Last night I heard you crying in your sleep

[dogsled]

WHO: Benton Fraser and Stanley Kowalski
WHERE: De Chima
WHEN: January 30/31stish
WHAT: Ray returns home, but Fraser doesn't know how to help with what he's been through
WARNINGS: Mentions of trauma, possibly cannibalism.

[ Fraser didn't know what he'd expected--maybe for everything to snap right back the way it was when they got home? They'd been through terrible things in the past, both of them, almost been drowned - Fraser one time more than Ray - almost died out in the snow - again, Fraser one more time than Ray - and worse things still. But this? He hadn't realized quite how this would affect him. It had really hurt Ray, and though they'd smiled at each other and embraced and said all sorts of sweet things, Ray had quickly fallen silent.

And Fraser hadn't known what to do about it, after that.

He watched Ray settle in with beers and television, watched him sink back into memories of where he'd been and what he'd seen while he was there, and Fraser didn't know how to snap him out of it. It was like there wasn't a way to break the cycle. So he watched, and did his best to keep Ray occupied and happy, and didn't make him talk about it. His own diplomatic mission had left him exhausted, but he'd gotten what he wanted--he'd gotten Ray back. So why was it still so hard?

Toward evening he stepped out with Diefenbaker and North, to walk them around a few blocks. Coming back up to the door, he let himself in, quietly urging the two dogs inside. ]

Okay. Now relax, it's settling down time. Ray?

[ He didn't expect a reply, but he pushed ahead anyway, back into the tiny living room in their tiny home, afraid but hopeful. Maybe Ray would be better now than he'd been earlier. Maybe. ]

Comments

[cuff]

[ Ray didn't quite know what to do now that he'd returned home. It was weird, the whole disappearing act without his consciousness thing (aka kidnapping; it was definitely kidnapping), showing up somewhere else out of the blue and now being delivered back to his newfangled home as if it was no big deal. Days had felt like months somehow and the strain of not eating, not sleeping, pounding on the walls and shouting his head off had led to a resolute silence that he couldn't seem to kick.

It just made it that much worse that he couldn't yank the words out to tell Fraser what was up. He wanted to shout about it, flail his arms wide and talk about every miserable second but it all jammed up inside and refused to budge.

And so he plopped in front of the tv and lined up beers like toy soldiers along the ground, so that when Fraser made his return with the dogs, he didn't flinch quite so much at the sound of the door opening, expecting something rotten to happen all over again. The chaos of waking, of the rescue, of everything kept circling in his mind and it at least quieted to a dull roar behind the window of beer.

North still came trotting around beside the couch as Ray twisted about to look over at Fraser, craning his neck and nearly looking upside down to get a so-called better look at the other man. It just felt weird being back, like he couldn't pinpoint where his comfort was supposed to exist and yet he still wanted to break it all down in an instant. Let it be without restraint. ]

Right here, Ben.

[ 'You woulda liked Antarctica,' are the words that creep in at the back of his throat, something desperate and needy and stupid and so very uncalled for. And so instead he just looks, eyebrows raised with dumb expectancy, forever playing the idiot to save himself the grief of anything more. ]

[dogsled]

[ Fraser didn't know how to be more vocal, or any more pushy about it, than he already was. It was hard, and he knew that Ray was traumatized, God knew he'd seen it enough times in his work. But actually dealing with it, trying to pick his way through it, or at the very least find a thread so that he could start to unravel the armor that Ray had built around him--that was nearly impossible.

He plastered a smile to his face that was as transparent as he felt it was, and then went about returning the unused leashes to the hatstand, making idle conversation as he did: ]

I didn't need to use the leashes at all this time. North finally seems to understand the need to stay with the pack.

[ The number of times he'd had to send Diefenbaker to retrieve the pup when he ran away, off the leash, but things were looking up--Ray had to be happy about that, surely?

But perhaps not. Fraser took off his running shoes, and set them by the door, locking them in the little shoe cage that protected their sneakers from hungry, teething little mouths in the middle of the night. ]

Are you feeling any better? Did you eat anything?

[cuff]

[ It was, honestly, good news. The little stinker had a habit of running off when he felt like it, Dief chasing him down only to have the whole cycle repeat itself after a few minutes. Walks were spent dragging North back into the fray more often than not and to know that the little guy was finally getting into the swing of things meant that maybe hard work was starting to pay off.

Ray was just having a hard time representing the news with more than a few interested shakes of his head, nodding along with interest until he realized that Fraser had asked something else. Right, yeah, carrying on with the conversation.

He just couldn't help the slight grimace at the mention of food. ]

Y'know, i'd planned on a fucking feast when I got back. Even talked about it, second day I think, except the place made me lose my appetite. Stuffing the damn astronaut food through the door.

[ Waving a hand around dismissively, Ray tried to ignore the actual images that flickered behind his eyes, crushing them down theatrically in the back of his brain where they didn't have to be considered. It was the stink, the bones, the chaos that had quashed his need to eat anything and now it was praying on his mind badly enough that he bounced up off the couch and proceeded to start on a lap around the room, bypassing North as he skirted around his feet. ]

They cannot actually feed that crap to people up in space.

[dogsled]

[ Fraser was concerned, of course. He knew his partner well enough that he knew the moment Ray was upset beyond thought, like when he'd flung that poor man down on the front of a car and jumped on top of him, all but ready to blow his head off.

This wasn't just like that, but it had its own elements of wrong. Ray was drinking, wasn't eating, and he was irritable--more irritable than usual. Fraser knew he was trying to work his own way through it, but there was only so much that Ray could manage without help. Just like Fraser, sometimes he needed to be pulled out of his own head.

He approached, carefully, his face twisted into obvious concern. He could try and take his mind off it, perhaps ask Ray to dance, or they could try and talk it through, but Fraser didn't know which of his go-to solutions would be best.

He sat down, though, on the other end of the couch, and looked attentively at his partner, silent, just waiting for him to talk again. ]

[cuff]

[ Some part of Ray wanted Ben to say something; anything. Wanted him to come up with some kind of magical reply that would put everything in its rightful place, would make it all feel okay in that way that he did that seemed to ease the world into some semblance of sense. Would make him stop wanting to jump every time he heard something weird or thought the universe might be sneaking up to drag him off all over again.

Because maybe, at the end of the day, that was the worst part. Knowing he didn't have any control over this, what had happened to everyone - the fleeting feeling that everyone had slipped through his fingers. And feeling like he'd get snatched at a moment's notice, leaving nothing behind.

Though, being stuffed in a room full of people with no supposed hope of rescue was enough to addle his brain in equal measure.

Pacing in the other direction, in a space of a few seconds Ray went from wrapping an arm around himself, to dropping his hand on his hip, to gesticulating with the beer he still held in his grasp. The silence was already starting to make him itch and he couldn't take waiting for Ben to speak up, staring at him like he was watching him crack from the inside out. And maybe that's exactly what he was doing, Ray couldn't tell, already rubbing absently at the back of his neck. ]

Not that we were in space. But y'know, those guards. Those- they couldn't have been paid enough, y'know? There is no way, all the shit they took. Not that they didn't deserve it, but not- they didn't deserve all of it.

[dogsled]

[ Fraser was nervous, to tell the truth. He didn't know what Ray might have to say, what he might have gone through, and half of him was afraid that it would turn out to be untenable, as though there was nothing in their past experiences that could help them to work through it. It was almost fear, but it was nothing, he knew, to how Ray had felt locked up in the cold, not knowing what would happen, or if they'd even be rescued.

If not for the trip to France, Fraser wouldn't have known what to do to help. Considering he'd been prepared to walk right into the Kremlin and start stomping his foot.

The moment he was sitting, Ray was on his feet, pacing like a caged tiger, his anxiety undulating from his surface like vibrations from a speaker, bass thrumming.

It was best to just let him go, when he was like this. ]

Didn't deserve what, Ray? What happened to the guards?

[cuff]

Ahh-

[ How do you say bad things when all you want to say is nothing at all. Because Ray would much prefer not having any vivid stories not tell, like nothing much awful had happened apart from the actual kidnapping. He'd prefer just panicking over the simple fear of it; waking up somewhere you shouldn't be, worrying that they were niggling their way into his brain just because they could. It's even not like he'd taken part in a good portion of it, truth be told, but it still resonated somewhere in his head, bouncing around like he was the one who'd done it all.

Stopping for a moment to scrub the toe of his sock at the floorboards, Ray narrowed his gaze, trying to assess the moment and pick out the right things to say, if anything at all. It wasn't like he'd done anything wrong.

Except he hadn't stopped any of it either. And that was on his head, wasn't it. ]

I dunno if you gotta pluralize it, I think it was just, y'know- one guard. Not like we were stuck in there for weeks. But yeah, no, that doesn't make it any better, does it? Don't even know my way around a damn skeleton.

[ Maybe he should try a little harder to make sense but instead Ray just shook his head, turning and maneuvering his way back the other direction. ]

[dogsled]

[ The moment Fraser thinks he's beginning to understand, Ray goes off on a tangent that leaves him reeling, completely lost for words and direction. It stops making sense to him at once, and a thousand terrible things flicker through his mind, starting with the sensible kind and then spinning into the supernatural: a skeleton guard, for example.

He frowns at Ray, uncertain, unhappy for him, and then carefully just folds his hands in his lap, bright eyes flicking back up toward him. ]

I know it's... I know it's hard, Ray, but perhaps if you started at the beginning. There was one guard? Only one?

[ But Fraser is thinking that there was one guard guarding them for weeks, and the gruesome truth? Of all his potential imaginations, what really happened on that submarine hasn't occurred to him. His mind wouldn't even drift toward imagining it. How could it? He'd seen terrible things in Chicago, but Hell, he'd never seen that.

So he looked at Ray perhaps more expectantly than he would do if he knew what was coming, with sincere sympathy, yes, but nowhere near actual understanding. ]

[cuff]

[ The fact that Ben's looking at him like he's talking about picking up gardening isn't something Ray entirely knows what to do with. Not that it's any different than usual, the bright-eyed stare down that's entirely too gentle, coaxing, as if anything that could possibly be said here will be okay. The trusting look, the thing that Ray hates to ruin, the gentle touch that he's convinced himself time and time again that he's going to somehow smother is staring him down.

Which is maybe the one reason he says it. ]

That got eaten.

[ Ray stares back, eyebrows raised, feeling like he's somehow just told the punchline to a very bad, very inappropriate joke. One of those things that flatlines with the audience so bad you can hear the static like friction in the air. It sours everything around and Ray feels his insides go cold seconds later, aware that he screwed it all up without even knowing what he should've done to make it all stop. It's not like he could've changed any of the outcomes, couldn't have known what was going to happen or how to throttle someone through the door, but there it all was and nobody did anything but gape. ]

Nobody did anything, y'know? Hell, I didn't do anything, I should've- [ Ray comes up entirely empty handed, waving a palm through the air, trying to grasp for words while his mind goes blank and his eyes go bleary. ]

If I could've just gotten my hands on one of 'em..

[dogsled]

Who--

[ Fraser stared, worried and concerned, and a moment later he moved up and forward, reaching out to grip both of Ray's hands. He looked sick, a little like a lost puppy, maybe a little broken too, like he was supposed to do something but had suddenly forgotten how to walk, or talk, or think.

He didn't know how to process the information he was being given, even. Cannibalism? How did cannibalism come into this? Why? Had Ray eaten human flesh, was that why he was so cut up? Fed guard by the Russians? That's insane. He doesn't believe it.

But he believes Ray even if he doesn't believe what he's being told. Please. It has to be something else. ]

What do you mean, Ray? The guard... You ate the guard?

[cuff]

Me?

[ For a few seconds, Ray managed to look highly offended by the possibility, before something closer to worried shock slapped across his features. Ben actually thought he partook. Like he'd somehow been a part of the whole thing and Ray was suddenly frantic despite being unable to move his hands in Ben's grip, harried and terrified all at once. ]

I didn't- fucking, no way. They gave the rest of us the shitty astronaut food, I told you that first. Not like we were all in there long enough to lose our minds.

[ Shaking his head vehemently, Ray tried to rewire his brain to find the right words so that he could make some semblance of sense. He didn't know how to say it when he hardly knew how to explain it himself and he came up with slumped shoulders, giving in to the gravity of the situation. ]

It was one kid.