Archive of Our Own ^beta

Notes:

Another year, another solstice - Ray and Fraser still love each other (and Dief, too!) and they keep bringing us together. I'd like to express my sincerest "thank you kindly" to onnakarot for her friendship and encouragement (and for letting me beta her wonderful art).

I started this piece for last year's winter solstice, but then changed my plans in favor of Midday Twilight. I had some trouble with the reference photo here - the perspective of the photo of the two guys lying on a bed, one of them slightly sideways on top of the other, made their legs simply disappear, and while it was realistic in the photo, it started to look completely insane after I had stared at it for long enough. Now I found a wolf that fits snugly beside them and hides the leg issue. The credit for playing Dief in this piece goes again to Nikai, the wonderful ambassador wolf from the Wolf Conservation Center.

I'm not much of a poetry reader, but I needed a title for this piece, so I went looking for a winter solstice poem which might both provide a title and be something Fraser could possibly be reading out loud here, and that's how I came across "Solstice" by W.S. Merwin (1988). It's worth reading in full, and this page has more on Merwin, with a video of his televised reading of "Solstice" from 1994 - Fraser might've have seen that while in Chicago. What little I've read about and by Merwin now, he seems like the kind of writer and person that Fraser would appreciate. I'm certainly glad I came across his works now through my fannish endeavors.