ds_flashfiction | five minutes after

"It'll be like falling into a duvet."

When it came to imminent death-type things, Ray had a definite hierarchy. He'd never actually busted out a Bic and written it down, but if he had, he'd have ranked "getting shot at" way below "drowning", and drowning about a hundred million feet per second below "death by falling very very fucking far out of a motherfucking airplane".

Freefall, as far as Ray was concerned, was nothing but one blind, eye-tearing, all-sky-but-no-air scream that ended with a sucker punch that landed everywhere on your body at the exact same time.

The only reason he hadn't pissed himself was because he hadn't had the time. And the only thing better than surviving a chuteless nosedive from 30,000 feet into the ass crack of the frozen northwest areas was surviving all that just long enough to piss yourself and have your dick freeze off.

"I never want to do that again, Fraser. As in ever, you hear me?"

He didn't actually expect Fraser to answer him, as every speck of air he'd ever had in his lungs had been relocated. By a pack of thugs armed with sacks of pay-phone change, it felt like. But Fraser answered him, full voiced and hearty.

"I can't see how it could possibly come up again, Ray. Unless our plane home should have some sort of engine trouble--"

"Not. Helping."

For a long minute, Ray just lay there, his face, hell, his everything jammed into hard-packed snow. The snow was everywhere: gritty, crunchy, coldcoldcold and sneaking past his collar like it was alive. He could feel his legs. Good, that was goodness. And he wasn't coughing up any blood, so that said maybe he hadn't splashed his internal organs all over his spine. Also good.

He managed to dig himself out of the snow and stagger to his feet, freaked out and shivering with the unbelievable frost-on-your-eyeballs cold.

He wondered if his glasses had survived the fall, but before he could pat himself down, Fraser smiled at him, this goofy sort of look-where-we-are kind of smile. Ray was still too stiff to smile back, but as he rubbed at his frosty face, he realized the whole stupid truth.

He'd jump (or, hey, technically? get pushed) out of any airplane Fraser asked him to.

Goddamn it.