Challenge 146 - "Forty Years Short"
Fair Warning... I feel like I should apologize up front for the angst levels on this one.

No Happy Ending

Ambiguous but slashy tones

Word Count: 696





Blair stood with a pain in the bottom of his throat as though he were about to be sick. Part of him wanted to be sick, to have an excuse to run as far as he could. He wanted to tell everyone that he needed time to process and just walk away. He wanted the aching pains in the back of his arms from where he had hugged himself to soreness to vanish. He wanted the crick in his neck from sleeping in the chair to fade. He wanted Jim back.

He could feel eyes on him as he concentrated on a flickering candle, the image blurring in and out of focus as he gripped the smooth wood in front of him. A hand closed over his, and he tensed, wanting to pull away, but not having enough energy to make the muscles move. Instead he remained frozen as people wandered by and muttered words he couldn't understand.

Another hand settled in at his back, pressing, and Blair leaned forward. He didn't want anyone to touch him. He didn't want to touch or be touched. He wanted all these people to leave so he could just crawl into the casket with Jim and die. He was dead anyway, and making his muscles move and his mouth eat and his ears listen to the pointless words that didn't change the truth… it wasn't worth the dull ache in his soul.

A hand pulled at him, tugging him downward, and Blair resisted for a moment, focusing on the candle flame which had for the moment come into sharp focus. Then his knees failed, and he collapsed on the hard bench so hard that tears sprang up from the sharp pain in his tailbone.

The pain distracted him and in that moment, his eyes betrayed him, sliding over to look at the black coffin, its gold rails and trim shining with the light of the candles that lined the front of the church. Cream satin lined the opened lid, and Blair struggled not to look just inches lower… to Jim's strong face frozen in time.

"Blair?" the sound of his name reached Blair when nothing else could. He looked over at Megan, her graying hair pulled back tight and her uniform crisp. It wasn't how Jim would have remembered her. Jim would have preferred her in jeans with one of her horrible coats that Jim said made it look like an animal had crawled around her neck and died. Blair's mind went skittering away at the thought of that word.

Forty years wasn't enough. Forty years of sarcasm and fighting over the last beer and sitting by each other's hospital beds and Jags games and Christmas mornings and barbeques with the guys from work… it wasn't worth the feeling that his guts had been torn out leaving a Blair-husk to wander through the rest of his life alone.

"It'll be alright, mate," Megan whispered as a minister started the service with a prayer that washed over Blair without registering as actual words. Alright. Blair doubted that. He'd lived up to this point without ever having this ripping void in his heart… Forty years ago, he should have kept living alone in the crowd. He could have kept right on only showing people the Sandburg-chipper surface, but Ellison had to go and burrow deeper, into the soft core that craved love and belonging. And now the bastard had gone and left him—taking part of Blair with him to the grave.

Blair suddenly felt the lack of air in his lungs, sucking in a deep breath. The hand around his wrist tightened.

Why had he ever let himself fall so deeply? Blair glanced at the large picture of Jim standing to the side on a small table. The blue eyes looked back mischievously, and for a second he remembered when they had been young… or younger…. Why had he fallen in love? Why had he let Jim so far under his skin that living without him hurt so damn much? Looking at the framed picture, Blair remembered how, when those eyes had really seen him, everything had seemed like a good idea at the time.