Breath


A swell, a rush, and a deep drag, as the tide pushes and pulls. For a moment he's under. Then he's back up again, bobbing, catching his breath, and thinking, 'bloom, close, kick 'em in the head... bloom, close, kick 'em in the head...'

Only Fraser could teach a man to swim in under a minute while his student was literally drowning.

Quite how he isn't drowning now is beyond him.... 'bloom, close, kick 'em in the head...' He should be floundering, he should be all clench and fist and panic, thrashing out his last breath, lungs filling with salt water and... 'bloom, close, kick 'em in the head...'

But he's not drowning. Some kind of miracle... there was breath in his lungs, and he still felt the kiss of it, a moment of warmth as the steel terror released in his chest, and air came in.

Not a kiss, no. Just... buddies. But still... 'bloom, close, kick 'em in the head...' Still love, for all that. Fraser had shared what could have been his last breath before dying. That's... that's buddies.

And here he is now, not panicking, insane though the situation is, not drowning, because he just tried it, and hey... it's not all it's cracked up to be. No... he's breathing, he's swimming... he's even smiling. And life is wonderful, outrageous, contagious, unexpected... incredible bullshit. And there is a taste of salt on his tongue, and his eyes are stinging with it, and he's laughing as he swims. Blooming and closing, and laughing, laughing, and kicking out for life.



Edited 2012-04-21 07:23 pm (UTC)

Thank you desiree. :) Next time I'm going to try to have the courage to try to use a cut again... last time it took up a huge amount of my evening, and I was really upset and exhausted by the time I gave up and posted my story as a comment!

But I'll try again, and start in HTML rather than Rich Text, which is of the divil.

I don't think I've ever used the Rich Text mode? I'm in the habit of coding the italics into the story while I write it: (i)bla bla(/i) will give you "bla bla" in italics, if you replace ( with < and ) with >.

Feel free to send the text of the entry to me before you post, if you want, and I can help you to spot what's wrong? Also, you know there's a preview feature, so you can check that it will come out right before you post? Putting the story in the comments won't work in the long run since there's a length limit on comments.

The LJ-cut thing should work if you're in html mode, and if you just replace the "Story, first in comments." in this post with

(lj-cut) Story text here (/lj-cut)

if you replace ( with <, and ) with >. But as I said, I am happy to check over the code for you if you want--just send it to luzulae@gmail.com : )

Oh, this is terrific! \o/

TYK for helping me to come to terms with this one thing that had troubled me about MotB. Since someone tried to drown me when I was a child, I have a huge fear of the water...which is precisely WHY I've watched MotB more times than I've rewatched the other eps...a "face your fears" thing...and I just wasn't getting how Ray could learn so quickly to swim...but I did get it when I read your line "Only Fraser could teach a man to swim in under a minute while his student was literally drowning".

I'm glad it helped! Ray's just had a near death experience, and I think he's literally bouyed up on hope, and glee, and the fact that Fraser is really, really there for him.

I liked how unexpectedly happy and giddy this is towards the end!