo girls, blood and fire
The problem with Blair's office was that it was Grand Central Station. He'd said that he didn't leave people alone in his office anymore, and that might even have been true, but he still kept generous office hours and was ridiculously friendly with h1s students. It was surprising that Jim had been able to search the office undisturbed.
He'd even been undisturbed by Blair, for the most part, although Blair had been at his desk a good portion of the time. Between grading papers and typing at his laptop, he barely seemed to notice that Jim was in the room.
"All right," Jim sald finally, getting to his feet. "Based on what's been left in your office by visitors, I can narrow it down to about a hundred people,"
Blair glanced up from his computer. His glasses slid down his nose.
"Yeah. I'm stuck there too. If you give me a list of names we can compare notes."
Jim grinned. "I don't have names I'll know them when I smell them "
Blair pushed his glasses back into place and tried to look solemn. It was a nice attempt, but something in his eyes gave him away. "So if you come to all of my classes and go up and down the aisles sniffing people, we should be able to narrow this down."
"I don't think that's necessary. They're anthropology students. I should be able to smell them from here."
Blair laughed with the delight he always showed when Jim managed to zing him. Lately he'd had almost no patience for teasing from anyone else, but he still loved it from Jim.
"Okay," he said brightly. "Good. Get on that. I have to make some photocopies."
Jim took the guest's chair in front of Blair's desk and set his feet beside an odd-looking paperweight that had probably been used by a tribal warrior to bash in someone's skull. Blair had always cheerfully refused to discuss that souvenier, and when Blair was reluctant to talk, Jim got suspicious.
In fact, he happened to be considering a fine example of that phenomenon at the momomt. For the past few months, Blair had been abnormally quiet, ergo, Jim didn't trust him as far as he could throw him. Hell, not nearly as far, because he could throw Blair off the top of the Rainier University Arts Tower, and that would constitute a fair distance. Tallest building on campus, fifteen stories to the grounds.
Maybe throwing him off a buildimg would got him to talk about why he was in such a rotton mood. Maybe he'd scream it out in the way down.
Unfortunately, Jim didn't think he could do it, on account of he loved Blair so damned much. Of course, if he didn't love Blair so much, he probably wouldn't be frustrated enough to want to pitch him off the top of a building, but that was ... what did Blair call those things when your point didn't matter because it was never going to happen? Well, that was him coming down the hall, so it would be simple enough to ask.
"Chief,"" Jim began as Blair entered the office and moved past him to the desk, "what do you call it when ... what are you doing?"
""Paper," Blair said helpfully, moving term papers and academic journals with both hands. He stopped when he located a sheet of plain white paper, and shoved it into his pocket without bothering to fold it. Then he grabbed a pen from the mug at the corner of his desk and made a beeline for the door.
Jim followed. He wanted to know what the hell Blair was up to, and it was a pretty good bet that the professor wasn't going to be offering a synopsis later.
Blair's mad rush ended in, of all places. the washroom. Before the door had stopped swinging, he had laid his paper out on the windowsill and was copying a design from something below the sinks. Jim stopped closer and saw that whatever Blair was looking at was in the garbage can.
"You know, Sandburg, this is strange even for-"
As soon as he got a look at the item which had caught Blair's attention, the words stopped dead at the front of his mouth. On top of that pile of paper towels and crumpled study notes was a three inch square piece of gauze, stained with blood. Not a lot of blood. So little blood, in fact, that it was possible to make out the exact pattern of the cuts that had bled into that bandage.
It was that pattern Blair was committing to paper, drawing a few lines, then checking back to make sure he was getting it right. Dammed if something about that design didn't look familiar.
"Chief?"
"I think I'm just paranoid," Blair told him. He finished his drawing and backed away from the garbage can. His eyes stayed focused on it until he had backed all the way out of the door.
Jim listened to Blair's rapid heartbeat, made sure that Blair wasn't going anywhere but his office. Once he was satisfied that Sandburg wasn't about to get himself in trouble, Jim moved closer to the garbage can and examined the blood.
It was still a little damp, which told Jim that the bandage had been removed that morning. The gauze and the sensitive skin tape which had held it in place were fairly clean on the outside, which said it hadn't spent a lot of time outside a medicine chest. If the fact that it was lying in a men's washroom wasn't evidence enough, the coarseness of the hair pulled out by the tape said that it had been on a man's arm.
Jim wasn't about to touch it, but in case he needed to track this person down, it wouldn't be a bad idea to get a handle on the scent. He leaned in close and took a breath.
What he smelled made him sick at heart, sorry he even come to the U that morning. That blood, the scent of it, was wrong. It smelled dark and crazy, worse than the smell of schizophrenia that Blair had taught him to recognize.
He staggered back, choking, and covered his mouth and nose.
*Dial it down. Dial it down.*
He could do it himself, but it was easier when Blair talked him through it. He had to find Blair.
Though Hargrove Hall was nearly as familiar to him now as the precinct, he didn't know which way to turn as he stumbled from the washroom to the hall. It was Blair's heartbeat that led him back to the office.
"Jim?"
Blair was on his way out of the office as Jim entered, coming to meet him. Jim placed his hands on Blair's shoulders and took a few deep breaths.
"Jim? Are you okay?"
Cinnamon. For some reason, Blair smelled of cinnamon today. Maybe he'd had it in a roll, or an oatmeal cookie. It was a good, warm smell. Jim ducked his head for a second to get closer to that scent, shut his eyes to steady himself. Much better.
"Jim?"
"It's okay, Chief. I'm okay."
He pressed Blair's shoulders and released him. Blair kept still and watched as Jim made his way to the chair, then went around the desk and took his seat.
"What happened?"
"I ... I don't know. I smelled the blood so I could find whoever left that bandage, and it was ... it didn't smell right.
Blair narrowed his eyes.
"What do you mean? You mean it wasn't blood, wasn't human blood?"
"No, it was ... it wasn't from an animal. It smelled like it came from someone crazy
Blair sank back into his chair.
"Like a schizophrenic?"
"No. It was worse. I've never smelled anything like that before, It made me sick."
All of a sudden it occurred to Jim that Blair looked terrible. Pale shaking hands, dark circles under his eyes ... he was a mass. Jim wasn't about to leave him there.
"Maybe we should talk about this at home" Jim suggested.
"I need my books," Blair said dully. He was looking at something just over Jim's shoulder.
That did it. Jim was definitely not leaving him alone.
"Bring them with you."
i've been drowned out by the rain ... got to leave you
once again ... and despite what I might say I measure
pleasure by the pain. it might be very hard, can't be
more than what we are, can't be more `til it's over. here comes
the resurrection, everybody's got to die from something,
never quite enough to leave you when you go
-moist, resurrection
He didn't want to push. He didn't think he'd like the results of pushing Blair right now. But Blair had been going through books and making notes for over two hours, and Jim had to head to the station pretty soon.
"Chief?" He tapped Blair's drawing of the pattern of blood. "What do you think this is?"
Blair shut the book he'd been looking at and propelled himself backwards onto the couch.
"It matches the designs that are carved into my drum."
"Which -- oh. That drum."
Blair raised his eyebrows.
"Yeah. That drum."
Jim sat am the edge of the yellow chair.
"It's pretty obvious that's our thief."
Blair grinned.
"Y'think?"
Jim didn't normally like people mimicking him, but it was sort of cute when Blair did it. He smiled.
"I'm a trained detective."
"So I've heard. You really think this guy is crazy?"
Just the thought of it and he could small it again. Dark and rotten as the coffee ground blood people vomited when their stomachs were in shreds.
"I think he's dangerous Chief. Maybe you should let this go."
Blair looked amused.
You've been telling me that a lot lately."
Jim shrugged.
"You've been ..." He stopped He didn't like using the term, but he couldn't think of any other way to put it. "Hell-bent."
The sharp raw look in Blair's eyes was something new. Jim didn't like it much.
"That's very funny," he said, and he seemed to mean it. Jim bit his tongue to keep from asking where the joke was. It was likely that Blair would tell him. God know, there was no middle ground with Blair between not enough information and far too much.
"I have to go to the station," Jim said. "Are you coming?"
Blair shook his head. He had grabbed one of the books from the coffee table and was regarding it without affection.
"Nah. I'm looking for something."
*Trouble,* Jim thought. *You'll find it, too*.
But there was obviously no talking him out of it, so Jim took his own advice and let it go. At least at the station, he could be useful.
i drank the blood of a witch ... chased the moon from the night,
fighting with her `til sunrise. she said, "sometimes you know
too much. i'm offering you such wonder as death in living and
whispers in thunder. starting to shatter, i lied to her,
said none of this matters in my world." she said, "you fool,you
ask to see, and when you do you throw it away."
--thomas trio and the red albino, chasin' the dragon
There was supper an the table when Jim got home. And not some half-assed sandwich and beer deal, either ... Jim didn't recognize the food, but it was definitely a proper sit down meal.
"What's this?" he asked. Blair looked up from the vegetables he was stir-frying and smiled.
"Ethiopian food."
Even after three and a half years, Jim didn't always know when Blair was joking.
"I thought they didn't have food, Chief."
"Heh. Stir this for a minute."
Jim took the slotted spoon and did what he was told while Blair took a couple of beers out of the fridge.
"It's a very old culture," he said. "And they used to be much better off. Anyway, I totally guarantee you will like this."
As far as Jim was concerned, there was nothing not to like. The food was part of it -- one of those stew and little pancakes combinations that reminded him of Peking duck, and Blair's stir-fried vegetables to go with. Jim never objected to a good feed. But mainly he was pleased to see Blair exhibit energy and humour in contrast to his behaviour that morning.
Sure, some people might call it a mood swing, but Jim was determined not to look a gift horse in the mouth, and also to let sleeping dogs lie, and any other appropriate aphorisms.
The anthropology books had been put away, and with a stack of rental movies on top of the tv, Jim had every reason to expect a pleasant evening. Maybe Blair had taken the advice of his elders for once, and opted to let this go.
Jim settled himself an the couch. Blair flopped down next to him, and Jim turned up his sense of touch until the warmth of Blair's body was as comforting as a fire.
that time of year thou mayst In we behold when yellow
leaves or none, or few do hang ... bare ruined choirs
where late the sweet birds sang
--shakespeare, sonnet seventy-three
Blair had a perfectly good reason for not coming in to the station with Jim the next day, which was that he hadn't accomplished a whole lot at Rainier the day before. And really, he *always* had a perfectly good reason for not coming in to the station, since it wasn't actually his job ... but that didn't keep Simon from grumbling.
"This isn't his real job, Simon." Jim said for about the millionth time. "If you want him to be more reliable, try offering him a paycheck." "You want to explain his credentials to the powers that be?" Simon inquired.
Jim shrugged.
"Kid's turned into a pretty good cop. Even if I didn't have this Sentinel thing, I'd want to work with him. Hell, the whole department likes working with him."
Simon laid one hand over the top of his coffee cup and patted it a few times.
"Look, Jim, I won't say he has no training. You did a hell of a job training him. But you can't put that on paper."
"When Rainier pulled his teaching fellowship, you were going to try."
Simon looked at his hand as if he was surprised to find it on top of his coffee mug. He moved it to the handle.
"You getting the feeling that he wants to be here full time?"
Jim met Simon's eyes.
"Yeah. I think he does."
"I think so, too." He took a sip of coffee and grimaced. It was such an ingrained reaction to the station's coffee that Jim suspected Simon would still make faces if the machine in the lunch room starting pumping out the best coffee in the world. "Let me think on it."
Jim was astonished into silence. Simon smiled
"Panther got your tongue?"
Jim didn't consider the panther a joke. He shook his head.
"Just surprised. You want me to tell Sandburg?"
"Better not. I don't know what I'll be able to work out. Look, Jim, is the kid doing okay? Maybe I'm way off base here, but he seems a little ... moody."
Jim grabbed a chair and sat in it.
"No, you're not off base. I don't know what it is. He's always had moods, but it's been pretty bad since .."
Thankfully, Simon was equipped to finish that sentence himself. He nodded.
"You think maybe he needs to see somebody about that?"
"Why?" Jim was confused. "If he wanted to talk about it, he would. I think he just wants to put it behind him."
Simon regarded him silently for a good long time, so long that Jim started to fidget.
"I hate to suggest this," Simon said finally, "but maybe I should have a talk with him. See if he's got a handle on things."
That had to be the most ridiculous thing Jim had heard in weeks.
"Sir, with all due respect, he's not going to tell you anything he wouldn't tell me."
Simon shrugged.
"Maybe not. But it won't do any harm for me to ask. You going to see him tonight?"
What kind of a question was that?
"Yeah. We live in the same neighbourhood. We usually run into each other somewhere around the living room."
"Tell him I want to talk with him."
Jim stood.
"Yes, sir. For whatever it's worth, I'll tell him."
i am a brother to dragons and a companion to owls. my
skin is black upon me and my bones burned with heat.
my harp is also turned to morning and my organ into the
voice of them that weep.
--Job 89129-81
What Jim saw when he got home changed his attitude toward Simon's offer. Somebody had to find out what was wrong with Blair, and if Jim couldn't do it, he wished Simon all the luck in the world.
Blair was on the couch, sunk so low into the cushions that a strand of hair trailing along the back was all Jim could see of him from the doorway. He was watching a movie, something gray and dark, and his heart was racing.
Jim went to sit next to him, or at least next to the nest of blankets and pillows that surrounded him. In spite of his cocoon, Blair was shivering.
"You feeling all right?" Jim asked, reaching to lay the back of his hand against Blair's forehead. He had a fever but it wasn't high enough to be serious. A slight case of the flu, maybe.
Blair leaned into the touch.
"You could take my temperature from across the room," he said softly. Jim brushed back a few loose curls. "Habit," he said, What're you watching?"
"Jacob's Ladder."
"Oh." Jim turned his attention to the screen. Tim something-or-other, that guy who married Susan Sarandon, he was peering into a medicine cabinet, When he shut it, something nearly human stuttered in the reflection for a moment before vanishing. Jim felt Blair tense, heard him take a sharp breath. All of his vital signs said that this movie was shaking him worse than the ugliest crime scene.
"What's it about?"
"Um ... I don't think anybody's sure. This guy might be going crazy because he was given some weird drug in Vietnam, or it might be a post-traumatic stress thing. Or the whole film might be a future he imagines while he's dying in Vietnam. I think he thinks that he should have died in Vietnam. Louis ...that's his chiropractor ... basically told him that angels and demons are coming to tear him from the Earth."
"His chiropractor told him this."
"Well, yeah. but sometimes when he goes to see Louis the guy's not there and people say he died years earlier, so Louis might be one of the angels."
Now that Blair was teaching the movie to Jim, it didn't have any power over him. His heartrate was back to normal. Jim was starting to think that Blair's compulsive lecturing served a purpose for him, soothed his nerves.
"No offense, Chief, but that sounds pretty damned... who's she?"
"That's his ex-wife. But the's not your type, She's not evil."
Smart-mouthed little shit. Jim cuffed him lightly, aiming for the part of his head that was above the blankets.
"Shh. You're wrecking it."
He didn't care for the movie, in particular didn't care to see recreations of that war, but Blair seemed happier with him there. Jim stayed next to him and monitored his heartbeat, asked a question whenever he seemed to be taking it hard. Occasionally he'd give Blair a gentle shove and complain about couch hogging, because he had a feeling Blair wanted the contact. Whatever was going on in Blair's head, it wasn't happening on Jim's watch.
"Simon wants to see you tomorrow," Jim told him as the credits rolled. "Were you planning on coming in?"
Blair aimed sleepy eyes at Jim and yawned.
"I guess. What does he want?"
"Just checking on your stress levels. I think he's concerned because you haven't been around a lot lately. He has to parent somebody when Darryl is with his mother. You have to admit, you're the most suitable target."
"I don't admit that," Blair stood up, somehow managing to step out of the blankets without tripping and landing on the coffee table. "I'm really wiped, I'm going to lie down, see if I can got some sleep."
It was early for that, not yet nine o'clock. Jim wanted to ask if Blair was having a lot of trouble sleeping, maybe ask if he'd eaten anything that day, but he didn't think he'd got straight answers. Instead, he picked up the remote and started looking for something to occupy him for the evening. He suspected it was going to be a long one.
can you hear every sound i'm making? in the
darkness, without breathing, nothing moving,
... I feel peculiar. i don't know, i can't tell
if i am myself. holy moses, i've been burned.
&i can't remember when i was happy
--jann arden, holy moses
Sometimes Jim was blind in his dreams. And it never seemed strange. It was a comfort, with all of his other senses so alive, that he didn't have to worry about his eyes.
The deafness, though, that bothered him. Even when he had his sight, he couldn't stand the silence.
It was perfectly silent in the loft in this dream. He had a strange feeling that there would be sound if he opened a window or stepped out onto the balcony, but this loft was a vaccuum.
Jim tested it by trying his voice. He called for Blair. He could feel his tongue and throat moving to form the words, could even feel air moving past his lips, but there was no sound.
Blair would know how to fix this. He'd have an idea, anyhow, which was more than Jim had. He went downstairs and opened the door to Blair's room.
Except it wasn't Blair's room. It was the spare room, empty, theway Jim had left it when he'd moved all of Blair's things into boxes and demanded some space.
The shutters closed over Jim's eyes and sounds lept at him in thes udden darkness. A woman was crying in the kitchen, and he thought he knew her voice, but he couldn't be sure. He asked who was there and this time his voice worked just fine, but she didn't answer.
Jim felt groggy, as though he'd just woken up and couldn't shake the dream that had held him. But that didn't make any sense, because he was in a dream right now, and you didn't have dreams in your dreams. You didn't sleep in your dreams.
But in this dream, he'd just woken up from a dream ... and in *that* dream, Blair hadn't died. Which was why he was so confused to wake up to a silent loft.
Oh, yeah, it was all starting to come together now. Blair had died at the fountain, and if he thought anything else, he was just dreaming.
this is the noise that keeps me awake
--garbage, push it
Jim was sitting up when he woke, breathing hard. He felt as though he'd had to run a marathon to escape that damned dream. After a few moments, he was calm enough to send his senses on a tour of the loft. The balcony doors were open a crack (trying to heat the neighbourhood, Sandburg?), the remains of dinner were still sitting on the kitchen counter (it's not like the garbage can is in a different zip code from the counter, Chief), and Blair was peacefully asleep in his room.
He placed his face in his hands rubbed sleep from his eyes. Ye gods and little fishes, what a fucked-up dream. Illogical and surreal, but while he was in it, he'd swallowed it whole. Or it had swallowed him.
Not wanting to fall into more dreams of that kind, he got up. Television, a beer, bowl of chips ... that would keep him occupied, put enough distance between himself and that dream world that he could risk sleeping again.
He got settled quickly, but he couldn't stay that way. The sound of Blair's breathing distracted him, set him on edge. It was *loud*. Not that Blair was snoring. He wasn't. It was the regular deep breathing of sleep, but for some reason it was loud enough to drown out the television, and there was pressure on Jim's skin as the air pulsed around him.
Maybe if he rolled Blair onto his side, or just spoke to him, it would kick him out of this sleep cycle and his breathing would change. Obviously it *had* to change, because otherwise it was going to drive Jim crazy. He'd figure something out.
Stepping into Blair's room only made it worse. The pulse of his breathing was joined by his heartbeat, which had a strangely empty tone that Jim didn't like.
"Chief," he said softly. Blair turned his head away. Jim was surprised by how much that bothered him. He'd become accustomed to Blair turning toward the sound of his voice, even in sleep.
"Look," he said, "it's late. I'm tired. Whatever you're doing, knock it off,"
He knew even as he said it that Blair probably wasn't *doing* anything, it least not consciously, but that was fine. He didn't mind addressing Blair's subconscious directly. Sometimes he got along with it better than he did with Blair.
Between the thick waves of air and the warmth of Blair's room, Jim felt is though he was underwater. He remembered the neighbourhood swimming pool where he'd grown up, the way he'd sat at the bottom and listened as every footstep on the concrete floor gave off the flat and hollow ring of a timpani.
*come on in ... the water's fine*
Oh God, was that what this was about? That ugly dream, the horrible pulsing, the heat that was a weight on his skin, and Blair's secretive, black mood ... all because the wolf wanted a word with the panther?
Jim stopped closer and ran his fingers over Blair's soft curls, resisting the urge to touch his face.
"I'm still not ready," he whispered. Blair turned his head to listen, and Jim's hands shook with the effort it took to keep them still, "See, Chief, you talk a good game, but I know you pretty well, and I don't think *you're* ready."
He turned to go, then impulsively turned back to the bed and pressed Blair's hand.
"I'm waiting."
Tremble part 2