Seek
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.