Disclaimer: Not mine, which is undoubtedly a relief for the characters involved.

Author's Notes: Huge thanks to Bone for the beta without which I would suck so deeply they could use me to drain Possum Lake. Also to Laura Shapiro and Morgan Dawn, for inspiration via their vid 'Wonder of Birds', also known affectionately by me as Woobiest. Vid. Ever. Much gratitude to nancy for suggesting that I write more DS, because it sure was a good time :-)

Foreign Territory By Aristide

Sometimes, Fraser made him crave a bologna sandwich. White bread, squishy mayonnaise, some tomato and a slice of that gross and addictive American cheese that was as violently orange as his hair had been after that first disastrous tenth-grade dye job (the one that had only lasted a day before the comments at school made it clear that he looked more like Howdy Doody than David Bowie).

It was a throwback, an echo from a time in his life so long ago that it was even before Stella (which was weird, because he'd pretty much gotten used to thinking that he hadn't had a life at all before Stella), a time when his favorite thing was to climb to the top of the monkey bars, hook his knees over, then swing upside down as fast as he could, beating on his chest with a Tarzan yell and screaming: lookit lookit lookit! And people would lookit, and eventually Mrs. Mitsopoulos the playground monitor would come over and tell him to stop it before he fell off and cracked his fool head wide open, and then he'd go and unpack his lunch and swap his apple for somebody else's something (he always angled for a Twinkie, but who in their right mind would fall for that? Not even little Donnie 'Damaged' Damachuk--who didn't have a right mind to begin with--would fall for that), and then he'd eat his bologna sandwich, right down to the crusts, which were poison.

Not that he swung from monkey bars anymore--if he'd done that now he probably would crack his fool head wide open before he could get out one decent Tarzan yell--but there was no question that he did... things, little things, sometimes bigger things, pretty much always dumb things, and it seemed like he always did them around Fraser, and somewhere in the back of his mind there was an echo of lookit lookit lookit, and Fraser sometimes would lookit but never seemed to really *see*, and then Ray would stop and act like it had nothing to do with Fraser at all and go away grumpy, wishing he had a bologna sandwich.

Which was how Ray ended up dangling off a building, after he and Fraser had witnessed a hit-and-run that went from a car chase to a foot chase to the kind of chase that made him wish he had a video camera, because the guy they were chasing (with his blow-dried razor cut and his tailored three-piece suit) may have *looked* like somebody's lawyer, but he moved like an Olympic sprinter on crack.

The guy climbed a building. A seven-story building. True, there was an old, rusted ladder running up the side which made it a lot easier, but in Ray's world, dependable-looking lawyers in three-piece suits did not climb buildings, with or without ladders and crack.

Ray hit the ladder with a clang, and Fraser signaled to him that he was going to go up through the building to the roof so they'd have the guy pinched. Ray nodded, and started up. At first he meant to go only a little way up, enough so Mr. Olympic Lawyer couldn't jump down past him (because on flat ground the guy was a fucking *streak*), but once he started climbing there was that voice, the one that said maybe he should go a little higher, a little further, because Fraser would undoubtedly peer over the edge of the building at any moment (when he was sure to say something very Mountielike to their perp, something in Canadian that translated roughly to 'oh, you bad, bad law-breaking person, you see now that Crime Does Not Pay, A-ha-ha!'), and there was no need for Fraser to think he was pussy about heights, which he was not. Much.

And then, when he had really gone as high as he wanted to, he went a little higher because Fraser still hadn't appeared and it looked like maybe Mr. Bad Guy-Lawyer-Perp might actually make the roof first, which would suck. Which is when the bad guy put on a burst of speed and started climbing like a demon, and Ray wondered what had happened until a horrible screech-creak-squeal filled his ears, and he felt the ladder sway beneath him. He started climbing like a demon himself and forgot all about the Olympic Lawyer for the moment, because he was far too high now to back down safely and if this baby went with him on it that would *suck*, that would be, that was gonna be, that was...

That was happening. Ray scrambled, boosted, lunged and grabbed, and the next thing he knew he was dangling seven stories off the ground, hearing the ladder fall behind him with a hollow, clanging crash.

In front of him was crumbling brick and a rusty square of cement with two gaping holes in it where bolts had once been. Above him was the sky, the lawyer having apparently made it over the top unharmed. Below him was... nothing. A long, long stretch of nothing.

And his arms were tired.

Ray swallowed, kicked, and then stopped kicking when it just made his hands start to slip and his feet found nothing to push against but more crumbling brick. He tried to pull himself up, but once the top of his head reached the ledge the brick in his left hand came loose and he had to grab frantically for another handhold--and after that he just settled for hanging on, hanging on was good, hanging on would suit him just fine.

Ray closed his eyes. He tried to close his mouth, but it seemed he needed more air right now than he could get just through his nose, so he left it open. He wasn't going to short himself on air, not while he was still inclined to breathe it--

"Hold it right there," he heard from above, from the roof. "You are under arrest--well, technically, it's a citizen's arrest, but--"

"Fraser!" he yelled, and the next few seconds were just a blur. He heard his name, and he couldn't open his eyes but he knew Fraser was there, and then big Mountie hands gripped his wrists and there was a yank and air swooping by and then he was up, slumped on a graveled roof with two bricks still clutched in his hands, shivering in the mellow September sunshine and treating himself to all the air he wanted.

"I don't think that ladder met basic fire safety codes, Ray," he heard Fraser say disapprovingly. "It doesn't look like it's been inspected for some time."

"Yeah," Ray managed, tossing his two bricks aside so he could bury his face in his hands. His voice sounded all crazy and jerky, and he rubbed his face hard, wiping away sweat.

He sat there like that for a few seconds, waiting for his heart to stop trying to climb out of his body via his throat, until he remembered-- "Fraser, where's the guy?" he looked around, saw nothing but a bunch of gravel and the roof access door, a rusty monstrosity that looked like it had been battered open, hanging by one hinge. "He got *away*?"

Fraser's big hand patted his shoulder. "Not to worry, Ray; he won't get far. The fire doors in the stairwell lock automatically--another code violation, I'm afraid, but in this case, one that works in our favor." Fraser sighed. "I'll try to find the building superintendent."

Ray looked at him.

"It's shocking, Ray, really. Somebody could have been hurt."

"Uh huh," Ray said, and then laid down on the gravel and waited to see whether or not he was going to puke.

***

As it turned out, the guy wasn't a lawyer. He was a television advertising executive. Ray didn't warm up to him any on account of that. Ray walked him through processing in a kind of haze, only fully present when he was yelling threats into the guy's scared, rabbity face. Finally he watched him get led off towards the lockup by a couple of uniforms, and then, standing in the hallway with his fists clenched, he started to shake just a little.

"Ray?" he heard, and even though he knew Fraser was right there next to him, his voice sounded as if it were coming from very far away. "Ray, you look... you're pale. Are you all right?"

"Nope," he said calmly, and then walked out of the station without another word.

***

An hour later he felt guilty. He was fine, he'd been scared but he'd made it and he was fine, it wasn't Fraser's fault that Ray sometimes did dumb things. He was all set to suck it up and go back to the station and see if he could get some actual work done, when there was a knock on his door. He opened it to find Fraser and Dief standing there, Fraser with his hat tucked under his arm and a large, grease-spotted pizza box in his hands.

"Fraser, I'm okay," he said right off, but he held the door open anyway. Fraser stepped through with Dief on his heels, the wolf's eyes glued to the pizza box like Fraser might suddenly decide to hurl it like a giant Frisbee and he wanted to be ready.

"Of course you are, Ray," Fraser said warmly, setting the box down on the coffee table. "I just happened to notice that you left the station without the benefit of any lunch, and since I hadn't had any either and I needed to take Diefenbaker for his afternoon walk, I thought I would combine--"

"That's crap, Fraser," Ray said flatly. "You're checking up on me. You're bringing me Chicago comfort food, and you're checking up on me."

Fraser gave him the wide-eyed look. "Nonsense, Ray. Why on earth would you think I need to--"

"You are, though," Ray interrupted with an edge in his voice, daring Fraser to deny it. "You were worried, and so you're checking up on me."

He stared hard at Fraser, who looked back at him evenly for one beat, two, and then gave one of those weird sideways nods he did. "All right, Ray, yes, perhaps I am, a bit. But you really didn't look well when you left, so I was concerned."

Ray tossed his head. "Knew it," he said. "But I'm okay now."

Fraser didn't look convinced. "Are you sure, Ray? Because you truly were behaving rather strangely..."

Ray sighed. It looked like he wasn't going to get out of this without talking about it, and he didn't want to talk about it, and didn't really know how to talk about it, but Fraser was obviously gonna be a pain in the ass until he did talk about it. "Look, Fraser," he said, and he started out slowly enough but as he spoke he sped up until the words were rushing out, one after another to get it over and said and done with. "It's like... like I do these things, these dumb things, and I know they're dumb but I do 'em anyway because you're there and I always think you're gonna see, but you don't and then it's like hey, okay, maybe next time. But this time I was hanging off a building, and maybe you do that all the time no sweat but I'm not like that, I can't compete with that, and I don't want there to be a next time when you don't see my dumb thing and I end up with my leg stuck in a wood-chipper or something, craving a bologna sandwich."

Fraser blinked. "A bologna sandwich?"

Ray waved his arms. "It's a long story. Forget the sandwich, it's not about the sandwich."

"All right." Fraser stood up straight, shoulders back, giving him that 'I am now forgetting the sandwich' look, the one that told him that Fraser had no idea at all what the hell he was talking about.

Ray shook his head. "It's like this, Fraser. You do these things, really dumb things sometimes, like Super-Mountie things, and I see you do them and I think hey, he's a freak, but he caught the bad guy or stopped the explosion or made Turnbull shut up or whatever, and then... and then I think: cool. That's cool. You know?"

Fraser looked like a light had gone on somewhere, which was good, which was greatness because Ray really, really didn't want to talk about it anymore. "Ah," Fraser said, and it wasn't his I'm-pretending-to-understand-you 'ah', it was his I-read-a-book-about-this-once-and-therefore-know-everything-about-it 'ah'. "I see, Ray. Thank you."

Ray looked at him. "You do?"

Fraser nodded firmly. "I do." He hesitated for a minute, and then scratched his eyebrow. "Although I must admit that I have no idea how luncheon meat figures into it--"

"I told you, forget the sandwich!"

"Right you are."

"Okay then." Ray shifted from foot to foot for a second, and then nodded at the couch. "So--we gonna split that pizza, or what?"

***

These days, about the only thing Fraser made him crave was his old combat boots: the steel-toed ones with their laces busted in about a thousand different places and a few random jumbo-sized safety pins jammed through the tongues to keep them from slipping (those boots had been a casualty of his engagement to Stella, one of her 'conditions', and it had made him laugh until he realized that she was serious, and he wondered now if the pure hell of throwing those boots out shouldn't have been some kind of a hint). He missed those boots. They were perfect. They would have been perfect for kicking Fraser in the head.

He hadn't been certain at first whether or not Fraser had really understood what he was talking about, but now he knew. Fraser did. Fraser got it. And Fraser was trying to help. And more than anything, Fraser was Driving. Him. Nuts.

Fraser looked at him *all the time*. Stared at him. Smiled at him. All the time. Not the huge, goofy smile, not the shy smile or the polite smile or the 'we must do bark tea sometime soon' smile, but the quiet, happy, proud 'oh-Ray-my-dearest-friend' smile that used to be special, used to be something he waited for (and maybe even worked for, a little) until Fraser started beaming it at him all the time and it went from 'special' to 'annoying' to 'can't somebody please die so that this bastard Mountie will stop smiling at me?'

And then there were the comments. "Oh, well done, Ray!" and "That was an excellent shot, Ray," and "Why, this instant cocoa is utterly delicious, Ray," and "What an admirable performance of parallel-parking skills, Ray" until Ray was grouchy and irritable and afraid to let Fraser stand next to him at urinals.

It took less than a week for him to snap. It was Sunday, and he and Fraser had made plans to watch the game together (that was back before Fraser had become his own personal cheerleading squad, and Ray made himself a solemn promise that if Fraser showed up with a huge foam-rubber finger that said 'Go Ray', he was gonna make him eat it). Fraser arrived precisely on time as usual, and there was no foam-rubber finger in sight, but as soon as Ray let him and Dief in and closed the door behind them Fraser removed his hat, beamed, took a deep breath--

And Ray stepped in close, quick, and slapped one hand over Fraser's open mouth. "Don't say it, Fraser. Do not say it."

Fraser, his eyes wide, made a noise that translated effortlessly to 'don't say what, Ray?'

"Don't tell me how great it is to be here, or how nobody brings out a bag of chips like me, or that you and the wolf have been looking forward to this like it was Christmas or something. I'm done. I don't wanna hear it. So don't say it. Okay?"

Fraser made a noise that Ray couldn't translate, so he took his hand carefully away from Fraser's mouth. "Ray," Fraser said quietly. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought, that is, I was under the impression that what you wanted was a... a freer expression on my part of the admiration I feel for you--"

"Jeez, Fraser--stop!" Ray said, stepping back and waving his hands.

Fraser looked faintly shocked. "That's not what you wanted?"

"Not when you put it like that--I didn't say that. That is not what I said."

Fraser hesitated. "Well of course, Ray, I was paraphrasing, extrapolating conclusions from the actual conversation--which I don't mind telling you was somewhat difficult, owing to the oblique nature of--"

"Look, Fraser, just... I know what I said, and I know you've been trying to help in your own freaky way, but you gotta stop now."

Fraser stared at him. Looking confused. And maybe kind of hurt.

Ray scratched his head. "It's like this, Fraser--yeah, there was something I wanted from you, okay? But I had to ask for it, and then you bend over backwards to make all this stuff up to make me feel better--"

"Pardon me, Ray," Fraser said stiffly, "but if it's a question of authenticity, I can assure you that my sentiments were perfectly--"

"Do not use words like 'sentiments', Fraser. As far as I'm concerned you don't have sentiments, or if you do, you don't point 'em at me."

"Well that's just silly--"

"I hate being needy, Fraser," he snapped, his voice suddenly too loud and too naked and too honest, knowing that he'd gotten to the heart of it right there but not feeling too cool about saying it out loud. "I been needy, okay? Needy sucks. I hate it. I'm done with that. Finito."

Fraser's expression softened, and Ray's stomach tensed up like a clenched fist. "But... we all need things, Ray," he said gently. "Over and above the basic requirements of food and shelter, it's human to need things, other things, from our fellow--"

"Well I don't, okay?" Ray interrupted, temper spreading like a shot of whiskey in his gut. "And anyways, that is *rich*, that is something else, coming from you. When was the last time *you* needed anything, huh?"

Fraser rocked back a little, as if Ray had struck out at him with fists instead of words. "You think I..." He paused, and took a deep breath. "Ray, I need... I feel need all the time. Always. I may not always act on those feelings, but... I do, indeed, need things."

Ray bounced a little, shifting his stance as if he and Fraser were boxing. "Oh yeah? You do, huh? Well, it doesn't show, Fraser. It doesn't show at all. You could have fooled me."

And for a second he thought Fraser was going to head-butt him and really take the fight up a notch, but the only thing Fraser did when he leaned in was kiss him--once, on the lips, and it wasn't fast and it wasn't slow and it wasn't hard and it wasn't soft--it just *was*, like a word spoken or a fact handed to him: one kiss; plain and unadorned and pretty much the fucking shock of his life.

Fraser put his hat on. Like that was a normal thing to do. "Apparently I *have* fooled you, Ray," he said calmly. "And for that, I am sorry. Dief--come." He snapped his fingers, turned and went and was going, going, was gone, closing Ray's door behind him with a faint click.

Ray stood there, unplugged, the world yanked right out from under him and he didn't like heights, he really didn't like heights, he'd never liked heights at all.

***

On Monday, Ray called in sick. He spent the day in front of the TV with the remote glued to his hand, flipping channels every time he caught himself actually paying attention to something. He stayed up way too late and woke up on Tuesday groggy and irritable, and for a minute it was a toss-up whether he was going to go ahead and call in sick again, but in the end that was a little too much like running away, which he didn't do, so he hauled his ass out of bed and yawned his way through a shower and made himself some industrial-strength coffee and went to work.

Fraser didn't show until almost noon, and by then Ray had started to wonder whether it might be time to start worrying about whether Fraser was going to show up or not, so it was kind of a relief. Kind of.

"Ray," Fraser said, and that one word was just like the... the thing Fraser had done on Sunday: it wasn't sorry and it wasn't eager, it didn't ask for anything or tell him anything, it just was. It left it up to him, left everything up to him, whether to walk away, or... or not. It was up to him.

Ray took a deep breath, then flipped the file in his hands around so Fraser could read it. "That guy," he said, tapping the incident report on top of the file with one finger, "that freak from last month who was running into jewelry stores in a Nixon mask and a raincoat and flashing everybody at gunpoint--looks like he's back." He looked at Fraser then, met his eyes. "Guess he didn't move to California after all."

"Apparently not," Fraser agreed, staring right at him, then took the file and sat down in his usual chair, leaning forward to study it.

And they were off and running.

***

At the time, Ray remembered, he'd felt weirdly grateful that Fraser had left it up to him (the other alternative he could think of being Fraser insisting on talking about it, which just then seemed about as appealing as undergoing involuntary dental surgery). The thing was, though, even then, he *knew* Fraser would bring it up sooner or later. He'd have to. And then they'd talk about it, and Ray (with the benefit of the time he'd had to adjust) would keep it together and be cool and say 'hey, Fraser, thanks but no thanks, 'cause I'm not that guy', and Fraser would tell him he understood, and then they'd go on. Just like before, only Ray maybe wouldn't worry so much about impressing Fraser, because Fraser was obviously (in a weird, weird way Ray would never have considered in a thousand years) already impressed.

But Fraser didn't bring it up. They worked together, spent time together just like before, and Fraser had thankfully stopped with the staring and the smiling and the comments, and it really was just like before--before all of it, as if none of it had ever happened.

Which was when Ray started to get pissed all over again. The nerve of the guy--to do something like that, shake his whole life up like that, and then what, ignore it? Forget it? Just bury it, and go on like normal? What kind of a jerk would do that?

A tall, polite, Canadian jerk, that's who.

They caught the Nixon-mask guy (turned out he worked as an orderly in a mental hospital, you couldn't beat that), and after he was squared away there was the purse-snatching ring made up entirely of blind guys (who were harder to catch than you might expect), and finally a string of fires set in florist shops from one end of the city to the other, in which Fraser did some kind of bizarre forensic analysis with a shoe print and crime scene mud and a long, totally confusing story about lion dung and predator hierarchies, after which Fraser led him to a crappy old Irish pub on Christiana Street called The Burning Rose, which was, unsurprisingly, where they found their allergy-suffering arsonist.

And through all that Fraser didn't bring it up, didn't hint around about it, didn't give Ray any knowing looks or have any awkward pauses in his freaky speeches, didn't do anything at all other than be tall and polite and Canadian. And a jerk.

Ray wanted to kill him.

***

The idea of revenge crept up on Ray a little at a time: first as idle speculation during one of his more frustrated moments, the kind of thing he thought about when he needed to blow off steam and knew if he opened his mouth about it he'd be sorry. After that it became a kind of secret, a cherished, hoarded fantasy, the sort of thing he knew he'd never do anything about but it was good to have anyways, for when he needed it. And after that, when he and Fraser were stuck on a seemingly endless stakeout and Ray was finding it harder and harder to dance around the elephant in the room (the only kind of dancing that Fraser would ever be better at than he was), he found himself thinking about it, really thinking about it, thinking that maybe he was tired enough and frustrated enough and just-plain-pissed enough to actually do it.

He wasn't. Yet.

That particular limit was reached on the day when they finally hauled in Gerald Oberhauser, the seldom-seen subject of their stakeout, a hardcore scumbag who'd been running a scam on illegal immigrants, taking a chunk of their poverty-level wages for years by selling them phony protection and bogus papers.

Ray had taken this one personally, had dogged the guy and followed every lead and checked every angle and now they had him, had him wrapped-up solid with absolutely nowhere to run and no room to wiggle, but it looked like there was no way they were going to get a confession out of him until Ray let loose on him in the interrogation room, talking a blue streak and slapping down fact after fact after fact until the stony-faced bastard crumbled and broke wide open, whining something about needing the money for his Mother's cancer treatments--which was greatness because they'd done the standard background investigation, and both the scumbag's parents were dead.

"That was excellent work, Ray," Fraser told him, after Oberhauser had been taken away to lockup. Ray stared at him, but there was nothing there, no hint of what had gotten them into this mess in the first place, just Fraser being proud of him, genuinely proud of him for having done good work. There was no sign that Fraser knew--and he did know, Ray knew he knew, which Fraser also knew--how much Ray wanted that. Needed it.

It was too much. "Thanks, Fraser," he said, and then, before he could think twice or back out or lose his nerve he did it, reached out and hooked Fraser by the back of the neck and tugged, and planted a good one right on Fraser's polite, Canadian lips.

Fraser's reaction was everything he could have hoped for. Fraser jerked away like Ray had burned him, his eyes wide and shocked--no, *stunned*--he'd stunned Fraser good and proper, which should teach him a thing or two about--

"Ray!" Fraser said, sounding strangled.

"What, Fraser? You think you get some kind of special, jerky Canadian pass to do whatever you want--"

"Ray--"

"And I don't? You think you can just yank the bottom right out of everything--"

"Ray--"

"Mess with my head like that, and I'm just gonna sit back and--"

"Ray!"

"*What*!?"

Fraser blinked. "I simply wanted to tell you... I believe Lieutenant Welsh is still in interrogation room one."

Ray whipped his head around, staring right at the one-way glass. From far away he dimly heard something break and shatter, something that sounded like a coffee mug hitting the floor somewhere outside the room. Like maybe one room over.

"Oh."

Fuck.

***

Back in that first year of loving Stella, back when Ray would have gladly climbed monkey bars the size of the Sears Tower if she'd been there to watch him do it, Ray had ridden his bike over to her house one Sunday morning only to find her eating pancakes with a half-dozen pajama-wearing, giggling girls--the aftermath of a Saturday night sleepover. He'd left immediately, only to find that his bike had a flat and he had no choice but to trudge back up to the house to ask Stella's Dad if he could borrow their tire pump and a wrench. No sooner had he gotten the tire off than they all came piling out to watch him, a flannel-and-cotton flock of high-pitched geese with his Stella, swanlike, in the middle, chattering and gossiping and teasing Stella about her *boyfriend*, and someone brought the portable radio out and Ray kept right on working as if he didn't even know they were there, but of course he did. They were there like the hot sun on the back of his neck or the glasses stuffed into his pocket so he would maybe look a little bit more like Stella's mysterious boyfriend and less like a South Side freakshow, and every time he stole a glance at Stella she seemed to be smiling, at least he thought she was.

That smile and the sun and all that giggling must have gone to his head, because without even thinking about it he started to sing along with the radio (just like his Dad did when he worked on the car), singing along with Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves, only back then he didn't know that was what it was about, because he'd always thought it was about Hippie Chimpanzees, and then the giggles soared up into hysterical bursts of laughter and Stella had looked *horrified*, even without his glasses he could see that, and she'd shooed all the girls back into the house and turned off the radio and slammed the door shut.

He'd finished fixing his tire in the early-morning silence, his face burning red every time a muted whoop of laughter sounded from inside the house, and Stella refused to speak to him for almost two weeks after that, and when she finally did she was careful to never, ever bring him anywhere near her friends (which maybe should have been a hint).

Aside from the bank robbery, it was the most embarrassing, most humiliating memory of his life.

Until now.

***

Welsh seemed to have had a run-in with his coffee mug before he'd dropped it, there were coffee stains all down the front of his shirt. Ray was pretty sure that probably didn't brighten his mood any, and from the look on his face it hadn't been exactly a Shiny-Happy-People day to begin with.

"Hey," he said from the doorway of Welsh's office, wanting to get it over with, get it done--he'd expected Welsh to call him in right away but it hadn't happened, and he was going nuts with waiting. He hated waiting.

"Detective," Welsh said, in exactly the same tone of voice Ray had heard him use once to say 'hemorrhoid'.

"Uh, can I come in?"

Welsh squinted at him, leaning back in his chair with his hands folded on his stomach. "To the best of my knowledge, Detective, there is no legal precedent for keeping you out just because of my personal concerns regarding my blood pressure. So yeah." He beckoned Ray in.

Ray stepped in, closed the door behind him, took a deep breath--and realized suddenly that he had no idea what to say, how he was going to play this. "I, uh, about... you know, about the thing. You saw. See, I've been... there was this thing... and then I--" he stopped, swallowed, and lifted his chin. "It was a dare. Kinda."

That was actually mostly the truth, if you left out the part about him daring himself. Welsh didn't say anything, and Ray didn't really feel like saying anything else, but... "Fraser's, um, I mean, I'm not, you know, there's not... it's not like that. What you think."

"It rarely is, Detective," Welsh said dryly, leaning forward and propping his chin on his fist.

Ray shifted from his right foot to his left. "So... okay, um, I'm gonna... I got the rest of the paperwork to file, on Oberhauser. I'm gonna go do that."

"I'm sure the Chicago justice system will be eternally grateful," Welsh replied, and then opened one of his desk drawers and pulled out a bottle of bourbon and a glass. "Close the door behind you, Detective; there's only so many cats we can let out of the bag at any given time, and I think we've hit our quota for today."

Ray opened his mouth to argue the point that there were no cats, no cats and no bags because it wasn't like that, it wasn't a cat/bag kind of thing, but the look on Welsh's face as he methodically and deliberately unscrewed the bourbon bottle changed his mind, and he got out while the getting was good.

***

Ray went back to work, finishing up Oberhauser's case file so the prosecuting attorney would find every i dotted and every t crossed and wouldn't have any excuse for not doing his job when the trial rolled around. Fraser helped, in that he did the parts that involved writing and typing and forms and organization of the actual case file, which was normal, but there was no doubt now that he'd tripped over the elephant: he was distracted and distant, and at one point he actually filled out the same form twice, which had never happened before.

Ray kept his head down and stuck to his own work (which was mostly signing where Fraser pointed to and stapling things that needed to be stapled), but all the same he managed to keep an eye on Fraser, and despite the humiliation he'd suffered earlier it was sometimes hard not to grin. Fraser was thinking about it. Fraser was thinking about it for sure, oh yeah, and Fraser finally would have to bring it up. He'd have to.

***

Only he didn't. He didn't, and Ray didn't, and it was weird at first but as the days went by it became slowly less weird, and Fraser didn't seem distracted anymore and Ray wasn't really pissed off anymore, no more revenge fantasies, and that was good, that was a relief, but all the same, Ray kind of missed it.

***

And that very well might have been the end of it, it all could have ended right there, if it hadn't been for Turnbull.

Ray got Fraser's call on a Friday afternoon at about half-past five. He had his jacket in his hand and was ready to pack it in and call it a weekend, and he only answered the phone because he would much rather tell whoever it was to go screw themselves now than have to wait until Monday to do it.

"Vecchio."

For a second there was only silence, and Ray was about to yell 'asshole' and hang up, when he heard Fraser.

"Ray, I'm sorry to... I know you're off duty right now, and I apologize for intruding, but... something's happened."

Ray dropped his jacket. He knew that tone in Fraser's voice, and it never meant anything good. "What?"

"It's Constable Turnbull, I'm afraid. He requested the afternoon off in order to attend a... some sort of local arts and crafts bazaar--he said something about picking up some new patterns for antimacassars--"

Ray used the phone to bang on his ear. "Antiwhosiwhatsis?"

Fraser cleared his throat. "Doilies, Ray. Amongst his other hobbies, apparently Turnbull has a passion for tatting doilies. So he went to the bazaar--"

"Oh, that's bizarre all right," Ray said, rubbing his forehead. "Um, hey, you don't need me for *that*, do you?"

"No, Ray. But it seems that the bazaar has been taken over by a group of animal rights guerilla terrorists--"

"Terrorist gorillas?"

"Terrorist humans, Ray. Using guerilla tactics to pursue their animal rights agenda."

"So, like, what, eating bananas and pounding on their chests or something?"

"Apparently their thoughts are running more along the lines of shooting people."

"Wait a minute. Why the hell would a bunch of panda-hugging gorillas care about bizarre crafts?"

"That's not entirely clear right now, Ray. What is clear, however, is that Constable Turnbull has apparently succumbed to Stockholm syndrome, and has publicly allied himself with the terrorists' cause--"

"So Turnbull's decided he's a panda-hugging Norwegian gorilla who shoots people?"

Silence for a moment, and then he heard Fraser clear his throat again. "Something like that, yes, Ray--although so far he seems to be advocating for a non-violent resolution to the situation--"

"Yeah, and that always works out so great. Okay. Where are you?"

***

It was a madhouse. There were news crews galore (thankfully kept at a distance behind some barriers that had been set up), and a crowd of emergency medical vans off to the side, but outside the arena itself there was enough law enforcement personnel to either stop a riot or hold a giant Memorial Day parade, depending on how this went down. FBI, SWAT, Chicago PD and even some ATF guys were in the mix, and the whole thing made Ray nervous, because there was some serious firepower around but nobody seemed to be in charge, and his own personal experience suggested that when you got that many trigger-happy assholes together in one place with nobody telling them what to do, it didn't usually end well.

Ray yawned, shook himself, and forced down another swallow of his horrible FBI coffee (he hated FBI coffee. It always tasted kind of metallic and kind of like rancid gun oil, but he had to admit that it did what it was supposed to do). It had been over twenty-four hours since Fraser called him, and they'd both been here the entire time., even though there was really nothing for either one of them to do. Nobody had been shot yet, which was about the best that could be said about the whole situation. The hostage negotiation guy seemed to be doing okay until he had a long phone conversation with Turnbull, after which he said he had to take his migraine medication and lay down for a while, and handed the reins over to the FBI SAIC, who probably had his picture in the Law Enforcement Manual under 'trigger-happy asshole'.

"I dunno, Fraser," Ray said, cracking his jaw so that he wouldn't yawn again. "That non-violent solution thing--chances for that aren't looking too good, if you ask me."

"I won't give up hope, Ray," Fraser said, and of course Fraser didn't look at all like he'd been up for almost forty hours, but then, looking sleepy was probably some kind of weird violation of the Mountie code.

Ray opened his mouth to argue, because nothing kept him awake like getting in a good argument with Fraser, when there was a babble of voices from behind them. He turned around.

"They're coming out--look, Fraser, here they come!"

Ray pushed through the crowd to see a bunch of exhausted-looking people in camouflage flak jackets trailing out the open doors of the arena in single file, their hands held high over their heads. They were swallowed up by the sea of cops immediately, but Ray had gotten close enough to hear the leader, a grizzled man with a full graying beard and long hair, talking as they converged on him.

"We surrender, we give up, take us away, whatever--just get us away from that loony."

"Oh dear," Fraser said from behind him, and then Ray saw Turnbull, in his Mountie uniform and somebody's flak jacket with about a thousand buttons and pins and patches all over it, emerge on the heels of the last of the group.

"Comrades!" Turnbull cried. "You can't give up--remember our glorious purpose! What about the plight of the Arctic Wolverine? What about the--" At that point, Turnbull came face-to-face with a SWAT team member in full gear, bearing down on him. "*GUN*!" Turnbull shrieked, and whirled to sprint in the other direction--

"Hold your fire!" Ray heard somebody yell, and he tried to throw himself down, but before he could he felt something hit him in the shoulder like a hot, heavy punch, spinning him around and dropping him like a load of bricks. There were feet everywhere, big, booted feet, running and chaos and screams and a smoky, dense smell, and he hoped like hell he wasn't on fire--

"Ray!" he heard, and he reached out with the arm that could reach and Fraser was there, Fraser had him and the world spun around and then he was up, moving through the crowd on shaking legs with his right arm slung over Fraser's shoulder and his left arm hanging useless at his side, dripping blood onto the pavement.

"Fucking trigger-happy assholes," Ray said to nobody in particular, and the world went dark for a second but then it came right back, very bright and shiny, everything standing out clear.

"Sit, Ray," he heard Fraser say, and they were there, they'd made it, they'd gotten out of the crush and over to one of the open medical vans, deserted for now but Ray felt sure that the EMT's would all come back once everybody got done shooting each other. He sat.

There was no pain, not yet, but he felt like his head was swelling up like a balloon and his skin was crawling like someone had coated him with ants--he'd forgotten, how come he always forgot that this was what it felt like to get shot? It sucked. "This sucks, Fraser," he said, and he sounded kind of sulky but he didn't care. He'd been shot. He had sulking rights.

"You're going to be fine, Ray, just fine," Fraser told him, his hands right there to hold him steady, which was nice, Fraser was such a nice guy... "Medic! We need a medic over here--"

He wished Fraser wouldn't yell; it hurt his ears and made his swollen head buzz. He leaned his head into Fraser's chest and Fraser let him, which he expected, but then Fraser cupped his cheeks in both hands and lifted his ballooning head ever so gently and kissed him once, quick and soft and so centered on his mouth that it seemed to draw a line right down into his belly, and he hadn't expected *that*.

"I didn't expect that," he mumbled, but all at once there were people there, other people, not-Fraser people, and someone asked him something and someone else slapped a wad of bandage onto his shoulder and *now* it hurt, oh yeah, now it hurt *plenty*.

"Ow," he said, but he didn't think anyone heard him.

***

Turnbull came out of it okay. For a while it seemed certain that he'd lose his job if not go to jail, but there was a bunch of blather about 'mitigating circumstances' plus some close scrutiny of his psychological records, and everybody just seemed confused and left the decision to somebody else, so in the end nothing really happened. And after all, Ray said, it wasn't like they could demote him any lower. Where were they gonna send him, Detroit?

Nobody had been killed in the shootout, which had been one of the 'mitigating circumstances'. Ray had been shot through the shoulder, and one of the hostages had gotten a crease to the head as she ran through the melee to rescue her decoupage kittens, but miraculously those had been the only injuries.

FBI and SWAT blamed each other along with everyone else who was there, which didn't really surprise anybody, least of all Ray.

His own wound was clean, through and through with no bones broken, although they told him he might have some nerve damage and he'd have to do physical therapy for a while after the wound healed. He was in the hospital for five days, which drove him batshit, and after that Welsh made him take a week off and Fraser kept trying to take care of him, which drove him more batshit. But finally he went back to work (although Welsh forbade him to do anything other than drive a desk until further notice, which sucked), and eventually he left the sling behind and got the stitches out and had physical therapy with a gorgeous-but-married Latina goddess named Vira who obviously came from the bossy-is-sexy motivational school of physical therapists, so basically life was good.

Fraser refused to speak to Turnbull, and his brow furrowed thunderously whenever Ray brought it up. He seemed to feel that the entire dominion of Canada had suffered an embarrassing blot upon its national countenance as a result of Turnbull's actions (at least, that's what he said was bugging him), and even though Ray told him that nobody cared about Canada's national countenance or knew it had one or even knew what the hell a national countenance was, Fraser didn't let up.

About the other thing that had happened when Ray got shot, well, they didn't talk about that at all. Ray was okay with that. But he remembered it (actually, that was the clearest memory he had from the whole day), and he did think about it, although he tried not to while he was at work, because it was hard enough to concentrate already.

Ray sat at his desk for over a month. The day that Welsh told him he could go and start being a real cop again came just in time, because there had been some kind of riot at a heavy-metal concert in which most of the crowd and all of the band had been busted, and while it was bad enough taking statement after statement from guys with eighty pounds of hair apiece who thought it was cool to wear pants so tight you could practically read the label on their jockeys, it got a lot worse when Huey and Dewey decided to jump on the bandwagon and spent the majority of their bullpen time writing the world's worst metal ballad, which in Ray's opinion was saying something. Plus they kept forking devil-fingers at him and waggling their tongues at Frannie, so basically getting out of there was kind of like getting out of jail, only louder and less melodic.

He went straight to the Consulate, and once he walked in he had to stop and stare--there were balloons everywhere, and streamers, and a bunch of construction-paper maple leaves suspended from the ceiling on fishing line, everything white and red and basically it was like being smothered in a Canadian flag.

Turnbull stepped into the hallway, a sparkly red-and-white party had on his head instead of his Stetson, carrying a fistful of those stupid blower things that unrolled and made the world's lamest noise when you blew them. "Oh, Detective Vecchio," he said earnestly, "I'm so glad you're here--the celebration wouldn't be complete without you."

"Uh, yeah," Ray said, blinking a little at the redness-and-whiteness of everything. "What's the occasion? Canada win the international Curling championship or something?"

Turnbull looked shocked. "Why, no, although that would be something to celebrate of course. It's Constable Fraser's birthday. I know he doesn't like a to-do, in fact, he usually forbids me to commemorate the occasion in any way, but since... well, as he's still not speaking to me, he wasn't... he couldn't..."

And just like that Turnbull had great big Mountie-sized tears in his eyes, and when Ray reached out reluctantly to pat him on the shoulder Turnbull pulled a hankie out of his pocket, buried his face in it and really went to town, whonking like a Canada goose and making huge, wet snorking noises that were really pretty gross. "Hey," Ray said hesitantly, "hey, it's okay, okay?" He'll get over it. He's just, you know, being pissy--"

"I'm so *sorry*!" Turnbull wailed from behind his hankie. "I don't know what I was, why I... I never meant to hurt anybody!"

"'Course not," Ray said automatically. "Look, everybody's fine, the crazy kitten lady's fine, I'm fine, I got some numb spots on my hand but that's cool 'cause I can put out cigarettes on my palm now which I always wanted to do since I saw Dickie Benedict do it in eleventh grade, how tough is that, huh?" he was babbling and he knew it, but he just wasn't built to deal with two-hundred-plus pounds of sobbing Mountie. "I'm, uh, I'm gonna go see Fraser now, okay? Why don't you... you could maybe get his cake ready--you got a cake?"

"Baked it myself," Turnbull squeaked, and then sniffed, blew his nose, and seemed to pull himself together, lowering the hankie and blinking at Ray with moist, reddened eyes. "Yes, Detective, you're right--we must carry on, we all must carry on. I'll go and get the cake ready."

Ray didn't remember saying anything about carrying on, but he wasn't about to stop and argue the point. He watched Turnbull walk off towards the kitchen, stuffing the hankie back in his pocket and only sniffling about every third step. Ray shook his head, went to Fraser's office, knocked, and let himself in.

Fraser had a mighty stack of papers in front of him, forms, it looked like, along with a pen, an ink pad, a rubber stamp, and a bottle of white-out. "This how you Canadians celebrate birthdays?" Ray asked, closing the door behind him. "Or are you maybe snorting the white-out to get in the party mood, or what?"

"Ray," Fraser said, smiling. "I didn't expect to see you. I thought you would be at the station."

"Welsh gave me a green light, I'm good to go. Back on active duty, as of today."

"Well, that's wonderful, Ray--"

"Yeah, uh, how come you didn't tell me about your birthday, huh? It looks like Canada Day exploded out there. Turnbull made you a cake and everything."

Fraser's smile vanished. "I don't... I'm not really in the habit of celebrating my birthdays, Ray, and even if I were I wouldn't do it with... him." Fraser looked stormy, his brows drawn together and a bright spot of red in each cheek.

"Jeez, Fraser, hold a grudge much?"

Fraser did, and Fraser didn't seem to feel too badly about it either. "The man is a menace, Ray. He's a disgrace to the uniform, to this Consulate, and to--"

"Hey," Ray said, stepping forward. He reached out and touched Fraser's cheek with one finger, guiding him until their gazes locked. "I'm okay, Fraser. Really. Not dead, not damaged. I'm good. I feel great." And he felt himself grin as he realized yeah, he did. He felt great.

Fraser's eyes were wide, wide and questioning and doubting and maybe hoping a little, so Ray leaned in, kissed him once, softly, and pulled back on an inrush of air as everything in his stomach did a sudden flippy-funky dance.

"I'll be back at seven to take you out for dinner," he said, and his voice sounded a little funny so he cleared his throat. "Birthday dinner," he added lamely, "you know, for the, uh, that thing you don't celebrate. And in the meantime," he added, backing towards the door, "give Turnbull a break, okay?"

"Okay," Fraser echoed, and that was so immediate and so weirdly obedient (in other words, so not like his normal self), that Ray turned and went before he could be seriously tempted to see what else he could get Fraser to agree to.

***

Ray found it hard to believe that he'd wanted so badly to get back to active duty. 'Active' ha--not much activity in being cooped up in a parked car for eight hours at a stretch, and not much in the way of duty to worry about when the guy you were supposed to be looking for didn't ever show, night after night after night...

It was getting to him. His ass was numb, his knees had locked up into a position that made him feel like an old man, his stomach absolutely could not handle any more coffee, and it was getting to him.

It seemed to be getting to Fraser too, because they'd been tossing the bitch-ball back and forth all night, arguing about everything and nothing while Dief fretted in the back seat--even the wolf seemed to have had enough.

"You're missing the point, Ray," Fraser said with that snippy tone in his voice that drove Ray nuts. "Whether or not you care to acknowledge the strike of '94 as a factor, the fact remains that baseball has never recovered its former glory as the greatest American pastime."

Ray whacked the steering wheel. "Fraser, you can't--you do not get to lecture me on this. The term is greatest *American* pastime, and as far as I know I'm the only American in here, so what you think doesn't mean squat."

"That's just silly, Ray. Has it occurred to you that perhaps I can offer a more objective viewpoint because of my relative distance from the situation?"

"Uh, no, Fraser, it hasn't, and it wouldn't, 'cause that's really dumb."

Fraser sat up straighter. "You think I'm unqualified to share my opinion on baseball simply because I'm not an American citizen?"

Ray snorted. "No, I think you're unqualified to share your opinion on baseball because you're a freak, Fraser."

There was silence, the kind of silence where he could *hear* Fraser trying to come up with a snappy comeback to that one. He turned his head to watch Fraser grind through it, only the moment he did Fraser leaned over and let him have it, a hard kiss, an angry kiss, a kiss that reached in and yanked on his spine to get his attention, just in case he hadn't noticed that he was being kissed by someone who meant it.

And then it was over, only Fraser was still right there, right in his face, pupils blown and lips faintly shiny in the dim light from the street lamp. "Don't call me a freak, Ray," he said, and the growl in his voice made the hairs on the back of Ray's neck stand up. It was a signal, that put-up-yer-dukes signal that Ray knew really, really well.

He waited until Fraser started pulling away and then launched himself sideways, hearing Fraser hit the door with a satisfying 'oof' which Ray blocked with his mouth, showing Fraser that he didn't hold the patent on angry kissing--hell, angry kissing had probably been invented in Chicago, and Ray wasn't about to let his city down.

When he was done he wrapped his hand around the front of Fraser's uniform as best he could, keeping the pressure on. "Freak," he said, and his voice maybe wasn't entirely steady but he was sure he got the point across.

He touched his forehead against Fraser's (he'd meant it to be a firm knock, but it wasn't, it was a touch and it was warm, Fraser was so warm) and his stomach jumped crazily and when Fraser took Ray's clenched fist off his uniform he kept hold of it, lacing their fingers together and then he tilted and Ray tilted and then they were kissing, both of them in it, both of them all they way in it, kissing, non-angry kissing, making out in the dark.

***

After that, it occurred to Ray that maybe he'd have to rethink his opinion of stakeouts a little. Later, when he could actually think again.

He'd been into it, so into what they were doing that when Fraser finally pulled away with a gasp and said they mustn't be negligent and Ray remembered (right, the stakeout, the car, parked on a public, if deserted, street), it was kind of a shock.

Kind of a shock. Right.

They sat through the rest of their shift in silence. Not a bad silence, Ray thought, more like the kind of silence that happened after you'd been through something major, something life-threatening or mind-altering or just really heavy...

Was that what that was? Was him and Fraser making out in a parked car one or more or all of those things?

He didn't know. But he did know, now, what Fraser tasted like (and smelled like, and sounded like, and felt like--at least parts of him), and that was what he'd take away with him, no matter what else happened, or didn't happen.

That much was his to keep.

***

Their stakeout was called off the next day. At first Ray was relieved, and then he wasn't, and then he was pissed, and then he wasn't, and then he decided to stop thinking about it before he drove himself nuts. He and Fraser headed out to interview a bunch of bodega owners who all seemed to have been robbed by the same kid, did some solid police work and got some decent leads, talked about the case over dinner at Ray's favorite burger joint, and called it a night.

He drove Fraser back to the consulate, and he thought here was where something would happen, if anything was going to happen, if Fraser wanted to talk or... or anything, but the only one who lingered in the car was Dief, who was still apparently beside himself with joy because Ray had insisted on going to Reggie's Grill for dinner, and he expressed his appreciation with a whuffle and a disgustingly wet swipe of wolf tongue.

The next day was all investigation, and it wasn't his kind of investigating where you ran around and bugged people until they spilled their guts, but instead it was the kind of investigating that involved pulling files and reading them and remembering what you read so you could put those bits together with other bits you read later on, which meant it was Fraser's kind of investigating (not that Fraser wasn't good at bugging people--he was. He really, really was).

That meant Ray's job was pretty much to flip through whichever files Fraser had already read, crack his knuckles, and watch Fraser from across the desk.

Which actually turned out to be less boring than it sounded. Fraser didn't seem to even know he was there, and Ray watched his eyes flicker down page after page, his eyebrows drawn together in concentration. Ray figured out that Fraser blinked about six times per page, that he licked his lips whenever he came across something interesting, that he scratched his eyebrow whenever he was uncertain about something, and that he had the nicest, smoothest skin Ray had ever seen on a guy. Soft. He remembered it was soft, almost satiny, especially the back of his neck--

"Ray." Whoops. Looked like Fraser knew he was there after all. Ray shifted in his chair.

"Yeah? You find something good?"

"I..." Fraser trailed off, looked away from him, and then got to his feet. "Ray, would you please come with me for a moment? Dief--stay."

Ray followed Fraser through the hallways, lengthening his stride to keep up because wherever Fraser was going, he seemed to be in a hell of a hurry. They turned several corners and ended up at the janitor's closet, and Ray was so surprised that he just walked in when Fraser held the door open. Fraser stepped in after him, yanked the chain that switched on the cobwebby bulb that hung from the ceiling, and closed the door.

"Ray, you're staring at me."

Several possible responses to that ran through his mind, but in the end he went for casual. "So? That a problem?"

Fraser looked at the shelves over Ray's shoulder, cracked his neck, and swiveled back. "Actually, yes. It's very... distracting."

Ray shrugged. "So, what, I'm supposed to do this job with you but never look at you? How's that gonna work?"

He looked at Fraser then, really looked at him, and he realized that Fraser was shaking. Just a little, nothing really noticeable unless you were looking for it, but it was there. "Fraser? You okay? Hey, I didn't mean--"

Fraser grabbed him then, grabbed him and pressed him up against the door before he even got the last word out.

"It doesn't work," Fraser said, his voice low and tight. "It's not working, Ray. This is not working."

Fraser kissed him then, hard, and Ray arched against the door, pressing his shoulders into Fraser's hands and his tongue into Fraser's mouth, pressing everywhere. He felt electrified, like his hair would stand on end without any help from him.

"Ray," Fraser said when he pulled way, panting like he'd been running for miles, "Ray, I can't--"

But Ray never found out what it was that Fraser couldn't do, because all of a sudden there were hands on his belt buckle, big hands, Fraser hands, and zzzip there went his zipper, and the next thing he knew they'd left kissing miles behind them and had moved into foreign territory, a territory where Fraser actually had his shaking hand wrapped around Ray's bare cock, his face curved into the hollow of Ray's neck, breath blazing there.

"Just say stop, Ray," Fraser said in a rush, and Ray's mouth fell open but he couldn't say a thing, not one goddamn thing. "I'll stop, if you say."

And without another word Fraser started jerking him off, and it was the absolute stupidest thing ever but Ray was so... *surprised*, like somehow he'd come to grips with the kissing, gotten used to the idea of it, but the idea that kissing might lead to other places, might in fact lead to something very much like this, well, it was a shock.

Stupid. Sometimes he was so stupid.

He was careful not to tense up, not to do anything that might tip Fraser off that he was freaking out a little, because that would be... well, rude, and normally he didn't give a rat's ass about being rude but just now he did. Fraser had him, Fraser's whole, naked hand was wrapped around him, Fraser was touching (and squeezing, and stroking) his dick, and Fraser had done that because he wanted to, Fraser wanted to touch him, would stop if he said so but had gone ahead and done it anyway, had touched him because he wanted to.

Then, as if he didn't have enough to deal with (Fraser! Jerking him off! Touching his dick in the janitor's closet! Because he wanted to!), Ray felt his knees buckle and he realized that Fraser not only wanted to jerk him off but was really, really good at jerking him off, and while he himself had been working so hard not to tense up his body went ahead and did it anyway, but it tensed up because he was into it, hot for it, straining into Fraser's tight fist and getting off on it, because Fraser's hand there (stripping, stroking, squeezing), felt *amazing*.

"Oh," he said, louder than he meant to but he couldn't help it because he was surprised all over again.

Fraser kissed him, silky-wet and hungry, taking over his mouth the way he'd taken over his cock, and Ray made a low, muffled noise because he knew damn well he was going to come soon if Fraser didn't stop that, and the thought of doing that with Fraser right there (because of Fraser, because Fraser wanted to, because Fraser wanted him to), coming while Fraser kissed him and jerked him off--it was too much, too freaky, too much of everything and too hard to think about, so he broke it down and thought that he could start by putting his hands on Fraser's shoulders, and that he should be gentle, be gentle...

Except his hands were already there, and they weren't gentle at all, gripped in as tightly as if he were trying to climb Fraser like a tree, pulling him closer, harder, pulling him in and fucking his fist like he couldn't get enough, like he'd never heard the word 'shame' in his entire life.

Ray gave up, gave it up, and he didn't even get a chance to warn Fraser that he was gonna come because he *was* coming, right into Fraser's hand, and for a really weird moment he felt like he should apologize--sorry, Fraser, didn't mean to come all over your hand like that, jeez--but that was even more stupid because Fraser had done this, had wanted this, and for proof he had Fraser right there, groaning into his mouth and shaking like an earthquake had hit him, pushing up against Ray and milking him, taking everything Ray had to give like it was something wonderful.

And when Ray was finally done, when he was drained and empty and weak in the knees and still not sure just how that had happened, there was one last kiss from Fraser--a grateful kiss, that was a kiss of gratitude right there, Ray knew it because he'd doled out more than a few of his own in his lifetime--a very sweet kiss, and then a snap of fabric and Fraser had his hankie out, because Mounties were always prepared for anything, including tidying up after jerking off their partners in the janitor's closet.

"Fraser," he said, and he had no idea what to follow that up with, but apparently his mouth did. "I'm supposed to just go back to work now? After that?"

And now that it was all over, now that he was back in his pants and Fraser wasn't doing anything more remarkable than stowing his hankie back in his pocket, *now* Fraser blushed.

"I'm afraid... I'm going to have to return to the Consulate, Ray. I need to... I'll have to change my uniform."

"Oh, okay." And Ray forgot his own awkwardness for a moment because apparently he wasn't the only one; he could practically *feel* Fraser shooting off white-hot beams of oh-Lord-I-am-so-embarrassed, and that was weird, he really didn't get that, because Fraser had started it. Go figure.

Ray looked down at himself to make sure that he was buttoned and zipped and buckled and didn't have any hugely noticeable splashes of come on him--and of course he didn't, because Fraser had cleaned him up and tucked him away and after all there was no one like Fraser for making things all proper and tidy and respectable. "C'mon," he said, nodding at the door. "Let's get out of here before someone comes in and thinks we're a couple of freaks."

He'd said it lightly, as lightly as he could, anyway, but Fraser didn't seem to find it funny.

***

It took a few days for Ray to figure out what was wrong, and at first that made him feel stupid all over again, but then he remembered that he was deep in foreign territory here, and he decided to cut himself a break.

The thing was, Fraser didn't really help him out any. Fraser had gone stiff (stiffer than usual, anyways, which was saying something), and it took a while for Ray to work out that the reason why Fraser was how he was was because Fraser was who he was. That was it in a nutshell, and it kind of bothered him that all that made sense in his own head, but he put it down to spending so much time around Fraser and let it go.

Fraser wasn't flipping out over the fact that he'd jerked Ray off in a janitor's closet in the middle of the 27th Precinct (which, if their positions had been reversed, would have been exactly what Ray would flip out over), but rather because of *how* he did it--because he'd lost control.

Fraser never lost control. Except he had. And so, he flipped out. He flipped out and went stiff, and Fraser was more than embarrassed, he was ashamed (Ray knew it, he knew that feeling well enough that he could recognize it blindfolded), Fraser was ashamed of himself because he'd lost control for just a few minutes.

Which was, in Ray's opinion, totally dumb. Fraser-sized dumb. Dumb like special, imported-from-Canada dumbness. And he thought it might help Fraser out if he told him exactly how hugely dumb he was, but he couldn't do that because Fraser was so busy being dumb that he almost never showed up anymore, and when he did it was all work, all tell-me-the-latest-developments-in-the-case-Ray, and there were always people around--Fraser made sure of it, like he was afraid that Ray was gonna drag him off into a closet somewhere and stick his hands down his pants. Which was also dumb. Because he wasn't.

He wasn't a huge fan of closets.

***

Everything went smoothly, exactly according to plan, right up until Fraser almost brained him.

Ray broke into the Consulate silently, and Dief was right there on the other side of the door but Ray had planned for that (you didn't spend almost twenty years around criminals without picking up a few things), and so before Dief could do his welcome whuffling noise Ray gave him the cruller he'd picked up at the 24-hour bakery on the way over, and Dief, with wily animal cunning common to wolves the world over, took it and trotted happily off towards the Ice Queen's office, where the crumbs would have the most impact.

With that taken care of, Ray crept towards Fraser's room with his credit card in hand, only the door was wide open already and one glance showed him that the room was empty, he could see that it was...

He could see that because of the light spilling into the hallway from the kitchen. Fraser was up. That was probably a good thing.

Ray stepped into the kitchen doorway, and sure enough there was Fraser, wearing those goofy red longjohns that always made Ray want to check to see if they had attached feet and a button-flap in the back. There was a teapot and a mug on the table in front of him, but Fraser wasn't drinking. He was just sitting, elbows on the table and both hands buried in his hair to prop his head up, staring at nothing and apparently just putting in some quality time being miserable.

Ray was about to clear his throat when Dief threaded his way into the kitchen through his legs, facing Ray squarely with his tail held high at a jaunty angle, his eyes bright with happy anticipation. He whined.

"Don't be ridiculous, Diefenbaker," Fraser said, not even glancing up from where he was staring a hole in nothing. "You know perfectly well you can't have any snacks at this hour, let alone--"

"I gave him a doughnut," Ray said, and he never would have believed it possible, but apparently Fraser had been so deep in his dumb that he hadn't heard Ray step into the kitchen because he jumped about a mile straight up out of his chair, and although Ray hadn't seen his hands move Fraser suddenly had the teapot lifted high over his shoulder, ready to throw.

A small splash of tea hit the floor, and Ray held up his hands. "Whoa, Fraser, look out, that thing's loaded--"

"Ray," Fraser said, and lowered the teapot slowly back to the table. "I'm sorry, I didn't hear you." He blew out a shaky breath.

"It's okay, Fraser, no harm done. Well, your floor's gonna have a sticky spot, but that's--"

"Has something happened?" Fraser straightened up as he asked the question, shoulders back, very stiff, Ready For Duty all the way.

"Naw, nothing like that. Relax, Fraser, okay? I just..." he trailed off. This wasn't the way he'd pictured this conversation happening, but the way he saw it he pretty much had to roll with it, either that or give up and go home. "I just came by to tell you how dumb you're being. You're being dumb, Fraser. Quit it."

Fraser blinked, looking stiff and stubborn and faintly disbelieving all at the same time. "Ray, I'm sure I don't--"

"I could have said no, Fraser," Ray said quietly. "I had every chance to say no."

And as if those had been some kind of magic words, all the stiff went out of Fraser all at once, and he slumped down into the wooden kitchen chair. "Maybe you should have," he said, so clearly unhappy and stuck and dumb that Ray wanted to smack him.

"But I didn't, okay? Could have, but didn't. I didn't, because I..." Oh, and he really hadn't counted on this, hadn't planned for this, but here it was and there Fraser was and it looked like the only way through was to just say it. "I didn't want you to stop, Fraser." And the truly weird thing was that he hadn't even really known that until he said it, but now that he'd said it he knew it was true, and he didn't know what to do with that but another thing he knew now was that he was going to have to deal with it sooner or later.

And Fraser, damn him, still looked miserable, which just... sucked.

Ray didn't remember deciding to move, but he did, he stepped forward, and it looked like he was going to have to deal sooner rather than later because Fraser wasn't pulling him now, wasn't pushing him now, now there was nobody but himself to hold accountable as he settled onto the edge of the sturdy, wooden table, shoving tea things out of the way, and brought his own shaking hands to his belt buckle.

Fraser looked like a deer in the headlights, and Ray heard his chair scrape over the floor. "Don't," Ray said, his voice as husky as if he hadn't spoken in a week. Fraser went still.

Ray took a deep breath, and pulled his zipper down. "You can say no, Fraser, okay? You can say no, but don't run. Don't run from me."

The chair scooted across the floor again as Fraser slid out of it, down onto his knees with his cheeks glowing red and his mouth open, breathing hard, and Ray shivered a little as the cold air hit his rapidly hardening cock when he tugged his briefs down out of the way. The craziness of what he was doing threatened to overwhelm him but he pushed that away, pushed that away and reached out to Fraser, cupping his fire-hot cheek and curving around, silky strands of hair slipping through his fingers.

"Fraser," he said, and this was so crazy, it was all just crazy.

"Yes, Ray." Quiet. So quiet he almost missed it.

"I want you to suck me." He inhaled sharply then because he'd said it, he'd actually said it out loud, and now that he had he knew that was true too. "If... if you want to. Only if you want to."

Fraser's eyes turned up to his for the first time, blue and wide. "I... I want to."

"Then do it," he said, and pushed, and pulled Fraser, and kept his eyes open and focused straight down, straight at Fraser, because the last thing that he found that he knew was that both of them needed to know that they weren't in this alone.

***

One thing was clear: if Ray didn't want to have unexpected and unknown truths popping up at him when he might or might not be ready for them, he was going to have to put in some heavy time Thinking About Gay Things.

Which wasn't that easy to do, since it made him jumpy and kind of paranoid, at least during the day, in public, when there were people around. So instead he tried Not To Think About Gay Things, but then *that* didn't work out because all of a sudden everything everybody said or did seemed to have a second meaning to it, a hidden meaning, and all the hidden meanings seemed to be... well, gay.

He had a hell of a time at the 27th (because sixty percent of cop humor was about dicks and the other sixty percent was about asses, and he really couldn't believe he'd never noticed how totally gay that was), at the grocery store (where he had to force himself not to stare at the tender, almost obscenely sensual way the produce guy restocked the cucumbers), even at the auto parts junkyard (where he Did Not Listen to the huge, muscle-bound guy who kept going on about drive shafts and rods and pistons and which kind of motor oil was best for keeping your parts lubed up), and it was damn hard to work a case or pick out peanut butter or hunt for a decent used carburetor when he was busy Not Thinking About Gay Things and couldn't stop wondering if people were looking at him funny.

So the days kind of sucked. But at night, when he was alone, in bed, he rolled with it. Of course, that wasn't so much Thinking About Gay Things as it was Thinking About Fraser in a Very Gay Way, but he was actually okay with that since it didn't make him paranoid so much as, well, horny, and hey, he was right there in bed and there were tissues and lotion on the nightstand, so that was all good.

He thought about Fraser and the car and the closet and the kitchen, about Fraser sucking him in a way that was so eager it was almost clumsy, wet and hot and inexperienced and how that had done something to him besides just turn him on like crazy so that afterwards he slid off the table and went for Fraser with no hesitation at all, wet, bitter kisses and Fraser in his hand, spread out on the kitchen floor. Which was when he found out that jerking Fraser off was incredibly, insanely hot, nevermind that it only took about ten seconds. It was a really hot ten seconds.

It was while he was alone at home (not in bed yet, but getting ready for it), that Ray went from Thinking About Gay Things to Thinking About Really *Really* Gay Things, Really Scary Gay Things, and it was all Stella's fault. Sort of.

The weather had turned cold, fiercely, bitterly cold, and so he was hunting through his bottom drawer for his heaviest winter socks, which was the only way he knew for sure he could go to sleep and not wake up with toesicles in the morning. He pawed through everything once, didn't find them, pawed through again and found his second-heaviest pair of socks, thought about wearing them instead, thought 'toesicles' and stuffed them back in the drawer, and then went through everything more slowly, digging all the way to the bottom.

He was just about to say fuck the gas bill and go turn up the heat for the night when a solid 'clunk' from the drawer's bottom layer caught his attention. He fished around, dug deeper, grabbed... and pulled out a long, slim, chrome-colored vibrator.

Stella's vibrator. Or, more accurately, the vibrator that had been Stella's until she packed up and left him and forgot to take it and he found it in the nightstand a week later and of course he couldn't give it back and he couldn't stand to throw it out just then and he certainly couldn't stand to sit there crying and holding a vibrator so he'd jammed it into the bottom of his least-used drawer where he forgot all about it and where, apparently, it ate his best winter socks.

He remembered when Stella had brought it home, a gag prize she won at her friend Gabrielle's bachelorette party for making the best improvised lingerie out of gift wrap and toilet paper (and yes, there were moments in his life when Ray was so, *so* glad that he was a guy, and yes, that had been one of them). She'd only bothered to bring it home so she could share the laugh with him, and once that was over with she was about to chuck it in the trash when he said hey, no, let's try it out, could be fun, and Stella got all red-faced and embarrassed and all oh-no-Ray-you-can't-be-serious, but he was.

Back then he loved talking Stella into things (because back then she still smiled about it when she decided to give in), so he'd talked her into it and taken her to bed and done everything he could think of along with a bunch of stuff he invented on the spot. He'd made her come over and over again, made her come until she couldn't anymore, until she was limp and damp and flushed in his arms, beautiful and perfect and all his.

Ray bounced the silver thing on his palm, remembering the last time he'd seen it, when all those Stella memories coming back to him had been like having his guts pulled out slowly through a very small incision in his chest. That had been bad, that had been so, so bad.

But now it wasn't like that, not the same thing at all. It was a good memory, and it was only when he'd finally realized that he had to let the good *and* bad Stella memories be what they were--memories--that he'd been able to start getting through each day like something other than the walking dead. It wasn't a symbol any more, this stupid-looking chrome thing, it wasn't a trap. It was just a leftover, just a dumb toy, just something people used for--

Ray stopped cold. He closed his eyes and dropped the vibrator like it had burned him, and heard it roll across the floor until it came to rest against his foot. He had to force himself not to yank his foot back, had to force himself to open his eyes and look at it, all shiny and toylike and bright, snuggled up to his foot like an innocent bullet-shaped metal kitten.

It was a tool of Satan. Gay, gay Satan.

Ray made a grab for the vibrator, missed, tried again and got it, jammed it in the drawer, slammed the drawer shut and then got the hell away from there fast, thinking maybe he wouldn't go to bed just yet after all. Maybe he'd go take a nice long walk in the snow instead.

***

If he'd had a ringside seat, it's entirely possible that Ray might have enjoyed watching the battle between his curiosity and his fear, because that motherfucker was *epic*--a real Frazier/Ali-style heavyweight title showstopper. He could have made a fortune selling popcorn and scalping tickets, except for the fact that he would have quietly strangled to death on his own shame first.

It was one for the books all right, a full twelve rounds of nonstop pulse-pounding mayhem, the outcome uncertain until the very, very end when Ray tossed the vibrator away and laid splay-legged on his bed, heaving for breath and hoping his heart wasn't going to up and quit on him, studying the shiny pattern of droplets he'd somehow managed to shoot a good three feet up the wall above the headboard and wondering if he'd ever be able to move his limbs again.

"Hail Satan," Ray wheezed, and closed his eyes.

***

There were good days and bad days, just like always. Only sometimes they were a little different.

Ray had a bad day when a couple of thugs that Huey and Dewey brought in got loose in interview room two, and before Ray could yell for help he'd gotten his skull pounded through the drywall. He cleaned up the cut over his eye in the men's room, and Fraser came in to help and ended up helping him into a stall and jerking him off fast and sweet, one hand slicking over his cock and the other covering his mouth. Which, Ray had to admit, made it a slightly less bad day (that, and the fact that Welsh made Dewey go take a refresher course in Proper Restraint Techniques at the Academy).

And Ray had a good day when a pursuit over a bag of stolen diamonds turned into an impromptu ice-hockey grudge match on the frozen streets of the shipping docks, and Ray took out two of the robbers with a piece of packing crate and then whacked the bag of diamonds towards Fraser before the rest of them crashed into him, and Fraser caught the bag in his hat neat as you please, game over, good guys 1, bad guys 0, let's hear it for the Canadian hat trick. It was so cool.

It was cool enough that it led to Ray blowing Fraser for the first time in the back seat of the GTO when they found their way back to the alley they'd parked in, and he might not have gone there but Fraser stiffened up on him again, which meant that it was time for Ray to get pushy. So he pushed, and Fraser shook like a leaf the whole time Ray was down on him, moaning like his heart was breaking and touching Ray's face gently, very gently. Ray found out that Fraser's cock wasn't too much to deal with if he let his hand help out, but he only had the one free because he needed the other one for himself, since the whole thing turned him on like crazy.

And sometimes he'd think about that, watching Fraser go over a case file or eat his dinner or take a reaming from the Ice Queen, sometimes he'd think 'hey, I've blown that guy', and the whole thing would seem totally nuts all over again. But other times, certain other times, he'd think it and then he'd have to do something about it, drag Fraser into the closest available private place and just go all over him, as much as he could get away with given limited space and time and the fact that he was always half-panicked at the idea of them getting caught.

Fraser never resisted, and always responded, which was only fair because it wasn't like Ray ever said anything when Fraser dragged *him* off (except of course for really quiet four-letter words and a few enthusiastic-but-embarrassing things he'd rather not dwell on).

After a brief struggle with himself, Ray started carrying his own hankie, which cut down on his laundry some.

***

The annual Advanced Weaponry conference in Miami was coming up, but this year Ray wasn't falling for it. The conference had been expanded to a full six days and so competition for the assignment was fiercer than ever, but the fact was that getting picked for it was something that required subtlety and finesse, and Ray knew better than anybody that he didn't exactly have piles of that lying around. Now, if getting picked had been something that required a smart mouth and a problem with authority, he'd have been a shoo-in (at least, that was what Welsh had told him last year). This year, uh-uh, no way, he was out of it. But he had to admit that it was kind of fun to watch.

The initial scrimmage was short but brutal, and when the dust settled there were three top contenders on the field: Huey, Dewey, and Matson-the-split-shift-guy. It was understood that dirty tricks and cheating were acceptable, which was how Matson got knocked out early after he 'accidentally' overheard Dewey going on at length to Brenda from Booking about Lieutenant Welsh's love of clowns, and how that could possibly be leveraged.

Matson (displaying, in Ray's opinion, all the brains that could be expected of a split-shift-guy) immediately sent Welsh a Clown-O-Gram, but Welsh (who had hated and feared clowns from birth, a fact which everybody--except apparently Matson--knew perfectly well) sent the clown shrieking out of his office, followed by a garroted balloon poodle, after which he called Matson on the carpet and chewed his ass for an hour. Exit Matson.

Huey tried cigars. That didn't work. It never did, but he tried it anyway. Dewey made a lot of noise about having an 'in' for primo Cubs tickets, until someone pointed out to him that it was December, after which he shut up about it. He went with single-malt scotch instead, which got him an in-depth lecture from Welsh about the state of his ulcer, with details and even some helpful drawings.

Since expensive gifts were still cause for immediate disqualification, Huey next tried to 'loan' Welsh a top-of-the-line hedge trimmer that would do pretty much everything except seed your lawn for you, but since Welsh lived in a big concrete building in the middle of their big concrete city and had no green things anywhere around him and liked it that way, that particular offer didn't go down too well.

The next day Dewey returned from lunch carefully guarding a large brown paper bag with some grease spots near the bottom. "This is it," he said proudly, patting the bag. "This is the bomb."

"Do the words 'ethnic appropriation' mean anything to you?" Huey asked irritably, but everyone knew he'd only been able to get store credit when he returned the hedge trimmer, so of course he was pissed off.

"No, really. It's a bomb. Hoagie from Petrello's on Kedzie--salami and meatball. It's his favorite, they only make it for him." Dewey tapped the side of his nose. "I have sources."

"Yeah," Ray said, "you do whatever the little voices tell you to."

Dewey pretended not to hear him. "Excuse me, guys, but glory and sunshine and bikinis await," and he marched into Welsh's office, closing the door behind him.

Silence. Lots of silence. Huey's shoulders sagged. "Son of a bitch."

Ray whapped him on the back. "Hey, next year. Maybe you can trick your partner into giving Welsh some edible underwear--"

Welsh's door flew open, and Dewey, greasy bag in hand, sprang out of it as if he'd been kicked. The door slammed shut behind him hard enough to rattle the glass.

Dewey shrugged. "How was I supposed to know his doctor told him 'no refined flour'? And what the hell does refined flour have to do with a hoagie anyway--"

Welsh's door swooped open again, this time with Welsh in it. Everybody got very quiet.

"Gentlemen," Welsh said, in that way he had that somehow made the word rhyme with 'assholes'. "This has gone on long enough. Vecchio--I don't know where you managed to find some tact, but you should shop there more often. I hear Miami's lovely this time of year; send me a postcard." Then he ripped the paper bag out of Dewey's hand, stomped into his office, and slammed the door again.

"Foul!" Dewey yelled, at the same time that Huey said "Scab," and Fraser clapped him on the shoulder and said "Congratulations, Ray!"

"Uh, yeah, same to you," Ray said numbly, and very carefully did not look at Fraser, because until this very moment he hadn't even considered *why* he'd decided not to try for six glorious days in Florida, but now that he was going it was really, really obvious.

***

And the next day he was packed, he was ready, he had tickets and a room booked and he only had to work half his shift because he had to get to O'Hare in time to catch his flight to Miami. Fraser gave him one hell of a sendoff in the janitor's closet, kissing him breathless and then pushing him up against the locked door and blowing him not once but twice, the first time fast and eager and the second slow and teasing and sweet, and when he was done Ray had gnaw-marks on his wrist where he'd sunk his teeth in to keep from yelling, and he'd sweated so much his clothes were stuck to him everywhere, and for the first time ever Fraser pulled Ray's hand away from his cock when Ray finally recovered enough to reach out and grab him.

"No, Ray," Fraser said, his eyes brilliant and his cheeks flushed and his lips wet, "I want to... I'll save it for your homecoming." He gave Ray one last kiss, lingering and salty and lewd, and was gone.

Ray couldn't decide if that was really weird or really weirdly hot, but he leaned his sweaty forehead on a cold metal shelf and waited for his lungs to stop heaving and thought about it, thinking about Fraser and his weirdness and the way things happened, about safe and not-safe and control and no control, and not all of it was Fraser, he knew that, but that didn't really matter when he had no idea what to do about the part of it that was.

***

The Florida sunshine hit him like, like... like some really big warm thing, and as soon as he got outside the airport terminal Ray dropped his bag between his feet and stretched, feeling the heat soak into him, and he would've said it was better than sex if he hadn't recently had several opportunities to know that he'd be lying like a dog if he did.

Ray cabbed to his hotel, checked in, went up to his room, unpacked, changed into warm-weather clothes, sat down, got up and checked his hair in the mirror to make sure it had survived the flight okay, sat down again, almost got up but didn't, and then asked himself who was being a big dumb guy now and got up, decisively, and left the room.

***

Three days later Ray was just about ready to kill someone, and he didn't much care who. Florida sucked--it was ugly and too bright and crammed full of bugs and so hot it was like getting mugged by a steam room. The conference itself was incredibly boring, and it seemed like a minor miracle that anything with 'Advanced Weaponry' in the title could come across as boring, but apparently the conference organizers had really applied themselves.

And how come he'd never noticed how fucking annoying cops were? The way they talked, the things they talked about--tits and guns and how bad the coffee was and how bad the bad guys were and *endless* stories about their own personal feats of daring (which Ray was just never going to buy coming from any guy in white patent loafers and plaid sansabelt pants). The first day some loudmouth from Duluth had slapped him on the back at happy hour and told him, "Drink up, Chicago!", and now everybody called him Chicago, like it was cool or something, which it really wasn't.

He'd thought about fixing his conference badge so that instead of 'Law Enforcement Applications of Modern Advanced Weaponry--Attendee', it read 'Huge Bunch of Drunk Lame-O Jerk-Off Losers--Hostage', but in the end he didn't. Nobody would have noticed anyways.

Day three of the conference was a Friday, and the sessions wrapped at two o'clock to give all the attendees some extra time for plowing hookers and getting good and shitfaced before the Keynote Breakfast the next morning (not that the conference program book came right out and said that, but Ray thought it might as well have, since everyone seemed to take it as a given). He himself turned down several invitations to various outings from various groups of his fellow conference-goers: titty bar, sports bar, live sex show, titty bar, karaoke bar (this one didn't actually surprise him, coming as it did from a lonely rookie from Nevada who forcibly reminded him of Turnbull every time he opened his mouth), gun show, and titty bar.

The gun show guys were easily the creepiest (the fact that none of them seemed to care that one of their number was wearing a bedsheet and a Darth Vader mask didn't help), but the assorted groups headed for assorted titty bars would sweep the 'most pathetic' category, hands down. But one thing Ray knew for sure was that he didn't want to be within a hundred feet of any of them, especially not in public, even if he had decided that he hated Miami and all the people in it.

In the end, after going up to his room and sitting down and getting up again a number of times, Ray made for the hotel bar, and one glance around after he stepped into the wonderfully dim-and-cool interior made him glad he did, because the only people in there were the older cops, the quiet cops, the antisocial cops, and a few cops who looked way too depressed to talk to anybody--in other words, it was exactly what a cop bar should be. He bellied up and ordered a beer.

He'd finished half of it when he realized that he had company. He turned to the left to find that one of the quiet cops had settled in next to him, a pretty-but-tough little blonde woman he'd seen taking careful notes at the lectures. As one of only a handful of women there she'd stuck out, but what Ray had noticed most was the way she carried herself: calm and confident, like she belonged there but wasn't looking to prove anything. That stuck out a lot in a place where *everybody* was looking to prove something, namely that they should be Lead Asshole on the Asshole Float in Assholes On Parade.

"Mind if I join you?" she asked, the first time Ray had heard her say anything at all. He liked her voice, low and kind of musical.

"Yeah, sure," he said, waving at the bar. "Wasn't like I was sitting here trying to think up any new applications for advanced weaponry or anything."

"Thanks." She tipped her bottle of beer towards him in salute before she drank. After she set the bottle down she wiped her hand on her jeans and then held it out towards him. "Michelle Markowitz, Homicide Detective. Gary, Indiana."

Ray shook her hand. "Ray Vecchio, uh, Chicago. Detective."

Michelle squinted at him. "That's funny, you don't look Italian."

"Yeah. I get that a lot."

Ray went back to staring into his beer, and Michelle went to work on finishing hers, and when she was done he signaled the bartender for another one for her, which she clicked against his glass.

"Thanks again." She took a sip, set the bottle down, and then squinted at him a second time. "You don't talk much, do you?"

He opened his mouth to tell her how wrong she was, but then he thought about how many words that would take and how much he'd have to tell her, so he shrugged instead. "Sometimes I do, I guess."

She patted his shoulder. "Hey, it's okay, it's nice to spend five minutes with a guy who isn't a blowhard."

Her choice of words made him choke on his beer a little, but he passed it off as a cough. "Thanks."

"Welcome."

He looked at her then, pretty light green eyes and smooth blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail, her tough and pouty little mouth that was neither one right now because she was smiling. At him. "See anything green?"

Ray hadn't heard that one since... well, since he'd been old enough to play on the monkey bars. "Sure. Your eyes are green."

"Nice to see you got the Detective badge on merit, and not just 'cause you're handsome," she said lightly, playfully, and reached out to pat him again, but Ray felt her hand coming towards him from a long way away, everything suddenly moving in slow-motion, her hand moving closer and closer and he knew what this all meant even if it was low-key, just like she was low-key, low-key and simple and it had been so long since he'd done anything that could even remotely fall into either of those categories that he totally, completely panicked.

Ray leapt off his barstool so fast that he nearly knocked it over. "Sorry," he mumbled, digging in his pocket for bills which he tossed on the bar without even looking at them, "I have to... uh, I got these weird groinal lesions I gotta go take care of." And he would swear before the throne of God that that was *not* what he'd planned to say, but his argument was weak because he was in mid-panic and so of course he didn't plan anything, and now along with the panic he had embarrassment as hot and ugly as the whole state of Florida crashing down on him, and he turned and left the bar before he could make it any worse.

Ray went back up to his room, sat down, got up, sat down again, yanked on his hair with both hands, got up again, changed, packed, went down to the lobby and checked out of the hotel, stepped out into the hellish Florida sunshine, and lifted his arm for a cab.

***

He'd had a clear plan at first, a plan prompted by the dense, low burn in his guts that had settled in after the panic finally died away: go directly to Fraser, do not pass Go, blah, blah, blah. Go to Fraser, and do what needed to be done. But somewhere over Tennessee or Kentucky that burn started to slip away from him, and by the time he landed at O'Hare he thought that maybe he should go home first: dump his suitcase, check on the turtle, take a shower and change his clothes to get the plane smell off him, that sort of thing. So he did that.

And then he thought that maybe he should get something to eat, because plane food sucked as hard as cop conferences did, so he bundled himself up and went to the Korean barbecue place on the corner, which took care of that.

And then he thought he really should go check in at the station, and by that time he knew for sure what he was doing but he couldn't help it, so off to the station he went.

Which turned out to be one of those things, one of those fate's accomplices things that Fraser talked about, because he ran into Fraser (literally, ran right into him) as soon as he turned the corner into the bullpen.

"Ray!" Fraser said, and jeez, you'd think he'd been gone a year or been presumed dead or something, the way the guy lit up. "Ray, you're back!"

"Everybody's a detective," Ray mumbled, and then shook that off. "Yeah. Came back early. The conference was, uh, lame. Really lame." He looked around. It was late, and there was nobody in the bullpen except for Matson, working on the second half of his shift and giving him the stink-eye from his desk. "So how come you're here, Fraser?"

Fraser's cheeks went very faintly pink. "I thought I might... that is, I thought it would be a good idea for me to monitor any developments in your open cases, so that I could make sure you were thoroughly briefed. Upon your return. Which reminds me, the Peterson case, the forgery, a few curious facts have come to light..."

Fraser told him about it, and Ray kind of listened, but he couldn't have been paying too much attention because he hadn't even noticed when they'd started to move but suddenly here they were, moving, drifting along through the hallways and turning corners until they arrived at their closet, which really ought to have a fucking plaque on it by now. Fraser held the door open for him and in he went, and how weird was it that the smell of toner cartridges and typewriter ribbons made his dick twitch?

"I've missed you, Ray," Fraser said once the door was closed, all the cop-business gone from his voice like magic, and he leaned in and took Ray by the shoulders--

And Ray put his hand right in the center of Fraser's uniformed chest, and held him off. "Stop, Fraser."

Fraser stopped, of course he stopped. "Ray?"

Ray ducked his head a little. "I'm not gonna do this any more, Fraser. It's not right." He took a breath. "I can't... we can't keep ambushing each other like this, with kisses and blowjobs and orgasms and stuff, right in the middle of a police precinct. It's not right."

Fraser stepped away, looked away, and even in the dim light from the overhead bulb he looked pale, so very pale, sculpted from snow. "I... I see."

"No you don't, Fraser." Ray reached out and got Fraser's chin in his hand, and Fraser wasn't snow at all but warm skin, smooth and perfect. He lifted Fraser's head until their eyes met. "Come home with me."

Fraser's eyes widened. "What?"

Ray felt something quiver in his stomach, there and then gone, but it was too late for gut-level freak-outs, it had been too late for a long time. "Come home with me, Fraser," he repeated, and on the plane he'd planned out kind of a speech for this moment, anticipating Fraser's responses (and boy, the Fraser in his head was one snippy motherfucker), but he got how dumb that was now. "You can say no, okay? But I'm asking. Come home with me."

For a moment he thought Fraser was going to say no, or at least argue with him about it, and it looked like Fraser did too, but maybe the ability to avoid saying dumb things was in the air, going around like a virus, because after a few seconds the careful-and-stubborn fell away from Fraser's face, and his shoulders relaxed. "All right, Ray."

And just like that, they were in new territory all over again.

***

It was easy to think that it was too late for freaking out, but apparently his freak-center hadn't gotten the memo, because once they were there, in Ray's bedroom, in Ray's home, the door locked on the outside world and the two of them staring at Ray's bed like they expected it to jump up and do a tapdance, Ray found that it wasn't too late after all. Not by a mile.

"Ray--"

"I'm a little nervous!" Ray said very loudly, much more loudly than he'd intended to, not that he'd intended to say that at all. He stuck his hands in his pockets.

Fraser looked like his own freak-center was putting in some overtime. "Well," he said cautiously, "you don't really need to be. I mean, we could always just--"

"Oh, no, Fraser," Ray interrupted, shaking his head and squeezing his fists in his pockets. "No. We're gonna fuck, and we're gonna do it in my bed. Unless you say no."

Fraser blinked. Then blushed. "I'm not saying no, Ray," he said quietly, sounding a little choked. "I'm certainly not going to be the one to say no."

Great, Ray thought, next thing you know we'll be calling each other 'pussy' and arguing about which one of us is he-man enough to take it up the ass... "Okay," he said, and rocked on his toes. "Then that's that."

"Indeed." Fraser studied him for a moment. "Ray, do you have... have you done this before?"

Ray scratched his ear. "Uh, not exactly, no." He waited for his ears to stop burning. "You?"

Fraser shook his head. "Other than you, I've been intimate with one other person. One woman, to be precise."

"Oh." Ray wondered what the hell he was supposed to say to that, what guys were supposed to say in this situation. "Was she hot?"

Fraser stared at him, his face suddenly as smooth as still water. "She was soulless."

"Oh." Way to go, Kowalski. Why don't you just kick the guy in the nuts while you're at it? He sighed. "Sorry."

"It's all right," Fraser said, and it looked like maybe in a weird way that had been the right thing to say after all, because after a few seconds Fraser came back from wherever he'd gone off to and when he did he didn't look scared anymore, or at least not scared of Ray. He stepped closer. "I really did miss you, Ray."

Ray let his fists relax back into hands, and took a step forward himself. "You too, Fraser. I did, I mean. Miss you."

Fraser took another step. "I'm sorry to hear that the conference was unproductive."

Ray snorted, and then stepped. "The conference sucked rancid maggot ass, Fraser."

Fraser appeared to be thinking that over. "That's... that's really disgusting, Ray," he said, but he stepped closer anyway.

"You don't have to tell me, I was there." Ray stepped, and then there were no more steps to take, just he and Fraser, face to face. And because Fraser had gone first, because Fraser had had the balls to do what he did all those months ago, Ray leaned in and kissed him, and it wasn't an ambush or a game of tag or a control thingy or anything like that, it was just a kiss from him to Fraser, soft and warm and not in a hurry to go anywhere.

Ray nudged his forehead against Fraser's. "We're gonna take this slow."

Fraser nudged back. "Well, that's just fine, Ray."

***

Ray *hated* slow. Slow *sucked*. Slow was for Grandmas and poodle-owners and high-school history teachers from Idaho, not for naked, sweaty men who were trying their level best to fuck their naked, sweaty, gorgeous partners through the mattress.

"Oh, God, Fraser," he said, not for the first time but he couldn't help it--Fraser was everywhere, Fraser was all around him, and Fraser was slick and hot and squeezing the almighty bejeezus out of his cock (probably on purpose, the bastard).

He'd gone along with it when Fraser said he wanted to be the one to get fucked, gone along like a lamb, a smug lamb, knowing how wild it had made him and wanting to surprise Fraser with a taste of that, which was all good except Ray wasn't a vibrator and now his nerves were jumping like cats on fire, and his whole upper body was twisting with the effort not to just sink down on Fraser and yank his legs up and pound into him like a maniac.

But he didn't. Fraser was good, Fraser was happy, Fraser was purring along like a well-oiled machine beneath him, and maybe Fraser didn't get crazy from this the way Ray did but once he'd relaxed he got right into it, moaning and gasping and kissing Ray deeply whenever he wasn't doing either of those first two. His cock was hard and leaking, sliding against Ray's belly with every stroke, and while that was great for reassurance, right now it was just another thing that was making Ray insane. Apparently Fraser *loved* slow. Which figured.

"Ray..." Right in his ear, sounding throaty and blissed-out and so turned on that it made his balls ache, not to mention that whole talking-while-fucking thing, which always drove him nuts anyway.

"Nr."

"Ray, this is good, this is so good..."

"Nrr."

"Ohh, Ray... please... yes, ohh..."

"Nrr!"

"Ray... j'aime votre peau, j'aime votre odeur..."

"Fuck!" Ray's eyes rolled back in his head and something in his spine went off like a line of firecrackers and before he knew it he'd curled his arms under Fraser's shoulders and pulled and rammed forward with no control at all, shattered and wrecked and shaking. Fraser made this *huge* noise underneath him, but when Ray forced himself to look down to see if he'd maybe just done something really awful he saw Fraser wide-eyed and blitzed and *fucked*, and it looked like he'd finally managed to surprise Fraser after all.

"Oh my God, Ray!"

Oh yeah. Ray got as deep into Fraser's ass as he could, forgetting all about slow and fucking Fraser hard and fast and desperate, and thank God Fraser seemed to be a dual-speed kind of guy because he grabbed Ray's hips hard enough to bruise and the more Ray gave him the more he asked for, riding Ray's cock and squeezing and Ray didn't care because he *had* to come, had to, or he was gonna die or come or something, so he kissed Fraser and their teeth crashed and their tongues touched and Fraser heaved up right off the bed, shuddering, and Ray went with the pull and the throb and the heat of it and came his fucking brains out.

***

When Ray woke up, he had about five seconds of oh-holy-shit-I-did-some-Really-Gay-Things-with-Fraser, but that gave way to about thirty seconds of I-made-Fraser-come-so-hard-he-almost-passed-out-heh-heh-heh-I-am-the-man, so that was okay.

He opened his eyes and turned over, surprised to see that Fraser was still asleep; he'd thought for sure Fraser would be an early worm kind of guy if ever there was one. Fraser had the covers tugged up to his chin so that only his face was visible, flushed and damp and so innocent-looking that for a moment it seemed impossible to believe that this was the same guy who just last night had humped his cock like an animal until he came all over both of them, but Ray had the bruises to prove it, and besides, it wasn't the kind of thing he was ever going to forget.

As he watched, Fraser's eyelids fluttered, then he yawned, stretched, stiffened, and made a sleepy-curious noise that Ray would bet his next paycheck translated to something like 'hey, why is my ass sore?' Ray grinned.

Fraser opened his eyes, and if he had any first-moment freak-outs or smug attacks, they didn't show. "Ray," he said softly, "you're awake. And you're smiling."

"Yeah, I do that sometimes." He was about to add that it wasn't something Fraser should get used to, but before he could Fraser had octopused out of his huddle and drawn him in and wrapped him up, a tight, multi-limbed snuggle that Ray hadn't really expected but which, once he settled into it, was surprisingly... nice. Comfortable. Sleepy.

He'd actually started to drift a little when Fraser spoke again. "Thank you for taking me home, Ray."

Ray nudged Fraser with his chin. "You're a freak, Fraser. And you're welcome."

But he was awake now, awake and really aware of how close he was to Fraser, that Fraser was here, in his bed, with his heat and his soft skin and his smell and everything all wrapped up and tangled together and... close. It was new territory once again, maybe the last new territory, their final frontier. Ray snorted.

"Ray?"

Ray hesitated, rubbing his cheek mindlessly back and forth over the silky skin of Fraser's shoulder, then planted his hand on Fraser's chest and levered himself up onto his elbow, sending the covers sliding down and ignoring Fraser's startled wheeze.

"If I had a pair of boots that you hated, what would you do?"

Fraser blinked, and his eyebrows drew down. "If you had... if I... Well, would these be boots that I would be required to wear?"

"No, they're my boots--my boots, Fraser. I own 'em. I wear 'em. You hate 'em. What would you do?"

Fraser scratched his eyebrow. "Are the boots endangering your life in some way?"

"They're not super-villain boots, Fraser, okay? They're just boots. Regular, non-homicidal boots."

Fraser appeared to be thinking about it, thinking hard, but in the end he just shook his head. "Well then, I suppose the answer to your question is that I would do nothing, Ray."

He studied Fraser closely. He meant it. "Yeah, okay. I was just checking."

Ray came down off his elbow, and sure enough Fraser wrapped him right back up again, tugging the covers up and getting all around him and holding him close, and the warmth felt so good soaking into him, surprisingly good, because he hadn't even realized that he was cold until just now.

End