Author: Bernie
Rating G implied M/M slash
Disclaimer: This never happened, how do I know? It's
set in 2060.
Pairing: Brendan Morrison / Trent Klatt
* ** *** *
** ***
It has all finally come down to this; he is one ahead
of me. It is not quite enough, even here, as far north as we can go and still
be in the province of British Columbia Ð so close to the top of the world that
there is almost twenty hours of sunlight a day Ð but it is all not quite
enough.
Tomorrow we are due to leave for home, the voyage back
already delayed by one day as we lingered over the cabin and the dock and the
deep kindness of the lake we have returned to so many summers in a row. And yet
we are still not quite ready to put this behind us. Not ready to close up for
the winter one final time.
This is only the end of one thing, it is not as if
there are not other activities we enjoy together, when I think of golf, or even
fishing closer to home, of how our families are entwined through vacations, and
lunches, and - but this placeÉ But we are to old for the journey here, almost
to old to be driving for so long, setting up and packing up the cabin, to old
to haul the boat onto the trailer to go home. And this is not something that we
have ever shared before, it would all be changed to have other people come with
us at this time, break the rhythms that we have created for this time.
We are really to old to keep indulging this second
secret love on the still lake, it must be comical rather than pleasurable to
see hands darkened with age reach out trembling to stroke beside eyes lined
with wrinkles decades deep.
And I am not quite prepared to give up this
competition where it stands, an accumulated total over fifty years of catching
fish: Morrison 2110, Klatt 2111. A tie would be acceptable, a loss is Ð well,
you always want your last game to be a victory.
We are far old to care about numbers, have far to many
numbers of our own to be concerned with any other, just as we are told old to
be out so far away from civilization, from civilizing influences, to old to
cast again our lines into the darkness of the still lake.
This trip was prepared and over-planned and checked
again, and here on the edge of the province in the lingering twilight we are
almost ready for it, it has come to this, separated by only one fish and
nothing else a few seconds from the buzzer of the final game.
END
