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flownwrong · 4 months

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perpetuum mobile (due South fic)

Fraser/Kowalski, 5k words, tags: first kiss, post-canon, 5+1 things

Summary: Nothing's permanent.

Written for @duesouthseekritsanta as a treat for @feroxargentea. Thanks to @wicked3659 for running dSSS this year, and happy 20th birthday to the exchange!

read on ao3

1999, 22:37, Yukon

"Three bags. How is it three bags? I'm not even doing souvenirs." Ray ran his hands through his hair, said, "Ow, ow, fucking ow," as the edge of his sleeve produced a visible spark of static electricity.

Dief nosed his way under Ray's elbow and stuck his face deep into a bag. Probably the one half-full with dirty laundry, seeing as Ray had spent a truly impressive amount of time putting the packing off.

Ray grabbed Dief's muzzle firmly in two hands and gave it an impatient shake. "Hey, eyes up here. How is it three bags, Dief?"

Dief snorted with enough derision to make the cabin walls wilt and nudged his way to the fireplace.

"Right, right. I thought we borrowed most of this stuff, how did..."

He crouched down and reached up a blind hand over his shoulder. Fraser put Ray's green scarf into the waiting palm. He wanted desperately to ask Ray why he was taking his winter gear back home in the first place.

"You're welcome to store any clothing or, ah, personal items here, between your visits." The words felt as presumptuous as they did inevitable.

Ray spun quickly on his knees and squinted at him, ever good at hearing the unsaid.

Fraser's neck was itching under the collar of his flannel. Days were getting hotter fast. "I can mail them to you at your request. The postal service here is really remarkably fast, considering."

Ray fingered the little hole in the scarf where a stitch had come undone. "No, no, you hang onto them."

His mouth was downturned, but his laugh lines were clearer now than Fraser has ever seen them. Between the windburn and the sun, Ray's skin was darker, eager to reveal the expressive motions of his face. Fraser looked his fill, already missing it fiercely.

Ray ducked his head. "Shit, when I was moving out, Stella looked like she'd nuke everything I didn't carry on my back." He linked his fingers behind his neck and shivered without moving, somehow. When he looked back up, his smile was a jolt of radiance. "Imagine how much shit I'd hoard around here in another ten years."

His throat felt tight as he reached for the thick mittens Ray'd hated so much on the trail. Feel like the T-Rex, he'd said, staring at the steaming snow where his cocoa mug landed, mouth downturned and quivering like a child's. Can't do a damn thing without you.

He'd been exhausted, one of those first days out, searching desperately for something that Fraser could never seem to get into focus, like looking through a dirty lens, or maybe from too close a distance. By the time they got back and Ray held the cabin door open for Fraser, he was—serene. A Ray he hoped nobody else had gotten to see.

Fraser came back with no serenity in sight, which was confusing and bitter and made him helplessly afraid of the four walls around him, of going back into the vastness beyond.

He turned the mittens over, traced the creases where they'd molded themselves to Ray's hands with his thumb. He could feel Ray's eyes following the motion.

Ray shook his head, his mouth a tight line. "Here, gimme a hand," he said and yanked hard at the duffel's zipper, once, twice, watching it catch on the green weave.

They took Maggie's kindly offered pickup to the airstrip. It was almost summer, the terrain free of snow. Diefenbaker refused to get out, sounding torn between whining and snarling. Ray climbed halfway up the seat and leaned into the back.

"Hey, mutt, you take that back," he said, hand pressed firmly into the thick fur at Dief's nape, "sure I'm coming back. Every chance I get, and—I'm not leaving, okay?" Ray's voice dropped, raw and frantic. "I can do it. You—I can do it." Fraser watched him lower his head, hands going slack on Dief, and hoped against all hope Ray knew who he was talking to.

Halfway through dinner—the last of Ray's artless stew made in a bout of either inspiration or procrastination—he put the spoon down and picked up the mittens he'd discarded on the windowsill. Can't do a damn thing without you, he thought, and felt like his chest was breaking open.

2000, 09:07, the 2-7

Huey was on Ray's phone as he walked up to his desk, which was nothing unusual, what with him being less than ten minutes late and probably not expected for another thirty, and Frannie was practically jumping up to peek over his shoulder, gesturing wildly as he spun around and around until she was practically growling.

He snapped his fingers at Ray, mouthing Fraser, and Ray ducked under Frannie's arm, snatching the phone from his hand.

"Ray?" the receiver asked in a tinny Fraser-voice.

"Hey. Couldn't wait to get me at home?" He was smiling like a sap, so loud it was kind of embarrassing. Two days since they last spoke. A real hair-trigger.

Someone called Fraser's name faintly on the other end of the line.

"Thank you kindly, Maggie, that won't be necessary, and Ray, I'm calling to give you my new address, actually," Fraser said without pausing for breath.

"At how much AM on a Monday? Wait, Maggie's there?"

"Ah, yes, Ray. She insisted on driving me from the airport."

Frannie nudged his shoulder and swerved him bodily until he could see Welsh tapping his left wrist and motioning for Ray to shake a leg. Ray made like Dief and shook his head instead, earning himself some dizziness. "Say again?"

"Ah, I should've mentioned it sooner, but—I took a posting at Whitehorse, as of tomorrow."

"You what? Wait, wait, your cabin didn't burn down or anything? Is Maggie—what?"

Frannie sure knew an opening when she saw one, so that was when she did a solid Michael Jordan impression and snatched the phone from Ray's hands.

"Frase! It's so good to hear you! You sound really, and I mean really—oh, I'm so sorry, I didn't realize"—she gave Ray a major stink-eye for no apparent reason—"yeah, yeah, I'll bring your highest regards, I'm printing them out as we speak. Yes, yes, I'm doing good, just, really good, I had this great date last night—well, not so great, kind of a douche, so it's not like it's going anywhere, and, HEY!"

"This," Ray brandished the recaptured receiver over his head, "is now a pay phone. Come back with a quarter, or, you know, don't."

That got him a shrug and a seriously dangerous-looking eye roll, but that was par for the course.

"Yeah, Fraser. So, what?"

Fraser cleared his throat twice, and wow, there must've been something really awkward he was going to drop on Ray's head.

"Well, Ray, the fact of it is, I found myself somewhat... unmoored."

"Unmoored."

"Yes, Ray. Unmoored. Out of my depth."

"In the Territories?" Ray's brow was gonna fall off if he frowned any harder.

"Yes—that is, no. It occurred to me that I have grown—possibly—too accustomed to the state of being, as you would put it, 'a capella'."

Ray swallowed and nodded, then blinked and realized he'd probably do better sitting down for this conversation.

"A capella, huh." He elbowed yesterday's paperwork aside and dropped into his chair. "Fraser, you do realize you get to choose now? If you wanna hide from the world, you go, convene with the caribou. You earned it."

He could hear Fraser rubbing his brow. "I don't want to hide from the world, Ray."

Ray opened his mouth to say, yes, 'course you do, I get it, but then—Fraser probably had fifty words for lonely, like the Inuit and their thing for snow. Maybe lonely has lost some of its appeal. Maybe lonely changed meaning, hopped across the dictionary, and, in a truly bizarre way, landed near "home". Well, shit. Trust Fraser to not act in Fraser's best interests.

"Okay," he heard himself say, raising a placating hand. "That's, um, good to hear."

"You know, Ray, John Keats noted in one of his odes that solitude is easier borne where one has the freedom to be expressly and unmistakably alone with nature rather than 'among the jumbled heap of murky buildings'. My time in Chicago was certainly proof enough. But the more I return to his words, the more I look at another passage—"

Huey caught his eye and mimed something vaguely threatening.

"—poem, which—"

Ray groaned and dragged a hand over his face. "Jesus, Fraser. Now is not the time to be quoting poetry at me."

"Oh. Ray, I realise I sound somewhat maudlin—"

Ray waved his hand at the phone, annoyed at having his attention torn—never a good tactic with Fraser. "No, no, no, I don't mean it like—listen, Welsh will have my hide if I keep this up much longer. I'll get back to you when I'm home—or, um, when you're home, I guess. Gimme the number, will you?"

"Ah. Certainly, Ray."

Ray grabbed a post-it and wrote the digits down hastily.

"Be safe," Fraser said.

"Right. I will."

He dropped the handset back and stood up before he realized that, a) Fraser could easily call him after getting home, unless he planned to catch Ray with his hands tied and, b) with Fraser across the border and a zillion miles away, the murky buildings did suck massive balls.

He chewed on his thumbnail on his way to Welsh's office.

He chewed on it again after asking the kid behind the counter at the book spot near his place what the poem with the buildings was.

2003, 14:21, N. Octavia Ave

"This is ass-backwards, Fraser," Ray said, balancing seven shoeboxes between two arms and a knee, as Francesca said, "I'll nail your ass backwards to my door if you drop those pumps, bro," and Fraser said, "How so, Ray?"

"It's two weeks in Chicago. There's squat to do. What's not ass-backwards about this?"

Ray was being a hypocrite, really.

"Seeing as you have been spending much of your leave in Canada, I don't think you have a leg to stand on."

"Hell yes I don't, I'm holding shoes on my knee. Which, why are we hauling my ex-fake-sister's schmutter on our backs through the whole city on my day off?"

"It's three blocks, geez!" Francesca said.

"I'm sure you would appreciate the help were your positions reversed, Ray," Fraser added.

"Hey, casa de Ray is not going anywhere anytime soon," Ray said, defensive.

Francesca snorted and looked over her shoulder. "I bet."

Ray bared his teeth at her. "What's that supposed to mean?" He glanced longingly at a passing truck. "Jesus, Frannie, why don't you at least use those rolling rack things?"

Francesca sighed a sigh of the horribly wronged. "I'll roll your rack if—"

"I got it, I got it, you can pipe down now." Ray's hands twitched on the boxes, but he settled for a scowl, thankfully.

"Ray, it's only a short trip on foot—"

"Fraser, you're carrying dresses—"

"Yeah, Ray, and with you hogging the Fraser—"

"Me what?"

"Although, perhaps, in your condition, Francesca—"

"It's not a bug, Fraser, it's called pregnancy—"

"Me what?"

Francesca threw her hands up and stopped, turning on her heel. "Alright, alright." She closed her eyes and counted to ten under her breath, then jabbed a finger at Ray and kept talking to Fraser. "I know you came to see Ray, but it is two weeks. Forgive me for not realizing some time together that isn't yelling at each other over lasagna is too much to ask."

His hands grew cold so fast he wanted to push them against his rapidly warming face. "Francesca, I'm sorry I have given you the impression I don't enjoy my time together with you and your family."

She sighed wearily and looked skyward. "Impression. Right."

"There is a lot in this city for me to come back to," Fraser said, meeting Ray's eyes, wide and wounded.

Francesca's face softened into something like pity. Ray ducked his head and put the revered pumps down slowly.

"Hey," he said, and nudged Francesca's right boot gently with his left. "Whadda you say we get you settled and, um, you can make tea—or I can make tea, just not Fraser, I'm not drinking tree juice—and then we veg out? It's my day off. Got nowhere to be."

Francesca looked confused, primed for an explosion that never happened. Ray sent him a flash of a wink.

Ray was wrong: two weeks, even confined to city limits, was not nearly enough.

By the time Francesca let them go, it was getting dark. Ray scuffed the toe of his boot against the asphalt. "So, uh. Wanna catch a show? Or, or we could just get some grub—"

"I would love that, Ray."

Ray smiled, endearingly lopsided, then not, then snorted helplessly and started laughing, flinging an arm around Fraser's shoulders.

"Come on," he said, giving him a brief but firm shake. He piled Fraser into the GTO, put his glasses on without complaining—for once—about how he could drive just fine asleep with his hands tied, tossed him the cell phone and turned the keys in the ignition. "Chinese okay with you?"

Fraser dialed the number from memory and recited their order, which hadn't changed in years.

Ray's place was largely unchanged, too, and he felt a hot prick of shame for hoping that it was so. Ray'd swapped the television set for a newer, bigger one, and the plumbing seemed to have improved, the metallic smell of tap water less noticeable. The one toothbrush was perched precariously on the edge of the bathroom sink, near the empty cup.

The kitchen counter was still covered in junk mail. The photograph Maggie took of them, two days before Ray had to go, was pinned high on the fridge with a Leafs magnet he didn't expect to see here. He hoped Ray didn't look too hard at the picture—he thought he could see the cornered quality of his own gaze from where he was standing.

"Stay the night?" Ray said, folding back the flaps of his takeout bag and peering inside like he was waiting for something to jump out of it.

Fraser picked up the chopsticks—the nice ones Ray had bought for him and never commented on while snapping apart his own and rolling them between his palms to smooth out any splinters, every time for months and months of takeout dinners—and inhaled the fragrant steam, keeping his breathing even.

The hotel was a safety catch, as was, he supposed, the careful timing of their respective vacations so that they never overlapped fully. Ray had always held up his part of the unspoken deal. If this was a trust fall, he was willing to take it.

"Alright."

Ray's lips curved into a smile, unguarded and relieved, and Fraser's ribs felt tight.

2005, 23:49, apt. 309

Ray unbuckled the holster, his shoulder throbbing sharply.

He was slower than Elaine this time—equal parts pathetic and unnerving. Forty three was not it. He was not gonna croak at forty three, courtesy of some crook with sharp elbows. Fraser would laugh at him. Well, no, Fraser would frown at him. Dief would totally laugh at him.

He grabbed a Miller out of the fridge and picked up the phone.

"Hello, Ray," Fraser said, muffled.

"Hey yourself. Whatcha eating?"

"Oh—pizza."

"You got mushrooms on there?"

"As a matter of fact, yes, I do."

"Right," Ray said and looked at the mess of dishes in the sink. "Your funeral." He picked up the brush and stared at it before dropping it back into a dirty bowl and popping the beer open.

"How did the housewarming go?"

Elaine's building was nice, newer than his, a little further uptown, her apartment uncluttered but lived-in already. He'd stuck to people-watching in the corner, mostly, and wallowed in being too old to go anywhere now. It was kind of a good wallow, not sad or anything, just—content. Eight years on, he still liked his digs. Not like there was any need for a second bedroom—Fraser had always been cool with the couch.

"Uh, great, great. Got herself a good guy, Tony. A lawyer, no less. Wedding's next April."

Fraser was somehow smiling politely into his ear.

"What? What?"

"Oh, nothing, Ray. I got reminded of—that's not important."

Ray groaned. "God, Fraser. Elaine is way prettier—and sharper—than I ever was. And Tony—let's just say Stella he ain't. They'll knock it out of the park, you just wait."

"You've never not been sharp, Ray. Or, ah—eye-catching," Fraser said in this soft voice reserved for late night, before-bed calls. Ray had to squeeze his eyes shut for a second.

"Yeah, right, I'm a regular James Dean. Oh, and, speaking of—Vecchio was there. He's back, him and Stella."

"So I've heard."

There was a shrill whistle of the kettle in the background, and the clutter of Fraser putting the phone down to deal with it. Ray frowned at the mysterious stain on his sleeve and swallowed another mouthful of beer.

Stella wasn't at Elaine's, which was just as well, but Vecchio was, and they'd chatted about cars—Vecchio got zip right—and Frannie's youngest, and it was fine, none of the edgy shit Ray'd come to expect from himself.

Fraser picked up the phone with a click. "Sorry, Ray. Please go on."

"Um, yeah. We're all co-pathetic now. He's got this whole private dick deal—hey, why am I telling you this? You two must gossip like fishwives."

"Well, yes, we did talk not so long ago. But that's beside the point." There was a smile in Fraser's voice. Beside the point, huh.

Ray kind of drifted into the bedroom, shrugged out of his beat-up flannel, yanked the t-shirt up, got the phone tangled in it and gave up, flopping sideways onto the bed.

The shoulder was sore as hell. The glasses were starting to hurt, too, jammed between the phone and his ear, and he flung them onto the nightstand with a bit too much force, picked up the beer instead.

"How's the mutt?"

A gruff Dief-noise was reassuringly loud on the line. Last time he heard it there was an unpleasant wheeze tucked onto the end; not this time. He huffed back. Never let it be said he wasn't a great conversationalist. When it came to aging half-wolves who couldn't see or hear him, anyway.

"Hey, I know, I know. Took one today myself."

Dief sneezed. He knew it, he knew he'd never live it down.

"Diefenbaker, that was uncalled for." A grumble. "Are you alright, Ray?"

"Peachy. Bastard dislocated my shoulder. Elaine got him cuffed before I could whack him."

"I'm glad to hear that. You two make a good team."

"That we do, Fraser, that we do."

He got kinda lucky when Elaine made detective. He'd worked alone, mostly, a fact he knew Fraser knew and didn't seem too happy about. So when he'd finally partnered up with her, Fraser seemed to unclench, and she could hold her own, didn't chafe, didn't bring up any Fraser-memories.

Then again, his Fraser-memories were now as much snowball fights and Chicago museums he didn't even know existed and the flannel Fraser'd left on the couch that first night Ray got over himself and asked him to stay—because really, the whole hotel thing was chicken—as they were burning cars and ice crevasses and Vecchio's crappy fake mustache signaling his personal apocalypse.

"Hey," he said, as it clicked, not a hunch but a stone cold truth, "we made it."

There was a long pause, and Ray swore he could hear Fraser thinking. "Yes, Ray, so you've said."

"No, no, not me and Elaine. I meant, um, you and me." He willed Fraser to know, because he didn't have the right words to mean six years of calls and emails and goddamn visits—and here they were, off the clock and on the phone, pizza and beer, and the two zillion kilometers (zillion miles was around two zillion kilometers, he remembered) mattered fuck all.

"I suppose so, Ray," Fraser said, low, and Ray couldn't stop imagining his stupid dimples and his stupid graying temples and the passing months he'll get to see on his face, next visit, next coming back, soon, soon.

2006, 09:02, Whitehorse

He signed at the last line and set the turtle paperweight down on the forms, like a lock. Immediately thought better of it, picked the pile up and evened the edges out against the table, lengthwise first.

He was lucky to get so much—his job, the only one that mattered; his home, not a long trip away; the kindness the city has extended to him, of not having to be alone and not having to be lost. Ray, highly irregular, always coming back.

It gave him courage. Made it easier to think, I want this, even if I have to leave, I want it, and pick up the pen, the phone, the bags, start moving.

"Hi, Frase," Ray said on the phone, hoarse with sleep.

"Ray."

"Mm-hmm?"

"I'm putting in for a transfer. I thought you would appreciate a, ah, a heads-up this time."

"Oh, hey, right! The promotion—you going back up there to hug the trees, or, or, the lichens?"

Fraser knew Ray could name most of the trees and the lichens and the bird species to boot, but that was neither here nor there. He resisted the urge to straighten out his uniform, seeing as he wasn't wearing one, on a Saturday morning in his own kitchen.

"No, Ray. As a matter of fact, there is an administrative position open at the consulate." He rubbed his eyebrow. "In Chicago."

There was a rustle of sheets—Ray sitting up in bed. "Admini—what, a desk job? Oh God, a Thatcher job?"

"Well, if you mean international espionage, then, no." He thought briefly on the oxymoronic quality of them discussing something they should have had no knowledge of in the first place.

"Don't—no." Ray sighed unevenly, then was silent for a long time.

He worried at the corner of the paper right next to his signature. The whole form would probably need redoing. "It's rather more restrictive than I would prefer, given the choice—then again, my duties as a sergeant would be less than ideal concerning the time I'd spend in my office, so it wouldn't be a big change. And, while we wouldn't be able to partner on cases like we used to—"

"You want to partner up with me?" Ray sounded—dangerous.

"It's hardly news to you, Ray."

Ray was gaining momentum as he spoke, louder and faster and more desperate. "Given the choice, what, given the choice?"

He stopped abruptly. Fraser imagined him running a hand through his hair, mussed with sleep and yesterday's helping of product.

"Listen, Frase. Can't you, dunno, wait until Monday?"

"I certainly could, Ray, but—oh." He had to put his elbows on the table and his face in his hands. The emptiness at his feet where Dief would curl up before still hurt acutely. "You don't want me back?" He sounded all of five years old and couldn't do a thing about it.

"No!" Ray's voice was a snarl, and it tore at Fraser's throat like it was his own. "God, Fraser, it's not back. Back is out there, back is away from that fucking desk, not Chicago."

It isn't Chicago, he wanted to say. You must know that much.

Ray's breathing came fast and uneven, like back in the GTO, when he shook apart after—and God, Fraser should have been smarter than this by now.

More rustling, the sound of Ray's open palm connecting with something solid once, twice. He wanted desperately to be standing there, to put his hand on the back of Ray's neck, rub circles against it like he didn't, hadn't dared to in that car.

"Ray—of all people, you know the most about what I can call home." It felt like a déjà vu. I don't want to hide from the world, Ray. He'd meant it more than anything, the choice of being alone where he'd been with Ray an unimaginable punishment.

There was a creak, like Ray was putting too much pressure on the receiver. "Yeah. Alright." He sniffled. "But, it's bad luck to paper shuffle on a Saturday morning, right?"

That was such a Ray non-sequitur it made him giggle recklessly. "Who said that, Ray?"

"Someone, I remember—they say it, okay? Just, go with me on this. Sleep on it. Forty-eight hours, and you do what you need to do. I have a hunch."

He opened his mouth to ask. Ray cut him off like he'd seen it.

"Uh-uh. Monday, okay? So we don't jinx it."

"So we don't jinx it," he repeated, willing to go with anything that got Ray saying sentences with the subject we.

The shrill ring of a doorbell almost knocked the phone out of Fraser's hand.

"Shit, should've left it broken," Ray mumbled. "Look, I have a, a thing here. I'll call you back, or, whatever, you know the drill. Just, forty-eight hours, okay? I'm counting."

"Forty-eight hours, Ray."

"Good."

He hung up, stared at the papers some more. Forty-eight hours had nothing on seven years.

Forty-eight hours, and Ray hadn't called, hadn't called it off, so Fraser walked into the RCMP building, up the stairs, turned left and—Ray was leaning against the wall, hands in the pockets of his beaten-up brown jacket, the same one he had on when he was leaving that first, most painful time. The slump of his shoulders screamed belligerent.

Ray pushed himself off the wall, jittery and graceful. "I've figured it out," he said, breathless. His hair was growing out, going half-heartedly for an unfamiliar slicked back look, and his eyes looked feverish. He looked younger than Fraser had ever known him, and older than he remembered. "I've figured it the fuck out. I quit, okay, I don't want to—" He kicked at the lone backpack at his feet. "Asked Stella to mail me what I need and nuke the rest."

Fraser couldn't take his eyes off him, three steps away, tried to think of something to say before he would inevitably move and knew the first thing out of his mouth would be a curse or a vow, no stopping it.

Ray crossed the distance and took the key from his limp hands, jammed it into the lock with too much force, said, c'mon, c'mon, and they were inside, door locked.

And then Ray was on Fraser, fists curled on his chest, forehead rubbing restlessly against his shoulder. "I figured it out, why didn't you say it, Fraser, Jesus, fucking desk job, fucking—poems, why didn't you just," and then Ray kissed him, or he kissed Ray, and someone was saying, "Fuck, I didn't know, I didn't know how, I didn't know, I swear," and they made it. They made it.

2023, 17:29, Yukon

"Ow, ow, fucking ow!"

He dropped the box and gave it a kick, and fuck, "Fuck, it better not be dishes in there."

Fraser picked the box up and stared at Ray's handwriting upside-down, frowned like he didn't get it, because of course he didn't, it was Ray's hand upside-down. "I don't believe so, Ray, if the weight and the sound are any indication."

He loaded the box into the back of the ancient pickup. If Ray was sentimental when he took it off Maggie's hands and rigged it up better than new, then it was a surprise to just about nobody.

"Good, good. I, uh, I really like Charlie's one."

Fraser hummed his agreement. "You know, she would make you another one if you asked."

"She's going to Vancouver, Frase."

"There are pottery wheels in Vancouver, Ray. In fact, Maggie said she had to argue with her for almost an hour about setting one up in the dormitory room."

Ray smiled and just knew he was gonna choke up, any second now. "Shit. Charlie's picking out prom dresses and we're—shit, Ben."

Fraser looked at him, and Ray was turned inside out not by the look itself, the same one Fraser had given him in the hallway at the ass-crack of dawn—seventeen, Jesus, years ago, the same one Fraser had given him many times before, if only Ray'd known how to—but it wasn't that, it was that they were both fucking retired and hauling their asses back into the great white only-two-of-us-here nowhere, and Fraser still had enough wonder in him, enough hesitance to look at Ray like he was an honest-to-god miracle.

Then he had the gall to look concerned. "We don't have to go, Ray. You like it here."

And, okay, that was it.

He picked the boxes up first, stacked the remaining ones neatly in the back. His back complained a little, which was okay, considering.

"C'mere," he said then, grabbed Fraser's hand impatiently and felt Fraser link their fingers together, easy as anything. Pulled some courage out of nowhere—which, hey, just how much longer would they have to do this courage thing?—and said, "Almost the highest bliss of human-kind, when to thy haunts two kindred spirits flee. Or, uh, however that goes."

Fraser's head snapped up, eyebrows quirking, mouth reaching for a grin, but kind of a wobbly one.

Ray shrugged and didn't look away. "So. You say that again to me and count the fucks I give."

Fraser took a few big, heaving breaths and reached for Ray's right hand, brought it up to his cheek, soft with the beard he'd been growing out for the past few weeks.

"Hey." Ray turned their linked fingers so Fraser could see. "Look."

Fraser stared at Ray's ring finger, which, by the way, still hurt like a bitch.

"That box caught on my damn wedding band."

Fraser's crow's feet gave him away before a smile broke over his face, a bright and hopeful thing. Ray kissed the corner of it, kissed his eyelids, and his jaw, and his temple, and thought of home.

#my writing #due south #fraser/rayk #fraser/kowalski #benton fraser #ray kowalski #due south fic

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