Author's website: http://unhinged.kixxster.org

Disclaimer: Not mine, nor will they ever be, but it seems a shame to let them sit around collecting dust when they could be doing so many other fun things.

Author's Notes:

Story Notes: This was originally written for the Flashfiction "Telephone" challenge.

Telephone
By MR

"You're telling me you never played telephone?"

I shake my head. Despite his accusatory tone, I know Ray isn't angry. He's simply appalled (again) at my obvious lack of childhood socialization. "I've never even heard of the game, Ray."

"Why does that not surprise me?" He mutters, his binoculars focused on the warehouse. "You never owned a bicycle, you never went to a carnival and you never learned how to play baseball...of course you've never heard of telephone." He lowers the binoculars and looks over at me. "I bet you never read comic books, either."

"I did so."

"Were they yours?"

Ah. I scratch my eyebrow. "They belonged to Eric and June, actually."

He just nods. "That, my friend, is part of what makes you the freak you are. Jesus, Frase, you might've well grown up in a convent!"

"That's just silly, Ray. For starters, I'm not Catholic. Nor am I a woman."

I catch a flash of his teeth in the shadows; he knows I'm pulling his leg. "You dressed up as one once."

"Yes, but not a nun, Ray."

"Good point." He lifts the binoculars. "You know he's not coming, right? I mean, you and I are gonna spend all night sitting here with our butts getting numb and that dumbfuck is never gonna show up."

"You don't know that for certain."

"Yes I do. I told you, I get hunches. And my hunch is that Mr. Edward Carroll, a.k.a. Eddie the Shark is not going to be visiting this particular warehouse tonight."

We sit in companionable silence a minute. "Ray?"

"Yeah?"

"How do you play telephone?"

He lowers the binoculars and looks at me. "The best way to do it is with a large group of people. What you do is the first person thinks of something to say and whispers it to the person behind him. They whisper it to the person behind them, and so on down the line till you get to the last person. Then the last person tells everybody what they heard and the first person says what he actually said, and everybody laughs at how much it's changed between the beginning and the end. Because it does change. You're only allowed to tell the next person once, so if they don't catch it quite right, they just tell the next person what they /think/ you said."

The idea intrigues me. "Where did you play it?"

"Usually at school. Our teacher let us do it because she wanted to make us see how important it was to pay attention to what was said. That's what gets it all mixed up; because someone's not really paying attention."

"Can you remember any instances as to what was said?"

He leans his head back against the seat. "Okay. When I was in fourth grade, we played it one afternoon just before school was ready to let out for the summer. Richie Kauzlarich started it, and what he said was 'Billy kissed Alice underneath the slide.' There were 25 kids in the class, I think, so it took it a while to get around, and I was the last one to hear it. And by the time I heard it, it'd changed completely."

"What did you hear?"

He looks over at me. "'Billy pushed Alice off the slide.' I swear to God, that's what it sounded like. The teacher had everyone else tell what they heard, and we found out it'd started to mutate almost immediately. By the time Chrissy Belzer whispered it to Karl Ellison, it'd turned into 'Billy hit Alice underneath the slide.' And they were the fourth and fifth people."

I nod, feeling a sudden inexplicable sadness that I never got to play telephone; never got to mishear what was said, never got to laugh with the rest of the class over the mangling of the original phrase. What would we have said, I wonder. Something as child-like as 'Billy kissed Alice underneath the slide?' Or would we have chosen something more suited to the environment we lived in.

"The ice on Lake Halimede doesn't thaw completely until nearly May."

"What?"

I realize I said it aloud, and my face heats up. "I was trying to figure out what we would've said if we'd played it. Assuming I'd had a school to go to and a class to play it with."

"I'm sorry." Ray's voice is soft. "Didn't mean to make you feel bad. I know you were home-schooled."

"I don't feel bad, Ray." The knowledge that he can't see me blushing in the darkness of the car's interior makes it easier to say. "You're right, though. Perhaps part of the problem I have understanding things is the vast difference between how we were raised."

"I can't imagine what it would've been like, ya know? Isolated like that, I mean. How quiet it must've been. Where I lived was crowded and noisy, people talking and shouting, babies crying all the time. I remember the first time I ever went to Stella's house I couldn't get over how quiet it was. This whole big place, big as the first two floors of the apartment building where I lived, and nobody in it but her and her parents and her two brothers, and their cook and the maid. It was like another world." He snorts. "Kind've like coming here from where you'd spent your whole life. I was 11 when I met Stella. You were in your 30s before you ever set foot in a city this big."

"It was...different. I think the hardest things to get used to were the noise and the amount of people. It's never quiet here, even at night. There are more people in the neighborhood around the Consulate than there were in the largest town I'd ever lived in. Sometimes I thought I was going to suffocate."

"Hence the camping in the park."

I feel an inexplicable tenderness towards the man next to me. Ray Kowalski, who accepted me from the moment he saw me, who first made me realize that Chicago wasn't the hell hole I'd always felt it to be, who's camped out in the park with me numerous times, patiently listening to my Inuit stories. The man from whom 'Freak' is as much an endearment as it is a simple statement of fact.

"Ray?"

"Yeah, Frase?"

I clear my throat. "Is it possible to play telephone with only two people?"

He shifts in his seat, so that his face is no longer in shadow. "Dunno. I've never played it with only two people."

"It would greatly facilitate the likelihood of what was said not getting garbled."

"You mean things wouldn't get misunderstood?" I nod, not quite sure what to make of the look on his face. His eyes seem unnaturally bright, almost as if they're shining in the dark. He cocks his head to one side, considering. "Hell, go for it. Make up for lost time. You wanna go first."

I nod, pushing the part of me that's screaming this is a genuinely bad idea back down. Some things need to be said, and they need to be said in a way that will insure they aren't misunderstood.

Ray waves his hand. "Whisper away."

I lean towards him, achingly aware of our closeness, of the heat he's generating, of the way he smells. I focus on his right ear and block everything out but what I'm about to say. For good or ill, I will say it.

My lips brush against his ear, and I feel a small shiver run through him. He's totally still otherwise. I lick my suddenly dry lips, suppress the desire to lick his ear as well, and whisper softly. "Benton Fraser loves Ray Kowalski."

I draw back slowly, eyes fixed on his face. His expression is unreadable, except for his eyes. They look bigger, the blue of them shockingly apparent.

A moment, then he shakes himself, like a man waking up. His features soften, and he studies me a minute. He's almost, but not quite, smiling.

"Did you get it?"

He nods. "Want me to say it back to you?"

I close my eyes, offering up a brief prayer that this won't backfire as badly as I fear, that what I believe I've perceived in Ray, just below the surface, isn't simply my loneliness speaking.

Unlike me, Ray scoots across the seat, pressing his body against mine. I keep my eyes closed, unable to be as brave as he was and actually watch. All is silent, except for the sound of our breathing. Then his voice, low and husky, with just a hint of laughter in it, speaks. "Ray Kowalski loves Benton Fraser."

Inside me, something that was tightly coiled relaxes, and I open my eyes and look at him, face only inches away from mine. "You get it?" He says, voice still soft, and I can only nod, aware of the tears in my eyes trickling down my face, not caring that Ray sees me thus unmanned, not caring about anything but the words I heard.

He leans the last few inches and kisses me, such a sweet gentle kiss, and I return it in kind. When he draws back, I want to grab him and pull him close, kiss him harder, make what was, up to now, only a vague, half-formed hope real.

But he stays me, scooting away a little, and shakes his head. "We're still on duty, Fraser." He checks his watch. "Huey and Dewey should be here in about five minutes to take over."

"And then?"

He smiles. "Then we'll go back to my place and play some more. Cause you know, I got other things I wanna tell ya."

I realize I'm grinning back, not caring that I look like a complete idiot, incredibly content for the first time in so very very long.

"Greatness." I say, and Ray bursts out laughing.

FIN

End Telephone by MR: psykaos42@yahoo.com

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