Disclaimers: Not even close to mine.

Spoilers: Call of the Wild

Ratings Note: R.

Summary: Holding on.

Author's Note: Just a little post-CotW snip.

Feedback makes me happy. teland793@sbcglobal.net

*

Ray is holding on to the cold.

It's not like before (an hour ago, a day), when he had a good solid grip on it, when the cold was like the girl you fucked the night before who just wouldn't leave. Then he didn't have to think about it. It was him and the cold, real buddies.

And Fraser, too. Fraser's right there beside him, been there since.

He can still hear the dogs.

Not all of them. The crevasse wasn't deep so much as just deep enough. They're baying. Calling for help in their own way. They tried. To reach them. Blood on the ice, the tangle of the harnesses. See, Ray isn't sure if they're still barking or not, but he can see them.

Or just that one. Mitzi. Stupid fucking name for a dog. Huge and powerful like the rest of them, only she'd landed wrong. Harness pulled wrong. Something. Mitzi suffocated to death, right in a big pile of her doggy buddies, staring up at the sky. Tongue lolling like the world's longest laugh.

They're not too far away. Without supplies... and, well sound carries.

Ray holds on to the cold, because he knows what happens when you forget it's there. When it just slips away like so much smoke. Frase's got him, though. They got each other, and the cold.

Ray's gotta reach for it, though.

Gonna keep reaching.

End.