Sing Me a Love Song [pg13] Fraser/RayK PART TWO
Part One
It only took that one time for Fraser to cotton on. I think he had some sort of well thought-out explanation for sense-memory whosit where he figured him singing made me feel safe and taken care of like he’d done for me that sick day. He was only half-wrong, so I let it slide.
I really did get the warm fuzzies when he sang to me. I just got… warm other things, too.
But like hell was I gonna tell him, “No, Frase, no more singing, it gives me a stiffy.” Because. Well, a lotta reasons, most of them selfish. The biggest one I had going for me, though, was that…Fraser looked fucking beautiful when he did it. And yeah, you’re thinking, This is different from all the damn time…how? but you haven’t seen Fraser beautiful until you’ve seen Fraser happy.
I think he had some happy go sense memory stuff working on him, too. Taking care of me, feeling useful and needed. And his warm fuzzies look beautiful.
He never abused his power, or overused it. I didn’t have to worry about him belting out a chorus from Sound of Music if I had a bitching hangover and a fierce need to bite people’s heads off. But if, say, I’m in the middle of reinvestigating the murder of a cop so a woman I put away won’t get lethal injection, then Constable Benton Fraser of the Royal Canadian Mounties will find the one inmate in the entire jail who’ll ask him if he’ll sing to her, conveniently right by my side.
I almost got dragged through the bars by a beefeater with tits because the warm fuzzies hit me so hard. Out of the fucking blue. I didn’t even hardly see the rest of the walk to Beth Brotrell’s holding room, didn’t think about til later how much hell that would’ve been if he hadn’t sung a note.
I had K-K-K-Katie stuck in my head for thirty of the longest hours of my life (and not for the reasons you’d think, if you didn’t know the details). Didn’t help. I couldn’t make Fraser sing for me at the drop of a hat, I didn’t want him to. I couldn’t let myself get addicted to this. Not when-
Not when I hadn’t done a damn thing that made me worthy of any comfort.
That hand on my shoulder almost broke me. I thought I was actually breaking, little pieces of me falling in the floor-well until there wouldn’t be much left besides the shoulder Fraser had a grip on.
Selfish save-your-skin preservation instincts kicked into over fucking drive, shoving me and my knee into the seat-divide like I was going to crawl in Fraser’s lap. His back hit the door, eyes huge, arms wide so they could stop me. Straight. Straight. …Fuck.
Dief licked my ear and whined, his own kind of weird music, and I scraped up enough strength to stop and say, “I can’t-I can’t fucking drive, Frase, can you get us out of here?”
His breath rushed out of him, and if it didn’t sound exactly relieved, well. My ears were screwed on wrong. Obviously. “Of course, Ray,” he murmured, and it sounded enough like a melody that I flinched.
I sank as low in his seat as Fraser had on our drive to the Henry Allan, wishing the whole way home that I could slip inside it like a jacket. It smelled like Fraser if I turned my face towards the window and pressed it to the leather.
I was done crying by the time we got home. Or I thought I was. One look in the rearview showed a steady stream of tears running down my cheeks and I barked out a laugh, loud and ugly enough to startle both Canadians in my car.
“Didn’t think this through,” I muttered to myself, pressing one shaking hand over the track they’d be able to see. “Sorry, Frase.” My voice sounded fucked raw. “I didn’t think. You and Dief take the Goat over to the consulate and I’ll take a cab there in the morning, yeah?”
Crinkly lines, though he wasn’t looking at me until he said my name. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like some company, Ray?”
Dief whined encouragingly from the backseat and started licking the tears off my face, dangerously close to my eye. I fended him off and let myself consider it for a minute. It’s not like we’d be up there unsupervised with Diefenbaker around.
“No,” I said, pushing open the door so sudden I about hit the pavement. “Nope, I’m…not gonna be any type of company as soon as I reach the liquor cabinet. Take care of my girl,” I added with a little wave that made me feel half drunk already, and pasted on a smile as I shut the door.
Fraser turned off the car.
“Um.”
He got out and flipped the seat forward for Dief, blinking those big blue eyes at me. “Yes, Ray?”
“You’re not walking,” I said, “It’s ten million blocks in the middle of the night.”
“Oh, no,” Fraser promised, swore, in fact, “We’re just stretching our legs.”
Dief barked agreement, wagging his tail.
Right.
I shoved my hands in my pockets and walked to my building, straining my ears for the click of wolf claws and Mountie boots, but nothing. When I turned around they were exactly how I’d left them, only about twenty feet closer.
I told him, “That’s creepy, Fraser.”
His shoulders shrugged, eyes wide. “What is?”
I rolled my own eyes and trudged inside, up the stairs, and every time I had to take a corner they were exactly how they had been, just one landing below. I snapped with one floor to go.
“Okay, now you’re freaking me out!” Dief laughed. Fraser told him to hush but didn’t mean it. “Just…” I sighed and pushed my door open, rubbing my eyes so I wouldn’t have to see them, “Just come on in.”
“Ah, thank you kindly, Ray.” Even not looking I could hear him smiling, and I could definitely smell him when he brushed by me. Dief’s tail whacked me in the leg.
“Ow,” I said, just for the…whatsit. For the point. ‘Cause I could and had the right.
“Dief, that wasn’t very nice,” Fraser scolded, but I’d have to be a lot dumber than a canine to buy it.
I ignored them both and went straight for the booze. I was pretty sure this time I’d stopped crying, but my insides felt all shivery still and the top of my mouth ached, like it wouldn’t take much.
“Ray.”
“Nah-uh, Fraser,” I cut him off, holding the bottle of cheap rum on high as I turned, “This here is a pre-emptive strike.”
“Against what?” His mouth was amused, but his eyes weren’t.
I didn’t answer, busy picking at the label. “You know they called me Kowalski today? Yesterday too.”
Fraser said, “Yes,” like he didn’t want to. Like he knew this was going somewhere bad. Who am I to disappoint?
“Forgot how much it sucked to be me.” I took a swig as I walked by, dragged the back of my hand over my mouth and headed into the bedroom without looking back. Either he was gonna follow or he was gonna leave, and either option was a-okay by me.
Dief didn’t take as long as Fraser did, flopping down by my ankles before I’d even stopped bouncing on the bed. Another burning gulp and I forced myself upright long enough to strip out of my jacket and top shirt, and when I fell back in my wifebeater I felt a little better until I caught Fraser leaning in the doorway, watching me.
I looked at the ceiling, sigh pressing out of my skinny chest. “The bed doesn’t bite, unless it’s Diefenbaker.”
“And even then…” Fraser sighed, then added, pointed (not to me), “You certainly are going soft.”
Didn’t have to look to see him shaking his head at Dief’s annoyed grumbling, but my traitorous eyes flipped down to watch him shake off the bulky red and black lumberjack coat he had on. I don’t think I’d noticed until then that the sweater he was wearing looked a lot like the one he’d worn on the Henry Allan, only…clean, and not ripped up. Had some sort of diamond pattern across the front, looked really big and warm. Soft.
I took a deep breath and another pull off the bottle as Fraser kicked off-alright, removed his boots and laid down real careful on the
comforter beside me. Then I offered him a drink, unfolding my arm just enough to bump the glass against his hip.
“No, thank you, Ray,” he said but took the bottle anyway, holding it up to read the label, thumbnail following the line of the cartoon captain’s coat hem. I drew in a shuddery breath and held still, eyes burning with the image of Ben-Fraser, fuck, Fraser in my bed, on my pillows, dim light from my dingy lamp spilling gold across his skin. “You know alcohol is considered a depressant.”
“You don’t say,” I mumbled, not really listening as I took it back from him and swallowed down another mouthful. I could already feel it buzzing on my skin, creeping through my skull, probably why I said what I did next. “Always thought…” Hoarse. Not really audible. I tried again. “Always thought you didn’t drink ‘cause you never know when you’re gonna need to do your duty, or whatever, and maybe that’s it too but-“ I dragged in a breath and listened to it rattle through my tight throat. “I bet you just get really sad.”
Tears burned down my raw face, not tears for me or Beth, this time. I think he must’ve caught the bottle before I dropped it to reach for him. I got a fistful of that thick wool sweater and held on, trying to stop shaking.
Ben shifted without a word, never once making me open my eyes or move on my own. Just suddenly his arm was under my head and curled around my shoulders, and he was on his side facing me, rum held between us just above where my hand was clenched in his clothes.
I kind of expected him to sing. Hell, I half expected him to kiss me. But he didn’t, and he really didn’t-just put his head against mine and breathed, matching mine, so that I didn’t even realize I was slowing down when he slowed too.
“That’s a neat trick,” I told him a long while later, even got a grin on my face for a second.
Fraser did that, “Hm,” thing, and then, “Yes, it is.” He eased onto his back but didn’t move his arm, so I didn’t try to make myself let go. “My friend Innusiq taught it to me when I was…missing my mother too much.”
“That’s harsh,” I whispered, “People should always be allowed to cry about their folks.”
Fraser didn’t say anything, but he was quiet in a way that meant he didn’t really agree with me, or didn’t know how to.
I blinked just big enough to see that we both had our eyes closed, then kept ‘em shut. Took a deep breath, which Fraser matched exactly. Good.
“Hey Frase,” I said, just the barest bit of a tug on his shirt, “I’d like you to tell me about Victoria, sometime. Okay?” He was very, very still. Not breathing at all. I twitched my hand until one of my knuckles poked his belly and he let out his air. “Not right now and not right away, I just. It feels like something I should know about not from a file. You know? And it feels like…” Something you should be allowed to cry about, but my mouth twitched and stopped making words.
I didn’t realize for a long time that my fist had unclenched and spread over Fraser’s stomach, rising and falling in time to our breathing. Heartbeats. I didn’t move it, but I think I must’ve tensed a little because his chest kinda lifted under me, and I felt him speak before I heard it.
“She was a rare thing,” he let out in a hush, then his hips shifted and his belly went taught as he sang, not any louder, “as fine as a bee’s wing. So fine a breath of wind could blow her away. She was a lost child. Oh she was running wild. She said as long as there’s no price on love, I’ll stay. And you wouldn’t want me any other way.”
Later that night when I woke up sobbing trying to peel the bloody paper from my hands he crushed me in a hug, sang All the Pretty Little Horses to me until I calmed down. And how queer was that, right? Getting comforted by a song about ponies. But I couldn’t remember a time I’d felt cared about like that, and I fell asleep…thinking.
~*~
If this were a relationship, which I knew damn well it wasn’t that kind, but any case, still. Red ships and green ships. There was a whole lotta give going on on Fraser’s side of the equation, and a whole lotta take take take on my side without me giving anything back. Fraser probably didn’t even notice. No, I was sure Fraser didn’t notice because somewhere along the line someone taught him that’s what relationships are. You do all the giving, they do all the taking, and you get the pleasure of their company when they deem fit.
Just the fact that Fraser followed me into my apartment that night when I told him not to was a huge step, and I didn’t know how to let him know it was a step in the right direction without the usual relationship fallback of, you know, sex.
So I tried little things. You know, stuff I’d been doing before that I could do more of. Like bringing him lunch when I knew he’d be stuck in the consulate on Ice Queen duty. Only this one time I showed up and Fraser’s about to put something in a pan that looked like it should never see this side of the plumbing pipes, and I said, “Um, Frase, you better tell me you were about to burn that bad enough that Dief won’t drag it from the trash.”
“Why no, Ray,” he said, looking perplexed and mildly insulted, “It’s lichen soup, I wouldn’t waste it on-“
I hollered until he shut up, showed him the perfectly good sandwiches I’d gone to the trouble of purchasing, and made sure he had lunch and dinner every day until the lichen soup expired.
You know, stuff like that. It wasn’t…exactly right, but it was the best I could do til I figured something better.
I touched him more. And not touched, I mean-shoulder bumps and nudges and making sure he knew I was around. That I had his back, you know, thick or thin. And I was watching like a hawk for signs that he didn’t like it, ‘cause I’d seen him freeze on me before, and maybe he’d decided it was a weird Chicago thing-or a weird Ray thing-but he didn’t seem to mind so much. And I did it some with the other guys too so Fraser wouldn’t think nothing queer.
Then Tracy Jenkins… Well.
Well, so Fraser. So the thing I didn’t tell you is that while I’m running around getting Fraser real food and buddy-touching, Fraser was closing off. Not sos you’d notice, not so you could freaking call him on it, he just wasn’t…there. His face was there and his mouth said the right things but if you knocked on his skull and hollered, “HELLO, ANYONE HOME?” nobody’s in but us chickens.
And suddenly I was only pretty sure I had a handle on Fraser at all, because I’d been watching, damn it, and I was pretty sure it wasn’t the touching. Guy jumped out a window without checking to see if what he was landing on was secure, I better hope to God that’s not about me.
“Look, Fraser-“
He did look, but he looked kind of surprised seeing as we were sitting in the mixing room of Tracy’s recording studio and not in the middle of a conversation. The rest of the group was fighting just fine without us so I mumbled a completely pointless, “We’re just going to-be in here,” and dragged him out past the music goons in the hall to a side-room, holding onto about two inches of red serge above his elbow.
“Ray, what on earth-?”
I flicked on a light. The room wasn’t much bigger than the supply closet back at the station, but this one had nice foam padding on the walls which would be fucking greatness for…soundproofing. Right.
“So Fraser.” I cleared my throat and looked bootward, real aware that my shoulders were hunched as high as my folded arms. “Look, uh. I told myself after the Henry Adam-“
“Henry Allan, I think you mean,” Fraser corrected, oh so earnestly blank.
“Allan. Right.” Fuck. I knew that, I knew these things and these words in my head but Fraser made them come out wrong, sometimes. I chewed on my bottom lip hard enough to feel it, hoping that might help. “So I told myself after that case if we ever started glitching-“
“Glitching?”
“You know, not clicking. You set ‘em up, I knock ‘em down, Abbot and Costello, a-hey, yeah, a duet. You and me.”
His eyebrows came together just a fraction of an inch, right before he flicked his tongue over his teeth. Ha, gotcha. It wasn’t a neck crack or thumb to his eyebrow but I’d take what I could get.
“Yeah,” I pressed, running with that idea, “It’s like-Feels like there’s some poser standing in the middle of our band singing a flat note, Frase.”
“Ah,” he said, and there was the eyebrow rub. But nothing else. No contradiction or reasoning.
Being right didn’t feel as good as I thought it should. Because…Ah. I held my arms tighter. “Right. So…I figure I’m the bimbo with the flat note, here. But you gotta tell me what I’m doing wrong here, Frase, or I won’t know to knock it off.”
“I-“ Whoa. I’ve probably seen Fraser stammer less than I’ve heard him sing, so that’s saying something. “It’s not-you, Ray. I-I’m the-“
“It’s not you, it’s me,” I laughed, but not too well, “Never heard that one before.”
“Ray,” he said, and there, there he was, and I jumped a little at his hand on my arm because…probably because I’d been so focused on doing the touching that I hadn’t realized he’d just stopped. Touching me.
…Way to fucking go, Kowalski.
Cowboy George poked his head in the room right then and Fraser’s hand vanished behind his back, and I really coulda kicked old George right in the head. “Hey, boys, Trace needs the room for sound checkin’.”
Eat shit and die, George, I thought, but said, “Yeah, we’re done,” and wandered off to bother the bodyguard. Didn’t look back at Frase once. What was I gonna see? Relief? No thank you.
Sometimes I think Fraser really didn’t mean to get roped into singing backup for Tracy Jenkins. Other times I gotta wonder what the hell you go tinkering around with someone’s song if you don’t expect a courtesy invite.
All I really knew when I got back was that Fraser was singing. Smiling right at me through the glass like a little kid up on stage, and I’d’ve had to been bleeding out to stop from grinning back. I felt like a little kid’s dad in the crowd, too, trying to get him to move, and he’s up there with his hands tucked behind his back wobbling like a weeble, and it feels like he’s pushing air into my lungs all over again.
Still.
I managed to get myself under control enough to poke fun at him later, because he really was moving like a block of wood. Only when he apologized he really seemed to mean it, Jesus, so I added, “Singing like a bird.”
His whole face lit up, so sudden it was like staring at the flashbulb when a camera goes off an inch from your face. “Really?”
I reeled a little, fucking stunned, and blurted the first thing that fell out of my juvenile head. “I didn’t tell you what kind of bird.”
Had no one-fuck, did Fraser not know?
I mean, what, did he think I was humoring him? Or-
The case got in the way again, and I didn’t get to bring it up again until Cowboy George was well and locked up, after Tracey’s gig. Fraser, of course, volunteered to help clean up since he was (however temporarily) part of the band, and what? I’m… We were still glitching a little. I get a little overprotective when we’re glitching, sue me.
So I’m wandering around the floor, wiping down tables and flipping up chairs, and I’d finished half my section before I got the guts up to ask, “Hey Frase?”
“Yes, Ray.” He’d left his jacket on the stage, Henley sleeves rolled up as he paid a lot more attention to table cleanliness that I ever would.
“You know when I, ah.” I flipped the dishrag over in my hands. “You know when I told you you were singing like a bird?”
“Yes, Ray,” he said in his Ah tone of voice, like he was preparing himself for the punchline.
“Yeah.” The cloth was dirty and damp, smelled like wet dust and beer. “Did you say ‘Really’ because you don’t think you’re a good singer, or did you say it ‘cause you didn’t think I thought so?”
Fraser looked stunned. I don’t think I’d ever seen him that floored. And I wasn’t even looking at him long, I had a table rag to twist.
“I…” He cleared his throat and I watched his feet, saw the heels come together in a way that meant he was standing up Mountie straight, his default for getting flustered. His Frannie-stance, actually. My gut flopped like the dishrag. “I’ve never supposed myself to be the best-“
“You are the best, Fraser,” I said instantly, head snapping up so he could read it on my face. “You are the very best.”
He blushed serge red in the dim lights. I coughed and turned back to my table, feeling giddy-jittery like I’d just dodged a bullet.
“I am told, however,” he said, voice kinda low, “that my rhythm leaves something to be desired.”
My head ducked automatically to hide my grin, and then I checked the stage. Most all of the guys were out back lugging sound equipment into the vans, and the ones who weren’t were too busy to notice a flatfoot and a Mountie out of uniform past the stage lights.
“Come here,” I said, and tugged him into a cleared space in the middle of the floor but off to one side, behind a huge stack of chairs and where the house speakers were playing just loud enough to be heard.
“Ray?”
“You, Benton Fraser,” I said, slapping my hands together real quiet as I moonwalked back a step, “I am going to teach rhythm.”
He smiled a little, doubting. “Here? Now?”
“No, there, whenever. Yes, here, now. Listen,” I said, planting myself shoulder to shoulder with him as I pointed towards the ceiling.
I hope that I don’t fall in love with you, Marc Cohn crooned. My lips twisted. Ironic son of a bitch. ‘Cause falling in love just makes me blue.
“Okay?” I asked. Fraser nodded uncertainly. I rolled my eyes. “Right. Okay, now, sway.” Fraser instantly jostled me, thumping against my shoulder. “Whoa, hey!”
“I’m sorry, Ray,” he mumbled, serge-red for shame now and I wrapped an arm around his shoulders without thinking and pulled him close to my side.
“Hey,” I promised, “Not a natural, no biggie. I can’t carry a tune in a bucket.” I arched an eyebrow at him, waiting for it.
“I don’t think anyone can, realistically.”
“You do it,” I shrugged, then turned my attention back to the task at hand. Left my arm where it was, though. “Alright, now think about it. Could you sing along to this song off the beat?”
I meant it as a rhetorical question. Should’ve figured.
“I can see that you are lonesome, just like me,” he hummed, sliding over the words he didn’t know, And it being late you’d like some company…
And I’ve got Fraser singing in my ear, under my arm, close as he’s ever been but this time we’re awake, not drunk, not sad, not sick. In public. I closed my eyes and took a breath and forced myself to relax, so that when we swayed Fraser was so focused on keeping the melody he didn’t even notice.
Well I’ve had two, I look at you, and you look back at me. The guy you’re with has up and split, the chair next to you’s free.
I could’ve turned him. One slow step to the right-he wouldn’t even notice, singing with his eyes closed-and we’d be dancing.
And I hope that you don’t fall in love with me.
I don’t know how long I was watching him. I only know exactly when his eyes opened and he saw the view shifting in front of us, the moment when he realized we were moving. To the beat.
“Ray, look!” he said and instantly lost it, but it was worth it to hear him laugh my name like that.
If my own smile was a little strained, who cared? We were officially back in the groove, needle no longer skipping, but god fuck if we weren’t still going around in one big circle.
~*~
I knew what I had to do. Sorta.
Alright, I knew I had to do something. I couldn’t keep taking from Fraser, that left me way too big and him way too little and we’d both Sprit and Sprat ourselves to death so no. Finito. No more singing.
Not from him, anyway.
See, for a second I figured-the dancing. Maybe. Maybe I could teach him and that’d be my gift. But he wasn’t teaching me to sing and it’s not like I could sweep him up and do the polka whenever the need arose. It just. It wasn’t quite right.
So I dragged out my records every spare second I found, pulled them off the shelves spread them around me on every available surface and I listened. Record after record after record, skipping impatiently over the tracks I knew weren’t it, stopping halfway through to scramble for the cover of that half song something reminded me of, flipping back, straining my ears listening to the lyrics backwards and forwards and backwards again, just in case.
Fraser sneezed the first time he got in the car with me after a morning going through the boxes in the back of my closet, so I told him I was going through some stuff but I didn’t say why. What was I gonna say, anyway? I’d obviously lost my mind.
Hey, Frase, no worries, just looking for our song. Take your fingers off the radio dial before I break them.
It wasn’t even our song I was looking for.
I knew I was freaking him out just a little. He probably thought it was a Stella thing-hell, most of my manic obsessions were, I’ve got a track record, he’s a smart guy. But working all manic like that got me through all the records I owned in two weeks, and with the radio only playing the same ten songs every day I figured out a) I didn’t have it already, and b) it might take a while to find.
I could be patient. I could keep my ears open and wait. I could calm down so Fraser and Dief stop looking at me like I’m-what’s Fraser say? Few marbles short of an elevator?
Whatever.
Some days I thought I had it. It’d be humming in my skull right behind my left ear, and I’d turn everything off and park the car and try to hum along, try to force it to the surface. When Fraser wasn’t in the car, of course. First and last time I did that he was convinced I was hearing a bomb and made us vacate the GTO until a bomb squad nearly tore her to pieces.
But up until then it’d been a pretty good day. Those almost-had-it days were usually good ones. Days when Fraser laughed and meant it, when we were really, really clicking on a case, when we were really clicking on life.
We were so-so freaking in tune that when he started getting homesick, I wandered around for days trying to figure out why I felt like I was missing a limb before I figured out I was missing Canada. By like, proxy.
Weird as fuck to miss something you’d never had, but I guess I figured that right there was me and Fraser. Me missing someone I’d never had.
Still, I figured we had time. Maybe the song was Canadian. Maybe me and Frase could go up North for a vacation and get this homesickness worked out of our systems and maybe I’d find the song. We had time.
Until suddenly I’m staring at a balding guy with a big nose and an ugly mustache, and Fraser’s saying my name with a shake in it but he’s not talking to me, and it’s not really my name. And we didn’t have any time at all.
I meant what I said to Thatcher-and what the hell was I confiding in the Ice Queen for? Desperate much?-about not…not fucking knowing who you are when you aren’t around a person any more. There Fraser was doing stakeout with the real me, and I got left with being the fake him. Fake Vecchio.
Good thing people shooting at you tends to take your mind off blowing your brains out.
Falling down a mile deep crack in the ice tends to work too.
I was pretty out of it, crushed against Fraser, mind numbingly cold everywhere he wasn’t touching me. I remember mumbling something about King Tut, and trying, trying really hard to tell him I wished we’d dated. Except I think I called him a supermodel. God knows he’s pretty enough. (Like I said, really fucking out of it.)
Then he asked me about death.
“Oh, I’ve faced Death,” I promised, letting my head fall back. No biggie, Death was. Pushover with a face like a pincushion. Philbert “Death” McGrew. He and his heavy metal band had me pinned down in the concrete warehouse they’d broken into to rehearse, sharpening sticks and rocks and things for which to bash my brains in.
“What did you do?” Fraser asked like he actually heard all that, and who the hell knows? Maybe he did.
“I sang.” So when you’re near me, darling can’t you hear me, S.O.S., as loud as I could scream it, and they seemed to take it as some sort of audition. Confused ‘em just long enough for the cavalry to arrive. “Course it was Abba,” I mumbled mostly to myself, “so it spoiled the romantic affect.” Can’t remember why I said that. “But yeah, I sang.”
“Then we should sing.”
Fraser sounded so damn serious I didn’t realize what he’d said until the notes were spilling out of him. Franklin and the Beaufort Sea, and I closed my eyes and wished so hard that this was the song.
He paused just a split second before he started the next verse, and I made sure there was a smile on my face even though my cheeks were frozen, and it felt like something was ready to break.
I was pretty much ready to kick it in that crevasse. So ready, song or no, that when Delmar hauled us out? I started jittering. Bad. Like a junkie, or-no, like, like I’m about to step in the ring, but not right before the match. Day of, that morning, when I wake up with my blood buzzing with the knowledge that if I stop shadowboxing I’m gonna haul off and hit someone before I even see the mat.
~*~
I was gonna dump Thatcher in the snow if she took so much as one more sauntering step towards Fraser, so help me fucking god. And after that I was gonna do Fraser-and not do Fraser, I’m talking… Fuck all Canadians to hell.
Shadowbox. Shadowbox. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.
I got back to the tent while Frobisher still had the dogs howling, knowing I was fucked. Angry. And frustrated and pissed the fuck off and hurt because, because I try to tell a guy to choose me, just once, god, please, choose me-I took a breath and stopped shadowboxing-and he spins me some yarn about how we’ll always be friends no matter the distance and blah de fucking blah it feels like the ‘let’s be friends’ speech but in Canadian. Fuck.
I’ve got this loud aching ringing in my ears that won’t let me lay down, let alone go to sleep, and I can’t-I can’t even look at Fraser because I know I will kick him in the head and kiss him stupid instead of better. Know it like it’s pounding on my hide, know it like I know I don’t want to go back to Chicago and that’s freaking me out, because if I had anything at all that was me it was that city. I don’t even have the fucking song.
I want, I thought, and then-
Something snapped, like a guitar string thwapping my skull, and I was reeling so bad I didn’t even realize Fraser was standing there staring at me for way too long.
“Ray-“ he started, too worried for even crinkly lines around his wide, way-too-blue-to-be-real eyes, and I threw out a hand to shut him up.
“Shh.” Almost got it. Almost. I grabbed Fraser’s coat the same spot I’d grabbed his sweater and started running, tripping and falling mostly but dragging him to the woods, trying to keep the words in my mouth even as I dredged them up.
He probably thought something was wrong, like Muldoon’s men were sneaking up on the camp, until I threw him against a tree and crowded up close and then he probably thought different. Then it was just me who was wrong, me who was throwing my gloves down on the ground to get my cold fingers against his colder cheeks.
“I want you, you, you,” I sang, rough and barely on tune, watching emotions flicker across his face, “All I want is you, you, you. All I want is you.”
Fraser was staring at me. I stared back. Then I closed my eyes and shifted on my feet-because there was more to the song I just knew it, something about stars above and all my love-but huge leather gloves covered my ears so all I could hear was a muffled…nothing. Not my gloves. Not my hands. I opened my eyes.
Fraser’s were wet, and he gasped when I met them like he was seeing something in me he hadn’t let himself look for, or like I’d put my hand on his belly and pushed the air out of him.
“Fuck, Frase…” I whispered, crowding even closer, because Fraser should never have to feel that naked. Emotionally. Physically he could get as naked as he wanted, and I trailed my thumb along the edge of his jaw and showed him a grin, trying to coax one from him like I’d said that out loud. “Hey…”
He laughed just a little, wetly, then shook his head, moving his grasp to my shoulders. “Ray. You’re going back to Chicago.”
“No!” I said, surprising both of us enough that his mouth went slack for a split second and I had to take a step back. “No, wait, what’s the-I’d give you the stars above, sun on the brightest day…” God, I was choking up here. I gave up and moved close again, half singing the words. “Give you all my love, if only you would say…”
His arms-six sizes too big with all the padding we were wearing-wrapped so tight around me I didn’t have the breath in me to keep going. That, though? That was just fine. Because Fraser was murmuring the words against my mouth, cold lips and hot tongue telling me he’d seen me, he’s seen just me. He’s only been singing for me.
All I want is you, you, you. All I want is you.
I’d known the song wasn’t ours, but I’d always thought of it as mine in the sense that it was mine to give to Fraser. I hadn’t let myself think that it was my song for me, about Fraser.
“I wasn’t kidding about the adventure,” I blurted, almost right into the kiss before I could make myself pull back far enough to see him. “I want to-the reaching out hand-and, you know, I’m not all that good with dead guys or the artic so I was kinda hoping-“
“I know a lot of ballads,” Fraser said, gloved thumb trailing the shape of my ear as he put on his most serious face.
I grinned. “Really?”
“Long and involved,” he promised, leaning in to kiss my smiling mouth, “and totally, utterly miserable.”
THE END
.
\O/ First Due South fic! ...O_O i don't know where to post this. if you like it do you think you could put a rec on it?