Home for the Holidays
by lamardeuse
Rated: PG-13 for language and adult content.Written for Christmas, 2004
Ray peered out the window of the cabin for the five hundred and sixtieth time. For the five hundred and sixtieth time, he saw exactly jack and shit.
Partly this was due to it being two a.m. on Christmas morning and therefore darker than a frog’s asshole in a cave, and partly this was due to there being a raging blizzard outside. In five hours he was going to have to start cooking the turkey – the measly seven-pound turkey which had cost him a small fortune, but dammit, if he was going to spend Christmas up here, he was going to at least get his fill of dark meat, walnut stuffing and cranberry sauce. Fraser had tried to sell him on the whole festive caribou haunch, but he wasn’t having any of that.
Fraser had also suggested Ray fly back to Chicago on his own, but Ray wasn’t having any of that, either. They were not going to spend their first Christmas as a couple with the two of them in different countries. That was not an option, and he’d told Fraser that in no uncertain terms.
His mother was disappointed he wasn’t coming down, but Fraser’s second-in-command had gone and gotten her leg broken and couldn’t take over for him like they’d planned. The RCMP detachment was understaffed as it was—Fraser pulled a lot of double shifts even when everybody was healthy—and the past three weeks Ray’d barely seen him. Some nights after he got home from working at the shop, he’d spend hours staring at the four walls and wondering if this was how Fraser’s mother had felt. Falling so crazy in love with a Mountie that you followed him to the edge of the world, then trying to figure out what you’d done in a former life to get handed that kind of karma.
Then he’d shake his head and tell himself to stop being such a drama queen. First of all, they were hardly at the edge of the world the way Fraser’s parents had been. Jeez, Ray worked in a snowmobile and engine repair shop that was busy all the time. The community was only a hundred miles from Whitehorse and their cabin was only a little over a mile from town. They could see the town from the living room window, when it was light and there wasn’t a shitload of snow sweeping down from the mountain. There were even trees here – Ray’d gone out last week and cut himself a real doozy of a white pine and decorated the hell out of it with strings of dried berries and popcorn. He was getting really good at the whole drying-preserving-canning thing now, which kind of scared him, but it was a necessity up here if you didn’t want to spend your whole paycheck on food, and Fraser didn’t have a lot of time for it what with the demands of the detachment. Ray had stuff hanging over the rafters in the barn he never even would’ve looked at if it’d been wrapped in nice, sterile cellophane and laid out in a grocery store back home.
That’s how you know it’s true love, he’d think, when you start playing with dried caribou parts. And then when Fraser finally got home looking tired and a hell of a lot more edible than dried caribou Ray would greet him with a long, deep, kiss, or maybe a long, deep blow job, and that would put an end to his navel-gazing for a few more days. It was always a lot more fun to gaze at Fraser’s navel anyway.
Which is what he wished he were doing right now, only Fraser was more than a mile away (Ray hoped, Christ, he hoped he was holed up at the post and not running around in that blizzard looking for a missing kid or sled dog or something) instead of home where you were supposed to be at Christmas. All because he’d been his usual Dudley-Do-Right self and traded shifts with Mike Kiguna when he’d asked him to, because Mike had a two-hundred-mile drive to get home, and—oh, hell, there Ray was being a Scrooge again.
Which he wasn’t, not by a long shot. In fact, he’d been the one who’d gotten caught up in the holiday spirit, chopping down the tree, buying the turkey, putting up lights around the windows, even helping to organize a New Year’s Eve dinner and dance at the community hall. Fraser, now—well, it’s not like he was against Christmas, exactly, but he wasn’t exactly for it, either. Every time he’d come home to find something new adorning the walls or the window or the tree, he’d hmm and nod appreciatively, saying all the right, polite things. But he wasn’t into it, wasn’t enthusiastic.
Maybe he was just tired, or maybe it was something more. Ray knew Fraser had endured some pretty shitty Christmases as a kid; let’s face it, he wouldn’t know what a real Christmas felt like if it ran over him in a sled. On the other hand, Fraser was all about the spirit of Christmas, and not only on December 25th, but three hundred and sixty-five days a year. Yeah, if anybody could say they knew how to give to their fellow man, it was Benton Fraser.
But Christmas was about getting something back, too—presents, sure, but also all that good stuff like love and hope and faith. And Ray was starting to wonder if Fraser really understood that part of the deal.
Not only the Christmas deal, but their deal.
He hadn’t missed the looks Fraser would give him now and then when he came home and saw Ray for the first time since heading off to work. He’d stare at him for a second or two like he hadn’t expected him to still be there, like even after six months he thought Ray might suddenly decide to skip out on him without leaving so much as a lousy note. He hadn’t missed the increasing frequency of I’m sorrys, which, sure, you had to get used to when you were living with a Canadian, but this was getting ridiculous. Fraser seemed to be apologizing for everything these days, including things that Ray was fairly certain were out of his control, like the weather and the fact Ray’s Christmas presents hadn’t made it to his nephews yet or Doreen breaking her leg.
Ray rested his head against the cool glass of the window. Damn. Fraser understood giving just fine; it was receiving he was shaky on. The problem was, exactly how was Ray supposed to go about fixing that? Fraser was a hell of a lot tougher to take apart than a Briggs-Stratton engine.
He jumped as a harsh blast of wind slammed against the front of the cabin, rattling the triple-glazed panes. “Shit,” he muttered, sending up a brief wish that Fraser was sitting in front of the woodstove in the squad room at the post, never mind that his shift had officially ended nearly two hours ago. Better that than trying to slog his way home in a vain attempt to save Ray’s Christmas—
“Shit,” Ray said again, peering out at the blackness for the five hundred and sixty-first time. “You better not be.”
In the space of another curse Ray was at the door; he turned the handle and nearly had his arm ripped from its socket as the door blew in.
“FRASERRRRRR!!!” he yelled, his voice drowning out the roar of the wind. His eyes squinted against the needles of snow attempting to spear his eyeballs. Christ. He wouldn’t be that stupid, would he?
Just when Ray’s eyes were almost frozen shut, he saw a thin stream of light pierce the wall of swirling blackness.
He might not know much about the North yet, but he could recognize a snowmobile headlight when he saw one. Halogen, just like Frase’s. He’d put it on himself.
Deciding not to be stupid, he snatched his boots, goggles, coat and gloves, getting dressed in the open doorway so that he could keep watching the light. Then he grabbed the length of rope hanging by the door and secured one end to the door handle. The other one he tied around his leg.
If he ran out of rope before he got to Fraser, that was just too damned bad. He closed one gloved hand around the pocket knife in his coat, then headed out into the blizzard.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
“Really, Ray, I—”
“Shut up, Frase, just. Shut. Up,” Ray panted, slamming the door behind him and securing the latch with shaking fingers. Back still turned, he began stripping off layers of clothes. Hell, it wasn’t only his fingers, every inch of him was shaking, and not from the cold.
“But I’m only trying to tell you you didn’t need to worry,” Fraser blurted. “I was in no danger. I’d know the route from the post to the house blindfolded.”
Ray whipped around to face him, hands clenched against the tremors, and began advancing on him. “That’s bullshit and you know it. If you’ve told me once, you’ve told me a hundred times, Frase, being in a blizzard is not like being blind. You can totally lose your sense of direction in a blizzard—it has nothing to do with seeing.”
Fraser opened his mouth.
“You left the fucking dog back at the post,” Ray growled.
Fraser closed his mouth.
And right then any plans Ray might’ve made on how to slowly get Fraser more comfortable with being on the receiving end of things went up in smoke, because if he kept on like this much longer God knew what was going to happen. Jesus, he’d almost gotten himself killed…
The problem was, he didn’t have the first clue of how to start.
I suck at this so bad, he wanted to say. Tell me, you gotta tell me what to say to you.
Fraser just stood there with the melting snow and ice dripping off his seal hide coat, looking like a little boy who didn’t know why the adults were shouting. Ray shook his head. “Here,” he murmured, stepping up to begin undoing the leather lacing. Fraser just stood there and let him do it; let him take the coat off his shoulders and hang it up, let him lift the thick wool RCMP sweater over his head, even sat down and let Ray take off the boots. Fraser wasn’t much better at words than he was, sometimes, but he knew when something needed to be done or not done. They were both a lot better at actions; that was one thing they had in common.
But it wasn’t the only thing. Ray looked up into Fraser’s cold-reddened face.
“I love you,” Ray said, at exactly the same second Fraser said, “I’m sorry.”
Ray slammed his fists into the couch on either side of Fraser’s thighs, and Fraser flinched.
“Goddammit, Fraser, will you stop being sorry,” he choked, aware he wasn’t doing this right but no longer caring.
Fraser’s jaw clenched. “I can’t help it,” he said steadily.
“Why? Why’re you always apologizing, huh? You sorry I’m here? You sorry I’m still here, is that it?”
Fraser stared at him, stunned.
“Or are you just surprised I’m still here?” Ray demanded.
Fraser blinked a couple of times, then looked down at his hands where they lay folded in his lap. “I—didn’t realize I was that transparent.”
“Yeah, well,” Ray said, rocking back on his haunches, “I’m gettin’ better at listening to your engine. I can tell when your timing’s off.”
Fraser smiled, but it was a thin one. Ray took Fraser’s hands in his and gripped them hard and Fraser raised his head to look at him.
“Listen up,” Ray growled. “Get this through your thick head. I am staying here. I am not going anywhere. You will have to drop my skinny ass down an ice crevasse if you want to get rid of me.”
Fraser’s eyes softened a little, but his mouth was still a hard line. “There’s still the worst of the winter to get through,” he said stubbornly. “You weren’t raised to this—”
“Frase, in case you haven’t noticed, I have been drying caribou guts in the barn. I wasn’t raised to that, either, but I seem to be doing all right.” Ray shook his head. “But that is not the point. The point is, if you want to see me movin’ up here like somethin’ I gave you, that’s cool. But it’s not the way I see it. I didn’t choose this place, I chose you.”
“I know,” Fraser breathed, voice gone thready. “That’s what scares the hell out of me.”
And then it was Ray’s turn to stare. “Jesus,” he murmured, feeling like he’d been gut-punched. “How can you? How can you think you’re not enough? Don’t you understand you’re the biggest gift I ever got in my whole fucking life? Don’t you get that?” He took Fraser’s face between his hands. “And if you ever try to throw away my gift again like you did tonight, I’ll—Christ, Frase—”
“I won’t,” Fraser whispered, gathering Ray’s shuddering body in his arms and holding it so tightly Ray could barely breathe, “I won’t, I won’t, I promise.”
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
“Ray.”
“Mmmptthhh.”
“Ray. Ray. Ray.”
“Jeez. What.”
“It’s seven a.m. Time to start the oven for your turkey.”
Ray moaned and rolled over to face Fraser. “Changed m’mind. Gonna have it for supper instead. I’ll start it at noon.”
“Oh. Go back to sleep, then.”
“Too late,” Ray said, yawning and stretching. “I’m awake now.”
“I’m s—”
Ray’s long fingers covered Fraser’s mouth, silencing him.
“Don’t apologize,” Ray growled, eyes glittering. “Make it up to me.”
Behind Ray’s hand, Fraser’s lips curved in a smile.
End
December 2004
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