Beta thanks to Brooklinegirl!
"When I was a kid, y'know, I thought it was cool when the power went out--almost like an adventure." Of course, Ray's standards for adventures were higher now, but back when he was a kid, what did he know? "It mostly happened in the summer. My dad would come home from work, everybody was on their porches and in their yards, trying to keep cool. Anybody who had popsicles or ice cream would be giving it out to every kid on the block, trying to get rid of it before it melted." The still, breathless heat of those days wasn't hard to remember, with Fraser wrapped around him so tight he almost couldn't breathe; between him and the covers Ray was a little too warm, but he wasn't the least bit tempted to move.
"Mm," Fraser said, a couple of seconds after Ray stopped talking, rubbing his ankle with one foot, prodding him to keep going.
"When I grew up a little it was just annoying, but when I got to be a cop I hated it. Was scared to death of it, tell you the truth." Ray shifted just a little, not away from Fraser exactly, but toward the cool air, where he could catch a breath. "Seemed like every summer got hotter, and you got people packed into these apartment buildings and all of a sudden I'm wearing a uniform and a badge and I'm responsible for 'em."
Fraser's hand spread and pressed against Ray's chest; he understood being responsible, after all.
"They'd send us out to check on people, old people mostly." Ray could still remember the smell. Old people sitting tight, waiting it out, we're just fine, sonny, thank you all the same. "One time I was going practically door to door, knocking, reminding people to drink water, telling 'em where to go if they needed help, and--and the landlord had to let us into one apartment, the woman there--she was sitting up in a chair next to an open window, great view of a brick wall six feet away, not a breath of air--she'd been dead for hours, but I--I touched her and she wasn't cold, there was no cold to get. She just squished, like--"
"Shh," Fraser said, against the back of his neck, tucking the covers more firmly about them. Ray gritted his teeth and stared at the wood stove. If he died tonight, he'd get cold, all right, and he sure as hell wouldn't squish. He'd freeze solid.
He'd come close enough to it three times already: once when they were going over the mountain, chasing Muldoon, but Fraser had gotten him moving again all right. Once on the adventure, which had led to waking up naked in a sleeping bag with Fraser, and after ninety seconds of confusion and yelling, that had turned out better than any other horrible experience in his life, up to and possibly including pissing himself during a bank robbery.
The third time had been the worst--he'd gone through a patch of rotten ice, helping searchers try to find Denny LaCroix after he'd gone missing, so he'd managed to combine almost freezing to death with almost drowning, that time. Two for one on ways he didn't want to die.
But Fraser had gotten him through all of that, and they'd get through this, too, and never mind the snow packing down around the cabin and the dead generator. They were bundled up in front of the stove, with Dief and the dogs in a heap a few feet away. The fire was stoked; they could sleep for hours without it going out, and there was enough fuel and water in the room to keep them warm and hydrated for days, and more pemmican and dried fruit handy than Ray ever wanted to think about eating.
Ray tried to focus on the feel of Fraser's body, pressed up tight behind him, the warmth of the stove in front of him, anything but the snow. It was getting hard to remember those hot days in Chicago, though. He shivered, just thinking about the storm outside, and Fraser's arms tightened hard around him, all of a sudden, like he was thinking about it too. Like snow wasn't where he belonged, like this storm even had him spooked, and that was crazy.
Ray thought of how gray Fraser's face had been when Ray woke up after that third time, and not just because he'd had to break the news that they stopped searching for Denny to get Ray to safety. The only thing worse than almost freezing to death had to be watching somebody you loved almost freeze to death. Ray would bet if Fraser were alone up here and a bad blizzard killed the generator, he wouldn't even have bothered to put on an extra pair of socks, let alone taken this many precautions.
The least Ray could do was keep talking, let Fraser know he was okay. "The worst part was the quiet," Ray said. "I didn't notice it when I was a kid--I was always around too many people, I guess--but when I was on patrol during power failures--the whole city would go dark. No trains, hardly any cars, nobody on the streets. Everybody just hunkering down and waiting. Chicago's not supposed to be quiet, I don't do so good with quiet. I'd start thinking crazy, like the end of the world would be like that, like one time the power would just never come back on."
Fraser's lips touched the back of his neck, and his breath was warm right on the ticklish spot. Ray shivered again, but he had to smile as he did it this time. "Well, Ray," Fraser said, in that warm, easy, storytelling voice of his, "I suppose we cannot entirely rule out the possibility that this is not an ordinary February snowstorm but in fact Ragnarok, but I assure you that the odds are excellent that the sun will rise tomorrow and eventually the snow will melt."
Ray snuggled down into the covers, dragging the edge of the candy-striped Hudson's Bay blanket over his nose. At this point, he'd have taken the hundredth repetition of the caribou-on-a-ledge story, so long as Fraser kept it up until they were both over the willies from this storm. "Rag-a-what?"
Fraser cleared his throat, settling in for a good long yammer. "Ragnarok, Ray. It's also known as Gotterdammerung, the Doom of the Gods. You see, the Norse people believed--"
Ray closed his eyes and listened.
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