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Since I missed two ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
ds_flashfiction challenges due to being on a road trip, I thought this snippet, which I actually wrote a while ago, might be a good make-up.
Getting It
They were halfway home, and four hours of driving, mostly in silence, had been enough time for Ray to put a lot of it behind him. Punching Fraser, and Fraser punching him back, he’d managed to lose that somewhere in the middle of that national forest, when he’d looked over and caught the Mountie smiling at the trees. Sharing a grin with Fraser when they stopped for coffee at the Wisconsin line, his lingering irritation over having let Fraser drive partway up had dissolved along with the Smarties Fraser pulled out of his pocket. Back in the car and flying down the highway, the transfer offer, the wildly bizarre ways, the gold, it all just slipped away, so now there wasn’t much left to remember from the last few days except saving the day with his partner and friend, standing on a tall ship and bursting into smiles.
There was just one thing he couldn’t get rid of, now. Not all the water in Lake Superior, not spotting Fraser in a mind-boggling clinch with the Ice Queen, not landing himself in an equally mind-boggling clinch with a gorgeous blond girl Mountie, not three straight meals of stew and two different states’ awful rest stop coffee, nothing could wash it out of his mouth. Fraser had... buddy-breathed him. Whatever that meant.
Oh, sure, he understood the idea, difficulty and excess lung capacity and all, and he was happy not to have drowned, but it didn’t change the fact that Fraser’s mouth had been right on his mouth, and their mouths had been open, and Fraser’s hands had been on his face and... and Fraser, so matter of fact, said nothing had changed, like Ray was an idiot for thinking anything else, but, hey, that was not normal. That was not *buddies*, not any buddy he’d ever had before. This was some whole new kind of buddies - right up there with rejecting a brilliant transfer offer just to keep working with a guy who drove you nuts.
He glanced over again. Fraser was sitting in his seat in the posture that Ray had learned to read as relaxed; it was about three degrees of shoulder-angle from tense, but he’d had practice telling the difference. Ray turned his eyes back to the empty highway, and tried some more to push that mouth thing out of his mind, but it wouldn’t go; he just kept remembering how warm Fraser’s lips and hands were, in the cold water. Hot, even. His breath had been hot, Fraser’s breath that became Ray’s breath. Which was kind of a weird thought. He managed to put another few miles behind them before he finally said, “Okay, I still don’t get it.”
Fraser instantly said, “Get what, Ray?” like they’d been talking the whole time, and not off in their own little worlds. Ray had been expecting to have to repeat himself at least once, so he didn’t have the next thing he was going to say figured out yet, and had to take a minute to put the words together.
“I don’t... that thing, with your mouth. And my mouth. I still don’t get that.”
Fraser, of course, wasn’t confused by it at all, just said, “Ah, yes, I thought–-but then, you were doubtless a bit distracted, it probably didn’t register. It’s called buddy breathing, it’s–-”
“Standard procedure,” Ray finished with him, and when Fraser stopped, he went on by himself. “You saw I was in some difficulty, and you have excess lung capacity, so you helped me out. I heard you the first time.”
Fraser didn’t say anything, but when Ray looked over, the shoulder was up, all three degrees, right into ‘tense’. “I’m afraid I’m not sure where your confusion is arising, then, Ray.”
“I–-I don’t know, Fraser. When somebody puts their mouth on my mouth, usually I know what that means, but you’re saying this didn’t mean that, and I believe you, I just don’t get it yet.”
“Ah.” Fraser shifted a little in his seat, and when he settled again, the shoulder was maybe halfway back down, like he was trying to relax but it wasn’t working. “Well, Ray, to be perfectly honest, I suspected this might happen–-it did occur to me that you would be so curious about, as you termed it, the thing with our mouths, that you would be that much more determined to survive until you could clear up the confusion.”
Ray ran one hand through his hair and clenched the other on the steering wheel, let a few more miles fly by while he took that sentence apart and tried to figure out what the hell it meant. “So it wasn’t just buddy breathing, then.”
“No, Ray, it was. I just said that.”
“No you didn’t.”
“Yes, I did. What I said, also, is that I knew you might not automatically interpret it as such–-not being a swimmer, you wouldn’t have been trained in water-rescue techniques and wouldn’t be familiar with buddy breathing, whereas you would be, ah, extensively acquainted with superficially similar forms of contact.”
Kissing, Ray thought, missing the rest of Fraser’s explanation. He just used five different words not to say ‘kissing’. What the hell was that supposed to mean? There was something there, something else Fraser wasn’t saying, no matter how many words he used not to say it. “But you knew I’d think it,” Ray said, slowly. “You knew and–-and you didn’t care if I thought it! So it’s practically the same thing as if you were doing it!”
“No, Ray, it’s not,” Fraser was starting to sound kind of irritated, and Ray was not a little frustrated with this whole conversation himself. “I’m not responsible for your misapprehensions.”
“But you were! You started it!”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Ray! If I’d known you would–-well, no.”
“Well, no, what?”
Fraser turned to look out the window, and made a sound Ray would have called a snort, except he didn’t think that was in Fraser’s vocabulary. “I almost said, if I’d known you were going to take it this way, I wouldn’t have bothered, but of course that’s ridiculous; I wouldn’t have let you drown just to save us both a bit of aggravation.”
“Well, thanks.”
“You’re quite welcome.”
They drove a little farther, but Ray still couldn’t put it out of his mind, and now the quiet was all spoiled and strange, not comfortable like before. Finally, when they hit a long clear straightaway, he turned his head to get a good look at Fraser, who looked back after a second. “Fraser, look, do you wanna kiss me, or not?”
Fraser gave him the Mountie-in-the-headlights look, and Ray thought, *This is what it’s like to be Frannie. Wow.* Fraser looked nervously toward the road, and said, “Ray, perhaps you should turn your attention to driving.” Which wasn’t the same as “no,” not by a long shot.
Ray grinned, slowly, like Dief staring down a donut. “I learned to drive for the sole purpose of making out, Fraser. I can drive just fine out of the corner of my eye. So, yes or no?”
Fraser was still staring at him, but Ray saw the shoulder slip, and knew the answer a few racing heartbeats before Fraser said, “Yes, Ray. Very much so. Though preferably not in a moving vehicle.”
Ray faced forward, to make his partner happy, and didn’t say anything until they passed a mileage sign. “Green Bay,” he said firmly, trying to convince himself as much as Fraser. “Twelve miles. We’ll stop there.”
Fraser opened his mouth to ask why they weren’t stopping anywhere sooner, and Ray said, “Overnight, Fraser. Green Bay, hotel room, you get me?”
“Ah,” Fraser said, and then, satisfaction audible in his voice, “Yes, Ray. I do get you.”
Ray laughed all the way to their exit.
ds_flashfiction challenges due to being on a road trip, I thought this snippet, which I actually wrote a while ago, might be a good make-up. Getting It
They were halfway home, and four hours of driving, mostly in silence, had been enough time for Ray to put a lot of it behind him. Punching Fraser, and Fraser punching him back, he’d managed to lose that somewhere in the middle of that national forest, when he’d looked over and caught the Mountie smiling at the trees. Sharing a grin with Fraser when they stopped for coffee at the Wisconsin line, his lingering irritation over having let Fraser drive partway up had dissolved along with the Smarties Fraser pulled out of his pocket. Back in the car and flying down the highway, the transfer offer, the wildly bizarre ways, the gold, it all just slipped away, so now there wasn’t much left to remember from the last few days except saving the day with his partner and friend, standing on a tall ship and bursting into smiles.
There was just one thing he couldn’t get rid of, now. Not all the water in Lake Superior, not spotting Fraser in a mind-boggling clinch with the Ice Queen, not landing himself in an equally mind-boggling clinch with a gorgeous blond girl Mountie, not three straight meals of stew and two different states’ awful rest stop coffee, nothing could wash it out of his mouth. Fraser had... buddy-breathed him. Whatever that meant.
Oh, sure, he understood the idea, difficulty and excess lung capacity and all, and he was happy not to have drowned, but it didn’t change the fact that Fraser’s mouth had been right on his mouth, and their mouths had been open, and Fraser’s hands had been on his face and... and Fraser, so matter of fact, said nothing had changed, like Ray was an idiot for thinking anything else, but, hey, that was not normal. That was not *buddies*, not any buddy he’d ever had before. This was some whole new kind of buddies - right up there with rejecting a brilliant transfer offer just to keep working with a guy who drove you nuts.
He glanced over again. Fraser was sitting in his seat in the posture that Ray had learned to read as relaxed; it was about three degrees of shoulder-angle from tense, but he’d had practice telling the difference. Ray turned his eyes back to the empty highway, and tried some more to push that mouth thing out of his mind, but it wouldn’t go; he just kept remembering how warm Fraser’s lips and hands were, in the cold water. Hot, even. His breath had been hot, Fraser’s breath that became Ray’s breath. Which was kind of a weird thought. He managed to put another few miles behind them before he finally said, “Okay, I still don’t get it.”
Fraser instantly said, “Get what, Ray?” like they’d been talking the whole time, and not off in their own little worlds. Ray had been expecting to have to repeat himself at least once, so he didn’t have the next thing he was going to say figured out yet, and had to take a minute to put the words together.
“I don’t... that thing, with your mouth. And my mouth. I still don’t get that.”
Fraser, of course, wasn’t confused by it at all, just said, “Ah, yes, I thought–-but then, you were doubtless a bit distracted, it probably didn’t register. It’s called buddy breathing, it’s–-”
“Standard procedure,” Ray finished with him, and when Fraser stopped, he went on by himself. “You saw I was in some difficulty, and you have excess lung capacity, so you helped me out. I heard you the first time.”
Fraser didn’t say anything, but when Ray looked over, the shoulder was up, all three degrees, right into ‘tense’. “I’m afraid I’m not sure where your confusion is arising, then, Ray.”
“I–-I don’t know, Fraser. When somebody puts their mouth on my mouth, usually I know what that means, but you’re saying this didn’t mean that, and I believe you, I just don’t get it yet.”
“Ah.” Fraser shifted a little in his seat, and when he settled again, the shoulder was maybe halfway back down, like he was trying to relax but it wasn’t working. “Well, Ray, to be perfectly honest, I suspected this might happen–-it did occur to me that you would be so curious about, as you termed it, the thing with our mouths, that you would be that much more determined to survive until you could clear up the confusion.”
Ray ran one hand through his hair and clenched the other on the steering wheel, let a few more miles fly by while he took that sentence apart and tried to figure out what the hell it meant. “So it wasn’t just buddy breathing, then.”
“No, Ray, it was. I just said that.”
“No you didn’t.”
“Yes, I did. What I said, also, is that I knew you might not automatically interpret it as such–-not being a swimmer, you wouldn’t have been trained in water-rescue techniques and wouldn’t be familiar with buddy breathing, whereas you would be, ah, extensively acquainted with superficially similar forms of contact.”
Kissing, Ray thought, missing the rest of Fraser’s explanation. He just used five different words not to say ‘kissing’. What the hell was that supposed to mean? There was something there, something else Fraser wasn’t saying, no matter how many words he used not to say it. “But you knew I’d think it,” Ray said, slowly. “You knew and–-and you didn’t care if I thought it! So it’s practically the same thing as if you were doing it!”
“No, Ray, it’s not,” Fraser was starting to sound kind of irritated, and Ray was not a little frustrated with this whole conversation himself. “I’m not responsible for your misapprehensions.”
“But you were! You started it!”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Ray! If I’d known you would–-well, no.”
“Well, no, what?”
Fraser turned to look out the window, and made a sound Ray would have called a snort, except he didn’t think that was in Fraser’s vocabulary. “I almost said, if I’d known you were going to take it this way, I wouldn’t have bothered, but of course that’s ridiculous; I wouldn’t have let you drown just to save us both a bit of aggravation.”
“Well, thanks.”
“You’re quite welcome.”
They drove a little farther, but Ray still couldn’t put it out of his mind, and now the quiet was all spoiled and strange, not comfortable like before. Finally, when they hit a long clear straightaway, he turned his head to get a good look at Fraser, who looked back after a second. “Fraser, look, do you wanna kiss me, or not?”
Fraser gave him the Mountie-in-the-headlights look, and Ray thought, *This is what it’s like to be Frannie. Wow.* Fraser looked nervously toward the road, and said, “Ray, perhaps you should turn your attention to driving.” Which wasn’t the same as “no,” not by a long shot.
Ray grinned, slowly, like Dief staring down a donut. “I learned to drive for the sole purpose of making out, Fraser. I can drive just fine out of the corner of my eye. So, yes or no?”
Fraser was still staring at him, but Ray saw the shoulder slip, and knew the answer a few racing heartbeats before Fraser said, “Yes, Ray. Very much so. Though preferably not in a moving vehicle.”
Ray faced forward, to make his partner happy, and didn’t say anything until they passed a mileage sign. “Green Bay,” he said firmly, trying to convince himself as much as Fraser. “Twelve miles. We’ll stop there.”
Fraser opened his mouth to ask why they weren’t stopping anywhere sooner, and Ray said, “Overnight, Fraser. Green Bay, hotel room, you get me?”
“Ah,” Fraser said, and then, satisfaction audible in his voice, “Yes, Ray. I do get you.”
Ray laughed all the way to their exit.