hackthis_archive | ds -Happiness is a Serious Problem

I was going to write gen-Ron/Harry for

lalejandra, but Harry was being a little bitch, like normal, so I had to bin it. I will try again tomorrow. I wound up writing due South for

serialkarma instead. *shakes head*

due South
Happiness is a Serious Problem

It occurs to Ray after he's barricaded himself inside the bathroom stall furthest from the door for the twelfth time this week, and pushed his jeans and his briefs down to his knees, that perhaps he's got a slight crisis on his hands. Metaphorically speaking though, since his issue isn't with the really persistent hard-on that he's got his right hand wrapped around or the fact that the wall of the stall is really cold against his bony ass. His problem is a bit larger than that. Actually, Fraser's not just a big problem, he's a huge, serious, six-foot-and-change problem, and the way Ray's desperately jerking himself off? That's a problem, too, because he's not using lotion and the friction-burn? It's going to hurt a lot in three, two, ...

"Ray? Ray are you in here?"

"No!"

Jerking off uninterrupted should not be a big problem.

Having a crush on his partner? That's a problem.

*

Between the coke-bottle glasses and the scrawny legs Ray’s always been a bit of a loner, which has always suited him fine, because his dad always used to tell him he never had to be liked by everyone.

When he was little he got be a loner with Paulie Padalecki, who lived three houses down and liked to fling his boogers everywhere, and when he was in school he had Stella, and the fact that she loved him was enough.

The problems only began once she didn’t love him anymore, but then he found Fraser and the problems didn’t go away, they just changed up a bit.

*

The way Ray sees it, this crush-on-Fraser thing is all a downward slope, like going to AA or getting on a dogsled led by twelve Dief clones. You take one step, like giving up the drink or actually getting on the sled, and then suddenly you've completely lost control. You give up on sex, you give up on dating other people and start dreaming about snow, and then you're jerking off to thoughts of your partner three times a day in the bathroom at work. But what really butters Ray’s muffin is that he couldn't even depend on himself to develop a crush at a convenient time, like when they were up north and still trapped together all the time; because then, if Ray had unceremoniously crawled into Fraser's sleeping bag, it could be written off as being cold instead of looking for a cheap grope.

But now? No such luck.

*

It's only after he's dropped Fraser off at the consulate and gone back to his apartment and his turtle and all those modern conveniences that Ray epiphanies, if one can epiphany, that maybe life up north wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing, because at least he'd be with Fraser, and even when Fraser didn't shower a lot and looked kinda like Nanook of the North, he was still Fraser. And to Ray, Fraser was pretty damn hot, even when he was all smelly and scruffy and licking things. After all, Ray could never have gone looking for Franklin's Hand with Stella, she wouldn't have lasted five minutes in that cold without demanding that they go to the nearest city and find a Four Seasons with serious heat.

*

His dad used to say that ‘Everything turns out the same whether you make it hard on yourself or not’, and Ray never really understood that idea until the day he watched Fraser spend fifteen minutes trying to pull open a door that clearly said ‘push’ on it because Fraser couldn’t see the problem from where he was; but from where Ray stood, it was as clear as day.

*

In the dreams that Ray concocted when he wasn’t busy jerking off or pretending that he wasn’t horribly crazy about Fraser, it never occurred to him that maybe he wouldn’t need some elaborate ruse to get Fraser into bed. Not once did he seriously think that Fraser would ever kiss him or touch him or show the slightest bit of interest unless Ray were in serious danger or shot or hanging out a window on the thirty-second floor of a skyscraper in the middle of downtown. Ray always thought the problem was that Fraser wouldn’t want him because Fraser wasn’t gay or bi or just not interested in Ray.

*

His mom used to say that there was ‘no such thing as the right time’, and the realization hits him between the eyes when he's counting his Smarties for his morning coffee, kinda like a sucker punch that he wasn't looking for, because he was going red, yellow, pink, green and then, suddenly, there's his mom’s voice in his head wondering why he’s making such a big hash of just trying to be happy. He can actually hear her telling his father that Stanley’s just being difficult again.

*

They’re sitting in the GTO well after midnight, and Fraser’s telling Ray some Inuit story about a moose and beaver or an otter or something furry, and he’s clearly trying to explain some problem he’s been having with something or other, but it’s all white noise in Ray’s head what with the realization that he’s just been psyching himself out the entire time. With every inflection of Fraser’s voice and every brush of his eyebrow with his thumb, all Ray can think is that the problem really isn’t anyone but him. It’s not Fraser or Stella or his worry that Fraser won’t love him back. The problem isn’t his crush – it’s his refusal to do anything about it. So he does. And the moment his lips touch Fraser’s Ray realizes that even if he’s wrong and Fraser doesn’t love him like Ray loves Fraser, it’ll be okay and they’ll survive, because the biggest problem in Ray’s life isn’t anyone else but him getting in his own way.

-end-

Beta by

serialkarma, remaining snafus by me.