Reader: Desiree Armfeldt
Title: Of Hot Water
Fandoms: due South
Characters: Benton Fraser
Rating: Gen
Length: 433 words (plus epigraph)
Angst-to-hope ratio: High (ambiguous?)
Disclaimer: I didn't create these characters, I don't own them, I derive no profit from their use.
Summary: Fraser contemplates the significance of bathing.
Bookkeeping Notes: This submission counts towards the Complexity Theorist badge, because in addition to "Hot Water" it also fulfills "Rough" and "Solitary."


O! water cold we may pour at need
down a thirsty throat and be glad indeed;
but better is Beer, if drink we lack,
and Water Hot poured down the back!

                        -- J. R. R. Tolkein, The Fellowship of the Ring



Where I grew up, hot water was a luxury.  My grandmother valued cleanliness, but there’s only so clean you can keep things, or people, with rain and snow, a river, a hand pump, and a wood stove.  On the trail, of course, yet different standards pertain.

When I got to Depot, of course, the grooming standards were military, and I followed them precisely.  I have, ever since, in proportion to the size of the community in which I find myself.  In Chicago, my personal appearance reflects what some of my acquaintances consider an almost pathological devotion to tidiness.

And it’s funny, when I think about it: my father’s ghost almost always appeared to me in his dress serge, spit-polished and regulation, which is the way he appears in my memory as well.  Even though my father spent most of his life roughing it.  Surely when he did visit us, he came unwashed and unshaven and occasionally bloodstained, in his traveling clothes.  It must be the case; but I can’t picture it.

In Chicago, that’s how everyone thinks of me: eternally on parade in my spotless red tunic, my shiny brass and leather.  Indeed, sometimes that’s all I can see in the mirror, no matter what I’m actually wearing.  Sometimes I forget what it feels like to have bearded cheeks, to smell like sweat and dirt, to move freely.

It’s a dangerous thing to forget.

When I’m gone, that’s how they’ll remember me: red serge, impeccable manners, not a hair out of place.  And that’s for the best, because few, if any of them could begin to conceive of the man I was in the North, and will be again.  I’m not sure I would want them to try.  It seems unlikely that anyone here would like that man, let alone wish to call him friend.

In the wilds of the Territories, friendship is as rare, and as highly prized, as a hot bath.  Up there, we savor our luxuries as they come, but do not depend on anything so uncertain.  So, tonight: a last lingering shower, the hot water streaming over my bare skin like an affectionate caress, like an invitation to get comfortable, take off my hat and stay a while, what’s my rush. . . ?

I twist the knob hard and am doused with icy water a moment later.  I close my eyes and think of river baths and snow baths, canteens and hand pumps and melting snow over a fire, until I start to shiver.

Hot water, free for the taking.  It’s a terrifying thing to get used to.