by ren
Disclaimer: Not mine, not mine. I make no money only words.
Author's Notes: Not beta'd, mea culpa
Story Notes:
Carapace
There were days sometimes when it seemed he stood outside himself, watching his actions and interactions, judging the degree of his success in any given situation. It was a peculiar sensation; so much so that sometimes when he was back in his body he found himself running his fingers compulsively over his own skin, grounding himself with touch.
It brought a strange kind of comfort; the sensitive skin of his fingertips found every imperfection on his surface, belying the mask of perfection people insisted on seeing. The lie that, he had to admit, he had done his best to perpetuate. Not out of any vanity, though there was some measure of pride in his soul, but out of an instinct for self-preservation, honed since childhood into an almost tangible shell. A psychic carapace, fused into the cells of his skin and as cold and hard as the ice of his homeland.
Beneath it he found himself insulated from the world; safe, protected. Or so it had seemed. Until the strangers he helped in the name of Duty became people with faces and lives, and his surroundings started to become familiar, the rough alien edges smoothed into something resembling a home.
With every smile he received from a friend, the shell became less like armour and more like a network of bars, imprisoning him inside himself where it was cold. More and more, he found himself yearning for warmth.
For a while he thought he had found it in Victoria. The passion between them had burned hotly (or maybe, as he sometimes thought, it was just friction). But he learned almost too late that the addictive heat of her, the warmth he craved was deadly, its radioactive comfort deceptive as it leached the life from his blood.
In Ray Vecchio he found fire. Intense and colourful, impossible to resist, Ray's heat drew him in and offered shelter from the lonely darkness of exile. For a long time, content, he had remained with hands outstretched, close enough that he felt the chill inside himself begin to recede...until he reached too far and was burned by the flames.
Pulling back from the pain, cradling his abused self once again against the cold comfort of his own heart, he realised that it was too late. The damage was done; what ice had melted would never return. Never one to leave a job half finished he returned, only to find that the fire was gone.
For one moment, almost eternal, this new cold of betrayal threatened to shatter him completely...until a new voice called his name and he found himself embraced by the sun.
Even now, remembering this, the warmth inside him flared and caught, filling the empty places and melting a little more of the shell beneath the skin. Beside him, Ray's hair stood up from his head like white-hot tongues of flame. The fingertips resting on his thigh branded their prints into him like glowing pressure points.
"Ray, do you think I'm perfect?"
In this light, the eyes that turned toward him were the colour of ash, the flash of teeth brilliant beneath the wry twist of a grin. Ray's amusement lit the car's interior like a torch. "Um, hate to disappoint you buddy, but you're about as perfect as I am."
Fraser smiled, closed his eyes, and melted like a snowflake.