yay, lynn

[schmerica]

lynnmonster is amazingly darling, if you didn't already know; between her various acts of generosity and neatness, I offered her a ficlet to try and make some of it up for her.

Of course, then she had to beta it, too, but. Well. *cough*

F/K, about 350 words.

*****

The room is dim, the slim blinds down, but a stream of morning light still comes through, pale and sweet.

Fraser arose, he showered and dressed and took Diefenbaker out, he put Ray's coffee on to brew, and sat down on the couch with a book he found in the bathroom and tried to read.

But somehow he's back here, standing in the threshold to the bedroom.

Ray sleeps on his side, curled up in what seems to Fraser an unlikely position, the blanket thrown off and the sheets wrapped awkwardly around his limbs. The arrangement shows off the lean expanse of his back, the decorated muscles of his arms, his elegant hands, one strangely endearing foot. One of the beams from the window is hitting the side of his face, highlighting the roughness of his stubble.

Fraser has a sudden strange urge to walk across the room and press his face to the curve of Ray's throat.

He doesn't. It seems utterly impossible that he was there, part of this tableau, not an hour ago.

He should go back into the other room, sit down and wait for Ray to wake up, but he can't make himself move: it's as if he's fixed here, feet planted at this very spot.

It's possible, Fraser's mind thinks slowly and calmly, that he has never known a person as well as he knows Ray Kowalski now. That he has never *seen* a person the way he has seen Ray. Fraser has seen him laughing and joyful -- seen him angry and miserable and frustrated -- frightened, brave, petty, *broken*.

That this realization is belated (how could he not have noticed, Fraser wonders, last night in his bed, last week as his partner, any other time he has known him--) does not make it any less frightening nor any less true.

Fraser *knows* Ray; he knows exactly who he is. And this, then -- this is love.

It's that, finally, that changes something, allows Fraser to move, and he takes one step into the room, and then another, just as Ray's eyes begin to open.

Comments

[wildmachinery.livejournal.com]

I third that, plus the happy sigh.

[celli]

Fourth! A definite fourth.

[pearl-o.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[pearl-o.livejournal.com]

Thank you!