Episode Five: Nothing Would Be Easy Ever Again
Ray wakes up. Fraser’s father is gone.
Ray wakes up.
Benton’s heavy against his chest, one leg hooked over Ray’s. His mouth is open and his hair has gone experimental with sweat and sleep. He’s nothing like the imperfect freak who camped out on the floor of a dive apartment with his arms crossed over his chest and an alarm clock in his head.
Ray reaches out with his free arm to shake Fraser.
Ray stops.
He could pretend that he just doesn’t want to disturb Fraser’s rest, what with all that sleeping on couches and getting out before Ray wakes. Not to mention a wolf with a taste for trash-TV.
Ray could pretend. It’s what he’s good at.
But this is real.
Ray isn’t always good at words, but in that moment he woke, he could feel them. They’re trapped in his chest and his lungs are bursting and he’s drowning in words, explanations. Only he can’t let them out. Can he?
It would be so easy to wake Benton up. So easy, and then nothing would be easy ever again.
They’re solid, they’re good, and all it takes is Ray’s idiot mouth and they’ll just crumble to sand. The words are still pressing against Ray’s chest; it’s tight and Ray’s trying not to struggle with the breathing because waking Fraser would not be good.
Ray has to get these words out.
"Ben." It comes out like a breath, like a gasp, and if this was a cartoon, Ray would be holding his jaw closed with a look of wild shock in his eyes. And then his mouth would walk off his face and blab anyway.
But this is the real world, and in the real world sometimes things just work.
"Benton." It’s barely a whisper. "Ben, there’s something I’ve got to tell you, but I can’t." Because if Fraser was ready to run to try and escape a broken heart, then Benton would run right off the edge of the world and into the stars, if he thought it could fix Ray’s. "I know they’re real, the ghosts. I know that your old man follows you about and tells you the answers to pop quizzes. It ain’t important."
Ray’s breathing easier already. "I can’t talk to you about that, you’d have to trust me enough to tell me, and maybe you never will. And I get that, because I’m just as afraid as you are. A partnership where the… uh&helllip; partners are never afraid wouldn’t last long. Not if they’re not afraid of the important things. I’m not talking guns and submarines, Fraser, I’m talking about the things inside there.” Ray shifts smoothly – he doesn’t want to wake Benton – and places his hand on Benton’s chest. He can feel Benton’s heart beating steady and there’s the whoosh of Ray’s own heartbeat in his ears.
Ray’s trying to keep calm under all this. He’s not thinking of caribou thundering across the snow plain, but whatever Ray’s doing – and right now, Ray doesn’t know how he’s doing it – seems to be working. "And the thing I’m most afraid of is hurting you, losing you. ’Cause without you, it’s like being Dorothy in Kansas – everything is black and white; there’s no life in there, it’s just… It’s not like I expect this is to be Wonderland or anything, Benton. It’s just… you’re the colour; you’re everything; and I don’t want to be in a world without you no more." Ray thought he had colour so many times before, with Stella, with Jack, with people he barely even knew. And now he knows he was living his life in a monochrome rut and thinking he was one step from paradise.
"And I know it’s the same with you. You told me you were prepared to run to the Northwest Territories to avoid a broken heart; and when you said that, you stopped being afraid of it. Stopped being afraid of being hurt and started being afraid of hurting me. Only, I know you, and I know if you thought I was hurting and you thought you not being here would cure it, you’d do that in a heartbeat. You’re all kind of noble like that. I’m not noble, but&hellip:"
A single sob shudders, trapped in Ray’s chest. If Ray let it loose, it would break everything. Everything would shatter and the pieces would cut them both to the bone.
Ray tries to make out patterns in the nicotine-brown water stain on the ceiling, and all he sees are rats. He’s not going to make that mistake again. This isn’t Stella and he isn’t the Ray with the dive room and the rats in the rafters. He isn’t that Ray. That’s it, the problem.
"See, buddy, I’m going to ask a question, even though I know your answer’s ‘no’. Because you have to be sure, up there in the snow. You might take calculated risks, but you’re always certain. You have to be confident in yourself, know who you are and why you’re there, because otherwise, you’re deadski."
"If I tell you this when you’re awake, I’m going to wish I was dead, because there would be a big Benton-shaped hole in my life and everything would be back in black and white. And I don’t think I can live with that no more, even if I’m not so sure about&hellip:"
Ray’s getting off track, he needs to get back to the question. He doesn’t need to be any particular Ray in order to do this, it’s enough just to be here and know that he’s got to say it, even if he can only do it now, in the dark time between sleep and waking.
"You ever feel like you don't know who you are? I know you don’t ever feel that way. I’m not so sure about me, but maybe I’m just becoming somebody new, like this gig has cracked open my chrysalis and given me wings&hellip:"
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