fic, sentinel. [pre?]slash (here's where i say 'it's slash, dernit!' but it's ambiguous, really.), pg. 4 965 words. AU(s). and thanks to fantasmabob for listening to and reading my rather inarticulate beginnings.




Five Things That Never Happened In The Great City


I.

There’s no visiting hours per se, so Simon pushes open the double doors and is permitted through security, even though it’s after one in the morning, and because he’s a familiar face. He nods at the dozy-looking guard manning the station, who waves back but is slowly turning the pages in something with a bright cover and speech bubbles, so Simon doesn’t stop to speak; he’s doesn’t feel much like talking, anyway, and never does when he’s here, and he has to wonder if he comes sometimes only because he knows there won’t be much to say.

The fluorescent lights and sterile hallways are bright and blinding after the darkness and damp of the night, so Simon squints down at the orderly wearing a white uniform behind the white desk, and the ink that smears his name on the open page in the sign-in book is black and deep.

“Another late night, Captain Banks?” John works nights five days out of seven, and the last time Simon was helping on the morning rotation, he was startled to find a woman with red hair and narrow lips in John’s place. “He’s awake; musta known you were coming.” It’s said with a smile but it’s not really a joke; Simon can’t think of anyone he knows who sleeps anymore. “He’s been pretty quiet this week; just head on in.” John takes the book and initials next to Simon’s signature. “Holler if you need any help, and flash the call-button to be let out – you know how it goes.”

Simon taps a thanks on the top of the desk and follows the hall to a familiar door with a narrow, unbreakable window; it locks from the outside and although the handle turns easily, he can hear it snick shut behind him. There’s a chair that’s fixed to the floor, synthetic, non-rip fabric covering the length of the solid, plastic-based frame, and a bed in the corner that’s made of the same material, although the comforter is thrown to the far side of the room. The walls are white and stark and there’re bars on the window, but it’s nicer than the other room where the floor feels the same as the walls and there’s nothing but empty space, so Simon sinks into the chair with something unnervingly close to gratitude, but it turns to apprehension and again into an unknown, bitter and pre-season and seedy in his gut.

There’s a shuffling and a snuffling sound, and it’s dim with the lights at the minimum, nighttime setting, but the white pajamas glow in the faint spill of the streetlights outside, and Jim Ellison slowly makes his way across the room. Jim’s head is tipped back and his hair swings gently along the line of his throat as he twists his body in slow, aching passes; his eyes are squeezed shut and his nose wrinkles and twitches as he draws in air.

He turns his face towards Simon. The lines and scratches running down his cheeks and across the flickering, pale eyelids are dark in the shadows, and Simon feels his guts twist and pop. Jim’s nostrils flare and he pushes his head forward, breathing deep, and hunches down, one arm barely brushing the floor as he weaves a last, careful step; he makes a sound deep in his chest, soft and quick and painfully grating, and drops to his knees.

Simon clears his throat, mindful of Jim’s flinch and the desperate pinch that rises white and strained around his lips and across his forehead, and begins to speak so softly he can hardly hear himself, but he’s learned from application and the constant, hissing screams when Jim’s jaw would lock open with his hands pressed to his ears and a binder, dropped and scattered, would have him bent over and sick on the ground.

“We finally got the arsonist I was telling you about,” he begins. “Caught him on Wednesday, right in the act. He’s lawyered up, but the fires killed five homeless men and a woman; there’s been a strong public reaction. Taggart had his anniversary party yesterday – twenty five years. His oldest is visiting, getting ready to graduate in a few months. An MBA. I’ve brought up colleges with Daryl again. He’s still convinced that he’s going to turn eighteen and be a super cop, but I’ve told him that he’d need a degree to make it off patrol, and he might even have listened.”

Simon watches as Jim’s shoulders droop and his head tilts, eyes still shut and face angled down and towards the floor; he’s puffing, quick and harsh, but steady, and although his face is still his fingers twitch restlessly along the ground, unlike the motionless, lifeless seizures that started this whole thing. His lips keep moving, and Simon runs through the week, and the paperwork, and Rafe’s girlfriend’s unfortunate decision to store her extra hair rinse in one of Rafe’s old shampoo bottles while he tries not to think of Jim limp and lifeless and held down with restraints, or screaming and wailing and clawing desperately at his stomach and arms and dropping, heavy and vacant and gone with a new drug regime.

Jim’s not peaceful now, because that’s too much to hope for, but he’s muted, quieted on the edges, and it breaks Simon’s heart and hurts deep inside somewhere that his grandmother would have had a word for but he doesn’t, and Simon just watches the rise and fall of Jim’s shoulders in the dark and listens to him breathe.

Jim rears back before Simon even hears the clatter and the shout, and he lunges forward before catching himself and standing still. Jim is shaking and hissing, but there’s a moan rising from low in his stomach and he’s grunting and panting and his arms shake as his back hunches and his head buries into his knees.

“Jim?” Simon whispers, but Ellison makes a sound that’s high-pitched and pained, and swings a blind head in his direction, face flat but teeth bared in a way that makes Simon swallow and grieve, so he says: “I’ll see you next week, Jim, okay?” and when Jim scrabbles backwards and curls in and begins to keen, Simon presses the call button twice in quick succession, and keeps his face toward the hall light until the door swings open.

The orderly is unfamiliar, but he nods to Simon and closes the door firmly, and Simon sees the spilt cart and scattered trays two doors down. He says: “Jim was startled by some noise” as he passes John, and keeps his face still and his hands in his pockets until he’s outside and at his car, and he has to take off his glasses to wipe away the water while he stands in the rain.



II.

The morning’s cool and wet, dawn gone but the sky still fading grey, and the dew on the grass soaks into her socks as she walks down the pathway and through the park. The air is cool and she shivers because it’s still early enough in May to have brought a jacket, but late enough in spring to refuse.

Between decorum and appearances, she’s never been to this part of the city before, despite the closeness to the house, and it’s the first day since yesterday and moving into the small, three-room apartment on the wrong side of the east/west Cascade divide, so she scans the area with a tight jaw but an easy smile. The park is her favourite part so far, and the only part so far, but she was never overly particular, and the stretch of it is dark and green and fresh.

There’s a slide and swings and a few picnic tables to the left, so she glances around and cuts across the grass – and she’d thought her socks were wet before – but she lives only fifteen minutes away and the future is looking like summer and packed sandwiches and sunlight.

There’s a girl sitting on one of the tables, tall and slight with hair that’s almost the same colour but longer and brighter than her own, and a sweater that’s half poncho and half unraveled. Grace hesitates, draws a breath and squares her jaw, and moves to sit at the next table over. As soon as she glances across the divide, meaning to be quick and careful and sure, she sees the swell of the girl’s stomach, and the steady, trailing fingers rubbing lengthwise over the child.

There’s an ache in Grace’s middle that’s sharp and unexpected, and she shakes her head to clear Stevie’s thick hair and always-sticky fingers, and Jimmy’s ability to look at her with her mother’s eyes and his voice as he counts out the stars at noon.

She must have paused too long, or thought too loud, or maybe the girl just expected it, because when Grace looks up there’s a smile and wide eyes waiting for her. She thinks she might be blushing, but the girl just says: “Hello,” so Grace nods, and pushes her hair from her eyes, and searches for something to say.

“It’s a nice morning,” she offers, and the girl smiles happily.

“It is,” she agrees, and tips her head back to smile at the sun. “Very clear. I didn’t expect anyone else to be out so early. I’m Naomi; but I might change my name. My parents disowned me this morning.”

There’s a lightness unlike air and more like space, bright but vast and cold, and for a moment there’s no oxygen and in the back of her mind, Grace begins to name the bones of the body. She knows Naomi feels the wetness of the picnic tables and the cool of the grass as much as she does, and somewhere inside they are made of watercolour. Grace blinks, and pauses, then says: “I’m Grace. I’ve left my husband and my children.”

Naomi nods and runs both hands over her belly. Her smile is soft and wide and she taps a gentle rhythm with the flat of her fingers and the curve of her palm. “Some people I know are going to be driving south. I think I’m going to go to California.”

“It’s very nice this time of year,” Grace agrees, and ignores the shaking beneath her heart. The air is starting to warm as the morning cloud burns away, and her ankles are damp and clammy. Something drops out from the middle of her stomach, and she doesn’t know if she’s thinking of the dusty, beige curtains in her apartment or the sheer, lace ones in the house, or if she’s wanting to stay, or to go. “Maybe I’ll have to join you.”



III.

“No, no,” H. says, gasping, “I’m serious. It was orange. Like the fruit! You should have seen it. I couldn’t believe it. And this guy here – ” he punches Rafe’s shoulder, and the other detective sighs, and rolls his eyes, and determinedly focuses on the file on his desk. “This guys just keeps going, keeps walking over here like nothing’s happened – like he doesn’t have Florida represents on his head.”

Rafe huffs, turning a page in the folder, and ignores H.’s: “There’s no other word for it, Babe. You were pure citrus. And there’s no way anyone could have missed it! Everything went dead – ab-so-lute-ly silent. I mean, I didn’t know what to say! Until Captain Banks goes – what he’d say Rafe? Your face was priceless. He said, ‘I’d heard orange was the new pink, but I hadn’t believed it until now.’”

H. laughs, hyphened and stuttering, and tips back in his chair while Rafe runs an involuntary hand through his new, darkly brown hair and sighs again. “Charlene put her rinse in an old bottle of my shampoo. She forgot to tell me, and I didn’t realise until I’d dried off, and then it was too late.”

“I never knew you had a thing for clowns,” Joel chuckles, leaning against his desk and grinning at Rafe as he grits his teeth and pinches the bridge of his nose.

“Her hair’s red -- as you know,” Rafe says when he drops his hand and looks up. “She uses it for touchups. It was just a stupid accident and I’ve been getting fruit on my desk all week – ”

“Oranges!” crows H., and quickly spins to face his monitor as Simon’s door opens and a cigar protrudes.

“Doesn’t anyone have work to do?” Simon bellows. “Pendergrast, have you spoken with the girlfriend yet?” Jack takes that as his cue to duck his head and turn to his partner, who’s sat grinning and demolishing one of Rafe’s oranges through H.’s demonstration, and the pulp and bittersweet of the torn peel and split juice floats lighter than air.

“C’mon, Slick,” he says, and shrugs into his coat. “We can talk with Green Gables, here, later.” Rafe makes a face and Jack winks at him, tilting his head towards the door as Blair grabs his own jacket from the back of his chair. “We’ve got a schedule to keep; Emily’ll kill me if I’m late tonight.”



IV.

Cascade hasn’t changed much over the years; the air seems thicker and warmer, but it does the same, stirring things in his lungs that it used to, like wings when he swallows, and light falls in the ways he remembers, and even the ground feels the same after the rain and in the sun. The city’s grown, expanded, and neighborhoods have evolved and constricted and taken on new faces, but the sheen of concrete and leftover water that’s turned purple and saturated grey in the air can’t be disguised, even if everything smells more like coffee and less like almost two decades have passed.

He’s seen more of Cascade in the past few days than he’d thought about it in the last fifteen years, and one thing he’ll say for Dr. Blair Sandburg, PhD, is that the man knows his city. It’s been less than a week, but they’ve covered every inch of Cascade that Jim could think of, and more, with a steady pace that’s hardly deliberate but more than meandering, and somewhere between Chinatown and Little Haiti and the Ethiopian restaurant Sandburg ate supper at on the fifth day, Jim stopped wondering about the how and just worked to maintain a steady balance between the street-vendor hotdogs and salt-rich air, and the ever-present crackle of static in his ear and the whisper-weight of the sidearm strapped flat against his back.

Cascade has a rhythm that’s easy to fall into, and he can feel it in his stride as he follows a block behind Sandburg, and he doesn’t even realise he’s passing the Ellison Enterprise tower until Brackett hisses and chortles, “Don’t look now, Jimmy” in his ear, and even then he blocks the man out as best he can with practice he’s been perfecting since his briefing after Peru, and those are memories that boil in his throat and sound like wind over devastating prairie, so he moves his eyes to the ground and skirts a puddle on the sidewalk.

Jim catches sight of the tall, glass building in the reflection of the bookstore window when he pretends to be interested in the newest page-turner and instead listens to Sandburg’s awkward Russian and the mother-tongue flow of the girl with whom he’s speaking. Jim’s not sure what he was expecting, or if he was expecting anything, but either way he can’t be disappointed at the lack of response in his gut, and instead he follows the drift of the clouds as they form and fall apart in the sky.

It rains on the forth day, and Jim sits in on one of Sandburg’s lectures. He follows the beat of the crowd, and smiles when they do, and keeps himself out of sight and at the back of the auditorium while Sandburg sketches an outline of food and society in the air with fast hand movements and bantering jokes about always thinking he would be finished with introductory classes after his defense, but he had also thought he’d be at a different school, by now, so who was he to make assumptions?

When Jim follows the mill of the class out of the Hall and onto the Quad, the emerging sunlight and early autumn tastes like the dry season in Peru and bitter, mud-based claw marks painted across his face. He tips and gasps and there’s a whirl of sound and air-on-air dissonance and a flash of something bright and spinning above his line of sight and a pause –




– until the earpiece squeals feedback and Brackett’s voice is snapping “Ellison!” and his mouth tastes dry and gummy and he hunches his shoulders and disappears across the street with his heart pounding and his hearing glued to the sound of Sandburg’s feet hurrying to where he’d stood.

Brackett spits and shouts in his ear for five blocks and Jim slips into the van when it pulls alongside him; he hunts for a water bottle and curls into the back side-seat and finds a copy of Sandburg’s: “The Sentinel: Tribal Watchmen and the Role of Forensic Science in Modern Police Society”. He runs his fingers down the pages and closes his eyes against the brightness of the day shining in through the windshield while inside his mouth his tongue tastes surface-thin and rich with adrenalin.

The surveillance is long-distance only now, and Jim can’t blame Brackett’s anger on anything but himself, even if the man’s scorn and sneers and innuendo are never ending, because the call was too close and just too – tempting, and not even Brackett demanding, “Are you positive, Ellison?” will make him change his mind.

The seagulls sound like crows at sundown, and the air turns cold quickly and beautifully, and the sound of breathing through the earpiece can’t detract from the richness of the dark and the shadows and interplay of something beneath his fingers that isn’t memory and is more than heartbeat but feels like both and is painted pale and gold along the twilight. Cascade grows as the streetlights flicker on and off in the dimness and the haze, and Jim feels his shoulders drop and his hands start to shake.

The city stands tall and warm and is backlit by the sky and the moon with the harbour under his skin and the mountains faded beyond the line of skyscrapers, and the lights in the buildings blur and something like the glow of roadside puddles tugs along the corners of his eyes. He’s glad that Brackett can’t see him as he's watching from a park bench a few miles away, and Sandburg paces in his living room, phone cradled against his shoulder as he waves a book in the air and says: “Eli, I’m serious! Just look at the citation, please. Page 83, at the bottom.”

Jim’s not sure if it’s fear that’s keeping him away, or something deeper, but he’s absolute when he says: “There’s nothing, Lee. He’s not a viable risk, and you’ve seen the footage – he’s practically a hippie; it’s not worth it to try conforming. Doctor Sandburg just isn’t a fit for your guide theory.” And he hopes with a tight throat and fluttering lungs that Brackett will believe him, will decide to leave the most promising prospect so far and follow the lead on the art student in Germany.

Jim draws a breath that is full of the turn of the year and the promise of rain, and peers at the possibility of Brackett just letting it go entirely, and letting Jim go back to doing what he’s been doing too long to be able to hate it with his full body and mind. And if, theory unproven, someone will decide than an operative who loses time and awareness isn’t worth the potential field gain of hyperactive senses, or if the years that are blurred behind plastic curtains and white sheets and burning hot and freezing cold will be reawakened and reappear.

The light he’s watching turns off, and Jim lets his focus shift so he’s following Sandburg as he locks up and tosses the book onto a table, and disappears behind a closed door. Jim concentrates on the play of moonlight along the edges of cloud, and can’t tell if he’s imagining the twisted scent of brown and wild grass and sake, or if Sandburg’s finally gone from all his senses, and instead he watches Cascade until Brackett pulls up beside him and it starts to rain.




V.

Jenny grabs a box of something bright off the shelf, and Jim catches it mid-fall and puts it back while she reaches for another. “Oh, nono,” he says and blocks her hand with his own. She laughs and screeches and grabs at his fingers while he maneuvers the shopping cart one-handed around the aisle, her legs kicking and bouncing happily from the seat at the front. “None of that, Jen-Monster,” he tells her, and she warbles something with a lot of vowels and shoves his fingers into her mouth.

Her teeth are sharp and she drools excessively, and he makes a face at her, asking: “And do those taste good, Darling?” She grins and blows accidental spit bubbles; he can see Caro in her hair and in the sweep of her brow, but it’s his mother’s eyes looking up at him and his own nose and Stevie’s chin. “Yeah, I bet they do.” The lights in the grocery store are oddly yellow and make him squint when he looks up, but the air is fresh despite the babble of other shoppers, and they check their produce daily.

“What do you think,” he asks her in the next aisle, eyeing the bags and boxes of rice and the lines of orange and black and blue packaging. “Minute, or converted?” Jenny squeals happily, babbling and gripping one of his sticky fingers in a fist, and Jim whirls around at an amused, “Converted, no question.”

There’s a man standing next to their cart, long hair pulled back at his nape and glasses sliding low on his nose. He raises an arm even as Jim’s eyes are narrowing and he’s dropping his free hand to his waist and his holster, and he wonders how someone got so close without him noticing –

“Whoa, whoa, Big Guy,” the man says, and spreads the hand he was raising before shoving his glasses up his nose, and Jim blinks and realises that the man’s other arm isn’t so much at his side as holding a basket out and slightly angled because Jenny has a tight grip on his jacket and is happily tugging the loose fabric back and forth.

“Oh,” Jim says, and feels his cheeks heat while he scoops up Jenny’s hand. “Let go, Honey; that’s not yours.”

Jenny’s screech isn’t as cheerful as her other ones, but she unclenches her fist and lets the bunched fabric fall free. Jim winces and says, “I’m sorry, she’s – she doesn’t – I,” he stops and the man takes pity on him, smiling and waving at the air with his empty hand.

“Hey, hey, no worries, man. I totally understand, because hey, that’s a pretty hands-on age, y’know? And the nylon fabric’s super sensory, what with the noise and the reflective quality, and,” he stumbles to a stop and rubs a knuckle down the length of his nose. “Ah,” he says, “converted?”

“Right,” Jim nods, “right. But not minute.”

“Heh,” the man laughs, and the sound is sudden and full of air and stutters along the vowel, and Jim finds his lips curving at the length and the shortness of it. “Right, ‘cause the extra fifteen minutes are really so worth it; not nearly as chalky, and it keeps way better.”

Jim nods, and gives Jenny his fingers without even thinking about it, drawing her reaching hands away from the air and the far side of the aisle. “Right,” he agrees. “Right, what’s fifteen minutes when it comes to chalkiness?”

“Exactly,” the man says, and fidgets, bouncing gently from one foot to the other. “Ah,” he finally says. “I need a bag, too."

“Oh!” Jim blushes more than he did before, and repeats “oh, sorry” as he reaches up and grabs an orange bag, and pulls the cart backwards and out of the way.

“Hey, hey, don’t worry about it!” he’s reassured, and the other man waves a hand above his head. “I wasn’t saying anything, I mean, I was gone, y’know? Long days and florescent lights.” He gestures at the ceiling, and ducks his head. “Instant zombie, man. You know how it goes.”

Jim nods, and hesitates, because he doesn’t want to turn his back, and he doesn’t want to push around, and really, he doesn’t want to leave, which is foolish because he’s on a time schedule and doesn’t have time to – to – whatever he’s doing, right now. Which is apparently shifting the weight of a bag of converted rice in his hand, and bopping a finger back and forth between Jenny’s eager fists.

“You’re a cop?” the other man asks, and Jim is absurdly pleased that he hasn’t left, either, and then stands sharp and frowns. “It’s,” the man waves a hand towards Jim’s waist. “The holster. I saw it, and figured well, either you’re a cop, or a crazy person, and I’m really hoping it’s the first now, because – ”

“ – I’m a cop,” Jim interrupts, and the other man nods, shooting him a brief, thankful look. Jim shifts his hips and tugs the hem of his jacket down. “What about you?”

“Me?” the other man asks, surprised, and Jim can’t help but smile.

“Yeah, Chief. You.”

“Ah - I’m a professor,” he says, “University. At Rainer. I’m, I’m Blair.”

“Jim,” Jim says, and blinks. “What’s your field?”

“Anthropology,” Blair nods, bopping his head at the same speed that Jenny’s tugging apart and clenching Jim’s fingers. “Pre-Columbian and tribal, particularly. Latin America. But bits of everything that I can get my hands on, really.”

Jim pushes the cart forward, tilting his head as Blair, keeping in step beside him, talks and gestures with his hands and his chin, and Jim listens to stories of people of the jungle and the rainforests and those who live in the trees and touch the sky. Jim shrugs and talks about Major Crimes, and how old Jenny is, and she grows bored with chewing on his wallet and reaches for Blair’s jacket and hands, and succeeds in grabbing two fingers. Jim can’t help but grin as Jen bites down and Blair’s eyes go round, and Jim pulls Jenny away. “Hey now, Jen-Monster,” he says, “people aren’t supposed to be part of your diet.” He glances apologetically back at Blair. “I think she sharpens them.”

“I’d believe it!” Blair laughs, but he just waves the sting away, and warbles back at Jenny when she waves her arms at the lights and space. “She’s a happy baby.”

Jim nods, and brushes a hand over the fuzzy top of her head, “Yeah. She really is.” He’s surprised to see that they’ve reached the other end of the store, and there’s nothing left on his list. Blair seems to realise the same thing, because he ducks his head and looks around, and finally reaches into his pocket and pulls out a wallet.

“Ah,” he says, and fishes out a slightly battered card. “Look, this is me – um. I don’t know if you – ” he stops, and frowns, and pauses with his eyebrows lowered and breathes out and there’s such a look of bewilderment on his face that Jim reaches across and plucks away the card, and slips one of his own in it’s place.

“All right,” he says, and glances down. “Dr. Sandburg. It was a pleasure.”

“Yeah?” says Blair, and scans the card before shoving it into his pocket. “Yeah, it was. It was nice to meet you, Jim.” He tips his head and his hand stutters for a moment in the air while he decides what to do with it, and he finally waggles his fingers at Jenny and says, “You too, Shorty – don’t chew on your dad, too much, okay?” And he waves quickly at Jim before skipping a step backwards and falling into line at the express till.

Jim puffs out his cheeks and makes a face at Jenny who claps her hands and babbles back at him, and he almost forgets to have the cashier separate his load into two sets of bags, and cuts in just as she’s loading the bread with the animal crackers.

Pushing through the exit and into the late autumn sunshine, he sees Blair again when he pulls away in an old Corvair; Blair grins and waves and Jim feels his face stretch as he smiles back. When they get to the truck, he loads his groceries in the back and Caro’s into the front; she’s been working a triple shift and existing out of the vending machine in the break room, and there’s no way she’ll want to head to the supermarket now that’s she’s done for the week and it’s her weekend with the baby.

“Let’s go, Jen-Monster,” he says as he pulls her from the cart and pushes it over to the drop spot. She chortles and drools into his sweater and twists her head this way and that while he straps her into the car seat and slides in behind the wheel. “You liked him, huh, Squirt?” Jim looks back over his shoulder and smiles with Jenny while a hand in his pocket runs careful fingers along the length of the card. “Yeah. Daddy liked him, too.”