(part 5)

Jim didn't realize he'd been asleep until he woke up. He lay on the couch, with a crick in his neck from the uncomfortable position he'd slumped into, and pins-and-needles in his left arm. Still half-awake, he padded into the kitchen to make himself some coffee to wake himself up. He filled up the coffee maker with water, switched it on, pulled out a mug, a teaspoon and the sugar bowl, and opened up the coffee jar. The delectable aroma of ground coffee beans filled his nose -- and then he noticed the note stuck to the jar. Blair's handwriting: Remember Jim, no coffee.

Jim groaned. He could smell the coffee, imagine the hot, bitter-sweet taste... He put the lid back on the jar. He turned to the tea bags. Blair had anticipated that too. There was a note on the box: No tea either, Jim.

Jim sighed. I suppose I could go for one of his herbal teas... He eyed the assorted boxes lined up next to each other. Red Zinger, Mandarin Orange, Sleepytime... No. He wanted something to wake him up, not put him to sleep.

So he went and had a shower. When he came out of the bathroom, the smell hit him; a contrast with the humid, steamy, soapy air of the bathroom; the faint, tantalising aroma of coffee, just the faintest of traces, that no-one but a Sentinel would detect. Damn. He went into the kitchen and sprayed a few squirts of the orange oil that Blair had found to use as an air freshener. The coffee scent was gone, but it was no good. Jim couldn't stop thinking of coffee.

He looked at his watch. Damn. Simon would have left work by now. Too late to call him at work, and too early to call him at home. He really wanted to talk to him about Sandburg's position. Possibly better not to bother him when he's busy at work, though. Jim thought of coffee again, and cursed.

I'll start dinner, he thought. Blair should be home soon, and it will distract me. But as he was chopping up the vegetables, his eye kept straying towards the jar of coffee. He'd bought the storage jar at a closing-down sale of one of those boutique homeware shops which were normally frequented by those who had more money than sense. The word "coffee" was spelt out in flowing gold script which stood out against the brown glass, and the vacuum-seal lid seemed to be sneering at him.

He couldn't stand it any longer. He grabbed the jar of coffee and -- emptied it into the garbage.

Big mistake. Big, big mistake. If he'd thought the aroma was tantalising before, now the smell was overpowering. A whole jar of coffee poured out made for one hell of a cloud of coffee-scent.

Jim emptied the trash in the bin downstairs and came back inside. No good. The coffee smell still lingered in the kitchen. He opened the balcony doors, turned on the fan above the stove, scrubbed the bin, washed out the coffee jar for good measure, and squirted orange oil until the kitchen smelled like a grove of orange trees.

Then he went on with making dinner. Better make it good, he thought. Sandburg's going to be pissed off.

When Blair got home, the loft was cold. He noticed the balcony doors were open. "Hey, Jim, are we holding an Eskimo convention in here?" he called out as he went to close them.

"Oh, that," Jim said distractedly from the kitchen. "I was trying to get rid of a smell. Must have forgotten about it."

"I'll say! You are impervious to cold," Blair declared.

"And you," Jim said, "are only happy in jungle temperatures." He waved at the table. "Dinner will be five minutes."

Blair raised his eyebrows. "To what do I owe this -- on the other hand, am I about to be fed something which will have my arteries screaming for mercy?"

"Stir fry," Jim said shortly. "I even used olive oil."

"Not of course because it's mono-unsaturated, of course not," Blair teased. "You just happen to like the taste."

"And you don't?" Jim countered. He put a couple of plates on the bench. "How was the university?"

"Same old, same old," Blair said. "Gave an assignment to Anthro 101. You?"

"I talked to my lawyer, he's sending the Power of Attorney papers, should be tomorrow or the day after." Jim rolled his eyes. "Then I slept all afternoon."

During dinner, Blair kept sneaking peeks at Jim, wondering if there was something wrong, or if he was just imagining it. Maybe Jim was simply annoyed that he wasn't feeling 100% yet. Maybe that was it. Then he noticed Jim glancing around the loft, as if he were looking for something, as if something were out of place.

Blair groaned inwardly. I knew I shouldn't have done the moving without him. I put something wrong, I just know it.

"We never talked about it, you know," Jim said, apropos of nothing.

"About what, Jim?" Blair said, trying to hide his anxiety. Pretend you don't know what he's talking about.

"About Sierra Verde."

Huh? "Jim, we just talked about Sierra...."

"No, in the dream," Jim corrected. "We never talked about it, not once. Not in all the months that I thought were passing."

"Oh, man." Months? There must be more to this dream than Jim told me. Get with the program Sandburg -- he's talking about it now, isn't he? "Why? I mean, why not? I mean, you might not have wanted to talk about it... no surprises there.... but I went for months and never said a word?"

"Yeah, that should have tipped me off right there that it was a nightmare... or a dream."

"Hey, you said it was really vivid," Blair said. "It's not like the dreaming mind is one for really keen analysis. You just accept what's there. Unless it's really weird, like flying yellow elephants, or giant man-eating plants." He raised his eyebrows, leaning forward. "Um, there wasn't anything really weird in the dream, was there?"

Jim smiled. "Not really." Jim stopped to think. "Though the bit with Kincaid dancing was rather odd."

Blair nearly choked on his stir-fry. "Kincaid? As in Garrett Kincaid? Dancing? And you didn't think that was strange?"

"Well, the rest of that bit made sense," Jim protested. "Kincaid was broken out of jail by some of his men, and they took over the Cascade Sports Arena during a game, which you, Simon, and Daryl were attending. He was making demands, the usual thing... the dancing bit was when he told the cheerleaders to dance while they were waiting for the response to the demands. That was weird, I admit. And one of the things that helped me believe you when you were trying to persuade me it was just a dream. The whole thing with Kincaid getting out was just too coincidental."

"Any other strange coincidences?" Blair asked.

Jim sighed. "Met an old flame -- turned out she was setting me up to take the fall in insurance fraud and murder. You'd been telling me she was bad news all along, but I didn't listen."

"Well, there's an obvious lesson in that!" Blair grinned. "Listen to your Guide!"

"I think it was a friend thing rather than a Guide thing, Sandburg," Jim said. He picked up his and Blair's empty plates and cutlery and put them by the sink.

Blair followed him into the kitchen with the glasses. "Well, 'listen to Sandburg' covers just about everything, don't it?"

Jim smiled. "You got it, pardner." He started filling the sink with hot water, and put the dishes in to soak.

Blair got out a couple of mugs. "Um, Jim, what's happened to the coffee?" Blair asked, after failing to find it in its usual place.

Jim cleared his throat. "Er, I threw it out," he admitted.

Blair turned around and gave him an incredulous look. "You did what?"

"I threw out the coffee."

"You threw out the coffee?!" Blair repeated as if he couldn't believe his ears. "That was good coffee!"

"I know," Jim said ruefully. "It was irresistible."

"This isn't some 'share the pain' thing, is it, Jim?" Blair said. What is it with him? "Why not throw out the tea while you're at it?"

"Because tea doesn't smell wonderful," Jim replied. "It was driving me crazy."

A lightbulb went off in Blair's brain. Trying to get rid of a smell. "How much of a smell, Jim? Don't tell me you smelled the coffee through the jar?! We've got to test this!"

"Don't get excited, Chief. Nothing so elaborate -- I opened the jar before I saw your note... it was when I threw the coffee out that the smell was overpowering."

"Ah," Blair said. Yet another hidden drawback to being a Sentinel. He smiled and decided to forgive Jim for the lack of coffee. "Well, I guess we're stuck with tea." He surveyed the boxes where the herbal teas were kept, and plucked a bag out of one of them. "You should try some of the Lemon-Peppermint tea, Jim. You'll never say tea doesn't smell wonderful after a whiff of that one." He grinned. "Pure ambrosia."

"What are you doing today?" Jim asked after breakfast the next day.

"Today, I am doing some research," Blair said with a gleam in his eyes. He made no move for the door, though. Instead, he gathered together his notebook, pen, and tape recorder.

Jim raised his hands. "Hey, have mercy on the poor Sentinel," he said. "I go back to work tomorrow, you know."

"Did I say a word about tests?"

"You said 'research'," Jim said. "With you that's either dusty tomes or picking on me. Since I don't see any dusty tomes in your hands, that leaves me."

"I do not "pick on you"," Blair protested. "Well, except when I do pick on you, but that's got nothing to do with research, it's a friend thing."

Jim raised his eyebrows. "A friend thing?"

Blair put his hand to his heart. "It is the bounden duty of a friend to pick on his friend, to keep him humble." He quirked an eyebrow at Jim. "Or do you just make those "table leg" remarks because you are wicked, evil and nasty and you hate me?"

Jim snorted. "Does that mean you'll stop complaining about them?"

"Of course not! Gotta defend my honour!"

Jim muttered a remark that sounded suspiciously like "What honour?" then said, "What kind of research were you thinking of attempting, Sandburg?"

Blair let out a short breath, and a look of determination settled on his face. "You need to tell me about the dreams, Jim."

Jim balked. "It's got nothing to do with --"

"I'm not talking about the diss, Jim," Blair said. "Not really. I'm talking about you. About what affects you. As your Guide, your wellbeing is my responsibility, remember? Those dreams are obviously important, whether or not they were visions or nightmares. You've got to tell someone. Better it be someone who understands."

Jim sighed, and looked away from his friend. "It's silly," he said.

Blair shook his head. "No way, man! You wake up from a coma so convinced that you dreamt reality that you tell me the last thing you remember was Zeller falling off the roof -- and then last night you let slip that there was more than one episode to this dreamtime saga... C'mon, man! Give!"

Jim sat down on the sofa and decided to reconcile himself to the inevitable. "All right, all right," he said. "Just one thing, Sandburg," he added. "You don't happen to have a fellow called Brad Ventriss in any of your classes, do you?"

"Not that I recall," Blair said. "But I haven't memorized the class lists. Why?"

"Because in my dream, Ventriss was guilty of murder, industrial espionage, date rape, extortion, harassment..." Jim answered, "and cheating on his anthropology assignments."

Blair's eyes widened. "Oh," he said. He shook his head, opened his mouth to say something, and then shut it. "I'll keep it in mind," he finally said.