Author's Notes: written for the freeversefic challenge on livejournal.

Ray didn't think at first about how if he was Vecchio, then who was going to be Kowalski. Or if he did, it was just that he did not envy that poor sucker one bit. At first he just thought Thank God I can stop being me for a while, as he hadn't been doing a particularly bang-up job of it lately, and so perhaps it was time he was benched.

Later he thought about it, about Vecchio being Langoustini and him being Vecchio and some other peon being Kowalski, and would that one have to be replaced too? How far would it have to go? It was like those dolls of his grandmother's that his mom brought out at Christmas, each smaller than the next.

But of course, no one had to replace him. See previous re fucked-up life, cross-reference to Stella, conclude that one Stanley Raymond Kowalski going missing was probably a damn good thing for all concerned.

So he said okay and read the file, trained himself to answer to Vecchio and quietly slid outside of himself, into a new skin, dancing a new set of steps.

::

They told Ray he'd be working with a Mountie, and he thought that would be all right. Canadians were nice, right? Polite, anyway, and that turned out to be true. Mostly. It didn't take long to see that politeness was also a weapon, wielded with passive-aggressive perfection.

Ray learned quickly that Fraser had a lot of other weapons at his disposal: silence, arrogance, and rather pathological need for independence.

Not that there was anything wrong with that.

There were plenty of things that didn't show up in Fraser's file, like how solid he was when Ray hugged him or the apparent magnet under the red serge that drew Ray's arm around his shoulders over and over or how the lines around his eyes would soften on that first evening when Ray said yeah, he'd go to dinner with him.

::

They did say he was agile, but when Ray had Fraser's ankles up around his ears he didn't think that was what they had meant. And pretty soon he didn't think about anything at all.

But now Ray was getting ahead of himself.

::

The first night in the new apartment, Ray stayed up late painting dance steps on the floor under the rug, security deposit be damned. He didn't really know why he had done it. It wasn't as if he didn't know them like the back of his hand. Like his own name. They hid beneath the rug until the days when the Vecchio, Vecchio, Vecchio in his ears for hours got to be too much. Then, in his apartment at night, he shuffled through the same rhythm, overwriting with Kowalski, Kowalski, Kowalski.

::

He had never seen anything like the shape of his name in Fraser's mouth, Ray over and over again until he'd follow Fraser anywhere.

::

Ray lived fully in his body, working issues of heart or mind out through feet or fists. Dancing was boxing was chess was a pattern and poking at a problem from all sides until it gave in, until he found the loose thread to unravel it all.

All of Fraser's loose threads were well-hidden.

::

He'd never had a partner who bickered with him like Fraser did. Constant banter, verbal sparring, defining the borders of who they were, of who they could be. Like dancing with words, Ray figured, but he didn't usually feel like punching out his dance partner. Fraser was an exception to everything, though, and if he dug up one more Inuit story as evidence Ray figured he'd either punch him in the teeth or kiss him, and on the whole kissing sounded like the less painful option. At least to start with.

::

In the end, it was the beginning. Two steps forward, one step back, and Ray was grinning like a mad thing because he was right, damnit, fucking Eskimo wisdom was totally not applicable in this particular case. It had been a brilliant collar built on his instinct and some serious legwork, and he was going to celebrate. He was wound tight, spring-loaded, and when he impulsively hugged Fraser it was all he could do to hold himself in check. He pulled back and saw something uncertain in the twitch of Fraser's mouth. "Could you please give me a ride home, Ray?" he asked, and if Ray noticed "home" and not "the Consulate" he kept it to himself until they were in the car.

::

Ray'd been patient this long; he could manage a bit longer. Up the stairs to his apartment, fumbling for the keys, and apparently Fraser wasn't nearly as stoic as he had appeared because he was pushing them through the door, twirling Ray back around, up against the wall. They kissed like they fought, no finesse, just passion, hot and rough and all the things they had been waiting on, all the things they thought they shouldn't want.

The door quietly snicked shut behind them, locking out the weather and the past, locking in room for the redefinition of borders and the relearning of names.