men on the moon • 2011 • aukestrel
the soundtrack is eponymous
the genre is slash
the fandom is due South
the pairing is fraser/kowalski
Soundtrack: Man On the Moon, R.E.M.; I Feel Home, of a revolution (OAR); The Start Of Something, Voxtrot; Maps And Legends, R.E.M.; Running Up That Hill, Placebo; Invincible, OK Go; Lofty Pines, Gord Downie; Madly, Tyrone Wells; Firelight, Snow Patrol; Turn You Inside Out, R.E.M.; Blind Man, Paul Gross & David Keeley; Closer To Fine, Indigo Girls; The Planets Bend Between Us, Snow Patrol; It Happened Today, R.E.M.; Lake Of Silver Bells, Carbon Leaf (acoustic)
It’s not supposed to be me. I mean, it’s supposed to be him. Supposed to be him who knows what’s what, supposed to be him looking out for me and I’m getting this feeling, worse and worse, that he’s in trouble.
He’s not calling me Steve, okay, and there’s no head injury, but I think we’re losing it, I think he’s lost it. He gave me his hat when the wind kicked up a while ago, and then a little after that his scarf. Says there’s snow coming. We know we’re less than two miles from the cabin and the dogs, less than two miles from Dief, for God’s sake, but it’s not his cabin, not his terrain, and I think we passed that funny bent pine about an hour ago.
We’ve been staying with a friend of Fraser’s, Tom, since we left Buck and the rest of the Mounties behind, getting me trained up. “Acclimated,” Fraser says, of course. Last couple days has been snowshoeing and skiing “acclimation.” Tom breeds sled dogs, does the Yukon Quest, looks down his nose at the Iditarod: he won it eleven years ago, Fraser said, and never looked back. So he’s gone when we’re there, we’re gone when he’s there, and the upshot is, no way he’s gonna worry about us not turning up for at least a couple more days.
He’s shivering hard, makes my teeth hurt to hear him. But he plows on, says “that’s the body’s way of warming itself, Ray,” and “this ridge is probably the one we need to crest to see the cabin.” I think we need to rest, get out of the wind, maybe, find a tree or something to duck behind for a while. I got the stove, he’s got fuel, we just need a snow bank or something to get behind, get something hot in us.
Last time I mentioned it he snapped at me. Called me green, snippier than he’s been in a long time, so I just shut up, walked faster, thought about him, thought about Buck and Fraser telling me, all patient and shit, about winter survival and frostbite and shit at the Mountie camp, every night, telling each other stories about missing toes and hands and noses and, God help us, ear anecdotes too.
He stumbles, goes down on one knee, and he’s breathing hard, still shivering. I can smell the snow on the air, yeah, even me, the city boy.
“Need a hand?” I say, trying to sound neutral.
He heaves himself up, overbalances and almost goes down again. “No, thank you kindly, Ray, I’m fine.” His voice sounds loud and way too cheerful, like he thinks I’m going to panic. I’m way past panic, buddy, don’t worry about that.
I’m not even sure Tom would call out a search party. He’d look for us himself, sure, but he’s got issues with the local constabulary, or so I figure. Tom’s partner Lane was sent up the river for poaching, still serving time. Fraser gets a pass, being, I guess, that he’s Fraser, or maybe that he’s Bob Fraser’s son, or maybe that we saved the Hudson Bay from a nuclear sub, but Fraser shook his head when I started to ask more questions. It’s a thorny subject, Ray. The law’s the law. On the other hand, to people who have lived here all their lives, it doesn’t make much sense to be told that on one side of an arbitrary boundary there is apparently no danger to the animal population from subsistence hunting while on the other side of said boundary there are seasonal restrictions.
“Look, there’s a stand of trees there, Fraser, we could pile up some snow, sling the tarp over the top, rest a while, huh?”
“Ray.” He sounds sharp and he must realise it, ’cause he stops and tries again. “Ray, there’s a storm coming. We are probably less than two miles from the cabin. It’s pointless to stop now when we haven’t got much farther to go.”
And he swings his arms a few times, smiles at me, and starts off again.
Fuck.
I follow him up until we’re almost even with the trees and then I make my decision. I fall over, make a loud noise going down, like I’m surprised.
Scuffle, scuffle, thud, and he’s right there next to me, and he’s still fucking shivering, I can hear his teeth. “Ray. R-Ray?”
“Sorry, Fraser. Sorry. I’m fine.” I sit up, breathe heavy. “Fine, I’m just a little cold, little tired, I’m slowing you down.”
“No, Ray. You’re managing fine. Cala-calamari.” He’s shivering so hard he can hardly get the word out but it makes us both smile. “Come on, no stopping, up and at ’em.”
I breathe hard, make a big deal about getting up, getting the snowshoes untangled. I’m thinking we have to stop right now. I’m thinking we don’t have a tent, even. But I’ve got a tarp and we’ve got the stove and both sleeping bags and food and shit, if I can just get him to fucking listen to me.
“Ray, are you all right?” he says, and he sounds so worried I feel awful for making him worry on purpose, I’m fine, I’m cold but I think he’s a lot colder. He’s been in Chi-town three years; he’s not any more used to this weather than I am but he thinks he can give me his hat and just go off like he’s been Yukon Cornelius for forty years. Well. Thirty-six, whatever.
So I take a breath, try to sound unsure. “Fine, Fraser, just - just tired. Little cold. I’ll be okay in a few. Look, over there, can’t we sit over there for a few, out of this fucking wind?”
There’s a snowdrift and a tumbled down tree, and you can see where the wind’s sculpted the drift. At least I can see it and I don’t know shit about this terrain or this weather; I know the lee side of a hill when I see it is all.
“All right, Ray, but I’m going to go up to the top of the rise and see if I can get our bearings.”
“Fraser–”
“Five minutes, Ray, you sit tight and I’ll be back in two shakes of a dragon’s tail.”
“Fraser.” I make him look at me. “Don’t leave me alone, that’s not buddies.”
“Not alone, Ray,” he says in that ultra-fucking-reasonable voice, voice that’s scaring me almost more than anything else. “I’ll be fifty metres away at best, in sight the entire time. The cabin could well be in the next valley.”
“What if it’s not, Fraser?” I say, as calm as I can. “What if it’s not?”
“Ray, Ray, Ray. There’s absolutely no need to panic.”
“I am not panicking, Fraser, I’m asking you a question. What if it’s not? If it’s there it’ll be there after we have some soup. If it’s not there then it’ll still not be there after we have some soup.”
He stares at me, frowns, shakes his head a little. His shivering’s slowed down. I hope that’s good, don’t know if it is or not at this point, I’m mad and I can’t remember, can’t think, and that’s bad, a cop has to keep his head.
“You go start the stove, Fraser, I’ll go look on the ridge.”
“That makes no sense, Ray. You’re the one who’s cold and tired, there’s no point in you walking up there. I’ll be right back. You go set up the stove.” He shoulders off his pack, drops it at my feet, and sets off again.
“Bastard,” I say, loud enough for him to hear. He doesn’t turn around, doesn’t even slow down.
All right, fine, just fucking fine, Fraser. I grab his pack and drag it along with me over to that snow bank. Feels damn good to be out of the full force of the wind. Snow’s piled high here. I try to remember the name of that thing, but the name doesn’t matter, after all, what it was was a hole in the snow, dig out a snow bank, it’s like an igloo, Buck said, only smaller. And you angled up, so the cold air went down. Cold air, isn’t that all we’ve got right now?
Supposed to dig it up and pack it down, I remember them talking about the snow ‘sifting,’ but I don’t have time for that, going to just go with the idea that the snow’s been drifted and packed here a while, so I drop both packs, unstrap my snowshoes, pull out the little folding shovel and start digging.
After a few minutes I got a lot of snow and I have the bright idea to pile it up around the outside of the snow bank, make more of a windbreak. This is hot work, I’m sweating and I know that’s no damn good either, but I got no choice.
Few more minutes and I got an inside starting to take shape, hollowed out round, dark as hell and no flashlight. I crawl out backwards, dig for a flashlight in one of the packs. Wind’s whistling through the trees and it’s starting to snow now. I take a few steps out, look up the ridge. I can still see him, he’s about forty feet from the top. Stubborn goddamn fuck.
I crawl back into my hole, Little Bunny Kowalski, ha, poking the flashlight into the snow wall so I can see what I’m doing. I clear room, more room, run into wood on one side so I poke my arm up through the drift, good place for the stove, little ventilation hole. I stomp the floor down hard and then poke another hole for more ventilation, crawl back out to look at the top.
The top. Tarp. We got a tarp, I’m pretty sure, tarp, groundsheets. I find one and tack it down over the top of the snow bank. I don’t know what good that’ll do but, hell, it looks warmer. I check on Fraser again. He’s at the top of the crest and walking along the top of it, damn him. I wave my arms at him but he’s not looking at me. I feel that panic bubble, start to boil. If he’s gone, if he forgot I’m even here... fuck.
I crawl back in, put the groundsheet on the floor, haul the sleeping bags up next, then the stove. Then I crawl back down, strap on my snow shoes, put one pack in front of the snow bank so I can see it, and head out after Fraser. He’s still on the ridge, still moving away from me, and the snow’s picking up. I turn the flashlight back on and wave it at him, not too much chance that he’s looking, but what the hell.
I can’t snowshoe as fast as him, but I’m mad and I’m scared and I’m making pretty good time. It only takes me about ten minutes to make the top of the ridge, better time than he made, I’ll bet. And I don’t see any fucking cabin, no fucking smoke, just a whole lot of goddamned snow and trees and one stubborn Mountie, still headed away from me.
I start yelling way before he can hear me, but I’m pissed and I’m yelling to blow off steam. Scooping up the goddamn fucking Mountie and bashing him on the fucking head... By the time he hears me and stops moving, I’m up to words that I don’t think anyone knows except my uncle in the Marines who taught ’em to me.
He smiles, has the balls to smile, when I get close enough for me to see him. “Ray! I’m sure the cabin is–”
“Fraser!” I’m so mad I don’t know where to start. “Where the fuck are you going? You said you’d come right back, damn it, what the hell–”
“Ray, calm down. I was simply–” He stops dead, a puzzled look on his face. “Simply,” he repeats, and then he starts to frown. “There’s – we’ve got to find the cabin, Ray, the storm’s–”
“Storm’s fucking here, Fraser, and we’re going back to the stove and the tarps. Come on. I made a whimsy.”
“A what?” he says, like he doesn't believe me.
“A whimsy, I dug out a snow bank, whatever.”
“Quinzhee,” he says, kind of mechanical. “You didn’t have time, Ray–”
“Fraser, calamari, buddy, this way.” I grab his hand and pull and thank whoever’s up there looking over stubborn Mounties – who’s the patron saint of Mounties? – ’cause this time he follows me.
He’s pretty quiet on the way back; all I can see is the blur where those trees are, my footsteps are blown over in the snow, but the trees are a good landmark. The flashlight’s not a lot of help except that it keeps Fraser’s attention. He’s wandering a little now, stumbling, not talking much, not that anyone can hear anything over the wind.
We come around the lee into the shelter and being out of the wind feels almost better than anything else all day. I unstrap the snowshoes and prop them up against the side of the snow bank. He fumbles with his, can’t get them off, I drop to my knees and help him. Then I shove him at the hole, shove him again to get him up inside it and pull his pack in after me to kind of block the tunnel, act like a door.
He’s shivering again. Now I think I remember that’s good. I stick the flaslight back inro the snow wall and go to light the stove, and he grabs my arm. “No, Ray, not in here.”
“Yes, in here, Fraser, it’s just like an igloo or our tent, I made a hole there. See? And one there too. Now, we got soup, coffee, hot chocolate. What’ll it be?”
He shakes his head, teeth chattering so hard he doesn’t even try to talk. I light the stove, put some snow I scrape out of the wall on to melt, and move over to sit next to him. He’s just sitting there shivering and I panic again for about fifteen seconds. God, if he can’t make it here, what the hell am I thinking? I should have just dug our graves, yeah, there’s a positive turn of thought, Kowalski. He can make it, we’ll make it. We’re out of the wind, we got food and we got heat, we’re snug as two bugs in a rug.
He laughs a little and I realise I said that out loud while I was taking off his boots. So I say it again, grin at him, that’s good, he’s listening to me. I pile his boots and mine by the door. Then I take off my hats and pull one down over his ears, pull the other one back over mine before he has a chance to protest. “We’re out of the wind now, I don’t need two any more,” I say, and he doesn’t argue. He just leans back, closes his eyes, wraps his arms tighter across his chest and shudders hard.
I watch him for a few seconds, then stir the snow a little, hurry it up, dump the hot chocolate mix into the pan anyway, it can heat up while the snow melts and it’ll smell better than the stove maybe. He’s still shaking, hard, teeth cracking against each other. I lean in and touch his face with my finger. Like that’s going to tell me anything. He opens his eyes, grins that little half grin where one side of his mouth pulls up, then closes them again like it’s too much effort to hold them open.
So I stick my fingertip in his mouth. My hands are plenty warm and his mouth feels cold. Fuck fuck fuck not good, way past bad, we’re coming up fast on awful. He’s looking at me, a little surprised. Yeah, whatever, Fraser. I’m past worrying about how queer you think I am. It’s mutual anyhow. “Freak,” I say.
He nods a little, closes his eyes again. I swirl the pan, snow’s melted now but it’s not hot. Okay. Out of the wind, check. Hot liquids, check. Next thing is to get him in a sleeping bag. I remember Buck sounding so serious I thought he was putting me on. Less clothes equals more warm? But he told me about permafrost and I wouldn’t swear he didn’t mention the Inuit too and the bottom line is that clothes can keep in the warm or keep in the cold. Still sounds stupid to me because I spend every night in about four layers of clothes huddled as close to Fraser and the stove and Dief (if I’m lucky) as I can get, so I can’t say I’ve tried it.
We’re fucking crazy is what we are, both of us too high or too stupid or too unhinged to just take the medals and head back to Chicago and face the music. Lot of ways it was just us for a long time; going on this quest was putting that off even longer, keeping it just us, and here we are lost in a snowstorm, just us, yeah, they gonna put that on our tombstones, Fraser?
Sometimes I think I could spend the rest of my life up here, as long as he’s here. Other times I want to fucking strangle him, especially when he pulls this shit. He never means to, no, but he gets that gotta-be-perfect mode going, crossing the t’s and dotting the i’s until I pull him up short, and it gets old, it gets old, Fraser, and right now it’s not just old, it’s stupid and it’s scary.
And I’m here with him, which is stupider and scarier. Ben Kenobi had Han Solo pegged, didn’t he.
We’re both looking for something, I guess, but I don’t think it’s Franklin’s hand. Well, it’s not Franklin’s hand, for me, I know that. It’s me. And Fraser, he knows who he is, he’s not looking for him, but he’s looking for something too.
What I’m looking for, right now, is some warmth.
Hell, what I’m looking for, long-term, is the same thing.
Vecchio sucks, but I got to applaud his taste in climate.
“Ice,” he jerks out between shivers, nodding at the ceiling. “Respiration, p-polar b-bears regulate the at-atmos-atmosphere in their d-dens, ice–”
I look up where he’s nodding. There’s a shiny crust forming on the inside of the ceiling. “Hey, Sistine Chapel,” I say, trying to distract him. “Think you could paint on that?”
“C-carbon m-monoxide,” he mumbles. “D-d-dioxide. R-R-Ray–”
I grab his hands, hold them between my own, trying to calm him down. “Two vent holes, Fraser, that’s one more than the tent has.” I crawl a little closer and start to pull at his icy zipper.
“N-no,” he says, shivering harder. “D-don’t–”
“Monoxide, dioxide, how come it’s not disexual?” I say, and he stops fighting long enough to look at me, really look at me.
“S-sexual d-dimorphism?” he asks, frowning.
“Bimorphism, huh?” I say, and wrestle his zipper down, little bits of ice flying after it. I stick my fingers in my mouth for a sec – that motherfucking zipper was cold – and then realise that was stupid, nowhere to dry them except my own cold wet coat and pants.
“N-no,” he says again, but his back’s to the wall and he can’t get away from me. “D-don’t... what...”
“What the hell, Fraser. Body heat, got to conserve body heat. You think I was too busy eating that gorgonzola to listen to you and Buck?”
“R-Ray, the s-stove will–”
“I’m going to zip the bags together–”
“They’re n-not that k-kind of b-b-bag,” he says, really impatient. “The s-s-seal won’t – won’t b-be ideal–”
“Zippers zip, Fraser, I’ll shove some fucking clothes into the bottom of the bag, I’m not fucking stupid!”
“Ray!” he says, harsh and sharp, and he manages to grab my hand through the shivers. “Listen. I-I am b-bimorphic. B-b... gay.”
God. Nobility, not stubbornness. He makes it hard to tell the difference sometimes. I turn his hand over and squeeze it back before letting go and feeling around his waist. “Well, after the way that bitch worked you over,” I say, pulling off his next two layers together and hitting the snow ceiling with my knuckles when they finally come over his head, “I’m surprised you didn’t shoot up the post office.”
Yeah, he told me about her. A lot more than was in the official file, anyhow, probably not even a tenth of what he’s still got inside. It was the night before we left, his eyes watching the horizon, watching forever far away, watching anything but me. Short sentences, matter-of-fact... because I needed to know “the mettle of the man” I was going to be partnered with.
After he was done, I stared at the horizon too for a while and then said, “So what time do we have to get up?” And he turned and looked at me and the smile on his face knocked me on my ass.
He’s so fucking stupid sometimes. Like I didn’t already know the mettle of the man who stayed on a sinking ship to find me.
“Y-y-you think I-I–” His teeth are cracking so hard now he can’t even talk.
“I think you’re a freak, Benton Fraser,” I say, poking him in the stomach.
He grabs both my hands again and opens his mouth and nothing comes out. Then a tear spills out. Christ, he’s worse than I thought and so fucking cold I expect to see ice instead of wet on his chin. But the tear rolls all the way down and splashes onto my hand. We both look down at it. Then I look back at him, all red and white and blotchy.
One morning we woke up, well, I woke up before him, and I had to sort of pull my eyes open. When I looked at him I saw why. He had little tiny icicles on his eyebrows, even on his eyelashes. A muscle in his face twitched and some broke off and melted. It was the weirdest fucking thing I’d ever seen and I leaned over and breathed on his face just to get rid of them. It woke him up but he never asked me what I was doing, just smiled at me. So I lean in now and breathe on the white patch on his cheek, then on the one on his nose, then on that patch over his left eyebrow. He closes his eyes for a sec and then grabs me and hugs me hard, tight, like he’s not gonna let go any time this century.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, save it for your boyfriend,” I say, and he giggles and lets me go. A Benton Fraser giggle is about the funniest sound in the world. Okay, I’m still worried as hell but, damn, I’d rather be here right now than anywhere else on this earth.
Yeah. Following fools. Whatever. I heave the last outer layer off – he’s down to his union suit on the top half now – and put his hat back on him. Time to zip the bags together. I reach over and swirl the stuff in the pan, snow’s melted now, then move back and try to figure out where to put the damned bag.
“Okay, buddy, back up a little,” I say, shifting around. “Just about a foot, over here by the door.”
He shudders really hard once, and then he stops, all at once, while he’s moving, or trying to move for me. I whip around and look him in the eye.
“What are you doing, Fraser, what’s going on?”
“Tired,” he says. “Sleepy.”
“Why’d you stop shivering? You feeling warmer?” I touch his lips again. They’re still cold.
“Not walking,” he says. “Muscle groups... metabolic processes not required to... to generate...”
“Heat! Look at this, the hot chocolate’s done!” I’m so fucking scared my hands are shaking. “Okay, not done, just warm, well, a little better than warm.” I lean over and pull the pan off the stove. I test it on me first, make sure it’s actually warm. “Here. Drink. Drink, Fraser.”
“Tired,” he says, shaking his head.
“Drink or I’ll jump Bogart on your ass!” I say in my sharpest cop voice. He sits up and blinks and then leans in a little, his eyes wide. I try not to be scared when he can’t hold the pan himself. I sit there for five fucking minutes, longest fucking minutes of my life, I swear, right up there with those ten seconds on the ship when I was waiting for him to say about the transfer, barking at him every time his eyes close, until he drinks it all and when he says he’s going to barf – okay, he says “vomit, Ray,” – I tell him he’ll eat that too, and like it, and I finally get a grin out of him. I scrape some more snow into the pan and put it back on the stove. When I turn around again to look at him, he’s shivering again.
The zippers on the bags are thawed, not as cold as his coat was. The hardest part is finding somewhere to put the damned things while I wrestle with them and the ground sheet. I end up in Fraser’s lap at one point. He puts a hand up to my hair and says my name, like he’s a little surprised. I pat his hand and say, “Yeah,” and then struggle back up and spread the bags out between the door and the stove, across the longest part of floor.
“Tight squeeze,” I say, more to me than him. His eyes are closed and the shivering’s not letting up but I’m glad about that. “Let’s get the rest of your clothes off.”
He shakes his head again but he turns sideways a little. I stretch his legs out and start wrestling with his pants. He giggles again, unhinged freak that he is, when I start to pull them down and overbalance and end up with my face in his belly.
“Go ahead and laugh. All I’m gonna say is you could have waited to tell me you were gay until after I got your pants off, buddy.”
“I th-think that’s m-m-my l-l-line,” he says, trying not to smile, trying to help me by kicking his pants off.
“That’d be a come-on, Fraser, I don’t think you’d be so improper.”
“Y-y-you’re the one wh-who m-mentioned m-m-my ass,” he points out, like he’s the reasonable one.
“I said I’d jump Bogart on it,” I say, wondering how the hell I can even think about his ass right now.
“T-tight squeeze, you said,” he says, real soft, almost wistful. “I-I-I–”
“Fraser, true confessions after you get into the bag,” I say. “We’re about there, buddy.” We’ve managed to get him all the way down to the long underwear now; under that it’s just boxers. “We’ll talk about whatever you want.” I start to unbutton the buttons on the front. “After you get in the bag.”
“Ray,” he says, and he sounds a little wild, grabs my wrist. “This is enough–”
“Skin to skin,” I say, swallowing a little hard. “If you’re worried about your, uh, purity, I think the boxers can stay on.”
“My purity?” he says, surprised, his hand falling away. I finish unbuttoning, fast.
“You think you’re the only cop who ever took a walk on the wild side?”
“That’s a song,” he says, kind of dreamy. “Freude, schöne Gotterfunken, Tochter aus Elysium...”
“It’s not that song, buddy, Lou didn’t have a whole lot of time for, uh, Schindler.”
“He had a list,” Fraser says, and giggles again. Then he gets serious. “It wasn’t a funny list.”
“They never are.”
“Did he check it twice?”
“You got a lot of coal when you were a kid, didn’t you.” I lift his left leg and pull the red thing all the way off him. “Into the bag. Now.” I unzip one side and help him as best I can. We’re all elbows in here, elbows and knees, and I feel so fucking bad for making him strip down and get even colder but it’s like every night when we make camp, we get into the tent and we’re freezing and then we get warm again, I’ll get him warm again, we’ll get him warm again.
“Dief!” he says, startling up, almost knocking the fucking stove over. “Dief!” he yells.
“Dief’s waiting for us at Tom’s,” I say, trying to sound calm around the cocoa packet in my teeth. I tear it open and dump it in the pan.
“He’s drowning,” Fraser says, all choked, and I grab him fast, shake him a little.
“He’s fine, Fraser, he’s at the cabin with Tom. If you knock the stove over, I swear I will kick you in the head.”
“Bogart,” he says, but he lets me push him back down. “I like Bogart better than Cagney.”
“Steve’s cooler than both of ‘em, Fraser, don’t make me kick your ass about that too.”
“I... I liked Steve,” he says, real quiet, real sober.
“Lots to like about Steve,” I say, trying to distract him again.
“Not as much as I loved her,” he says, then bites his lip. “Thought I... you know the prince, Ray?”
“Not personally, Fraser, no.”
“They asked him if he loved her. He said, ‘Whatever love is.’ Do you remember?”
Christ, do I remember. Stella worshipped her, got up to watch the wedding and everything. “He had a point.”
“You think so?” he says, frowning. “Really?”
“Oh, yeah. Definitely. Always thought so.” I take a deep breath and strip my tops off together, fast, my hat going with ’em. Christ, it’s cold. Jesus Christ. I sit my ass on the edge of the ground sheet and pull off my bottoms, all but the modesty layer, and then I take another breath and slide in next to him and try to find the zipper before my fingers freeze and fall off, and finally manage it.
He was right, these bags weren’t meant for this, and I forgot to shove some clothes into the bottom so I have to find some and stuff them down there. By the time I’m finished I’m kind of hoping he’s forgotten about the love stuff, because I don’t think he really wants to go there, and I sure as hell don’t. I squirm around and check the hot chocolate. Snow’s melted again, the stove’s doing its best for us. I squirm back down and try not to panic at how fucking cold he feels up against me. He’s all stiff and uncomfortable, scrunched as far away from me as he can get, which is about one and a half inches, and his eyes are shut tight.
“Got more chocolate almost ready,” I say quietly. “How’s your stomach?”
“F-fine,” he chokes, and I feel a hand fist between us. God, he’s so fucking worried and embarrassed on top of being out of his fucking head, and I choke a little myself, then bite my lip. Take a breath. Another breath. God, it feels almost like falling into that crevasse or getting ready to... propose or something. Then I just move right over, plaster myself all over him.
“Oh, God,” he chokes out and then he tries to push me off. “P-please...”
“Hey, calamari,” I say quiet, into his ear. “Partners. Friends. I got your back.”
I feel him relax and it’s a weird feeling, like ice cubes in a bag suddenly melted into a water balloon or something. “Or your front,” I say, ’cause that’s where I ended up, and that works, makes him actually snort a little tiny laugh.
“C-cold out here, heat me up,” he says, like he’s quoting something. “Never b-been so c-cold, Ray...”
“Fraser, you guys need a serious reality check up here if this is your idea of spring.” I’m trying to think where I heard those words before, trying to keep him relaxed, trying, hoping, that I can make enough warm for both of us. Then I remember and I bite my lip again. It’s not that I think he’s any more fucked up than any of the rest of us — in fact, I think he’s a lot more fun than most of us — but somehow when it’s him hurting it makes me hurt too. “Warmer now,” I say, trying to sound neutral so he doesn’t freak again. “Yeah?”
“God, yes,” he whispers. I feel like I hit the Powerball the next second when he puts his arms around me and the fact that his hands are freezing is the only thing that brings me back to earth.
“Good. Don’t go to sleep yet, you have to have more chocolate.”
“Tired,” he says. “We’re both tired.”
The bags are starting to kick in: I feel warm air pockets now when I move, and I’m brave enough to stretch my hand out to check the pan again. So I lean up on an elbow. The chocolate smells good in here. I reach around to the food I got out of my pack, pull out some pemmican and a mug. I dump the chocolate in the mug, put more snow in the pot, and put the pemmican in on top of it. Fraser taught me this the first storm we got caught in, all of six days ago. It’s like stew only not, but it smells good and it tastes okay. Not sure how it’ll taste with chocolate on the edges but I’m past caring and it’s not like there’s a gourmet to be had in this tent. Igloo. Quinzee. Whatever.
“Will you stop wiggling around?” he says, and it’s the first time I’ve ever heard someone actually sound ‘cross.’
“Share a bag with me, Fraser, you’ll get your workout one way or another,” I say, grinning down at him. He turns red and I put a hand down to touch his face. Christ, that has to be a good sign. His face feels warm and when I leave my hand there it stays warm even after a few seconds. The rest of him still feels cold compared to me, but his head’s right up here by the stove and he’s still got his hat on, maybe the head comes back first.
He’s biting his lip and I realise I’m still staring at him, still got a hand on his face. “I’m s-sorry, Ray,” he says, stuttering this time because he’s embarrassed. “I didn’t mean for you to know.”
I’m too insanely relieved – and happy – to get all serious back. “Unless you’re telling me I’m gonna get beat up by your boyfriend, Fraser, I’m cool with sharing a bag.”
“Idiot,” he says, his voice harsh, surprising me a little. “Idiot. A fucking idiot!”
I lean in to hold him down again, calm him down again, and he grabs me and pulls me down all the way and plants one on me, tongue and all. His mouth feels warmer than it did, but still cool to mine, and part of my brain wonders why the hell I’m thinking about anything but that... but the other part of my brain is louder. And a whole lot happier than it’s been since the very first time I followed him up a ladder and wondered about, oh yeah, the tight squeeze of his ass.
“What do you have to say to that?” he says, real belligerent, as soon as he lets me up. “Now do you–”
“I have to say who’s the idiot, the idiot or the idiot who kisses him?” I can’t be serious.
Everything, every damn thing inside me, is about to explode from relief. And happiness.
And... other stuff.
“Ray, you were married!” he says, and somehow he manages to sound prim, proper, shocked, like I’m the weirdo here.
“So I got a Stellaton in my closet,” I say. “You had chainsaws in yours. Drink some more hot chocolate.”
He stares at me, more shocked and speechless than I’ve ever seen him, and then he just bursts out laughing, long and loud and hard, so hard he gets tears in his eyes, so hard he starts to choke, so hard he makes me laugh too, just watching him. When he finally calms down he pulls me down again and he says into my hair, “And a cabin, and a wood stove, and stray fishermen...” It feels a little weird to hear him talk against me like that, into my hair, holding me like he’s done it a thousand times before.
By the time he’s calmed down the pemmican mush is done. He’s kind of dozy but eats about half of it. I almost force the hot chocolate down him, make another mug and he finally rebels. “No more. No.”
The sleeping bag’s downright toasty now, and he’s feeling warm alongside me, under me. Suddenly I’m sleepy, like everything’s shut down and I don’t have to worry. “Okay.”
He relaxes a little – queer, being so close like this, I can feel what he’s thinking in a way – and says, “Good.” Then he yawns, sets me off too. I finish what’s left of the hot chocolate, pull the flashlight out of the wall and turn it off, turn off the stove, then crawl back down on top of him.
“Ray, you don’t have to–” he whispers.
“Go to sleep, Fraser,” I say, yawning again. “We’ll argue about which side of the bag in the morning.”
He shifts a little; then his arms come up around me again, kind of hesitant. I just make a noise at him, get one arm around him, and he leaves his there.
“Dief,” he says a few minutes later, really quietly.
“He’s fine,” I say, here we go again.
“...he’ll be worried,” Fraser says, makes me feel a whole fucking lot better: he knows where we are now.
“He’s fine,” I say again.
“I’m sorry,” he says a little while after that. “Unconscionable–”
Yeah, guilt or sleep, which one’s a Mountie gonna choose, every time? “How come you never told me you were gay?” I say, interrupting him not at all kindly, thank you. Legit question beats all hell out of Fraser beating the hell out of himself.
Oh, now there’s an image I didn’t need, not plastered on top of warm and mostly naked Fraser.
The question surprises him enough that he stops to think about it, stops to answer too. “I suppose... well, I didn’t think it was germane.”
“Germane to me,” I say, putting my head back down in his neck.
“Well, I didn’t know that,” he says in his “reasonable” voice, but his hand’s rubbing my back, down low. “Assumptions... well, if people think one is, ah, not exactly heterosexual–”
I have to laugh. “More than, buddy, let’s go for ‘more than’ heterosexual.”
“The point is... was... well, I always wanted to ask them if they wanted every woman who walked by them on the street. I don’t...”
“Some guys probably do want to poke everything that walks by,” I say, weirdness to be here, to talk like this, talk with Fraser like this. “I get that. I have days like that. You didn’t want me to think you were after my ass. But what if we, uh, ended up sharing a sleeping bag?”
“It’s a difficult – I didn’t – there aren’t many...” He shrugs, finally, wraps his arms a little tighter around me. “Assumptions...”
“It’s okay,” I say into his neck. “Just curious, Fraser. Not mad.”
“To be honest,” he starts, then stops, his body getting all tense again: Fraser body language, this is the way to do it, Braille, right, touch tells you a whole lot more than just sight. “To be honest,” he says again, “I ought to have told you before we–”
“Because I was one of the guys you wanted to poke, or wasn’t?” I say, closing my eyes, grinning into his neck.
His chest rumbles a little: a laugh he’s trying not to let out. I laugh with him, then pat him. “Go to sleep, Fraser.”
“How you expect me to sleep now...” he grumbles in my ear, moving us both around a little while he gets comfortable again.
“Mmm. Wet dreams.”
His chest heaves again; he sounds like an indignant seal or something, fighting back the laugh. “I believe you mean ‘sweet’ dreams.”
“One man’s sweet is this man’s wet.”
That sends him off again and by the time he calms down he’s not in the mood to talk any more, way cool by me. I’m dozing, fits and starts, when I start awake, and he does too because I jumped about a foot.
“Ray?” he says, his voice slurred.
“Is it safe to sleep?” I say, squinting down at him. “Do I need to – why the fuck am I asking you? Are you warm enough?”
“I’m warm,” he says, blinking, starting to fall back asleep. “Yeah.”
“Yeah?” I stare at him a few more seconds, then remember before, his mouth, and I stick my finger right back in there. He opens one eye, closes it again, moves his head to one side. His mouth feels warm. I put my head back down. Last thing I remember is his hand coming up to mine, holding it there where it slipped down to his neck.
No way to tell what time it is, no way to tell much of anything. I probably need to get up, light the stove, melt more snow... I could even check my watch but I’m too comfortable to move. We’re about the same way we fell asleep last night, both of us too tired to move plus the whole ‘not enough space to move’ thing. I close my eyes again, feel his hand tighten over mine a little. Feels good here, and warm, and let’s not forget the whole ‘alive’ thing.
I must have dozed off, because it wakes me up again when he moves a little, mumbles something.
His stubble’s prickling through my stubble and his mouth’s kind of humming against my neck. “What are you doing?” I say, not really awake yet. He moves his head, burrowing down into my neck, and I can hardly hear his answer, all slurred and sleepy.
“Dreaming.”
Aw, Frase. Aw, Jesus. I swallow, and he kisses my neck when I do. “Wet or sweet?”
I feel him grin, feel him waking up too, his body starting to get un-sleepy. “Both.”
Forget morning breath: I pull up and back enough to see his face, enough to get him to look up at me. His eyes close before mine: I watch all the way down, all the way to the taste of his mouth, warm now, no doubt, and get lost in it for a while, lost in that tongue and those hands, restless, touching me all over, restless, can’t find a place to settle.
“Not such a good idea,” I say finally, pushing my face down into his neck, trying to find my sense. He goes stiff right away, not in the good way, fuck, I’m too tired and too hungry to fucking sort this out now. “Asshole,” I say against his neck. “Water and food, Fraser, and a warm bed.”
He holds pretty still while he thinks about that. Takes him a while, enough to make me think he’s either not firing on all cylinders yet or he’s worried anyway. I bite his neck a little, enough to distract him: time later, in a warm cabin, to talk my skeletons and his.
“I can’t help wond–”
“Fraser, zip it,” I say, exasperated, and I slide a hand down to palm a nipple, rub it kind of hard, just to feel it harden. “You want to get off, then have breakfast? Fine.”
“No!” he says, and now he’s starting to sound angry. “I – I want to–”
Fuck that, fuck him, fuck all of this. I go for the gold, no finesse here, just my hand under his waistband, just a handful of big warm cock the next second, just Fraser under me with his back arched, his eyes shut tight, no words now, just a strangled yelping kind of noise.
Get him off, yeah, and then dump some food and water down his throat while he’s too afterglowing to argue or to talk about why his partner (the one he fucking admitted wanting to poke, at least last night) wants to poke him too.
He’s stubborn. Even while I’m jerking him off he’s trying to get hold of me, keeps losing track of what he’s doing, be pretty funny if he wasn’t so damn hot, if I didn’t want so bad to turn him over and fuck him, sink deep in his ass, be easier if I could just get it out of my head, that idea or the idea of him fucking me, the way it’d feel to come hard with him hard inside me...
“God, yes!” he moans, right in my ear, right before he goes stiff under me and then jerks all over my hand, and I’m too busy thinking about that to worry too much about what I just said to him, never thought I’d say anything like that to Fraser, Jesus, but he liked the hell out of it, and, damn, it’s a world-class image, isn’t it?
I’m licking it off my hand before he opens his eyes, still breathing hard, staring at me like he just got hit by a train. Yeah, that’s the Ray Kowalski Express, Fraser, that’s the “let’s get out of here so we can get to a real bed and fuck before sundown” that just pulled out of the station.
“Ray!” he says, and I swear to God he sounds more turned on than he did before he came.
“Protein,” I say, trying to smile. It’s damn hard, ’cause I’m damn hard and he tastes better than I’d have guessed, better than I’ve tasted in a while, always did like going down on guys, and I’m wishing the sleeping bag was big enough to let me go down on him without suffocating. Too late now, story of my life, one taste of him’s hardly enough to start to whet this appetite.
“I’m the one who needs protein,” he growls, pushing me up, wriggling himself down. Fuck, he’ll suffocate, and I grab outside the bag, grab for the edge of the groundsheet, trying to pull myself up and out. There go my shorts, there goes his mouth, Jesus, like he’s a homing pigeon or something, and I’m hanging half out of the bag, my elbow freezing in the cold snow wall, his mouth like a furnace around me, sucking with everything he’s got.
Not much finesse, not like this when I’m fucking suffocating him, fucking freezing half of my body off, but it doesn’t take much, not on top of having my hand on him, not on top of tasting Fraser’s goddamn come, hell no.
“Not how you’re supposed to have breakfast,” I pant, rolling off his head, sliding the rest of the way out of the bag, buck naked and sweaty. “At least that’s not what Buck said.”
“Better than moose hock and gorgonzola,” Fraser says between his own panting, flushed and sweaty, his eyes big and dark and kind of dazed-looking.
“Hell of a compliment,” I say, digging around for my underwear. “‘Hey, Ray, you taste better than moose hock.’”
He stares at me for a few seconds, never seen him like this before, like he’s having to lip read ’cause his ears just aren’t working right, and then he starts laughing, just like he did last night, so hard he’s choking for breath. I pull the underwear on, try to find some clothes in the pack that are at least less than wet. He’s still giggling by the time I have my boots on, and it’s not until I crawl over him to the door tunnel that he finally stops, finally asks where I think I’m going, that edge in his voice the same one I’ve gotten way too used to the past day or two. That right there tells me he’s still not one hundred per, and I start to feel panicked and guilty, like I took advantage of him.
“Got to piss,” I say, “piss and get some fresh snow.” I grab the pot and hightail it out of there, right smack into a faceful of wind and snow. Yeah, Ray, not better than the stupid whimsy with Fraser sucking me off, not better than facing him and trying to figure this whole weird thing out, but I’m here, might as well do what I came to do, fast as I can.
I still can’t see anything: I waste a few minutes squinting around. It’s still dark, can’t tell if it’s dawn or twilight, can’t tell anything, really, all I can see is the blur of trees around us, and I have the sense not to go more than about five steps, off to the side.
I get fresh snow near the door, on the other side, then hear Fraser coming out. He doesn’t say anything, but he grabs me around the waist for a few seconds and I don’t think it was exactly for balance.
“Bad storm,” is all he says when he comes back over to me after doing his own thing into the bushes where I did.
“You got any idea when it might let up?” I say, packing the snow into the pot, my fingers already freezing. I know we need water, lots of water after what we both went through yesterday. Today. Whenever.
“Could be hours, could be days,” he says with a shrug, lifting his face up, staring into the snow like I did. “It’s midmorning.”
Shit. “Is this normal?“
“Not so late in the season,” he says quietly, so quiet I almost don’t hear him. I finish packing the snow in, stand up, push at him.
“Weather, go figure. C’mon, I’m starving.”
But maybe he is a hundred per cent, because instead of turning towards the whimsy, he turns towards me and the next thing I know I’ve got a mouthful of Fraser tongue and it is way better than moose tongue.
At least as far as I know, because that’s one comparison I’m hoping I never have to make in real life.
I hear him say my name against my cheek, and then he just holds me for a minute. I’m holding him back, don’t get me wrong, but I feel like any minute I’m going to wake up in a lonely bed in Chicago.
Oh, what the hell. Even if it’s a dream, there’s no point in wasting any more time than we already have, right?
So I turn my head and kiss him back just as hard as he kissed me, and it’s kind of perfect, in a weird, Canadian-blizzard-infested way.
“Let’s have breakfast,” he says, when I finally let him go, his voice as warm and soft as his lips.
When we get back inside, I crawl over him and everything else to get back to start the stove. When I look around again, Fraser’s looking around with a kind of dazed smile in his eyes.
Yeah, that’s the way to a Mountie’s heart. Jump out of a plane? Whatever. Climb a mountain? Yeah, we got that. Save Hudson’s Bay? All in a day’s work. Build a snow shelter? Break out the candles and start singing.
And the next time I look around, after getting the cocoa into the pan too, he’s managed to make the rest of it look like home. Well, home to a deranged Chicago cop: I have now, officially, been hanging around Fraser too long.
He’s waiting patiently, his boots off already, looking at mine: “Boots?”
He kind of made a couch or at least a place to sit that isn’t groundsheet and snow, out of the fallen log and the sleeping bags, so I sit down next to him and stretch my legs out, and it feels so good. Everything that happened is finally catching up with me, and I don’t mean the panic of last night, but everything since then. I feel like throwing my boots in the air and shouting, but there’s not enough room in here, so I just take my boots off again and hand them to Fraser, then give the cocoa another stir.
Fraser finishes arranging the boots, then looks at me expectantly again, his eyes big and dark.
I’m starting to think he and Dief have spent way too much time together.
“Clothes?” he says finally. “Your underwear is still damp...”
His ears turn red even before the rest of his face, blushing so hard I can see it even in the dim light in here.
Which is how we end up naked, me straddling Fraser with his back to the log, his dick halfway up my ass and still pushing in, God, so slow, so big.
Yeah, guess what, he did want to poke me.
He pushes again, his hands holding onto my hips so hard that there are gonna be Fraser-shaped handprints on my ass, and then he drops his forehead to my shoulder, breathing hard.
And he’s trembling.
And almost weirder than sitting here in a snow shelter with Fraser’s dick up my ass is feeling so calm about it, especially when he’s not. I’m not trembling; I am the fucking opposite of shaky, I am calm and collected and hard, my dick pushing against his stomach.
Seriously, Fraser, you take on a sub full of nuclear terrorists and this is when you decide you’re living dangerously?
So I finish it for him; I push down against him, all the way down, so he’s all the way in; and then I find his face with my hands and pull him up to me so we can kiss, so I can hold him, so I can whisper into his mouth that if this isn’t real it’s a heck of a wet dream so we should just enjoy it; and, finally, finally, he laughs.
It’s not much of a laugh, as Fraser laughs go, more of a chuckle in the back of his throat, but I feel him relax under me, and then his hands move up to my back and finally — finally! — he starts to move with me, just a little at first; and, hey, I don't push him too hard, because, like I said, if this is a wet dream we might as well enjoy the hell out of it.
“I never thought it would work this way,” he says against my cheek, on his way to my ear, and when he bites my earlobe I drop my head down to his shoulder, my turn, and I bite his neck.
And he shudders, all the way through his body, and then he starts to move for real.
And this is buddies, because I got him, I got his rhythm, I really can feel everything he’s thinking now, right now, this second, and the next one, and every second after that stretching out as far as we both can see, like the horizon when we started this; and there’s no end in sight, just us.
For real.
~ f ~