"No! This can't be all."

I bent to pick them up. "I'm sorry, Chief. Your friends searched everywhere."

"I have to see again! I'm going to be a *cop*. Who ever heard of a blind cop? Damn!"

He began to rage and curse, pounding on his bed, his pillow...me. I let him. He kept going until he collapsed in my arms, still hitting me weakly. I held him until he fell into an exhausted sleep.

"Jim? Jim?"

I blinked myself awake. "Ch...chief? You okay?"

"I don't know, but...I gotta live with this, right?"

"We don't know..." I ran a hand over my hair. Blair's was tangled and his beard was getting long. I'd have to get hold of a razor and take care of that for him. Blair hated looking unshaven. I'd have to get him a comb, too. I couldn't help hoping he'd let me take care of it for him. It had been a long time since I'd brushed his hair.

"Yeah, well, whatever I do won't hurt if I do see again."

I nodded and then hit myself. "Point. What do you want to do?" Blair was sounding more himself - at least the himself of the past few weeks.

"Find out when I can start learning to, you know. Live with this. Function. Get on top of it, maybe. And you...you find me books on the subject. Please?"

"Anything you want, Blair." I took his hand again. "I'll be here."

"You're going to have to go back to work."

"I've done the paperwork on Manzo. They found the last bunch of gems hidden in his mattress. The insurance company is paying the jewelers off. I'm free. Simon's giving me vacation."

"You got that coming, I guess."

"And when that runs out, I'll take a leave of absence."

Blair sat up. He scrunched his face against the pain and dizziness. When that wore off, he turned to me. "You will do no such thing. Once I start, you know. Learning....I'll be busy. You might as well work."

"Simon'll chain me to a desk without you." I forced a laugh.

"Good. Then I won't have to worry about you." His laugh sounded forced, too. "I'll bet there are all sorts of gadgets I can use...even stuff I can add to my desktop to make it more usable. I have students...had students...who couldn't see. They managed. I'll manage."

He did manage. His therapists and instructors were amazed at how fast he progressed. I wasn't. This was Blair, after all. He was going to get on top of his blindness.
***********

"Hey, Ellison! Where are you."

"Right here, Sandburg. Just ten feet away."

There were chairs and a table between us. Blair knew that. He didn't know where they were.

"Just keep talking, man. I'll get you."

"Hurry. Man-eating shark behind me. Save me, Sandburg!"

Blair laughed and, using his white cane, poked and prodded the obstacles, confidently walking around them and towards me. As he did, I kept yelling how the sharks were coming closer and he had to hurry.

He was walking normally, picking up his feet. He'd shuffled the first day, but hated the way it felt and sounded. So, he changed it.

And then he found me and I hugged him. "You saved me!"

"You idiot!" He gave me a huge smile and a bigger kiss. "I love you, you know."

"Never would have guessed." He tilted his face up at me. I tried to look at his eyes. Individually, they were still beautiful, but all of their animation was gone. Blair wasn't there anymore. I held him tight.

"They're letting me go tomorrow, you know."

"I heard."

"They're springing for good behavior. This means I can survive in a house now without a sitter." He had every right to be bitter. He just sounded resigned. "And then I get to start taking the bus to school and learning how to read and write again."

"You'll do fine. You did it once, right?"

"So they tell me. You get to check my homework, too."

"Looking forward to it, Chief." The lie didn't stick in my throat. I was learning.

Unfortunately, he didn't.

"Damn! I'll *never* learn this!" He tossed his slate across the room, narrowly missing me.

"Hey, watch your pitching, Roger Clemens." I bent to pick it up. "Give it time. You've only been trying a couple of weeks."

"I can't even feel if it's one dot or two, man. My fingers aren't sensitive enough. I'm going to need someone to read to me for the rest of my *life*. And I *hate* being read to."

He did. Before, if I'd read him more than one paragraph of an article, he'd grab it out of my hand to finish it, and if he couldn't, he'd squirm. "Didn't Naomi read to you?"

"Why do you think I learned to read at three? She always took too long. Dammit! Take that thing away." I'd tried to put the slate back his hands, but he brushed it away. "I'm sick of those little dots. I'd have to be...I'd have to be a sentinel to do anything with them...Hey!" He grinned at me.

"Uh-oh. I know that look. That's the 'let's test Jim's senses' look." That was a look I thought had disappeared forever during a press conference that haunts my nightmares. I had to fight to keep a growl in my voice. God, he looked beautiful.

"Let's see how you do with the little dots. You're good with codes, right?"

I nodded. He handed me his primer. There were print instructions along with the Braille. Patiently, he taught me the basics - he knew something even though he couldn't sense it. To his surprise, and mine, as he did, his fingers became more accustomed to the "dots."

As for me..."Chief! I *see* them!"

"Of course you do, Jim."

"No, my eyes are closed. I *see* the letters with my fingers. It's as clear as if my eyes were open."

Blair actually bounced. "Synesthesia! That's sooo cool. You know, I'll bet that if that Golden hadn't worn off, you'd have adjusted just fine to lack of vision. Maybe that's why you were so calm about it. I gotta note this down...oh." The bouncing stopped as his face fell.

I picked up his hand as it rested on the table between us. "Why don't you? I mean, your friend Roger is working hard on that peer review...and even if it didn't, why waste it?"

"What's the point? Even if...if I get reinstated, I can't read anything. I can't write anything. I'm useless." He pulled his hand free and rubbed his eyes. He did that a lot.

Even though he couldn't see it, I shook my head. "I don't believe you're saying that. That is *not* the Blair Sandburg I fell in love with."

"No. *He* could see. *He* was going to be a cop. *He* didn't need you for everything." He pushed himself away from the table and walked towards the couch.

"*He* didn't let anything stop him. *He* could make a weapon out of a vending machine or a baseball. And...Blair..." He turned to face me. "I fell in love with you because I wanted you and I needed you. And I will always need you. Look at this...synesthesia thing. This is something we need to explore more." I walked to the couch and sat next to him, placing my hand in his. He took it.

"I still can't read. I still can't be a cop or a professor."

"You'll find ways. You already cook. You've memorized the bus schedule and the number of every taxi company in Cascade. You've figured out ways of adjusting that amaze even that idiot they sent to teach you."

"You want me to just...accept this?"

"Hell, no. I want you to fight it. I want you to be Blair Sandburg, too stupid-stubborn to know that the fighting is over. Someone who..." I reached out and gathered him into my arms. He wrapped his arms around me and held me tight.

"Someone who gave up because someone else was unscrupulous?"

"Yeah. I want that Blair back, whether you're blind or a cop or a professor, or *all* three. I don't care. I need you and I miss you. Are you still there?"

He smiled at me in a way he hadn't smiled since before the accident. "Yeah. I think I can find...me again. If you'll help?"

I nodded, and checked myself. "We'll look together. I love you."

"I love you, too." We hadn't kissed since the accident - when I tried to initiate anything, he just said his head still hurt or he was tired. He was still sleeping in my bed, but after a brief cuddle at night, we just went to sleep.

This kiss felt like the first one did, that night we came back from Sierra Verde. He was sweet and hesitant and passionate all at the same time, and I responded with every ounce of my being - every nerve tingled as I focused my concentration on that one point of contact, our mouths. I drowned in it, I reveled in it, I nearly zoned in it except that his arms were around me and I could feel them...and then other senses kicked in and I was hearing his taste and smelling his touch and I can't describe all of it, except that it had never happened before.

And then he led me upstairs with strength and confidence and pulled me to the bed, and we were kissing again and holding each other and then he was naked and I was naked and we were touching all over, and I could feel each curl on his chest rub against mine, and the hardness between his legs rub my belly and it was enough and not enough and never enough.

He fumbled through my night table drawer and came up with a tube of lube and a condom and slipped the condom on me, and I took the lube and prepared him, gently, lovingly, as I had so many and so few times in the past and he lay on his stomach and opened for me, not in surrender but in need and desire and love. Then I was inside of him, and he was around me and together we moved and pounded and I think I forgot where I left off and he began as my senses began to truly merge until finally I crested on a wave of pleasure and heard him gasp beneath me. Eventually, I slipped out and we cleaned up and then he took me in his arms again.

"You do, don't you?"

"Yeah, Einstein. You're...I don't want or need anyone else."

"I'm not going to let this beat me."

"No, you aren't."

"I'll call Roger tomorrow. Tell him that I'll do anything he wants me to do. And then we invest in voice recognition software and see what else I can do. And we'll talk to Simon. Must be some use for a blind man in CPD, somehow."

"If there isn't, you'll find one, and then we'll wonder how we managed without you."

"Don't let me give up again."

"I'll beat you up if you do." I held him closer.

"Promise?"

"Promise."

************************

"Sandburg! What are you doing here?" Simon stood up from my desk.

"Just came to pay my partner a visit. Hi, Jim." He walked over and kissed me. No one blinked an eye - over the past several months, they'd all seen it before.

I kissed him back. "Hi, yourself. How did things go at the university? There's a chair just to your right."

"Thanks." He found it and sat down.

"University? What's going on?"

Blair grimaced. "I'm going in front of a peer review next week. Today was a preliminary meeting. They're going to look over all my data. It's going okay...I think maybe...I can kiss the possibility of tenure goodbye, but I'll get that doctorate without compromising Jim. I wish...I wish my eyes looked normal." He automatically rubbed at them at those words. "I don't want it because of, well, sympathy for the blind guy."

There was no answer for that. There was no way of knowing. So I just squeezed his hand.

That's when all hell broke loose.

"Simon! It's the chief. Water main explosion six blocks away. Street's completely flooded, power and utilities down in that area. They need all of us!"

Simon grabbed the phone. "Yes, sir. In charge of...yes, sir. I know many valuable...yes, sir. We'll be right down." He hung up. "Gentlemen, we have a bomb to investigate, and victims to help.
Oh, and things to guard. If we get around to it. Let's roll!"

Blair got swept up with the rest of us. For the first time in months, I felt whole, with my partner by my side. Once we were there, he came with us to investigate the bomb.

"Are you sure about this, buddy? Maybe you should go home or back to the PD?"

"I'm here. Let me help. I don't need eyes for this."

And he didn't. He helped me filter out extraneous sights and smells and zero in on the unusual make up of that explosive, which was enough to pin it on one of our local terrorists. And to find and defuse a second bomb.

He wouldn't come home even after we sent Megan and Henri off to pick the bomber up. I couldn't leave, either. The EMTS were overwhelmed and needed what help they could get, so I volunteered my services. Meanwhile, Blair found a table and a chair, and somehow - don't ask me how - he started taking charge of services, making sure everyone had food and something dry to wear, and generally working with the crews. They all instinctively went to Sandburg first if they had help to give or needed help themselves. He was always in the center of the fray, constantly talking on his cellphone, smoothing things over as only he could.

A few hours later, the last of the victims had been packed off to the various hospitals and everyone else was sent home - we were all grateful no one lived in the area. That wasn't strictly true, but Blair found places for the homeless to go. He seemed to have all those numbers simply memorized.

I found him ready to bounce out of his seat. His hair was flying, his face was smudged from who knew what, and he was grinning. "Oh, God, Jim. That was exhilarating. All those people!"

"You did a great job, Chief." I sat down and hugged him.

"You certainly did." Simon came walking up. "I don't know how we would have managed without him. You know he got half the university out here?"

"Yeah...with food and blankets." It was amazing what a couple hundred willing kids could do.
 
Blair shrugged. "I did what I could."

"Could you do it again?"

"Excuse me, Simon?"

"Could you do it again? Could you...come work for the department and do this sort of thing?"

"Don't you have people for this? Disaster relief?"

"None who also have ties to non-agency groups. You have connections everywhere."

Blair grinned. "I do, don't I? I could...I could do this. I really could!"

"Excellent. I'll clear this with the commissioner, but I think you'll be back on the payroll soon."

"Um... Simon. I was never *on* the payroll."

"Then you'll be getting a raise." He squeezed Blair's shoulder and left. Blair grinned all the way home to the loft.

********'

Blair dished up the pasta and sauce and brought the bowl and a bottle of wine to the table. I took the wine bottle and poured us both wine as he served out the meal.

"Simon missed you today."

"No one to be a liaison between city services and the PD?"

"That *is* your job, Chief."

"That's one of my jobs." He smiled at me and expertly twirled his spaghetti.

"I know. Simon wants you there full time. You know that. You don't need to keep teaching."

Blair shook his head. "I need the university affiliation right now. They cleared my name, but I need to finish publishing those last couple of papers to justify the doctorate. One more."

"Anyway, you love teaching."

"I love *you*. Right now, you can *have* teaching. Freshman!" He shook his head, but his grin was brilliant. "I'm glad you told me to fight that day. Even if I still can't do that damn Braille."

"I don't know. You did a good job reading me last night." I chuckled.

He tossed a roll at me. Hit me, too.

Copyright 2000 Debra Fran Baker and NightRoads Associates

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