It taunted him, lingering always just beyond his reach, always present, but never really there. Like the faintest echo of a distant whisper, a flicker of movement just beyond the edge of vision, or a barely felt breath of air brushing him in the wake of another's passage. Like the faded scent brought in by the breeze, of something long since gone, or the taste of something remembered, never known. It haunted him.

He found himself reaching out, only half consciously, trying to grasp at that elusive sense of something there, or perhaps it was more of illusive, for he never managed to find it, much less identify what it was, even when he all but zoned out, extending his senses to their limits, and then some; far beyond what he would ever have believed possible.

Blair would have believed in it, certainly. It seemed there was nothing the former anthropologist thought impossible for his senses, be it detecting some inconceivably minute particle, usurping his reason like some humiliating parody of animal instincts, or wonder of wonders, contacting the restless souls of the unquiet dead. Perhaps that was why he never spoke of it to his friend, never asked him to help pin down this damnably incomprehensible, unquantifiable feeling; he was afraid the scientist in Blair would somehow manage to capture it, drag it into the light and strip away the mystery, the wonder of it, of this thing that could defy even his senses and unsettle the fierce black spirit that watched his every move with glowing eyes. And while the process of analyzing it, of reducing it to its components might be wonder enough for the younger man, sometimes he needed the reassurance of knowing that some things remained unknowable and unquantifiable.

Unknown.

* * *

"Jim," said Simon, sounding a little tired. "I can't join you for the Jags game tonight. Daryl's been in a car accident. No," he added, anticipating his next question, "Joan says it's nothing serious, but I just need to go see for myself...you know," he finished uncomfortably, as if he'd said too much.

Perhaps he had. He thought he should know what Simon was talking about, and he did, but there was something...in the tone of his voice, maybe, that seemed to hold echoes of that feeling, only he'd been sensing it even before Simon's call, hadn't he? Aware that he'd been silent too long, he replied, "Sure," hating the non-committal sound of the word, nothing that a friend should sound like. "See you tomorrow then."

He considered calling Steven for a moment, but the idea held no resonances for him, and he did not act on it.

* * *

A bright spot of color at the base of a tall pyramid of canned drinks caught his eye, and he zoomed in on a fallen Barbie in a slinky red dress, drawing his attention somehow. He walked over and picked it up, studying it as he scanned his memory to see if he'd seen it dropped, or knew whom it might have belonged to. Nothing came to him, save for the feeling that there was something about the doll that was important, like the odd tone in Simon's voice.

It seemed an ordinary enough doll, staring up at him with big blue eyes, a mass of golden hair... Unbidden, the image of a woman rose in his mind, or memory; beautiful, blond, blue-eyed, her lips full and ripe, her body lush with the promise of life, of continuance...

"Donkey Kong!" squealed a high childish voice, breaking through his reverie with delighted giggles, and for a moment he was confused, failing to understand the reference. Then as the scandalized mother tried to hush the boy, and laughter hastily muffled around him, he looked around, saw the drink-tower, and the blond, scantily clad female in his hand, and had to smile too.

"I'm very sorry, my little girl dropped this," said an anxious voice, and a short-haired, professional-looking woman moved forward, holding a sniffling, red-eyed child by the hand. He handed the doll over to the little girl, smiling at the way she grasped at it like it was some precious treasure, and perhaps it was, to the child beaming up at him in almost adoring gratitude.

He received their thanks as the gathered people dispersed, watched them leave, the mother admonishing her daughter to take more care with her toys, and thought of Carolyn. How was she now? He thought of the way their marriage had ended, and thought they were lucky they'd not stayed in love long enough to have children.

What would these last few years have been like if they had? Would they still be married now? What of his senses? And he remembered the overwhelming passions for the rogue sentinel that had surged through him, and wondered if their progeny would have shared these senses. Tried to remember what it had been like for him, imagine what it would have been like for them...wondered...

...no wonder he could never trace the source of the sensation...

* * *

He thought, almost before the waiter arrived with their orders, that this had been a mistake. But since he'd made the invitation, it would have been more than rude for him to be the one to cut the evening short. He wasn't ready when the bomb finally dropped, though he should have been, considering how unusual his living arrangements were for someone his age, and under the circumstances. She still remembered the furor over the dissertation. If only she knew the magnitude of their fraud, his and Blair's, but...

"Why are you still living with that person? How are you going to start a family with him there?" Fair questions to ask, he supposed, if rather unexpected for a first date.

"I'm afraid to live without him," he wanted to say, and nearly did, except that he knew what it would sound like, and it was not that he was afraid of what she would think, but that to compare what he had with Blair to anything so simple, so common seemed a gross insult to everything Blair was to him, because Blair was so much more.

So he said nothing, and pushed food around his plate, his silence expressing all he lacked the eloquence to explain, his unwillingness to lie and find some way to excuse Blair's presence in his life, as if it needed justification, like it was something sordid and shameful. How...he wondered...did Blair explain things on his side?

She chose to misunderstand anyway, and her face flushed, turning ugly with disgust and resentment. "I'm not going to be your cover for your relationship with your 'partner'," she hissed as she stood, making the word sound dirty, which it wasn't. "Find someone else for the job. Have a good life."

He did not bother to correct her, or watch her departure.

* * *

Blair barely acknowledged his return, hunched over crumpled maps, smudged and dog-eared reports, and his own copious notes in deep concentration, glasses sliding down his nose as he frowned, chewing on the end of his pen thoughtfully. He removed his coat and hung it, then wandered into the kitchen to get himself a drink. He considered it a moment, and took out another bottle for Blair.

"Any luck?" he asked, more to make conversation than in any serious expectation that there had been any breakthrough; had there been, he would have been enthusiastically updated on the developments as soon as he walked in the door.

"No more than you, it seems," shot back his partner, still halfway distracted by the shifting reams of paper. For a moment, he flashed back to an image, much like this one; Blair, surrounded by term papers, scowling at them through the glasses perched precariously on the end of his nose as he nibbled on the end of his red pen. Only a moment, as the other continued, still poring over his work. "You're back early. Date didn't go well?"

"Much as might be expected, Chief," he said, setting the extra bottle in front of Blair. "She wasn't our killer," he added, to see if Blair would take notice. The younger man did look up then, and flashed a quick grin at the reference to his checkered history with women.

"That's supposed to be a good thing, you know. You sound disappointed."

He only shrugged, absently running the beer through a brief sensory test just for the sake of having something to do, finding no unusual substances that did not belong in a beer. Safe, or as safe as it could get.

"What did happen?" Blair asked after a moment, pushing aside the papers to gaze up at him in genuine concern.

"She thought I was planning to use her as cover for our relationship," he answered honestly.

Blair laughed then, the sound quicksilver and brittle. "Weren't you?" He had nothing to say to that, and smiled back, reassured somewhat by the show of good humor.

"Need any help with those?" he asked, settling down beside Blair, drawing comfort from the one certainty in his life. Blair moved to one end of the couch to make room for him. They continued studying the mess in companionable silence, broken only by the rustle of paper, and the occasional bathroom break. There was progress; not much, but enough that they would have something to show for the efforts of the night, and a few new leads to chase down.

"Have you ever thought about marrying, starting a family?" he asked, during a lull in the turning of papers. Blair spared him a brief look of surprise, blinking owlishly at the non-sequitur, then that naked expression was quickly shuttered, turned into a wicked grin, like he used to wear so long ago.

"Taking care of you is already a full time job, man," he chuckled and returned to flipping through his notes, clearly dismissing the topic. "Where would I find the time for a wife and kids?"

He considered the sober, still form bent over the papers strewn over the coffee table, muttering imprecations about the probable ancestry of the perpetrator, thought, 'This is a full-time job too.' And the Sentinel resumed his post.

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