ds_flashfiction | 'Passed Me By' by Cherry Ice

cherryice.livejournal.com posting in

Title: Passed Me By
Thanks: are due to

qe2 for beta.
Word Count: 1504

Fraser wasn't always Fraser.

He remembers when he was young; four, five years old, sitting on his mother's lap in the cabin his father built. They had a bearskin rug on the floor and Fraser ('Ben' then, he was, with his mother's lilting voice whispering it in his ear) would lie on his stomach on the hardwood floor and watch the firelight reflecting from its glass eyes.

His father built the cabin and his father shot the bear, but Fraser (Ben) remembers sitting on the rug and playing knick-knack-patty-whack with his mother, that the tin of his father's tobacco was kept in the drawer that always stuck and his chair by the fire had a layer of dust on it.

He remembers his father -- a wedding picture with his eyes over bright and his mother's gaze just this side of left, a voice at the door in the dark -- but in his mind the cabin is still and full of full of firelight, and he sits with his hands on the stones of the hearth and listens to her sing:

"Oh don't you remember sweet Alice, Ben Bolt? Sweet Alice whose hair was so brown, who wept with delight when you gave her a smile, and trembled in fear at your frown..."

*

When his apartment burnt down, Fraser was understandably outraged. Arson, after all, is a serious offense punishable by...

It is at this point that people's eyes start to glaze over, and Fraser is more than glad to let the subject drop. He feels, in truth, strangely grateful. The accumulation of *things,* of postcards and official correspondence and Dief's old collars, rubber bands and paper clips and old photographs he can't bring himself to throw away; it makes him feel heavy and tumescent. Like if he had to run (after, towards, away) he'd be dragging it all behind him.

The Consulate is quiet at night. Long halls, tall rooms, and thick-paned windows. Traffic is muted to a murmur, like wind through the trees that have no room to grow here. Hum of the fans in the summer, heater in the winter. There's a bolt loose in a grate somewhere and it clicks softly as the air rushes through the building, and Fraser falls asleep thinking of the crackle of flames.

Always Ray looks at him, worried, when he drops him off at night, lower lip between his teeth and fingers drumming on the steering wheel of the GTO. "You got to find yourself a place to live," he says. You really worry me, freak, he never says except with the way there are always blankets at the foot of his couch. "I just don't get you," he says instead, despite the fact that he's learned to pronounce the name of the noodle dish Fraser likes so well from the Chinese place three blocks down from Ray's apartment. Just so it will be there and hot when Fraser gets out of the shower.

Ray watches hockey and the nature channel and talks about cars and dancing. Fraser watches the way Ray's hands flit across the couch, through his hair, the way his face fades in and out of shadow with the flickering light from the screen.

"Fraser," he says, and "Frase," and "buddy," names dropping from his mouth heavy with the sonance of his voice; and Fraser finds he feels full in a way that has nothing to do with the empty Chinese containers sitting on the table.

*

Fraser's grandfather was born in 1891. He used to take Fraser hunting in the winter, let him trail along with a miniature hunting knife and check the traps. He kept a diary his entire life and Fraser's best memories are of watching him sit at the kitchen table, pen scratching against the heavy pages while his grandmother bustled about making supper. 'Away,' she'd say as she brought pots over from the wood stove. His fingers were always smudged with ink as they ate.

Fraser's grandfather was twenty-one when the Titanic sank. Fraser (Benton, his grandfather used to say, emphasis stuck between the syllables and a quirk to his bushy brows) knows this because on Sunday evenings, his grandfather used to let him sit on the edge of this bed and read the old journals, small fingers tracing in awe over the faded ink.

This is who he is, Fraser thinks.

His grandmother was often stern, all full of the 1920s and black and white photographs. When he was sick, she made chicken soup that he would drink from a heavy mug while she sat on the side of his bed and read him stories about children who had great adventures and always remembered to wash behind their ears.

She used to take him with her to the general store (buy him ice cream if he was good, said 'Please' and 'Ma'am') until one day he heard:

"In the old church yard, in the valley Ben Bolt, in a corner obscure and alone..."

Hiss of static over the radio signal. Fraser (Benton) was standing in the isle, staring past the comic books and up at National Geographic while the radio played softly. "Benton!" his grandmother said. "We're leaving,'" and she grabbed his hand and pulled him out of the store.

But we don't have the supplies we came for, Benton ('Ben,' then, mother's voice out of breath as they carried firewood) didn't say. The sun was bright and hot as door snapped shut behind them (bright overhead, it wouldn't go down for weeks). The summer breeze carried a ghost of the lament behind them, and his grandmother's face was tight and pinched He trailed along behind her all the way home, humming beneath his breath with his mother's voice smudged across his mind.

(Benton doesn't hum.)

And the radio sang: "They have fitted a slab of granite so grey, and sweet Alice lies under the stone."

*

Fraser wasn't always Fraser.

I am not always this, he is thinking as they sit on the roof of Ray's apartment building. Not always this, he thinks with the sky so hard and far away above them. He is listening for the crackle of flame and his mother's song, the scratch of his grandfather's pen and his grandmother's voice ripping words from the page. Ray's smoking a cigarette and squinting in the light, and the plumes of smoke from his mouth make it look like it's winter, like he's so far away that there are climate zones between them.

His mother was a little bit fey, and sometimes they would run outside in the snow and play ring-around-the-rosie, spinning faster and faster until they flew apart and fell to the ground. And she'd sing him stories of Ben Bolt with her breath drifting up to the bright blue sky: "And of all the friends who were schoolmates then, there remain, Ben but you and I. But you and I."

There were no pictures of his mother in his grandparents' home.

"Something you want to tell me, Frase?" Ray asks, cigarette stubbed out beneath his heel and hands loose on his knees.

Fraser's close enough to reach out and touch him. He wants to say: See me, touch me, save me, listen to all the things I've never spoken. Tell me that there's somewhere you can see until the sky touches the ground, and the wind rushing through the grass knows your name.

"When I moved to Chicago, for good, my father's journals were one of the first things I unpacked," instead. What he *means* to say is: I remember reading them for the first time, remember the way the words were tattooed across the paper like it was some piece of art.

"Help you feel closer to him?" Ray asks.

Fraser laughs. He's closer to his father now than he's ever been, but it's not -- "'This is who he wants to be,'" he says. "That's what I thought. When I read them. 'This is who he wanted to be.'"

He's staring out at the city now, and the crags of buildings are everywhere, thrusting up and displacing the sky. He misses the horizon.

"That's not so bad," Ray says. "Knowing what someone wanted to be." Laughs. "I only ever knew what my father wanted *me* to be--"

(Fraser is something like that, a composite of all the people he's ever loved with all the names they've ever called him written across his skin.)

-- and there are all sorts of things to be said to that, about living through your children and living in the past and loving enough to live for someone else, but none of them mean a damn thing, because. Because he's here. Now. With Ray.

He's looking at the sky and he's looking at the clouds and when Fraser winds his fingers through Ray's, Ray doesn't even blink. Just squeezes his hand tight, like he's never going to let go.

Sometimes, Fraser isn't Fraser.

Sometimes he just is.