Raleigh felt a blow at Fraser’s exasperated realization of truths that he clearly did not like. He forced himself not to dwell on it though, the bigger priority being Fraser’s final answer, his executive decision despite all the smaller huffs and puffs. Even his latter absent words of acknowledgment for their situation, Raleigh breezed over, his gaze on the younger man keen and laser-focused in anticipation. It was when Fraser began to speak again that Raleigh snapped back into focus, aware of more than just the tenseness in his own shoulders. Fraser’s desires, rare on his lips even in the time they’d known each other, caught deliberately on Raleigh’s ears. There were obvious signs of distress in Fraser’s expression, clear to someone trained to read people by profession. But it wasn’t so much that Fraser was emotional that struck Raleigh, but the fact that he cared so much he’d become emotional, especially as he specified that he didn’t want to hide them.
Raleigh thought back to the last time he was in this predicament with someone begging him to be open, and honest just one time. Back then, just hours before he’d ended up disastrously collapsed on a public bathroom floor, a simple request had been made from him. Bring me out to see your friends. Just for a little while, let me meet them, you said yourself they’re safe. Lincoln had pleaded with him but all through words behind a screen, long blue bubbles of endless reasoning with him at a time he wanted least to be reasoned with. There were no glossy brown eyes hammering into his memory then, no fluctuating intonation to twist his chest, no tangible evidence of a life he was irreparably impacting with his every breath. Just one man’s word against the other in a battle where neither was willing to budge. It had been simple even if it was devastating, the resounding answer in Raleigh’s mind was no. Everything else that occurred between them was built around it. No.
But this, right here, right now, was anything but simple. And the instinctive single word of rejection, solitude, and security that Raleigh had clung to his entire life was lost to him. Instead, he spat out his own plea, stepping forward unwittingly to emphasize his point. “It wasn’t-” he cut himself short, all the usual confidence and broadness of shoulders in him faltering for a moment as he bowed his chin to his chest. He was only willing to look back up when he trusted himself to continue clearly, “We weren’t private tonight. We came here, we came out, I-” The furrow in his brows implored Fraser to understand the gravity of the fact that they were around people tonight, both familiar and not. “I’m here…” the whisper was all that escaped him, but his mind ambled on that sure, it might have been uncomfortable and strange but they were there and they were together. It wasn’t great but it was a start and everyone had to start somewhere. The logic and reasoning cluttered his thoughts faster than he could summon words for them fitting to his character, and the effort would prove to be wasted in a few second’s time anyway.
Raleigh’s entire body language shifted to see the streak of red mark its path along Fraser’s face and then his hand. He worked quickly to determine first that the man was alright, and wasn’t even allowed to dwell in his slight confusion of the poor timing Fraser mentioned before they were interrupted. Raleigh almost resented the regular bar patrons for having such a casual night. Had he not been standing in front of a man who had his unfettered time and attention, Raleigh would have taken a much greater issue to their lack of respect for Fraser’s personal space. He almost sidestepped to growl a biting, Watch it! in their general direction. But the aggression died in his throat with the distant knowledge that Fraser would slip even further from him to see him embroiled in a senseless test of ego and machismo. The kinetic ferocity in his eyes died down as his pupils shifted their way back to the man who had served as his fixed point on this entire ride, just in time to catch Fraser recentering on him as well.
It was stabbing to hear Fraser’s answer finally come to fruition. To know after such a held breath what the executive decision was, painted with such unsurety and obligation. He’d desperately been steering towards the concession, as he always was in these sorts of situations, willing to manipulate any last ounce of sympathy a sane human could spare a person like him. But to feel as though he’d cornered and coerced Fraser into what he wanted at that moment was repulsive. The man sounded torn apart to give what he’d initially offered willingly and Raleigh’s brows furrowed impossibly to see him in such a way. He sucked in a breath, his own resolve coming about him in the most tsunamic manner, daunting in its immovability as he stepped forward into Fraser’s space, so close that alarm bells rang out in him, warning to glance over his shoulder and make sure no one was looking. The more he ignored the brightly flashing color in his mind in favor of placing his thumb over the dulled and dried red beside Fraser’s lip, the hotter his skin felt, ablaze with trepidation that he knew he would be remiss to succumb to.
It wasn’t necessary to rest his palm against Fraser’s cheek for his crisply whispered healing spell to be effective, but Raleigh wanted to. He wanted to feel the stain disappear from under his fingertip and look at the younger man from a proximity that he’d always enjoyed in moments when his reservations had been shed away. His eyes narrowed to maintain the gaze and stare so hard into Fraser that they watered- from the wind, from the nerves, he told himself. And when he was forced to bow his chin and blink away the prickling, Raleigh’s hand came with him, missing the familiar pressure of gentle stubble the moment he stepped back.
“Don’t then,” Raleigh’s breath shook to get the words out, each one going against every last grain of self-preservation that controlled all facets of his life. He took a deep breath and even that wavered, making him look to the side briefly, shaking his head, willing himself to hold it together for just a little while longer when inevitably, this would all come crashing down around him. Forcing the muscles of his neck to turn back, he continued, “If you don’t think it’s the best choice, if you don’t want to, deep down, then don’t. I want you to-” He froze. Had he ever actually told Fraser that before? Honestly and truly, outside of the sheets where it was so easy to feel like a better version of himself? “I want you.” It felt smoother around the edges of his mouth the second time, but Raleigh snapped himself out of his experimentation, judging away the time and place, of which this was an ironic one.
“But you should be around me because you want to be.” Raleigh licked his lips, a huff leaving his nose as he found the overwhelmed heat in his eyes refusing to cooperate again. It couldn’t be that he was so frenzied at the notion that Fraser would actually take his advice that he was driven to this, right? Of course, his body was only having a physiological reaction to psychological duress. Of course.
“Tell me what you need,” Raleigh demanded in his urgent but leveled tone of voice. “If you need me to fuck off then say so. If you need me to apologize then make me. If you need me- want me- to stay then say it, but say it sure.” Another breath left his mouth in a cool rush, his fingers itching to run through his hair and give away the strain in him. Time and time again, Raleigh torpedoed the things that were good for and to him, his primal instinct for selfish survival serving as the trigger in each and every instance but this one. Now, the one time in his personal life that he felt even a shred worth the colors the sorting hat decided for him all those years ago would have the same outcome that every other disgusting decision he’d made before did. Ever since they’d walked out of the bar Raleigh was sure Fraser would be done with him but the difference now was that instead of grappling hysterically to stave it off, he was understanding of it. The truth, as it turned out, would at least begin to set him free.
Had Fraser managed a sip of his Sherry before stepping into the cold air surrounding the bar, maybe, just maybe he might’ve been able to brush off his dizziness to the alcohol. Bo had stuttered out prose on privacy, on being here tonight as a ‘we’, as a pairing, together, but Fraser was no longer sure what together meant for them. He was no longer sure what together had ever meant for them, if they’d been leaning on two different definitions to the same word, denotation dependent on circumstance. When Fraser felt himself stumble to his heel at the brush of the stranger’s shoulder, mixed with the cool trickle of blood from his nose, mixed with the muffled sound of Bo’s voice over the doorway music, he had nearly lost his sense of place.
He was brought back solely by the coarse, familiar feel of skin against his skin. He knew those hands, the touch of them, the overworked grit of them, the clean curve of the nail. These were hands that had touched him before, hands that had touched him everywhere, and while usually his skin would tingle and rile from underneath at the stroke of them, this time he felt his chest swell and deflate---afraid to float. He finally looked over at Bo as those hands, those hands he thought, Bo’s hands found way to his cheek. The blood ceased and cleared. Fraser drowned in a rare rinse of being taken care of. He knew the man didn’t need to touch him, but had chosen to. Before Bo pulled his hand back Fraser thought not of what they were or weren’t, of whether Bo would continue to hide him, but only of the physical truth as it stood before him: regardless of what had transpired tonight, this was a man who cared for him.
This wasn’t a thought he could sit in long.
Fraser was convinced he’d solved the problem, twice, but Bo clearly didn’t have intentions to make it easy for him. Panic tightened his chest as the other man listed options for Fraser to choose from, and his eyes darted from Bo’s shoulder to his chin to his abdomen to the lobe of his right ear to his face again. His throat dried and tightened and while the sentiment of being wanted by Bo should have eased him that hadn’t been part of what nerved him to begin with. Fraser hadn’t been concerned about whether or not Bo wanted to be with him, he at least knew this much. What truth Fraser lacked was whether or not Bo wanted to be with him enough.
Fraser found himself overwhelmed and exhausted. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had asked him what he wanted, let alone what he needed. In the brief breaths between Bo’s questions Fraser tried to breath, as though he was using Bo’s shuttering chest as a guide. I don’t know. He panicked. Fraser didn’t like not knowing what to do. I don’t know. I don’t know. Tell me what you need. “I don’t know!” Fraser finally let out, and instantly put his hand to his head and turned away, but only briefly enough to inhale and turn back with a weighted adrenaline. He was both high-strung and strung-out. “I don’t know what I need. You know-” this was hard for him, he felt seen but in the naked way, where Bo had stripped him and gifted him what he’d always craved but at a time where he couldn’t eat it. But he knew what he wanted.
“I want to leave. I’m tired, Bo. I don’t feel good,” a hand rested against his stomach, but he said it as though he was trying to convince. “But I don’t want to see you hurt. I mean, I don’t want you to be hurt. I don’t want you to be alone.” Tonight, he meant, but did not add. Ever, he also meant: to have no one, no tens to crawl to in the morning. Fraser’s instinct once more was to stick to his original plan, to go home with a man he missed, one that felt distant to him despite standing before him. He almost reached for this option before taking a shallow breath and fixing his gaze on the Bo’s face, his thumping heartbeat calming to a patter. Once he relaxed, a realization settled. He didn’t know what he needed, or what he wanted, but he also didn’t know the next time someone would give him the chance to decide. He feared if he didn’t take it now, he wouldn’t ever find out. “I can walk you back.” he offered, let it sit before he finished, “I want to.” he clarified. “....But I don’t know if I can stay.” Tonight, he meant, but did not add.