Paint Challenge by strangecobwebs
Feb. 12th, 2006 01:55 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
strangecobwebs.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
ds_flashfictionSo, um, I'm completely new to due South. And writing. And this definitely wasn't betaed. So I'd really, really welcome feedback. That way I'll know if I should never do this again. :) Thanks!
Title: Black, Red
Pairing: RayK/Fraser
Rating: G
Length: 1100-ish words
I think Chicago turned black the day Stella gave me the divorce papers. I guess it had started fading a while before that, but it had been so gradual that I didn’t notice. It was kinda like how in the fall, the days start getting shorter, and it gets darker earlier, but you don’t really see it. Just, one day you look at the clock, and just think, "Shit. It’s only five o’clock. And it’s pitch dark out."
I walked into the lawyer’s office on a bright, sunny afternoon. At least, that’s what the weatherman had said, and people around me where wearing shorts and sunglasses. I left at two, after I signed the papers that left me on my own for the first time since… well, the first time in my life really. (And that was a damn depressing realization.) But I just walked outside and it was dark. No one else seemed to notice it, but I did. It was like that Stones song, “Paint It, Black”: “I wanna see the sun blotted out from the sky. I wanna see it painted, painted, painted black.” You got your wish, Mick.
Chicago became black. The sun was still out, and the warmth hadn’t completely faded yet. But it was dark. Really dark.
When I took the job as Vecchio, I was hoping it might change a bit. The black was starting to get to me. Really, really get to me. Get to me like I wanted to not bother with the vest sometimes.
I think my lieutenant was noticing. So he asked me first if I wanted the Vecchio job. I don’t know if I was really his first choice or not, but he’s a good guy. I think he knew better than I did that I needed a change. He and Welsh were buddies, so when Welsh said he needed someone to be Vecchio, the lieu suggested me.
Seemed like a better idea than heading out to a drug bust after “forgetting” to put a vest on and then
hoping for the worst. So I said yes.
I guess it was a good idea, because if the world didn’t get any brighter, it didn’t get any darker either.
Fraser and I had been working together for almost a year before I really noticed the paintbrush. It was just a little one, like one of Stella’s eye makeup brushes. Fraser had been painting things red.
He’d always been red. I saw that the first day I met him. I turned around when I heard my name in the bullpen, and there was just red Fraser. But at some point, without my noticing, he began making other things red. Like, it must have been only a few days after he was around, Dief turned red too. And eventually, Fraser painted that chair that he always sat in by my desk.
After I noticed the paintbrush Fraser had, it slowly got bigger. The part of the couch that he always sat in when he came to my place became red. Then the whole couch. The consulate. The diner that we went to all the time. My entire desk at the precinct. The breakroom there. The goat.
This was all happening slow enough that it’d be a while before I noticed. Kinda like that whole turning-dark thing in the fall again. Or maybe like getting lighter in the spring. I don’t know. But I’d see something that used to be dark a long time ago, and now it’s red, and I can’t remember if it just did that, or if it’s been red for a while and I just didn’t notice.
By the time Vecchio came back, I’d gotten used to everything being red. And that, of course, is when the red started to darken.
It wasn’t too dark yet. But the threat was there. And this time I saw it. If I couldn’t figure out how to stop it, I knew that it would be even darker than the after-Stella black.
Before I knew it, we were sitting around the fire in Canada again. It was the night after we got Muldoon. I was supposed to go back to Chicago the next day. Fraser was going to head up to his dad’s cabin for a little while, and then he could pretty much pick where he wanted to go.
I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want him to go. I just wanted to keep the red. I knew, as sure as I knew that I was in love with Fraser, that if I went back to Chicago without him, if I went anywhere without him, the black would be endless and darker and deeper than the Stella-black. And it would never, ever be lighter than gray.
Fraser and I were the only two left. Everyone else had gone home or to bed. He got up to throw another log on the fire, then sat down next to me.
“Fraser, I wanna keep the red,” I blurted out.
“Pardon?”
“I wanna keep the red. You made everything red. I can’t go back to black, Frase, I can’t. I won’t be able to take it.” I knew he had no idea what I was saying, but I couldn’t stop. “It was so bad before, the black, after the divorce, and then you came, and you painted everything red. And I love you, and I love the red, and I want to keep it. And- and I can’t go back, Frase. I can’t. Not without you.” I stopped when Fraser’s bare hand came up to dry the tear that I didn’t know had fallen.
“Ray, did you mean that? That you love me?” I couldn’t do anything but nod. “Ray…” he started again. But this didn’t sound so good. “Ray, I love you too. But I can’t go back to Chicago. Not right now. Maybe not ever.”
And now he looked like he might cry.
I nodded again, and turned to face the fire again. I hugged myself as the chill began to really set in. “You know, Frase, I don’t really have anything in Chicago anymore. It’s black. There’s nothing there anymore.”
More silence. Then, “Would you stay here then? With me?”
I turned and looked at him, into his eyes. And realized that they were blue. And then I looked at the snow. It was white. The logs in the fire were brown and black. The fire itself was red and orange and an occasional small blue flame at the bottom. The trees, under the snow, were green and brown. The tent that we were going to sleep in was an ugly brown. Fraser’s scarf was plaid, blue and green.
I smiled. He smiled back, with white teeth and pink lips.
“so before i let you go
there's one thing you should know about my love
i look around and everything's red
i'm up-side-down and everything's red
one look at you and all i see is red”
-Ike, “Red”
Title: Black, Red
Pairing: RayK/Fraser
Rating: G
Length: 1100-ish words
I think Chicago turned black the day Stella gave me the divorce papers. I guess it had started fading a while before that, but it had been so gradual that I didn’t notice. It was kinda like how in the fall, the days start getting shorter, and it gets darker earlier, but you don’t really see it. Just, one day you look at the clock, and just think, "Shit. It’s only five o’clock. And it’s pitch dark out."
I walked into the lawyer’s office on a bright, sunny afternoon. At least, that’s what the weatherman had said, and people around me where wearing shorts and sunglasses. I left at two, after I signed the papers that left me on my own for the first time since… well, the first time in my life really. (And that was a damn depressing realization.) But I just walked outside and it was dark. No one else seemed to notice it, but I did. It was like that Stones song, “Paint It, Black”: “I wanna see the sun blotted out from the sky. I wanna see it painted, painted, painted black.” You got your wish, Mick.
Chicago became black. The sun was still out, and the warmth hadn’t completely faded yet. But it was dark. Really dark.
When I took the job as Vecchio, I was hoping it might change a bit. The black was starting to get to me. Really, really get to me. Get to me like I wanted to not bother with the vest sometimes.
I think my lieutenant was noticing. So he asked me first if I wanted the Vecchio job. I don’t know if I was really his first choice or not, but he’s a good guy. I think he knew better than I did that I needed a change. He and Welsh were buddies, so when Welsh said he needed someone to be Vecchio, the lieu suggested me.
Seemed like a better idea than heading out to a drug bust after “forgetting” to put a vest on and then
hoping for the worst. So I said yes.
I guess it was a good idea, because if the world didn’t get any brighter, it didn’t get any darker either.
Fraser and I had been working together for almost a year before I really noticed the paintbrush. It was just a little one, like one of Stella’s eye makeup brushes. Fraser had been painting things red.
He’d always been red. I saw that the first day I met him. I turned around when I heard my name in the bullpen, and there was just red Fraser. But at some point, without my noticing, he began making other things red. Like, it must have been only a few days after he was around, Dief turned red too. And eventually, Fraser painted that chair that he always sat in by my desk.
After I noticed the paintbrush Fraser had, it slowly got bigger. The part of the couch that he always sat in when he came to my place became red. Then the whole couch. The consulate. The diner that we went to all the time. My entire desk at the precinct. The breakroom there. The goat.
This was all happening slow enough that it’d be a while before I noticed. Kinda like that whole turning-dark thing in the fall again. Or maybe like getting lighter in the spring. I don’t know. But I’d see something that used to be dark a long time ago, and now it’s red, and I can’t remember if it just did that, or if it’s been red for a while and I just didn’t notice.
By the time Vecchio came back, I’d gotten used to everything being red. And that, of course, is when the red started to darken.
It wasn’t too dark yet. But the threat was there. And this time I saw it. If I couldn’t figure out how to stop it, I knew that it would be even darker than the after-Stella black.
Before I knew it, we were sitting around the fire in Canada again. It was the night after we got Muldoon. I was supposed to go back to Chicago the next day. Fraser was going to head up to his dad’s cabin for a little while, and then he could pretty much pick where he wanted to go.
I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want him to go. I just wanted to keep the red. I knew, as sure as I knew that I was in love with Fraser, that if I went back to Chicago without him, if I went anywhere without him, the black would be endless and darker and deeper than the Stella-black. And it would never, ever be lighter than gray.
Fraser and I were the only two left. Everyone else had gone home or to bed. He got up to throw another log on the fire, then sat down next to me.
“Fraser, I wanna keep the red,” I blurted out.
“Pardon?”
“I wanna keep the red. You made everything red. I can’t go back to black, Frase, I can’t. I won’t be able to take it.” I knew he had no idea what I was saying, but I couldn’t stop. “It was so bad before, the black, after the divorce, and then you came, and you painted everything red. And I love you, and I love the red, and I want to keep it. And- and I can’t go back, Frase. I can’t. Not without you.” I stopped when Fraser’s bare hand came up to dry the tear that I didn’t know had fallen.
“Ray, did you mean that? That you love me?” I couldn’t do anything but nod. “Ray…” he started again. But this didn’t sound so good. “Ray, I love you too. But I can’t go back to Chicago. Not right now. Maybe not ever.”
And now he looked like he might cry.
I nodded again, and turned to face the fire again. I hugged myself as the chill began to really set in. “You know, Frase, I don’t really have anything in Chicago anymore. It’s black. There’s nothing there anymore.”
More silence. Then, “Would you stay here then? With me?”
I turned and looked at him, into his eyes. And realized that they were blue. And then I looked at the snow. It was white. The logs in the fire were brown and black. The fire itself was red and orange and an occasional small blue flame at the bottom. The trees, under the snow, were green and brown. The tent that we were going to sleep in was an ugly brown. Fraser’s scarf was plaid, blue and green.
I smiled. He smiled back, with white teeth and pink lips.
“so before i let you go
there's one thing you should know about my love
i look around and everything's red
i'm up-side-down and everything's red
one look at you and all i see is red”
-Ike, “Red”
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