Amnesty 2007- "Broken"; saintmaybe1121
Title: Moebius Strip (returning and returning)
Challenge: For the 2007 Amnesty challenge; prompt- "Broken"
Author: saintmaybe1121
Pairing: Fraser/RayK
Soundtrack: Iron & Wine
My first contribution to the creative community at large in almost a year. Be gentle. Slippery things are done with the timeline, but it doesn't make sense anyway, so I decided I didn't care. Comments most welcome.
When he was six, his mother fell there in front of the door and turned towards him, her blood blooming crimson on the virgin snow. The dogs howled in the shed, plaintive, as if mourning one of their own.
II. When he left for Depot, he returned to the cabin. He had not been back in almost 12 years. It was dark and barren and cold. His father had been on patrol for three months, and they had no contact for the five preceding. A calendar hung on the wall, testifying to the day and month and year when his life changed irrevocably. Her scarf hung on a peg next to the door. It smelt of must and old pine sap. This was not a home; it was a mausoleum. He closed the door and turned his back. There was nothing for him there, and he wasn't sure why he returned at all.
III. After Depot, he was stationed back outside of Inuvik, not at his own behest. He could have lived without ever seeing the place again. He had expected to make his way through the ranks in the traditional manner. However, he is his father's son, and though he was willing to leave the Territories, they will always and forever be calling him home. He took his mother's scarf down as well as the calendar. He put them in his footlocker, and in their place he built shelves to hold his Shakespeare, Lawrence, Dickens. It was warm and comfortable, and he remembered almost nothing from before.
IV. After Victoria, his return to the cabin was embraced by the bitter winds of March. He looked at his father's picture, straight and strong astride his mount. He ran his thumb along the Sam Brown, leather edges catching his ragged nail. He picked up his service weapon, felt it heavy and coiled with dangerous purpose. He lay himself down in his twin bed and wept, waking a day and a half later to see snow drifted halfway up the windows.
V. The day he returned from his sojourn to the Beaufort Sea, he was accompanied by a half-grown wolf pup. There was no chance of saving the drowning and frozen fishermen, and although he knew that, knew it was beyond a lost cause, he jumped anyway. For reasons that he couldn't fathom, this skinny half-breed with his strange eyes that saw too much jumped after him and dragged him back to shore. He dubbed him Diefenbaker after a biography of the same, wedged between a thick tome about the early life of the Queen and an even thicker tome about Nelson Mandela. The wolf seemed to indicate his agreement, or at least his indifference, by curling up on the handwoven rug in front of the fire. Three days later, after fever muttering and coughing the pneumonia from his lungs, Dief was there licking his hand.
VI. He packed his rucksack for Chicago. He remembered his mother's scarf, his fathers's journals, his guitar. He remembered his white sweater with the torn neck and his dress Serge. He shuttered the windows, cleaned out the stove, and shut the flue. He had no reason to believe Chicago was permanent, but he could not stay here in this cabin filled with the ghosts of violence, loss, and absent love.
VII. The gunmen had wrought destruction, but there was no insulation that couldn't be replaced, no holes that couldn't be filled, no windows that would never again be smooth, icy panes of glass. Ray would help him. Any man could handle a hammer and saw, after all.
VIII. In Victoria's wake, there was nothing left except ash that made a bitter taste in the back of his throat. Emptiness he had known all his life. Emptiness he understood. Never before had the absence of everything hurt so badly. Ray had not accompanied him this time. Ben touched his hand once to the blackened foundation, the broken rotting timbers. He whistled for Dief and turned towards town. His lower back ached fiercely, and he had to find lodging before nightfall.
VIV. The summer days were long and bright, the sun's rays pinking his pale skin. He barely noticed, lost as he was in measuring, planing, sanding, rebuilding. Quiet, blessed peace descended on him. During the evenings, he read 'Leaves of Grass' aloud to Diefenbaker, taking comfort in the familiar rhythms. Dief stared attentively into the middle distance before loping off to chase a hare or squirrel. The wolf had never cared much for Whitman. The rest of the summer, after those first two weeks, was spent on the chase. The cabin remained unfinished, but Fraser was unconcerned as he climbed the telephone pole to receive Ray's call.
X. The next summer, he escaped the heat of the Chicago streets, the blue heat of his mysterious partner's gaze. He had long conversations with his father that were not illuminating in the slightest. This time he read John Donne and Marianne Moore, caught between the ancient words and the new, though both were still like foreign languages. He slept in his bedroll on the hard plank floor and watched the trees sway in the constant breeze until the day he finished the roof. He didn't think once of Ray Kowalski's long legs or his slender hands or his sly mouth. Not once.
XI. They stumbled into the rebuilt cabin with Ray clinging tightly to his outer parka. Both men were half delirious from the cold, starved from two days without rations. Fraser kept a modicum of his wits about him and built a fire in the stove from the wood he left stacked more than a year ago. He stripped both of them naked so they could dry and made a bedroll as close to the fire as would be safe. Ray's shivering eased into sleep; all the while he had been muttering about 'behind blue eyes, a bad man, a sad man.' Fraser warmed Ray's long fingers in his mouth, watched the shadows play over Ray's smooth, pale skin. His blond hair had hardly grown out in the three weeks since they had left and stood out in startled-looking tufts. Fraser tried not to make comparisons.
XII. He awoke on the day of Pentecost to a thin skim of new white snow on the window's ledge. He breathed warmly and deeply, enjoying the musk of their lovemaking trapped in the quilt they had bought together in Yellowknife. The sun burned constantly in the sky now, and glinted gold in Ray's hair. He stretched and rolled to face Ray directly. Ray rose to half awareness and moved to nuzzle his stubbly jaw under Ben's chin. "Mmmm, iss'Sunday, Ben. We have to get up yet?" This was spoken in a husky whisper. Ben slid his hand down Ray's strong back and cupped a slender buttock.
"No, Ray. We can stay right here. Go back to sleep."
"Kay," Ray replied through a yawn, throwing a leg over Ben's hip. Ben could feel Ray's soft genitals pressing against him, the warmed metal of Ray's wedding band soothing against the skin of Ben's shoulder. As Ray's breathing deepened into sleep once more, Ben listened to the sounds of the cabin settling around them. Dief's claws clicked against the wood floor as he roused himself to lap water from his bowl in the next room. Ben realized that this end was also a beginning of a kind before slipping back into dreams, bathed in the new summer light.
Challenge: For the 2007 Amnesty challenge; prompt- "Broken"
Author: saintmaybe1121
Pairing: Fraser/RayK
Soundtrack: Iron & Wine
My first contribution to the creative community at large in almost a year. Be gentle. Slippery things are done with the timeline, but it doesn't make sense anyway, so I decided I didn't care. Comments most welcome.
When he was six, his mother fell there in front of the door and turned towards him, her blood blooming crimson on the virgin snow. The dogs howled in the shed, plaintive, as if mourning one of their own.
II. When he left for Depot, he returned to the cabin. He had not been back in almost 12 years. It was dark and barren and cold. His father had been on patrol for three months, and they had no contact for the five preceding. A calendar hung on the wall, testifying to the day and month and year when his life changed irrevocably. Her scarf hung on a peg next to the door. It smelt of must and old pine sap. This was not a home; it was a mausoleum. He closed the door and turned his back. There was nothing for him there, and he wasn't sure why he returned at all.
III. After Depot, he was stationed back outside of Inuvik, not at his own behest. He could have lived without ever seeing the place again. He had expected to make his way through the ranks in the traditional manner. However, he is his father's son, and though he was willing to leave the Territories, they will always and forever be calling him home. He took his mother's scarf down as well as the calendar. He put them in his footlocker, and in their place he built shelves to hold his Shakespeare, Lawrence, Dickens. It was warm and comfortable, and he remembered almost nothing from before.
IV. After Victoria, his return to the cabin was embraced by the bitter winds of March. He looked at his father's picture, straight and strong astride his mount. He ran his thumb along the Sam Brown, leather edges catching his ragged nail. He picked up his service weapon, felt it heavy and coiled with dangerous purpose. He lay himself down in his twin bed and wept, waking a day and a half later to see snow drifted halfway up the windows.
V. The day he returned from his sojourn to the Beaufort Sea, he was accompanied by a half-grown wolf pup. There was no chance of saving the drowning and frozen fishermen, and although he knew that, knew it was beyond a lost cause, he jumped anyway. For reasons that he couldn't fathom, this skinny half-breed with his strange eyes that saw too much jumped after him and dragged him back to shore. He dubbed him Diefenbaker after a biography of the same, wedged between a thick tome about the early life of the Queen and an even thicker tome about Nelson Mandela. The wolf seemed to indicate his agreement, or at least his indifference, by curling up on the handwoven rug in front of the fire. Three days later, after fever muttering and coughing the pneumonia from his lungs, Dief was there licking his hand.
VI. He packed his rucksack for Chicago. He remembered his mother's scarf, his fathers's journals, his guitar. He remembered his white sweater with the torn neck and his dress Serge. He shuttered the windows, cleaned out the stove, and shut the flue. He had no reason to believe Chicago was permanent, but he could not stay here in this cabin filled with the ghosts of violence, loss, and absent love.
VII. The gunmen had wrought destruction, but there was no insulation that couldn't be replaced, no holes that couldn't be filled, no windows that would never again be smooth, icy panes of glass. Ray would help him. Any man could handle a hammer and saw, after all.
VIII. In Victoria's wake, there was nothing left except ash that made a bitter taste in the back of his throat. Emptiness he had known all his life. Emptiness he understood. Never before had the absence of everything hurt so badly. Ray had not accompanied him this time. Ben touched his hand once to the blackened foundation, the broken rotting timbers. He whistled for Dief and turned towards town. His lower back ached fiercely, and he had to find lodging before nightfall.
VIV. The summer days were long and bright, the sun's rays pinking his pale skin. He barely noticed, lost as he was in measuring, planing, sanding, rebuilding. Quiet, blessed peace descended on him. During the evenings, he read 'Leaves of Grass' aloud to Diefenbaker, taking comfort in the familiar rhythms. Dief stared attentively into the middle distance before loping off to chase a hare or squirrel. The wolf had never cared much for Whitman. The rest of the summer, after those first two weeks, was spent on the chase. The cabin remained unfinished, but Fraser was unconcerned as he climbed the telephone pole to receive Ray's call.
X. The next summer, he escaped the heat of the Chicago streets, the blue heat of his mysterious partner's gaze. He had long conversations with his father that were not illuminating in the slightest. This time he read John Donne and Marianne Moore, caught between the ancient words and the new, though both were still like foreign languages. He slept in his bedroll on the hard plank floor and watched the trees sway in the constant breeze until the day he finished the roof. He didn't think once of Ray Kowalski's long legs or his slender hands or his sly mouth. Not once.
XI. They stumbled into the rebuilt cabin with Ray clinging tightly to his outer parka. Both men were half delirious from the cold, starved from two days without rations. Fraser kept a modicum of his wits about him and built a fire in the stove from the wood he left stacked more than a year ago. He stripped both of them naked so they could dry and made a bedroll as close to the fire as would be safe. Ray's shivering eased into sleep; all the while he had been muttering about 'behind blue eyes, a bad man, a sad man.' Fraser warmed Ray's long fingers in his mouth, watched the shadows play over Ray's smooth, pale skin. His blond hair had hardly grown out in the three weeks since they had left and stood out in startled-looking tufts. Fraser tried not to make comparisons.
XII. He awoke on the day of Pentecost to a thin skim of new white snow on the window's ledge. He breathed warmly and deeply, enjoying the musk of their lovemaking trapped in the quilt they had bought together in Yellowknife. The sun burned constantly in the sky now, and glinted gold in Ray's hair. He stretched and rolled to face Ray directly. Ray rose to half awareness and moved to nuzzle his stubbly jaw under Ben's chin. "Mmmm, iss'Sunday, Ben. We have to get up yet?" This was spoken in a husky whisper. Ben slid his hand down Ray's strong back and cupped a slender buttock.
"No, Ray. We can stay right here. Go back to sleep."
"Kay," Ray replied through a yawn, throwing a leg over Ben's hip. Ben could feel Ray's soft genitals pressing against him, the warmed metal of Ray's wedding band soothing against the skin of Ben's shoulder. As Ray's breathing deepened into sleep once more, Ben listened to the sounds of the cabin settling around them. Dief's claws clicked against the wood floor as he roused himself to lap water from his bowl in the next room. Ben realized that this end was also a beginning of a kind before slipping back into dreams, bathed in the new summer light.