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ds_flashfiction2007-03-07 07:13 pm
troyswann.livejournal.com) wrote in ds_flashfiction2007-03-07 07:13 pm
Entry tags:
for the Window challenge: Vibrato by Salieri
Title: Vibrato
Author: Salieri (aka![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
troyswann)
Characters: Dief, Fraser, Fraser Sr., some guy named Phil
Length: about 600 w
Eps/Spoilers: none
Warnings: none
Notes: I'm listening to "dream body" by the Gordon Brothers on a continuous loop, so this is really just a little mood piece that goes with that. (You can hear a bit of it if you go to the Amazon sample listing page here, in case you're interested in knowing what Phil is dancing to:)
Vibrato
In the alleyway, Phil is dancing.
Dief looks through his own reflection, head tipped sideways. His ears perk forward in the memory of hearing, and he does hear, in a way, Phil's worn work boots slapping, loose-soled, on the asphalt in the rain. Dief hears through the pads of his feet and his nose against the glass. He feels the sound of Phil dancing in the alley under a narrow strip of curdled sky. Trapped in the alley, the wind whirls and sends a panicked clatter of sleet into the window. Fractured and glowing in the tiny prisms of ice, drawn long and wavering in the slow downward sliding of rain, Phil keeps dancing. He's wearing a trench coat and it's already too wet to swirl with his motion and instead sticks to his legs. He holds his arms out at his sides and stomps through his dance. Puddles around his boots break upward against the rain.
Floating above him in the window, reflected and blank where his own shadows meet the darker ones outside, Fraser is leaning back against the counter beside the stove. The low sighing of the water ready to boil. His breathing. The murmur of voices as he turns the page of the journal in his hands. Dief can hear this, too, an agitation on the skin. Under the skin. In the bone. In the hollows.
Phil comes to the end of the alley and drums his open hands on the sagging plank fence. Then he turns and heads back he way he came, stomping with his head bowed, water drawing him downward. Fraser turns another page.
Dief knows he's there without shifting his gaze. The presence is a tremor along the raised tips of his fur. It's as it always is: there's a moment when space buckles inside Fraser, opens, and a coldness leaks out, the kind that comes when a body that has warmed you has gone, and then the other Fraser is there, in the window, too. For a moment, Fraser looks up from the journal and both faces occupy the same space in the pane. Fraser looks out at the night through his father's eyes; his father looks in through Fraser's. Their lips move, and the father says, "Wind's shifting. I can feel it." And then their lips move again and Fraser says, "You do?" There's hope in the upward arch of his eyebrows. "You feel it?" Rain and ice and wind against the glass. The water in Fraser's kettle breaks into a boil and the whistle is a thin, blind fumbling in the air. "No, I don't suppose I do," the father says. Fraser's disappointment draws his father's face into a frown. Dief's fur rises again, trapping heat against the chill of loss. Fraser bows his head and closes the book. The window reflects only Dief and Fraser's back as he walks away.
Down in the alleyway, Phil holds his arms wide and looks up unblinking into the rain. His feet shuffle him forward as he dances to the music in his head, and the rhythm shivers through concrete, rises upward against the downpull of the rain to the window where Dief listens to the vibrations of yearning, his head tipped sideways, nose against the glass.
Author: Salieri (aka
troyswann)Characters: Dief, Fraser, Fraser Sr., some guy named Phil
Length: about 600 w
Eps/Spoilers: none
Warnings: none
Notes: I'm listening to "dream body" by the Gordon Brothers on a continuous loop, so this is really just a little mood piece that goes with that. (You can hear a bit of it if you go to the Amazon sample listing page here, in case you're interested in knowing what Phil is dancing to:)
Vibrato
In the alleyway, Phil is dancing.
Dief looks through his own reflection, head tipped sideways. His ears perk forward in the memory of hearing, and he does hear, in a way, Phil's worn work boots slapping, loose-soled, on the asphalt in the rain. Dief hears through the pads of his feet and his nose against the glass. He feels the sound of Phil dancing in the alley under a narrow strip of curdled sky. Trapped in the alley, the wind whirls and sends a panicked clatter of sleet into the window. Fractured and glowing in the tiny prisms of ice, drawn long and wavering in the slow downward sliding of rain, Phil keeps dancing. He's wearing a trench coat and it's already too wet to swirl with his motion and instead sticks to his legs. He holds his arms out at his sides and stomps through his dance. Puddles around his boots break upward against the rain.
Floating above him in the window, reflected and blank where his own shadows meet the darker ones outside, Fraser is leaning back against the counter beside the stove. The low sighing of the water ready to boil. His breathing. The murmur of voices as he turns the page of the journal in his hands. Dief can hear this, too, an agitation on the skin. Under the skin. In the bone. In the hollows.
Phil comes to the end of the alley and drums his open hands on the sagging plank fence. Then he turns and heads back he way he came, stomping with his head bowed, water drawing him downward. Fraser turns another page.
Dief knows he's there without shifting his gaze. The presence is a tremor along the raised tips of his fur. It's as it always is: there's a moment when space buckles inside Fraser, opens, and a coldness leaks out, the kind that comes when a body that has warmed you has gone, and then the other Fraser is there, in the window, too. For a moment, Fraser looks up from the journal and both faces occupy the same space in the pane. Fraser looks out at the night through his father's eyes; his father looks in through Fraser's. Their lips move, and the father says, "Wind's shifting. I can feel it." And then their lips move again and Fraser says, "You do?" There's hope in the upward arch of his eyebrows. "You feel it?" Rain and ice and wind against the glass. The water in Fraser's kettle breaks into a boil and the whistle is a thin, blind fumbling in the air. "No, I don't suppose I do," the father says. Fraser's disappointment draws his father's face into a frown. Dief's fur rises again, trapping heat against the chill of loss. Fraser bows his head and closes the book. The window reflects only Dief and Fraser's back as he walks away.
Down in the alleyway, Phil holds his arms wide and looks up unblinking into the rain. His feet shuffle him forward as he dances to the music in his head, and the rhythm shivers through concrete, rises upward against the downpull of the rain to the window where Dief listens to the vibrations of yearning, his head tipped sideways, nose against the glass.
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as is this: "Puddles around his boots break upward against the rain. "
and this is just plain wow: "The presence is a tremor along the raised tips of his fur. It's as it always is: there's a moment when space buckles inside Fraser, opens, and a coldness leaks out, the kind that comes when a body that has warmed you has gone, and then the other Fraser is there, in the window, too. For a moment, Fraser looks up from the journal and both faces occupy the same space in the pane."
this is luscious and full of so many layers regarding all their lives.
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I'm with
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Oh man, that's so cool. *beams*
I've been watching a lot of Torchwood lately and revelling in the OTTnes of it but last night, with the whole lingering migraine thing going, I found myself craving that gentleness that is dS. I know the show has its moments of action and hijinks, but in my head it feels like quiet, reflections on reflections, small, important dramas leaning against each other. And Dief, I think, can hear more of them than a wolf with ears, sometimes. *g* I love this window challenge liek woah, man!
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Perfect, lovely descriptions. Nice writing, there, woman!
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The most beautiful world in the world,
Tell her she's beautiful,
Roll the world over,
And give her a kiss...
And a feel.
It's from the Son of Schmilsson album. *g*
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Dief hears through the pads of his feet and his nose against the glass.
And the image of the two Fraser's reflected in the window, looking in and out, through each other's eyes. Stunning.
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Actually, that image of the two faces was way more complicated in my head, because I have this notion that Fraser projects his dad out of himself, the way we see it (because we see through Fraser's eyes generally), but that Dief sees them as being overlaid in the same person (thus, Fraser Sr. speaks in Fraser Jr's voice, although Fraser doesn't experience it that way). *handwave* But that's for a different story I'm not smart enough to write.
I'm glad the image worked here, though! :)
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This paragraph disturbs me. A lot. It's as it always is: there's a moment when space buckles inside Fraser, opens, and a coldness leaks out, the kind that comes when a body that has warmed you has gone, and then the other Fraser is there, in the window, too. For a moment, Fraser looks up from the journal and both faces occupy the same space in the pane. Fraser looks out at the night through his father's eyes; his father looks in through Fraser's. Their lips move,
I've always found Dead!Bob amusing, but this description makes him feel like ... an open wound in Fraser's soul. Something wrong, and subtly horrifying. *shivers*
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I guess I could say that I think Dead!Bob is disturbing, that he is a wound in Fraser's soul, and that there is something wrong about him. This doesn't mean he isn't warm and amusing and comforting for Fraser (or us), too. For me, Bob is not so much a presence in Fraser's life as a locus of loss, an embodiment of absence, the attenuated echo of a connection Fraser always yearned for and never got. That's why his presence is both comforting and scary, in my way of seeing Fraser. Ghosts are paradoxical, absent presences, present absences, things that you can't settle on because they are everything and nothing, a promise of thereness that can't be fulfilled. His folksy comic relief is an index of that paradox, I think because it makes him approachable. It makes him seem easy, and amusing and familiar, but he's not.
Anyway, I ramble, because I've been trying to figure this out for a long time. In any case, as a character, Bob is the creation of a genius, I think.
Thank you for your comment. It's gotten the wheels turning in my head. :)
(and I'm sorry if the snippet disturbed you, although I'm sort of glad it did, since that was in some way the effect I was going for--I hope the explanation of the logic behind it helps, especially since I know that this reading of mine does go against the grain.)
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Oh. Oh! Damn, that just makes so much sense.
Please don't apologize. Anything that can make me understand a part of my fandom in a new way is a gift beyond measure.
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Lovely story.
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Hmm. Me, too. But in a weirdly functional way that says more about normalcy than it does about deviation, I think (given that Ray sees his dad too). In a mad world, a mad mind is the sane one, or something. Hmmmmm. Oh, now I've got to think hard on this one, too! :)
Warning: you have spawned blitherings
If we're looking for similarities in the cases, the fact Buck can see Bob is also interesting. When Buck's character first appears he is just as closed off as Fraser and shows some damage. I think they are both similarly insane in the way they ride the fantastical currents around them. Neither of them seemed fazed when things go profoundly strange. And Ray(s) may constantly bitch about the crazy turns of events but you don't see him stopping, either.
Typically, the obsession for Duty above all other things is the wedge that shatters normalcy around them. That kind of iron determination has predictably disruptive effects. Society is built more on the easy give-and-take and bend, and this town in particular, with its abundance of organized crime, is the poster child of dereliction. Fraser's insane devotion constantly catalyzes events (ref. Warfield ep).
I'm reminded of soldiers coming back from wars and finding there is no outlet any longer for that central need for duty. A lot of them have tremendous difficulty finding normalcy. Duty breaks people. It not only breaks Bob (kills him in fact) but forces him to return from death to haunt. It breaks Fraser indirectly when it takes his mother away (revenge against Bob, due to duty) and then when Bob leaves him to grow to adulthood without a father.
Fraser is almost cast in the soldier dilemma when he is ostracized to Chicago, but he finds Ray and so can continue to do his perceived duty. Welsh is some kind of weird co-dependent in this scenario, I remember in the Paducci episode he asks Fraser if he doesn't have anything better to do in his free time. But Welsh still uses him. Society has made his particular obsession useful, so Fraser can still function.
I am undecided on whether Fraser made the right choice in turning Victoria in the first time. Yeah, it was his duty, and part of me wants to think it's pure black and white. But another thing duty is useful for is acting as a perfect pretext for pushing others away. I don't think Fraser, broken as he was, could have made any other choice. And truly, she could have run off and participated in other crimes, perhaps even more dire. He knew she had a darkness. So his duty was clear.
What is more interesting than why he made that choice is what caused it to come into being. Yeah, Duty caused the choice to begin with because he tracked her through the storm in spite of losing his gear, at the risk of his own life. When they were together in the pass, they bonded, and this is the fascinating thing to me: what about her called to him in that way? What fracture in him, unprotected by duty and his sense of right, let her in? And would they have survived if they *hadn't* had that compelling attraction and need between them to keep their hearts beating?
Fraser was set up: a total Catch-22.
In corollary, I would even argue that it was Duty that led to him being so unutterably solitary his whole life, which is what made it possible, in extremis, for him to be vulnerable to her. And one of the most pleasurable things about writing in this fandom is trying to find the proper wedge to do it to him again. And again.
Re: Warning: you have spawned blitherings
I agree about the enabling/debilitating character of duty, which provides structure and purpose but which also creates a kind of split inside people like Fraser who find that duty and personal feelings can't often coexist, or not not without subsuming one into the other.
I've always been puzzled, I guess, about Fraser's willingness to accept the guilt that Victoria dishes out to him in VS because she was clearly in the wrong and his duty really was clear in that context. But that's just it, isn't it. The duty makes no allowances for feeling. Absolutes are like that. No wonder he cracks right down his foundation because of those incompatibilities. I suppose I see his acceptance of the guilt trip as more of an index of how messed up he is around her, and about what she does to him when she exploits that fissure in him that you point to than any as kind of statement that there was any other choice he could have made, or that the choice to turn her in was the wrong one. It was the right one, and that's what makes it so painful and the guilt he feels so paradoxical and debilitating. It's like the situation forces a distinction between the man and the uniform, and without the uniform, he's... well... kind of dangerous.
Ramble ramble. I'm thinking about this more, because there's something ... soooomething there *gropes* I've not quite got a grip on yet.
But I really like your analysis of this and that notion of the fissure or the wedge... very cool.
Re: Warning: you have spawned blitherings
Very thought-provoking. I'm over here, thinking, now.
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Hmm, that's kind of fitting, I think, since it's from Dief's point of view. I hadn't thought of it that way. Thanks!:)
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Your words fill up my soul, Sal. Truly and surely.
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