Fraser,

I don't want to fall in love with you.

You are so, so -- I don't know. Me and words, we never got on that well. When I want to say something, something real important, I don't use words. I can't. They choke me if I try. They scare me, words, 'cos it's so easy to say something without really saying it. It's so easy to say the words you've been thinking and dreaming for months and then... and then you see the other person's face and you *know*, without even asking, that they don't have a clue what you mean.

It's so easy to say what you mean and not get heard. It's so easy to say what you *don't* mean and get heard. Words can really fuck you up.

You dance with words, Fraser. Did I ever tell you that? No, no, of course not. You dance with them, and you build walls with them, bright beautiful walls that are so pretty no one notices they're made of solid granite. Long words, short words, you know them all, you know their power -- and you use them to keep anyone from getting close to you.

I don't want to fall in love with you. I don't want to break my head against the granite. Shit, I've tried that kind of thing before and look what it got me. A fist full of heartbreak. A life full of dust, and pain, and...and *want*.

I want...

I want things to be simple again. If they were ever simple, which maybe they weren't. Well, okay, so I just want them to *be* simple.

I can't even jerk off any more, you know that? Every time I start thinking of bodies without faces, but they never end that way...by the time it gets too far to just *stop*, the bodies always wear your face. Your hands. Your mouth, though I don't know what it would feel like, really; closest I got to kissing you was underwater when I was too cold and scared to think about anything except how nice it was that I wasn't dead.

But I can't fantasize about you, Ben. (You mind if I call you Ben? I know you're never going to read this, but I have to ask.) I can't think about you with my hand on my cock, because it just feels so sleazy. Like I'm using you. Like you were no better than some girl in a porno mag. And...shit, how would I face you the next day? The dreams are bad enough.

I didn't tell you about the dreams, did I? Best dreams I ever had. The kind you never want to wake up from.

I don't want to fall in love with you. It would just make things complicated. It would push me up against the granite and I'd push and push and push, and...

I don't know. Maybe I could break the wall down, huh? Wouldn't that be cool? No. I couldn't. I'm not strong enough to break it by myself.

And you wouldn't do it for me, either. You'd never even know that was what I wanted.

I don't want to fall in love with you.

Too bad I don't have a choice.

Ray.

**********

Ray,

We have been partners -- and, indeed, friends -- for some time now, and I would like more than anything to, as it were, move our relationship to the next level. My failure to do so, or even attempt to make overtures to you on this subject, can only be attributed to fear.

You frighten me. And it is not a mundane fear, nor one that is easily suppressed. I have found, over my years as a police officer facing many dangers, some of them unpredictable and difficult to handle, that facing one's fears is the best way to get rid of them. I realise that sounds hackneyed, but there is a reason why old sayings *become* old; they have stood the test of time, have been found true for many years.

I have been routinely facing my fears since the day I left the RCMP Academy. I have hunted murderers and terrorists and people whose minds I would not care to understand, let alone inhabit. I have used fear in much the same way that an expert in the martial arts uses the strength of his opponent against him. I have drawn on it when all other strength was gone, when all that sustained me was that stab of adrenaline, the primal certainty that *this must not be*.

That is what fear is, I believe. The certainty that "this" must not be so, coupled with the knowledge that it *will* be so, or already is.

But I digress.

I have faced my fear of you, and it makes no difference. I... I do not understand why it is so difficult for me even to *write* those words, let alone say them. No, that's not true. I understand, and it makes no difference.

I love you.

It has taken me over a year of knowing you to admit that to myself, and over a page of irrelevant ramblings to write it down. I'm sure that by the time I've finished I'll destroy this paper. That way I can get right back to pretending it isn't true.

I have no way of knowing whether my feelings are returned or not. I will never know, unless I take a risk which, taking all the relevant circumstances into account, I must consider unacceptable.

I am not afraid of your cruelty; postures aside, I know that you don't have a cruel bone in your body, and I love you for that as much as anything else. You are better than me in ways you could never imagine.

And so I come to the crux of my problem.

Do you know me, Ray? Do you know me as well as you think you know me? If you knew me better, would you still be my friend?

I want to know. I want to ask -- but only if the answer is "yes".

And so I never will.

I have felt, at times, that you were trying to come close to me, to touch me, as it were; and my instinctive response is that of any animal faced with a threat: flight. I retreat behind protocol and courtesy and an endless stream of words.

The day you punched me by the lakeside, I feared that I was being offered an impossible choice: open up to you and show you all my imperfections, or lose you. How could I lose you, Ray? How could I live without your wit and your smile and your quicksilver heart? But how could I open up those doors inside me, doors that have been closed so long the hinges have rusted shut?

I did learn to...bend. I had to. I couldn't lose you. I *can't* lose you.

I want you too much for it to be easy to forego the chance of more; but I need you too much for the risk of losing what we already have to be worthwhile. And so I will continue wanting, silent except when you cannot hear me.

Benton Fraser.


[end]

Back to Due South Fiction Archive