Promises in the Dark

by Lois RH Balzer

  *

  The stillness of the early morning was shattered, waking Ellison from a sound sleep.

  “No! Let me go. Let go of my arm!”

  Ellison rolled over in his sleeping bag so quickly he got a kink in his neck. “Chief?”

  Sandburg’s head was tossing back and forth on the pillow, sweat drenching his skin. “JIM!” he screamed, his body arching from the effort.

  “I’m here, buddy. Wake up, Chief.” Still enwrapped in his sleeping bag, Ellison shifted closer until he could pull Blair up enough to get a good hold on him. Frantic hands grasped at his sweatshirt, almost ripping the fabric. “I’m here. Just relax.”

  “He won’t let go. Make him let go. Make him let go.” Sandburg’s eyes were squeezed shut, his heartbeat racing as he panted out his request over and over. “Make him let go. Make him let go.”

  “I’ve got you. He’s gone now, Blair.” It took several minutes of reassurances before the nightmare’s hook fell away and his partner collapsed against him, trying to pull oxygen into his lungs. “Relax. Breathe slowly.”

  “Thank you, Jim. Oh, God,” Sandburg mumbled, still clinging to his shirt, his chest heaving as he tried to control his breathing. “Shit. That was too real, man. It was just a dream, right?” he asked, raising his head and looking around for a moment. “Uh … where are we, Jim? I’m missing something here.”

  That was probably true, Ellison considered. Blair had slept most of the way in the jeep, waking only long enough for Ellison to steer him into the tent. He had then crawl into his sleeping bag with a murmured, “Good night, Jim,” any trace of animosity vanished.

  “We’re camping, remember? We’re at the Chuckanut Government Campgrounds right on the coast near Bellingham.”

  “Camping? Oh, right. Camping. Camping. We’re camping.” Blair glanced around the tent, not letting go of his grip on Ellison’s shirt until his eyes finally focused on his clenched fists. “Uh, sorry, Jim.” It took several big swallows and a deep breath before he unlocked his hands from the fabric and moved away. “What time is it?” he asked, pushing the hair back from his face.

  Ellison glanced at his watch. “Six-thirty in the morning.”

  Sandburg nodded, still trying to take it all in. “So … that was a nightmare I just had, right? Everything is cool here? You okay?”

  “I’m fine—or I will be once my heart goes back to its regular beat. You startled me,” Ellison said with a smile.

  “Sorry, man. It was, like, so real. Incacha had this major grip on my arm and he was dead and we couldn’t get the body off me. Then the arm broke off and—” Blair grimaced, shaking himself. “Well, enough said. It got rather gross after that, believe me. Bugs and cockroaches, and, well, I’ll spare you the details.”

  “Thank you.” Jim shifted back to his thin foam mattress, and lay down again. “Think you can go back to sleep, Chief?”

  “No … not in this century, anyway.” Sandburg glanced around the tent. “Did you say that we’re at a public campground? Did you happen to notice which direction the restrooms are in? My bladder just informed that it’s been a while since I took care of it.”

  “I parked fairly close to one. Follow the path up the hill and it’s right there. Big building with a flat roof. And, Sandburg, the men’s room is on the far side. Be careful, please. I don’t want any incidents.”

  “Ha, ha. You’re so funny, Jim,” Blair muttered sarcastically, as he pushed his feet into his loafers. “Did I bring some boots along?”

  “They’re still in the jeep. You’ll be fine wearing those for now.” He listened as his partner scrambled up the path, laughing as Blair made a few snide comments directed his way, knowing the odds were that Jim was monitoring his progress.

  The rest of the morning passed calmly, taken up with a walk along the rocky winding beach, sitting and watching waves crashing against the shore as the tide came in. They ate some lunch from the supplies Jim had brought, then Blair had slept until five. He emerged from the tent and sat on the bench of the picnic table, eyes dull as he watched Ellison set things out for dinner and then start chopping wood for a fire to stave off the evening chill. What had been a beautiful sunny day was fast turning into a cloudy night. It grew steadily darker as the hour passed, and Blair grew more quiet, until contemplative became uncommunicative.

  Cutting down trees in the government park was illegal, so Ellison had purchased a few bigger logs and had to chop them smaller for their use. Kindling was easy enough to find, and he wadded up some newspaper and built up the kindling around it. “What’s up, Chief?” Ellison asked, lighting a match.

  Sandburg shrugged, but said nothing.

  A second match got the newspaper beneath the kindling to burn. “Cat got your tongue?”

  There was an answering glower, then Sandburg sighed and shifted on the bench. “Just thinking, okay?”

  “About what?” The fire took hold at last, snapping at the dry kindling. “Hmm?”

  “The future,” Blair answered, after a minute’s pause, “what’s going to happen to us down the road—that kind of thing.”

  “Sickness and in health, till death do us part—Isn’t that how it goes?” Ellison said, adding the logs around the outside of the fire.

  Blair let out a brief, irritated laugh. “I’m your guide, Jim. I’m not married to you.”

  Ellison reached for another log. “I’m not saying you are. But it’s still a commitment. Not a marriage commitment, but a partnership. Same thing. Whatever happens to us, we’re in it together.” There was no response for several minutes while he watched the fire, still arranging the logs. When he finished, he wiped off the axe and put it aside, then started stacking rest of the cut wood closer to their fire.

  Sandburg’s whisper, when it came, took him by surprise. “You divorced Caroline.”

  Ellison turned his head quickly to see Blair use the sleeve of his shirt to wipe at his eyes. The detective dropped the log he was carrying and moved across to where his partner sat at the picnic table. Blair wasn’t looking at him, seeming to fold inward on himself, making himself smaller on the bench. The young man looked devastated, as if he wanted to run away and hide, but there was no where for him to go. Ellison crouched down in front of him, hands resting lightly on Sandburg’s knees. “Yes, I did divorce her. But that has nothing to do with you. This is a whole different kind of commitment that I’m talking about.”

  “But when you married her, you believed you were marrying for life, right? Then she didn’t meet your expectations or whatever—she wasn’t what you needed—and you divorced her.”

  “It was a mutual agreement because we had no future together. I’m not proud of that, Chief. I failed at that relationship. What we are—I don’t even have the words for it, but it’s on a different level than my marriage to Caroline.”

  Blair shrugged, not looking at him, tears a steady stream down his face. “It’s just human nature, Jim. Nothing lasts forever. This friendship is important to me—you know that—being with you, the Sentinel stuff, the police work, the loft—all of it—but one day, maybe, things will change for you and—”

  “Quiet.”

  The abrupt reprimand struck Sandburg as physically as if Ellison had actually hit him, and Blair gasped, drawing back, bracing himself for a blow. Sandburg’s reaction was totally unexpected, and Jim wasn’t sure how to handle it. Ellison wanted to go on instinct—he was desperately trying to go on instinct, to listen to his inner feelings—but his initial instinct this time was to grab the young man by the shoulders and yell some sense into him.

  For a long few minutes he sat trying to find the correct words to say to Blair, to put together his thoughts in a cohesive rational argument that wouldn’t be misunderstood. Twice the kid tried to run, but each time he blocked him, depositing back on the picnic table. That would be all he needed right now, to have Sandburg taking off and getting lost in the woods as night was falling.

  “Tell me about Naomi,” he said, finally. />
  Sandburg’s head snapped up, the frown firmly in place. “What?”

  “Tell me about Naomi. What is your relationship to her?”

  “She’s my mother. What are you talking about?”

  “Did you choose her to be your mother?”

  Sandburg stared at him. “No. Of course I didn’t. She’s my mother.”

  “So your relationship is based, not on choice, but on something beyond your control?”

  “I would have chosen her if could—”

  Ellison waved him silent. “But you had no choice, right?”

  There was a hesitant nod from his partner, as if he knew he was going to be trapped eventually by this line of questioning.

  “What about us as roommates? Was that a choice or not?”

  “Your choice.”

  “Yours, too. You could move out whenever you wanted to. Or I could kick you out at any time.”

  Blair wrapped his arms around his chest, as though bracing himself for whatever Ellison was going to say next.

  “What about us as partners at the station? Choice or not?”

  “Choice, obviously. All yours.”

  “If Simon were to change his mind, you’d be out,” Ellison pointed out.

  “Or if you wanted me out, I’d be out,” Blair added, a hint of bitterness underscoring his words.

  “Or you could leave whenever you wanted to. You have a choice as well.” Ellison watched the emotions flicker across the young man’s face. “What about our friendship?”

  “What about it?”

  “Choice or not?”

  Blair shrugged. “Choice, I suppose.”

  “They say you choose your friends, but not your family.”

  “Yeah. What’s your point?”

  Darkness had fallen, the moon not yet risen. Ellison adjusted his sight. He needed to see Sandburg’s reactions to all this. “So, we both have choices as roommates, friends, and partners. Agreed?”

  Blair shrugged again, looking down.

  “Agreed?” Ellison repeated.

  “Yes,” Sandburg hissed. “You could dump me at any time.”

  He waited a few seconds, then said, very clearly, “Impossible.”

  There was a moment of stunned silence. “I thought we had just established that I was expendable?”

  Ellison’s hands moved to Sandburg’s shoulders. “What’s left, Chief? Roommates, partners, friends. What’s left? What brought us together in the first place?”

  Rain pattered around them, big icy droplets flung by the wind. Blair shivered again, a mixture of cold and fear shaking him. Then the anger burned out, leaving the young man sounding tired. “You’re a Sentinel,” he said, finally.

  “Yes. And you’re my other half, Chief.”

  Wide eyes looked up at him, numbed by the intensity of what he was feeling, but still not making the connection.

  “Just trust that, Blair. We’re in it together. For the long haul.”

  Sandburg was trembling, fear robbing him of making the leap to grasp hold of Ellison’s conviction.

  “Trust your instincts. Just like you and your mother,” Ellison continued, “this relationship between us was not a decision that was left for us to make. I believe, for whatever reason, someone or something greater than us brought us together. It was predestined. No choice. You could leave my side, move to a different continent, never speak to me again—and that relationship would still exist. When I’m talking about commitment, I’m just acknowledging what is already there, and I’m acknowledging that it is forever. Maybe it’s time we put that into words, a covenant of some kind. Regardless, we have no choice.”

  Ellison looked away, trying to reach for words again. “Simon’s son Daryl once referred to us as David and Jonathan. I got curious and looked it up. It says: ‘The soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as himself. And Jonathan made a covenant with David because he loved him as himself.’ That’s how I feel. We have knitted souls.”

  Blair’s breathing became ragged and this time when he pulled away, Jim let him go. At least Blair didn’t go far, just inside the tent, hunkering down in the corner as though escaping the rain and wind.

  Ellison let him be for a few minutes, stacking the wood he had cut and wrapping a tarp around the pile, keeping it dry for morning. He reached inside the tent and grabbed his toiletries kit from his bag, walking the short distance up the hill to the camp grounds’ public washrooms. A few cars were pulling out of the government campsite at this late hour, probably giving up on the weather and leaving before it got any worse. Headlights pierced his night vision, almost blinding him. He looked away, zeroing in on his rental car and the tent, then listening to the rapid heartbeat of his partner.

  The men’s washroom was bare of everything but the essentials. Cement floor and walls, large garbage cans, toilet cubicles to the left, showers to the right. A father was there with two young sons, yelling at them to hurry up washing their hands; he apparently wanted to get back to their trailer and watch the rest of the game on his portable television and they were dawdling in his opinion. Two teenagers came in, dangerously close to fighting, cursing and swearing at each other, one shoving the other up against the wall, clenched fists waving. Before Ellison could interfere, the father suddenly changed from aggressive toward his children to protective and picked up one child, shielding the other as he hurried them out of the washroom. The fighters exited as well, but headed in the opposite direction, away from the family and away from where Blair was.

  Ellison used the facilities, brushed his teeth, and headed back to his tent, rain lashing at his face. Twice he was stopped by campers who were wondering if he had heard the latest weather forecast. Was this going to end or not?

  He checked the tent when he got back, but the stakes were firmly in place, the outer flaps of the tent holding against the wind. A last deep breath, and he bent low and entered the tent.

  “Whew. Quite the storm out there,” he said lightly, relieved to see that Sandburg had turned on the kerosene lamp and was fiddling with the radio.

  “Yeah. Think the tent will be okay?” Blair didn’t sound worried, more like he was making conversation.

  “It should. I just checked it and it looks fine.” He pulled his wet jacket off, hanging it on a hook on the tent pole near the entrance. The tent was technically listed as a three-man tent, but he had no idea where they would put someone else. There wasn’t much room left, with all their stuff in it. “Hungry yet?” he asked.

  “Sure. I guess. What is there?”

  Ellison flipped open the cooler and rummaged around in it. “How about some sandwiches and a Coke? The fire’s out already. Didn’t last long in the rain.”

  Sandburg shrugged. “Why not? Listen, Jim, I’ll be right back. Just going to take a trip to the facilities myself.”

  “Don’t get lost. The power might go at any time. That wind is really blowing.”

  “Yes, mo—” Blair stopped short of saying ‘mom’, biting back on the word before it escaped his mouth. “I’ll be right back. There’s a game on the radio, if you’re interested. Vancouver Canucks versus New York Rangers. If you want, I mean.”

  “I’ll find it. Just go before it gets worse out there.” Ellison changed the dial on the radio, setting it on the closed cooler along with the two cans of pop. Normally they would have beer, but Blair’s medication precluded that. He tossed a tuna sandwich onto Blair’s sleeping bag. The game was already into the second period, but he left it on, knowing it would offer them something to do to ease the tension. Sure enough, when Blair returned, the previous conversation was ignored, and Sandburg latched onto the game, listening to it with an intensity that he had never shown before, cheering and groaning as though he were an avid fan of the team.

  An hour later, as the third period was past the halfway mark, Ellison watched Sandburg struggle to stay awake. There would be a window of time when the kid’s defenses would drop, just before he fell asleep, and that wa
s what Ellison was waiting for. He wanted to touch Blair and know that the connection was still there. That this emptiness between them was temporary. He wanted to get back on track with life. Right now, he felt caught in a major train derailment, everything scattered around him, useless.

  The wind was howling against the tent, shaking the canvas, rain smacking against the sturdy material. Maybe not the best weather to camp in, but it kept them inside, kept them in close enough quarters. It kept them together.

  Sandburg’s eyes closed, his head slowly falling forward as the tension left his muscles. Another few minutes passed, then Ellison sat up and reached for his partner, easing him gently to the sleeping bag. Just trust your instincts, Chief. They serve you right every time. Once asleep, Sandburg’s ‘instinctual behavior’ with the Sentinel fell into place. The absolute trust surfaced. The equally absolute comfort was evident as Blair didn’t waken when Jim shifted him to lie inside the sleeping bag.

  That was it, of course. It wasn’t anything Sandburg read, or studied, or ingested. It was that instinctual behavior that was the key. It was nothing that he did. It was who he was that had made him a part of Jim’s life forever.

  Now he just had to find a way to convince his partner of that.

  *

  Blair shivered, lifting his head to look around the tent. He wasn’t sure what had woken him, but the steady pounding of rain on the roof of the tent made him glad to be inside. Every minute or so, a gust of wind would shift the tent canvas, sending ripples across the surface. The moon was out, but hidden behind a lot of dark clouds, only the tiniest bit of diffused light showing through the dark canvas, but it was enough for him to see by.

  Jim was sleeping just a few feet away, his back to Sandburg. Blair studied the silent form, feeling isolated, miles apart rather than inches.

  Promises. Commitment.

  What kind of commitment was he supposed to make? If no commitments were made, nothing could be broken, right? He wouldn’t hurt anyone. Nothing would hurt him. Naomi had taught him about keeping things loose, breaking any ties that could later prove to be binding, changing his location as often as he changed his shirt. Sure, this was the best friendship he’d ever had, but friendships just happened. If you held on to them too tightly, they’d slip away.