DISCLAIMER: The Sentinel and its characters are the property of Petfly, Paramount, DiMeo and Bilson. This piece of fanfiction is written for the enjoyment of ourselves and others. No copyright infringement is intended. No money has exchanged hands.

RIPPLES by: Sharif (sharif@lsol.net) and Zamlo (nccs@xmission.com)

Jim Ellison heard the unmistakable engine of the Volvo while it was still blocks away. He set the book he had been reading down on the nightstand and glanced at the clock. 'That's odd,' he mumbled to himself, 'only l0:15. Blair shouldn't be home for hours yet.' As he said it everything fell into place and he knew exactly what had happened. Wouldn't his partner ever learn? Probably not. That spacey look in Blair's eyes last night had told him everything he needed to know, and as Simon would have said, 'more than I need to know.' Another roller coaster ride resulting in one broken-hearted anthropologist and he would have to pick up the pieces, yet again.

The engine cut off and the slam of the car door followed. Heavy footsteps echoed up to him as Blair trudged up the two flights of stairs. The key turned in the lock , then it was open and one dejected man flopped onto the couch. 'Do I let him know I'm awake and willing to talk or let it go for now?" Jim's thoughts warred with each other before deciding the point was mute. Blair would know he had heard him and besides the bedside lamp was still on. Strengthening his resolve to see this through, he called out. "Hey, Chief, everything okay? I didn't expect you home for a couple hours yet?"

"Fine, Jim. Just have an early day tomorrow." Sure, he'd believe that when pigs flew.

"It's still early, for you that is. How about I come down there and we talk?" Jim looked down from the balcony, noting the defeated slump of the shoulders in the leather jacket.

"Not tonight, Jim, okay. I'm really tired and have that meeting at the university. Besides there's really nothing to talk about." Blair was getting real good at handing out that line. All those negative experiences were paying off. 'Do I let it go or insist?' He didn't have time to decide as Blair got up and went to his room, closing the door none to gently behind him. Leaving no question as to the subject being closed. 'For now,' Jim thought.

Even with the door closed he could still hear Blair preparing for bed. The bedroom door opened and then he heard the toilet flush and water running in the basin. He fleetingly considered pushing the matter but then let it drop, maybe the distance the rest of the night offered would give them both some much needed perspective. 'Tomorrow, partner, tomorrow we talk.'

Jim could not sleep and from the sounds coming from the room below him, neither was Blair. He'd heard the laptop being turned on several hours ago, but nothing from it after that. Instead there was steady pacing of the small room. He tried to concentrate on other things, but finally gave in and let thoughts roam where they would.

Blair flitted from woman to woman, always hoping to find that one special one. He was absolutely sure each and every time it happened. He assured Jim over and over again that all was well and he was in complete control. 'Controlled pacing, maybe, but little else.' There was only one person to blame for this mess, heck all the romantic disasters, his partner had had. Naomi. He liked her well enough, what wasn't to like? She was pretty and fun, but eventually the fluff and nonsense began to wear on a person. As much as she had tried to steer her son in that same direction of detach with love nonsense it simply could not work. Blair didn't have that personality. Blair did become attached, something in him longed for and needed permanence. But he had no idea how to make it last. The problem being, of course, to get his partner to realize that on his own. Once he was aware of what was going on, he could do something to overcome it. 'If only it were as easy as that,' he thought, but knew better than that. Blair had some deep soul searching to do before he could even begin to come to terms with the problem.

The pacing below continued and then stopped as he heard the balcony doors open and a rush of cold air blow over him. It stopped as the doors closed softly again, Blair must not have known he was awake and was trying to keep it that way. 'I don't think so, buddy. Since we both can't sleep, I think it's time for that talk." Besides the night might be more conducive to this discussion, lending an air of privacy that the daylight could not offer. He got up and grabbed the robe from the foot of the bed and made his way downstairs, hooking the afghan from the back of the couch as he passed by. Jim opened the balcony door and slipped out beside his partner. "Mind if I join you. Doesn't seem to be a night for sleeping." He dropped the afghan around his partner's shivering shoulders.

"Thanks." Blair wrapped the blanket around himself. "Tried to sleep but the wheels just keep spinning, can't stop them or turn them in a different direction no matter how I try."

"I think that would mean you need to get what's ever bothering you out into the light, talk it out with some who understands."

"What is going on, Jim? If you know tell me, cause it's driving me nuts. I have all these thoughts running around, but I can't make any sense of them." Blair sat in one of the patio chairs and Jim took the other.

"That's where I come in. Start talking and I'll listen., it won't work the other way around. Start with what happened tonight." Jim felt the cool air start to seep in and turned the dial down a little. This was too important to his friend to let a little cold interfere.

"That's part of the problem. I don't know what happened tonight. Stacey is fun and pretty, we got along great. I thought everything was going along fine. Then tonight she got all defensive and said that I didn't love her and had just been leading her on to get what I wanted. That really hurt. I never stepped over that line. I tried to give her what she wanted, what I thought she needed, but obviously I've missed the boat somewhere along the line because now all of a sudden I don't love her. Came from right out of the blue with that. I didn't know what to say. What to do."

"You didn't know what to say or do, but how did you feel?" He had no idea if he was going about this in the right way, all he could do was plow ahead and hope for the best.

"Feel? I felt betrayed I guess. After the past few weeks I thought we understood each other, what we wanted and where we were headed."

"And where would that be?'' Jim gazed out over the bay, hoping they were at least headed in the right direction.

"Friendship, of course. Companionship. Someone to spend quality time with and maybe, eventually, something more permanent than that."

"Ah, I think you may have just found the key word there, Chief. Eventually. Do you think that's what Stacey was looking for?"

"Of course it was. She wanted that as much as I did."

"I don't disagree with you on that one. Don't you think that the question here might be when she wanted it, not if she wanted it."

Blair shivered again before continuing, "I don't know, Jim. We never really sat down and discussed it in precise terms. I just assumed she knew we would get to that point some day. You think she wanted that now and somehow sensed that I didn't, couldn't commit to anything right now?"

'Maybe we're getting somewhere now.' The pain in his friend's voice as he expressed this newly discovered awareness made him feel a deep anger toward Naomi. How did one tell his best friend that he had a flake for a mother? How could she have been so blind to what she was doing to her son? "I think there's a pretty good chance."

"But I'm not ready to settle down, Jim. Not yet."

"You came right out and told her this?"

"No, guess I just sorta assumed she knew."

"Maybe you were the person she wanted to spend the rest of her life with. Things started to heat up, you started getting closer, and then she starts picking up on these vibes. She's ready now, but you're still holding back. Suddenly you're going nowhere." Now that he had started he might just as well continue full speed ahead. "Why?"

"All my life we've moved from one place to another, never staying long enough to really feel like we had a home. I don't think I could even begin to name all the men that have passed through my life via Naomi. I've been left with more relatives and friends than I could even begin to count. Not until you let me move in here with you have I ever had a real home. I guess I didn't realize how much my mother's lifestyle had affected me. It scares me to death to even think of settling down with someone. I don't mean to hurt anyone, Jim. Just seems like I can't help myself. Guess when things start to get too serious I back off, big time."

"Is that why you never followed through on your promise to visit Kate and Rachel?"

Blair looked up surprised. "How did you know I promised to visit them?"

He grinned. "That's a rather dumb question for a guide to ask his sentinel, don't you think?"

Blair grinned back. "Yeah, I guess it is. And in answer to your question I suppose that's why I didn't go back. What on earth do I have to offer? She's been through so much and still is willing to reach out and trust. What if I let her down? She could have been the one, at least I thought that at the time............Maybe I'm always thinking that, huh? Always looking but never finding. Not because it's not there to find, just because I'm not able to see it."

'Maybe the light is beginning to come on.'

"Out of all the men in my mom's life, Carl was the one I wanted Naomi to stay with. I really felt like he cared about me. I didn't feel like he was just using me to get to Naomi."

Blair seemed to lose himself in his memories. After giving him a moment Jim asked, "How old were you when Carl and Naomi were together?"

"I was almost twelve when they met and he was with us until I turned fourteen.. I remember when Naomi decided to move on. I saw the regret in his eyes and knew that he had hoped it would have worked out. He put his arms around me when we left and patted me on the back. He told me to be a good kid and take care of my mom. He said, never lose your way, Blair. Be all you want to be and don't be afraid to let other people in to stay. I wondered about that at the time and now I understand that he saw I was becoming just like Naomi, rootless and unattached. I made up my mind right then and there that I would never hurt anyone like my mom had hurt him. Yet that's what I keep doing. By trying to protect them I keep on hurting them, and myself. Some part of me just keeps pushing the women in my life away. And the silly thing is, I have no idea how to stop."

Jim watched his young friend with an aching heart. How did one unlearn a behavior that had been a pattern in his life since infancy? "I think you've taken a pretty big step in that direction, just by realizing and acknowledging that the problem exists. Now that you're aware of it you can take steps to correct it. It didn't happen overnight and it's not going to go away overnight. A good start might be to see a therapist. You didn't create the problem on your own and I don't see how you're going to solve it on your own."

He saw the pain in the young man's eyes, and wondered at the demons and monsters Blair carried in the recesses of his mind. Somehow Blair always managed to get him to talk about his suppressed memories of Peru and his childhood, but what of Blair? How many suppressed memories did he have lurking around, waiting to trip him up? How could a boy be raised by so many surrogate fathers without being emotionally, and perhaps even physically abused? No, it would take more than the two of them to set things straight, but they had started. That's what was important.

"Jim, what do I do about Stacey?"

"For now I don't think you do anything. If you go back and try to work things out before you're ready the same thing is going to happen again. The cycle will just keep going on and on. If she's the right girl for you she's not going to be able to just go on like it never happened. Once you know where you're coming from maybe you can go back and start all over again from the beginning. If she is the one, she'll still be there."

"Jim?"

"Yeah, partner?" Jim looked over and saw the smile creep across the moon dusted face.

"I'm cold." Said with a perfectly straight face.

How does one go from such an intense discussion to such an inane remark? Only Sandburg could pull that one off.. He grabbed Blair around the neck with one arm and messed the curly mop with the other. "Come on, Junior." Jim let go and pushed him toward the doors. "Let's go find us some hot chocolate."

"With marshmallows?"

"Is there any other way?" Blair would find his answers, he was sure of that. And just in case he took some detours, Jim would be there to help him find his way once more.

"