dS Birthday fic for akamine_chan
Title: Language, Ray
Author: mizface
Fandom: due South
Pairing: Fraser/RayK
Rating: PG
Word count: around 880
Summary: a story about communication with (surprisingly enough) no dialogue
I am dedicating this to akamine_chan whom I adore for so many reasons. Happiest of birthdays, aka! (a big thank you to Jean for the beta!)
To Ray, language was a tool, like a hammer, or saw, or screwdriver. Something to be used to get the job done. He didn’t see why it needed to be fancy, or overdone. Ray was a ‘say what you mean’ kind of guy, all about getting the point across. Means to an end - that’s what words were for.
Fraser saw communication as a science. Words were building blocks, like DNA, and each combination had its own unique result. Like any scientific work, it could be dangerous if not done correctly. So each word choice had to be precise, thought out. Otherwise, the results could be disastrous.
***********
When Ray first met Benton Fraser, he wasn’t sure the guy knew how to speak English… okay, American, but same diff. He knew about Fraser’s excess lung capacity way before the guy ever said anything about it; no one could talk that much for that long without breathing otherwise. He put Ray’s old teachers to shame, and part of Ray wished he’d known Fraser back in high school, when word counts and numbers of pages for reports were hard to meet. The rest of him had to keep from interrupting, from trying to get Fraser to just tell him whatever it was he needed to know, in sentences of ten words or less.
When Fraser met Ray Kowalski, he was, quite frankly, appalled at some of the things that came out of the man’s mouth. He certainly had an interesting grasp of grammar and correct word usage. Ray’s assertion that he was a ‘poet on the inside’ was dubious at best. Or perhaps that inner poet did exist, but much farther inside than could easily be discerned. Or accessed.
***********
When Ray listened, really listened, to what Fraser was saying, he had to admit that the stuff he spouted was kind of amazing. Not just the facts - anyone could know stuff - but the way he said it, the sheer beauty of the language he used was something Ray found kind of awesome. Ray didn’t know how he did it. They used the same words (okay, so Fraser knew lots more, but still), spoke the same language. But Ray just knew that if someone came in and handed the two of them a box of words and said, “Here you go! Let’s see what you make of this,” Ray would, at best, probably be able to make a basic one-story house. Fraser, on the other hand, would take the same box and manage to get a mansion out of it, or a castle, or whatever fancy-assed thing he wanted.
Fraser admired Ray’s utilitarian use of language, the conciseness of his phrases, his ability to say very little but still get his exact point across. It was a skill he himself did not possess. He could, of course, form sentences of any given length, but he tended toward the verbose. Fraser knew this, and indeed used that fact to his advantage. It was a way to both showcase the beauty of language and access its functionality simultaneously. Still, there were times he truly wished he knew how to just get to the point in the way that Ray did.
***********
It was interesting, trying to figure out what Fraser wasn’t saying. What he was trying to talk around, or over, or whatever direction he needed to avoid a subject. As much as Fraser did talk, you’d think he got everything out, but that just was not the case. Ray found out almost as much about the guy from what he didn’t say than from what he did. He just wished he could get Fraser to actually talk about some of that unsaid stuff, too. Might make for some real interesting conversations.
Fraser found that when Ray spoke, it was a full-body kind of language. He rarely used words alone to convey a point; his entire being seemed to want its chance to speak its piece. Perhaps this was the inner poet Ray had spoken of when they first met. Body language was, of course, much harder to interpret than mere spoken words. The chances of error were much higher, the risk of acting on what was at best supposition on Fraser’s part was, he felt, too much to warrant an attempt. Better to stay with what was actually said, and to take the words at face value. Even if what wasn’t being said aloud was an entirely different story.
***********
Ray stopped listening to what Fraser was saying after awhile. It wasn’t doing either of them any good, wasn’t getting them where they needed to be. They could talk and talk (and boy, could Fraser talk) but that didn’t mean they’d ever say what they wanted to. What they really could be saying, should be saying, to one another. So Ray watched Fraser instead, because that’s where all the good talking was being done now anyhow. And what he was seeing was the most beautiful words he could ever hope to hear.
The actual words, when finally spoken, were almost anti-climactic. Actions, after all, had a far louder voice, or so the saying went. And those actions, on both Ray’s part and his, had spoken volumes on their feelings long before those three tiny words, that one simple, yet incredibly complex, phrase, was ever uttered aloud.
Author: mizface
Fandom: due South
Pairing: Fraser/RayK
Rating: PG
Word count: around 880
Summary: a story about communication with (surprisingly enough) no dialogue
I am dedicating this to akamine_chan whom I adore for so many reasons. Happiest of birthdays, aka! (a big thank you to Jean for the beta!)
To Ray, language was a tool, like a hammer, or saw, or screwdriver. Something to be used to get the job done. He didn’t see why it needed to be fancy, or overdone. Ray was a ‘say what you mean’ kind of guy, all about getting the point across. Means to an end - that’s what words were for.
Fraser saw communication as a science. Words were building blocks, like DNA, and each combination had its own unique result. Like any scientific work, it could be dangerous if not done correctly. So each word choice had to be precise, thought out. Otherwise, the results could be disastrous.
***********
When Ray first met Benton Fraser, he wasn’t sure the guy knew how to speak English… okay, American, but same diff. He knew about Fraser’s excess lung capacity way before the guy ever said anything about it; no one could talk that much for that long without breathing otherwise. He put Ray’s old teachers to shame, and part of Ray wished he’d known Fraser back in high school, when word counts and numbers of pages for reports were hard to meet. The rest of him had to keep from interrupting, from trying to get Fraser to just tell him whatever it was he needed to know, in sentences of ten words or less.
When Fraser met Ray Kowalski, he was, quite frankly, appalled at some of the things that came out of the man’s mouth. He certainly had an interesting grasp of grammar and correct word usage. Ray’s assertion that he was a ‘poet on the inside’ was dubious at best. Or perhaps that inner poet did exist, but much farther inside than could easily be discerned. Or accessed.
***********
When Ray listened, really listened, to what Fraser was saying, he had to admit that the stuff he spouted was kind of amazing. Not just the facts - anyone could know stuff - but the way he said it, the sheer beauty of the language he used was something Ray found kind of awesome. Ray didn’t know how he did it. They used the same words (okay, so Fraser knew lots more, but still), spoke the same language. But Ray just knew that if someone came in and handed the two of them a box of words and said, “Here you go! Let’s see what you make of this,” Ray would, at best, probably be able to make a basic one-story house. Fraser, on the other hand, would take the same box and manage to get a mansion out of it, or a castle, or whatever fancy-assed thing he wanted.
Fraser admired Ray’s utilitarian use of language, the conciseness of his phrases, his ability to say very little but still get his exact point across. It was a skill he himself did not possess. He could, of course, form sentences of any given length, but he tended toward the verbose. Fraser knew this, and indeed used that fact to his advantage. It was a way to both showcase the beauty of language and access its functionality simultaneously. Still, there were times he truly wished he knew how to just get to the point in the way that Ray did.
***********
It was interesting, trying to figure out what Fraser wasn’t saying. What he was trying to talk around, or over, or whatever direction he needed to avoid a subject. As much as Fraser did talk, you’d think he got everything out, but that just was not the case. Ray found out almost as much about the guy from what he didn’t say than from what he did. He just wished he could get Fraser to actually talk about some of that unsaid stuff, too. Might make for some real interesting conversations.
Fraser found that when Ray spoke, it was a full-body kind of language. He rarely used words alone to convey a point; his entire being seemed to want its chance to speak its piece. Perhaps this was the inner poet Ray had spoken of when they first met. Body language was, of course, much harder to interpret than mere spoken words. The chances of error were much higher, the risk of acting on what was at best supposition on Fraser’s part was, he felt, too much to warrant an attempt. Better to stay with what was actually said, and to take the words at face value. Even if what wasn’t being said aloud was an entirely different story.
***********
Ray stopped listening to what Fraser was saying after awhile. It wasn’t doing either of them any good, wasn’t getting them where they needed to be. They could talk and talk (and boy, could Fraser talk) but that didn’t mean they’d ever say what they wanted to. What they really could be saying, should be saying, to one another. So Ray watched Fraser instead, because that’s where all the good talking was being done now anyhow. And what he was seeing was the most beautiful words he could ever hope to hear.
The actual words, when finally spoken, were almost anti-climactic. Actions, after all, had a far louder voice, or so the saying went. And those actions, on both Ray’s part and his, had spoken volumes on their feelings long before those three tiny words, that one simple, yet incredibly complex, phrase, was ever uttered aloud.