hth | new! and for no reason!

1444 words of due South fic. Don't get used to it or anything.

As He's In It
by Hth

"I hope you understand, Ray," Fraser says, but it sounds futile, like he doesn't hope it and can't even imagine it. Ray almost feels like a dick, but he's not overreacting here, is he? This is not a fucking detail, this is not like, we forgot to tell you that Vecchio ate paint in grade school.

Ray takes a deep breath. They both need to relax, is just what they need to do. He loosens the straps on his shoulder holster and shrugs out of it, tosses the gun on the table between them, which should be some kind of peace gesture, but Fraser leans sharply away from it, like it's going to take up yelling where Ray left off. "I don't understand. The way people understand things is, they receive information, they are, like, told what's going down, and then they say, Aha! Now it becomes clear, now I understand. And then there's me and you."

Fraser turns his head away, but he catches his own face in the two-way mirror and can't look there either, so it's back to the table, and Ray's gun. There's not a lot to look at in an interrogation room. "It's not...you and me."

"You and me! You and me! Then there's you and me! Don't poke my grammar, you wouldn't like my grammar when it's angry, Fraser!"

"No, Ray. It's not you and me. It's me. Just...me." Ray rolls his eyes at that, because what, is he getting dumped here? And didn't even know until this morning that he was getting any.

Although apparently he was. Or Ray Vecchio was.

"No one knew," Fraser continues softly. "No one at all. No one could have told you other than me, and I chose not to, and that's my fault, Ray, no one else's. But you can -- can't you, you can understand why....?"

Ray leans against the wall, suddenly tired. "Yeah. No. I can understand. But it's like -- you're in the loop, you're out of the loop, and then there's, look, in the distance! A loop!" Fraser looks not just puzzled, but kind of pained, as if he's worried that he's caused permanent brain damage to his partner. Ray sighs and rubs his eyes hard, and then harder, and then he spins a chair around backwards and sits across the table from Fraser. "Okay," he says. "So loop me in."

"I -- what?" Fraser says hoarsely.

Ray gestures rapidly, and Fraser's eyes go immediately back to the gun, so Ray sits on his hands to prove his lack of murderous intent and says, "Just tell me. I mean -- tell me what I should know."

"Nobody knew," Fraser says.

"Vecchio did," Ray says.

For a second, Fraser looks lost, like he's disappeared from inside the serge and nobody's noticed yet. And then he gets that square, stubborn expression on his face and he says, "You're asking about something that was very personal to me, Ray."

"No shit, well, I'm apparently someone who's sucked your cock in the past, so you and me, we're ten kinds of personal with each other, aren't we?" He's sorry after he says it, but he's not, I mean he is but he's not.

He won't take this; Fraser knows his rights. He stands up and says, really calm but sort of thunderous, like the voice of God, "No, Ray, as a matter of fact you have not."

"Look, look, look," Ray says, waving his hands in front of him, and it comes out impatient but he means it as an apology, and maybe Fraser takes it that way, because he sits back down. "I know this sucks," Ray says. "I'm not mad at you, okay? Just, it's time now. Tell me the whole story."

Fraser sort of pales at that, and he says something really fast and kind of mumbly, which is like, where did Fraser even learn how to mumble, anyway? Something mubmly, but Ray catches "extremely inappropriate," and he answers back real quick, "I don't need the gory details, okay? Just give me something to hang my hat on."

"Hat," Fraser repeats blankly.

"Something, Fraser, give me something, here! I got nothing to stand on! Tell me-- " Did you fuck him, did he kiss you, did he like it, did you love him? How did it start, what was it like, did he make you laugh, did you lie for him? Did you take your clothes off? Did he crack you open, did you let him see you? "Tell me what side of the bed you slept on," is what falls out of his mouth.

Fraser blinks. "What side of the bed?"

"Yeah, yeah. I mean, you did sleep -- it was a bed -- there were beds, right? This wasn't fuck and run-- " pretending not to notice the way Fraser flinches upward, chooses the nothing on the ceiling to look at rather than the God knows what on Ray's face, " -- you were partners. You.... In beds. Right?"

"Yes," Fraser says quietly. "Sometimes in beds."

"Right or left?"

"I'm not quite sure."

And that's it, he can't take it anymore. Ray doesn't manage to knock the chair over when he jumps up, so he has to pick it up with his hands and bang it into the floor and kick it across the room. Fraser bends his head down and folds his hands over the back of his neck. "You're full of shit, Fraser, you're full of shit. People don't switch sides of the fucking bed, they have a side! Did you sleep on the right side of the bed or the left side of the fucking bed?"

"I don't know!" Fraser says without looking up, so that Ray can't tell if the wildness in his voice is anger or sadness or -- or whatever you call that, that thing that you feel when your wife leaves you and you're completely alone and blaming yourself and hating what you grew up to be and too stupid to stop thinking maybe it's all a misunderstanding and it'll be back to normal any minute now. That thing. What do you call that? "From whose perspective?"

"Huh?" Ray says. He's kind of forgotten the question.

"The right or left side as a person comes into the room, looking at the bed, or as he's in it? I never really knew -- when people say the right side of the bed, I was never entirely sure from whose point of view...." He raises his head, and there's more stuff there on his face that Ray doesn't have any words for. "People say -- and I don't know how I'm supposed to-- "

"No, it's okay, Fraser," Ray says. "Forget the bed. It doesn't matter."

"I am trying to answer your questions, Ray. I want to answer you, but I don't know how to talk about -- I don't know how to do these things. I don't know how to do this."

"You were right, Frase, okay? I don't need to know, it's none of my business."

"It is," Fraser insists. "Your business is precisely what it is now."

"Yeah, well. I'm in a shitty business, some days. Let's just, uh. Punch each other in the head a few times, and when we're all out of short-term memory, we can say the whole day didn't happen and get some dinner." He scoops his gun and holster off the table, and Fraser doesn't blink, just keeps staring vacantly somewhere around Ray's thigh. He recovers pretty soon, though, and he stands up and adjusts his lanyard, ready to face the world again. Part of Ray can't believe Fraser ever had a secret in his life that he could keep, and part of him doesn't know if he knows anything about this man at all.

Later that night he squirms out of his shoulder holster while Fraser is holding his face, kissing him over and over, and he pitches the whole thing, gun and all, over onto the coffee table, and it hits with a loud noise -- either he's chipped the finish on his coffee table or the gun's gone off and he's blown a hole downstairs into 415, and he doesn't care, it doesn't matter which. He pulls Fraser's hands away from his face, presses them to his ribs and wraps his arms around Fraser's neck. He didn't think anyone could kiss harder than Fraser, but turns out someone could, and it's Ray. "Yeah, yeah, yeah," he says incoherently into Fraser's mouth. "Show me, show me...."

He doesn't know if he knows anything about himself at all.

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"I don't know!" Fraser says without looking up, so that Ray can't tell if the wildness in his voice is anger or sadness or -- or whatever you call that, that thing that you feel when your wife leaves you and you're completely alone and blaming yourself and hating what you grew up to be and too stupid to stop thinking maybe it's all a misunderstanding and it'll be back to normal any minute now. That thing. What do you call that?

I am ded. I call that being ded. Holy fucking canoli, girl. How the fuck can you not be doing this all the time? This story rocks me SO HARD--the anguish, the jealousy, the desperate kisses at the end. How I love this. Holy canoli.

Arrrgh, I realize that what's killing me is the detail! How the lust and the fury are being channelled in this totally fucking pointless conversation about the bed! There's just--it's the frenzied conversation that isn't a conversation, that thing they're talking about because they can't say anything important--THAT is what's kicking my ass here. I need more stories where the characters are talking about one thing and being, feeling, something else!

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hth-the-first.livejournal.com - Date: 2004-10-06 06:36 am (UTC) - Expand

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From:

hth-the-first.livejournal.com - Date: 2004-10-06 06:38 am (UTC) - Expand

Ray leans against the wall, suddenly tired. "Yeah. No. I can understand. But it's like -- you're in the loop, you're out of the loop, and then there's, look, in the distance! A loop!"

::loves you::

Thank you! You were my first BNF Idol, you know, so of course any love from you will always have a special place in my heart.

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eliade.livejournal.com - Date: 2004-10-06 10:01 am (UTC) - Expand

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From:

hth-the-first.livejournal.com - Date: 2004-10-09 09:05 am (UTC) - Expand

This is wonderful! Although I do wonder how Ray found out, if only Fraser and Ray Vecchio knew....

Fraser told him? You know he can't keep his mouth shut. At least, that's what I assumed....

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hth-the-first.livejournal.com - Date: 2004-10-05 09:00 pm (UTC) - Expand

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hth-the-first.livejournal.com - Date: 2004-10-06 06:30 am (UTC) - Expand

Oh. My. God.

So much tension and conflicting emotion packed into so few words! This fic is simply amazing!

Thank you! I used to write short on a regular basis, and then lately I've been writing very, very long, so it's highly refreshing to get back to this length, which is perfect for balling up a whole bunch of stuff and pegging your reader with it all at once. *g* I enjoy that. Thanks again for the feedback!

Don't poke my grammar, you wouldn't like my grammar when it's angry, Fraser!

This made me laugh.

Ray's frustration, the talking around, Fraser's obtuseness. Oh. My.

This is oddly unlike anything I can remember reading (probably because I avoid things that look like people are going to cry), but it was beautiful in its sadness and then rebuilt the world in such a perfect way. Thank you.

Thank you! I don't too often make my characters cry, just because I worry that it comes off as a cheap tactic to manipulate the reader. But I very often make them want to. I try to give you *something,* though! Something in the way of some humor or hope or whatnot, because I know not everyone is in love with the unrelieved wallow *g*

Sweet holy lord, talk about your loops and looping loops and running loops *around* the story and then telling the story and --

*totally falls apart under the strain of how good this story is, like a femmebot*

Bloody amazing. Absolutely bloody amazing.

eeeheeheehee.

nifra_idril as slash-happy femmebot.

My day, she has been made.

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From:

hth-the-first.livejournal.com - Date: 2004-10-06 06:25 am (UTC) - Expand

I love this. Particularly the bit about the bed and what "right side" and "left side" really mean - it's so Fraser to bring that up in the middle of a situation like that.

You know, that was the start of this whole thing. My mind was wandering at work, and I started thinking, "I wonder if the right side of the bed is the right side as you view the room, or as you're in bed?" And then I thought it would be interesting to use that uncertainty about the social conventions of sharing a bed to be symbolic of some character's uncertainty about how relationships go altogether, and then Fraser seemed the perfectly obvious character to have issues with that, and then by golly it was a story and I figured I'd have to write it.

The point of all this being -- thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it.

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kattahj.livejournal.com - Date: 2004-10-06 08:51 am (UTC) - Expand

Mmm, thank you, just what I needed this morning :)

Well, you're very welcome! And thank you for letting me know you liked it!

*whimper*

Okay, so you shred me into little tiny ribbons with the fantastic voices and the miscommunication and the rawness, and then:

"Hat," Fraser repeats blankly.

makes me bust out laughing even as it furthers that same miscommunication and rawness.

I particularly love the reversals at the end -- Fraser not knowing how to do this, how to talk about this, and Ray wondering if he knows Fraser at all; then Ray not knowing how to do this, getting Fraser to show him, and wondering if he knows himself at all... Wow. Even with the sense of potentially impending doom I feel hanging over the two of them, I adore the ending even more than I love the scene in the interview room.

Thank you! People seem divided on whether that's a happy ending or a sign of impending doom -- which is kind of cool, honestly. Personally, I think if there's ever a larger story encompassing it, this will be followed by doom, and then probably a happy ending further down the line. *g*

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From:

lynnmonster.livejournal.com - Date: 2004-10-08 06:33 am (UTC) - Expand

Oh, so nice. The detail with the shoulder holster there...oh, yeah. I would ask for a sequel but I don't even really read DS, so I guess I shouldn't.

Thank you! I've *always* had kind of a kink about Ray's shoulder holster; I don't know, he just wears it very, very well. So I like to sneak that in there when I can. As for a sequel, there's definitely a *lot* going on here and it probably deserves a sequel, or maybe just a framing story around it, but I'm not in any state to write one at the moment. Maybe someday.

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From:

mistressrenet.livejournal.com - Date: 2004-10-06 06:42 am (UTC) - Expand

SO love this - writing and story and characters and, yeah, the fuckin' detail. And especially the way they're always dancing around one another, even when only one of them is moving.

Ah, God.

Definitely triggers what I think of as the

cesperanza effect: "fear, love, grief, rage, dismount." (http://trickster.org/speranza/Eight.html) Which really is one of my favorite ways to feel.

Mille grazie.

What a great line that was! And actually, I thought about 8Sessions as I was writing this, because I think there's a common theme there -- that emotional illiteracy that Fraser has, the idea that it's not that he's being all stubborn and not willing to be emotionally open, but that he really doesn't have the vocabulary, the tools for it. He doesn't know how it's supposed to be done. I've always thought that was one of the big keys to Fraser's character, and it's that vulnerability underneath all that supernatural competence that makes him so much fun to write about.

Anyway, the point is -- thank you! This was most excellent feedback! *g*

Jeepers, this is one intense scene, and there's so much going on under the surface on both sides.

I adore the Ray dialogue, especially Don't poke my grammar, you wouldn't like my grammar when it's angry, Fraser!". ::dies::

Thank you! I appreciate your feedback so much!

I'm about as happy as happy can get--this is just friggin' marvelous. Thank you!

No, thank you! I'm so glad it made you happy.

::crazy incoherent noises of joy, over and over again::

Thank you! *g* Coherence isn't necessary -- just a vaguely positive sign makes me entirely happy.

"No shit, well, I'm apparently someone who's sucked your cock in the past, so you and me, we're ten kinds of personal with each other, aren't we?" He's sorry after he says it, but he's not, I mean he is but he's not.

He won't take this; Fraser knows his rights. He stands up and says, really calm but sort of thunderous, like the voice of God, "No, Ray, as a matter of fact you have not."

Oh, Fraser, honey, no way do you get to keep your dignity. You have met the OTHER Ray. Good try, though.

Hth, this is wonderful, and it makes me want LOTS more. I love how their conversation floats on top of everything else going on. It's also easily the best dialogue I've read in months. Woo hoo you.

I could never take Fraser's dignity away from him; that's half the reason I adore him so much! But yeah, it's not like he's going to be able to intimidate Ray, so it's good that he gives up that strategy right away. *g* Thanks for the kind words!

I never read slash at work but I was looking over my friends recent posts and there is this one saying a good F/K story by you and I think well, I have 40 minutes free, why not but now I'm mad because it will take twice that to read this enough times to get all that I can out of it because it is fucking layered with so much meaning that is so like the F/K relationship and you captured it so perfectly. Thank you.
I usually do use sentences with periods but wow. ::convulses on floor::

Thank you! I always like being able to spoil someone's work schedule, even just a little *g*

I am amazed and know not what to say.
Except...what an absolute treat to have you writing DS.

When I commented back last October I didn't put in words how wonderful this story was. It was just recced by

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When I commented back last October I didn't put in words how wonderful this story was. It was just recced by <lj="ds_recs"> and I came back to read it again. Your writing always cuts right into my heart, in the best possible way, and this masterful, insightful story, with its perfect voices, is no exception. Again, thanks for writing it. I wish there were a way to <strike>bribe</strike> <strike>coerce</strike> encourage you to write yet more Due South fic -- all of your past stories have permanent places in my affection.

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From:

hth-the-first.livejournal.com - Date: 2005-08-03 09:57 am (UTC) - Expand

Oh my lord. This is incredible.

"Something, Fraser, give me something, here! I got nothing to stand on! Tell me-- " Did you fuck him, did he kiss you, did he like it, did you love him? How did it start, what was it like, did he make you laugh, did you lie for him? Did you take your clothes off? Did he crack you open, did you let him see you?

Just - heartbreaking and perfect. The situation, the dialogue - I could *see* this, and god am I glad I did.

Truly amazing. Thanks so very much for this.

Thank you! That paragraph was the bane of my existence that night; it literally took as long to write as the rest of the story put together. So I'm extra glad you like that part *g*

So you just kind of made me cry. Which has only happened twice ever because of fic. And I'm including just now. Very lovely.

Oh my goodness. Well, thank you. I'm really very flattered!

Fucking fantastic. Fucking fantastic!!!

The way you start it out, looping us right in without bothering to tell us what's going on because we're with you, we get it, even if Ray doesn't -- and the frustration, and the desperation -- and then, then, thank God, the ending. Man. Yeah. That's what slash is.

I'm so glad you like it! The ending was kind of a last-minute change of plans, and in retrospect, I don't know how I ever thought the story was going to work without it. But anyway, thank you so much.

Holy freakin' Mountie...this was heartwrenching in so many ways.

Loved it, loved the whole loop dialogue, the out-of-control Ray and the bed conversation.

Lovely. Holding them up bleeding and raw and making me want to hug them both.

Well, I go through life wanting to hug them both -- so welcome to my world! *g* Thanks for the feedback; I'm glad you liked it!

...

::is rather shocky, staring at the story that managed to twist me up in a good way right from the begining, and then untwist me and pull me in a totaly different direction in the last paragraph.::

Beautiful.

Thank you! I honestly hadn't planned how I was going to end this story, and even by the time I had them getting out of the interrogation room, I didn't have an ending per se. It was a very last-minute inspiration, to just cut ahead and attach that scene without any sense of how they really got there, and I thought it was a little whiplashy and might bother some people. So I'm glad it didn't bother you!

Wonderful, wonderful, and yet more wonderful!

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

What a wonderful, achingly satisfying story! The voice ring true and the angst is set off with just the right amount of humor.

Thank you! I find if you leaven things with a little humor, more people will hang around to be beaten over the head with your angst *g* It's the Spoonful of Sugar school of slash.