ds_flashfiction | Darkest Before Dawn Challenge (Reply)

It's been ages since I've posted to a challenge community. I don't usually do challenges, as I find my muse doesn't so much rise to meet a challenge as turn her back and sulk. My muse is clearly a 13-year-old girl. This explains a lot.

Title: Nights Like This
Pairing: F/K technically, although this is really kind of gen.
Disclaimer: Not mine, so sad.

The Chevy’s dashboard clock is broken, and it’s too dark to see his watch, but Ray figures they’ve been driving about four hours, which makes it a little past one a.m. It’s been pretty quiet in the passenger seat for a while now, so he glances over to see if Stella’s fallen asleep--

--and sees Fraser. It’s Fraser, sitting there in his white henley and suspenders, head tilted slightly away, so mostly what Ray can see is his ear and the curve of one high cheekbone.

It’s not Stella, it’s Fraser. And they’re not driving down 57 to visit Stella’s college friends in Champaign, they’re driving up 75 on their way to Sault Ste. Marie to catch some boat so they can do…something that sounded so noble and heroic when Fraser was talking at the shipyard, Ray could practically hear the howl of the storm and the cries of the drowning men. Right now it sounds kind of foolish and definitely maybe a bad idea.

And what the hell made him make *that* Freudian slip, confusing Fraser for his ex-wife? Was it even a Freudian slip when you didn’t say it, just think it? Ray doesn’t know much about Freud--other than that the guy clearly had mother issues--but he wonders what he would have said about that.

A partnership is like a marriage, he’s heard a lot of cops say that over the years, and maybe it’s true. But what do you do, when you’ve tried, and you’ve tried, and you’ve fucking tried, done everything the other person wants you to, done everything you think they want you to, and it still isn’t working? How do you make these things work?

When did his partnership with Fraser, their duet, start to feel like his marriage?

Maybe about the time he stopped being able to do anything right. Which, when he thinks about it, was pretty early on.

Yep. Just like his marriage.

But even from the beginning, there were a few things he and Stella’d been able to do without arguing: dancing, fucking. Except he and Fraser don’t dance. And they certainly don’t fuck.

Maybe they should start.

But no, ’cause tempting as the thought is, 1) he’s pretty sure Fraser doesn’t dance to that particular beat and b) fucking never really solves anything. Which Ray definitely knows from experience.

So that leaves them with--what? Talking? Ray’s not so good with that. And Fraser’s a little too good.

The road’s stretching out in front of him, dark and silent. The only light’s from his headlights and there’s no moon, so it’s really fucking dark, and for a moment, Ray can believe that it’s really not Fraser sitting next to him it’s Stella, and it’s not now it’s fifteen years ago.

And they’re on one of those road trips they used to make, when Stella was in college or law school and Ray was still a beat cop with weird hours and really bad hair. Nights when he didn’t have to work the next day and she could blow off studying, they’d sometimes get in the car--whatever beat-up junker he’d be fixing up that year--and just drive, all night sometimes.

They’d end up in Champaign, drop in on friends, or Michigan, drop in on other friends (friends, always Stella’s friends, with BAs, and houses with yards, and sometimes kids). Or they’d just drive until they found an all-night truck stop, split a piece of pie and really bad coffee, laughing at each other under the ugly fluorescent lights. They’d go home, and Stella’d fall asleep, just like Fraser is now--long lashes against her cheek, mouth slightly open. She drooled, once in a while, and Ray would rib her about it when she woke up. She’d wrinkle her nose and grumble a little, but she took it, because what could you do? You drooled in your sleep, you deserved to get teased for it.

Those were good nights.

Ray bets Fraser is drooling in his sleep.

He’s just wondering if he can lean over to check without running the car off the road--this stretch of the highway is straight as Turnbull’s spine--when Fraser shifts in his seat and comes awake with a small gasp.

Ray’s got his gaze back on the road immediately, but out of the corner of his eye he can see Fraser surreptitiously wiping the corner of his mouth, and he can’t help the smirk he feels on his face.

“Ray? It’s almost two. You’ve been driving for quite a while, would you like me to take over?”

And how does he--oh. His watch has glow-in-the-dark hands. Of course his watch has glow-in-the-dark hands. He’s Fraser, he’s prepared for everything. But if Ray lets Fraser drive it’ll probably take them till noon to reach the border, so...

“Nah, Fraser, I’m fine. I can go a couple more hours.”

“Ray, it’s late, and you haven’t slept at all. You really ought--“

“Fraser it’s fine okay? I’m fine, I’m good, just...”

And Fraser’s sleepy slouch is gone like the wind, and his voice is like the starch Ray’s mom puts in his dad’s shirts, all “All right, Ray. Whatever you say” and now it’s just like with Stella again. Stella towards the end, when even their soft, night-time conversations couldn’t stay that way, but always, always dissolved into harsh tones and hurt feelings. This is it, it’s happening all over again, and suddenly Ray wants to pound the steering wheel in frustration, wants to yell and punch a wall.

But he’s done that. He’d done that with Stella and he’s done that with Fraser (because punching Fraser is like punching a wall, just ask his knuckles), and it hadn’t worked. It won’t work, and they have to find some other way to do this.

Because dammit, he wants this to work. He wants this to work, this particular duet, he just doesn’t know how to make that happen.

So, instead of doing what he wants to do, what every instinct is screaming at him to do, he takes a deep breath. And then he lets it out. Then he takes another, and says,

“Sorry Fraser. I didn’t mean--it’s. I’m okay for another hour or two. Really. If I feel sleepy I’ll pull over and let you drive, okay?”

He feels Fraser relax next to him, a little bit, feels Fraser turn toward him as he says, softer now,

“All right Ray. That’s good.”

And it’s not good, but it’s better.

And it’s not Stella sitting next to him, it’s Fraser, but it’s nighttime, the road is stretching before them, and nights like this used to be good.

He wants them to be good again.

*end*

ETA: Lest they think I'm utterly ungrateful, let me take this opportunity to thank