Disclaimer: I don't own the characters, I'm not making any money from this, this writing is just for fun and entertainment.

Author's Notes: Thanks to Vanessa, Andrea and Dia. Quotes/lyrics property of U2.

Story Notes: Post CotW.

and you feel like no one before you steal right under my door

It wasn't as though he was counting or anything, but Ray had been back in Chicago for forty six days, nine hours, twelve minutes and about twenty seconds. Give or take. He yawned, scratched his elbow and looked at the clock. Thirteen minutes. Days went by so slowly now, uneventful, wolf-less, tundra-less, cabin-less and most importantly, Mountie-less.

Unless, of course, you counted Turnbull's occasional visit to the station, which Ray didn't. He figured the better definition of his life now would be Fraser-less. And that bothered him. Actually, it more than bothered him; it made his skin itch with restlessness, and his apartment felt lonelier than it had in years. Going home alone had always been hard for Ray. After Stella left him, it had troubled him a lot more, but he'd almost gotten used to it by the time he met Fraser. The Mountie had to go and ruin that, of course, making himself as much a part of Ray's apartment as the turtle was.

But Fraser was gone now, so it was just Ray and the turtle. He was finding it even more difficult to get used to being alone this time around.

"Detective."

Startled, Ray looked up, wrenching his neck. "Jesus," he muttered, bending forward to rub his neck. He looked up at Welsh again when it felt a bit better. "Yes sir?"

"Are you just gonna sit at your desk all day and waste my time or are you gonna fill out some paperwork and file it like you were supposed to do a week ago?"

"Uh." Ray looked at the clock. Quarter after three. Forty six days, nine hours, sixteen minutes. And still more than an hour before he'd be allowed to go back to his empty and lonely apartment. "I'm just gonna sit here and waste your time today, sir. Y'know, if that's okay."

Welsh raised his eyebrows, looking unimpressed. "Funny, Kowalski. Get your skinny ass outta here."

"What?"

"Go home. Start your weekend early. You're useless to me in this state."

Ray frowned. "What state?"

"That walking dead state you've been in off and on since you got back from Canada," Welsh barked, then turned back to his office and called over his shoulder, "Fix yourself up this weekend, Detective. You're starting to get on my nerves."

"Starting?" Ray muttered. He rubbed his neck again and then collected his things. He almost said "C'mon Fraser" before remembering that Fraser wasn't there and he stopped himself in the middle of "c'mon", then glared at Dewey when Ray found him staring.

Glancing at his watch on the way out of the precinct, Ray sighed. Forty six days, nine hours and twenty one minutes.

-

On the drive home he pulled into the grocery store parking lot on a whim. He hadn't been grocery shopping since before he and Stella had split, but without Fraser to remind him when it was time to restock the fridge and without Fraser to coerce into doing the shopping for him, he'd run out of everything in the past week. Including coffee.

"Coffee?" he asked the first employee he saw in a hopeful voice. Smiling brightly, she handed him a basket that he wasn't entirely sure he needed, then pointed him in the right direction and gave him an aisle number to start off in. Her smile brightened when he thanked her. Half expecting a "go get 'em champ" pep talk, Ray walked in the direction she'd pointed out and found the coffee quickly enough.

But as he turned into the aisle, Ray saw that broad back covered in red flannel and he felt heat rush to his face. Right down at the end of the aisle was Fraser. Which was weird, yeah, but it was Fraser and he missed Fraser so much that he really didn't think about it. Big shoulders, dark hair, his jeans tucked into his boots in that annoying way Ray never really understood. It had to be Fraser.

He approached slowly, grinning like a maniac, he was sure, and nudged him. "You came back," he said, failing to keep the happiness out of his voice.

The man looked at Ray, frowning. "Uh ... I come here all the time."

And suddenly the man in flannel wasn't Fraser anymore. Ray felt his neck burning and he forced himself to smile.

"Sorry, man. I, uh ... I thought you were someone else. Sorry," he said again, then stepped away.

Forgetting all about the coffee, Ray quickly returned to the front of the store and left the basket in the pile beside the doors. He forced himself to return the bright but confused smile of the girl at the front, then made his way back out to the GTO and locked himself inside.

"Stupid," he muttered, leaning against the steering wheel.

That was exactly how he felt: stupid. Fraser wasn't coming back to Chicago. He'd said as much in every phone conversation the two of them had had in the past month and a half and he'd repeated himself in every letter he sent to Ray. Fraser was home and Ray was home. That was the way life went.

-

Ray ordered pizza when he got home. Ate it, had a beer -- a poor substitute for the coffee he was craving, but good enough -- watched some TV, checked his messages, had another beer, then went to feed his turtle.

"You're no wolf," he said, turning on her sunlamp and looking through the glass at her. "I can't even take you for a walk."

As much as he hated to admit it, he missed Diefenbaker almost as much as he missed Fraser. It had become some sort of tradition between them during the time they'd spent together: finish up at the precinct, pick up some food, go back to Ray's apartment and watch whatever bad movie was on TV that night, and they usually ended up missing the end of the movie because Dief would prance around the apartment door, whining as loudly as he could until one or both of them went outside with him.

Sometimes Ray walked halfway back to the Consulate with them, then headed home, his collar turned up against the wind. Sometimes he went the entire way, despite Fraser's protests, and the Mountie would just let Diefenbaker inside, then turn around and walk Ray halfway home. Sometimes he wouldn't go at all, but those nights were rare.

After checking the clock -- it was only ten, so forty six days, fifteen hours, forty six minutes and god he had to stop doing that before it drove him insane. Steeling himself, he looked at the clock again, ignored the desire to calculate exactly how long it had been since he'd stepped off the plane, then picked his jacket up off the chair.

"Goin' for a walk," he said to no one in particular.

His turtle didn't even move.

-

Forty minutes after leaving the apartment, Ray was cold, shivering inside his leather jacket and not counting how many minutes it had been since he last counted how many minutes it'd been since he'd left Canada. Even with the collar turned up, he was freezing and beginning to wonder how he'd managed to survive so long in Northern Canada. Of course, while he was up there, Ray had spent most of his time in a thick parka, not a leather jacket, t-shirt and a pair of jeans that was almost worn through in a few places.

His neck still hurt from wrenching it to look at Welsh earlier and Ray ducked his head, rubbing at it absentmindedly. There was a knot he could barely reach with his thumb, something Fraser probably would have worked out of his own neck in moments with the help of some pregnant elephant seal urine or something just as gross. Ray always had kinks, knotted muscles, pain shooting up his spine and into his skull, tension headaches ... you name it, he had it.

When Fraser was still there, he'd notice Ray rubbing at his neck and would offer to work the kinks out for him, although not before clearing his throat, cracking his neck and running his thumbnail over his eyebrow. Ray never took him up on the offer. He'd brush away Fraser's hands, shrug, crack his neck as well and say he was fine. They were both just fine. Ray joked that he might fall apart without the knots in his muscles and Fraser would smile and say "ah" which would just drive them into an argument about what the hell that specific "ah" had meant.

Ray felt really ridiculous admitting to himself that he missed those arguments. Hell, he even missed the "ah"s now and then. He missed a lot of things that used to irritate him, things that pissed him off about Fraser. Things that he now realized meant they had been better friends than Ray had even imagined.

Kneading his fingers into the back of his neck and looking for his keys at the same time, Ray turned to enter his apartment building and walked straight into a warm, strong body.

Spending months in the wilderness with one person who, if you were lucky, showered once a week was a fast way of learning said person's smell. Within the first two weeks, Ray had learned Fraser's scent. He'd learned the way Fraser smelled in the morning just before he woke up, the way he smelled when he stretched, opened his eyes and said good morning. It had taken all Ray's willpower to prevent himself from leaning into Fraser's throat and just breathing him in.

When they had climbed and walked and hiked all day, all Ray could smell was Fraser, his own scent taking a backseat to the stronger, bigger presence of his partner. When they had built a fire -- rather, when Fraser built a fire and Ray tried not to burn things -- he could pretend he was messing with the firewood just to get close to Fraser, just to lean in and practically drown. The smell of smoke clung to their skin when they'd retired for the night, sleeping bags pushed close together so they'd be warm and Ray was always warm. He'd lie there smelling Fraser under all the smoke, his fist under his chin and his head tilted at just the right angle to breathe it in without making it obvious.

He walked into that body and the smell of Fraser rushed over him. Ray knew, without even looking up, he knew that Fraser had been waiting for him to come home. He finally raised his head hopefully, only it wasn't Fraser. Realistically, he knew he shouldn't be surprised, but he couldn't help the disappointment that washed over him.

"Sorry," he mumbled, as he fished out his keys and entered the building.

"No harm," the man replied, then went out into the night as Ray trudged toward the elevator, dragging his feet.

Welsh had told him to straighten himself out and he wasn't going to be able to do that if he kept seeing -- and smelling -- Fraser everywhere.

Tomorrow. Ray would start to straighten himself out tomorrow.

-

When he woke up the next morning the sun was blazing and if he hadn't frozen his ass off the night before, Ray would have sworn is was almost summer. The sheets felt damp where they were twisted around his legs and the comforter was heavy and hot, but he didn't move. It felt like one of those rare moments in Canada when Ray would wake up with Fraser's arm thrown across his back, weighing down heavily on him, making it a little difficult to breathe, but that might not have been entirely Fraser's fault.

They never said anything about those moments, although Ray sometimes thought Fraser was awake, testing him, waiting to see if he'd freak out and demand to know why he was being hugged to his partner's chest. Ray suspected that if he had freaked out, Fraser would have stammered out some reasonable explanation like, "I was simply trying to keep your shivering to a minimum, Ray" and then Ray would have felt bad and everything would've been different. So he never freaked out. He just lay there, letting Fraser edge closer to him, bit by bit, until Ray pretended to roll over in his sleep and then suddenly his back was pressed to Fraser's chest and he was warmer than he ever thought he could be.

That was the way he felt now with the comforter wrapped tightly around him and a pillow lying against his back. He felt warm and safe and if he closed his eyes and just listened, he was able to pretend he could hear Fraser's steady, comforting breath.

"Pitter patter," he mumbled into his pillow. Then he forced himself to open his eyes and look at the clock. Past noon. Even his internal clock was protesting the change from Canada to Chicago. With Fraser, Ray had adjusted to getting up before dawn and he'd actually begun to secretly enjoy it, the sunrise as they packed up their camp and loaded it onto the dogsled, the way the air felt different, like no one had started to disrupt it just yet. He liked that. Waking up early in the city was different. The air in the city was always disrupted, tangled, frantic. So Ray started to sleep in instead.

Dragging himself out of bed, Ray shuffled to the kitchen and banged the cupboard doors around looking for coffee he knew he didn't have. It figured that the stupid Mountie would mess Ray up enough that he'd abandon buying coffee. He didn't feel like breakfast either, so he shuffled back in the direction of his bedroom, debated passing out on the bed again, then continued on into the bathroom.

A shower would do him good. Preferably a cold one.

-

Two hours later he had a coffee in one hand and he was steering the Goat aimlessly around Chicago with the other, feeling like the cold shower hadn't really done much of anything. And 'aimlessly' might not have been exactly the right word, seeing as Ray was simply taking the long way to the Consulate, driving at a leisurely speed, something he never did. There was no reason for him to go there, nothing at the Consulate that would help him straighten up, nothing that would do much of anything besides drive him a little closer to the edge, but he was going anyway.

Maybe he'd talk to Turnbull, although Ray wasn't sure how much more he could take of Turnbull's babble about running for public office. Maybe he'd stop in and chat with the Ice Queen, who was apparently transferring to some Canadian Intelligence Agency, which Ray found kind of ironic and snickered about to himself every time she mentioned it. Truthfully, it would be just as awkward talking to her now as it had always been, even without Fraser around. Ray remembered wanting to tell her to shut up every time she spoke to Fraser, wanting to tell her to close her eyes every time she looked at him. He never made the effort to get along with her as a result, so there was really no excuse for him to go into the Consulate.

He pulled up in front of it anyway, circled around, found a parking spot across the street and maneuvered into the space. This was stupid. He was stalking the Canadian Consulate on his Saturday off. It wasn't as though sitting outside the Consulate all day was going to help him forget Fraser. In fact, Ray was pretty sure that, no matter what he did, he wasn't going to be able to forget Fraser. A person didn't just forget someone like that.

"This is screwed up," he said quietly, sipping his coffee and watching the Consulate doors. The last thing he needed to do was watch for a Mountie to come out of those doors, especially since all he'd been doing for the past forty seven days was thinking about a Mountie he knew wouldn't ever come out of those doors again. And seeing him, smelling him, wishing to god he was waking up beside him again, their limbs entwined and Ray pressed into Fraser's chest, their bodies aligned, warm and perfect, something they'd never talk about once they were awake.

If he kept seeing Fraser -- exactly like he was seeing him now, Fraser coming down the steps of the Consulate, Fraser taking off his hat and squinting into the sun, Fraser studying the car and Fraser coming across the street -- he was probably going to drive himself completely insane and end up in some kind of home for cops who couldn't handle their job anymore.

"He's not there," Ray muttered to himself, rubbing his eyes with one hand, then taking another sip of coffee.

Except the almost-Fraser Mountie kept coming, not quite smiling and ducking slightly to look into the car.

"That's not Fraser," he said. It didn't occur to him that talking to himself was as insane as seeing Fraser everywhere he looked. "Fraser's in the Northern Territory thingies."

The almost-Fraser Mountie leaned down to look into the passenger window, then knocked on the glass and asked, "Ray?"

"Fraser's gone," Ray told the almost-Fraser.

"Ray, open the door."

"Fraser left," he said to the almost-Fraser, but he opened his door and got out, his coffee trembling in his hand and why the hell was his coffee trembling?

For forty seven days Ray had been seeing him and smelling him and feeling him, but even as Fraser's arms went around him, pulling him tightly to his chest, spilling his coffee, Ray couldn't quite put all those sensations together to fit into Fraser. His Fraser. During all that time, it had never occurred to him that whatever he was seeing, smelling, feeling couldn't be the real Fraser because the real Fraser was all those things put together, not just one at a time. His Fraser was everything; the red flannel over broad shoulders, the smell of campfires and something heavier underneath, the feel of warmth and security, and the hug was all of that. The hug was all those things finally coming together.

"You left," he finally said, but he wasn't sure if Fraser had heard it. Ray had his face buried in Fraser's shoulder, breathing him in and his arms came up to return the hug, wondering if it would be okay with the rest of the world if he never let go again.

"I ... there was ... I was lonely, Ray."

"You have Diefenbaker."

Ray felt a hot rush of air against his neck and it took him a second to realize that Fraser had laughed.

"I missed you, Ray."

Well, Welsh had told Ray to straighten himself out. It had only taken forty seven days to figure out exactly what he needed to hear to get his head on straight.

If there was a reason behind the kiss, Ray wasn't aware of it. He just knew that one second he had his face pressed into Fraser's throat, breathing deeply, taking him in, making silent promises to never let go again and then they were kissing. It didn't matter who started it, who turned their face first, which one of them had made the decision to go through with it. None of that mattered.

They just stood on the sidewalk, Ray's back pressed against the GTO and they kissed. Fraser, warm and heavy and pressing Ray into the car, kissed his partner for all he was worth. Ray barely managed to hold onto the front of Fraser's shirt, returning the kiss as best he could, already thinking about waking up together the next morning. And suddenly he wasn't thinking about anything beyond Fraser's mouth, warm and hot and smooth, tongue and teeth, stubble scratching against Ray's face until it burned. He wasn't thinking about anything except the way Fraser was holding his face with both hands, his long fingers splayed across Ray's cheeks, the way Fraser's teeth caught his bottom lip and bit down, ever so gently. He was thinking only about Fraser and the way he had his fists twisted into the flannel shirt Fraser was wearing, the feeling of Fraser's tongue carefully exploring Ray's mouth and how good it felt to have Fraser's body pressed up against his.

"I missed you too, Frase," he managed to say when they parted. He leaned into the Mountie's throat again and tried to catch his breath. "But this is ... you gotta be straight with me." He couldn't even look at Fraser when he asked. "When're you goin' home?"

One of those big hands pressed into the back of Ray's head, holding him in place so he could feel Fraser's chest heave with every breath he was trying to catch.

"I am home, Ray."

The sound Ray made was caught somewhere between a laugh and a sob and he was suddenly thankful that Fraser couldn't see his face. He forced himself to laugh a second time.

"You're such a fucking Hallmark card."

"You love that about me," Fraser said simply and Ray knew that, yeah, he did love that about him. "Get in the car. I'll fetch Diefenbaker. You and I have a lot to talk about."

Ray reluctantly stepped away from Fraser and looked up at him, finally taking him in. "Yeah, we do." He didn't want to, but he got into the car that smelled too much like Ray Kowalski and not enough like Benton Fraser. He didn't mind, though, because he figured, soon enough, that was going to change.

-

When Ray woke up Sunday morning it really was Sunday morning. Just past seven and he was pressed up against Fraser's chest. Nothing between them now, just skin to skin, Fraser's arm slung over Ray's waist without the tension it used to carry. No more tests, no more wondering if one of them would freak out. Just lying there together, Ray feeling like he was suffocating under the arm and loving every second of it.

Ray turned, faced Fraser and found him still asleep. Already things were changing. Already Fraser's clothes were in Ray's dresser drawers and already there was a towel for him in the bathroom. Already Ray's living room smelled like the wolf and like Fraser and maybe still a little bit like Ray, but it was all mingling together and turning into something new.

He'd be okay to go back to work on Monday morning. He knew that now. Yeah, he'd be just fine. Turned out he wasn't the only one who'd been seeing ghosts, waiting for his mind to settle, waiting to forget.

He should have known better. They both should have.