The Hours And The Days 2 : Sunset    

m/m situation 

(Standard, all-purpose disclaimer) All pre-existing characters are the
property of the creators and producers of "Due South." No copyright
infringement is intended. All new characters and situations are the sole
property and responsibility of the author. Comments and criticism
accepted. 

This goes along with a story I did about a week ago called "Sunrise."
While the two pieces are meant to go together, they can also be taken
separately. And, like the first one, this story has a warning for mild m/m
content. 

 The Hours And The Days 2 : SUNSET 

by Katrina Bowen 

A lamp would be nice. Just an ordinary, run of the mill lamp, the kind you
could buy at any store. That wouldn't be out of line to suggest to Benny,
would it? It wouldn't have to be expensive or high-tech or anything. Just
the kind that you plugged into the wall, you turned a switch, and you had
light. None of this fooling around with matches and wicks and kerosene,
where you ran the risk of burning down an entire city block for the sake
of a little light -- he'd probably have more luck rubbing two sticks
together. 

The way he saw it, Ray had two courses of action to choose between. He
could try to light the damn lantern, probably burning his fingers, or the
sheets, or the whole room in the process, and he and Benny would end up
jumping naked off the fire escape, which would really give the neighbors
something to talk about for a few weeks. Or he could continue to just sit
here quietly for a while, looking at his sleeping lover in the dying
light. 

Ray sighed and folded his arms around his upraised knees. Yeah, this was
probably safer, all things considered. Just sit here in the dark and watch
Benny for a while. It wasn't exactly a hardship, and he could never find
the matches anyway. He reached down and trailed a finger along the line of
Ben's shoulder, barely visible in the dimness. Ben sighed and rolled on
his stomach, quieting again as Ray gently stroked his back. For a while,
Benny had been startled out of sleep every single time he and Ray bumped
into each other in bed; and given the fact that it *was* a fairly narrow
bed, that meant Ben had woken up a lot. Not that Ray had minded much,
considering what usually followed. But now they'd reached the point where
each one saw the other's presence in bed as part of the natural order of
things, as normal and necessary as breathing. 

In fact, Ray couldn't sleep well alone anymore. On the nights he slept
back at the Vecchio house -- and they were getting fewer all the time --
he'd usually lie there for hours, tense and wakeful, maybe dropping off
halfway towards morning. For all of the next day, he'd be jumpy and ill-
tempered, from lack of Benny as much as from lack of sleep. Benny'd never
mentioned if the same thing happened to him, but Ray had noticed faint
shadows under his eyes and an uncharacteristic restlessness after the
nights they spent apart. 

It was a little frightening to realize the level of their need for each
other. Ray had put a lot of time and effort into not relying on anyone;
then he'd had a lifetime's work unexpectedly blown to hell by a single
blue-eyed Mountie in no time flat. For probably the first time in his
life, Ray had taken the chance of giving the entirety of his heart to
someone; and rather than losing it forever, he found he'd been given
another's in return. The responsibilty of being in love like this scared
him -- but the thought of losing what he and Benny had together absolutely
terrified him. 

Maybe it *was* too soon to ask for a lamp, Ray thought. There were still
times that he couldn't believe he was here, welcome in Benny's bed, in
Benny's life, in Benny's heart. For now, that was enough -- it was all
he'd wanted for a long time, in fact. He should probably wait a while
before he tried to influence how Benny decorated his apartment. Though
maybe a bigger bed *wouldn't* be such a bad idea, come to think of it ... 

Then again, it was kind of nice knowing that Benny was never more than a
couple inches away. That was worth the occasional elbow in the eye,
really. He could live with it. Just like he could live with Benny's
compulsion to taste disgusting things off the street, or Benny's
insistance on getting the two of them in trouble over some obscure point
of ethics. He could live with all of that because it was part of who and
what Benny was. 

Besides, Benny was remarkably tolerant of all of *his* quirks, right? Ray
had never tried to convince himself that he was easy to live with. But for
some reason, the traits that always irked everyone else seemed to fit
right in with Benny. It was strange, but Ray had decided to stop worrying
about it some time ago. 

Yeah, they fit. That was probably the best way to put it. He and Benny
just somehow managed to fill the empty spots in each other's souls. And
when something was so unexpectedly, wonderfully, miraculously *right*,
there was no point in trying to break it down and figure it out, was
there? That was just asking for trouble. For the first time in his life,
Ray was ready to just go with something without worrying about it -- okay,
without worrying obsessively. 

"Ray? Why are you sitting in the dark?" Ben rolled over on his side and
raised up on one elbow, awakened at once by something Ray hadn't heard.
Ray could barely make his lover's features out in the dark, but from his
voice, he could easily picture the expression that went along with it;
part polite inquiry, part concern and part waiting to be let in on the
joke. 

Smiling, Ray reached down to where he knew Benny was and ran a hand
through his hair. "Because I don't need a light to know what you look
like." He felt his hand being pressed to a pair of smiling lips, and he
didn't resist as a strong arm went around his back and pulled him back
down to the bed. 

"Maybe not. But do you think it might be a good idea to buy a regular lamp
... Ray? Why are you laughing? What's so funny about a lamp?" But Ray just
put his arms around Ben and laughed even harder.