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It all began with Dr. Loveless. In hindsight, Jim knew that the little man’s plans for him couldn't just stop with that one hallucination, no matter how horrific it had been. Even though it had been realistic enough, convincing enough to make him give serious consideration to other, more self-destructive, alternatives to jail because of what he’d done; in the end Jim had known there was nothing else he could do but hand himself over to the puzzled sheriff and demand he take action for the crime Jim was certain he’d committed, the unforgivable sin of murdering his partner. Even now, when he woke from yet another version of the same dream, Jim wondered whether it was Artie turning up in town which had been the hallucination and not their fateful encounter in the barn. He stared at the dim outline of the door to his room — he could go out there, check on Artie, and then he’d know it was definitely a dream. Except that the other room could be empty, the covers of its bed undisturbed and a fine layer of dust shrouding everything else, and he’d know the truth was more awful than he cared to consider. He needed to know the truth but feared it at the same time; Jim lay on his bed, paralysed by his own indecision, and continued to stare at the door. The dream had changed, over time, and it was that fact which made him more reluctant to leave this bed than he’d ever imagined possible. Jim West was no coward — if anything, Artie had often told him he didn’t worry enough about his own safety — but this dream had been convincing too. This dream where he’d gunned Artemus Gordon down in the velvet-upholstered luxury of their shared sitting room. At least, if it was a dream, he could lie here and soon he’d hear Artie moving about. The outline of the bedroom door was clearer now, as the sun rose and a small amount of light penetrated the blinds over the window. Artie would be up soon, complaining sotto voce about the ungodly hour, and Jim would hear him pass his bedroom door on the way to the galley and his first cup of coffee. Then he’d know it was definitely a dream, that he wouldn’t find Artie’s room deserted, or the sitting room bathed in his partner’s blood. In the silence of his own room, Jim could hear every creak the carriage made, the small song of a bird in the stillness outside in the siding where they were parked for the night. All normal, all usually reassuring, but not this morning. Those weren’t the sounds he needed to hear, the ones which would convince him that everything was fine with the world and he hadn’t done the thing he dreaded most. ***** There was something wrong with his partner, Artemus Gordon was sure of that — he was equally sure it could all down be traced back to their recent encounter with Dr. Loveless. The little genius was trouble, pure and simple, and every time he turned up he seemed to get under Jim West’s skin in a way no other adversary they faced could ever manage. It was as if, Artie decided, Jim was everything that Loveless wasn’t and that meant he was a source of fascination. There was a streak of obsession inside every genius and Miguelito Loveless was no exception — if only the object of his twisted affections wasn’t one James West. Artemus Gordon himself, apparently, held no interest for Loveless. If anything, he got the feeling he was an annoyance, an unnecessary encumbrance because of his relationship with his partner, but rarely of more significance than the buzzing of a gnat. And while Artie might not be quite as big a genius as Loveless, that slight still stung. That they were both fascinated by James West, in their own ways, was another similarity between the two men and one that Artie tried not to think too much about. All he knew was that he’d considered himself blessed by the gods from the day he’d reluctantly shaken James West’s hand and that whoever had signed the paperwork putting the two of them together had done him the biggest favor of his life to date. Their partnership had been a blessing and a curse, putting temptation in his way on a daily basis, but if there was one thing Artie knew it was that he couldn’t have asked for a better partner. Whether Jim was oblivious to his partner’s proclivities or simply chose to ignore them, he couldn’t have said, but either way they had continued to work together longer than either man had previously been able to manage with another partner. Artie could see why Jim had previously experienced such a checkered track record with partners — the man was stubbornness personified, throwing himself into dangerous situations apparently without a second thought. Neither of them had thought their partnership would be different and it had been a happy surprise for both to discover that they seemed to complement one another so well. For himself, he wondered whether his own equally unimpressive history was a result of his own nature or a lack of tolerance shown by his former partners, particularly now that he and West had made such a fine show of working together. Prior to that, he would probably have shouldered most of the blame himself, but now he wasn’t so sure… He should probably get out of bed soon. There was no sound of movement from elsewhere in the carriage, but he didn’t expect that there would be. Jim wasn’t an early riser, at least not when he had a choice, but Artie had always found it difficult to stay in bed once he was actually awake. Considering their respective former professions, he found that horribly ironic and wondered just how he had managed to burn the candle at both ends when he had trod the boards. And, indeed, how Jim had coped with years of reveille, though that was probably the easier task of the two. ***** He dozed again, the light restless sleep of one whose dreams have interrupted his rest too often in the past few days, and when he woke the light was far stronger through the blinds. Jim sat up, albeit reluctantly — someone had to attend to the horses and that was usually his job when the two of them were on the train. He hadn’t heard Artie go by, but it was possible he’d missed it, since he’d unexpectedly fallen asleep once more. Jim pulled his pants on, shoved his feet into an old pair of shoes, and then headed for the door. It opened quietly, a testament to the excellent construction of the carriage, letting Jim into the silent corridor between his and Artie’s rooms. The horses were in the next car along, and he headed forward with only a glance at the closed door of Artie’s compartment. The sun was brighter than Jim expected when he opened the door between the two cars, and he was forced to shade his eyes so they’d have time to adjust to the glare. Inside the next car, the horses seemed happy enough — they shifted a little in their makeshift stalls, inquisitive eyes following Jim’s every move as he poured feed and checked their water. He rubbed one velvet nose, silently promising a good run later on, then headed back towards the parlor car. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust from the glare outside to the semi-darkness of the shuttered carriage, but even before he could see again the smell hit him. A familiar, sickly-sweet smell, one he’d smelled far too often to ever forget. He turned the handle of Artie’s compartment, his hand shaking a little with the need to know the source of that odor. Needing to know, but dreading what he might discover. The room was empty, the bedclothes thrown back as if the bed had been left in a hasty fashion. Artie was a restless sleeper at times, as Jim knew from their frequent camping trips, but nothing like this. This looked as though there’d been some kind of struggle, the way the bedding was draped half off the bed onto the floor, and for a moment his mind filled in the blanks left by this disarray. There was an obvious explanation, that Artie had not slept alone the previous night, and for a moment Jim wondered what it would be like to share that closeness with one of the few people he trusted. The room would smell differently, though; Jim had been in enough places where sex had taken place to know what it smelled like, that the heavy mustiness of sweat and semen had its own distinctive odor. That wasn’t what he smelled here, not in Artie’s room or in the corridor between that room and his own. The train should smell of coffee, of the beginnings of breakfast — it shouldn’t smell of this, the smell that haunted Jim West’s nightmares. It was a smell he remembered vividly, one that had imprinted itself into his memories of the war, the mingled scent of black powder and blood. A smell that had no place on the train, in this, their sanctuary. When he opened the door to the sitting room, the handle warm in his hand, Jim halted on the threshold. No Artie, that much was clear, but a sign that this was the place — a trail, a slick crimson track as wide as a man, heading away from the middle of the room and out of sight towards the far door, the door to the outside world. Jim felt his stomach roil, his hand tightening on the door handle as he stood, reluctant to enter. He knew what he’d see, what the end result of this trail would be, as surely as he’d known each time he’d seen those marks before. ***** He’d just left his own room, headed in search of coffee, when he’d heard the sound — a low, despairing moan coming from Jim’s room, the closed door hardly a barrier. Artie had heard other sounds before, of course, the close quarters in which they lived meant that both of them had to turn a deaf ear to the more basic behaviors of human beings, but never something like this. It was unmistakable, the sound of someone in torment. He opened the door without hesitation and was unsurprised to see Jim lying twisted up in the bedclothes, his hands eloquent enough as they grasped the coverlet in a deathgrip. "Jim." Artie didn’t touch his partner, though he ached to do so — Jim’s torso was bare, the bedclothes kicked back to show that he was sleeping naked. He’d heard somewhere that it was a bad idea to wake someone in the throes of a nightmare that suddenly and the comfortable lie was a reassuring excuse. "Wake up, my boy." His voice was enough to break the spell; Jim’s restless movements stilled almost immediately, his face relaxing as his eyes opened. "Artie?" Jim pushed himself up, the bedclothes slipping down his body. Artie forced himself to look away as casually as he could. He might live with temptation all the time, but that didn’t mean he needed to see the forbidden fruit itself. "I thought…" Jim’s robe was draped over a nearby chair — Artie picked it up and handed it over without making a big deal of the fact that he was assiduously not looking in his partner’s direction. After a moment, he turned his attention back to Jim and studied his face for a moment, concerned at the signs of exhaustion he saw there. "I should get up," Jim said. He was sitting on the side of the bed now, his feet on the floor, but he didn’t move. He looked like he could sleep for the rest of the day, given half a chance, and it was on the tip of Artie’s tongue to suggest he do just that. "I can’t lounge about in here all day, can I?" It was clear from Jim’s overly-casual tone, one that was far too familiar by now, that he had no intention of discussing what had just happened. Artie might have walked in on a nightmare but that was as far as anything would go between them — to Jim’s mind, it was clearly as if it had never happened. Artie shook his head minutely, wishing life was really that easy. "Coffee will be ready when you are," he said finally, before he headed for the door. Jim said nothing — the last image Artie had of his partner before he closed the door was of the other man still seated on the edge of the bed, staring resolutely at the floor of his compartment as if he wished it would open and swallow him up. ***** He’d betrayed himself this time, Jim knew that for certain. It was only Artie’s kind nature that prevented his partner from forcing some kind of conversation Jim had no idea how to deal with — how did you talk rationally about losing your mind, after all? The temptation was strong, though, to confide in Artie. It wasn’t as if there was really anyone else he could trust, not like he trusted Artemus Gordon, and Jim knew that there was no danger of him telling a soul. That went without saying. But still, the thought of pouring out his heart, of admitting to his fear that he was losing his grip on sanity, was too much of an intimacy even for their friendship to bear. He’d seen men lose their minds, of course, in the war. There’d been no avoiding the sight; he’d been a soldier long enough to see it with his own eyes, the simple insanity of men driven too close to the edge — men whose ability to cope with the horrors of war had just gone up like smoke from a campfire, there one moment and gone the next. Perhaps that was the problem here, except there hadn’t been anything to cause it, nothing that wasn’t a run of the mill experience for any government agent worth his salt. Except, his treacherous memory reminded him, the death of Artemus Gordon at his own hands. "It didn’t happen," Jim told himself firmly. The words weren’t a reassurance, not that he’d expected them to be. If the cause was simple, if the little doctor had somehow worked his malignant magic long beyond their immediate encounter, then there was little chance mere words would be enough to deal with it. And as for the other matter, he could ignore that too. Even if he could have talked with Artie about his fears that he was losing his mind, James West had no intention of sharing with his partner his other, baser desires. He hadn’t wanted things to turn out this way, but he wasn’t a coward. At some point, Jim knew he would have to face his feelings for Artemus Gordon and he wasn’t sure what would happen then. ***** Artie was on his second cup of coffee by the time Jim emerged from his compartment, still looking like the closest thing to a walking corpse Artie had seen in longer than he cared to think about. Jim had taken the time to dress, the clothes resembling nothing more than the armor of a warrior in their preciseness, excessive for that time of the morning even for the usually dapper agent. He filled another cup, setting it in front of the other seat at the table; instead of sitting, taking up Artie’s unspoken offer to join him, Jim picked up the cup and carried it with him over to stand by the window. "You sleep okay?" Artie asked, then chided himself silently for the question. "Other than the nightmare, I mean." There was a silent moment, Jim’s back to him, and for a long moment Artie was certain his partner wouldn’t answer. "I don’t want to talk about it," Jim said, without turning round. Artie took another mouthful of coffee and considered his options. If Jim didn’t want to talk, which he rarely did when things were uncomfortable in any way between them, then there was little he could do about that. He could wait to see if Jim’s attitude changed, but that might take a while, or he could try to put the clues together and figure out just what was going on that his taciturn partner didn’t want to let him in on. "Of course," Artie said, watching Jim tense up a little as he tried to push a casual tone into his own voice. He was better at it than Jim was, more convincingly uncaring, and he was sure he hadn’t imagined the slight shift of muscles in Jim’s body as the tone hit home. "But you know where I am, if you change your mind," he continued, unwilling to play that particular role to the end. He had to let Jim off the hook, just a little, and watched his partner relax once more as he finished speaking. He thought back over the past couple of missions, relatively straightforward for them; there was little doubt in Artie’s mind that their run-in with Loveless was the key to it all. He’d heard the little genius laying out his plan, in great detail, and it didn’t take another genius to figure out just how Loveless’ powder, so innocent looking, had affected James West. Artie had been able to put two and two together without a great deal of difficulty, though his partner had been characteristically reticent when it came to personal disclosures, and it was clear enough that he’d imagined some kind of encounter between the two of them that had ended badly. Fatally badly for one Artemus Gordon and not much better for the man who’d been convinced he’d murdered him. So what was happening now? A repeat performance? Artie considered that as he drank his coffee, keeping a weather eye on his unmoving partner. That seemed unlikely, since it had been a couple of weeks since Jim had been first affected and it was only recently that the nightmares had begun. He might have thought he was covering up what was going on, but if there was one downside of having an observant partner it was that it made it hard to hide when things weren’t going too well. And James West had an observant partner, whether he liked it or not. When he thought about it, Artie realized he still had a sample of Loveless’ powder, one he’d picked up as they watched Loveless telling the ducks just how he planned to make the world safe for them again. He’d put it to one side in his laboratory, meaning to send it off with their report to Washington, but in the end he hadn’t done so. There was too much danger it would break on the way, forcing some poor messenger to experience what had almost driven Jim to the brink of madness, and that had been too dangerous a possibility to risk. So he still had it, tucked away somewhere safe. It could yield answers, Artie was sure of that, answers he didn’t seem likely to get any other way. ***** By the time Jim finished his coffee, Artie had left the room. They had time, at least, time to kill while they waited for their next assignment — a common state of affairs, waiting for the telegraph to begin chattering their instructions, sending them off to who knew where. But that was the life they’d chosen, both of them, and who was James West to quibble with that? The thought of unknown dangers, waiting to be faced by himself and his partner, was starting to lose a little of its allure. It wasn’t so much for himself, Jim realized, but for Artie. Not that his partner was any damsel in distress who needed to be rescued, but the thought of the dangers they faced together on a regular basis was enough to make any man wonder, at least momentarily, whether the end results were worth the risk they took. It had almost made him lose his mind, after all, when he’d thought Artemus Gordon dead. The thought of that happening in reality, even if he were not the one responsible this time around, sent a chill through Jim that he’d never felt before. He’d rarely had much to lose but his own life and at times he hadn’t valued that too highly. That was what had made him a good soldier and a better government agent, the knowledge that there were plenty of men waiting to take his place if he should falter in the line of duty. But knowing that for himself didn’t mean he could happily accept it for another, for someone he cared for the way he’d come to realize early on that he cared for Artemus Gordon. At first he’d tried to tell himself it was just the result of two men thrown together by circumstance, making the best of something over which they had no control. But the easy camaraderie that Artie offered him had lowered the reserve with which Jim had previously surrounded himself. He’d been so focused on doing the best he could, on striving to excel at everything he took up, that along the way James West hadn’t made many friends. Artie seemed able to understand him in a way that none of those others did, and that had been an unexpected result of their unlooked-for partnership. He wasn’t blind to Artie’s predilections either, no matter what the other man thought. Just because he didn’t flaunt his body in front of his partner didn’t mean he wasn’t aware of just when his partner was watching him. Which was quite often, if he thought Jim wasn’t looking. The attention was flattering, really, and Jim found himself enjoying the opportunity to pretend that his behavior was more casual than it actually was. Should he ever actually want his partner’s undivided attention in that way, Jim was certain it wouldn’t take much to get it. And the more he thought about it, the more he realized that a lot of the time he did want to be the center of attention where Artemus Gordon was concerned. In recent months, at least, he’d found himself becoming annoyed with some of the women they’d encountered, women who seemed to expect more of both of them than they were prepared to give. Jim knew he wasn’t the marrying kind, after all, not with the life he currently led and possibly not ever. He should probably be horrified at the concept of getting involved with his partner this way, more for the possible effect on their working relationship than anything else, but somehow Jim could hardly bring himself to care. His encounter with Loveless and the resulting brush with insanity had made him think about a lot of things and one of them was how things stood between him and Artie. He was no blushing virgin, after all, and though maybe he’d never thought about himself and his partner in that light, Jim was realistic enough to know it wouldn’t take much for them to both end up doing something that neither of them had quite expected could happen. At least he liked Artemus Gordon, as well as respecting him for his intelligence and common sense, and that had to be a good basis for any relationship, working or otherwise. A crash from the other end of the train, the sound of glass breaking as it slammed against the thin wood wall, made Jim’s head snap round. He took a couple of steps to the cabinet down one side of the wall, fingers instinctively finding the catch that made it drop open, and removed a loaded revolver from the drawer that presented itself. He was through the doorway and headed down to the back of the carriage, where he expected his partner had gone, before the drawer had closed again. Jim flattened himself against the wall of the narrow corridor, beside the door to Artie’s laboratory. There was little doubt that the sound of breaking glass was coming from inside, but how could anyone have boarded the train? Jim was certain he’d reset the alarms when he’d returned from checking on the horses earlier so there was no way that anyone could have got in without tripping the system. Another crash of glass made Jim wince. Regardless of who was in there with Artie, there would be a lot of cleaning up to do. Jim reached out and rapped on the door with his knuckles. "Artie?" There was silence, then the crunching of booted feet across broken glass. The door opened, swinging inwards, and for a moment Jim couldn’t see who had opened it. What he could see of the floor was liberally covered with glass shards, large and small, and then there was Artie. Framed in the doorway, one hand clutching the doorframe as if it held him up, his hair disarrayed and shirt marked with tiny rips. "Jim," he said, his voice sounding a little odd. "James, my boy," Artie continued. With the hand that wasn’t clutching the doorframe, he gestured expansively. "Come in, come in." He moved back, apparently to make room for Jim, then frowned at the crunching sound his boots made on the glass-covered floor. "Mind the mess." "Is someone in there with you?" Jim asked, not moving despite the urge he felt to grab Artie before he fell over. What could have happened? Only minutes earlier, they’d been in the dining room together and Artie had been fine. "All alone," Artie said, his face twisting into a pantomime expression of overdone sadness. "Except for you, of course." He brightened a little at that, gestured once more as if to beckon Jim to follow him, then turned and disappeared back into the laboratory. ***** Standing in the glass-covered ruins of what had been his laboratory, Artie wondered for a moment what had happened. He’d been happily working on something, he was sure of that, and then Jim had interrupted him and that had been the end of it. "You shouldn’t have done it," he said, turning back to the doorway. Jim stood there, just as he remembered him, revolver in his hand. "Done what?" Jim asked, then took a half-step into the room as Artie’s flailing arm caught on a beaker stand and sent both the stand and the beaker clamped to it tipping over into space. "What’s going on?" he asked, as he caught the stand and placed it back onto the bench. Artie was certain his mouth was opening and closing like a beached fish. The answer to Jim’s question had been an obvious one, there on the tip of his tongue, but now he came to it there was no answer there. Artie thought about it for a moment, conscious of his partner’s presence there with him, in the confines of what was usually his sanctuary. He’d been angry with Jim, angry enough to throw things and that really wasn’t like him. At least he thought it wasn’t, though at present his head was too muddled for him to be sure what was. Had Jim done something to make him that angry? Jim was watching him, the hand holding the revolver hanging by his side, the other half-raised as if he expected to have to catch more items of laboratory furniture before too long. "You know," Artie said, "this is all your fault, don’t you?" It was worth a try, the chance to attempt to figure this out without letting Jim know he had no idea what was going on. The room spun a little, then righted suddenly and everything slammed back into focus as a sharp pain jabbed through his head. "Oh god." "I’d tell you to sit down, Artie," Jim said dryly, "but everything is covered with glass. Is there a single thing in here you didn’t smash?" He remembered now. It was as if the pain had jolted the memory back into place, except that the way Jim was staring at him made Artie wonder if it was a memory at all. Surely if what he remembered happening had happened, Jim wouldn’t be standing there like that? There hadn’t been much in the capsule, after all, so maybe that was the difference between their experiences. Except he could see now why Jim had been so certain of what he’d seen, convinced of his own guilt even when reality and hallucination had clashed and Artie had come into town himself. "I left a couple for you," Artie said. He pointed to the beaker Jim had rescued and there was another nearby; pushed right up against the wall that separated the laboratory from the rest of the train, it had somehow escaped the destruction. "You might find you need them." ***** If he hadn’t known better, Jim would have described the expression he saw on Artie’s face as guilty. Except, other than the destruction they both stood in the midst of, what did his partner have to feel guilty about? "I had to know," Artie began. "But then I guess it’s true what they say — the road to hell is paved with good intentions." As he spoke, Artie was searching for something amid the debris that covered the laboratory bench. "I was fairly sure that my conclusions were correct," he continued, as he turned and held out one hand to Jim, the item he’d been searching for lying on his outstretched palm. "But a scientist never guesses." Jim looked at Artie’s hand, trying to remember where he’d seen what lay there before. It was a small capsule, half-filled with white powder. "Loveless made that." Artie nodded. His face was wretched now, embarrassment and guilt warring for dominance there. "What did you think you were doing, Artie?" "Putting two and two together," Artie said. There was a little defiance in his expression now and Jim decided he liked that better. "I know you’ve been having nightmares and I was certain it was linked to what Loveless did." "So what if I have?" What business of Artie’s was it if he was? Even though Artie was the subject of many of those nightmares, that was Jim’s business and nobody else’s. "I needed to see what it was like," Artie continued, as if he hadn’t heard Jim’s question. "He’s a genius, there’s no doubt of that." Artie looked down at the capsule in his hand, apparently talking to himself. "It was so real. It seemed so real. But it wasn’t, thank god." "What wasn’t?" Jim asked. "I never imagined that — whatever devilish cocktail of drugs Loveless dreamt up, it acted so fast there was no way I could tell it wasn’t real." Artie placed the capsule back onto the surface of the bench, almost reverently. "And then, when things didn’t go so well, all of this happened." Artie looked around at the devastation he’d caused and sighed. Jim understood the source of that, since there must be a couple of hundred dollars worth of glassware lying around them in bits and the cost of replacing it would have to come from somewhere. In this case, there was little doubt that somewhere was likely to be the salary of Artemus Gordon. Jim thought for a moment, considering what his partner had said and what he’d conveniently left out. "You said this was all my fault," he began. "So, tell me, what did I do to provoke all of this?" ***** There was no easy answer to Jim’s question, even though Artie’s head was clearer now. The dose he’d given himself had been a small one, clearly much smaller than the one that had all but driven his partner insane, but it had still been enough to overpower his reason sufficiently to lead to the destruction that lay around them. The destruction that had been spawned by the rejection he’d imagined from his partner and his own anger at the way he’d destroyed everything the two of them had worked so hard to build — their partnership, their friendship, everything. Except none of it had been real. He hadn’t had an uncustomary moment of weakness, Jim hadn’t walked into the laboratory at the most inopportune time and allowed himself to be momentarily taken advantage of, and he hadn’t then laughed in Artie’s face when he’d tried to explain that all of this meant something to him. None of that had really happened, none of it except the breaking of glass that had been Artie’s outlet when the imaginary Jim had left the room. The room suddenly seemed too small, Jim’s eyes a little too clever and intent on him. His partner might be many things, but stupid wasn’t one of them — he was good at reading people and even better at reading his partner, thanks to all the situations they’d found themselves in over the time they’d worked together. Jim’s behavior in the previous encounter should have been his clue, of course, if Artie had managed to retain much grip on his rational mind when he’d taken Loveless’ concoction. He had no reason to think Jim would really act that way, not when he’d never given any indication he despised his partner that way before. There was another thing to add to the list of things James West wasn’t — Jim was no actor, at least not where anyone who actually knew him was concerned. He looked genuinely concerned, his expression seeming to say that he’d stand there as long as it took to get an answer from his partner. "I’m not sure I can explain it," Artie said. He had to be right this time, right in terms of the response he’d get from his partner. If not, there was little left to destroy, at least in concrete terms — he had no doubt that if he’d misjudged, it would be the end of their partnership for certain. "Except to say that I told you something you didn’t want to hear. The imaginary you, that is." Artie wondered how much sense he was making, but Jim didn’t speak so he took that as encouragement to continue. "And your reaction made me break things." Did he have to spell it out? ***** Jim looked at the mess Artie had made, the glass that covered the floor and every other flat surface in the room and wondered just what had caused that kind of destruction. He knew for himself how real the hallucinations caused by Loveless’ powder could be, real enough to make him certain he’d acted completely out of character and killed his partner. Real enough that he’d hated Artie long enough to gun him down, then weep over his body when the reality of what he had done sank in. Except that it wasn’t reality, no more than whatever it was Artie had imagined was. Or his own nightmares, come to that. Were they also the fruit of Loveless’ twisted genius, or his own mind playing tricks on him as he tried to figure out what it was he wanted from his partner? Artie was watching him, almost nervously, and the feeling made Jim uncomfortable. That was rare where the two of them were concerned, but there was a tension beneath the surface now, something undefined that made him feel uncomfortable in his partner’s presence for the first time since they’d met. "Come with me," he said, suddenly needing to be out of this room. The laboratory was small, even when it wasn’t covered in debris. He turned, not bothering to look back and see if Artie followed but certain that he would. "I should clean this up," Artie said. "It’ll keep," Jim said, as he led the way back into the dining room and returned the revolver to its accustomed place. "Now," he continued, as the door closed and they were alone together, in a different room completely from the one where Artie had imagined him and whatever reaction he thought he’d make. "I think you should tell me again what you said." The embarrassment was back, written large on Artie’s face. "On one condition," Artie replied, clearly battling to keep his composure. "That you tell me what your nightmares are about." Jim supposed he should have expected that. Both of them had half-told the other what was happening but balked at the final details, the things that would make it impossible to take back whatever words were probably better left unsaid. "Fine." He hadn’t meant to snap the word out that way but once it was said it couldn’t be taken back. "Now tell me." He’d closed in on Artie a little as he spoke, pushing the other man back towards the closed door, as if sheer proximity would encourage the words when nothing else would. Jim saw Artie close his eyes, swallow once, then open his eyes once more. He looked like a man steeling himself to face a firing squad. "I’d always wondered what your reaction would be," Artie began, his voice tentative. "And feared the worst when you discovered just what my proclivities were. Clearly Loveless’ powder made my mind relive those fears…" He was trying to sound cool and rational about it all, as if the broken glass had been a figment of his imagination as well — Jim could see that and sympathized with Artie, knowing just how believable his own experiences had been. And continued to be, if Loveless had a hand in more recent events. There was a look of determination on Artie’s face now, and Jim had only a moment to wonder at it before his partner moved, hands gripping Jim’s upper arms and pulling him closer before he had a chance to resist. Then Artie was kissing him, something he’d never expected to experience — it was over before he realized it, Artie stepping back with a look of resignation on his face as if waiting for the inevitable response. "I dreamed about you," Jim said, simply, amused at the surprise that appeared on Artie’s face at his words. "Each time I’d done what I did in the barn, but it was here, on the train." "That’s it?" Artie shook his head. "That’s all you have to say?" "Well, you asked," Jim said, smiling now at the expression of bemusement on his partner’s face. "Didn’t you?" "I guess I did." ***** Jim lay on his side and stared at the door to his room as the sun rose and a little light came through the blinds over the window. He’d woken in the night, unused to sharing his bed with someone else, particularly someone who was larger than he was, and found himself oddly comforted by the slow, quiet breathing from the man who lay beside him. Artie asleep had been calm, sleeping on his back with one arm draped across himself and the other hanging off the edge of the bed. His breathing was slow and even, his brow slightly wrinkled as his eyelids flickered with the telltale signs of a dream. Whatever it was he was dreaming about, Jim hoped it was good, that his own experiment with Loveless’ powder hadn’t affected Artie the same way Jim feared it had affected him. Now his bed was empty, no sign of Artie. He could go out there, check on his partner, and then he’d know that all of last night’s events were definitely a dream. Except that he was filled with an odd lassitude, relaxed in a way he hadn’t felt in a long time — the only word to describe the feeling was sated. That couldn’t be the result of just a dream, could it? If he went to look, Artie’s room could be empty, the covers of its bed undisturbed and a fine layer of dust shrouding everything else. Or Artie could be there, sleeping peacefully in his own bed, never having left it in the preceding hours. Or, worst of all possibilities… "Are you still in bed?" The door had opened while he watched, wondering what was reality and what was illusion. Artie stood there, robe loosely tied, a cup of coffee in each hand. His hair was disheveled, standing up in places, his face telling Jim that he’d only recently awakened himself. Jim pushed himself up till he was sitting back, the weight on his elbows as he watched his partner, taking in everything about this new side of the man he once thought he knew so well. "So, it wasn’t a dream?" he asked. The bed dipped under Artie’s weight, a spring squeaking quietly as Artie shifted his weight to offer one of the cups to Jim. "All that, it was real?" "As real as anything is, James my boy," Artie said, then raised his coffee cup in silent salute.
~ fin ~
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