Bullet Challenge: Faster than Sound, by Salieri

[troyswann.livejournal.com]

Author: Salieri (aka troyswann)
Title:  Faster than Sound
Pairing/Characters:  gen, RayV, Fraser, Bob
Episode:  Letting Go
Length:  454 w
Summary:  Not letting go.

            You and I
Are suddenly what the trees try
To tell us we are:
That their merely being there
Means something; that soon
We may touch, love, explain.
    Some Trees, John Ashbery

 

 

Number one with a bullet.

He's been plucked by the bony finger of mortality.  The "bony finger of mortality?"  His father snorts.  A bit purple, that, don't you think?  You could do better.

Along the strings inside his spine, vibration.  Diminuendo.  Once, he watched a guitar player stroke the strings on the frets with a hollow steel tube held over his middle finger.  It made the notes stretch, dip and rise, turn sideways so that the edges gleamed.  Then, it made him think of the way water travels down a windshield before the wipers take it, or the way a kingfisher aborts a dive and races its own shadow across the surface of the lake and up into the trees on the other side.  Now, he imagines the bullet pressed against his spine and thinks diminuendo.  Against all evidence, his father says.  Sounds loud enough to me, if you can hear it over all that brooding.  The kingfisher aborts its dive, races, rises.

This pain is not gunshot pain.  It's elsewhereness.  This pain is the strings inside his spine stretching, taut, like the tracks of a train drawn across the prairie toward the vanishing point.  It begins in his body but disappears someplace beyond the horizon, a sideways gleaming stroked by a steel-coloured wind, the twisted ends clasped in Victoria's hand.  

Backward, his father says.  Pain is hereness.  You're not doing it right.  Snap out of it, man.

Diminuendo.

Pain is here, his father says.  It's inthebody.  In the cold, trapped by an avalanche for three days, a broken leg, I'd've died there before Buck could find me except for the pain, a reminder of what I am.  A man, not an idea.  Here, not someplace else.  Well, that was then, of course.  Nowadays, it's different.  But the principle is what I'm saying, that's the same.  Pain is here.  What are you looking at?

Fortitude Pass.

Well, you're looking in the wrong direction.  See?  Here.  Look here.

Two magazines beside him on the hospital bed, spilled green and blue on the white knit blanket:  Field and Stream and Canadian Geographic.  "Ray Vecchio" on the subscription stickers.  In the chair by the window, Ray Vecchio himself, slouched like a Klimt figure asleep in geometric shadows, still wearing yesterday's clothes.

The tracks of the train drawn across the prairie.  Fraser could follow them to the vanishing point.

He would have gone, diminuendo, except the bullet plucked at him, made him ring, hums now against bone.

Love is iron, son.  It travels faster than sound. 

 

 

Comments

[troyswann.livejournal.com]

Thank you, ma'am. I love RayV liek woah. Love. Him.

(also, I do have your chapters--they're on deck for tomorrow!)

[troyswann.livejournal.com]

You SO win! If only I had more icon spaces, I'd've stolen every icon!
*loves new Vecchio icon liek woah*

And re the fic: Thank you!

[luzula]

Oh, that's so lovely. I've read it twice now. I love the part about Victoria holding the twisted ends. And the ending almost made me tear up.

[troyswann.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I'm glad you like that Victoria image. That's sort of how I see her a lot of the time... just over the horizon...

[springwoof.livejournal.com]

What are you looking at?

Fortitude Pass.

Well, you're looking in the wrong direction. See? Here. Look here.

oh, my heart! such beautiful words to paint a picture of choosing to live in a world of pain, and what real love looks like...

[troyswann.livejournal.com]

Aw, thank you!

I have such a love of Bob and his practical wisdom, and for Fraser's... whatever that is that Fraser has that makes him so... Fraserish... so I'm glad that this worked for you!

[0not-just-me0.livejournal.com]

I missed this? How did I miss this??
But at least I found it now, and...

**flails about helplessly**

**kisses Bob**
**smooshes Ray**
**smacks Faser upside the head**

**flails some more**
**goes back to read again**

[troyswann.livejournal.com]

Hee! Thank you!

Yes, Fraser really does need the occasional smack upside the head. Fortunately, he has a number of folks willing to do that for him :)

[spuffyduds.livejournal.com]

Wow, that's incredibly beautiful.

[plotbunniofdoom]

Love is iron

Gah!

Love this, just so perfect!

[sl_walker]

This is seriously one of the best-written stories, not just in DS, but that I've ever had the pleasure of reading. And I read a lot. Perfect.

[troyswann.livejournal.com]

Wow. Thank you!

*goes blushy and runs away*

[ride-4ever.livejournal.com]

For as long as I can remember ANYTHING, I expect to remember the <3 of Ray for Fraser that's expressed through the magazine subscriptions. Oh Ray! <3

And what is the vid that you say had some influence on you writing this?

[troyswann.livejournal.com]

Thanks. Wow, this is a blast from the past.

The vid is by sdwolfpup, "You Can Call Me Al." My all-time favourite vid ever of all time. At the first Bitchin' Party it practically got a standing ovation.

[ride-4ever.livejournal.com]

Heh heh, goes to show how one fan's "past" is another fan's "present". I've only been in online fandom a little over a year (fangirl for dS and C6D), and this year's BP is the first one I ever attended (and I'm already psyched for the 2013 MJ).

TYK for the vid rec. That one's FTW alright!