Fly. Fly by the seat of my pants. [ He corrects instantly, but he continues none the less, even if it might have been preferable for him to stop - oh - several minutes earlier than he actually did, in both cases.
They got right into it. Ray might not be good at talking about feelings, but he was better at getting to the point than Fraser was; he managed it with rhyme - love and marriage and babies in the carriage - rolling off his tongue like the whole phrase had emerged there fully formed. He fell into gesturing a moment later, but Fraser didn't miss the most important words among all of them.
But it wasn't a first date, was it? It wasn't even the second. They'd been at this for longer than either of them had even known each other. Fraser had been put into this relationship when he'd come back from the Territories two years ago, practically as though the two of them were already married. Ray had embraced him like an old, beloved friend, smiled into his neck - jumped in front of a bullet for him - and perhaps that night could be called their first formal date, when Fraser had proposed to take him to dinner--something that he'd always waited for Vecchio to ask him rather than the other way around.
They'd been dating ever since, it was just that neither of them had ever known it, and here he was--Ray's date to his ex-wife's wedding, or maybe Ray was his. And wasn't it always important to take only people you really cared about to weddings? Something about being seen perpetually in photographs with Ellen from Accounting, or that wino who only came for the free bar?
He'd brought Ray, and Ray had come for him. They were each other's emotional support during this impossibly difficult time, just like they'd been there for each other from the Fraser river heading west, as the wilderness grew ever more challenging, ever more lonely. They'd been there for each other for years, but to Fraser it was as though he'd known this man far longer than that. His number one in a pool of two million potentials. They clicked.
He mused while Ray gestured, and he smiled very slightly, hopefully, to show that he was getting it, that he was listening. His brow crinkled in the middle with gentle urging: You can do it.
And Ray did. Every word. And Fraser softened, the blind misery and panic beginning to ebb away as Ray told him that he was all for it, all for taking the hard with the easy, and maybe they could make it work. When had they ever backed down from a challenge because the odds were too high?
He took a bracing breath and let the silence settle--or, well, it wasn't silence because the music was still playing jauntily, at odds with the mire like mood that had settled in this particular corner. The air was pregnant with the unsaid, with swirling torrents of emotion that barely broke the surface despite their churning.
His question could almost be considered neutral, after everything that had been said. ]
Is that what this is, Ray? A first date?
[ He raised his hand to pronounce that the question wasn't done yet, trying to hold Ray back from answering. Every word was careful, weighted as though he were accounting each syllable more consideration than the last, ensuring that what he said was what he meant to say, and that what he meant to say was heard. ]
And if I may caution you to be careful with your answer? You see, in Canada it's not traditional to bed your partner on a first date--or even the second. And I--I am rather a stickler for adhering to traditions, as we've already established.
But you see, Ray, by my count, we're already running far behind our contemporaries. And frankly comments about the infrequency of rain in Death Valley would be appropriate, in regards to both my...uh--recent transgressions and your own. And if I kiss you again, right now - kiss you the way I want to - I can't promise to adhere to the established tradition. In fact, I'm rather confident I couldn't, given immediate evidence.
[ He really could be terrible sometimes. And how about this emotional rollercoaster, huh? ]
So we really should decide. In advance of our - or one of us, at least - doing anything that might be deemed-- [ He narrowed his eyes slightly. ] --otherwise inappropriate.
no subject
They got right into it. Ray might not be good at talking about feelings, but he was better at getting to the point than Fraser was; he managed it with rhyme - love and marriage and babies in the carriage - rolling off his tongue like the whole phrase had emerged there fully formed. He fell into gesturing a moment later, but Fraser didn't miss the most important words among all of them.
But it wasn't a first date, was it? It wasn't even the second. They'd been at this for longer than either of them had even known each other. Fraser had been put into this relationship when he'd come back from the Territories two years ago, practically as though the two of them were already married. Ray had embraced him like an old, beloved friend, smiled into his neck - jumped in front of a bullet for him - and perhaps that night could be called their first formal date, when Fraser had proposed to take him to dinner--something that he'd always waited for Vecchio to ask him rather than the other way around.
They'd been dating ever since, it was just that neither of them had ever known it, and here he was--Ray's date to his ex-wife's wedding, or maybe Ray was his. And wasn't it always important to take only people you really cared about to weddings? Something about being seen perpetually in photographs with Ellen from Accounting, or that wino who only came for the free bar?
He'd brought Ray, and Ray had come for him. They were each other's emotional support during this impossibly difficult time, just like they'd been there for each other from the Fraser river heading west, as the wilderness grew ever more challenging, ever more lonely. They'd been there for each other for years, but to Fraser it was as though he'd known this man far longer than that. His number one in a pool of two million potentials. They clicked.
He mused while Ray gestured, and he smiled very slightly, hopefully, to show that he was getting it, that he was listening. His brow crinkled in the middle with gentle urging: You can do it.
And Ray did. Every word. And Fraser softened, the blind misery and panic beginning to ebb away as Ray told him that he was all for it, all for taking the hard with the easy, and maybe they could make it work. When had they ever backed down from a challenge because the odds were too high?
He took a bracing breath and let the silence settle--or, well, it wasn't silence because the music was still playing jauntily, at odds with the mire like mood that had settled in this particular corner. The air was pregnant with the unsaid, with swirling torrents of emotion that barely broke the surface despite their churning.
His question could almost be considered neutral, after everything that had been said. ]
Is that what this is, Ray? A first date?
[ He raised his hand to pronounce that the question wasn't done yet, trying to hold Ray back from answering. Every word was careful, weighted as though he were accounting each syllable more consideration than the last, ensuring that what he said was what he meant to say, and that what he meant to say was heard. ]
And if I may caution you to be careful with your answer? You see, in Canada it's not traditional to bed your partner on a first date--or even the second. And I--I am rather a stickler for adhering to traditions, as we've already established.
But you see, Ray, by my count, we're already running far behind our contemporaries. And frankly comments about the infrequency of rain in Death Valley would be appropriate, in regards to both my...uh--recent transgressions and your own. And if I kiss you again, right now - kiss you the way I want to - I can't promise to adhere to the established tradition. In fact, I'm rather confident I couldn't, given immediate evidence.
[ He really could be terrible sometimes. And how about this emotional rollercoaster, huh? ]
So we really should decide. In advance of our - or one of us, at least - doing anything that might be deemed-- [ He narrowed his eyes slightly. ] --otherwise inappropriate.