For the Laughing Academy in the DS Secret Santa.
Coming for to carry me home.SWING LOW, SWEET CHARIOT
By Cherry Ice
The winter air is bracing, a cool and solid presence against the skin, in the lungs. Ray is bundled up, long blue and white scarf wrapped around his neck, blonde hair spiked and catching the snow. His breath comes in gusts, each exhalation sending another frozen plume towards the clouds. He's jittering from foot to foot, gloved hands stuffed deep into his pockets except for when they come out to gesticulate wildly as he speaks.
Dief is in his element, jumping from drift to drift, snow exploding into the air as he lands. His coat is crusted with ice and he is making puppy noises, chasing the almost-tame park birds across snow banks.
It's early yet but it's almost dark – it isn't the shortest day of the year but it's getting close – and Fraser can hear the traffic just outside the park, see the faint glow of the Christmas lights strung up along the streets.
The sun should have gone down weeks ago, Fraser is thinking. The sun should have been down for weeks.
Ray is talking about December and the cold, cheeks red with it. Talking about December and the cold and not about Stella, like when December's over it will get warmer, like it's a downhill glide towards spring. Fraser could tell him that January and February are (historically) the coldest months of the year (Fraser did tell Ray to put on a toque because you lose in excess of 40 percent of your heat through your head), but it doesn't seem worth the breath.
Doesn't seem worth the breath when the air is so crisp and clear that it almost hides the tang of pollution and exhaust.
This is not cold, he could tell Ray, this is not cold and this park is not nature and this separation from a woman you love (loved) is not the end.
Loss, like snow, fades with the season.
"Fraser," Ray says, and his hands are once again stuffed in his pockets, his shoulders hunched up to his ears. "Fraser, buddy, what's wrong?"
"Nothing," Fraser says. Thinks about the Northwest Territories and how short the days got before the sun disappeared for weeks. Ray has snowflakes caught in his eyelashes, and Fraser's mouth is suddenly dry. "Just – the days are so long here," he says.
The days are so bloody long.
*
Thatcher has had Christmas carols being piped through the Consulate since two days after American Thanksgiving. Orchestral and operatic recordings, Gregorian chants, multilingual ditties, Anne Murray, holiday compilations composed of all the popular artists of the moment.
("A place for everything, and everything in its place," she said, almost under her breath, almost to herself, as she hung the last ornament precisely on the twelve-foot tree Turnbull managed somehow to fit through the Consulate's front doors.)
The tree dominates the Consulate. It is visible from the foyer, the kitchen, the stairs and the landing; and the scent of pine wafts to almost every room. Turnbull spent hours in the kitchen with a needle and thread, stringing popcorn garlands and pricking his fingers. One of the stockings hanging over the fireplace reads 'Elizabeth' in Turnbull's precisely looping script.
Thatcher has garlands everywhere, and candles, and lights. It's tasteful, in a very overwhelming sort of way, and Fraser can't look around without remembering his grandmother with pine needles in her hair, flour on her cheeks, and gingerbread in the wood-burning stove.
The sun is shining brightly through the window when he knocks on Thatcher's door. She's filling out paperwork and picking absently on one of the cheese trays Turnbull insists upon bringing them. The light is reflected off the snow and filtered through the frost on the windows, and seems curiously, starkly white. It suits her, Fraser thinks, and absolutely does not think of what firelight would look like on Ray's skin.
Thatcher is staying around for Christmas, and was clearly counting on him to do the same, but she lets him go with a smile that's something like wistful.
He wishes –
Fraser wishes a lot of things.
*
Fraser smells smoke as soon as he enters Ray's apartment building. It is diffuse, mixed with the scent of old wood and cold air. It's strongest outside of Ray's door, and Fraser drops his bag and knocks.
"Yeah, no, I got the alarm turned off, it's nothing—" Ray is saying as he opens the door. Stops. Blinks. "Fraser, hey. I wasn't expecting you." Residual smoke wafts from behind him.
"Ray, is everything—"
"Were we supposed to do something –"
"Ray, I smell burning, is everything—"
"Cookies," Ray says, sheepishly. Shrugs. "Was I supposed to pick you up or something?"
"No," Fraser says. "Nothing like that. You were baking?"
"Trying to," Ray says. "Just – Stella's mom used to send us these cookies at Christmas and I thought – Holidays make me stupid, is all." What he doesn't have to tell Fraser is that it's been longer since he's spoken to his parents than it has been since he spoke to Stella's. "So, tomorrow, you wanna grab a pizza or something? I promise not to try to make it."
"I'm afraid I'll be unable to, Ray," Fraser says, as Ray catches sight of the bag in the hall. "I'm returning home for the holidays. I just came by wish you a merry Christmas."
"Yeah," Ray says, and his face flickers for just a second before he pulls Fraser into a hug. "Merry Christmas."
"Merry Christmas to you, too, Ray," Fraser says. Ray smells like vanilla, smoke, and soap.
He's glad he left Diefenbaker down in the cab, because letting go is a little harder than Fraser is willing to admit, even to himself.
*
Fraser's cabin, while still bare, is peaceful. He purchases a tree stand in town and hews down a pine at the edge of his land. When he was small, his grandfather used to let him pick out a tree, and Fraser would bound along beside him, around him, as his grandfather hauled it back to the cabin on the sledge.
(History is revisionist, and Fraser allows himself to forget that by the time they got back his grandfather was out of breath and sometimes snapping, that Fraser himself would try to help and accidentally overturn the sledge.)
Fraser cuts down a pine and hauls it back, through the snow, with Dief bounding around him and attempting to wind between his legs. He has few decorations (a few metal or bone ones he rescued from the ashes of his first cabin, a few of his father's things, one Ray Vecchio gave him his first Christmas in Chicago when he was alone and cold on the inside) so he makes snowflakes and paper chains, littering the floor with small pieces of paper which lay there like snow. Hiss of the kettle on the stove, fire in the hearth, wind whistling at the door and windowpanes; pine and smoke and leather; and it feels like home.
"Bullshit," Fraser's father says. "If you'll pardon my French."
"That," Fraser says, snipping away at a paper snowflake, "given the season, is particularly crude, even for you."
"Well," his father says, peering out the window at the dark, "you were being particularly obtuse. Even for you."
Diefenbaker, curled up by the fire, looks up and barks.
"See?" Bob asks. "Even the wolf agrees."
"He can't agree," Fraser tells him. "He's deaf, and you're dead."
"If I've told you once, I've told you a million times, son. Wolf's not deaf. He just hears what he wants to hear."
"It would figure," Fraser says, hanging the paper snowflake on the tree, "that the one year I'm not waiting for you to show up, you do. And offer unwanted advice."
"Haven't offered it yet."
"No, not yet." Fraser is remembering the precisely wrapped packages beneath the tree, the ruler-straight folds his grandmother always managed to work out of the wrapping paper. There was always a present for him from Santa, and one from his father, and they were both tagged with his grandfather's small, laboriously neat printing.
"This isn't where you want to be," Fraser's father says.
The kettle starts to whistle. "Of course it is," Fraser says as he pours boiling water over the tea bags. "Home for the holidays."
"Home, Benton," his father says. Sighs. "You're thinking of Christmas with your grandparents now, but twenty years ago you were thinking of Christmas with your mother, and ten years before that you were standing at the window, staring at the snow and waiting for me to come home. Ten years from now, you'll look back and think of this moment, and you won't even remember how much you wanted to be somewhere else."
Fraser pours his tea. Adds milk and sugar, even and precise.
"No one," his father says, and his voice is old, so old. "Should have to be alone for the holidays."
Fraser is not looking at his father. Is staring at the tree, the fire, the way his reflection ripples as he blows over his tea to cool it. "I'm not alone," he says. "I have Diefenbaker, and, apparently, you."
"You're not listening to me. Some days, I swear, you are as deaf as the wolf."
The light in the cabin is low and comfortable, firelight, oil lamps, candles. "I thought you held that Diefenbaker was not, in fact deaf, but heard only the things he wished to hear."
"Exactly," his father's ghost says, staring into the night, at the snow illuminated by the stars and aurora borealis. "Home, Benton," he says, "is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in."
"Frost," Fraser says automatically. "The Death of the Hired Man."
"Who is going to take you in here, son?"
*
From the air, Fraser has always found something whimsical about the look of a city at night. Grids and spirals of lights and snow, homes and trees and highways. It looks the same as it always has, but tonight he thinks it something like a celebration of the season (Christmas, Hanukah, Kwanzaa, Solstice), the city done up in lights, in joy.
*
The hallway outside Ray's apartment still smells faintly of smoke – it will likely linger in the carpet and paneling for months. Fraser hesitates before he knocks, a split second that turns into one second, two, three. Dief growls an admonition. "I'll have you know," Fraser tells him, "that is not, indeed, that simple. In the pack, perhaps, but— Fine," he says and knocks.
Ray opens the door, looking much as he did three days ago, only more surprised. "Fraser," he says. Blinks. "Come on in." Dief has already pushed between their legs and is standing with his paws on the kitchen counter. "That's not for dogs," Ray says, darting over to rescue the container he was nosing at.
Fraser steps inside, puts his bag down by the closet, and lets the door click shut behind him. Ray's chili pepper lights are plugged in, and there's a bedraggled Norfolk Island pine standing in a pot on the table. It has tinsel on its boughs and is covered liberally with multicoloured balls.
"Cookie?" Ray asks, prying the tin open and offering it.
"Thank you kindly," Fraser says, removing one gingerly. They're sugar cookies, cut into angels and trees and stars, and not burnt at all.
Ray laughs at the look on his face. "Yeah, no, I didn't make them. Stella brought them over. From her parents, she said."
"Ah," Fraser says, and the taste in his mouth is suddenly bitter.
"Look," Ray says, dropping a cookie to Dief and shutting the tin. "Look, I know you don't like her, but you have to understand – I spent most of my life loving her, Fraser."
Loss, Fraser thinks, like snow.
"You want a drink?" Ray calls from the kitchen.
"No, thank you," Fraser says. "In fact, I should probably be going..."
"Sure," Ray says. "Probably." Wanders back into the living room with two mugs of eggnog and presses one into Fraser's hand. "Only thing is, no one should be alone on Christmas Eve."
"I really don't mind—"
Ray drops down onto the couch, rolls his shoulders and props his feet on the coffee table beside the tree. "Maybe not. Maybe I do, though."
Fraser, Fraser is at a loss for words, and stands there with his hands wrapped around the cold mug until Dief butts at the back of his knees. "Perhaps I'll stay a spell," Fraser says, sitting on the couch beside Ray.
"You do that," Ray says, eyes bright in the dark and shadows clinging to the curve of his neck. One of Ray's neighbours is playing carols, cadence of orchestra and choir softened by the walls. Outside it is snowing, tap-tap-tapping on the glass and softening the light from the street below. "Glad you're here," Ray says, finally, and Fraser can feel the warmth radiating from him where he sits, close enough to touch. "Thought you were heading home."
"I was," Fraser says. "I just had to take a short trip, first."
The night is soft and feels almost real enough to touch, and there is nothing Fraser wants for, no place he would rather be.
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