In Between The Hell
“Whatcha doin’ there, Chief?” Jim asked his partner. Blair was hunched over his
laptop sitting at their kitchen table reading an article on one of CNN’s pages.
Jim and Blair were enjoying one of their rare three day weekends off together.
Instead of going camping and fishing in the nearest state park, they decided to
batten down the hatches and stay at home. They had enough provisions to last
them through.
“Reading about another roadside bombing in Afghanistan. Did you know that Robbie
in Auto Crime was in the reserves?”
“No, I didn’t, Chief,” Jim responded making the jump from Afghanistan to Auto
Crime. “Was he called up?” Jim asked as he crossed the room to stand just behind
Blair. Blair turned the screen to give Jim a better view forgetting that Jim
could probably see the fine print even if the screen was across the street on a
rooftop somewhere.
“Not yet but he’s worried, ya know?” Sandburg twisted in his chair to gaze up at
Jim. Jim could see concern in Blair’s deep blue eyes. “His wife just had their
second child.” Jim didn’t have any words so he patted Blair on the shoulder then
gently gave a squeeze to the tight muscles.
“Blair, I...”
“It’s okay, Jim. It is what it is,” Blair said. Jim just nodded. War, any war
just is, war. No patriotic songs, no protest rally, no rules of engagement could
ever change the fact that war is hell and has been since man crawled out from
his cave, picked up a weapon to use on another man, and not for felling his
dinner.
Jim sprawled himself on the couch, TV remote in hand and made like a potato.
“Hey Jim?” Blair began after a while. He made his way over to the sofa, pushed
Jim’s hips to make room then made himself comfortable next to his lover, back to
chest.
“What is it, Sandburg? I’m trying to watch the game here,” Jim groused while he
wrapped one arm around Blair holding him closer. Blair ignored the growl like he
always did. The big macho, weight-lifting, ex-Army Ranger, cop of the year,
Sentinel, I-can-hear-a-pin-drop-three-miles-away, James Joseph Ellison, was in
reality, a big marshmallow.
“I know you can’t really talk much about what you did when you were in the army,
national security and all, but what was it like?”
“Like? It was like hell, it was like all your worst nightmares rolled up in one
continuous nightmare and you know you can never wake up. That’s what it was
like.”
“But there had to be some down time. Sometime that you could get away to take a
breath and regroup. If it was just one continuous fight all the time, no one
would come back sane.”
Blair could feel Jim’s muscles stiffen behind him.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked,” Blair conceded.
“No, it’s okay. You’re right, we did have some down time although with all the
shit that went on around us, you’d never know it. All I remember is the
fighting. You forget that sometimes you make a friend or two or that you do get
to go on leave,” Jim recalled.
“Can you tell me about that?” Blair snuggled more in his lover’s arms. Jim
snorted out a laugh.
“One night we decided to play darts,” Jim began then broke out into a fit of
very un-macho giggles.
“Hey, big guy, let me in on the joke.” Blair gave Jim an elbow to the ribs.
“Sorry. We didn’t have any darts so we used our knives. Of course, the knives
weren’t made for throwing like that and we had a little too much to drink.”
“You were lucky no one lost an eye.”
“Yeah, but one of us almost lost a toe.” Jim chuckled. Blair looked down at
Jim’s impeccably white sock clad feet.
“Not me, Darwin, I have better aim than that.”
“I’ll remind you of that the next time you try for the toilet when you’ve had a
few too many,” Blair retorted. “So go on.”
“The knife slipped and fell blade first into Tall Paul’s boot. The point
penetrated just enough to make him yelp. He jumped so high his head hit the
cross beam of this little shack we were in and knocked him out. We were laughing
so hard that we didn’t realize that he had sustained a concussion. We got him to
the medics of course and he was fine the next day but we found out that the doc
had submitted his name for a medal! He didn’t know how Paul sustained the
injury.”
“Oh no, he didn’t.”
“No, he didn’t. Paul had more scruples than that.”
“Uh, Jim...” Jim could feel Blair’s tension return.
“Don’t worry, Chief, Paul was one of the lucky ones. He made it out.”
Blair let out a breath. “Any other stories you care to share?”
“Yeah, one day we got a notification that some pretty wannabe singer/actress was
gonna do her part for the boys, but we had no secure place for her to put on her
show. So us enterprising young men quickly erected a medical tent complete with
a big red cross on the top. Then we backed in a bunch of tanks to completely
surround the tent. Half way through the show we hear copters flying in low
looking for a place to land. There was a skirmish a few clicks away and the
copters were transporting wounded. They saw the cross and figured they lucked
out finding a medical outpost. We were soon overrun with about a dozen wounded.”
“Shit! What did you guys do?”
“Treated them. We had enough medics and docs attending the show and the medical
equipment wasn’t far. The copters took the worst of the wounded on to the main
hospital camp. It all worked out. As it was, some of the wounds were minor so
the actress went on with the show and the soldiers got a treat.”
“Oh man, only you can fall into a pile of crap and come up smelling like roses.”
“Hey, just lucky, I guess,” Jim said smugly.
The guys cuddled, as Blair twisted in Jim’s arms, for a few kisses during the
commercials.
“Um, Jim, did the guy who decided to put up a medical tent instead of a regular
one get in trouble?”
“Nah, he got a commendation when it was all said and done.”
“Oh.”
Blair caressed Jim’s hard muscular chest then stole some more kisses.
“Hey, Jim?” Blair murmured against Jim’s lips.
“Mmm?”
“Who was the guy who ordered the tent?”
Jim leaned back and smiled his most handsome smile as his ice blue eyes twinkled
with love for Blair. Blair cracked up with laughter returning the smile. They
wrapped their arms around each other, very grateful for those moments in between
the hell.
-end-
Author’s note: The ‘dart’ story is real although I changed some of the details.
The incident occurred during WWII with bayonets and the foot that the bayonet
landed in belonged to my father. And no, he didn’t get the Purple Heart.