Disclaimers: The words are mine; everything else belongs to Pet Fly. Absolutely no infringement is intended, and I'm not making any money off this.

Summary: Jim and Blair see the world.

Warnings: AU.

Author’s Note: Well, if it wasn’t already painfully obvious, I think this clinches it. I’m obsessed with blindness fic:) This story was inspired by Stephen Kuusisto’s Planet of the Blind . I hope y’all enjoy this one and feedback is welcome!

Athens is a sparkling treasury and Blair is in Heaven. In the morning we have coffee in Constitution Square, in the afternoon we explore a stuffy Byzantine church that smells like a Gypsy’s tent. I listen as Blair describes rich tapestries and piles of gold. He speaks of religious debates as though they are as exciting as sword fights. He takes my hand and together we touch things in secret like window-shopping thieves. And then, at night we run through the rain down a street clamoring with footsteps and foreign voices, honking taxi cabs and the gurgle of water in the gutters. I hold onto Blair, he holds onto me, laughing. Finally we come bursting through a door, slapped in the face by dry air, the two of us vibrating in the space of sudden silence. He kisses me, then, giddy and sopping wet. He tastes of fine wine. His tongue is warm in my mouth.

“Where are we?” I gasp.

“Beats me,” he chuckles back.

As it turns out, we’re in the back lobby of an ancient hotel. Blair has a broken conversation with the man behind the desk, and then he is leading me up a narrow staircase that spirals on and on. The storm is raging. Somewhere, high above shutters are slapping. I hear the sound of breaking glass. We lie down, finally on a bed and curl up together.

“It’s okay. It’s okay, Jim,” he whispers when my arms tighten around him. I kiss his damp, warm neck and shudder as he soothes me. The storm fits and kicks outside. It feels like we’ve found the last warm bed in the world.

~~

Outside in a scream of light, midday insects buzz as the professor drones on about the design of Greek temples. I sit in the meager shade of a thirsty tree, seasick and ducking from the blaze of the sun like some nocturnal creature stuck outside its hole. On our way up the hill Blair saw me squinting behind my sunglasses and wanted to leave but I told him I’d be fine if I found someplace to sit

“You go learn about ruins,” I told him, “I’ll just keep my eyes closed.”

A fly brushes my cheek and unwittingly, I blink letting the molten pain erupt in my head again, stabbing, so it bad steals my breath. My body flashes over with a chill of agony that leaves goose bumps on my arms. The nausea swells again like a tumble through an ocean wave and I have to dig my fingers into the bark of the tree to keep from throwing up.

The professor talks about the Parthenon and slaves who broke their backs hauling stones. Blair’s voice is gentle as he asks a question, thoughtful, respecting the still-whispering voices of long ago. I breathe through the pain. Finally letting go of the tree I set my hand down on a rock that is as hot as a hunk of coal. There are rocks all around me, I imagine. If I tried to walk, I’d stumble with every step. I’d fall to my knees in all this horrible light.

The professor is still talking when Blair’s dry hand touches my sweaty cheek. A breeze kicks up, cooling me.

“I’m sorry,” he says in a soft, regretful tone. I can hear his unspoken confession: I’m the one who’s blind, he says.

Blair’s canteen brushes against my fingers and I take a few cool, metallic swallows before he retrieves it again. I hear water hiss on parched dirt before Blair pulls off my sunglasses and presses his wetted bandanna to my face. He washes away the sweat on my cheeks and forehead, my neck. He even dips down below the collar of my shirt. Then he wets the bandana again and ties it as a blindfold over my eyes.

We walk slowly down the hill with Blair’s arm around my waist. It’s a loud, crowded bus ride back to the hotel with everyone crammed in, three to a seat. The smell of the man beside me is so rank I nearly retch but Blair speaks in my ear, his palm on my hot cheek. He is a soft stream of English words amid a cacophony of so much Greek, the only person in the whole world who makes any sense.

Back in our hotel room, Blair stands with me under the blessedly cold gush of the shower. I press my forehead to the tile wall, trying to hold myself still and float. My whole body is a heated pulse of pain. My eyes feel burned. Blair’s hand rests on my back between my shoulder blades.

“Hold on,” he tells me, “just a few more minutes.”

Out of the shower, I finally do throw up, spectacularly, surprising us both. I miss the toilet altogether, of course, but manage not to soil my clean, naked body. Blair pulls me back a few steps in the tiny bathroom to lean against the wall. All I want to do is lay down with my cheek to the cool floor.

“Okay, breathe,” he coaches me, “it’s okay.”

Finally, with a sour taste in my mouth, I let Blair lead me, stumbling to the bed. I crawl over the sheets and collapse with a groan. The pain in my head rolls and crashes like waves on a beach. My skin, suddenly oversensitive, feels badly sunburned. Blair touches my shoulder and I yelp into my pillow. The sheets might as well be made of Astroturf .

“Hold still. Don’t move,” Blair says when the slightest shift makes me hiss. He manages to lay his hand gently on my head without causing me pain.

“Easy. Just breathe.” I try to let the pain roll over me without washing me away. I promise myself that if I do as Blair says and keep breathing that I won’t suffocate. It’ll pass, I chant to myself, hold on, hold on. It’ll pass.

~~

Fifth Avenue at dawn has such a fresh pitch and sway. Dizzying, but welcome like a child’s playground-- swings, slide, merry-go-round. I see streaks of color and wobbly shapes like I’m in some hysterical fun-house world; it has a kind of Coney Island beauty.

Holding Blair’s arm, he is warm against my side. We pass by a grocery and I smell the tart, wet skins of apples. Blair pauses, and chats amiably with a young man who taps the bristles of a broom against the sidewalk. Moments later, Blair presses something into my hand. An orange. Bright like a tropical flower, newly bloomed. I bring it to my nose. I heft its plump weight, and smile. Simple pleasures. When I touch Blair’s face, my cold hand tingles. His lips are silk under my fingertips. When we kiss, there is no gravity at all, no cold air, no sidewalk. Only this sweet warmth, and his wet tongue.

~~

Morning. November. New England. The window is cracked and I can smell the sweet scent of fallen leaves. We’re staying at one of my brother’s vacation houses. Who knew that when dad died, leaving us both with an astonishing fortune, Stephen would buy a house for every season of the year? Who knew that Blair and I would travel the world trying to see all that we possibly could before I lost my sight completely?

Back in the states now, I can make out only mossy shadows. I know a bright light as a gray smudge against pervasive darkness. The afternoon sun doesn’t make me sick with pain anymore. Blair’s face is finally lost to me, though, and that does make me sick with pain.

Still, as he reads to me in bed, I count myself blessed because he’s here, still right here beside me through it all, his voice a rich rumble near my ear. He pauses to turn the page and I take the book out of his hands, tossing it gently away. It hits the floor and Blair chuckles.

“Hey,” he says, “I was getting into that.”

Instead of answering, I roll over on top of him with a rustle of heavy bed covers, and cup his face before kissing him. With my eyes open I can just make out the difference between him and the bed, but my hands know the difference very well. My lips know the difference too. One day soon keeping my eyes open or closed won’t matter. It’s probably good that I’ve become increasingly comfortable with having them closed. I’m actually relieved not to have to struggle any more to decipher distorted images, shimmering shapes that warp and change, all the colors bleeding together into a befuddling mess. No more crushing headaches brought on by light or eye strain. No more frustration at being able to see Blair, but not really see him, getting only the twisted carnival-mirror image instead of his true beauty.

His kiss is potent, his tongue vital in my mouth. He slides his hands down to cup my ass cheeks.

“I could get into this, though,” he says, smiling.

~~

The night Blair and I become lovers. Terror has its own momentum. He finds me in his ransacked room, throwing books into boxes. Every light in the loft is on despite the fact that my eyes are still dilated from the drops the ophthalmologist put in this morning. Tears stream down my cheeks but I’m not crying, I tell myself it’s just the light bothering me.

“What are you doing?” He asks from the doorway and I whirl around to face him. He is nothing more than the same nebulous blur my life has become. I am furious in my panic. I can’t tell him what the doctor has told me-- pronounced like a death sentence, with me sitting in that straight-backed chair so similar to an electric chair: in two years or less I’ll be blind. I won’t see anything at all. Instead I tell him that I want him to leave. I spout horrible lies. Insulting. Get a life, I scream, you’re pathetic!

“I’m pathetic?” He asks, his voice scouring and calm. He’s hurt but seeing through me, down to my churning core of pain. He has witnessed this kind of hateful display before, God help him. I’m so angry, I throw something at him-- the book that’s in my hand-- and I miss by a mile.

“You missed,” he informs me, sounding surprised. “You can’t see me, can you?”

“I meant to miss,” I yell, which is the truth-- just not so badly. Infuriated, I scrub at my eyes. I’m caught off guard when Blair shoves my shoulder against the wall and pins me there.

“You turned on all the lights,” he says hotly, his voice humid with his own sudden fear, “Your eyes are dilated. Why?”

“Get off me,” I hiss and give him a shove-- but my heart’s not into it because the dread in my gut is spreading upward like some kind of malignant cancer, some kind of black death that I can’t escape, leaving me standing against the wall in utter terror, gulping for air.

“Jim?” His voice quakes, “What’s wrong with your eyes?”

For weeks I’ve been telling him: sensory spikes, just a bad headache, just stress from work. I’ve hidden the worst of it, deflected his questions, cooperated with each relaxation exercise, but yesterday, driving alone, I almost ran over a kid on a bicycle. I nearly killed a child.

“It’s a virus. There’s no cure,” I confess to Blair on the crest of a sob, “I’ve got two years-- or less.”

I can’t say the word “blind” but Blair hears it anyway as the sound of all the pieces falling into place. He is frozen for one long, terrible moment, and then he pulls me into his arms with words, so fervent they’d be harsh if not for their meaning. “Okay, it’s okay, Jim. We’ll get through it. I’m not leaving you. I’m staying right here with you.”

I kiss him in a passion of panic, my face slick with tears. I grab his face and plunge in desperately, delirious with fear. It’s a kiss that says: “help me”. And he does, pressing me hard against the wall and kissing me back. We fuck in the fierce white glare of his bedroom-- every light blazing-hot-- with a wreck of books on the floor, his dresser drawers yanked open, clothes strewn all around. I’m already blind. Anguish crashes into ecstasy just as he crashes into me-- all a struggle to become one.

When it’s over, he is gentle and I am spent. He pulls out, murmuring sweet things. With my face pressed into the pillow, I hear the condom snap off. He holds me for a long time, tightly, with such strength. Then, when he thinks I’ve fallen asleep, he gets up and walks through the loft turning off all the lights, one by one.

~~

Chicago. The St. Patrick’s Day Parade. Two years and seven months of the fullest life I’ve ever known, has passed in a shriek of joy and pain and heart-stopping love, and now I am totally blind. Bagpipes wail along with the rat-tat-tat of an army of drummers. Blair and I weave through a throng on people, practically in the parade. He is looking for a cafe while we “go with the flow”, plotting our escape like Steve McQueen. For me, this is dancing, following the shifts and moments of his body with my hearing dial clamped way down and my touch dial cranked way up. Salsa. Tango. Waltz.

“I thought bagpipes were Scottish!” I scream, feeling Blair step in front of me, like a shield. We stop for a moment.

“Don’t even get me started!” He yells back. “Hang on! I think I see an opening!”

I take hold of his shoulders, duck my head, and wait for him to move, marveling at my calm. I’m in the middle of a pitch-black, raging storm, but with Blair it’s all just one big adventure.

“Here we go!”

He surges forward and I follow. We veer, and twist, and wrangle our way along-- and just when I get the sense that we’re almost out of the fray, something slams into me, hard as a line-backer, and I go reeling. My hands are empty. Blair is gone. Panic swoops up like a flock of startled birds. I bump. I stumble. I fall, scraping my hands on the asphalt, knocking my knees. And in my head there is nothing but the sweaty scream of pipes and a stampede of drums underscored by teeming voices--voices and footsteps and spinning. The world is falling over itself, tumbling end over end.

“Blair!”

I reach out, groping. Blackness plasters itself to my face like a wind-blown trash bag. Right, left, up, down, all direction jitters as my internal compus needle goes haywire. I can feel my heart banging crazily inside my chest. I can’t breathe. I can’t move.

“Blair!”

Suddenly there is a stumbling bump beside me. A hand touches my back. My head. Then an arm wraps around my chest as I crouch on all fours in the street. People are streaming all around. Drums are pounding incessantly. Hot air puffs into my ear. I hear breathless words.

“I’m here. I’m here. It’s me. I’ve got you. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Jim. It’s okay. I’m right here.”

Blair. I move with fear, throwing my arms around him. Clutching him to me as he clutches back, his fists twisting in the back of my jacket.

“I could see you the whole time,” he gasps, “I never took my eyes off you. You knew I was coming-- didn’t you? You know I’ll always come for you.”

I nod numbly and hold on, feeling shattered.

Finally, after a long while, he struggles and we make it to our feet. A gust of wind surges up and I bury my face in Blair’s neck. All I can hear is the sound of my own breathing, roaring in my ears. But I can feel Blair’s heat and movement. I can smell his skin. His hair. His wool coat. His leather gloves. After a while something hard presses up against my back and I realize we’ve left the parade behind. I have no idea where I am, but it doesn’t matter. Space hovers infinitely around me, but Blair is right in front of me, solid and palpable and somehow infinite in his own way.

I sink my fingers into his hair, lean in and kiss him. Still breathing hard, I gasp between kisses, grazing my lips over his face, searchingly. Imploringly. Kissing. He pulls off his gloves and spreads his hands over my cheeks. He says my name. He holds my face. He tells me he loves me.

“I’m blind,” I confess, at last, helplessly, remembering the exact moment I opened my eyes and blinked, and then slowly exhaled; remembering how my fists clenched in the bed sheets. “I can’t see anything. This morning. I woke up and there was just blackness. Just nothing.”

“I- I know. I think I knew that,” he rasps, close to tears.

“It’s happened.”

“Jim. Listen. We’re going to be okay.”

“You’re sure about that?”

He pulls me into his arms and holds on. I feel him nod against me.

“Yes, I am. And you know what else I know?”

“What?”

He pulls back and gently palms my cheek. The wind gusts up, and then dies back down again.

“It’s time to go home.”

Reaching out, I touch his face, and I can feel that he’s smiling.