Brothers in Arms, a Sentinel story following the
episode Warriors, by Glacis. Rated NC17 for
explicit language and homoeroticism. All characters owned by Pet Fly et al, no
infringement intended. Enjoy!
It had been a hell of a few days. The blood stains from Incacha's last moments on Earth still covered the couch, to
Sentinel vision, even after the best efforts of the dry cleaners. Only new
upholstery and a lobotomy would take that image from him.
Jim Ellison, lately Sentinel of the Chopec and now Sentinel of the
How could he have forgotten *that*?
The Chopec were not a simple people, no matter
how 'primitive' the Western culture might claim them to be. The tribal
structure was hierarchical, with the Shaman and the tribal Elders sharing the
burden of guiding the Tribe. When the Sentinel was added to the mix, the
responsibility of protecting was added to that of guiding, and his place was by
the Shaman's side. All the time. Day
and night. He had remembered the days.
Somehow, he had forgotten the nights.
One whispered name and he had remembered again.
Sparkling black eyes, inquisitive fingers, strong, lithe body, delight
pouring from him, first at Sandburg's unknowing signing of 'lovers' for
'partners' (how could the scholar have known that the sign for 'friends' in
English meant 'soul mates' in Chopec?), then at the
aboriginal music pouring from the stereo speakers. He had forgotten how full of
life his Shaman was.
Had been.
Gutted by greed, as their land had been, as their
people had been. All that sparkle, all that passion, gut shot by a
greedy man with a gun and no morals, a dying man running to the one place he
knew he must go before his spirit lost contact with his body. Ellison would
have given years off his life to know what had passed between Blair Sandburg
and Incacha in the minutes before he flew through the
door of the loft. His roommate had looked so panicked, and not just because he
couldn't do anything to help the wounded man lying on the couch. There was
something more.
He knew it when Blair touched him, in the middle of an argument over the
body Incacha had left behind. There were rituals, he
had howled. No pictures, leave him alone, there were
things that had to be done -- and his partner had touched him, reined in his
anger, his despair, his grief, refocused his driving need to DO SOMETHING back
to the living and away from the dead. Then, when the murderers had been
captured and the remaining tribesmen had vanished back the way they had come,
then ... his Chief had stood beside him, and the rituals had been performed,
and the body had been returned to the arms of the Earth.
Staring out at the glide of dying sunlight off the sliver of a gull's
wing, ears filled with the driving rhythm of a different people's drums, nose
tickled by the scent of sandalwood smoke in the air, thoughts drifting years
and miles and a life away, Jim remembered.
The music wasn't helping. Blair had done his best to center himself,
burning the sage earlier while Jim had been away at the station tying up some
of the loose ends still left dangling from the latest deaths to touch their
lives. The sandalwood masked it from his own sense of
smell, but he knew Jim was still bothered by it. Three sneezes less than a foot
past the threshold had told him that. But there hadn't been any complaint, not
even a dirty look. Nothing.
So he had settled himself in the center of the rug, aboriginal drums
thrumming quietly along his nerves, eyes shut against the intrusive twilight
coming in through the large windows. Against the silent presence of his
Sentinel, who had yet to say a word to him.
Some shaman he was.
Go to the place where the animal spirit is. Do I know where that is?
C'mon, man, do I look like I know what I'm doing? Do you SEE any kind of road
map here? I am so far out of my depth here I feel like a guppy swimming down
the Amazon with the piranha. But you did it, didn't you, big guy? All by yourself.
It's not like you needed me, or anything.
Well, with my headphones, but essentially, by yourself. He settled
further into the meditative trance, shifting his hips, straightening his spine,
allowing his thoughts to wander, since any degree of discipline he'd ever been
able to muster was sure as hell missing tonight. Had been missing, since a
bleeding, dying Chopec Shaman had lurched into his
arms and muttered something indecipherable in his ear, then slid one hand
unmistakably from the top of his throat to the base of his balls, and smiled
into the side of his neck.
Hadn't been a come-on. For god's sake, the guy was dying. It had been ... approval. A blessing, of a sort. What sort, the young anthropologist
wasn't quite certain, but the approbation in the gesture was as unmistakable as
the movement itself. Then the smile had disappeared into a grimace of pain, and
he'd recovered from his shock long enough to half carry Incacha
to the couch. Working on autopilot, he'd punched the fast dial on the cell
phone, the one that always rang through, ever since Lash, and told Jim that his
best friend from the jungle was currently bleeding to death and he'd better get
his butt in gear and get home. Jim had made the twenty minute drive in nine
minutes. Incacha had stared at Blair the entire time.
Blair had very nearly freaked.
Then ... then the Chopec warrior had held his
arm in an unbreakable grip, and he had felt ... something ... move between
them. And the 'very nearly' became 'totally'. He was still shivering, in a
corner deep inside himself, feeling those fingers, feeling that hand, not
understanding the smile in those pain-stricken dark eyes. Autopilot had worked
well in the ensuing day, keeping his grief at losing an old friend at bay,
helping him help Jim ensure that the proper protocols were respected and that Incacha was not defiled by an alien culture's idea of right
and wrong. But the shivers were still there. And he could only sustain a
freaked out state for so long before he began to shut down. So, before that
happened, he tuned out the world, tuned into the rhythm of the Earth and his
own heartbeat, and burrowed down as deeply into himself as he could reach,
trying to find the face of the thing that was frightening him so very badly.
A muffled rustle of fabric from his Guide's direction brought Jim back to
Cascade for a brief moment. A quick scan of the younger man's heart rate,
perspiration and breathing pattern showed that he wasn't physically distressed,
and the determined relaxation of his meditative pose showed that any mental or
emotional distress was currently off limits. Unwilling to force the issue,
Ellison moved as quietly as he could through the loft, up the stairs, and to
his bed. Keeping one part of his attention focused automatically on Blair, he
efficiently stripped and slid between the covers. Expecting to lie there, mind
restless and body too keyed up to rest either, he was
asleep before he even realized his breathing had evened out.
This time, he didn't have a hunting rifle. His hands were empty. And so
was the jungle. No heartbeats. No Incacha. None of the Chopec. The trees were
bare, and blackened, uprooted and broken, what trees were left. The temple was
stark in the eerily silent landscape. He couldn't see another soul. Couldn't
hear them, couldn't smell them. The familiar taste of moist vegetation on the
air bathing his tongue was overlaid with a hint of smoke, a touch of coppery
blood, the flavor of devastation. The mist was cool on his skin, but it didn't
refresh him as it once had, even though he was sweating from the sticky jungle
heat, his heart pounding, muscles quivering with exertion. The mist made him
shiver.
He was lost.
Completely alone, and lost.
Trying to control the shivering running through his frame, he narrowed
his eyes, opened his senses, and began to hunt.
The deeper Blair sank into his trance, the quieter the drums became,
until they melded with his pulse and wove into the background, hovering on the
edges of his consciousness. He was quivering, now, as he reached the place
inside himself that Incacha had touched, reached out
to open the door to a world he had never seen before, and knew instinctively
had been inside him all his life.
His hair was longer. He could feel it brush his shoulders as he walked
through the stillness of the jungle. Thick cords bound hanks of it to either
side of his face, keeping it out of his eyes, while curls twisted over his
back. Soft, coarse material covered his thighs and was belted at his waist, and
rope sandals covered his feet. Looking down at his torso, he could see black
markings tracing his ribs through the pelt of auburn chest hair, and further
lines traced his shoulders, biceps, and forearms. His calves were ringed in
black, and he could feel the light greasiness of paint on the skin of his face.
Incacha's face swam before his eyes, and he knew in
that instant what he looked like. Red mask, cobalt eyes blazing from it, black
bracketing full lips, shadowing the cleft in his chin, laying in the hollow of
his throat.
Way cool. It would appear he was to be a Shaman after all. A Chopec one, at that.
He circled for what felt like hours, sweat running freely along his skin,
before his muscles gave out. He fell, numbed legs collapsing beneath him, hands
outstretched to break his fall. His fingertips scraped against rough hewn rock,
and he rolled over painfully onto his back, staring up, once again, at the
temple.
It was different.
The trees were thick with vines and leaves, again. The smoke was gone
from the mist. And he could hear sounds.
The faces appeared first, as they had when he had pulled himself up from
the wreckage of his chopper. Gradually their forms
solidified, long black hair swinging over slender, muscular shoulders, lengths
of dyed linen around their waists, bows and arrows in capable hands.
Dark eyes appraised him, accepted him, approved him.
They surrounded him. He reached out to them.
And growled.
It wasn't a hand. It was a paw, huge, covered in black fur.
Oh, shit.
This time he was on the other side of the animal spirit.
As he rose and shook the leaves from his fur, then loped silently into
the jungle followed by his pack of Chopec warriors,
he purred with each exhalation.
He could get to like this.
A delighted grin began to cross Blair's lips, when a heavy weight
suddenly landed on his back. To his own surprise, he didn't feel any fear. That
may have had to do with the fact that whatever had landed on him, pushing him
prone into the wet grass, was purring in his ear. And its breath smelled of
mint.
Before he could gather himself to push the relaxed weight off of him, he
felt fingers on either side of his jaw, cupping his face. He looked up and
froze.
Incacha smiled back down at
him. The black eyes were sparkling.
The purr was growing louder.
Reflected in those impossibly large dark eyes was ... a jaguar? A big, black, furry jaguar with very LARGE teeth? and golden eyes? and a wide, pink
tongue that was making its way along Blair's neck, into his ear?
The resulting tickling sparked a paroxysm of giggles. He twisted away
from Incacha's grip, looked over his shoulder at the
big cat, and froze again. It was -- melting? Morphing? Forming and reforming,
the broad nose sharpening, the eyes flickering between molten gold and crystal
blue, the chin squaring, the face lengthening ... It was Jim. No, it was the
jaguar. It was both? Neither? Both.
It was Blair. He was dressed as a Chopec
warrior -- no, a Chopec Shaman. Jim recognized the
marks. There was a hint of herbs, salt, and the unique essence that meant Blair
to him, tickling his nose, making his fur/hair bristle and his whiskers twitch.
Grinning to himself, caught up in a need he could
barely recognize, much less analyze, he leaped.
Incacha laughed.
Finally, the Sentinel was beginning to understand.
God, he was slow. It was Jim's animal spirit, of course. Before he could
berate himself further for the ridiculously long time it had taken him to
discover the identity of the furbag draped over his
back, he found his head taken firmly back into the dead man's hands.
Then the trance, or dream, or spirit walk, or whatever it was he was on,
really got strange.
Huge paws slid down his arms, extending them, not disturbing his warrior
markings in the least. They settled over his hands, claws sinking like pitons
into the soil, trapping his spread fingers against the ground. The paws
metamorphosed into hands traced with black, then back into paws. It was
fascinating. Except he couldn't watch for long. He was
distracted by a handspan of rough, nubby tongue, running along his back. There seemed to be
two jaguar spirits, or maybe more, he couldn't keep track, with the rough
caress of tongue running along his spine, running over his throat, running
between his thighs, running over his suddenly naked groin, lifting his
testicles and slapping against his erection. He didn't remember becoming
aroused, but there was no disputing the fact that he was. Because the jaguar,
or Jim, or something that was somehow both of them, still had his hands pinned,
and had managed to lift him to his knees. He was covered in the hot, silky
sensation of fur from his neck to his ankles, and yet, that tongue kept licking
at him, licking at him, pulling at his cock, driving him rapidly insane. He had
to come. Didn't dare come. God, what if it got hungry?
Before the gruesome thought could make it to its natural, or unnatural,
conclusion, the tongue extended. Or perhaps it was joined by another, it was
impossible to tell in this strange dreaming state.
Jim was splitting into parts, coalescing into a whirl of need around the
writhing body of his guide, his partner, his shaman, his Blair. He had to
touch, taste, breathe, hear, know every inch of
precious skin, every drop of precious fluid that was his mate.
Had to mate.
Had to.
Mate.
His mate.
His.
The tongue continued to work at his genitals, but gentle fingers spread
his ass cheeks at the same time, running with rough tenderness over his anus,
wetting it thoroughly, opening him effortlessly. A hard, hot, solid length
began to probe him, and he found himself pushing back against it. He wanted to
get away. Didn't he? But he was demanding it, demanding he be taken, wanting
that more than the fear that tried to make him run. His head was drawn up
higher, and he opened eyes he hadn't realized he'd shut. Incacha's
loin cloth had disappeared, and his cock was fully aroused, an inch from
Blair's lips. As Blair opened his mouth to protest the invasion between his
buttocks, Incacha thrust forward, over Blair's tongue
and down his throat.
Heat, invading him from both ends, a taste he had never known yet knew
intimately, a fullness that was both new to him and reassuringly familiar. His
fingers dug into the ground, arching like a cat kneading into the grass, in
perfect timing with the slow, deep double possession of his body. Long, sharp
teeth bit gently into the joining of his neck and shoulder, holding him, owning
him, marking him, claiming him.
He was on fire.
Orgasm ripped through him as the intruder buried in his guts convulsed
and reached for his heart, as the partner to it buried down his throat
contracted and spat. He was bathed in blood-warm seminal fluid, muscles seizing
with a force that wrenched mind from body, spirit from mind, threw him into the
fire and drew him forward into a blackness deeper than
any he had ever imagined.
All in all, it was one hell of a meditation session.
The sound of a keening wail broke through the fever of his dream, and
Ellison jolted back to wakefulness with a start that nearly sent him out of the
bed on his face. He was covered with sweat, trembling uncontrollably, and he
should have been covered with semen, since the quivering in his legs and belly,
not to mention the empty ache in his genitals, informed him that he had come
harder than he could ever remember coming in his life. His breath was rasping
in his lungs, sounding awfully familiar in a weird, purring sort of way ...
before he could complete the thought, the wail came again, short,
cut off by the gasp of needy lungs drawing in air in great gulps.
He had vaulted the side railing and was halfway down the stairs before
the first gulp finished. One step from the bottom, he froze.
Blair hadn't moved. He was sitting in a full lotus position, exactly
where he had been before Jim went up to bed. The backs of his hands were lying
along his knees, fingers slowly opening and closing, looking like the slender
claws of some large cat, kneading the air. His head was thrown back, baring his
throat.
There were tooth marks on it.
Jim's head came up, and he sniffed the air.
Mint. Herbs.
Sweat. Semen.
His body unfroze slowly, unwound from its place poised on the bottom step, feet carried him across the floor to stand behind his
Guide. His partner, who was trembling through the kind of orgasm that had just
shaken Jim clear to his own foundations. Blair's throat was convulsing, as if
he was swallowing, and Jim's eyes narrowed to slits as he followed the motion.
In the back of his mind, he heard Incacha cry out
softly.
He pounced.
Blair twisted in place, and met the pounce perfectly. Strong thighs came
up around Jim's waist as the Sentinel bore his burden down onto the floor.
Clawed hands ripped the Shaman's clothes from his body, leaving red marks
behind on fine-grained skin, causing the smaller man to shudder and press
closer against his mate. Knees were drawn up, skin was nipped and licked and
kissed, pressure gave way to pleasure. Sharp white
teeth bit deeply into soft skin and shivering muscle, a broad, furred chest
rubbed frantically against a broader smooth one, hips thrust down against
invasion, and joining became paramount to existence.
The Sentinel barely felt the heels digging into the small of his back,
the long fingers digging into his shoulders, as he lost himself in the heated
silk of his mate's body, the headiness of his scent, the strength of his
embrace, the soft strangled sounds of his moans. The Shaman barely felt the
sting of the bite at his throat, the hard floor beneath his shoulders, the
clenching fingers buried in his hair. His world consisted of heated strength
pouring into him, arms anchoring him, the sweet weight of his mate covering
him, the pounding of his heart in his throat.
When they eventually surfaced, they were wrapped as closely around one
another as two separate bodies could be without sharing one skin. Blair's head
was tucked under Jim's chin, hearts beating in synch with one another, arms and
legs entwined.
"That was so not what I was expecting," Blair finally managed
to whisper.
Jim tensed, then relaxed. "Is that a good thing or a bad thing,
Chief?"
Blair pried open one eye and tried his best to look indignant. It didn't
really work on features saturated with satiation. "Greatest,
man." He was quiet for a long moment, but Ellison knew it wouldn't
last, and it didn't. "I think I know what it was, Jim."
When no further information was forthcoming, the Sentinel gave in to the
inevitable and asked. "What what was,
Blair?"
"Sentinel and shaman. Partners. Need each other. Part
of each other. Bonded." He fought to get
the words out, exhaustion weighing him down.
Jim curled even tighter around him, settling him for the night, one long
arm reaching up and snagging the blanket from the side of the couch, pulling it
down to cover them both before he lost the battle to sleep himself. As he was
slipping into welcome darkness, wrapped up in Blair-scent and Blair-warmth, he
nestled his chin into his partner's sable curls.
"Warriors ... mates." The last word Blair forced out made Jim
smile. The phrase reminded him of something he'd heard years ago in the army.
Before
"Brothers in arms, Blair." Mates. His.
The jaguar growled softly.
In the mist, free to leave knowing that his Sentinel was safe in the arms
of his Shaman, Incacha
smiled, and slowly disappeared.
~~~finis~~~~