ds_flashfiction | TEAM REALITY: Day 14, "Truths Like Gravity"

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Title: Truths Like Gravity
Author:

nos4a2no9
Team: Reality
Prompt: "Well, it would be rather entertaining...under different circumstances."
Pairing(s): Fraser/Kowalski
Rating: R
Word count: 3800
Warnings: None
Author's Notes: Many thanks to a whole army of betas:

malnpudl,

akamine_chan and

j_s_cavalcante helped me find the shape and rhythm of this story.

qe2 and

secretlybronte helped me find its heart. I am indebted to all of these very talented women.
Summary: He and Fraser have been preparing for this inevitability for years, glancing at each other sadly over yet another birthday cake, a New Year's toast, a graduation dinner. Their children aren't really children anymore.

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**

In the silent minutes before he falls asleep at night, Ray can sometimes hear a faint crackle.

It's a soft, crunching sound, like someone chewing granola, or a boot on an icy sheen of snow. Or tires on a gravel road. But the crackling sound Ray hears isn't quite so concrete. It's a quiet sound where no sound should be.

He knows he's imagining things. He can account for every nighttime sound in the cabin, except for the crackle. There's Fraser's soft snoring and the faint scrabbling of Petal's nails on the floor as she chases rabbits in her sleep. The metronomic tick-tock of the clock on their bedside table, and the sound of Jenny mumbling to herself in her room down the hall. When the girls were little and shared a room, Ray could often hear three quiet voices talking to each other in the dark.

The mysterious crackle has become softer since Molly and Katie left, and Ray's absolutely certain that the sound is connected to the girls leaving home. The crackle makes him think of something impossible but present. Something invisible, but undeniable. Like gravity.

It's the sound of children growing up.

He and Fraser have been preparing for this inevitability for years, glancing at each other sadly over yet another birthday cake, a New Year's toast, a graduation dinner. Their children aren't really children anymore.

***

At night, when he's finally drifted off to sleep, Ray dreams about his children as babies. Which is ridiculous, because Molly and Katie were five and ten years old when he and Fraser adopted them. Someone else had changed their diapers and sung them to sleep and dressed them in those frothy pink dresses that looked like the frosting on cupcakes. Someone else—not a parent, but a social worker or an understanding nurse—had bathed them, breathing in the sweet warmth of their baby-powder smell.

He suspects that's why he dreams of them as babies. His little girls spent too many years in the arms of strangers.

Jenny came to them as a baby. She was a sallow, fuzzy-haired infant who cried every time they tried to put her down. When Ray dreams, he knows he's drawing from his memories of Jenny: her little body warm and secure in his arms, her milky little burps of contentment. In his nightmares he can hear her crying, but he can't find her.

When he can't find her, Ray's not sure if he's in one of her bad dreams, or if she's in one of his.

***

He's been collecting things from when the girls were small. Whenever he salvages some bit of their history from the garbage bin or the box destined for Goodwill, he feels like a temple priest. He saves little things, packable things, like tiny baby shoes and old buttons and slightly inept art projects weighed down by old paint, ancient macaroni and limp feathers.

And Jenny's tutu, of course. He's hung on to that. And a variety of Molly's ribbons for first-place science projects. Small trophies from Katie's hockey days. A tiny braided circle of black hair twisted together with a red elastic, which he rescued the day Katie turned fifteen and decided to shave her head.

It's all filed neatly away in a big box he keeps under the bed, and Ray is always on the hunt for more. Last week he was cleaning out his desk at work and found a birthday card Jenny had made for him. The card was a simple crayon drawing of the five of them. Ray recognized himself by the bright shock of blond hair growing straight out of his head in five precise spikes, like a cartoon character. Jenny had chosen to render Fraser in his red serge, complete with brown boots, a belt, and a brown hat that looked more like a bowler than a Stetson. The three girls—tiny brown-haired Jenny; medium-sized Molly; and tall, willowy Katie—wore identical blue triangle-shaped dresses. They all stood beneath a banner that said, We love you, Daddy! and beneath that, Happy Birthday!

When Ray added it to his magpie collection he reminded himself to show it to Jenny later, maybe tease her a little. When he can look at the card without getting teary-eyed, maybe he will.

Fraser also seems to be feeling the impulse to preserve the past, but he goes about it in a slightly different way. He's phoning Katie more often, for example. She lives in Winnipeg and has a child of her own, which Ray finds unimaginable even though he's met the kid. The one-sided conversations he overhears are sometimes strained, but at least Fraser is talking to their eldest daughter, which is more than Ray could have hoped for once upon a time.

Fraser's also re-reading all the old books. He can't seem to part with the books, no matter how often the Inuvik Municipal Library calls begging for donations. The Kowalski-Fraser homestead has a better collection of children's and young adult fiction than any library in the north, and Margie Fitzpatrick, the Inuvik librarian, seems determined to get her well-meaning claws on most of it. But so far Fraser's managed to hold out.

Fraser's working his way backwards through the bookshelves that line every wall of their place in town, starting with the Z's——Zodiac Town, something about a couple of kids wanting to play instead of memorizing poetry. Which Ray really can't blame them for. The girls never liked that one. They preferred stories about horses, or ones where the plucky young orphan (always orphans in those books, and why was that?) lived deep in the woods and made a little home and survived just fine without any parents.

Ray lost a lot of sleep worrying about their daughters' fondness for those books. He'd always suggested something cheerier during bed check, and refused to read anything with dark forests or weeping children on the cover.

"It's weird, isn't it?" Ray had asked late one night after yet another battle with the girls over story time. "Those books are so...dark."

"I liked them myself, Ray," Fraser had said, slipping into bed and curling up close against Ray. "I think they appeal to most children. We all need to believe that our world can continue after the worst has happened."

Ray had rolled over and wrapped his arms around Fraser, hugging him close. He hadn't told Fraser that, when Ray was a kid, even "the worst" he could think of hadn't included losing his mum and dad. Or he hadn't let himself think about it.

He wanted to make it better for them. All of them—his girls, and even Fraser. That was his job as a dad. Security, stability, love—that was the most he and Fraser had to offer as parents. He'd seen enough to know that, even if he and Fraser turned out to be spectacularly bad at raising kids, everything else would work itself out as long as they did okay on the basics.

And it has worked itself out, for the most part. The girls were women now. Katie was a mom herself, Molly was doing graduate work in chemistry, and Jenny, always and forever the baby, was just turning sixteen. She'd graduate next year, and then she'd be off to one of the big university cities in the south. Edmonton, maybe, or Vancouver. A major in English Literature.

Not a result of Ray's influence, obviously. His alternative suggestion to the orphan-stories had always been something like Ring World. Jenny was their daughter, but she'd always been more like Fraser, dreamy and kind. Molly, too, in a way. They were the intellectuals, the scientists. The ones who'd save the world.

Katie was his. Ray still wasn't sure how he and Fraser'd ended up with three daughters, let alone two who related better to a repressed Canuck like Fraser, but Katie was definitely Ray's kid. She was bratty and scrappy and had a chip on her shoulder a mile wide. Her teen years had been pretty awful. Smoking cigarettes (and worse) behind the gym. Screaming fights over dinner. The shaved head. The lousy boyfriends. The two-week period when she'd run away to the reservation at Paulatuk and declared her intention to live amongst her people there, even though no one recognized the bald girl with the red-rimmed eyes and the two white fathers hot on her trail.

Fraser weathered the storms of Katie's adolescence badly. He'd grown a little more cold and distant towards Katie every time the kid fucked up. Fraser loved her, deeply, but he just didn't get rebellion.

Ray did. Ray knew the steps to that dance cold. He was the one who picked up the phone late at night; who brokered deals with the school principal; who was at Katie's side when she returned the cosmetics she'd shoplifted at the Northmart. He'd been the only one to talk during the long, silent car ride back from Paulatuk after they'd finally found her. Ray'd sung along with the radio and told bad jokes and old stories about Chicago until Katie and Fraser were laughing along with him and speaking to each other again.

When they'd stopped for lunch on the side of the Dempster, he'd made Fraser repeat to Katie the same words he'd once said to Ray: vows of support, of sympathy, promises that he would always love her no matter what. Katie had cried into Fraser's shoulder and, for the first time, had said she was sorry.

"Sorry for what?" Ray'd said, and that had only made her cry harder.

***

But they'd all made it. Sometimes Ray is shocked by that knowledge. There were a lot of days, weeks, even months, when he'd never thought they would get through it all. Fraser'd been like the walking wounded during those years, and Katie had been so angry. She'd hated the isolation, the small horizons of Inuvik, Fraser's pained disapproval. The way she looked nothing like either of them, but didn't act like any of the Inuit around town.

Eventually Katie's anger had mellowed. She'd left, gone to Winnipeg, had a child. And her son, Akiak, had changed everything for her. As the years passed, she'd come to understand that Fraser's disappointment, and his silences, were mainly directed at himself.

It made a little more sense, Ray knew, if you understood that Fraser's love for his children was like the love of God: profound, inexplicable, and that he sat in judgment. He'd been raised by people who'd taught him that love was conditional. They'd admired thrift, praised cleanliness and resourcefulness and honor, but hadn't said much about affection. The qualities Fraser thought were the best parts of himself, the ones he had to pass on to his children, were the ones he understood best. When Katie hadn't accepted what he had to give, Fraser'd been convinced he had nothing more to offer.

It had taken him a long time to understand that he had much more to give his children. He had love. Unconditional and irrevocable love.

Molly understood. She and Jenny were, if not easy, at least easier. They adored Fraser, and Molly in particular shared a special bond with him. Ray was okay with that. He understood Katie's wild unpredictability and desire to be understood on her own terms. Molly was quiet, unassuming, and always seemed slightly shocked at her older sister's behaviour. She read scientific journals and textbooks for fun, and seemed most at ease with the family, or out tramping in the woods with the dogs. It hadn't surprised any of them when, after she'd left for university, Molly had called home and announced that she intended to study chemistry and that she'd fallen in love with a girl from one of her tutorials.

That phone call had almost been funny. Molly's voice, speaking softly and distinctly—Mouse, he'd always called her—preparing them for what she thought was a scandalous announcement. It was strange that Ray's queerness, and Fraser's, hadn't convinced Molly that they would understand.

Maybe it was because he and Fraser hadn't been very affectionate in front of the kids. They'd hugged each other, kissed, but some of the parenting books had said that too much of it in front of adopted children might make them feel uncomfortable. By the time they'd figured out what a load of bullshit that was, he and Fraser'd fallen into the routine of not touching each other much in front of the girls. In private, of course, they made up for it. More than made up for it, actually.

But if Ray could go back in time and do anything differently, he'd change that part. Mainly because he and Fraser had missed out on a lot of touching, over the years.

***

He wakes early on the day before Christmas, and a feeling surges through him that he remembers from childhood long ago. It's a heady sense of anticipation. Tonight, for the first time in four years, all of the members of their little family will sleep under the same roof.

Snow has been falling for days, which is unusual for this time of year. It's always dark, too, which throws Ray off even more. He finds he wakes much earlier than he normally would on a day off. Even Fraser is still asleep.

Not that Ray minds. They've shared a bed for eighteen years, but it still feels like a gift, this privilege to wake up in the early-morning dark and hear Fraser breathing, soft and regular, beside him.

Ray lies on his back for a while, staring up at the ceiling he can't quite see in the dark, and thinks about the day ahead. Breakfast, town, and then they'll hit the tiny airstrip where they'll meet Molly and Katie's chartered plane. He has to pick up Fraser's gift at Dave Kickinghorse's carving studio, too. Jenny'll help him come up with a distraction. And they need more flour, and some mushrooms. He's making Kluski z Kapuski tonight with the turkey. Akiak loves the noodles.

Otherwise they're ready. The fridge is full of food, and Fraser's done enough baking over the last few weeks to keep them in bread and butter tarts well into the New Year.

They've also got plenty of firewood, even though it's not strictly necessary. They put in a gas furnace since the kids were small, but Ray likes to have a real fire from time to time. Mainly when it's just him and Fraser. He likes what the flickering light does to Fraser's skin.

Whenever Jenny sleeps over at a friend's place, Ray builds a little nest of blankets on the floor in front of the hearth and watches Fraser get undressed, his pale limbs and broad white chest emerging gradually, brushed bronze-red by the fire. If the hot look in Fraser's eyes and the hard, wet kisses he presses to Ray's chest are any indication, Fraser likes what firelight does to Ray's skin, too.

Ray shifts a little and stretches. He's not really surprised to find that he's hard. His body is suffused with an easy, languid arousal caused by sleepiness and the comfort of their warm, wide bed. Fraser is still snoring softly beside him, and Ray rolls closer, one hand coming down to rest on Fraser's shoulder. His dick brushes Fraser's bare thigh.

Fraser murmurs something unintelligible and sighs, curling into Ray's touch. His skin is warm and smooth under Ray's hand, and, like always, Ray feels a hot coil of anticipation tighten deep in his belly.

Eighteen years. Christ. Maybe he's supposed to say that the early years, when they were young and crazy for each other, were their best. Back then, they usually couldn't be bothered with a bed. A nicety like a fire, or the accompanying slow striptease of seduction, hadn't been remotely necessary. They'd made love in tents, in snow banks, in the shower, and on the kitchen floor. They'd laughed about lost buttons and sliced-through bootlaces, and talked about swearing off zippers entirely.

But that was before kids. When Katie and Molly and later Jenny had become a part of their lives, they'd learned to appreciate a slower pace. Long nights of pleasure and privacy, safe behind the locked door of their bedroom. An island in the midst of a busy working week, and the frenzied rhythms of the school year. Given the heedless rush and hunger of the early years, and the long, slow, trembling silences of the last decade, Ray is looking forward to what might come next.

"Morning," he rasps, his voice rough from the early hour. He rubs himself a little more firmly against Fraser, who keeps his eyes shut. Even so, Fraser can't stop the twitch of his lips.

"Faker," Ray says, and kisses him. Fraser kisses him back, his lips warm and mobile against Ray's, but pulls back enough to laugh and shake his head at Ray's bristly chin.

"Good morning, Ray," Fraser says. His voice is a little raspy, and not because it's early. He's getting hard, too. "Sleep well?"

Ray shrugs, kisses the side of Fraser's neck, his cheek, whatever he can reach. He slides a hand up Fraser's back to cup the back of his neck and draws him close. "Yeah. I was dreaming."

He cuts off Fraser's inevitable question with a kiss. Ray doesn't like to talk about his dreams with Fraser, because Fraser wants to give everything extra significance, and he worries when Ray dreams of ravens or coyotes or sudden winter storms.

Fraser's mouth opens beneath his and Ray deepens the kiss a little as Fraser shifts and rubs his thigh against Ray's dick. They know each other too well; Fraser could bring him off in ten seconds, if he wanted to. But the goal right now isn't to race into pleasure, but to pace it out. They run marathons, these days.

He draws a line of wet kisses along Fraser's collarbone, moving lower to dip his tongue into the hollow of Fraser's throat. Fraser sighs and spreads his thighs apart. Ray moves between them, stretching out, getting comfortable. He and Fraser fit together like a tongue in a groove.

They fall into an old rhythm: Ray lines them up, Fraser's penis a hot length against his, and they thrust slowly against one another. Fraser's head drops back on the pillow: his body grows slick with sweat, and Ray watches, fascinated, as Fraser's eyes drift closed and he bites his lip, his skin flushing pink.

By now Ray knows Fraser's body as well as his own. He mapped it long ago, and has since committed it to memory. Sometimes he's had to make small changes to his mental map: a new scar on Fraser's thigh, wrinkles that have formed around his eyes and forehead, grey hair at his temples.

At 57, Fraser is still damn good-looking: he's thickened around the middle but his body is still hard and muscled. Ray's gotten skinnier, if anything, and he probably has more wrinkles than Fraser, but they don't look as different as he thought they would. Life up here has been good to them.

"How's that feel?" Ray asks, even though he already knows the answer. It comes out half-question, half-statement. "You want to—uhhh—fuck?"

"Well, it would be rather entertaining...under different circumstances," Fraser huffs a little, blushing. "But I'd rather continue as we are."

How Fraser can get that out while he's hard and leaking Ray will never understand. Fraser's always been a mystery, at least where his vocabulary is concerned. Ray nuzzles his earlobe, and whispers, "Maybe later tonight, hmmm?"

Fraser nods and clutches at Ray's ass, squeezing tightly. Ray gets it: Fraser just wants to feel him like this, their bodies pressed so close together, sweat and hot skin and the smell of one another surrounding them. They've always liked this: it was how they started out so many years ago. Moving against each other in the dark.

When Ray reaches between their bodies and gathers both of them in his hand, Fraser arches up a little and groans. All the times before, and all the times left to them, are colliding in his Ray's head. He sees Fraser at 40, at 45, at 50, at 60, now and always and later today, reaching up to kiss him and urge him on. "Now, Ray," he'll say, and Ray will wrap his hand around them both.

And Ray will move faster, harder, picking up the pace as they lose their perfect rhythm. Collisions everywhere, sparks in the atmosphere, then and now and later jangling together in his head like the perfect discordant song. It will feel so good and it won't last nearly long enough, but he'll still move faster and faster, rushing them both to the end. Fraser will come with a surprised gasp, and Ray will explode with a moan suppressed at the last possible second. They'll sag together, sweaty and sticky, like they have a thousand times before.

"I love you," Fraser will murmur into his hair, and Ray will smile. Maybe they'll sleep, after. Maybe they'll give it a few hours, and feel ready for a second round. Or maybe they'll shower, and go have breakfast with Jenny, and start the day.

Tonight they'll eat with their children. They'll sing songs, decorate the tree, and exchange gifts.

Then Ray and Fraser and the girls will venture out into the cold to watch the Northern Lights shimmer and dance above them. Like always, Jenny will claim that she can hear the snap and crackle of the Lights. Fraser and Molly will try to explain why that's just not possible, but the rest of them, even little Akiak, will argue against the dreary scientific facts.

"We hear it too!" they'll all say, and soon even Fraser will drop the pretense and stand, transfixed, as electric blues and pinks and greens ripple above them across the night sky. Fraser will wrap his arm around Ray, and Ray will rest his head on Fraser's shoulder.

They're older, but they're learning.

And then Ray will close his eyes, and think about what it means to live in a world full of invisible truths. Like gravity, and love.

He will listen to the silent, inevitable force of children growing up.

END

**

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TEAM REALITY: Day 14, "Truths Like Gravity"

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