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Title : One More Kiss, Redux (a Companion Piece to bghost 's One More Kiss)
Fandom: due South
Pairing : Benton Fraser / Ray Kowalski
Genre : Pre-slash ; UST
Rating : Teen and Up
Word Count : 670

AN #1 : Written for challenge 17 of fan_flashworks, "Win or Lose".
AN #2 : Contemporary-style quatrains.

Summary : They were both ready to die for one more kiss.

I asked him, “Don’t you feel a little naked without the long johns?”
And for a second I saw some kinda hot look in his eyes.
Then the bland Mountie Mask went on
and he said something about “having several pair”.

And then Tommy the sketch artist had to start admiring
the Consulate’s wood paneling.
He was saying “This is nice. Really nice. Real wood.”
Not helpful, there, Tommy…gettin’ me thinkin’ about my wood.

Bad enough before the buddy breathing.
First moment I ever saw Fraser I felt like I had to hug him.
First day I was with him
I was ready to take a bullet for him.

But it wasn’t unexpected, a cop taking a bullet.
Drowning though…not one of your more expected cop deaths.
And getting hard for your partner when you’re drowning…
yeah, not expected.

We’ve all heard shit about “your life passes before your eyes”
when you’re near death…and maybe for some people it does.
Not for me, though…
the cold and pressure and not breathing just made my mind blank.

And in that place of blank panic
I was about to give up the last air
that I would ever hold in my lungs,
take in the first and last water.

But then another unexpected thing,
Fraser’s mouth on mine
-- a kiss before dying, I thought --
and I went rock hard for him.

He was kissing me and my panic subsided.
If I’d had any air left for laughing I would have fuckin’ laughed.
It was like the universe almost but not quite granting a dying guy’s last wish…
and then I realized that I did have air.

That air? Fraser was breathing into me!
He might’ve had enough air to get himself out of there and live,
but he was gonna give it up for me…
he was ready to die like that and I wasn’t gonna let him.

Myself, it woulda been worth it to me to die then
if kissing him for the rest of my about-to-end life was part of the deal,
but I wasn’t having Fraser die if he had a chance to live…
so I broke the contact.

I broke the contact and then we broke the surface of the water
and then it broke my heart when he decided to act like nothing had changed.
I asked him, “What was that, Fraser? That thing you were doing with your mouth?”
He said, “That’s buddy breathing. Standard procedure.”

Standard procedure buddy breathing my ass.
The way he did it was much more than buddies.
I gave him another chance; I prompted “Nothing’s, like, changed or anything…?”
And he said no! -- Mr. I-Never-Tell-A-Lie -- he did what he would call “dissemble”.

Weeks later, the night we closed the Denny Scarpa case, he was still “dissembling,”
repeating back to me what I told him about playing poker :
“As you instructed me, Ray,
there are certain cards that are better left hidden until they are absolutely needed.”

So what did he mean to hide and what did he mean to show
when we played poker that night,
with the talk about Lady Shoes kissing him,
with the talk about our poker ante being air?

When he said, “I’ll take that air now, Ray,” I wanted to just go for it.
Wanted to kiss him…but that look in his eyes…
thought I saw some kinda hope but also thought I saw some kinda terror…
thought maybe it’s not the right time for him yet, so I said “I’m tapped out”.

Fraser didn’t let it go at that, kept the pace of our duet,
said “I'll accept an I.O.U.”
And I’m thinkin’ we were both ready to die for one more kiss…
after that, the wins have gotta outweigh the losses.