Disclaimer: Not mine

Author's Notes: Beta by aerye

The first ring he owned was heavy, and silver. He bought it at a booth at some dumb craft fair his mum made him visit with her. The guy who sold it to him was huge, and had tattoos of snakes coiled around his wrists. After he'd fingered almost all the cheaper rings, the guy had glared at him and asked whether he was going to buy or just put his sticky hands all over everything. He walked away with nothing left of his allowance, and the ring slipping down his skinny finger to balance on his knuckle. That afternoon, Stella complained that it hurt her when he held her hand.

He wore it to school the next day. The punch he threw, in a short and ugly fight at recess, seemed to land extra hard on his opponent's nose. He sat outside the principal's office and rubbed the blood off his ring with the hem of his t-shirt.

Eventually, the silver began to wear off, and the metal underneath made his finger turn green. Stella still complained, and since she was letting him do more than hold her hand by then, he finally took it off. He put it in a drawer, and left it there.

When he was undercover, he didn't wear his wedding ring. The first few months, he took it off every morning when he got ready for work, and put it back on as soon as he got home. His hand looked weirdly naked during the day.

After a while, he started to forget, left it on his dresser with the crap from his pockets: small change, crumpled receipts, half empty packs of gum.

The day Stella told him they were done, he put his wedding ring back on. He moved out, into his own place. In one of his boxes, unopened since their last move, he found some of his stuff that Stella had refused to put out in their upscale apartment. His green bottle glass ashtray went on top of his chest of drawers. Every night he emptied his pockets out onto the chest of drawers. Every morning he took his ring off and left it in the ashtray.

He started smoking again, sometimes. When the divorce papers arrived the first time, he burned them in the green ashtray.

The second time, he signed them.

The ashtray moved onto his nightstand, the ring into a case, buried under his socks.

Fraser gave him the ring for his 40th birthday. He'd already opened his other gifts: a new sweater, some CDs, a gift certificate for Hank's Hardware in town. Fraser held out the last package nervously. He looked at the little box, covered in brown leather. Fraser was rubbing at his eyebrow.

He opened it. Fraser exploded into speech. Not a marriage thing, Fraser said. Just, he thought it might be nice, and this one was made by a man in Vancouver in an authentic totemic style of the native peoples of the west coast...

He didn't listen to the rest - and there was a lot more - but took the ring out of the box. It was heavy, pale gold, and carved. An eye looked out of the pattern at him.

Too cold to wear it outside, Fraser was saying, might lose a finger. Wear it indoors, or in the summer, when you feel like it. If you feel like it.

He looked up, met Fraser's eyes. He slid the ring onto his finger.

Fraser sighed. He watched while Fraser's square hand caught his, while the calloused fingers rubbed over the ring, while the dark head bent. He closed his eyes when he felt warm lips touch where metal met skin.