I had wings of fire with tongues of flames acting like feathers. They crackled and whispered to me with the soft sound of burning paper as they pulsed in gold, tangerine, azure, and cyan.

"Ray, you can fly," Fraser said. When I turned to look, he had angel wings too but his were traditional-like, white as snow when it's still swirling in the sky, before it hits the mean streets of Chicago. (And everywhere that Fraser went, that Ray was sure to go.) Beautiful, blazing pale against his red serge and sable hair. He looked comfortable with them, while I was fidgeting with the effort to be careful with mine, afraid I'd burn something.

Sure he was used to them. He's Fraser. Hell, maybe all Canadians really had wings, all "That's hardly the sort of thing we'd tell you Yanks, eh?"

We stood at the top of a cliff, with blue sky all around. I could feel the cool breeze ruffling my flames.

"You kidding me, Fraser? I never did this before. I never had wings before."

"You can fly. Just leap off."

I walked to the edge and looked down. It didn't have a bottom. I guess that was a good thing, since the big fear in falling was smashing yourself to pieces on something. But I heard that your heart could just burst way before you even hit. That would be a mercy, considering, I guess. Or I could smack against the side of the cliff on the way down.

"Yer nuts, Fraser."

"You simply flap your wings. It's instinct."

Oh yeah, it was that easy. Anybody could do it.

Hell, no.

Besides, I had some big wingspan on me, and I was afraid of burning Fraser to a crisp if I didn't move right. I mean, he just had feathers. He could fan me to death. If he moved them hard enough, they'd probably hit me pretty painfully. Me, I could kill him with one wrong shift, and what would I say? "Sorry, guy, I didn't expect to fry you because they just feel warm to me"?

"I can't. Can't move."

"Don't you trust me?"

"Yeah, you I trust. It's what I might do I don't trust. I don't know what I'm doing."

Then something pushed me over the edge. Something. Fraser. Fraser! Son of a bitch pushed me! I plunged and kept on going, screaming all the way.

The alarm woke me up before I died. I felt like I ran a marathon. When I reached over to turn off the alarm, I knocked the clock off the table. It kept screaming its head off on the floor. Oh, it was gonna be one of those days.

*****************************************************

I spent the day being an asshole to everyone. I knew it, but I couldn't help myself. I hated that. All grring and snapping at everyone, while the reasonable part of my head kept asking my tongue what the hell it thought it was doing.

It didn't help that I was having one of my uncoordinated days. Clumsy body, clumsy brain, clumsy tongue. Tripping on stuff, knocking stuff over, searching for words.

"Ray, did you sleep well?" Fraser asked. Again. Man's been mother henning all day. Did you sleep well. Do you feel well. Are you eating right. When I asked why he asked, he said "nothing," which was passive-aggressive for saying I looked like shit and was ripping into him unfairly.

Of everybody around me, he kept getting the worst of my anger, but he kept bringing it on himself by annoying me. And he was there more. Plus, my subconscious reminded me once in a while that Fraser's the guy who pushed me off a cliff. Unfair? Stuff it.

"Like the dead, Fraser." Grr, snap tone.

"I see." He leaned back in the passenger seat and went back to looking out the window. Temporary retreat. Soon enough, he'd be niggling again.

Might as well give it up and save some trouble now. "I didn't sleep well."

"Ah."

Grr. "I'm gonna punish you for ticking me off like this by telling ya the dream that messed up my sleep. Nothing bores people more than hearing other peoples' dreams."

"Actually, Ray, many cultures feel it's important to share dreams to--"

"Fraser."

"Understood. Please tell me about your dream."

"Right. Well, I had these fire wings."

"Fire wings?"

"Wings made out of real fire. Y'know, like the thing you tell campfire stories around. They were all pulsing and shifting in orange, yellow, and blue. Wings. But fire."

He was looking at me real weird, all penetrating like, like he was aware of every inch of me. It made me shift in my seat. At first I thought maybe he was thinking I was a loony, but that wasn't the look, quite. Then I got it. He was imagining me with the wings. He had this smile in his eyes....

"Wings of fire.... There was a fiery bird in mythology, Ray. It-- Oh."

"That was the suicidal bird, right? The one that offs itself once in a while? Now I feel better."

"But the phoenix always rises from its ashes, Ray, starting a new life. It's a symbol of rebirth, renewal, hope."

"It's a symbol of me needing to get my head examined. It probably means nothing anyway. So, you were there too, and you had these snowy white, feathery angel wings. You were an angel, of course."

"I believe that your wings would make you an angel as well."

"Really? Didn't think about it that way." Still couldn't, not really. "We were at the top of a cliff, and you told me that if I could jump, I'd fly. I said, Hell no. Then you pushed me off. I woke up before I died."

"I would never push you off a cliff."

"No? Not even if you thought you were gonna save me over my own protests?"

"In that case I would simply convince you of the right thing to do."

"You think I'm maladjusted, don't you?"

"Excuse me, Ray?"

"Like I'm just putty in yer hands, like you could talk me into anything." Got it. "Malleable. I'm probably maladjusted too, but I meant 'malleable.'"

"I don't think you're malleable at all."

"You saying I'm hard to deal with, then, that I don't know how to work with others?" Grr, snap. Damn. "Sorry."

Fraser smiled at my apology. He had a really great smile, when he let it out. It always brightened his whole face, like everything on him was smiling. "'Malleable' means 'easily molded,' suggesting that the malleable person or object has no will of its own. I'd say you were flexible."

He thought I was flexible? It took me a bit, but I got my mind out of the gutter. He didn't mean it that way; he would never mean it that way. "'Flexible.' This isn't like one of those times you do something shady and you use some kind of euphemism to make it sound like ya did everything okay, is it?"

"I don't do that."

"Of course ya don't."

"The only way I would ever push you like that would be if you were in imminent danger and I didn't have the time to convince you. If you were malleable, convincing you would take very little time."

"Okay. I can see that." Kind of flattering of him to say that. Oh, wait, this was the son of a bitch who pushed me off a cliff. Grr.

"Ray, you have to go back to this dream."

"What? Why?"

"You have to see that you can fly."

"Yer so sure of that?"

"Positive. It's actually quite easy to affect your dreams if you know the techniques."

At least being paired with Fraser made me feel like the sane one in the partnership. "I don't *wanna* go back."

"I feel that it's important you achieve a feeling of closure. I believe your subconscious is trying to tell you something."

"It could be telling me I miss getting pineapple on my pizzas."

"Ray, you must do this."

"Like hell."

******************************************************

Damned do-gooder Mounties. Thank you, Mr. Helpful. What he said took me from thinking "weird fucking dream; glad it's over" to "weird fucking dream; now I have to go back because I have something to prove."

He was so full of helpful advice too, but his techniques for lucid dreaming were mostly undoable for me. My replies to keeping a dream journal, no longer using an alarm clock, and somehow waking myself right up every time I finished a bit of REM sleep consisted of "no time," "I'd never get up for work," and "you gotta be kidding me, right?"

The only thing that I felt I could do was think real hard about going back to that dream right before I went to sleep. I thought "fire wings, fire wings" every night before bed.

Finally, on the third night, I was back. Kind of. I had the wings, but no cliff or Fraser. I had Chicago, though, with all its people. My place, my people, love 'em or hate 'em. They hemmed me in close, which scared me until I saw that my wings did diddley-squat to them. One guy even looked like he was using the fire as a kind of heater for himself, basking near them.

I had this urge to move, but the rush hour crowd trapped me in place. Looked like I'd have to fly. Hell, this was a dream; I could do anything I wanted, right? I remembered Fraser telling me to flap my wings--which made sense--so I did and that lifted me up a bit. Maybe this would work after all. I flapped and thought "Up." And soared into the sky like a bat out of hell. It was great. The wind, the speed, the height....

I could fly on my own, no Angel Frasers or cliffs necessary.

Whooping, I did loop-de-loops in the air until the alarm woke me up.

*****************************************************

"You're whistling, Ray."

Huh. So I was. "Yeah. Funny." I went back to my paperwork.

"Ray... did you-- Hmm."

"Yeah?"

"Never mind."

I knew what he was trying to find a way to ask. "I flew last night. I ascended into the sky on wings of fire. It was great."

"Then I was helpful after all?"

"You weren't in it, actually."

"And you flew?"

"Like a bird. A big fiery bird."

"Oh. I see. Was my presence the first time an obstruction, then?"

Most people hearing his voice would describe it as a talking-about- the-weather voice, but Fraser is spoken here. I knew better. His tone made me look up, and I could see the disappointment hiding in his eyes. I couldn't let that continue. "Yer advice from last time helped, though. A lot. Couldn't have done it without you, buddy. I just have to do things in my own time, ya know."

It worked. Fraser smiled. "I'm glad I could be of assistance."

"It was fun having you." Oh, if only.

"I do have a question that only came to me last night as I considered your dream experience."

"You were thinking about my 'dream experience'? Yer *calling* it my 'dream experience'?"

"Of course. I felt honored to be taken into your confidence on this matter and tried to see if I could offer you more insights."

"Freak. It's a *dream*. Okay, hit me with it."

Fraser's grin deepened. Darkened, even. It was sexy as all hell. "Do you really see me as an angel, Ray?"

Oh, shit. He'll never let me live that down.

*********************THE END************************

More Viridian5 stories can be found in The Green Room at http://members.tripod.com/~drovar/viridian/
Fandoms represented: due South, Hard Core Logo, X-Files, Once a Thief, the Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie, Angel, Two Guys and a Girl (was Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place), X-Men, Doctor Who