saraid@wf.net
Warning: pumpkin told me to put it this way, folks: this story may or may not contain scenes of necrophilia (that's sex with a corpse, in case you didn't know) so don't read it if the thought makes you puke and don't flame me if you read it anyhow and chunder all over your keyboard. k?
Of all the silences Jim Ellison had ever heard - and in the past few years he'd heard none at all - this was the silence.
Where once a heart had beaten, lungs had breathed, hair had rustled invitingly.....
there was nothing.
And he was nothing.
Even from the deserted hallway he heard the absence, as loud and disturbing as an actual sound in itself.
Glancing from side to side, he pushed open the big metal doors, cold to the touch, and stepped inside. It was very late, slong past midnight, and the Cascade county morgue was empty.
Of anything living, that is.
Around him the air hissed with energy stolen from electrical currents, the floor squeaked inaudibly to normal ears, all the soap not rinsed properly the last time it was mopped. Metal pinged and sighed and the building above him echoed with scant life
All of it made the absence here more potent.
He stood in the main room, lines of cold metal beds, white sheets discreetly covering forms that might have been people. Might have had lives, might have been loved.
Might have been, but now, in the dimmed lights of deep night, they were only shrouded forms devoid of possibility.
Walking between them, Jim counted them silently.
Twenty beds, ten to a side. The autopsy room on the left, the morgue proper, a wall of refrigerated steel boxes, directly ahead of him. On the right, three rooms.
The first was dan's office.
The second was storage, for anything ghoulish enough to be stored here.
And the third....
a small, private resting place, however temporary, for the toe-tagged forms of those who were once policemen, or close to the department somehow. Cops' friends and family members. Political figures. Controversial cases.
Jim turned right, his feet moving steadily although his heart faltered.
There was a small metal cabinet on one side on the room. Looking at it first as he opened the door and entered, Jim avoided looking at the table.
A small blue candle with a sweet scent burned on the cabinet, half of it dissolved in a puddle of pastel wax already.
The sturdy light fought the darkness of this room and of Jim's heart, but it couldn't bring even a flicker to dead eyes.
Closed dead eyes.
Hands by his side, eyelashes brushing bluish skin, Blair's dark curls were obscenely alive in the candlelight, spread around his head in a halo.
He'd heard of time standing still at moments like these, but Jim didn't feel it. Instead it rushed him with terrible force, reminding him that he would have to live every future second of his life without this face in it.
This face, this voice or this touch.
Stepping to the side of the table, wallowing in that pain, Jim found some relief in the very intensity of it. If it hurt this bad, then it must have been real. If it hurt this bad he must have been right.
Only love could hurt this bad.
But discovering that love hours after it's gone...there was no relief in that agony. And there never would be.
Slumping forward, Jim Ellison took his dead partner's cold hand between his own and kissed it tenderly, as he had never done while Blair was alive. As he had never dared to. As he should have.
Should have. Should have.
Aware that his thoughts were spinning, that the sedative the doctor had given him, the reason Simon had finally agreed to leave the loft, and Jim, was reacting dangerously with his senses, Jim followed that thought, obsessing over it.
Should have.
Should have.
Should have.
Should.
When the sentence didn't finish itself in his mind, Jim realized that it was because it was finished.
No have.
Just should.
"Chief." He whispered the word, leaning over the still face, his own eyes closing to match his mate's, the lifeless hand still clenched between his own.
The only time his lips had touched Blair's he'd been trying to breath life into him.
Now he did it for himself.
Cold, firm. The sweetness of the candle was the prominent scent in the room, followed by Jim's own musk. Blair's personal smell was faded, only a faint aftertaste of it available on his closed cold lips.
Leaning closer Jim dragged a breath through his flared nostrils and probed deeper, searching for that flavor, the one he had never allowed himself to taste.
He'd never thought that Blair might be willing. Or that this was a way he could live. But now that Blair was dead it didn't matter, did it? Nothing mattered.
He needed to hold his Guide. To touch him.
To make one last effort to contact the spirit that had inhabited this cold, dead flesh.
Deliberately Jim dialed down his sense of touch, so he couldn't feel the chill of the soft skin he was touching.
But that lessened the contact so much that he had to substitute pressure for sensation, so he slowly raised himself up the gurney and laid his body down over the smaller one. The one that was only a body.
No longer a person.
But the person it had been was more dear to Jim's heart than any other ever had been. And that was enough.
He felt the blood pool in his groin, almost reluctantly, the knowledge that this was Blair - all that was left of him - overriding the instinctive disgust that accompanied the arousal. All that mattered was that he was touching Blair. He was kissing him, as deeply as he could, both hands going to bury themselves in the almost-living mass of hair, tilting the slack face to a better angle.
Released, Blair's hand flopped over the side of the gurney and hung there, extended into sweet-candle-scented space.
"oh god."
Whispering a prayer - for forgiveness, for a miracle - Jim hunched his shoulders and moved his hips convulsively. Blair's body was pliable beneath him. it gave resistance, but nowhere near as much as a living body would have.
Thinking that made him groan aloud, despair filling the small room.
Warming the frigid air.
As he moaned his pain into the air, his body moved helplessly, thrusting gently into Blair's unresponsive one.
It wasn't enough.
All he felt was the cold and the cotton of his jeans, the slide of the sheet as it bunched between them.
Rolling to the side, knocking Blair's other arm into the air in his haste, Jim yanked desperately at the sheet, managing to push the wrinkled know down between his dead Guide's knees, and then he fumbled with his own zipper until it finally came open and his cock sprang free, reveling in the release of pressure.
Jim groaned again, louder, this time filled with disgust and desperation, and rolled back onto Blair's body, beginning to hump almost immediately.
Blair's cock was soft and small and squishy against his own, everything cold. Even Jim's sweat and precum cooled as soon as it pooled on that dead flesh.
As he humped slowly, driven by some twisted instinct to draw this out and make it as powerful as possible, Jim felt the heat fading from his own body.
It was as if he was trading places with his dead Guide.
As his body cooled, the heat being sucked from it by Blair's, the slender, sturdy one beneath him grew faintly warmer. And that was okay. He would have died for Blair if he'd had the chance. Would trade places with him now if given that chance. Overjoyed to do so.
As the heat in his core grew and his outer regions grew colder Jim once again grasped Blair's head between his hands and kissed him. His cock throbbed hungrily, having made itself a warm slick nest in the lax flesh of Blair's groin, the curly hair there tangling and tugging at it.
He was going to come. Oh, sweet Jesus, he was going to come. He was fucking Blair's dead body.
The agony of that knowledge, of knowing that Blair had been violated and that he, Jim, had done it, was doing it -!
That pain hit him mid-chest and burned straight through him to his jumping cock and sprayed out in a fine cloud of self-hatred.
Against the cold skin his semen was impossibly hot and Jim shuddered at the feeling, too powerful, too hopeless to resist. and he kissed Blair.
And he kissed him.
Kissed him until he became aware of the slightest movement beneath his lips.
Kissed him until a cold wet tongue slithered out to meet his own.
Kissed him while that tongue danced with his and trembling hands rose weakly to clutch at broad shoulders slicked with guilty sweat.
The tongue tasted of death and despair, the hands held with the weakness of the final dance.
Finally realizing what he was feeling, Jim gasped mightily and jerked himself up, fingers digging bruises into death-blue skin, and stared, totally unable to breathe.
Eyelids so thin that the veins could be traced through them flickered and suddenly sound joined sight as bleary confused blue eyes blinked up at him and a dead heart beat once again.
"Jim?" a raw croak of a voice, and then a head shake that made the eyes close again.
Sitting back on his knees, still not breathing, aware that he was getting dizzy, Jim Ellison gripped his hands into fists so tight that he cut his palms with the nails and the blood dripped onto Blair's pale stomach, flowing and melding with the cum already drying there.
Blair's eyes opened again and he stared at Jim.
Then he looked down at himself.
Saw his nakedness.
Saw the patches of thick white semen on his belly, drops clinging to pubic hairs.
Saw the open zipper of Jim's jeans and the flaccid cock drooling out of it.
"JIM?!"
Panic and horror filled that voice and he sat suddenly, adrenalin giving him the strength to knock his Sentinel to the floor. Caught by surprise, still breathless, Jim fell awkwardly, not even trying to catch himself, and hit his head on the painted concrete floor, welcoming the merciful darkness that rushed to swallow him.
If it had been an hallucination, he didn't want to know.
"Jim. Jim, man, wake up, you're scaring me here."
His disbelief stronger than the pounding in his head, Jim opens his eyes and stares upwards.
Into the beloved face of his Guide, the late Blair Sandburg.
Who was inexplicably crouched on the cold concrete floor beside Jim, wrapped in a white sheet, shivering violently, one hand gasping and shaking Jim's shoulder feebly.
"Chief? Blair?!"
Aware that his voice has risen to a squeak, Jim scrambles backwards on the floor, coming up short when his throbbing head bangs into the metal cabinet behind him. His strong fingers try to dig holes in the concrete as he stares.
"Are you okay, Jim? You're bleeding."
"Am I...am I? Am I wahT?!" With a lurch Jim threw himself forward and tackled Blair to the floor, a quick move with one hand keeping his friend's head from bouncing ont he concrete, and then Jim is over Blair on all fours, staring down into his bright-but-dazed eyes.
"Are you okay? Does anything hurt? Can you breath alright? Oh my god, I've got to call an ambulance!" Scrambling from the floor Jim caught at his jeans with one hand while the other searched fruitlessly for his cellphone, left home when he slipped out on this bizarre mission. "Just lie there, don't move, I'll be right back!"
He barely took the time to zip his jeans, hissing as soft satisfied flesh got in the way, before bursting through the doors into the main room. Kicking in the locked office door, he grabbed the phone and dialed with shaking fingers.
"Simon? Simon! He's alive! Blair's alive! I'm at the morgue and he just woke up!"
"You're where?! Doing what?!" Yanked from restless sleep by Jim's shout, the captain sounded more afraid than angry. "Jim, why aren't you home in bed?!"
"I had to see Blair!~ Something told me that I had to come and see him. And I kissed him and he woke up Simon. HE WOKE UP!"
"Jim, I'll be there in fifteen minutes, with an ambulance. Don't do anything!"
Simon hung up the phone so emphatically that Jim took a second to wonder if he thought he was bringing the ambulance for Jim himself.
"Jim?"
The frightened vice behind him made the Sentinel whirl and dash to Blair's side.
The younger man had come out of the small room and was stood very still, his shivers pronounced, in the main room of the morgue. The sheet around him offered no protection from the cold that was inside him.
"Here -" Jim tenderly wrapped his arms around Blair. The smaller man's eyes were wide with terror as he studied the familiar room. "Let me hold you. Help you get warm."
"What am I doing in the morgue, JIM!"
"I'll try to explain."
Catching the disbelieving look and the involuntary glance toward his own crotch, Jim amended that as he led Blair through the heavy metal doors and to a chair in the somewhat warmer hallway.
"As much as I can." He amended quickly. "Just let me get you settled..." Safely seated in a plastic chair, Jim pulled Blair, unresisting, into his lap and wrapped as much of himself as he could around the smaller body, offering what was left of his body heat.
They sat for long minutes. The shivers gradually eased, but Blair was still very cold. He sounded sleepy when he finally spoke again.
"I died?"
"We thought so. I guess not, since you're here now."
With a sigh Blair turned in his arms, tucking his face into the hollow of Jim's neck and breathing deeply.
"And you were...." He stopped and then tried again when Jim didn't offer any help. "Saying goodbye?"
"I was...." Jim sighed and pressed a kiss to the top of Blair's head. "I was insane. Realizing you were gone forced me to realize that I couldn't live without - without touching you, at least once."
"I don't know what to say." Blair whispered into Jim's skin. "I'm really tired, Jim. Can we talk about this later?"
Still stunned by the miraculous recovery, Jim tightened his hold on Blair and nuzzled his hair.
"I don't think yo should sleep, baby. They'll be here in just a few more minutes."
"How did I die, Jim?"
"I - we - found you in the fountain, in front of Hargrove Hall. Was it Alex?"
"I don't remember." Blair's voice rose with fear and his hands clutched at Jim's chest. "I was sitting at my desk, searching for anything on territory battles -and that's all I remember!"
"Shhhhh. Shhhhh. It's okay. We'll figure it out. You need to be calm, you're not out of the woods yet. No one is going to believe this."
"Tell me what happened, Jim. Help me understand."
Hearing the ambulance siren pulling up in front of the building, Jim calculated how long it would take them to get down here. Should he carry Blair up to meet them?
"We found you - it looked like you had drowned. Simon and I did CPR, but there was no response. I - I - " Jim faltered and drew strength from the cold weight shivering slightly in his arms. Blair's scent was growing stronger. "I wouldn't believe it. The paramedics tried everything. They shocked you ten times in the ambulance. When we got to the hospital they declared you dead."
There was a soft brush of bare warmth on the skin of his neck. Jim shivered once.
"And then what happened to you, Jim?"
"I flipped out. I, I wouldn't let them take you away. Simon and Brown and Rafe held me down while they gave me a sedative. Megan just stood there and cried the whole time." He squeezed the body in his arms even tighter. "Simon cried, Chief."
"Oh, man." The voice was fading, getting fainter. "Poor Jim."
"Stay with me here, Chief. Stay awake!" Pulling the younger man upright, Jim felt relieved with the blue eyes flickered open again.
"I'm really tired, Jim." he whined.
"Here they come, baby. Just hang on a few minutes more."
He stood and that's how Simon saw him when the elevator doors opened and he dashed out of them, moving faster than a big man had a right to.
Jim, with the sheet-wrapped Blair in his arms. Shivering, breathing, complaining, alive.
"Dear God." The cigar, smoked in times of stress, fell from his lips as he stared.
Then he was shoved aside by several paramedics who were too busy trying to save a life to recognize the presence of a miracle.
This time Jim woke up with a more familiar pain, that of sleeping awkwardly. On the couch on the living room, he'd been watching television, wanting to give Blair a chance to rest and process his experiences in peace. From the sound of the music, a low patter of drums and flute, he was trying.
The hospital had at first refused to believe Jim's carefully edited story. Simon had resorted to force, manhandling a doctor into actually reading Blair's record from the day before. And after that the man had insisted that it had all been a misdiagnosis in the first place.
When Blair's core temperature had been taken at 87.3, he'd changed his story. A battery of tests, all conducted while Blair lay in a nest of electric blankets with Jim holding his hand, led to a strange conclusion.
He'd never really been dead.
Injected with one of the rare drugs that caused a body to mimic death for a number of hours, he'd been held between life and death in the most frightening way possible. If Jim hadn't called the ambulance when he did, if Blair had been allowed to go back to sleep, if Jim hadn't been there when he woke...
He wouldn't have woken up again.
And this time he would have stayed dead.
As soon as he was warm enough, a process encouraged by hot soup and a multitude of hugs as people heard the news and rushed over to see for themselves, Jim had brought him home.
They still hadn't discussed what had happened in the morgue.
"It must have been the sedative."
Blair's voice behind him didn't startle Jim. Hadn't in years.
"The sedative didn't make me want to touch you. I've wanted to do that for years."
The next words were breathed across his ear as Blair leaned over the back of the couch to embrace him.
"Then why didn't you?"
"Because it wasn't about that." Turning, rising to his knees, Jim touched Blair's face gently. The skin was still cool, but now held a healthy, if faint, flush. "It was about friendship."
"And now it's something more." Parting his lips slightly, Blair licked at them, suddenly nervous. "You brought me back, Jim. It wasn't just waking up from the drug."
"I took advantage of you." Big hands stroked along a stubbled jaw.
"So what is it about now, Jim?" Leaning in closer, Blair breathed the question across Jim's lips, his breath warm, smelling of mint and Blair.
"Life."
With the one-word answer, Jim Ellison gently gripped Blair's face in his hands and kissed him as he had hours before.
And this time, Blair Sandburg was alive and well when he kissed him back.
the end.