Due South Fic: Jigsaw
A RayV story, for Kormantic. Enjoy!
Title: Jigsaw
Author: Lemon Lashes
Author Email: lemonlashes@yahoo.com
Author Webpage: www.geocities.com/lemonlashes
Category: Hurt/Comfort
Archive: anywhere you like, just let me know
Spoilers For: Minor, for Dead Man Walking, Victoria's Secret and The Deal.
Rating: PG13
Pairing: Fraser/RayV
Characters: They don't belong to me. Is that fair?
Summary: Ben talks, Ray eavesdrops
Jigsaw
By Lemonlashes
A little piece of something that calls itself Ray Vecchio is floating in a nothingness made of velvet.
It's not sure what it is, that piece, not for a timeless while. It floats and waits, floats some more and doesn't wonder anything. It feels strangely contented here--wherever *here* is--serene and disconnected. Unknown to itself, to anyone. Anonymous, adrift, and most of all safe.
Then, far off, it hears a voice, and the unnamed piece of Ray becomes an ear. The voice reels him in, like a hooked fish, and the ear fights its grip but can't escape the pull.
In time, enough of a brain connects up with the ear to supply a whisper of coherent thought. He's talking to his father again, the joined fragments of Ray tell each other, though they aren't exactly sure what they mean.
Distantly, they start to notice something else. Pain. Maybe a lot of pain.
Ray shies back toward the velvet nothing, but the voice--scared, dammmit, lemme go!--goes taut, refusing to let him flee the hurt that is waiting for him. He concentrates on the sound, because though it is to blame for turning him into an ear and a brain, it isn't frightening. Isn't, in and of itself, a threat. He focuses, and the murmur becomes words and one or two of them even make sense.
"It's his eyes," the voice says, and another piece of Ray seems to frizz to life, like the blinking light on a VCR clock after a power blackout ends. He is an ear, a piece of brain, and a swollen upper face now. A disembodied partial head swathed in bandages. The skin around his eyes is itchy and bruised at the same time, crusted with blood and wrapped in soft layers of blackness. He can't open them. Needless to say, he doesn't want to.
"What Ray says and how he feels are frequently two different things. With his face bandaged, I can't tell what he's--well yes, Dad, I know he's unconscious, but if he was awake, I could tell. Listen, you asked why I was unnerved and--I am *not* babbling."
The pain takes a delicate little bite, far from the face-ear-brain part that was, until just now, all there was of Ray Vecchio. Suddenly he also has a shin, bruised shin, sore bone, and now he remembers Benny, Benny, Benny. Benton Fraser, R.C.M.P., knocking his legs out from under him before the explosion. Ray can't feel anything between his eyes and that shin; as he tries he drowns under a wave of singsong gibberish... first came to Chicago on the trail of my father's killer, now he's dead and I talk to him, eyes and shin, nothing but eyes and shin...
No, wait. There's a hand, too. It hurts too, of course. It's a weird-familiar pinned feeling. That means an IV. Hospital. The concept of hospital falls on Ray like a wicked witch's house: white things, gurneys, bullets, Fraser saying he would have gone with Victoria...
"Ray talks with his eyes, Dad, that is what I'm saying."
So that's how he always knows, Ray thinks, and an unidentified part of him seems to echo back: Knows what?
Little sensations click into place around his bruised shin: something warm and blessedly not-painful is lying against that same leg, and for a second he flinches under the sheets, registering the press of fur.
Fur... what is this he's remembering now... something about a flying otter?
Nah, that can't be right.
Fraser continues to argue with his murdered dad. "Of course it's my fault. If it was Buck lying here and you'd taken him on a mad chase through the Yukon, you'd blame yourself. Yes you would. Yes you would. Yes you *would*, Dad. Oh, don't give me that. The incident with the homicidal piano wholesaler was entirely different."
Pain continues to reassemble Ray: a line of ache puts together the whole of the IV-punctured arm, burns up his neck and jaw to connect with the ear like the straight outer line of a puzzle. Gut--he got punched. Or hit with a bat, maybe? Definitely not a basketball. That was someone else's face, long ago.
What he really needs are his lungs: Ray wants to keep breathing in and out, slow and steady, so Benny won't know he's awake. Unfortunately, most of him is still floating in the unknown nothing, beyond his control.
He can't pick and choose the floodback of memories any more than he can control the gradual awakening of his body. A hazy collection of events forms in his scattered mind: some old childhood nemesis of Benny's tearing up Chicago, tag you're it and Fraser of course took up the challenge, just like his damn wolf, they both have the chase-it-until-you-catch-it-or-die instinct.
He always knew Benny could see right through him, didn't think about the how or why before. Fraser knew so any things: the right way to tie up hockey skates and differences between dog hair and horsehair and bindlestitches and Chinese food and Fraser says I talk with my eyes and ow, dammit, there's my chest.
Something had landed on him, just before or just after the helicopter crash.
Now he regrets wishing his lungs would come back. Fragile, full of pins and jagged metal things, there they are. It's hard to push them in and out in a sleep-rhythm. It's hard to move them at all.
But he does, and meanwhile, Fraser's voice is full of a different kind of wound: "You taught me there was nothing more important than honor. To sacrifice everything for what I knew was right, you said that was--but Ray doesn't do heroic things because of some ridiculous, antiquated code of behavior, Dad, he does them because he--"
Because I?
Hard, oh, so hard to exhale smoothly now. Behind his eyelids Ray sees a shimmer of imagined light, the pieces of his body feel on the edge of coming apart again, all straining-- hands, bandaged eyes, reluctantly thudding heart--to hear what Fraser will say.
But Benny has changed the subject, of course. "It *is* antiquated. And of course I did my best to give him the slip!"
Hey, that's right, Ray thinks feebly, and as his lips twitch with sudden pride he discovers his mouth anew, discovers his cheek too because it is mashed and the act of smiling, however slightly, makes it hurt. I tracked you in your natural environment. I found you in the far-off frozen north. He makes his mouth go slack again. Fraser doesn't react, though; he must be turned away from the bed.
"And if *you*--" Benny's tone has changed; he's addressing someone else now. "If you hadn't left a trail of empty chip bags and chocolate wrappers between here and Norman Wells, Ray would never have found us, and he wouldn't be here now."
A whine, and the warm weight against his leg ripples. Another piece of his brain floats back and brings the wolf's name with it: Diefenbaker. Dief. Good boy.
"Yes, I suppose I might be dead if he hadn't been here. But that is beside the point and you know it."
It's on the edge of coming together now, memories flashing like racecars at the Indy, flares of pain and bandages and hospital sheet all over. The bully, Fraser's own Frankie Zuko coming to town, busting things up, running Welsh's car into the river with Welsh in it. Not that Ray knew who it was, of course, not with Fraser strangely moody, investigating but not talking much about it, not sharing, after they rescued Welsh.
Then Frannie getting hit with a snowball of all things, a snowball full of rock. A stupid snowball, and it almost ends her life.
Ray had threatened to find and kill whoever it was. There's honor and then there's revenge. I do things for the ones I love, you stupid Canadian. It may be ancient, but it definitely isn't antiquated.
So Benny snuck off north to settle things with his old otter-swinging foe, to do the honorable thing in the honorable Mountie way. Worried that Ray would murder the guy, the way he'd almost done in Guy Rankin? No, Ray thinks as he finds his other knee in a fiery blaze of relief--some barely-connected part of him was afraid that the leg was amputated, its pieces lost--he's pretty sure Benny doesn't know about Rankin. Afraid of what, then?
"Would you listen to yourself? Dad, has it ever occurred to you that I am like some kind of ... agent... of chaos and destruction. Everything I love--Mom, Victoria--the only reason you survived so long is that you were so rarely within a hundred miles of me. I should be quarantined."
Love, Ray thinks, and he's whole again. Whole, hurting, and afraid if he moves he'll break the spell. Everything I love.
Benton Fraser talks on. "No? Over the course of my career I have been directly responsible for the destruction of over seventy automobiles, nineteen boats, a construction crane, a barn, an outhouse, an airplane, an oxcart, a priceless chair belonging to the nation of Turkey--"
He's gearing himself up to run off again, Ray realizes.
After a single moment of careful deliberation, he moves. He flails with his IV-punctured hand, feeling the tube flop back and forth and for once Fraser does exactly what Ray wants, doesn't see him thinking, doesn't anticipate or back off, doesn't shut him down before one of them says something that can't be taken back.
Doesn't read his too-revealing eyes.
Fraser's warm, smooth hand catches Ray's flying nurse-stabbed one. "Ray," he says, and he tries to fold the hand back down where it belongs. Ray fights off a smile and holds it tight. It's working.
"Fraser," he says, meaning it to come out a rasp, a whisper. He's surprised when it does, though, surprised to find his voice is actually that raw. It's barely audible and he feels Benny leaning in to catch his words. These Mounties, they always get their man? Today Chicago gets his.
It occurs to Ray that he might not be entirely coherent.
"Benny?" he says anyway.
"I'm here, Ray." Still closer, and now Ray can feel the heat of him, bending near, so close Ray's breath warms the air between their skin.
Close. Worried. Unsuspecting. Ray starts thinking of ways to trap Benny in other darkened rooms. Blindfolds, he thinks, and his cock stirs.
He fumbles with his other hand, encountering chest: rough fabric and suspenders. When he gets to Benny's throat he takes a good fistful of collar and clamps his fingers shut, pulling slightly as he says Fraser's name again.
"Ray, it's all right. You're awake, you're okay. I'll call a doctor."
"No," he says, clinging. It bleeds to talk--he can taste it. "Get some things. Straight first."
"Ray, let go."
"Make me. Break. My. Fingers. Or shutupanlisten." Fraser tenses and then relaxes, temporarily surrendering and it's crazy how horny that makes Ray, what with all the injuries and the way he might pass out from the pain any second.
"First thing. Not hurt so bad."
"Ray, you've been in a coma, you have--"
He shakes the collar and Benny shuts up. "Second. Partners do not run out on partners."
He can feel nerves, fear, something boiling in Benny now. He never knows what exactly, just feels the pent-up emotion, the under-the-skin electricity of things held in. Oh, he can smell guilt, all right. Ray's Catholic, after all, and Fraser's guilt is obvious, a vinegar-scent underneath the strong odor of a man who hasn't washed in a day or more, a man with blood dried into his clothes. As for the rest, the important stuff, it's a mystery.
Blindly Ray yanks Fraser's ear closer, just to feel the contact of his stubbly cheek on his chin. Then he ruins the moment by coughing. The sharp things in his chest start gnawing their way out.
"Ray, I am getting the doctor."
"Go before I'm finished--you better not come back." His voice is stronger now--coughing loosened something--and Fraser goes still in his hands again. He nods against Ray's face, a small raspy bob of the head and Ray loosens his death grip on the shirt a little. Through the backs of his knuckles, he can feel Fraser's throat, the pulse fast and weak.
"Yes, Ray?"
"Fraser, we alone?"
"Yes."
"Are we totally alone?"
There's a sense of air moving, and then Dief's weight vanishes from the bed.
"Ray?"
He strains upward, feels a stitch pop somewhere down low. He kisses him.
He misses the lips the first time, but how much can you do when your head's wrapped in gauze? He kisses the side of Fraser's mouth and the pulse under his knuckles jumps and the face turns and his heart stutters... but Benny's not turning away, but inward. The lips brush over his and don't retreat.
One little turn of his head. Besides that, Benny doesn't move.
So Ray kisses him again, once, again, three times, and he's just starting to feel like a prize idiot, just starting to think he'll have to plead delirium or pretend it never happened or join a monastery or even just let the sharp things in his chest take him back to the velvet nothingness for good. A *real* hurt, a killing hurt, is building just under his sternum when from out of the blackness Benny's lips move, they press and answer and Ray feels a bundle of things coming through them: nervousness, fear of love, memories of heartbreak and Victoria and excitement and affection too. And lust--he knows suddenly that Fraser's cock is as hard as his and isn't that stupid, given the situation?
They break when his strength fails, when he falls back through the half-inch of lift he'd been sustaining with his grip on Benny's shirt.
"You talk with your lips," he says.
"Well, of course, Ray." Puzzled voice.
Ray Vecchio smiles, and his face doesn't hurt at all. He knows what his eyes will tell Fraser when they cut the bandages off. You ever run on me again, Fraser, I'll track you to the ends of the earth. I'll chase you until I catch you or die trying.
"Ray?"
"Yeah, Benny?"
"Did we get everything..." Fraser coughs. "Straight?"
"Yeah, we're good."
"Can I get you a doctor now?"
"Get morphine, I don't care who brings it," Ray says. He lets go of Fraser's hand and as he does so some of the pieces of his body fall off again: he loses track of the knee, the gut, the shoulder the bear took a swipe at.
He lets them go gladly; they'll come back when they're needed. In the meantime, he drifts a little, already thinking of after-he's-better, of surprising Fraser. Of reading his lips, in an endless chain of entirely darkened rooms.
--end--
Title: Jigsaw
Author: Lemon Lashes
Author Email: lemonlashes@yahoo.com
Author Webpage: www.geocities.com/lemonlashes
Category: Hurt/Comfort
Archive: anywhere you like, just let me know
Spoilers For: Minor, for Dead Man Walking, Victoria's Secret and The Deal.
Rating: PG13
Pairing: Fraser/RayV
Characters: They don't belong to me. Is that fair?
Summary: Ben talks, Ray eavesdrops
Jigsaw
By Lemonlashes
A little piece of something that calls itself Ray Vecchio is floating in a nothingness made of velvet.
It's not sure what it is, that piece, not for a timeless while. It floats and waits, floats some more and doesn't wonder anything. It feels strangely contented here--wherever *here* is--serene and disconnected. Unknown to itself, to anyone. Anonymous, adrift, and most of all safe.
Then, far off, it hears a voice, and the unnamed piece of Ray becomes an ear. The voice reels him in, like a hooked fish, and the ear fights its grip but can't escape the pull.
In time, enough of a brain connects up with the ear to supply a whisper of coherent thought. He's talking to his father again, the joined fragments of Ray tell each other, though they aren't exactly sure what they mean.
Distantly, they start to notice something else. Pain. Maybe a lot of pain.
Ray shies back toward the velvet nothing, but the voice--scared, dammmit, lemme go!--goes taut, refusing to let him flee the hurt that is waiting for him. He concentrates on the sound, because though it is to blame for turning him into an ear and a brain, it isn't frightening. Isn't, in and of itself, a threat. He focuses, and the murmur becomes words and one or two of them even make sense.
"It's his eyes," the voice says, and another piece of Ray seems to frizz to life, like the blinking light on a VCR clock after a power blackout ends. He is an ear, a piece of brain, and a swollen upper face now. A disembodied partial head swathed in bandages. The skin around his eyes is itchy and bruised at the same time, crusted with blood and wrapped in soft layers of blackness. He can't open them. Needless to say, he doesn't want to.
"What Ray says and how he feels are frequently two different things. With his face bandaged, I can't tell what he's--well yes, Dad, I know he's unconscious, but if he was awake, I could tell. Listen, you asked why I was unnerved and--I am *not* babbling."
The pain takes a delicate little bite, far from the face-ear-brain part that was, until just now, all there was of Ray Vecchio. Suddenly he also has a shin, bruised shin, sore bone, and now he remembers Benny, Benny, Benny. Benton Fraser, R.C.M.P., knocking his legs out from under him before the explosion. Ray can't feel anything between his eyes and that shin; as he tries he drowns under a wave of singsong gibberish... first came to Chicago on the trail of my father's killer, now he's dead and I talk to him, eyes and shin, nothing but eyes and shin...
No, wait. There's a hand, too. It hurts too, of course. It's a weird-familiar pinned feeling. That means an IV. Hospital. The concept of hospital falls on Ray like a wicked witch's house: white things, gurneys, bullets, Fraser saying he would have gone with Victoria...
"Ray talks with his eyes, Dad, that is what I'm saying."
So that's how he always knows, Ray thinks, and an unidentified part of him seems to echo back: Knows what?
Little sensations click into place around his bruised shin: something warm and blessedly not-painful is lying against that same leg, and for a second he flinches under the sheets, registering the press of fur.
Fur... what is this he's remembering now... something about a flying otter?
Nah, that can't be right.
Fraser continues to argue with his murdered dad. "Of course it's my fault. If it was Buck lying here and you'd taken him on a mad chase through the Yukon, you'd blame yourself. Yes you would. Yes you would. Yes you *would*, Dad. Oh, don't give me that. The incident with the homicidal piano wholesaler was entirely different."
Pain continues to reassemble Ray: a line of ache puts together the whole of the IV-punctured arm, burns up his neck and jaw to connect with the ear like the straight outer line of a puzzle. Gut--he got punched. Or hit with a bat, maybe? Definitely not a basketball. That was someone else's face, long ago.
What he really needs are his lungs: Ray wants to keep breathing in and out, slow and steady, so Benny won't know he's awake. Unfortunately, most of him is still floating in the unknown nothing, beyond his control.
He can't pick and choose the floodback of memories any more than he can control the gradual awakening of his body. A hazy collection of events forms in his scattered mind: some old childhood nemesis of Benny's tearing up Chicago, tag you're it and Fraser of course took up the challenge, just like his damn wolf, they both have the chase-it-until-you-catch-it-or-die instinct.
He always knew Benny could see right through him, didn't think about the how or why before. Fraser knew so any things: the right way to tie up hockey skates and differences between dog hair and horsehair and bindlestitches and Chinese food and Fraser says I talk with my eyes and ow, dammit, there's my chest.
Something had landed on him, just before or just after the helicopter crash.
Now he regrets wishing his lungs would come back. Fragile, full of pins and jagged metal things, there they are. It's hard to push them in and out in a sleep-rhythm. It's hard to move them at all.
But he does, and meanwhile, Fraser's voice is full of a different kind of wound: "You taught me there was nothing more important than honor. To sacrifice everything for what I knew was right, you said that was--but Ray doesn't do heroic things because of some ridiculous, antiquated code of behavior, Dad, he does them because he--"
Because I?
Hard, oh, so hard to exhale smoothly now. Behind his eyelids Ray sees a shimmer of imagined light, the pieces of his body feel on the edge of coming apart again, all straining-- hands, bandaged eyes, reluctantly thudding heart--to hear what Fraser will say.
But Benny has changed the subject, of course. "It *is* antiquated. And of course I did my best to give him the slip!"
Hey, that's right, Ray thinks feebly, and as his lips twitch with sudden pride he discovers his mouth anew, discovers his cheek too because it is mashed and the act of smiling, however slightly, makes it hurt. I tracked you in your natural environment. I found you in the far-off frozen north. He makes his mouth go slack again. Fraser doesn't react, though; he must be turned away from the bed.
"And if *you*--" Benny's tone has changed; he's addressing someone else now. "If you hadn't left a trail of empty chip bags and chocolate wrappers between here and Norman Wells, Ray would never have found us, and he wouldn't be here now."
A whine, and the warm weight against his leg ripples. Another piece of his brain floats back and brings the wolf's name with it: Diefenbaker. Dief. Good boy.
"Yes, I suppose I might be dead if he hadn't been here. But that is beside the point and you know it."
It's on the edge of coming together now, memories flashing like racecars at the Indy, flares of pain and bandages and hospital sheet all over. The bully, Fraser's own Frankie Zuko coming to town, busting things up, running Welsh's car into the river with Welsh in it. Not that Ray knew who it was, of course, not with Fraser strangely moody, investigating but not talking much about it, not sharing, after they rescued Welsh.
Then Frannie getting hit with a snowball of all things, a snowball full of rock. A stupid snowball, and it almost ends her life.
Ray had threatened to find and kill whoever it was. There's honor and then there's revenge. I do things for the ones I love, you stupid Canadian. It may be ancient, but it definitely isn't antiquated.
So Benny snuck off north to settle things with his old otter-swinging foe, to do the honorable thing in the honorable Mountie way. Worried that Ray would murder the guy, the way he'd almost done in Guy Rankin? No, Ray thinks as he finds his other knee in a fiery blaze of relief--some barely-connected part of him was afraid that the leg was amputated, its pieces lost--he's pretty sure Benny doesn't know about Rankin. Afraid of what, then?
"Would you listen to yourself? Dad, has it ever occurred to you that I am like some kind of ... agent... of chaos and destruction. Everything I love--Mom, Victoria--the only reason you survived so long is that you were so rarely within a hundred miles of me. I should be quarantined."
Love, Ray thinks, and he's whole again. Whole, hurting, and afraid if he moves he'll break the spell. Everything I love.
Benton Fraser talks on. "No? Over the course of my career I have been directly responsible for the destruction of over seventy automobiles, nineteen boats, a construction crane, a barn, an outhouse, an airplane, an oxcart, a priceless chair belonging to the nation of Turkey--"
He's gearing himself up to run off again, Ray realizes.
After a single moment of careful deliberation, he moves. He flails with his IV-punctured hand, feeling the tube flop back and forth and for once Fraser does exactly what Ray wants, doesn't see him thinking, doesn't anticipate or back off, doesn't shut him down before one of them says something that can't be taken back.
Doesn't read his too-revealing eyes.
Fraser's warm, smooth hand catches Ray's flying nurse-stabbed one. "Ray," he says, and he tries to fold the hand back down where it belongs. Ray fights off a smile and holds it tight. It's working.
"Fraser," he says, meaning it to come out a rasp, a whisper. He's surprised when it does, though, surprised to find his voice is actually that raw. It's barely audible and he feels Benny leaning in to catch his words. These Mounties, they always get their man? Today Chicago gets his.
It occurs to Ray that he might not be entirely coherent.
"Benny?" he says anyway.
"I'm here, Ray." Still closer, and now Ray can feel the heat of him, bending near, so close Ray's breath warms the air between their skin.
Close. Worried. Unsuspecting. Ray starts thinking of ways to trap Benny in other darkened rooms. Blindfolds, he thinks, and his cock stirs.
He fumbles with his other hand, encountering chest: rough fabric and suspenders. When he gets to Benny's throat he takes a good fistful of collar and clamps his fingers shut, pulling slightly as he says Fraser's name again.
"Ray, it's all right. You're awake, you're okay. I'll call a doctor."
"No," he says, clinging. It bleeds to talk--he can taste it. "Get some things. Straight first."
"Ray, let go."
"Make me. Break. My. Fingers. Or shutupanlisten." Fraser tenses and then relaxes, temporarily surrendering and it's crazy how horny that makes Ray, what with all the injuries and the way he might pass out from the pain any second.
"First thing. Not hurt so bad."
"Ray, you've been in a coma, you have--"
He shakes the collar and Benny shuts up. "Second. Partners do not run out on partners."
He can feel nerves, fear, something boiling in Benny now. He never knows what exactly, just feels the pent-up emotion, the under-the-skin electricity of things held in. Oh, he can smell guilt, all right. Ray's Catholic, after all, and Fraser's guilt is obvious, a vinegar-scent underneath the strong odor of a man who hasn't washed in a day or more, a man with blood dried into his clothes. As for the rest, the important stuff, it's a mystery.
Blindly Ray yanks Fraser's ear closer, just to feel the contact of his stubbly cheek on his chin. Then he ruins the moment by coughing. The sharp things in his chest start gnawing their way out.
"Ray, I am getting the doctor."
"Go before I'm finished--you better not come back." His voice is stronger now--coughing loosened something--and Fraser goes still in his hands again. He nods against Ray's face, a small raspy bob of the head and Ray loosens his death grip on the shirt a little. Through the backs of his knuckles, he can feel Fraser's throat, the pulse fast and weak.
"Yes, Ray?"
"Fraser, we alone?"
"Yes."
"Are we totally alone?"
There's a sense of air moving, and then Dief's weight vanishes from the bed.
"Ray?"
He strains upward, feels a stitch pop somewhere down low. He kisses him.
He misses the lips the first time, but how much can you do when your head's wrapped in gauze? He kisses the side of Fraser's mouth and the pulse under his knuckles jumps and the face turns and his heart stutters... but Benny's not turning away, but inward. The lips brush over his and don't retreat.
One little turn of his head. Besides that, Benny doesn't move.
So Ray kisses him again, once, again, three times, and he's just starting to feel like a prize idiot, just starting to think he'll have to plead delirium or pretend it never happened or join a monastery or even just let the sharp things in his chest take him back to the velvet nothingness for good. A *real* hurt, a killing hurt, is building just under his sternum when from out of the blackness Benny's lips move, they press and answer and Ray feels a bundle of things coming through them: nervousness, fear of love, memories of heartbreak and Victoria and excitement and affection too. And lust--he knows suddenly that Fraser's cock is as hard as his and isn't that stupid, given the situation?
They break when his strength fails, when he falls back through the half-inch of lift he'd been sustaining with his grip on Benny's shirt.
"You talk with your lips," he says.
"Well, of course, Ray." Puzzled voice.
Ray Vecchio smiles, and his face doesn't hurt at all. He knows what his eyes will tell Fraser when they cut the bandages off. You ever run on me again, Fraser, I'll track you to the ends of the earth. I'll chase you until I catch you or die trying.
"Ray?"
"Yeah, Benny?"
"Did we get everything..." Fraser coughs. "Straight?"
"Yeah, we're good."
"Can I get you a doctor now?"
"Get morphine, I don't care who brings it," Ray says. He lets go of Fraser's hand and as he does so some of the pieces of his body fall off again: he loses track of the knee, the gut, the shoulder the bear took a swipe at.
He lets them go gladly; they'll come back when they're needed. In the meantime, he drifts a little, already thinking of after-he's-better, of surprising Fraser. Of reading his lips, in an endless chain of entirely darkened rooms.
--end--