Work Text:
...and divided we fall. That saying is so true.
That year that we were apart was rough. Possibly the roughest I've ever experienced. I'm including my whole life in there, so that ought to say something.
Blair left for Africa on a sunny summer day. The temperature in Phoenix was a toasty one hundred seven degrees. It wasn't enough to melt the ice that seemed to have taken up permanent residence inside my chest.
I kissed, held, stroked and loved him in our bed the night before; then kissed him again in the airport. Sky Harbor was teeming with people rushing here and there, I didn't care. I pulled him into my arms, crowds be damned, and kissed him until my lips were throbbing and I saw stars.
I waited until the plane had taken off before heading back for the truck, and my lonely life in Flagstaff.
How the hell was I going to last a year? He'd only been gone for fifteen minutes and it had already been fourteen too long.
* * * *
Two things happened that summer that made the next year bearable. One, I started my new job as a forest ranger. The area I was responsible for began just outside my front door and extended all the way north to the Kaibab forest. It went east-west for about 60 miles, covering hundreds of square acres. I loved it. Loved driving it, sitting in it, breathing it. It was quiet, peaceful, calm. A good thing, too, since everything else around me seemed to be stressed.
The second thing that happened was that Daryl Banks came out to live with me. Well, eventually he would get a place of his own, but he stayed with me that year and gave me someone to talk to, forced me to remain a part of society and life.
Daryl had been attending the University of Washington at Cascade, but was having trouble concentrating on his studies. Simon told me it was because he just had trouble settling down; Daryl confided that he'd been about a hairsbreadth away from joining a gang for several years. The only thing stopping him was the knowledge that it would break his father's heart if he did. And Daryl loves his father above all, though he has a hard time expressing it.
Anyway, he came to me at the end of July with a flagging GPA and a desire to succeed if it killed him. I got him enrolled in NAU then recruited him to help watch for forest fires for the remainder of the summer.
It was a busy summer, that one. Hottest August on record, for Flagstaff, anyway. Campers who either didn't know, or didn't care, about how to properly extinguish campfires. Hikers who flicked cigarettes into the bushes, figuring I guess that the wildlife would make sure they were out. People who just plain defied the ban on campfires once the fire danger rose too high. By the end of August I'd had enough smoke inhalation to last me a lifetime.
I was fortunate that the ranger station for my 'district' as the department of agriculture called them, was close enough that I could go home to sleep, as long as I had my radio with me. Most of the nights I did spend out at the tower, not wanting to leave anything to chance. My days I spent touring the area, senses on full alert, on lookout for *anything*. Anything that might endanger this calming place that had come to represent peace to me.
In late September I got a letter from Blair. They were in a remote region of Kenya called the Goombiya river basin. Daryl and I dragged out the atlas but couldn't find it; not even a search of the web turned up anything. I decided Blair had either misspelled it, or was mistaken. It turned out that they actually were there; the first white men in the area. Hard to believe that there might still *be* places like that on this earth.
He told me how much he missed me, and that he was sleeping with a shirt of mine that he'd snuck out of the laundry basket the morning he'd left. I'd wondered where that shirt had gone to. By the time next day my letter had tear stains on it from where I'd gotten moody reading it. I don't cry easily, but Blair's absence left a hole in my chest. A void that made me vulnerable.
I wrote back to him, but the letter came back, covered in airmail and overseas stickers, but labeled "Unable to forward". I sighed and tucked it away into a small box I'd bought to save special things I wanted to share with him when he returned. So far I had the letter, a small journal I'd bought to record notes while I was in the tower, a rainbow-colored rock I'd found in the creek bed one day, and a turtle shell. I had no idea where the *turtle* was--all I'd found was the shell. I saved it anyway, thinking Blair might like the hear the story of how I nearly broke my neck trying to see this shell from the upper bank of small river our creek flowed into.
The months flowed gracefully into one another and I watched in fascination as summer died out and autumn covered my forest. *My* forest. Right. Still, I'd come to view it as mine, as a part of my tribe. Perhaps from a certain point of view, it was.
Certainly the people who traveled through it were, and I found myself drawn into their lives and crises. The man who went hunting without a permit (not to mention out of season) and ended up nearly shooting his own leg off when the gun backfired. The woman who fell asleep 'just for a minute', allowing her two children aged two and five, to wander off alone. The teenagers who hiked up into the hills then got treed by a brown bear. And on and on it went. In some ways, forestry like this was as changing and unpredictable as police work had been.
December--and Christmas--was rough. Daryl had to practically force me to put up a tree and every time I looked at it I was reminded of Blair, and how much I missed him. His voice, his laughter, his curls. His scent, his taste, his touch. I could cover every sensory experience I'd ever had with the man and name it. I missed him. Missed him badly.
January dropped on us with three feet of snow. I almost envied Blair at that point, warm out in Africa. I didn't mind a little snow; I didn't mind *some* snow. I had a real problem with three feet of the stuff. Simon came out to spend Christmas with me and Daryl and ended up getting snowed in for a week. He didn't seem to mind at all, kept commenting on how 'unfortunate' it was that the police chief would have to cover for him. I made a note to ask him sometime what had happened to cause such animosity between two men I'd thought were friends.
The letter I had from Blair in early February told me that my one other attempt to get him a letter arrived on Christmas day. He wrote me that he'd cried when he opened it. I'd enclosed a picture Daryl had taken of me, standing in front of the shed I built for us, all decked out in my "Ranger Jim" outfit. Complete with hat, binoculars and water canteen. He said in that same letter that that had been the best present he'd ever received. I was struck with a deep, breath-stealing pain at the thought of him crying over me. I don't know why--I cried over him several times that year. It just seemed odd to me. Maybe because I equated the strength in our relationship to him.
His studies were going well, he told me. The students who'd accompanied him on this expedition were all competent and interested in learning. They were also very capable and that made his life a lot easier. They had one run in with a lion near the river's edge, but no one was hurt and from then on they tracked the movement of the prides a lot more carefully.
I wondered if Blair had been with the kids who'd had the run in. Knowing my mate like I did I figured the odds were nearly one hundred percent. All my protector instincts had gone on full alert one day for no reason that I could account for, so all I could assume was that I was somehow picking up on what had happened to Blair.
March struggled in on wave after wave of rain. I started to wonder if I'd somehow transported back to the pacific northwest and someone had forgotten to mention it to me.
I took what was NAU's spring break off and helped Daryl start apartment hunting. He was fairly certain he didn't want to live in the dorms; nor did he think he wanted a roommate. I told him he might change his mind someday, after struggling to pay the bills by himself. He smiled and told me that he'd been accepted into the Air Force on their delayed entrance program. My bottom jaw must have hit the ground.
"Does your father know?" was the most intelligent thing I could think of to ask him. He assured me that yes, Simon knew; what was even better, he approved. Daryl had decided to work on getting his degree in biology; he would move into pre-med classes next fall.
I made some more notes in my journal and added them to the ever-growing pile of things to share with my partner when he returned home from his travels. Some days I wondered how he would feel, after the excitement of an African expedition, about returning to a sleepy little college town and a man who was moving rapidly into the abyss known as middle age. I found myself scowling when I looked into the mirror--it reflected back a face I couldn't quite accept as my own. Funny, I was only one year older than I'd been last year. Well, not even that. It had only been eight months since I'd seen Blair. Why would I think he wouldn't want me anymore? Insecurity is man's worst enemy and I had buckets full of it.
June dawned with the absolute mind-blowing shock that Daryl had been quietly, secretly dating Patrick and Alisha's eldest daughter, Rhiannon. I had a little taste then of what it must be like to be a parent and actually felt a little sorry for Simon--and Patrick and Alisha.
"Are you out of your *mind*?!" I yelled, not quite believing I was hearing what I was hearing. "Do you realize you could be charged with statutory *rape*, if they wanted to? Do you?!"
Daryl sat on the couch while I paced around, yelling, his face calm.
"I love her, Jim. I really do."
"Daryl, you're nineteen years old. She's not even seventeen yet. Don't you think you're a little *young* to be worrying about this?"
He shook his head. "I can't help the way I feel, man. I want to marry her."
God in heaven help us. I stared at him until he started shifting around nervously.
"You haven't done anything stupid like sleep with her, have you?"
When he didn't immediately answer my question, *I* started shifting around nervously.
"Daryl? C'mon, kid, tell me you haven't."
"Okay, I'll tell you I haven't."
Jesus H. Christ. Next he would tell me he'd gotten her pregnant. *That* dire prediction of mine fortunately didn't come true. Not right away, anyhow.
I breathed a major sigh of relief when June 30th arrived. Not only did it herald Daryl's birthday and his getting his own place, but best of all, Blair would be home in two days. I was ready to have him home. I was beyond ready.
* * * *
My first thought when he stepped off the plane was, 'God, he's beautiful.' My next one was, 'He's mine.' Okay, I'm territorial. Being a "throwback to a primitive type of man" has it's perks and it's drawbacks. The problem is, I've never decided which one 'territorial' falls under.
"Jim?"
I'd gotten so lost in my thoughts that he'd walked right up in front of me without me actually being aware of it. I snapped back into reality and focused on him, standing just a few inches away from me, right in front of me. Ohmigod. I'd waited so long...
It was like a repeat of when he left: Crowds be damned. I pulled him tightly against me and crushed my mouth down on his, deciding in that instant that if he ever had to go away again I was going with him.
* * * *
It's nearly a four hour drive from the airport in Phoenix to our cabin. Blair slept most of the way, explaining to me when I woke him up that he'd been so nervous the day (night?) before he hadn't been able to sleep. I was so glad to have him home I didn't care if he was sitting there chattering to me, or just sitting there, slumped against the window, sound asleep. I held his hand the entire way, afraid to let go of him for fear he wouldn't return.
He woke up long enough to stagger into the cabin, shower and eat some dinner. I'd fixed a pot of chili before leaving and left it simmering in the crockpot. I still laughed every time I saw it sitting in the cupboard; three years ago at Christmas Patrick and Alisha had decided that Blair and I qualified as a "married couple" (I'm still not certain what their qualifications are, and am not sure I want to know) and therefore needed a crockpot. Want to guess what we unwrapped from them that year?
We curled up against each other to sleep that night. My heart was filled to bursting point just knowing he was at home with me now. I waited until he was sound asleep before rolling him onto his other side and spooning up behind him. His hand raised reflexively in his sleep and his fingers twined with mine. I nuzzled my nose into the curls that were longer--and a little grayer--and fell asleep, finally feeling as if all were right with my world once again.
In the darkness I whispered, "Welcome home, Blair."
His response was a gentle snore.
~finis~