A
Sense of Who You Are
[Dog Tags]
"Sandburg, do you still have my sweater?"
"The gray one with the stripes?"
"Yeah."
"In my dresser, man."
I went into Sandburg's room and began pawing through the dresser. As I
opened the drawers, I inhaled, cataloguing the smell of his room. Clean
laundry, the scent of beeswax candles, the faint trace of his deodorant,
the dry smell of the books that lay in piles around the room. And Blair
himself, invading everything in that space with his scent: shampoo and soap
and sweat, with just an edge of sex to it. Blair, I thought ruefully,
couldn't *not* smell like sex if he tried. Even when he was going through
one of his companionless phases, I could smell the sex on him, in him,
around him. He carried it with him--the scent of a healthy male animal.
It drove me half-crazy with desire, but he never seemed to notice my
reaction.
Probably just as well. Sex would change everything--it always did. I'd
ruined more friendships that way than I cared to count.
I found my sweater in the bottom drawer, and when I pulled it out, I heard
metal chink softly to the floor. I looked down to see a pair of military
dog tags, and bent to pick them up.
And I felt my breath catch. I'd thought that maybe they were a family
heirloom, or maybe a fashion thing--I'd seen kids wearing tags on the
street. But these weren't. These were the genuine article, and they were
Blair's. I could smell the scent of oil and helicopter fuel clinging to
the metal, over and around the smell of Blair. I rubbed my fingers over
them, and then took them with me into the living room.
"Hey."
"You find it?"
"Yeah."
He looked up at me, and I saw worry flash across his face. "Hey, man, you
OK?"
I held out the dog tags. "Blair--" He looked from the tags to my face, but
didn't respond. Finally, I said, "Why didn't you tell me?"
He smiled then, very softly. "I've mentioned it before," he said.
"No, you haven't."
"Sure I have. When Kincaid had me in that chopper, and I told the pilot
I'd flown Apaches in Desert Storm. I know you heard that, Jim."
"I thought you were...I don't know. Obfuscating."
"Nope." The smile grew broader. "I never told Naomi, so please don't do
it for me, OK?"
I sat down next to him on the couch and looked at him, wondering why he'd
never told me this. I knew why he'd never told Naomi--she would have had
a
million heart attacks--but why keep this from me? He smiled at me again,
and took the tags from my hand. "I never saw combat, Jim. I maintained
them, and I flew them to check out systems, but that's it."
"Still. It doesn't seem like you. I mean...you're..."
"I'm what?"
"I don't know." I shrugged and looked away.
"Jim," he said, gently, "didn't I ever seem awfully competent with guns
for
someone who didn't own one?"
"I hadn't thought about it."
"Well, maybe you should have." He rubbed his forehead and frowned at me.
"I've never had to shoot a person. I hope I never have to. And you know
I'm for gun control. But I do know how to use them, and I'm actually
fairly good with them."
"But you're--I don't know. Nonviolent."
"Jim, how much attention have you been paying to me? I have been known to
seriously fuck people up since I've been working with you. I don't much
like guns, and I prefer to use whatever's at hand, but where the hell did
you get the idea I was nonviolent?"
I closed my hand over his, feeling the chain against my fingers where it
looped over the back. "Did you believe in what you were doing?" I asked.
"Jim, I was maintaining helicopters. You don't have to believe in much of
anything to do that." He sat back, moved away from me. "Did you?"
"I did. For a long time. And when I didn't anymore, I left."
His smile was sad. "Jim, what you went through--I had a walk in the park.
How could I tell you? It wasn't anything like--well, like Peru."
"Sandburg--"
"Jim--" He turned his hand in mine and squeezed my fingers. "I did it
because it was something I needed to do, something I had to understand.
I
was barely twenty-one when I finished my master's. I needed to do
something different. So that's what I did. It was important to me, taught
me a lot. And when it was over...I went back to school."
"So you learned that school was where you wanted to be."
"No. I learned that I didn't know who I was, and maybe I should stay
somewhere out of the way until I found that out."
I looked down at our hands, at the fingers twisted together and the chain
wrapped around them, digging into the flesh. "Did you ever find out? Who
you are, I mean."
"Yes," he said.
"So, who are you? I mean, you're still at the university, so--"
"No." He grinned at me. "I'm at the university because it's convenient,
Jim, and because I enjoy the work I do there. It has nothing to do with
who I am."
"Who are you?"
"I'm your partner."
"What?"
"I'm your partner, Jim. That's who I am." I didn't reply, just stared at
him. Whatever I'd been expecting, it wasn't that. After a moment, he
shook our clasped hands, and the dangling tags jingled. "These tell you
what I am, Jim, or part of it. These, my diploma, my birth certificate,
my
blood donor card, my driver's license. That's *what* I am. *Who* I am is
a different matter entirely, man. Completely separate issues. I'm your
partner."
"How is that any different from being--I don't know--Naomi's son?"
"I chose it, Jim. That's who I decided to be. Your partner,
twenty-four/seven. It's what I do, it's what I think about, it's what I
love, and it's who I am."
I moved closer to him, looking down into his face. Seated, he wasn't so
much shorter than I was, and that made me feel better. We were more equal,
seated. "You love being my partner?"
"Yeah."
"I'm glad," I said, and released his hand, feeling the chain slip from
around my fingers. I stood up and stretched, and he held the tags out to
me. "Could you go put these back, Jim? I don't feel like getting up."
I took them, feeling the warmth of his body lingering in the metal, and
headed back into his bedroom to put them away. I placed them back in the
dresser, and inhaled, letting the scent of him fill me, feeling the
sharp-edged tang of sex call forth a response from my body. Vicarious
enjoyment of him, the way every casual touch was a caress in disguise. As
I walked back out into the living room, a thought occurred to me.
I'd once told Blair I didn't need him to define who I was, and yet here
he
was, defining himself by me. He said that's who he was: my partner. So
who was I?
Who was Blair's partner? The sentinel of Cascade? Or just plain Jim
Ellison? Whose partner was he? Both the sentinel and Jim were me, but
which was a *what* and which was a *who*?
Did I know?
Did Blair?
The happiness that had filled me when he'd said he loved being my partner
disappeared. I needed to know who I was to him. I needed...
I needed to find out how Blair felt about Jim Ellison, the man, and I had
no idea how to do that. So. The easiest thing to do was ask him. I'd
know if he lied to me, after all. I went back to the couch and sat down.
"Hey."
"Hey." He was re-absorbed in his reading, and I shook him gently by the
knee.
"Chief?"
"What is it?" He looked at me, his expression open and questioning. "You
need to talk?"
"Yeah."
"So talk." He folded his hands and smiled at me, and I touched the back
of
the hand that had so recently had the chain around it. I could still feel
the faint impressions on the skin.
"How do you feel about me?"
"Uh, what do you mean?"
"I mean...yeah, you're my partner, but are you only in this for the
sentinel part of me, or what? I need to know how you feel. Who I am to
you."
He shifted, tucking one of his legs under him. "Jim, who are you to you?"
I didn't answer.
"You told me that you knew. So who are you?"
"That was a long time ago, Sandburg."
He threw a couch pillow at me. "Jim, it was two months ago."
I still didn't answer.
And then his hand was on mine, skin to skin, his fingers firm and warm.
"Is knowing who I think you are that important?"
"I just want to know." I said it casually, as if it didn't really matter.
As if his answer wasn't the most important thing in the world. As if my
universe hadn't narrowed to the touch of his skin and the sound of his
voice.
A lifelong history of stoicism comes in handy when interrogating the man
who could break your heart with one word. Not that I thought I could
deceive him completely, but I could make him think it didn't matter nearly
as much as it did. Who was I to him? If I was his friend, just plain Jim
Ellison, first and foremost, I'd be happy.
Keep lying to yourself, Jimmy, you're good at it, I said to myself. I knew
damn well that his friendship wasn't enough, but I could live with it.
He'd told me that this wasn't just about my senses a long time ago; that
friendship played a part, too. If that was what he still felt, I would go
on. I'd believed him, hadn't I?
At the time, yes, but now?
Now, after Alex, after I'd thrown him out, told him I didn't trust him?
Now that I knew he defined himself as my partner?
Now that I knew I loved him and wanted him and, Christ Jesus, needed him
like a junkie needs a fix?
I could feel the faint residue of oil and fuel from Blair's dog tags on
my
hand, some of it on my skin, some on his where it touched me. He slid his
fingers between mine and held on, his pulse beating beneath his skin and
the scent of him--so close to me--rising around us, the bleeding-edge taste
of a man in his prime.
And Blair was in his prime. I'd studied him carefully over the years we'd
been together. Strong, regular features; broad shoulders and chest; large
square hands, the hands of the boy who'd driven a rig cross-country and
wielded a blowtorch and maintained choppers for the Army, the hands of a
man who gestured when he spoke and typed so quickly I could barely follow
the movements.
Time was moving so slowly as I waited for his answer, drowning in the scent
and feel of him.
"Jim," he said, finally, "I don't know why this matters to you, but I'll
answer. I've chosen to be your partner. And I've made choices about who
you are, too--choices you might not agree with."
I waited, feeling only the touch of his hand on mine. I prayed to a God
I
didn't believe in anymore, and I waited.
"You're the person I love, Jim. The person I want to stay with forever.
That's who you are to me."
"Chief," I said, composing a prayer of thanks in my head, "can I kiss you?"
And then those strong hands of his, smelling faintly of helicopter fuel
but
mostly of Blair, were wrapped around me: one on my hip, and one behind my
head. His beard stubble scraped my chin and I could feel the heat of his
cock through his jeans as his knee pressed my legs apart. "Jesus," I
whispered when he let my mouth go. "Jesus, Chief."
"No," he replied, "but he was a good Jewish boy, just like me." He
scratched my chest lightly through my shirt.
"I don't think he made a practice of hitting on his disciples."
"Oh, come on. Think about it. Amber Larkin is Mary Magdalene, and you're
the disciple Jesus loved. Don't you read your own religious books?"
"No, but you do, apparently." I ran my fingers over his cock, and he
inhaled sharply. "Besides, wouldn't that make Naomi the Virgin Mary?"
"Don't overextend the metaphor," he said, and unzipped my pants. As they
fell to the floor, followed by my boxers, I tried to remember if the Bible
said anything about Jesus sucking anyone's brain out through their cock.
I
was pretty sure it didn't, but then, I'd never paid attention in Sunday
school.
Later, as I lay shaking underneath him in his bed, feeling the aftershocks
of orgasm throughout my body, he started to laugh. "What?" I asked,
blinking up at him, the scent of both of us and of sex heavy in the air.
"The Second Coming," he said, and we laughed until our stomachs hurt. Then
we abandoned his bed for mine, which was somewhat cleaner (seeing as how
no
one had gotten fucked silly in it--at least not yet), and curled up to go
to sleep. Wrapped around him, I could still smell the faintest trace of
helicopter fuel, a part of the path that had led Blair to who he was. And
through him, to who I was.
His partner. The person he loved. Just plain Jim Ellison.
Tomorrow I was going to go back into that room and move all his clothes
upstairs. And I was going to take a minute to hold those dog tags in my
hand and thank God for Blair.
----
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