snippet #2, fraser

[schmerica]

heuradys wanted "Fraser, wistful melancholy." 340 words of post-"Good for the Soul" gen.

(H, my first few ideas for your prompt involved babies. I think it was the screencaps' fault. But I manfully resisted! Because, you. Yes.)

*****

Ray offers him a ride to the Consulate as the Christmas party lets out, and this time, Fraser accepts.

"You're sure you're okay to go?" Ray says as they pull up to the entrance. "You still look pretty bad."

Fraser shakes his head a few times. "No, I'm all right. Thank you."

"All right," says Ray, as Fraser steps out of the car and lets Dief out of the backseat. "Good night, then. Merry Christmas."

Fraser leans over and says, "Merry Christmas to you, Ray." He shuts the door, and Ray drives away as Fraser walks towards the Consulate.

Dief runs ahead in front of him as they enter, but Fraser walks slowly toward the kitchen. His soreness, his full body ache, slows him down. There is medicine in the cabinets, painkillers, but he has never cared for drugs. As it is, the feeling is a kind of reminder to him, written -- as so many of his reminders are -- in his body. A reminder of arrogance, obsessiveness, selfishness. Justice.

He makes himself a cup of tea and takes it to his office. He sets his photograph carefully on his desk and sits down in his chair, wrapping his hands around his mug.

It's such a small thing. One ancient photograph, blurry and small and indifferently framed. One photograph. His family. His home, long missed; his father, long absent; his mother, long dead; himself.

Well, he still has himself.

"Yes, and you, of course," Fraser says, rubbing Dief's head where he's stuck it beneath Fraser's hand. "I wasn't forgetting you. And you can open your present Christmas morning, of course, like always."

Dief grumbles at this last, but he leaves to walk across the room and curl up on the cot.

Fraser sips at his tea slowly, trying to make it last, and he thinks about forgiveness, and peace, and goodwill. When he finishes the tea he sits there with the empty cup a while longer, gazing at the picture.

Comments

[akite.livejournal.com]

Poor Fraser. Him taked a pain killer? No way. I think the pain is his way of knowing that he's still alive.

[pearl-o.livejournal.com]

Heh. It's Manhunt, I think, where he's just been stabbed in the leg and released from the hospital and chasing the bad guy and he's still arguing with Ray Vecchio over taking, like, aspirin.