My Heart in Hiding	  My Heart in Hiding

 by Cara Chapel

  

 Author's Website: https://www.squidge.org/~pumpkin/cara/caraindex.html

 Disclaimer: Owned by Alliance and borrowed by me. No profit was made and
no Mounties were injured in the making of this fic.

 Author's Notes: 

 Story Notes: 

 

  

 "Everybody loves the sound of a train in the distance. Everybody thinks
it's true." 

 --Paul Simon, "Train in the Distance"	

 The night was cold and still, and sound traveled for miles through the
heart of the city, pulling Benton Fraser from his warm bed. Trains moaned
in the distance, a siren song luring him to the window. Its bubble of cold
raised gooseflesh on his arms; in spite of his careful improvements the
old tenement was still drafty. Frigid air seeped around the windows,
evading his careful caulking, but to a man raised in the heart of Yukon
winters, it was hardly noticeable. 

 There was someone in the street, turning in a flash of long flowing coat;
for a moment his mind superimposed a familiar figure on top of the
stranger like a slide and his fingertips tightened around the window
frame, whitening. 

 Dief lifted his head, giving an inquiring whine; Fraser ignored him. The
dim flame of the kerosene lantern wavered in the warped glass, and his
eyes filled, shattering the image into the reflection of a thousand
candles. 

 *She's not coming back. And why in God's name would you want her to?* 

 The answer to that, at long last, was that he wouldn't. Didn't. Couldn't.
But the train whistle still haunted him on cold winter nights, like the
sound of her voice. Sometimes he could almost make out the words.
Sometimes the train cried aloud in anguish in spite of all that anyone
could do to soothe the ache of loss inside him. 

 Ben. Come with me. 

 He walked quietly into the kitchen and opened the cabinet, taking out a
single candle. Lifting the mantle of the lantern, he lit the candle and
watched the wick blacken and curl in the flame, wavering in the drafty
apartment as he drew it back and held it upright. The train moaned again
as he shielded the fragile flame with his palm and he carried it to the
window, knowing and not caring it lit his face and made him visible from
without. 

 A few icy flakes swirled down out of the sky, and he felt tears well
perversely as the low wail faded into the distance with a sound like
death. Then the flurry thickened, muffling and silencing the echoes across
the city of trains in the night, speeding away throughout the land to
destinations unknown, never to return. 

 "Benny?" A sleepy voice from his bed. Ray. He listened as the secondhand
bed creaked and the covers rustled, counted the slow footfalls against the
floor. Warm hands settled on his shoulders; Ray's mouth touched his neck.
Ray's body settled against his, warm and comforting, and the tip of Ray's
generous nose traced the curve of his ear. Ray knew his moods and had
never seemed to resent them, not even this one. 

 "Come back to bed, Benny." Ray's hand moved to settle over his heart; Ray
waited patiently for his decision. If he returned there, Ray would hold
him and kiss the loneliness from him, love him and remind him how it truly
felt to love someone. The peace and joy would lull him to sleep and in the
morning the city would be white and Ray would make coffee and she would be
forgotten again. Until late some other winter's night, when snow was
starting to fall and the wind was still, and the low train sounds would
reach him and make the scars she had left in his heart ache again. 

 He bent his head and blew out the candle, then followed Ray back to bed. 

End