pearl_o, dS: Ray Kowalski, the cabin 10 miles from the nearest town, sunglasses.

10 miles from the nearest town

He broke his sunglasses wrestling with Sasha in front of the cabin they'd rented for the week. Probably he would have broken them wrestling with Dief, except that Dief was with Fraser ten miles away in Little Mukluk or whatever and probably scamming the locals for doughnuts. Sasha was red and white and had short little legs, but she was crazy, with one blue eye and one brown, and she'd bowled him over and knocked his sunglasses off so she could lick him some more. When he finally managed to shove her off and get to his feet, he heard the glasses crunch under his boot.

Aw, crap.

He sighed and knocked some of the snow out of his hair and told Sasha to line up; she and the rest of the crew did just that, like a little line of privates to his drill sergeant. Sasha was crazy when she was off the leash, but in the lines, she was all business. He harnessed all eight lickety split, and mushed them down to the lake, where him and Fraser had knocked down a few deadfall pines for their fireplace the day before.

The day was white and sunny, snow snow snow and Petrel Lake was shining like a Cher outfit, all diamondy sequins, so bright it hurt to look at, and he let the dogs roam while he chopped wood and loaded the sled with split logs.

By the time he got back to the cabin, his eyes were tearing from the cold and he had a bitch of a headache from all the squinting he'd been doing. He turned the dogs loose and stowed the harnesses before he filled their bowls and closed them in the shed for the night. After that, he stacked the wood on the porch and lugged three logs inside to start the fire.

After he got the crackle going, he sat down on the rug in front of it and rubbed his shoulder, sore from swinging an axe for half the day, and then scrubbed at his eyes with the heels of his hands. They'd been itchy, and they were still tearing, even out of the cutting wind. By the time Fraser and Dief showed up, he could hardly even open his eyes, the stinging was so bad.

"What, you guys got an allergy season in winter or something?"

"Not that I'm aware of. Did you eat or touch anything unfamiliar today, Ray?" He could hear Fraser kneeling down and flinched when Fraser gently tried to open one of Ray's eyes with his thumb and forefinger.

"Nope. I chopped wood all day by the lake, ate some pemmican, played with the dogs. Sasha broke my sunglasses," he explained.

"Ah. It may well be that you've got a case of snow blindness. Hmm." He got to his feet and Ray could hear him rummaging around. "You know Ray, I was blind once," Fraser said conversationally.

"What are you talking about?" Ray was absolutely not freaking out about his eyesight. Not even a little bit. "I can see. I just can't keep my eyes open," Ray pointed out.

Fraser's bootsteps came closer again, and Fraser handed him what felt like a metal bowl that was full of sloshing liquid.

"Bathe your eyes in this, and I'll be right back with a cold compress."

Ray splashed his eyes with the water; it wasn't the biting kind right out of the cold tap, but it was nice and cool against his scrubbed-feeling eyes.

When Fraser came back, Ray tried to peek at him between his lashes, but the lights were too bright and his eyes still stung.

"Here we are, Ray," and a cool damp cloth was pressed against his eyes. It smelled like it had been steeped in cold tea. "Hold still a moment, now."

It took Ray a moment to realize that Fraser was wrapping gauze around his head, like the time Kuzma had nearly bitten his ear off.

"Whoa, whoa, what're you doin'?"

"Until your eyes heal a bit, Ray, we need to limit your exposure to light and keep your eyes covered as much as possible."

"But I need my eyes for seeing! How am I gonna get around? How long is this gonna stay on?" He took a deep breath; gotta stay cool. "I mean, this is gonna get better, right?"

"It'll only be for a day or so," and he patted Ray's knee bracingly. "I'm sure you'll recover completely, as long as we take the proper precautions."

"You promise?"

"I promise," Fraser said, and Ray listened hard but he heard only deep, solemn Mountie sincerity and not even a hint that he might be dicking around with him.

"My eyes still hurt," he added, sounding sulky even to himself.

He felt Fraser press a cool glass into one hand and little pill-shaped bumps into his other hand, "Here."

Ray knocked them back and Fraser took his arm, hauling him to his feet, saying "You'll be more comfortable on the couch, I think."

He was; he kicked off his boots, dumped his feet on the low coffee table and let Dief settle on the couch beside him and nose at his ear. Eventually, Fraser sat on the other side of him and handed him a cup of broth that was so hot it just about steamed his upper lip off.

"Perhaps you should wait for it to cool," and now, Ray could hear that Fraser was trying not to smile.

"Do not give up years of goody-goody to make fun of the blind guy, Fraser," Ray warned. "That's not buddies."

Fraser chose to ignore that comment and said, "When I was blind, I found myself very attuned to... sounds. Especially Ray Vecchio's voice."

There hadn't been any mention of this in the case reports he'd read, but Fraser's next sentence explained why.

"We were on vacation, actually. Our plane went down, and I took a blow to the head when I landed the plane. Well, I didn't quite land it, I suppose, or I wouldn't have sustained a head injury.

"In any case, I remember thinking that Ray Vecchio sounded... quite frightened."

"Vecchio, huh?" Ray found the idea of a spooked Vecchio reassuring somehow. He shrugged back into the old couch a little, felt the weight of Dief's head on his knee, the solid line of Fraser's thigh against his on the other side. It wasn't exactly fun, maybe, but there were worse places to be than here in a warm cabin with the cool, damp weight of a compress pressed against his eyes, the dark like a blank wall, and the friendly crackle of the fire and Fraser's voice in his ear.

"Well, you have to understand, Ray, that he'd never been in a true wilderness before, and that he'd placed a certain amount of faith in me to keep him oriented and trained in the ways of untamed countryside. Now he was lost in the woods, far from civilization, with an injured companion and a murderer on our trail."

"Jeeze. What is it about you that makes everybody want to kill you, Fraser?"

"I don't know," Fraser answered thoughtfully.

"Did you guys have any supplies?"

"Not really. Very little water, and the plane and its radio were damaged beyond repair. I? afraid my concussion affected my judgment; I suppose I was quite delirious for a time. It seems to me that it was at that time that Ray was the most frightened."

"It's creepy," Ray said. "When somebody's out of it with a knock to the head. My buddy Jimmy Pino got beat down once in a raid on a meth lab, right? And he was talkin' all crazy about his science fair project from junior high. I mean, he came out of it, but the docs say it was touch and go for a while."

"Yes. In addition to it being 'creepy', I imagine Ray was worried for me. It was entirely possible that I might have died out there; dehydration, swelling of the brain. And there was the fact that I was unable to walk, even though I was conscious."

"That must have scared the hell out of you," Ray said wonderingly, trying and failing to picture Fraser basically helpless.

"It was very unsettling," Fraser admitted. "And rather uncomfortable. Ray had to carry me for some distance. So. I am glad of the opportunity to reassure you that your blindness is very temporary."

"Plus, I can still walk."

"Yes. But if you couldn't..."

"Yeah, yeah, you'd leave me for the bears."

"Ray!"

Grinning, even though it made his eyes sting, Ray thought of all the times Fraser had picked him up off the pavement, dragged him out of sinking boats, lugged him up the sides of mountains. Now Fraser was basically kissing his booboos all better and bringing him beef bouillon that could melt the chrome off the GTO. Even blind, Ray knew love when he saw it.

"You know I'd carry you, too, right?" He knocked the back of his hand near where he judged Fraser's shoulder to be. Fraser caught his hand in his own big warm Mountie mitt, squeezed it and set it lightly on his own knee. Ray grazed the fabric of Fraser's jeans with his knuckles, enjoying the buzz enough to almost forget his bandaged face and his complete inability to see Fraser's.

"I know."

END