Work Text:
1. Back before The Great Frasering, my days went something like this: groan my way out of bed, try not to slip in the shower with my eyes not quite opening the whole way, inhale the coffee smell from the coffee mug, inhale the coffee from the coffee mug, Turtle feeding time, pants, shirt, holster, car, work—repeat in reverse, swapping coffee for beer and shower for a jerk-off-and-feel-sorry-for-myself session. Sprinkle in some evenings out with the guys—good collars, or someone's birthday, or impending fatherhood, or retirement—with bar games and shooting the shit, out of which I'm mostly good at that last one.
Work went something like this: come in, argue with anyone who's looking for an argument, try to make sure that doesn't include the witnesses or the Lieu, talk to people, shout at people, slap cuffs on people. On a good day, help people. Or at least try. Sprinkle in staying late in the attempts to keep all the papers in check, which wasn't as hard as you'd think considering back home it was mostly the TV and the Turtle waiting.
2. Then there was one day when work went something like this: Lieu calls me in, says, here's a doozy, wham, bam, I'm outta there, outta my own skin, outta my depth.
3. During The Great Frasering, my days went something like this: get to the station, hang out with Fraser, take a fat pill's worth of trippy shit, argue with Fraser, work with Fraser, hang out with Fraser, get slobbered on by wolf, go to bed, sleep the sleep of the dead—not necessarily in that order. Same on weekends, only without work. Well, not every time. Sprinkle in some letting Stella go, some letting Fraser in, some times my heart would feel so huge with needing him I was sure that was all she wrote.
4. Then there was one day that went something like this: Fraser catches a weirdass fish, gets on the trail of the killer of his mother, wham, bam, I'm outta Vecchio's skin, outta a plane, outta a partner. I'm lucky Fraser didn't get the memo.
5. The adventure went something like this: learn so much new stuff my brain felt three sizes too big for my skull, get why Fraser can't shut up about this place, spend so much time looking up at the sky one night I got a crick in my neck and felt dizzy, kiss Fraser, some more dizzy, try to figure out whether I said I loved him out loud only for him to say it first. Not find any hands, reaching out or otherwise, except for Fraser's hand down my pants, which, I'll be honest, I'll take over Franklin's any day of the week.
6. Then there was one day that went something like this: pack up my shit and go back to Chicago, listen to Fraser snuffle in his sleep on the plane, thank whoever's in charge about two hundred and eighteen times. Come home, curl up together in bed in the puzzle pieces way we worked out, only this time it's my bed, and technically it's the next day, but it's not like I stay up to check the clock.
7. After, it was The Great Frasering 2, bigger and better and like nothing I ever hoped for, until—
8. —the day that went something like this: Fraser sneaks off after lunch, which is nothing that pings my radar because he's his own guy, but then he comes home late and miserable and tells me Vecchio's back in town, which, yeah, maybe isn't something I was gonna do a victory lap about, but he looks way worse than I feel, which is ten different kinds of wrong, and then he says he owes me a bare minimum of honesty about his desires, with this face that gives me the idea he maybe isn't talking about me decked out in latex swinging a whip at him kind of desires, which scares the brains out of me because when it comes to the big feely things Fraser hardly ever talks, and I don't know if I will sock him one or curl up on the floor and sob until he tells me and it's so queer I end up laughing.
9. The days after that went something like—like something I don't even—but the important part is Fraser stays right where I want him, where I will always want him, and it turns out that's not the only thing I can want.
10. So, today went something like this: wake up late to an empty bed, inhale the coffee—the good stuff I never ask for but get nonetheless, have a bad hair day, go to work pissed off, piss Fraser off, piss the perp off, watch Fraser piss the perp off, take one in the jaw, give as good as I got, slap cuffs on the perp, sit through his song and dance, finally get rid of him. Endure the party, blow the party early, drive Fraser home. Open the door to Vecchio cooking, see him see me and swear, get the third bag of peas today slapped onto my face, get a beer and watch him chew Fraser out, better than TV. Eat half the whatever Vecchio's cooking right from the pan, listen to Fraser chew me out for bad behavior when all he really cares about is that there's less left for him. Make out with Fraser, pause for dinner, make out with Vecchio, try to stop the wolf from making out with me because I still smell like the good sauce, watch Vecchio make out with Fraser. Say wait, wait, what about the cake, hear Vecchio say what cake, say the one you made, hear the eyeroll as he says if you wanted one, should've made it yourself, say fuck you and get only today, Kowalski. Get herded off into the bedroom by Fraser, get horizontal, get—well, use your imagination.
So maybe this isn't exactly how I envisioned forty, but hey, my definition of a good day? Probably something like this.