GotR Challenge by nos4a2no9
Title: A word in a foreign language
Author: nos4a2no9
Pairing: Fraser/Kowalski
Rating: NC-17
Length: 2,160 words
Summary: Fraser’s having a tough time putting it all into words.
Author’s Note: Many thanks to ignazwisdom, arrow00, and j_s_cavalcante for providing excellent advice and editing suggestions, and to qe2 for her kind words and support. Those of you who might think four betas is excessive clearly don’t understand my deep, abiding problems with grammar, tense and punctuation. Would that we all had Michael Chabon’s grasp of language.

Inspired by the prompt: On swimming to the library at the heart of the world.

Sex, Fraser has discovered, is difficult to write about.

He’s been keeping a journal (Just like the old man! says the bright, jocular voice in his head, which he sternly ignores) and ever since his relationship with Ray changed, shifted, deepened, he has been consumed with the desire to record the new shape of his world.

He’s even made a little ritual of the attempt: after the Consulate closes for the day Fraser carefully locks the door to his office, sits at his desk with a fresh cup of tea, and opens his leather-bound journal. He writes the date. He records the temperature (high, low, and median) and notes the times of sunrise and sunset. Below that, in his neat, precise penmanship, he begins:

Last night Ray found me in my cot. I hadn’t been expecting him, and when I tried to rise he kissed me into silence, and slipped his hand into my longjohns--

But he loses his courage, and breaks off in mid-sentence. The pen comes up off the page and he cannot force it down, cannot even conceive of how to continue.

The vocabulary of sex he’s gleaned from erotic literature, from pornography, from American films...it’s all useless. How silly the words sound! Nipple. Tongue. Anus. And that most awkward of all words: penis. Should he refer to it as a “member”? A “cock,” or a “dick,” or, God help him, a “pleasure-stick,” as he’s seen it referred to in Frannie’s lurid romance novels?

The cold, clinical intonation of that word, “penis,” bears no relation to what he feels when Ray touches him there. The luxury of intimacy, the joy and pleasure and gratitude that wells within him, and makes him drag Ray closer for a deep, soulful kiss...none of that can be captured in the short, brutal syllable of “dick.”

And “sex talk,” that mysterious dialogue that exists between lovers, confounds him further. Two weeks ago Ray asked Fraser to “talk dirty” to him, but Fraser could only stammer a single “d-d-damn” and a clumsy, abortive, “fuck!” before lapsing once more into silence. Ray had paused in what he was doing--“God, don’t stop!” Fraser had wanted to cry--to look up at him in confusion: “Frase?”

But he couldn’t think of a suitable reply, couldn’t begin to explain to Ray, flushed and sweating and so very beautiful, what wild thoughts were going through his head. What were people meant to say to one another in such moments? Take me. Overwhelm me. I’m coming. Impossible.

Without the basic anchor of a workable vocabulary, the exposition of the act defeats him further. He’s seen the act performed in films and it has left him cold; sex in that context is nothing more than a tangle of limbs, a close-up of a sweaty throat or a naked breast or a thrusting penis (that word again!). Where is real desire? Where is tenderness, and fondness, and fierce devotion? How could all of that, all that he feels for Ray, all that Ray feels for him, possibly be captured in abstracted bits and pieces, in images or a jumble of words?

His failed attempts line the bottom of his wastepaper basket, a testament to the laughable streak of prudery within him that he cannot seem to control. Why can he perform these intimate acts so easily, but be so profoundly unable to write about them? Is it because he can’t hear the insistent, thrumming rush of sex in his maidenly descriptions? Truly, he cannot hear the rubbing, the sucking, the hoarse-voiced commands that inform his acts of intimacy with Ray. The scents of musk and sweat and rich, fragrant semen are entirely absent: the few words he wills himself to set down seem as though they’ve been freshly scrubbed with soap and water, diluted of power.

In the end he surrenders to the hopelessness of his task. He cannot write about the experience of making love with Ray. Fraser closes his journal and rinses out his tea mug. He pushes his desk out of the way and opens up his cot. He takes Dief for a walk. And when he returns to his office and lies down, he finally surrenders to the ebb and flow of his thoughts. Ironically, they swim freely now that they are safe from the unforgiving net of pen and ink.

No, it seems he cannot put his feelings down in easy, ordered sentences. But when he lies awake in the dark and touches himself and thinks of his lover, the words flow in the same way his body moves, so smoothly and effortlessly, into Ray’s. In the night it is suddenly possible to articulate the great tenderness that wells up within him at the thought of Ray nibbling playfully at the sole of his foot, or snatching the last piece of bacon at breakfast with a wolfish grin. Ray is so very dear to him, and sex is only a part of that.

This discovery, made late one night, has the force of revelation behind it. It renews his desire to record his thoughts on the subject. Fraser feels like a prophet or an explorer, and everything within him demands that he map this new land of satiation, of sweetness, so that others might follow and be absolved. If everyone could wake to find Ray sprawled next to them, his hair standing up in wild disarray, a faint sheen of sweat dewing his golden limbs, and kiss him awake...would there be a need for bloodshed and violence? No, he thinks, certainly not. To feel the brilliance of Ray’s smile, the secret thrill of Ray’s fingers laced with his, the ache of Ray buried deep within him...if everyone could know these things, surely that would demonstrate that theirs is a world worth saving.

But in the morning all that he understood the night before has vanished. In the harsh light of day, he remembers his own past, and his pen runs up against the trench of pain inscribed deep within his own flesh, scarred over but always, always present. The blunt, brutal realities of sex as he’s known it before make this new interpretation even more difficult to lay down in simple black and white. Now he has mercy, compassion, forgiveness. Before he had only a lie, and the cold hollow sheen of her eyes as she said those poisoned words: I love you.

Ray hasn’t said those words to him yet, nor he to Ray. He suspects they are coming to it soon, and he wonders if the simple phrase will seem adequate when finally given voice.

And so it goes. His insecurities and frustration build as his failures mount, and he dreads the cacophony of words that swirl so easily around him only after he has surrendered for the night. Ray, of course, notices his exhaustion, and invites him over more often.

“They’re working you to the bone at that Consulate, Frase,” he says. “Come over to my place. You can sleep in, at least.”

Of course he doesn’t turn Ray down. In fact, he does sleep better at Ray’s, if only because the simple fact of Ray's presence neutralizes the pounding need to record the details of their erotic life together. It seems less important to capture sensation in the face of it. And Fraser takes comfort in the solidity of Ray’s body: bone and skin and muscle, stubble and scars and sparse, sandy pubic hair. These things are tangible, real in a way that words are not.

Late one night (when he really should be sleeping, at least according to Ray) he lies with one cheek pressed into the hollow of Ray’s hip while Ray runs his fingers through Fraser’s hair, over and over.

“What’re you thinking about?” Ray murmurs. They are both half-asleep and drifting in the wake of several long, intense orgasms. It’s a cold night, but they are warm and content, and the security of it--of them--lulls Fraser into a sense of deep peace. He finds he has words enough for this, at least.

“I’ve been trying to write about you,” he confesses. Ray’s stroking hand does not stop, does not slow, does not even stutter.

“Oh? Like...in a novel?”

Fraser considers the question for a moment. What a character Ray would make! But no, no, that won’t do at all. He cannot even begin to document the reality of the man he loves, much less recast him as a fictional character.

“In my journal, actually.”

He can hear the shy, bemused smile in Ray’s voice as he asks, “What do you say about me?”

“Nothing, really.” He sighs and burrows closer. “That’s the problem. I don’t know how to write about--us.”

Ray’s response is instantly, outrageously confrontational. “Who says you have to?”

Fraser hides his smile against the curve of Ray’s hip. Wonderful man. “No one. But I’d like to set it all down.”

“Oh. How come?”

He’s silent too long; Ray is fully awake now, and curious. Perhaps he suspects that this is the root cause of Fraser’s insomnia, and the reason for the office wastepaper basket filled with the crumpled evidence of disappointment.

There’s a note of concern in Ray’s voice as he nudges Fraser’s shoulder and says, “How come you’re stuck, Frase?”

“My father kept a journal for nearly thirty years, Ray. He was an excellent writer: clear, direct, and unselfconscious. I feel as if I’ve come to know him through those journals, and lately I’ve felt the need to--”

“Write down all our dirty little secrets?”

When he looks up Ray’s mouth is serious, but his eyes are laughing.

“No. When I read my father’s journals, his words seem to bear the weight of history. All that he could never say in life--what he felt for me, for my mother--is in those journals. I want to leave some kind of legacy, Ray. So that, someday, people might read it and know that I...that we...”

Ray seems to sense he needs a rescue. “Yeah,” he says, and bends to kiss Fraser’s mouth. “I carved Stella’s and my initials into a tree trunk at the lakefront when we were fifteen. Got chased out by a park ranger. But they’re still there: RK + SW. I checked.”

When did you check? Fraser wants to ask. Or, why? But he pushes the question away as unworthy. He of all people should understand the impulse to memorialize.

He rubs a hand along Ray’s hair-rough thigh, and cups the soft, yielding weight of his--there is no better word--penis. Ray shifts a little and opens his thighs wider, and Fraser bends to taste him, once.

“I’d like to have tangible proof of this moment,” he says softly, and Ray’s eyes drift closed.

“Something you can hold in your hand?” Ray asks with a wry grin. He is getting harder, now; he fills Fraser’s palm. It never takes Ray long. “You want to go carve our initials into a tree?”

“Do you think that would be enough?”

Ray shakes his head. “Not a chance. Trees fall down, get cut down, die. And even if you could fill up a million books it wouldn’t be enough. Never is.”

How could you know that? More questions he can’t ask. Instead he waits, silently, and listens to the slippery-slick slide of his hand on Ray’s flesh. This act is so easy to perform: natural, and good. Why can’t he write about it?

“Fraser, maybe you can’t put this into words,” Ray huffs, arching his back. “Maybe that’s not the point.”

Ray groans then, long and loud, and Fraser answers in kind. He, too, is hard and aching.

“Then what is?”

Ray’s eyes fly open and he sits up, awkwardly, and wraps his hand around Fraser’s penis. They work together in well-timed unison. “That some things…are better…left unsaid,” Ray gasps.

Fraser’s hips jerk awkwardly and their easy rhythm is gone now, replaced by intense, mindless desperation. He hauls their bodies together and gathers them both in his hands; Ray is crying out, is coming, and Fraser thrusts wildly into his own hand and Ray’s, into the smooth, slick space they’ve made for one another.

When their breathing slows and he can think once again, Fraser kisses Ray.

Words fail him. But words no longer matter.

END