Taking What You Can Get
by Mab
It's not the written report or the picture that breaks something in Blair; it's the scans of the permission and waivers Jim signed. There they are, neat and precise - governmentally and legally correct paragraphs with a rough 'J E' initialled beside each one. Blair knows what Jim's initials used to look like. This isn't them. Fake initials for a fake consent. It makes him wonder (when he's not trying to use slow and gentle inhalations/exhalations to blow out the fuse of rage sputtering away inside) how many other sentinels someone might have found somewhere. Somebody wanted the provenance of this information to not be in doubt.
There will never be enough calming breaths to soothe this karmic sting. Blair stands, his limbs and his mouth powered by rocket fuel, that volatile and explosive stuff. He shoots out of the bedroom and confronts Jim, who is slicing vegetables in the kitchen, carefully not in the same room as a Blair who happens to be reading those disks Jim gave to him.
"You said they didn't torture you!" Blair snaps.
"They didn't."
"That's for a 'oh, I'm so stoic' Jim Ellison value of torture, is it?"
Jim looks up, cold-faced. "There's nobody with that name around here, Chief."
"Well excuuuuse me for not having a default nickname to fall back on. Jim." Sarcasm feels good and Blair keeps slicing with it. "No electrodes or water-boarding involved – oh, sorry, man, they could have used that and it wouldn't be torture either, so it doesn't count?" His voice rises. "It doesn't fucking count?"
The bell-pepper on the glass chopping board is probably sliced to nano-measure precision, the movement of the knife just as precise. "I told you some of that information would be difficult. And if you're looking at what I think you're looking at, you haven't even got to the good stuff yet."
"But wait, there's more...oh my god, the anticipation!" Blair squares his stance on the floor. He's way too close to nearly dancing with rage. "What do you think I'm looking at, then, huh?"
"They wanted to calibrate how the senses might behave if an op went south and the wrong people got hold of me. I did courses like that in Rangers. Signed the same kind of waivers. It helps to know your breaking points and it helps to know the skills that'll carry you through captivity and interrogation."
"Courses." Blair's voice is going low, going to ground in a growl. "You weren't signing up for a semester on Greek art. You didn't volunteer. And what use were you as a baseline if they didn't think that there weren't other sentinels out there?"
Jim's voice is flat calm, and pitiless. "That wasn't my concern. And this isn't my concern now."
It's like a dash of water – no, acid – in the face. Cold and then burning. "Then why give those fucking things to me in the first place? If it's not your concern?"
"You want to know. You know you do, and this way you get to know at your own pace. But don't expect me to stand there and annotate it for you. I can't do that for you. I'm sorry." The knife is still. The apology is very nearly as sharp, more so because for all the stiffness in Jim, Blair knows that it's genuine.
Blair's anger isn't gone, but he hauls back on it, ashamed to drop this on Jim.
"Yeah, yeah. Me too. I shouldn't be loading this on you. Sorry."
"Maybe I shouldn't have..."
"No!" Blair nearly yelps it before he gets his voice under control again. "Damn it, because you're right and I do want to know, but Jesus, Jim, I just get so angry."
"I think I guessed that." Jim is loading the vegetables and some beef strips into the skillet. His jaw twitches in time to the rhythm of the wooden spoon poking amongst the food.
"That'll be ready soon," Blair says.
"Yeah." Jim's mouth thins in a careful grin. "Better wash up, honey."
Blair wheels away, his left hand flashing in an obscene gesture, and returns to the bedroom to 'wash up'. He exits the scan of the waiver, but before he exits the report, he scrolls to the picture. There's only the one, grainy and fuzzy, a man on his knees, his hands tied behind his back, a thick scarf tied across his eyes. There's nothing to say that it's Jim except context, and once you have that context there's everything to say that it's Jim.
Blair swipes his palm across his face. He hates the picture, but there was a time and place when he would have been drawn to it, even loved it. Hasn't he always been fascinated by warriors? Endurance? Boxing and the gladiatorial displays of sports? How much did he love the frontispiece of that Burton monograph? Men who were strength and power incarnate, but human like everybody else. Strong, but vulnerable, the way that flesh will always be vulnerable.
Jim is subdued in that picture, but the lines of his arm and back declare him as yet undefeated. He faces away from the observing camera, willingly giving nothing. The anger drains out of Blair like blood from a cut throat and he's left empty and cold.
"You're a sick son of a bitch, *Bergman*," he mutters. Then he goes out to the living area and eats a dinner that he doesn't want.
"Not so hungry, Chief?"
"Guess not. But hey, leftovers for lunch tomorrow?"
"It's a plan."
Blair likes watching Jim. Always did, one way or another. He watches him now, Jim's long, graceful fingers wrapped around the fork as he neatly and economically eats his meal. The finger bone's connected to the hand bone, the hand bone's connected to the arm bone, the arm bone's connected to the shoulder bone – Blair thinks of Jim's broad shoulders, which were straight in that picture, pulled back by the ropes around his wrist.
"You're quiet," Jim says.
"I don't have to talk all the time."
Jim tilts his head in that 'if you say so' way that he has.
Blair did tests on Jim, too. Wrapped a blindfold around his head more than once. And when he finally knew what he wanted from Jim but couldn't have, Blair, once or twice, thought about what he catalogued as the 'standard fantasies'. Men bound, controlled, not even with Jim's face because by then it all hurt too much. But sometimes, because Blair likes to work out the 'how' of things, he wonders how he might have got his fantasy for real. He can't really see Jim as the sub type, but maybe for a role-play... Blair could have cajoled Jim, hell, he could have nagged Jim, and Jim might have eventually given in, with an indulgently exasperated eye-roll, and a stern statement that if Blair thought the word 'master' was ever coming out of Jim's mouth, he'd been popping too much peyote way back when.
Blair asks, "Would the gun range still be open?"
"Probably."
"Good."
Blair thinks that Jim might have indulged him his little fantasy. He might have kept amusement or uncertainty out of his face and simply knelt there for Blair to admire. Blair is pretty sure that he could have found some ways to keep Jim in the moment. He could have circled around Jim and seen proof in Jim's bowed head and bare, smooth nape that the pen was for once truly mightier than the sword. But that damn picture...
"Anyone in particular you want to kill?" Jim's face is smooth and knowing. Blair usually deals with weapons practice as a necessary evil that keeps Jim happy, not something to volunteer for.
"I have a little list. If you get too smug, I'll add you to it."
Jim chuckles at that, and, rising from the table, runs his hand over Blair's hair before he gathers up the plates. The dishes have to be done before they go out, the leftovers stored in the refrigerator.
Chores done, wallets and coats and keys gathered together, Jim stoops to pick up the bag containing their gear, and as he straightens, Blair says, "Come here, you." Jim does so, and Blair pulls his head down to kiss him. It's not a long kiss, but it's thorough.
"We don't have to go out," Jim suggests.
"I'm just giving you something to look forward to when we get back."
Jim smiles. "Guns and sex in one evening. I'm a lucky guy."
Blair smiles too. There are some things he can't ask Jim for, not anymore; but there are plenty of other things he can still ask for, and know that he can get.
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