Yes, of course. And it was very kind of you to volunteer that duty, Ray.
[ Fraser had felt it too. Their time in the wilderness had changed everything he thought he knew about home. It could be a place, as it had been for his father, a wild emptiness and a heartfelt yearning for a life into which he could never fit, or it could be a person. The city was a wilderness no different than the great white emptiness of the Yukon, and while Fraser still missed the whip of snow against his face, the scent of freshly chopped firewood and the ringing silence of the Territories--home he'd come to realize, could very well be the man sitting beside him.
He'd come to realize it over time, when his frustrations began to gradually give way to sentiment, that Ray had superseded his childhood home in his longings. Reading by lamplight - sometimes aloud - he'd dwelled in particularly on the stories in his father's journals about his mother. Seeing her had brought on a longing to reread them, thus his choice to pack several of them despite the extra weight and the peril of losing them, but in reality they served a different purpose. Fraser listened to his father's warmth and passion, read of the nights shared sleeping in that igloo and the dark days of winter lit only by the romance of the Northern Lights, and he reflected on loneliness--his father's and his own, and how the Yukon was somehow more hospitable when there was a warm body laying flush against your own.
And when they'd found The Hand, when the adventure was over, he'd sought in desperation for the words he needed to make Ray stay. If he'd asked, he knew, Ray would have done just that - he had nothing to come back to - but Fraser had come up short at the crucial moment. Heartsick, he'd wasted no time in transferring back to Chicago, only to find that it wasn't the city itself but the warm body that he invariably missed.
But just getting to work with Ray again was enough. If Fraser was good at anything, it was getting deep and fulfilling satisfaction from simply having someone he cared about in his life. There didn't have to be more to it than that. Sitting in the Pontiac bickering with Ray was all the physical contact he needed. But that was Fraser, and it had been well remarked on that Mounties were invariably hewn from the ice on which they were birthed. Ray had the firey passion and joie de vivre of a man who had grown up in the city, and the impatience to suit it. In all probability he wouldn't wait for Fraser to find out what he wanted.
His pensiveness kept him remarkably quiet, but it had done so since they left, and they would soon be running out of road. A gentle segue into discussing the wedding was to approach it through the relatively neutral topic of man's best friend. Of course since Dief was a traitor too, it was hard to tell how safe the efforts would prove to be. ]
Diefenbaker has been rehearsing all week. You know, he's never been a ringbearer before, but he's been taking the responsibility very seriously.
no subject
[ Fraser had felt it too. Their time in the wilderness had changed everything he thought he knew about home. It could be a place, as it had been for his father, a wild emptiness and a heartfelt yearning for a life into which he could never fit, or it could be a person. The city was a wilderness no different than the great white emptiness of the Yukon, and while Fraser still missed the whip of snow against his face, the scent of freshly chopped firewood and the ringing silence of the Territories--home he'd come to realize, could very well be the man sitting beside him.
He'd come to realize it over time, when his frustrations began to gradually give way to sentiment, that Ray had superseded his childhood home in his longings. Reading by lamplight - sometimes aloud - he'd dwelled in particularly on the stories in his father's journals about his mother. Seeing her had brought on a longing to reread them, thus his choice to pack several of them despite the extra weight and the peril of losing them, but in reality they served a different purpose. Fraser listened to his father's warmth and passion, read of the nights shared sleeping in that igloo and the dark days of winter lit only by the romance of the Northern Lights, and he reflected on loneliness--his father's and his own, and how the Yukon was somehow more hospitable when there was a warm body laying flush against your own.
And when they'd found The Hand, when the adventure was over, he'd sought in desperation for the words he needed to make Ray stay. If he'd asked, he knew, Ray would have done just that - he had nothing to come back to - but Fraser had come up short at the crucial moment. Heartsick, he'd wasted no time in transferring back to Chicago, only to find that it wasn't the city itself but the warm body that he invariably missed.
But just getting to work with Ray again was enough. If Fraser was good at anything, it was getting deep and fulfilling satisfaction from simply having someone he cared about in his life. There didn't have to be more to it than that. Sitting in the Pontiac bickering with Ray was all the physical contact he needed. But that was Fraser, and it had been well remarked on that Mounties were invariably hewn from the ice on which they were birthed. Ray had the firey passion and joie de vivre of a man who had grown up in the city, and the impatience to suit it. In all probability he wouldn't wait for Fraser to find out what he wanted.
His pensiveness kept him remarkably quiet, but it had done so since they left, and they would soon be running out of road. A gentle segue into discussing the wedding was to approach it through the relatively neutral topic of man's best friend. Of course since Dief was a traitor too, it was hard to tell how safe the efforts would prove to be. ]
Diefenbaker has been rehearsing all week. You know, he's never been a ringbearer before, but he's been taking the responsibility very seriously.