Sacred Space

Fanfiction
Title:	Sacred Space
Author(s):	Sanj
Date(s):	pre-1999
Length:
Genre(s):
Fandom(s):	Sentinel
Relationship(s):
External Links:	Sacred Space on LiveJournal Sacred Space st AO3
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Sacred Space is an early story by Sanj which crystallized her reputation for writing short, sharp, poignant Jim/Blair first time fic. It's a post-episode story, set after the episode where Blair gets trapped in an elevator, which posits that every time Blair's life is endangered, Jim needs contact with him to reassure himself that Blair's really okay.

Although it looks somewhat dated ten years after its creation (which Sanj acknowledges in the header for the story at her sanj-stories livejournal, where the story is now archived—her former website at Trickster no longer exists), it's a classic.

Excerpt

We make dinner together, usually something simple. Comfort food. This time it was canned tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches. He thinks I'm insane for eating mine with mustard. Tall glasses of milk; no beer. We're already half-drunk on fear and relief.

We take turns in the shower and dress comfortably, just sweats and T-shirts. And all the time we're attending to these little things, we don't say much of anything to each other. Just "this okay?" or "your turn."

Then we've eaten and put away the dishes, and Jim checks the locks again because he needs to, and I'm sitting on the couch watching him do it, thinking about Mom and her sage, and neo-pagans with their elemental circles, and Hasidim with their tabernacles. Sacred space.

The loft becomes a space between the worlds, a place outside of time. I sit on the couch and breathe deep, feeling the power of it, watching Jim, half-conscious of what he's doing, pulling every blind completely closed, shutting out any minute interference from the outside world.

And then, without saying anything, he comes to where I'm sitting on the couch and wraps himself around me, and we hold each other.

Reactions and Reviews

Unknown Date

In the aftermath of danger, Jim and Blair celebrate being alive. This is one of my absolute favorite TS stories of all time. It's insightful, tender, funny, sensual. The characterizations are spot on, and Justine's vision of the guys' relationship is incredibly intimate and tender.

Justine is one of those writers who does such gorgeous relationship development, you don't care about plot. Isn't it great that she can plot, too? Sacred Space is her self-proclaimed best story--not exactly, I can think of at least three more that vie for top billing, but it's highly representational, and the sex scene's very sweet.

2002

...the lovely Sacred Space, a not so typical first-timer indeed.

2005

This story is set after Dead Drop, and is a wonderfully poignant look at how Sentinel and Guide reconnect after the threat is over. It has a spot-on Blair voice, with a real sense of him as an anthropologist. As I've mentioned before, I love stories where the path from straight man to being in a committed homosexual relationship isn't automatic, and "Sacred Space" does a great job of exploring the redefinition of identity. I think what I love most is how believably vulnerable Jim is in this. A beautiful and touching story.

2006

I did find a story, when I started thinking about it, that includes a terrific use of the WNG trope, a story that doesn't bother me at all or come across as a rejection of homosexuality. Quite the reverse.

In "The Sentinel," you have a fandom that does give you a very viable way to express the sexual and soul-mate nature of the lovers in a manner that can have little or nothing to do with gay identity or gay culture of 21st Century America. Canon gives you a way of exploring an incredibly close, spiritual, karmic bond between Jim and Blair, part of their relationship as Sentinel and guide or Guide.

Of course, you don't have to focus on Sentinel/Guide to write TS fic. Some authors are actually bored by that or actively oppose that. But I find I enjoy all kinds of Sentinel fic, from the plotty police cases to the very, very metaphysical or shamanistic tales, and I enjoy the gen and the smarm in this fandom, too.

"Sacred Space" talks about a soul-deep bond between the two protagonists that slowly, over time, gets expressed as sex. And the Blair character, who narrates the story, sees it as WNG for himself. In this story, the Jim character is written as gay from the outset. In this story, Blair sees his connection with Jim as underlying or transcending or something --- anyway, the connection they have is the point and the sex thing or the sexual attraction thing is not the main point. The bond he feels with Jim gets expressed through sex, but it's very metaphysical. I don't think we are intended to see Blair as in denial here, as an unreliable narrator. I think Justine wants to explore this idea of sex being, in the words of the naughty musical, not the cause, but the symptom.

And Justine is definitely a good enough writer to pull that off!

On the other hand, another story of hers, "And So It Goes," takes the same characters and treats their relationship as more realistically gay, or bi, and plays with the power dynamic between them, and has another character arc entirely. I love that story, too.

So by thinking about "Sacred Space" I realized that, yes, there is definitely a WNG theme in some of the stories I like, and that I don't think it necessarily involves a rejection of dealing with actual gender identity issues as we see them today. You all know I'm very interested in gender studies, as an amateur, and the way slash and SF inform our understanding of them. So this is part of that, to me.

By letting our fic purposefully jettison the reality of 21st Century Gay Culture, are we learning things, experimenting in fiction, about the nature of gender? As grievous_angel used to say, the plumbing can be truly irrelevant; it's all about the characters and the love? If I think along these lines, I get equally interested in the other Big Discussion We Always Have in Slash: Feminizing Male Characters, and What That Means. What is masculine? What is feminine? I love that debate, too, as you know....