Story Notes: Crossover with Slings & Arrows. Set between S2 and S3 of dS, and pre-canon for S&A.

She is not going to cry. She is far too old, and anyway, it's more of a cliche than she can bear, crying at the end of Romeo and Juliet.

Her eyes are burning. Shit.

In the darkness of the theatre, as Montague and Capulet say their sorrowful last lines to each other, she feels a handkerchief pressed into her palm. She looks up to see Fraser staring at her, his own eyes suspiciously bright. She turns away, then wipes her cheeks with the cloth.

The cast gets a standing ovation a few minutes later. She has to blink back more tears when the leads appear. It certainly doesn't help that Geoffrey Tennant could be Fraser's twin brother. It's eerie.

God, she hates this play.

Once the bows are over, she gathers her program and debates whether she ought to return the handkerchief, desperately pretending she is not sniffling. Fraser, ever solicitous, asks if she is all right.

She doesn't have the energy to snap at him. Instead, she forces a tight smile, doesn't meet his eyes, and says, "The leads were very...moving."

"Yes," he says.

They follow the crowd out of the theatre and onto the street. They get a few steps in the direction of the hotel the Canadian Cultural Interchange Commission has put them up in, and then he stops and asks if she'd like to take a walk. It is ten o'clock at night, and they're both wearing their dress reds, but they have to go back to Chicago tomorrow, and she's willing to do something foolish if it means she can pretend just a little bit longer that she is not his commanding officer, he is not her subordinate, and they are destined to never be more than that.

She tells him to lead on.

Because he is Fraser, they inevitably find themselves in a large park along the river, the grass plush under their boots and the water flowing merrily between its low banks. Swans, asleep near the water, mutter and sigh in avian dreams.

They don't seem to be going anywhere in particular, and so when they step onto a footbridge that crosses the river at its narrowest point, their boots thunk-thunking on the wood, she sits down, hanging her legs over the edge like a child.

He joins her, a decorous foot between them. The last of the long summer twilight colors the sky ahead, and she can just see his face when she glances sideways. Good. After her reaction to the play they just saw, she doesn't know that she could face him in the fullness of daylight.

They can't just sit here in silence, though, or at least she can't, so after too much of it, she asks, "What did you think of the play?"

He cocks his head, contemplative. "I thought it was excellent. As you said, the actors playing the eponymous characters were marvelously expressive."

She closes her eyes, pressing her lips together. "Fraser," she starts after a deep breath. "I...I'm afraid I lied to you earlier. I'm sorry."

"About what?"

She almost winces. "It wasnt the acting that made me...that upset me." She finally dares to look at him, and finds that he is watching her with a kind of understanding she both welcomes and fears. She doesn't know what he's going to say in response, and to be honest, she isn't sure she wants to know, so she rambles on. "You know, that used to be my favorite play when I was a teenager. I read the balcony scene so many times that I had it memorized, and sometimes I'd just recite those beautiful words to myself. They were like music." She points her toe and moves it in a circle, her boot just skimming the surface of the water. "I thought the way Romeo and Juliet fell in love even though their families hated each other was so romantic." Please, she thinks. She isn't sure she can get through this conversation any other way than this artifice, this pretense of dramaturgical discussion. "Later, of course, I realized that both of them were idiots. If they'd just thought for a moment, they both would've lived. Of course, then you wouldn't have a play."

He smiles just a bit at that. "People call it the greatest love story ever told, but I've always seen it as more of a cautionary tale--defy your parents, defy fate, and the universe will punish you for not knowing your place."

This feels exactly like the time a horse kicked her in the stomach when she was twelve, all shock and white-hot pain. She actually finds herself unable to breathe for a moment. "Oh," she finally whispers.

"On the other hand," he continues, suddenly turning to look right at her, fixing his most intense gaze on her face, "perhaps the point is that even so...they try. They know the odds are against them, but they still make the attempt, and make it wholeheartedly. And we always wonder if maybe this time, it will work out for them."

Her mouth has dropped open. His expression is so perfectly neutral that she has no idea how to read his words. "Fraser," she says, feeling shaky. Feeling, maybe, a little hopeful. "What exactly are you saying?"

His expression softens into something she might call wistful. "'I am no pilot,'" he quotes softly, "'yet wert thou as far as that vast shore washed with the farthest sea, I should adventure for such merchandise.'"

It's probably a good thing that night is almost fully upon them, or else the blush blazing on her cheeks would be visible from several meters away. When she started this conversation, she hadn't even been sure exactly where she wanted it to go, but she would not trade the path it took for anything in the world.

She is never, ever going to be able to wipe this smile off of her face.

"Not that I think you or any person should be referred to as 'merchandise,'" he continues, "but that is the text, and--"

"Fraser," she says, not about to let him talk this moment to an unnatural end. "Shut up." Before he can get out the "yes, ma'am" she knows is forming on his lips, she leans over and kisses him.