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Ellison Residence. Even on an audio recording, even without the benefit of enhanced hearing, the capital letters are obvious—a stern rebuke entertaining no argument or quarter. Any solicitation or harassment will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. If you have legitimate business, leave a message.
Beep.
“Hi, Dad. It’s, uh—it’s me. Jim,” Jim says intelligently, and wants to smack himself on the forehead for his clumsiness. It’d be a mercy if he could blame it on the early hour, since beams of light are barely beginning to peek around the skyscrapers outside—or if he could blame it on the recent spate of insomnia a white noise machine can’t cure.
But he’s tense. After the Foster case, no matter his immense relief upon seeing his father alive, it’s not like the communication floodgates opened. Hell, Jim hadn’t started exchanging more than mildly less icy birthday and holiday greetings with William or Steven by the time bloodthirsty reporters started hounding them, being unfortunate enough to share his last name. Then it was damage control, pulling strings and calling in favors, because if anyone was going to suffer for Jim Ellison being a freak, it wasn’t gonna be his father and brother, estrangement be damned.
And now to be crawling back like some schmuck, begging…
Fear can be one of your greatest allies, he hears Blair chime in, as clearly as if his partner were beside him and not traipsing around God-knows-where with Naomi, cleansing his ‘disturbed aura’ at her insistence.
Not that Blair had protested, because he’d sacrificed the most on the Altar of Ellison and they all knew it—yet he’d still held Jim’s eyes in a stare so compelling it could force a zone, force Jim to his knees if Blair only offered, and said firmly, “I’ll be back in a week and you’ll be here resting that banged-up leg of yours. All right?”
Good ol’ sense memory. Except Blair's never directly asked what the imaginary Blair asks next, pointedly: Is there anything more important than your pride, man?
Yeah, Einstein. You.
He tears away from the revealing spiral of his thoughts, realizing belatedly that he’s lapsed into an uncomfortable, awkward pause. The headache gathering behind his eyes sharpens. “Dad, whenever you get this, can you—”
“Jimmy?”
“Hey,” Jim says, surprised. There’s a slight hitch to his father’s breathing, but his ear doesn’t pick up any tissue-deep wheezing or crackling or stridor. It’s more like—
“I didn’t hear you at first; I was on the other side of the house,” William explains, and Jim nods slowly. Exertion; right. “Between Foster and now the national press, Sally’s been having a hell of a time these past months. Figured I’d better start screening our calls so she wouldn’t be accosted.”
Strange to know William is so eager to speak to him. Why would he book it through that massive emptiness just to pick up the phone? Why, with the way everyone’s lives have been upended—
God, what is there to say to that?
“You call just to talk, son?”
Jim’s elbows dig into his thighs as he leans over, a hand gripping tight around his portable, the other scrubbing, agitated, down his tired face. The loft is too quiet without the familiar thump of Blair’s heartbeat, Blair’s little noises of routine; the loft is too loud without Blair’s presence as a soothing buffer, the cacophony of nearby neighbors and city streets and the sound of existence pressing, intruding.
“Maybe,” Jim allows. “What I really need is your help, but I know I have no right—”
“Jimmy.” Normally Jim would be nothing but annoyed at the interruption, especially by a childhood nickname he hasn’t used in years—well, besides Carolyn, anyway. But irrepressible gratitude hits him square in the chest, making him light-headed, when William says solemnly, “Anything I can do for you, it’s yours.”
Or perhaps it’s the anticipation making him dizzy, the performance of it all; staring at an A-6 hand and deciding if he can fumble his way through a bluff. Obfuscation, man, imaginary Blair offers, and Jim shakes his head to clear it, helped by the pain that spikes through his left leg as he struggles to his feet. He glares at his cane, refusing to reach for it, choosing instead to hobble to the kitchen, where at least he can pace with plenty of countertops for balance, if necessary. “I’m asking, but technically it’s for Sandburg.”
Silence. Long enough Jim nearly bites out “never mind,” and hangs up—it’s on the tip of his tongue, forming, taking shape. Only his determination—his desperation—keeps him on the line, giving William time to ask, too even, “Did he put you up to this?”
“He doesn’t even know we’re having this conversation,” Jim retorts. “Do I pass inspection, sir?”
William sighs noisily. That’s more like it; that is a sound Jim remembers across the decades, an implacable steel wall to repeatedly crash against. “I’m not trying to fight you, here. Give me a reason why I should do a favor for a man who put our family in danger.”
“He’s my partner,” Jim says tightly. “I’d like to keep him that way.”
“What way?”
It’s the quiet, pointed question that finally breaks him, leaving him scrabbling, falling headlong without a parachute. “I don’t know. All I know is he gave up everything for me, do you get that?” He’s saying too much, he can’t stop, months of damning words he’s so carefully kept locked away tumbling free: “It wasn’t enough for me to kill him once; no, I had to do it again, slower, for a secret I was doing a piss poor job keeping anyway. Whatever you think he owes us, we owe him more.” He laughs, mirthless. “I need him, Dad.”
The enormity of what he’s admitted—what he’s never admitted aloud to himself, to his father, to anyone before—hangs heavy over the line. Jim’s heart pounds harsh and scraping in his chest; he barely hears his father’s plaintive plea over the roaring in his ears. “Just tell me all this wasn’t purposeful.”
“It wasn’t anyone’s fault,” Jim rasps. He doesn’t know he means it until he says it, and this new understanding is terrifying as it is freeing. “Sandburg refused to keep me in the loop about his dissertation. I refused to talk about it. Naomi did what she thought was best for her son, and it threw gasoline on a fire that was already there.”
William hums, a thoughtful sound. Jim pulls the phone away from his head for a moment—stares at it, nonplussed—before William adds, “I thought my first impression of him had been wrong. I’m glad that’s not the case.”
A flash of memory surfaces—staring intently across Manleo Field in the chilly drizzle, spotting his father’s bloodied face, Blair’s arm looped around William’s back, carefully supporting his weight as they emerged from the forest.
Not staying on the field where he was supposed to. Never staying where he’s supposed to, a neo-hippie witch doctor punk running roughshod over the meticulous, sterile order of Jim’s life.
Like you’d want me otherwise, the Blair on his shoulder says. Despite himself, Jim smiles.
“Look. We can talk about… everything; right now I just want to get some information, see if this idea will even work. Can we start there?”
The connection bursts with soft, sudden noise—the creak of mahogany desk drawers being opened and closed, the rustling and flipping of a legal pad, the mechanical click of a ballpoint pen. “Tell me what I can do for you and your partner.”
x-x-x-x
It takes forty minutes of focused strategizing before Jim’s satisfied with their progress. By the end of the conversation, Jim has his own scrawled notes spread over the counter in a veritable flowchart of prospects. Though the clientele is a bit more highbrow than he’s accustomed to—intellectual property lawyers and university presidents and national executives he’s never even heard of—it’s not entirely unlike pursuing leads on a case, if/then equations spiraling in different directions, unsolved, waiting to be explored.
And seeing William Ellison in his true element as an accomplished, networked businessman is… well, nothing so profound or generous as humbling. Try as he might, Jim can’t quite shake that confused, scared boy who looked to his father in vain, desperate to be seen when his world was crumbling.
But it—means something that William offered his resources so readily. It means something that William had asked so casually before he hung up, “Why don’t you and Blair join Steven and I for dinner next Sunday?” and Jim found himself saying, equally evenly, “Yeah, okay, we’ll be there,” like this—sharing, this give and take, is something they regularly do.
Like, for once, he might actually have a family.
When he gathers up his papers and folds them in half, writing Blair’s name on the blank side, Jim feels lighter than he has in… a long time. Since he looked at Blair through the staticky light of a television screen and realized that Blair saw him. Not Jim Ellison, mystical sentinel—but Jim Ellison, as flesh and blood as any man.
Whistling, smiling again in spite of the spasms shooting through his leg, he pins the sheets to the fridge with a handful of magnets, enough to keep the stack stationary until Blair returns in…
It takes a minute, but his time sense eventually slots into place. Two days.
There’s still plenty of empty space on the paper. Plenty of possibilities. Jim ponders for a moment, then makes an addendum beneath Blair’s name with a steady, clear hand, illuminated by the full sunrise:
Take a look and tell me what you think. Your turn to operate the roller coaster, partner.
-Jim