A dream from Thursday morning.

Jim Ellison goes up into the snowy wilderness as the blackmailed captive of someone--male or female, unsure. He's gone, trying to make the best of it, more or less for Blair's sake. Blair comes to visit and tells him if he's going to stay on here, he's going to have to do certain things--goes to fridge, takes out bucket of ice cream, says throw this away. Jim gets a trash bag, and Blair hands him out a bunch of other things that are perhaps bad for him.

Jim asks him to help out, as long as he's there. Cut to bedroom, where Blair sees that Jim has already furnished the cabin--there are two beds, end to end and too close together, that he can barely walk between. He hangs some towels on the bathroom racks, goes and finishes making one of the beds.

They go outside and continue talking. Blair looks up at Jim, who is wearing a ski mask all crusted over with snow. Blair wipes off face mask of snow, and it cracks and crumbles away, revealing parts of Jim's face, his eyes. They come to some agreement that they'll stay together.

They walk along the cliffs which in the way of dreams has a very artistically rendered and, by laws of perspective, impossible view of the ocean all the way down to the cliff base, where huge waves roll up and smack. Jim flinches. They walk on past big empty local houses, buildings. They are nearing the small nearby town up in this wilderness, which is like Canada or remote Ireland. They see inside through open doors--empty rows of seats. Everyone is somewhere else. They find a restaurant, walk inside. A huge place, with many different types of counters, bars, all hardwood: Blair says, see, they serve drinks. They go to sit down at a counter which curves around, a rim on four sides, surrounding the station inside. On the far end facing the room are two cops, watching Jim and Blair closely. Extra cop gear--uniforms and such--lie along the counter. The guys sit down near the gear, Blair making sure to take a stool that won't mean he has to put his plates too close to the stuff. Nearby in the room is also a stereotypical "faggot" couple, big burly man, small man: dom and sub. All the local yokels in the room are snickering and commenting on them with fascination and no real attempt at discretion. The big one is the one who captured Jim. He sees Jim and Blair and reacts obviously, then jumps up and comes around, apologizes to Jim. Jim accepts the apology and they all eat together. This probably isn't a bright idea, since they get identified and pegged by association, and since Jim and Blair stay on to live in the small town.

Segue where Blair and Jim are walking home; some time has passed. It's like they leave the diner, walk, and we fade and time passes--like with Hugh Grant walking through Notting Hill. And then I get a perfect verbatim scrap of narration from Blair, which I scribbled down as soon as I woke: "They knew a lot about us already, more than we realized: that I liked organic produce, that "the little one was in charge" and I didn't even fucking know it, that Jim topped me because the other one had topped me differently, that Jim was seeing someone else, even though I was in bed after sunup and before sunset." Cut to image of Blair sitting in a hardbacked chair.

They return home. They live in a small blue trailer that is buried heavily under snow--a bit like the trailer at the end of Eye of the Beholder. They go inside and it expands to a huge place with wooden floors; all the furniture is cleared away from the front room, as they left it. A table sits there with neatly folded tablecloth and dishes stacked on it. A woman has visited in their absence; they'd forgotten that she'd been invited for dinner. Caught up in their own reunion, they'd totally blown her off--and she had to, like, hike up in the snow. She's essentially Fraser's Mountie sister. It's over between her and Jim now, if they even ever were together, and their unfortunate absence probably cements that message. Chunks of snow are sitting by the door, on the clear hardwood floor where she'd stood; she'd disturbed nothing but left a note.

Some flash of memory from Blair's point of view, that he has done modeling in the past--in the dream, I saw pictures of him, as if the "author" had done bad photo manips. I thought it was a plot point, that someone in town had recognized him by a magazine picture. No real point to that, though.

I can't believe three days have passed since my last confes--er, post. I've been writing Buffy noir every chance I get, and am racing along toward the finish on "episode zero." My apartment is heaped with clothes, CDs, wadded Kleenex, story drafts, thesauri, unpaid bills. Welcome to the writing life. Thus, no blogging, no answering of e-mails, though lately I've received many that are kind and lovely and which touch me. Thank you kindly. Even managed to cut back my hours at work, rushing home as early as I could each day. Left at two on Friday and wrote for ten hours straight. I pray to the demons who keep me writing: let them bite at my heels and drive me on.

And if they want me to kill my bedspring-boinking, stereo-tuning upstairs neighbor as a sacrifice, I'll seriously consider it.

Mood: Wistful for Assassin!Krycek

posted 1.19.2002 @ 12:10pm -- right-click here to grab a link