Notes: Written for Remix Redux IV. Remix of Celli Lane's fabulous Summer Is.
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Winter is Victoria.
It had once been a time of peace, a time when snowdrifts would pile up to the roof and neighbors would become a distant memory. Just the thought of stepping out the door would cause fingers to ache with cold and toes to curl up inside three pairs of socks, and you loved it, every second of it, because it was home.
Then in the space of only a few days, it had become the painful sting of snow, unrelenting in the darkness, and the taste of frostbitten fingers against your tongue. It became nothing but the memory of coming face to face with death and discovering that it didn't have a face at all, just a voice, howling mournfully across the frozen mountainside.
Now winter is the sound of a gunshot, the slice of pain across your spine that still flares up every so often when the wind is blowing the wrong way. It's the way the windows rattle as you lie awake at night trying not to dream, and it's the realization that the snow will never again be a refuge for you.
Fraser has come to dread the winter.
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Winter is an endless stream of complaints from the driver's seat as you stare out the car window and let them wash over you without registering the words. It's the way you know that they're the same complaints you heard yesterday and the same ones you'll hear tomorrow; and more than that, it's the fact that you don't mind.
It's feeling the car slide a little on the ice and glancing over to see Ray looking at you out of the corner of his eye with that dangerous smile on his face, knowing that he did it on purpose. Coming out of the consulate and receiving a snowball to the face as a hello, and secretly finding just the slightest bit of vindication when Dief's enthusiastic greeting sends Ray skidding across the icy sidewalk into a snowbank.
It's leaning on a fence, watching the neighborhood children playing hockey in the frozen park, with Ray yelling coaching tips from the sidelines that nobody listens to. The way the sun sets early now, and the game is lit only by the blinking fluorescent lights above, sending shadows skittering across the ice while the skies open and snow begins to fall for the third time this week. Watching Ray under those lights and the snow, with his eyes looking no older than those of the children before you.
It's getting caught watching him, reaching out to brush the snow from his hair and both of you laughing at the way his glasses are fogging with his breath. Turning and walking away and leaving the children to their game because the diner across the street is calling your names with the blinking sign outside that promises hot coffee.
Fraser finds that he once again loves the winter.
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Winter is a sky that spells snow hours before a single flake falls. And then when it comes, the snow falling sideways and up, but never down, because between the buildings of this city even gravity has learned to yield to the wind.
It's Ray sprawled out naked across the bed, layers of clothes lying forgotten on the floor beside him, eyes telling you that you're all the warmth he needs. It's the drops of melted snow still clinging to the ends of his hair that taste like gel and him as you lick them away. How he doesn't let you taste him, but rather demands it, hands insistent on your shoulders, in your hair, trailing chilled fingers down your arms as your lips find each spot on him that the snow has touched.
It's the way the cold and snow are forgotten as your skin presses against his, sticking and sliding and creating such glorious warmth that you think you can hear the storm subsiding outside. Wanting Ray, wanting him so badly you forget to breathe, forget to think, forget to feel anything but the silk of his skin against you, the unbearable heat of his mouth clinging to your throat, your stomach, the trembling flesh of your thighs. Wanting him like you've never wanted anything, in any season.
Ray's hands, afterward, drifting lazily across your ribs, reaching down to pull the blankets over both of you as the sweat cools on your skin. He is summer beside you, all heated skin and sleepy smile and eyes that could put any August sky to shame. And outside the storm hasn't stopped, in fact it's gotten stronger, and you watch out the window as the drifts climb higher, until you can't see anything at all and the world outside has become a distant memory, and winter is peace again.
Fraser never wants the winter to end.