Disclaimer: I'm playing in someone else's sandbox and I don't own the toys.

Author's Notes: My first posted story ever. And yes, unbeta'd. Encouragement, comments and constructive criticism will be savoured at length.

Story Notes: Post-COTW. Some language, but otherwise shameless, harmless fluff.

Two months. That's how long it took for Ray to finally get it.

On first arrival, there had been a killer to track, planes to leap out of, crevices to wedge themselves into, mountainsides to scale, a nuclear submarine to secure... He just hadn't had the time to begin to understand Canada or Fraser in it. Canada was illusive and ethereal. Snowy and white and bitterly cold and strange. It wasn't home. Chicago, that was home, he understood it. He knew it as well as he knew himself, as if Chicago was somehow in his blood, as if they were one and the same, identical and inseparable. It was dirty and mean and schizophrenic, but it was beautiful, and he understood it. Canada... Canada was something completely different. He'd heard that it was beautiful, but he couldn't see it. It was too hard, too harsh, too freezing and blank and dangerous. Even before, back in the safety of Chicago, he had never really had a grasp on it, on Canada as a living, breathing place, instead of the romanticised concept of it he'd gotten from Fraser.

Fraser and Canada, they were like this. Fraser understood Canada, lived and breathed Canada, could cross from coast to coast to coast with nothing but a pair of snowshoes and a really big knife... with his eyes closed... and his hands tied behind his back... while singing all four verses of the national anthem... in both languages. Fraser, it was clear, was home the moment he leapt out the plane and into the snowdrift, coming up smiling. Fraser and Canada, it was pretty damned clear, were both freaks.

Ray survived the planes and the crevices and the mountainsides and the nuclear submarine, and he figured that if Canada hadn't killed him yet, after all that, it probably wasn't going to, and maybe, maybe he could win. Because he wasn't about to let Fraser go, not without a fight. If Canada was what Fraser loved, what got his juices flowing and got colour on his cheeks and a twinkle in his eye, then Ray was just going to have to go head to head with Canada and fight for the man, because Ray was not the giving up kind. When he wanted something, and fuck it, he apparently wanted (loved) Fraser, he latched on and fought tooth and nail and soul and heart for it.

He'd lost it with Stella, because the world of lawyers hadn't been one he'd understood either, and he hadn't had the energy, by the end of it, to try. And lawyers were bloodsuckers with razor teeth and iron claws. He wouldn't have won anyway. Canada... well, Canada barely had an army. Canada wasn't offensive. It had peacekeepers. The national police force had pumpkin pants and a Musical Ride thingy. He could take Canada.

Hence the adventure. The Search for the Hand of Franklin. Dogsleds. Lots of snow and ice and potential frostbite on things he wanted to keep. Tents and pemmican and snowshoes. And Fraser to himself. Well, mostly. Just him, and Fraser, and Dief, and a bunch of dogs, and a polar bear on the horizon, and a pack or five of artic wolves, and more snow than you can shake a stick at, and the big fucking awe-inspiring vista of Canada. Even when you left out the animals, it was still, at best, a threesome. Ray, Fraser, and Canada.

But if a threesome was what it took to see Fraser looking all radiant and happy and open, then so be it.

Besides, thanks to Canada and her wicked sense of weather, he got to cuddle up to the human heater that was Benton Fraser at night. Not every night, sadly, no, but on the really bitter nights, the ones where Canada gave you about three minutes to cover everything up before she went at you with frozen knives, those were the nights when he got to snuggle, and he figured, hell, if this was how Canada was going to wage the war, he wasn't going to complain. No sir-ee. Canada could just keep blasting his ass all she wanted, so long as he had Fraser to cover it.

But then something strange happened.

Canada got beautiful.

It happened slowly. He almost didn't notice it happening. One moment, it was a harsh, bitter, freezing world that he had to survive and fight, and the next...

It started with stars. A big, giant, open bowl of inky blue-blackness and pure diamonds, the thick Milky Way splitting the sky. And then it was the sun, glinting off the tiny crystal shards of snow and ice, making rainbows of colour across the white slate of tundra. And the sunsets, orange fire across the horizon, making the whole world radiant and perfect, near-heavenly, melting into that inky blue-blackness and diamonds that could have him staring for hours, until Fraser finally told him to get his ass in the damned tent. He wasn't even going to get into the Aurora Borealis. Canada was beautiful.

But the moment it really happened, the moment where Canada suddenly wasn't such a mystery to him anymore, when the two of them developed an understanding, that happened at five o'clock on some random morning. Ray woke up slowly, drifting, feeling nice and heavy and warm and comfortable, with his back tucked up against Fraser's stomach and chest. Fraser had an arm slung around Ray's middle, and Ray, for all the world, didn't want to move. It hadn't been a bitterly cold night, not at all, but they also hadn't had that talk yet, the one that vocalised everything that was between them. Ray knew they both knew what was happening, slow as it was, but they hadn't actually said anything, or, hell, done anything. Fraser was spooning him like he meant it, and Ray could easily just turn and answer the hot hardness pressing into the small of his back, but they hadn't gotten that far yet. And there was something different that morning, something that wouldn't let Ray drift back down into sleep. Canada was calling him.

He slipped from Fraser's arm, stuffed his feet into his heavily padded boots, slung his arms into his down parka, and crawled out from the tent into a crisp but not bitter morning. The sky was just barely pink in the east, and Ray walked out into the crunching snow toward it.

And that was when it happened. When it all came together. The sun just barely slivering, turning the horizon to golden pink, sending liquid gold across the snow. The mountains in the distance, the great expanse of empty world, pure and untouched and as beautiful as it was thousands of years ago, as beautiful as anything could be anymore. This was what Chicago wasn't. It hit him, shook him down to his core, touched his soul, touched his heart, and he found himself smiling very slightly at the world around him, taking it all in. The air was chill against his cheeks, and he was happy. Dief came to sniff at his fingers, making an enquiring noise, and Ray just pinched his fingers though the wolf's soft, thick fur and felt the warmth spread through his body, tips of his hair to tips of his toes. He was calm and still and happy.

"Ray?" Fraser came up slowly, hesitantly behind him, and Dief turned to greet him. "Are you alright?"

Ray smiled without turning, eyes still on Canada. He could understand Fraser's confusion. He wasn't really known for waking up before he had to, most days Fraser had to drag him out from the sleeping bag by his feet. But this morning was different. This morning, he was seeing Canada the way Fraser saw it. He understood now.

"This, all of this," he nodded to the scenery. "This is you, isn't it?" He felt Fraser freeze behind him and continued, "I mean, I know you're more than this, but this really is you, isn't it?"

"Yes," Fraser breathed behind him, into his ear, sounding breathless and exhilarated, all at once. "Yes."

Ray nodded and turned his head to look Fraser in the eye. He looked terrified and ecstatic. Ray smiled softly and nodded again. "I love it," he told Fraser. "All of it."

"Do you?"

Ray smiled again and dipped his head toward his feet, and a soft grin overtook him. Dief looked from one to the other and then his tongue lolled happily and he wandered back toward the snowy pile of sleeping dogs. Ray glanced back up at Fraser and held his eyes. "Yeah. I do." He paused and then turned fully to face his partner, his friend, standing so close to him, there was barely two inches between them. "Is there room for me in Canada, do you think?"

"Oh, yes," Fraser answered immediately and swayed a bit closer, probably without knowing he did it. "Always."

"Does Canada want me? Does it really want a skinny-ass Chicago flatfoot around for the long-haul?"

"Long-haul?"

Ray grinned widely and dipped his head again, scratching his fingers through his hair, sending it in all directions. "Yeah. I was thinking along the lines of forever. `Til death do us part, kind of thing." He looked up again to find Fraser dazzling him with a wide, brilliant smile. "D'ya think Canada's alright with that?"

"I think we can manage," Fraser replied wryly, still grinning and then dropped his eyes to Ray's mouth, swaying forward again. "Ray, can I... Would it..."

"Yeah," Ray breathed. "That'd be fan-fucking-tastic, Fraser."

Fraser smiled one last time and then dipped his head just as Ray tilted up, and then the sun burst over the horizon, and it happened. A circle, a connection. Ray, Fraser, and Canada.

And, yeah, he got it. Finally.

END