Title: Shared Dreams                         
Author/pseudonym: Candy Apple 
Rating: E- (maybe)
Pairings: J/B

Status: NEW, complete
Date: 6-3-98
Series/Sequel: Story 4 of the New Beginnings Series

Disclaimers: Pet Fly owns the guys and The Sentinel.  No money being
made.  Just for fun.

Notes: Another installment in my continuation from Sentinel Too, so
there are SPOILERS for that ep in here.

Summary: Blair's nightmare leads the guys into a discussion of their
dreams and what they mean.

Warnings: Just the SPOILER thing.  Some mushy stuff lies ahead...





SHARED DREAMS

by 

Candy Apple


     Jim stirred as soon as the movement began.  Blair was writhing
in the bed, his hands up near his face as if he were trying to get
something off it that was obstructing his intake of air.  His breath was
coming out in harsh gasps.

     "Blair, wake up.  Come on, buddy.  It's a nightmare."  Jim
captured the struggling hands in his own, which momentarily agitated
Blair more until he started to calm a bit, returning the pressure on Jim's
hands.  "It's okay, Chief.  You can breathe, sweetheart.  There's nothing
in the way.  Take a deep breath.  Come on."  Jim kept coaching Blair
through the aftermath of the nightmare until he was breathing evenly
and finally opened his eyes, still clutching Jim's hands.

     "I couldn't breathe," he said simply.

     "Do you remember what the nightmare was about?"  Jim asked
gently, freeing one hand to push a few sweaty curls back from Blair's
face.

     "This guy...he was with Alex.  He put this mask over my face,"
Blair recalled, shuddering and squeezing Jim's hand.  "She had the gun
and I was dead no matter what I did.  It got to be impossible to breathe
at all, and then I guess things went black somewhere along the line.  
But in the dream, I was trying to get the mask off."

     "That's the first time you completely remembered everything
that happened."  Jim ran his thumb lightly over the back of the hand he
was holding.  

     "Did you get both of them?"  Blair asked hesitantly.

     "No.  We got Alex.  But there isn't much reason to expect any of
her pals to stick around.  What we have to do now is get a composite
together and hunt the son of a bitch down so I can pay him back." 
Leaning forward, Jim planted a light kiss on Blair's forehead, then
stroked his hair again.  "Well get the sketch artist over here tomorrow,
huh?"  He watched as Blair nodded.  "There's more."

     "You told me about the black jaguar...and about seeing a
spotted jaguar?"

     "Yes."

     "Did you...ever see a spirit animal for me?"

     "Yes.  That's part of why I...asked you to leave before."

     "Was it a wolf?"  Blair turned his head so he was staring
straight into Jim's eyes.

     "Yes."

     "Why did that make you ask me to move out?"

     "How did you know?  Did you see it too?"

     "I need to know."

     "I had a dream, and in that dream, I saw a wolf in the jungle,
and I shot it with the crossbow.  Only when I approached it, and it was
dying, it wasn't the wolf anymore--it was you."  Jim took a deep breath. 
"I thought that meant that I was going to cause your death.  And I
almost did, ironically, by trying to avoid having you with me.  I thought
if you weren't with me, you'd be safer."

     "So part of why you wanted me out was to protect me?"

     "A lot of it.  Plus, I wasn't thinking too clearly.  But I figured
that if you weren't with me, I couldn't hurt you."  Jim paused, watching
as Blair looked away a moment, processing what he'd been told. 
"When did you see the wolf?"

     "In a dream.  And if dreams are prophecy...I wish I'd known
that.  It would have been kind of comforting."

     "What happened in your dream?"

     "It must have been after I was gassed," Blair opined.  "Maybe
even sometime in the hospital.  I don't know.  I dreamed that I was
running through trees at night, only I was lower to the ground than I
should have been, and there was something different in how I was
running--I know it was easier to cover more ground than it usually is. 
The weird part is, at some point, I wasn't inside the action anymore.  I
was watching.  And what I was watching was a wolf being chased
through the jungle by a spotted jaguar."

     "Do you think that was influenced by what I had told you?"

     "I thought maybe it was at first.  But now..."  Blair sighed.  "So
the spotted jaguar chased the wolf and finally pounced on it, and this is
where it really gets weird.  I was *watching* it, but I could *feel* the
pain when the jaguar bit into the wolf."

     "The spotted jaguar killed the wolf then?"

     "No.  That's when the black jaguar showed up.  There was this
horrible snarl--and it came from the black cat--and the spotted jaguar
left the wolf alone and challenged the black jaguar.  I've never seen an
animal as fast, violent and effective as that black cat was.  It's like he
was unstoppable.  He got tangled up with the spotted cat, and they were
wrestling and snarling and biting and clawing, but it was only, like,
*seconds*, and the spotted jaguar was...ripped to pieces...literally." 
Blair shivered a little and Jim moved closer, pulling the smaller body
into his arms.  

     "That was the end of the dream?"

     "After that, the black jaguar went to the wolf and started licking
its wounds, licking its face...and then it was like, *wham* and I was
back in the wolf, and it felt so warm next to that big cat.  He just curled
up with me, that big tongue making everything feel better...and then he
got up like he was leaving.  But he turned and waited for me to follow,
and somehow, I knew, we were going to get out of the jungle...that if I
followed him, I'd be okay.  And I did.  I don't remember anything after
that."

     "You know what I think?"

     "Hmm?"  Blair snuggled closer to Jim.

     "Maybe when that big cat was taking care of the wolf, tending
its wounds...maybe that was when..."  Jim took a deep breath.  "When
you finally responded to the CPR.  God, Chief, you scared the living
shit out of me. *Nothing* had worked, and everyone thought I was just
losing it, that I couldn't accept you were gone.  They were right about
that part.  I couldn't have accepted that.  But you *were* gone for a few
minutes there.  I finally felt something when I tried the CPR again,
after everybody gave up.  It was right after that the paramedics got
interested again, checked your pulse and started you on oxygen.  You
didn't have a lot of water in your lungs because you hadn't been
*breathing* while you were in the water."  Jim shook his head.  "I'm
going to sue those incompetent assholes.  If I hadn't had my head up my
ass at the time, I would have insisted *they* keep working."

     "So maybe while I was...gone...my spirit was lost--you know,
stuck between planes, and maybe the dream--I mean, the spotted jaguar
attacking the wolf might have been symbolic of what *had* happened,
but the black cat showing up to save me was what *was happening*,
and then following the black jaguar...it led me back, brought me back
from the other side.  Led me where I had to go."

     "Thank God."  Jim tightened his hold on his partner, rubbing
the smaller man's back slowly.  

     "I just wish Alex hadn't wasted her gifts that way.  Man, to have
the abilities that you have, that she has--there's a responsibility with
that.  A responsibility to do something *positive* with those abilities."

     "You could take something else from that dream too."

     "What?"

     "Wouldn't you say the black jaguar almost treated the wolf like
it would treat its mate?"

     "Definitely," Blair responded, smiling against Jim's chest where
his head rested.

     "Blair...I'm not just experimenting with you.  I hope you know
that.  This isn't something I'm trying out to see if I like it."

     "I'm not doing that either."

     "This isn't very romantic, is it?"  Jim asked rhetorically,
laughing a little.  "I'm trying to say that I'm really starting to think of
you as more than my best friend or even my future lover."  Jim took a
deep breath, and it seemed that Blair was holding his, waiting for the
rest of the statement.  "As far as I'm concerned, Blair, you *are* my
mate.  My other half."

     "I feel the same way," Blair responded quietly.

     "I'm not sharing you."

     "You're not?"  Blair smiled at the blatant territoriality of the
statement.  It was hard to picture his bedmate as Jim and not a large,
very selfish black jaguar curled possessively around its wolf--a
completely mis-matched animal pair much as Jim and Blair seemed
mis-matched to the casual observer.

     "Nope.  You said yourself I was territorial.  You're my territory
now, sweetheart."

     "I never said that was a bad thing," Blair replied, kissing the
skin under his lips.  "I sort of like it."

     "I know you like women, Chief.  I don't know how you're going
to feel about not keeping up your cardfile of ladies."

     "Yeah, well, there hasn't really been anybody important in a
long time.  There was never anybody as important as you," Blair
confessed, running his hand tentatively over the expanse of Jim's chest. 

     "So we're okay with it being just us?"  Jim finally asked,
catching the roving hand and kissing it thoroughly.

     "I didn't think I dared ask for that."

     "You can ask for anything you want, baby.  If I can manage it, it
yours."

     "Are we married now?"  Blair moved to lean up on one elbow
to look Jim in the eyes.

     "Not yet.  Engaged, I think.  We need some kind of ceremony
for marriage.  There's got to be some strange ritual from some tribe
somewhere we could use since we can't use the traditional one."

     "I'll come up with something.  What good is all this
anthropological research if I can't put it to work for us?"  Blair smiled
and leaned in to kiss Jim, his hair falling across their faces like a silky
curtain.

     "About that.  When you're rested up, we're going to talk out the
issue about the dissertation.  I know you can't gather more data now,
but maybe you can work with what you've got."

     "I made one decision."

     "What's that?"

     "I'm deleting the stuff from Carolyn, and some of the things I
said about your fear of intimacy."

     "Why?  Because I didn't like it?"

     "Partly.  But also because the paper can work without it.  Jim,
I'm used to being very detailed...including everything.  It gives my
committee fits sometimes shaving down what I haul in for them to
review.  So I figure I'll just do some editing."

     "But then my reaction skewed your perspective."

     "Man.  I feel like I just ended up in bed with my committee
chair."

     "You better not end up in anybody's bed but mine--got that?" 
Jim tugged playfully on a stray curl.

     "No problem.  This is the only bed I wanna be in."  Blair slid
back down to rest his head on Jim's shoulder.  "Always."  Both men
were quiet a few moments.  "I don't need to betray things that are that
personal to you in order to do a decent paper on your senses.  Period. 
Plus, you aren't really acting like a man afraid of intimacy right now, so
maybe I was wrong anyway."

     "You weren't wrong."  Jim let out a long breath.  "It's risky.  I've
gotten burned once too often to be comfortable with the concept.  Until
now."

     "How can you trust me after what I wrote about you?"

     "You're not using that stuff anyway."

     "But you didn't know that 'til just now."

     "I think somewhere deep down, I knew it.  I know I was asking
you to choose between me and your research.  I'm glad you found a
way to accommodate us both.  I think I always knew that you would."

     "If I had to make that choice, it wouldn't be any contest.  I had a
taste of losing you.  No dissertation would have been worth that," Blair
said, sliding his arm around Jim's waist and hanging on tightly.

     "You think Simon would like to be best man?"  Jim asked,
smiling.  It was good to hear Blair really laugh again.

     "You haven't even gotten to first base with me yet.  How do you
know you're going to want to marry me?"

     "I could ask you the same question."

     "Because I love you so much there isn't room in my heart for
anybody else...ever."

     "You just answered your own question, sweetheart.  That's how
I feel about you.  I knew if you left me, I wouldn't last.  So you're stuck
with me."

     "I'm glad."

     "There's just one thing, Chief."

     "What?"

     "When you come up with this ceremony we're gonna use?  I
don't want to have to pierce anything or cut anything off."

     "How about claiming your mate in front of witnesses?"

     "Kinky.  But given the circumstances, I think we might have to
pass on that for now."

     "Seeing us kiss just about made Simon pass out.  I'm trying to
picture him witnessing ritual sex."  Blair laughed a little, picturing
Simon's discomfort at the hospital magnified about ten thousand times.

     "No maiming and no public sex.  Short of that, I'm pretty
agreeable."

     "Sure, after you've eliminated all the fun ones," Blair retorted.

********

To be continued... (And yes, you can trust me.  I really mean that!) ;-)