Road sign challenge by Alex51324
Title: Another Roadside Attraction
Author:
alex51324
Pairing: Fraser/RayK friendship or preslash, depending on your slash goggles prescription
Rating: PG-13 for language
Length: 1976 words
Summary: Fraser has a lot to learn about road trips.
Notes: I used a billboard rather than a highway-department type road sign, which I hope is OK.
Ray was bored. More than bored. So incredibly numb with boredom that he was seriously considering banging his head against the window just to relieve the tedium. “Is it my turn to drive yet?”
“No, Ray,” Fraser answered.
Ray was beginning to suspect that it would never be his turn to drive. It wasn’t like Fraser to hog all the driving, but they were in the Consulate’s SUV. He might have decided that only Canadians were allowed to drive it or something dumb like that. “When are we going to stop for lunch?”
“There are sandwiches in my knapsack.”
Ray stared at him. “We’re not stopping?” The only thing that had gotten him through the last hour of Fraser driving like an old lady was thinking, at least they’d be stopping for lunch soon.
“There’s no need.”
Hoping that maybe Dief had eaten the sandwiches already, or at least drooled on them, Ray looked over his shoulder into the backseat. Dief was stretched out with his chin on the knapsack, but it was still buckled closed. Those must be some grim sandwiches, if the wolf was using them as a pillow and not eating them.
Ray sank back into his seat. When Fraser had broken the news that they had to drive to Ontario instead of fly--something about a dispute between Air Canada and the RCMP--he’d actually thought it might be fun. Road trip with his Mountie. But Fraser seemed to think that the whole point was to get from here to there as quickly as possible, while driving two or three miles below the speed limit.
Suddenly, Ray saw just the thing to get Fraser into the spirit of the thing. “Fraser, look!” He pointed out the window.
Fraser slowed down, causing the drivers behind them to honk their horns and give them the one-finger salute as they swerved into the other lane to get around the guy who was hitting the brakes in the middle of the highway for no reason. “What, Ray?”
“The billboard. We have to stop.”
Shaking his head, Fraser slowly accelerated back to cruising speed. “We don’t have time.”
“Frase, it’s a giant cow.”
“I’m sure it’s not a real cow. It’s probably fiberglass or something.”
“I know it’s not a real cow. Do you think I’m that dumb?”
“Of course not, Ray.”
“You better not. Anyway, we have to stop and see it.”
“Why?”
“We just do.” Fraser didn’t say anything else, but Ray knew he hadn’t won. After a few more miles, they passed another billboard. “Look, it’s not just a cow. There’s a Cheese Chalet too.”
“I believe it’s pronounced ‘shall-ay.’”
“Whatever. It’s a giant cow and a cheese store. How can we miss that? I’m pretty sure if we get to the Wisconsin border and admit we haven’t been there, they’ll make us turn around and go back.”
“I’m fairly confident they’ll do no such thing.” Fraser actually took his eyes off the road for a second to look over at him. “I had no idea you were so devoted to cheese.”
“I’m not. It’s just, you know. A thing.”
“A thing?”
“When you’re on a road trip, you have to stop at stuff like that.”
“I see. But, Ray,” he said in that oh-so-reasonable tone of his.
“What?”
“This is a business trip.”
“It’s still a road trip.”
“It is not.”
Ray stopped himself from saying “Is too.” Instead, he said, “So you admit it’s a trip?”
“Yes. A business trip.”
“And--help me out here--what’s this thing we’re driving on?”
Fraser hesitated. “The, ah, surface?”
“Yeah. The surface we’re drivin’ on. What’s it called?”
“I believe it’s known as an interstate highway.”
Ray took a careful look at him. It was hard to tell sometimes, but yeah, Fraser was playing. “Yeah. Uh, there’s another name for it, isn’t there?”
“An expressway?”
“Yeah, that’s not the one I was thinkin’ of. Damn, it’s on the tip of my tongue.”
Fraser made a kind of choking sound and coughed hard. Ray got ready to lean over and grab the wheel if he had to, but Fraser recovered. “Motorway.”
“Huh?”
“It could be called a motorway. In England, I believe it would be known as a dual carriageway,” Fraser added.
“Yeah, I was thinkin’ of something shorter. Starts with an errrrrrr….”
“Ah. Perhaps you mean a road, Ray?”
“Yeah, that’s it! So we’re on a trip, and we’re on a road. Ergo, road trip.”
“That’s a compelling display of logic,” Fraser admitted.
“Thank you.”
“We’re still not stopping.”
“I bet Dief wants to see the giant cow.” He looked at the backseat. “Don’t you?”
“He only wants to go because there might be a snack bar.”
“There probably is.” Inspired, Ray added, “Shouldn’t we save the sandwiches for an emergency, anyway?”
“What kind of emergency?”
Ray tried to think of something that would leave him wanting to eat a sandwich that even the wolf wasn’t interested in. “Well, suppose the car breaks down. In a cell phone dead zone. And then when we go to walk for help, we both break both of our legs. And we can’t flag down a passing car for help because--” He searched for a plausible reason, but didn’t find one. “Because everyone else’s car has broken down too. If that happened, we’d be kicking ourselves for passing up a chance to stop at a giant cow with a snack bar.”
“Metaphorically, of course, because of the broken legs.”
“Right.”
“I have to say, Ray, that exact set of circumstances seems highly unlikely.”
“Well, it was just an example. It could be something else. Zombie attack, spotting a busload of hungry orphans, anything like that.” They were coming up on another giant cow billboard. “Look, the exit is in one mile! Come on, Frase, we have to stop. How many times are we going to have a chance like this?”
“At least one more, since we’ll be coming back this way after the trial.”
“Well, okay, yeah, but who knows what we’ll have on our minds then? This is the perfect time to see a giant cow.” Inspiration struck. “Tell you what. We can take turns. We’ll stop at the giant cow, and then the next cool thing we pass, we’ll skip.” He’d just have to keep his eyes open for something not-really-cool that they could skip, so that when something that was cool came up, it would be his turn again.
Dief stood up in the backseat and stuck his head between the two front seats, barking.
Fraser took one hand off the steering wheel to rub at his eyebrow, then, on the downswing, put on the turn signal. “Fine. It appears I’m outvoted. But we won’t be stopping long.”
When they got off the highway, there were plenty of signs pointing the way to the giant cow, and anyway, it was easy to spot. Ray bounced out of the car before Fraser had engaged the parking brake--he knew because Fraser told him that when he caught up--and went to look at the cow.
The thing was, after all that pestering Fraser to stop at the cow, there wasn’t much to it. It was a statue of a cow. A really big cow. Big whoop.
But he had better make it look good, so he dug out his drug-store camera and took some pictures. Left side of the cow. Right side of the cow. Back side of the cow. “If this thing was in Chicago, it would have swear words painted all over it,” Ray said to Fraser.
“If it was in Canada it would….”
“What? Be a musk ox?”
“Probably.”
Dief, after running circles around the cow, sat under its nose and barked up at it. “What the hell’s he doing?” Ray asked, snapping a picture. “Talking to it?”
“Diefenbaker does seem to have an animistic streak.”
“Huh?”
“Animism is the belief that plants and animals, and sometimes objects, have a soul or consciousness.”
“Oh.”
They stood and looked at the cow for a moment. “Do you suppose it’s hollow?” Fraser asked.
“Dunno. Probably.” Ray thought about it. “It’d be pretty heavy if it wasn’t.”
“Yes. Well.” Fraser took off his hat and handed it to Ray. “Only one way to find out.”
Before Ray could ask what that was, Fraser was climbing up onto the base of the statue and tapping on the cow’s giant udder. Quickly, Ray jammed the hat onto his head and snapped a few pictures--nobody back at the station would believe Fraser getting up close and personal with a giant cow unless there was evidence.
It was a good thing he took the picture fast, because Fraser had only been up there for about a second when a girl in a Heidi-dress came running out of the cheese store. “Sir! Sir, there’s no climbing on the cow.”
Fraser turned, looking surprised. “I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said, jumping down. “I didn’t know.”
“Well.” She looked flustered--the Mountie charm did that to people. “There’s a sign.”
“I didn’t see it. I’m sorry. We were wondering if the cow is hollow.”
“I--don’t know. She’s nineteen feet high and twenty feet long, and weighs two tons,” the girl recited. “A real cow her size would produce 270 pounds of milk a day. And your dog should really be on a leash.”
“He’s half wolf, actually,” Fraser said.
“Then he should definitely be on a leash.”
“He’s very well-behaved.”
Ray interrupted, “Let’s go in and look at the cheese.”
But it turned out un-leashed wolves weren’t allowed in cheese stores, so Fraser and Dief went to wait in the car while Ray browsed the cheese. Probably a good thing--there was cheese sitting out everywhere, and if they took Dief inside, half of it would have ended up in his stomach. (Well behaved Ray’s ass.)
Ray filled his pockets with free samples--Fraser licked things off of the ground, so if he minded pocket lint, well, more for Ray and Dief--and picked out a block of cheddar and some crackers and summer sausage. He was just about to check out when he saw the souvenir section.
Clearly, Fraser needed a memento of his special moment with the giant cow. It only took a moment of browsing for him to find the perfect thing.
Back outside, Fraser was leaning against the car and Dief was inside of it, hanging his head out the window. As he approached, Ray threw cheese samples at the wolf, who caught them out of the air with a snap of his teeth. On impulse, he threw one at Fraser, too, but Fraser wasn’t nearly as good as Dief at catching things with his mouth, and it bounced off his face and onto the ground. “Very funny, Ray,” Fraser said, picking up the cheese cube and giving it to Dief. “Don’t give him any more. I try to limit his dairy intake.”
“Okay,” Ray agreed. “Look, I got him a present.” He fished in the bag and took out a plush cow. Dief sniffed at it thoroughly before carefully closing his jaws around it and retreating back inside the SUV with his new friend.
“That’s very kind of you, Ray.”
“Uh-huh.” He took his other purchase out of the bag and handed it to Fraser.
“What’s this?” Fraser asked, turning it over in his hands.
“Your hat.”
His eyes flicked up to Ray’s head, where his real hat was. “I don’t remember it looking quite so cheese-like.”
Ray shrugged innocently and circled around to his side of the car. “Dunno.”
Shaking his head, Fraser got into the driver‘s seat and carefully placed the cheesehead hat on the dashboard. As he drove out of the parking lot, Ray heard him mutter, “You take a wolf and a Chicago detective to see a giant cow, and you pay, and pay, and pay.”
Author:
alex51324
Pairing: Fraser/RayK friendship or preslash, depending on your slash goggles prescription
Rating: PG-13 for language
Length: 1976 words
Summary: Fraser has a lot to learn about road trips.
Notes: I used a billboard rather than a highway-department type road sign, which I hope is OK.
Ray was bored. More than bored. So incredibly numb with boredom that he was seriously considering banging his head against the window just to relieve the tedium. “Is it my turn to drive yet?”
“No, Ray,” Fraser answered.
Ray was beginning to suspect that it would never be his turn to drive. It wasn’t like Fraser to hog all the driving, but they were in the Consulate’s SUV. He might have decided that only Canadians were allowed to drive it or something dumb like that. “When are we going to stop for lunch?”
“There are sandwiches in my knapsack.”
Ray stared at him. “We’re not stopping?” The only thing that had gotten him through the last hour of Fraser driving like an old lady was thinking, at least they’d be stopping for lunch soon.
“There’s no need.”
Hoping that maybe Dief had eaten the sandwiches already, or at least drooled on them, Ray looked over his shoulder into the backseat. Dief was stretched out with his chin on the knapsack, but it was still buckled closed. Those must be some grim sandwiches, if the wolf was using them as a pillow and not eating them.
Ray sank back into his seat. When Fraser had broken the news that they had to drive to Ontario instead of fly--something about a dispute between Air Canada and the RCMP--he’d actually thought it might be fun. Road trip with his Mountie. But Fraser seemed to think that the whole point was to get from here to there as quickly as possible, while driving two or three miles below the speed limit.
Suddenly, Ray saw just the thing to get Fraser into the spirit of the thing. “Fraser, look!” He pointed out the window.
Fraser slowed down, causing the drivers behind them to honk their horns and give them the one-finger salute as they swerved into the other lane to get around the guy who was hitting the brakes in the middle of the highway for no reason. “What, Ray?”
“The billboard. We have to stop.”
Shaking his head, Fraser slowly accelerated back to cruising speed. “We don’t have time.”
“Frase, it’s a giant cow.”
“I’m sure it’s not a real cow. It’s probably fiberglass or something.”
“I know it’s not a real cow. Do you think I’m that dumb?”
“Of course not, Ray.”
“You better not. Anyway, we have to stop and see it.”
“Why?”
“We just do.” Fraser didn’t say anything else, but Ray knew he hadn’t won. After a few more miles, they passed another billboard. “Look, it’s not just a cow. There’s a Cheese Chalet too.”
“I believe it’s pronounced ‘shall-ay.’”
“Whatever. It’s a giant cow and a cheese store. How can we miss that? I’m pretty sure if we get to the Wisconsin border and admit we haven’t been there, they’ll make us turn around and go back.”
“I’m fairly confident they’ll do no such thing.” Fraser actually took his eyes off the road for a second to look over at him. “I had no idea you were so devoted to cheese.”
“I’m not. It’s just, you know. A thing.”
“A thing?”
“When you’re on a road trip, you have to stop at stuff like that.”
“I see. But, Ray,” he said in that oh-so-reasonable tone of his.
“What?”
“This is a business trip.”
“It’s still a road trip.”
“It is not.”
Ray stopped himself from saying “Is too.” Instead, he said, “So you admit it’s a trip?”
“Yes. A business trip.”
“And--help me out here--what’s this thing we’re driving on?”
Fraser hesitated. “The, ah, surface?”
“Yeah. The surface we’re drivin’ on. What’s it called?”
“I believe it’s known as an interstate highway.”
Ray took a careful look at him. It was hard to tell sometimes, but yeah, Fraser was playing. “Yeah. Uh, there’s another name for it, isn’t there?”
“An expressway?”
“Yeah, that’s not the one I was thinkin’ of. Damn, it’s on the tip of my tongue.”
Fraser made a kind of choking sound and coughed hard. Ray got ready to lean over and grab the wheel if he had to, but Fraser recovered. “Motorway.”
“Huh?”
“It could be called a motorway. In England, I believe it would be known as a dual carriageway,” Fraser added.
“Yeah, I was thinkin’ of something shorter. Starts with an errrrrrr….”
“Ah. Perhaps you mean a road, Ray?”
“Yeah, that’s it! So we’re on a trip, and we’re on a road. Ergo, road trip.”
“That’s a compelling display of logic,” Fraser admitted.
“Thank you.”
“We’re still not stopping.”
“I bet Dief wants to see the giant cow.” He looked at the backseat. “Don’t you?”
“He only wants to go because there might be a snack bar.”
“There probably is.” Inspired, Ray added, “Shouldn’t we save the sandwiches for an emergency, anyway?”
“What kind of emergency?”
Ray tried to think of something that would leave him wanting to eat a sandwich that even the wolf wasn’t interested in. “Well, suppose the car breaks down. In a cell phone dead zone. And then when we go to walk for help, we both break both of our legs. And we can’t flag down a passing car for help because--” He searched for a plausible reason, but didn’t find one. “Because everyone else’s car has broken down too. If that happened, we’d be kicking ourselves for passing up a chance to stop at a giant cow with a snack bar.”
“Metaphorically, of course, because of the broken legs.”
“Right.”
“I have to say, Ray, that exact set of circumstances seems highly unlikely.”
“Well, it was just an example. It could be something else. Zombie attack, spotting a busload of hungry orphans, anything like that.” They were coming up on another giant cow billboard. “Look, the exit is in one mile! Come on, Frase, we have to stop. How many times are we going to have a chance like this?”
“At least one more, since we’ll be coming back this way after the trial.”
“Well, okay, yeah, but who knows what we’ll have on our minds then? This is the perfect time to see a giant cow.” Inspiration struck. “Tell you what. We can take turns. We’ll stop at the giant cow, and then the next cool thing we pass, we’ll skip.” He’d just have to keep his eyes open for something not-really-cool that they could skip, so that when something that was cool came up, it would be his turn again.
Dief stood up in the backseat and stuck his head between the two front seats, barking.
Fraser took one hand off the steering wheel to rub at his eyebrow, then, on the downswing, put on the turn signal. “Fine. It appears I’m outvoted. But we won’t be stopping long.”
When they got off the highway, there were plenty of signs pointing the way to the giant cow, and anyway, it was easy to spot. Ray bounced out of the car before Fraser had engaged the parking brake--he knew because Fraser told him that when he caught up--and went to look at the cow.
The thing was, after all that pestering Fraser to stop at the cow, there wasn’t much to it. It was a statue of a cow. A really big cow. Big whoop.
But he had better make it look good, so he dug out his drug-store camera and took some pictures. Left side of the cow. Right side of the cow. Back side of the cow. “If this thing was in Chicago, it would have swear words painted all over it,” Ray said to Fraser.
“If it was in Canada it would….”
“What? Be a musk ox?”
“Probably.”
Dief, after running circles around the cow, sat under its nose and barked up at it. “What the hell’s he doing?” Ray asked, snapping a picture. “Talking to it?”
“Diefenbaker does seem to have an animistic streak.”
“Huh?”
“Animism is the belief that plants and animals, and sometimes objects, have a soul or consciousness.”
“Oh.”
They stood and looked at the cow for a moment. “Do you suppose it’s hollow?” Fraser asked.
“Dunno. Probably.” Ray thought about it. “It’d be pretty heavy if it wasn’t.”
“Yes. Well.” Fraser took off his hat and handed it to Ray. “Only one way to find out.”
Before Ray could ask what that was, Fraser was climbing up onto the base of the statue and tapping on the cow’s giant udder. Quickly, Ray jammed the hat onto his head and snapped a few pictures--nobody back at the station would believe Fraser getting up close and personal with a giant cow unless there was evidence.
It was a good thing he took the picture fast, because Fraser had only been up there for about a second when a girl in a Heidi-dress came running out of the cheese store. “Sir! Sir, there’s no climbing on the cow.”
Fraser turned, looking surprised. “I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said, jumping down. “I didn’t know.”
“Well.” She looked flustered--the Mountie charm did that to people. “There’s a sign.”
“I didn’t see it. I’m sorry. We were wondering if the cow is hollow.”
“I--don’t know. She’s nineteen feet high and twenty feet long, and weighs two tons,” the girl recited. “A real cow her size would produce 270 pounds of milk a day. And your dog should really be on a leash.”
“He’s half wolf, actually,” Fraser said.
“Then he should definitely be on a leash.”
“He’s very well-behaved.”
Ray interrupted, “Let’s go in and look at the cheese.”
But it turned out un-leashed wolves weren’t allowed in cheese stores, so Fraser and Dief went to wait in the car while Ray browsed the cheese. Probably a good thing--there was cheese sitting out everywhere, and if they took Dief inside, half of it would have ended up in his stomach. (Well behaved Ray’s ass.)
Ray filled his pockets with free samples--Fraser licked things off of the ground, so if he minded pocket lint, well, more for Ray and Dief--and picked out a block of cheddar and some crackers and summer sausage. He was just about to check out when he saw the souvenir section.
Clearly, Fraser needed a memento of his special moment with the giant cow. It only took a moment of browsing for him to find the perfect thing.
Back outside, Fraser was leaning against the car and Dief was inside of it, hanging his head out the window. As he approached, Ray threw cheese samples at the wolf, who caught them out of the air with a snap of his teeth. On impulse, he threw one at Fraser, too, but Fraser wasn’t nearly as good as Dief at catching things with his mouth, and it bounced off his face and onto the ground. “Very funny, Ray,” Fraser said, picking up the cheese cube and giving it to Dief. “Don’t give him any more. I try to limit his dairy intake.”
“Okay,” Ray agreed. “Look, I got him a present.” He fished in the bag and took out a plush cow. Dief sniffed at it thoroughly before carefully closing his jaws around it and retreating back inside the SUV with his new friend.
“That’s very kind of you, Ray.”
“Uh-huh.” He took his other purchase out of the bag and handed it to Fraser.
“What’s this?” Fraser asked, turning it over in his hands.
“Your hat.”
His eyes flicked up to Ray’s head, where his real hat was. “I don’t remember it looking quite so cheese-like.”
Ray shrugged innocently and circled around to his side of the car. “Dunno.”
Shaking his head, Fraser got into the driver‘s seat and carefully placed the cheesehead hat on the dashboard. As he drove out of the parking lot, Ray heard him mutter, “You take a wolf and a Chicago detective to see a giant cow, and you pay, and pay, and pay.”