Disclaimer: Not mine -- the spoils all go to Alliance Atlantis.

Author's Notes: This is ds_flashfiction's fault, and I love them.

Fraser's always been weird -- even in Chicago, really. Like, Ray can't find too many people there who'll lick somebody's gum. That's been on the ground. And squashed into the bottom of somebody else's shoe. For the express purpose of tasting what that bottom of a shoe tastes like, and tracking down its owner for the good of all humankind. At the time, Ray'd thought that was pretty damn weird -- come to find out, there's a whole bunch of people in Canada who do that, who like to call themselves trackers, though they mostly tend to be more selective about what they lick.

But even if Fraser's licking thing was just the way they told him to track perps in the Depot -- though somehow Ray doubts that -- actually living with Fraser has exposed a whole new set of reasons why Fraser's unhinged. And really, Ray thinks, Fraser did a hell of a job keeping his inner freak under wraps way back when, 'cause now? Ray's no longer impressed by the gum thing. He is not even impressed by the deaf wolf thing. Hey, Dief might even be able to read lips, right? It's sort of vaguely possible if Ray rationalizes it for an hour. The stove, now, is not even a -- whatsit? A sentient being. And Fraser talks to the stove. He'd caught Fraser at it about two in the morning, whispering like he knew Ray'd freak if he heard, and when he saw Ray was there he started babbling all sorts of shit like "In fact I did not initiate the altercation with the stove, the stove initiated the altercation with me, you see, and -- and in fact it wasn't the stove at all, it was the oven. Did I say stove? I meant oven, Ray -- " in this totally urgent way, like he was trying to tell Ray a coded message or something, about how not to get himself blown up by a passing nuclear beaver-head, and Ray wasn't even trying to decode it. Which he hadn't been, of course, because Fraser is just unhinged sometimes. It's just a fact of life. It's also a fact of life that Fraser won't shut up until Ray drags him back to bed against his will.

Speaking of which, fucking Fraser and living with Fraser are two different things, which basically means that fucking Fraser is yet another layer to Fraser's weirdness. It's not like Fraser has kinks, or anything like that. Or he does, but that's not the really weird part. The weird part is -- well, the weird part is how he doesn't seem even vaguely shy about being naked. Just give him a minute, tops -- that's for when he's wearing the full dress uniform, which usually he isn't -- and bang, there he is, bare as the day he was born.

Except for the socks.

That's the one that actually kind of bothers Ray, 'cause the rest either don't bother him or actually work in his favor, and he's not gonna complain about those. Even the socks aren't so bad. It's just that he's got this voice in his head telling him that maybe it's kind of strange that he and Fraser've been living together -- actually together together, every way you can think of it -- and Ray can't even say he's seen Fraser's feet, or the half-inch of skin right above his ankle.

Usually at this point he just tells the voice to go away. It's not like it's a big deal, or anything. They're just feet, and it's not like he's got a feet fetish or anything. And he's seen everything else, besides -- hell, he's pretty sure he's licked all of the more prominent bits of everything else, 'cause after you hang with Fraser a while he starts to rub off on you. And he likes the socks, mostly. Yeah, there're thin white cotton socks for summer and a whole host of wool ones for winter -- striped and polka-dotted and zig-zaggy and occasionally solid red. They're okay socks. Nice and soft. Sometimes Ray borrows them, when he has to get out of the house and the thermometer reads so low that there's no red showing at all. And then the voice in his head would point out smugly that that's not the point. He and the voice in his head can talk to eachother all fucking day --

-- except right this minute, they're not, because Fraser's done that thing where he undresses in ten seconds flat as soon as he gets in the door. That happens sometimes. Not so often as Ray'd like, but it happens.

The socks are wool today, gray and blue zig zags, and Ray thinks that maybe he's getting a little bit obsessed with this sock thing when he remembers that Fraser last wore them two weeks and three days ago.

So, yeah, he plays along with Fraser -- he lets Fraser steer him into the bedroom, lets him apply his Mountie-magic to the pretty easy job of his own clothes. He gets Fraser all close and unsuspecting, before he hooks a finger into the fabric near Fraser's big toe.

Fraser goes stiff. "Ray, what -- ?"

Ray doesn't say anything -- he just tugs again, 'cause Fraser can figure the rest out.

"Ray, I -- I don't think -- " Tug. "You wouldn't -- " Tug. "They're not -- " Tug.

And finally, after a coupla rounds of that game, Fraser lets his head hang back and says, "All right, Ray," and maybe he sounds pissy, but he's not. Not really. Maybe a little, just 'cause Ray's more stubborn than he is.

So he takes 'em off.

And -- well, okay. They're not pretty. They're scarred pretty bad, patterns more like patches than lines, which he recognizes now, which he cannot fail to recognize now, after all this time up in the Great North. Everybody's got these -- it's just one of those things you see on people, along with the space-age parkas and the boots and the fur hats. Just about everybody's been stupid or brave about the cold sometime or another, and so they get these -- patches of skin where the frostbite made blisters, where the blisters never healed over properly.

Ray's pretty sure that Fraser'd been being brave, and he's just as sure that Fraser thinks he was being stupid.

"They're sensitive to the cold," Fraser explains. "It's not pleasant to have the socks off."

But that's not all of it, Ray's pretty sure, 'cause it's plenty warm in the cabin and Fraser is just the kind of guy who doesn't normally say what he means. And Ray's pretty sure it's not vanity, either, 'cause if Fraser was vain Ray'd never be able to live with him.

"Ray?"

Ray doesn't answer. He traces the jagged edge of Fraser's big toenail, which never grew back -- that happens to people sometimes. He traces the outline of the biggest patch, which must have hurt like motherfucker back when it was still a blister. He puts the tip of his finger over the smallest patch, which covers it up completely.

Turns out it's not just the cold Fraser's feet're sensitive to.