Author's Notes: This story is for Melodie, rentgirl one. You cheer-lead, you badger, you listen to my outrageous ideas and say, "Yeah, I can make that work." You rock. And this story is for Stormy Stormheller who tricked me into falling in love with Fraser. She managed to have every episode of due South sent to me from various fans so that I could truly get to know the boys. She also alpha-ed during the writing, helping me keep Fraser Canadian and the language of the tale in understandable English. Stormy's input was invaluable. She rocks. Special thanks to Lyn, LilyK and Rose, who stepped up to beta on short notice. Thank you, Ladies. Y'all are greatly appreciated.

Where does one draw the definitive line between hunter and stalker?

Diefenbaker has made his views abundantly clear. Ad nausem, I might add. If one has no reasonable possibility of ever capturing one's prey, so Dief says, then one is a stalker, not a hunter.

Perhaps if one were to include the term reasonable in the discussion, then Dief has indeed hit the proverbial nail on the head. There is no person who could be convinced that I have a reasonable possibility of capturing Ray Kowalski, at least not with the essence of who is Ray left intact. Therefore, I am not a noble hunter. I am instead, merely a run-of-the-mill borderline psychotic stalker who should no doubt have a restraining order taken out against him.

Each night, as I lay alone on my cot, I try to purge myself of this inappropriate longing. I sternly remind myself of what I am, of the many grievous errors I have made when I've attempted to indulge in matters of the heart.

I have been attracted to the worthy and the unworthy, persons one would be proud to claim in the light of day and persons one would prefer to relegate to the shadows of night. I have been attracted to men and women, the physically captivating and those with little looks to speak of.

There has been no rhyme nor reason to my yearnings, but never have I yearned for someone with such unrelenting strength as I yearn for Ray. It consumes me. Awake or asleep, it consumes me.

So, as I stare at the ceiling, uselessly counting the ceiling beams, I also count my past errors.

Since I was a teenager sex has been ridiculously easy to obtain. I'm not blind to my own attributes. I know I have inherited the natural good looks of my mother, some of the lightening-quick intellect of my grandparents and the determined doggedness of my nearly departed father. I know I could easily trade in on my appearance. I have in the past.

As a willful and stupid fifteen-year-old, I ruthlessly used a childhood friend. To this day I can see June, her sweet, homely face red and tear-stained.

"But, Ben," her watery voice had momentarily wavered, "I thought you loved me."

I still cringe as I recall my joyful relief that soon after, June had caught the eye of an Inuit boy in the village. Virginity is not held in as high regard among the Inuit as it is in other cultures. I was happily let off the hook.

June should have known better. She'd grown up with me, as had Eric and Mark. They should have all recognized that I was more than corporeal beauty and good manners. Inside, I seethe with selfishness, violence, arrogance and darkness.

Victoria understood. After all, like calls to like.

Now, as an adult, I comprehend that I deeply injured not only June, but Eric, Mark, Jamie and a handful of others. They believed that I truly cared for them. I suppose I did, but never enough to let them stand in the way of what I perceived to be my calling. That honor awaited Victoria.

It surprised me to some extent that they have chosen to deal with me at all, now that we are grown-up.

Eric, lovely and half-wild, was my first male conquest. He was everything I imagined that I wanted to be at the time. A courageous, adventurous boy with ties to the Native Spirit world, Eric also had parents who doted on him. To a motherless, and in all honesty, a fatherless adolescent, the noisy, festive atmosphere in Eric's home was foreign and delightful.

I wanted to be Eric. I settled for being in Eric.

Eric failed to see my sharp, hurtful edges and tried to cling to me. I fled.

Years later, we met in Chicago. We were a bit wary at first of one another. A scant few moments later, however, the old attraction burned between us. Only the knowledge that his family overflowed my apartment at the time kept us from devouring each other in his makeshift sweat lodge.

His dark strong body, glowing in smoke and sweat, poised a few inches from my hand had been almost more temptation than my darkness could tolerate. The quickening of his breath, the flaring of his nostrils, the scent of rut rising up of him, assured me he still wanted me, still remembered the first time he and I had succumbed to the pleasures of the flesh in a sweat lodge.

I allowed nothing to happen. His yearning and my knowledge of his yearning was enough to feed my arrogance.

Mark Smithbauer and I saw each other for the first time in decades in Chicago.

Mark pretended, much to Diefenbaker's dismay, that he could not remember me. Ray Vecchio was incensed and vocal.

"For Pete's sake, Benny, it's not like your town was crawling with kids," he'd shouted. Especially kids who looked like you was unspoken, but understood. Even Ray Vecchio, my heterosexual Ray, was not totally immune to my physical appearance.

I chose to enlighten neither Dief nor Ray as to the true nature of the history Mark and I shared. I was vain enough to wish to retain their good opinions.

Who was Mark to them after all? A hockey player, a sports celebrity, a face on the news. I was friend and partner to both of them. Who needed their high regard more, I'd rationalized at the time.

Did they honestly need to know that over twenty years ago Mark had come to me at the Depot and begged me to go away with him? He'd been given his first chance with the minor leagues and he wanted me with him.

Contract in hand, two tickets to Toronto in his jacket pocket, Mark had flown across Canada to share his good fortune. "It's all happening, Ben. We'll have everything we've ever wanted."

I'd been appalled. His willingness to flaunt our relationship not withstanding, how could he have thought his dream of playing professional hockey superceded my dream of being a member of the RCMP?

I'd made love to him the better part of that weekend, then sent him on his way.

In retrospect, I'm fortunate Mark chose only to feign amnesia and bash me when we met at the liquor store. He could have chosen to expose me.

Instead, he'd broken down and sought me out.

As we'd lay on my bed that night, sex-soaked sheets cooling beneath us, I'd not been able to resist prodding him.

"The bottle to the face was a bit of an overkill, don't you think, Mark?" My nose and cheek were still stinging despite my judicious application of ice earlier.

"Yeah, sorry about that, Ben," he'd said sheepishly. "I, well, seeing you again," he'd propped himself up on his elbow to stare down me. "I guess I was more pissed off then I thought."

"About what?"

"You. Us." He'd looked up to stare at the wall behind the bed. "I mean, here I am and my whole fucking world is crumbling around me and there you were, still the same Ben Fraser who'd told me goodbye twenty years ago."

"Hardly the same," I'd said, although in my heart I'd known I was indeed the same selfish, single-minded man I'd always been.

"Maybe not, but it sure as hell looked that way to me. Still the hero, still buttoned up in that damned uniform." He'd leaned down to kiss me. "Still too fucking beautiful for words. I couldn't stand it." He'd kiss me again. "I just couldn't stand it." This time, I'd kissed him.

I'd helped sort thing out for Mark as best they could be, made love to him the better part of the weekend, then sent him on his way.

From here on the street I can see Ray's smooth silhouette sliding across his window blinds. I can almost hear the plaintive notes he is surely swaying to. Ray. His brightness appeals to me, reflects against me. He calls to the optimism wedged in my soul much the way Victoria called to my darkness.

Victoria. Even now when I lick my lips I can taste the succulent perfection of her pale, soft flesh. I can feel the scratch of her nails on my shoulders and the bite of her teeth on my chest. She brought a measure of savagery into my life and my bed that I would have found distasteful at nearly any other point in my life.

During those few days we shared in Chicago, she was like a blood-moon, pulling the tide of wantonness up from within me. She'd shown me, with a great amount of glee, just how much evil I was capable of. I hadn't cared.

It is said that the heart wants what the heart wants. I would have done anything, said anything to keep her with me. I feel a hundred times stronger about Ray. Knowing what I was capable of with her, frightens me when I think about that same intensity, that same determination focused upon him a hundredfold.

By the time I was prepared to accept what Victoria truly was, by the time I was prepared to spring the trap set to ensnare her, she'd nearly killed Diefenbaker and had made plans to destroy Ray Vecchio. My two dearest friends, my two partners were insignificant obstacles in her race to obtain two things--the money and me.

Sexual relations with her were beyond anything I'd ever experienced. Her snug, slick darkness ate away at me. It devoured my intellect, my reason, my loyalty, even my call to justice was lost to me during my time of madness with Victoria. I was struck blind by her deep midnight.

I permitted her to try to demolish the two beings on earth closest to me before I could be moved to feebly act against her. Dief, who had saved my life, who had been my constant and faithful companion, struggled to live. Ray Vecchio, who had saved my life, who had been my friend and my brother, was but a hair's breadth away from the ruination of career, finances and future.

Yet, when faced with a choice between redemption or feeding the black, faceless monster inside of me, I stretched my hand out to a demon, wanting only to be with her, to serve her, to touch her for all my days.

My almost-murder at Ray Vecchio's hands had been all that saved my soul.

So, as I lay each night on my cot, listening to the Consulate settle on its foundation, I recall I am no expert in the field of love. I recall I have a string of false starts and incorrect selections in my wake. I recall I can be a danger to those who trust me the most.

I resolve to put this foolishness away when next I see the sun rise. I promise myself I will not tuck these dreams of Ray Kowalski away so that I can examine them the next night. I will, instead, let my desires burn up in the light of day.

I swear it. I vow it. I mean it.

Then I see him again.

How can I not covet him?

My desire for Ray is golden warm rather than hot black. Unlike the tide of evil Victoria's moon called up in me, Ray's sun forces a tide of near peace to well up.

Not that my relationship with Ray is peaceful. Far from it. We are more akin to flint and striker than to milk and honey. Yet, our verbal sparring, our jockeying for position, our very opposite approaches to life in general, only chafe on occasion. For the most part, the rubbing of one ego against the other is more like the polishing of a diamond. Which is exactly what our friendship is--a precious jewel.

Would I dare squander such a treasure in the quest to slake my lust? Consequences be damned?

To touch him, to lick the tangy musk of his flesh, to press into the absolute heat of him, to spend myself deep in the very core of him would be worth anything I possess. Ray Kowalski, my pearl of great price.

Ray's present and his future are tethered to his past by a cord so incredibly strong, I know he will drag his yesterdays behind him forever. I suppose we all do to some extent, but Ray pulls his along willingly as his penance, an indulgence to the great Stella.

Ray fools himself that there is a way to win her heart again. I watch him struggle in her presence, searching for just the right word, the right look, the right moment to bring her back into his life.

My father told me once, while I was searching for just the right word, the right look, the right moment to bring Victoria back into my life, "Sometimes all you need is a second chance. It's the one thing you're not going to get."

At the time, the claws of her possession were so deeply imbedded in me, I might have killed him in that moment. Provided, of course, he hadn't already been dead.

I wanted my father to be wrong. I needed my father to be wrong. He was right. I fear if I were to attempt to enlighten Ray as my father had attempted to enlighten me, it would effectively sound the death knell to our duet.

The blinds in his window part and I can see the pale oval of Ray's face peering out. Stepping back a meter, I obscure my presence in the shadows. Thankfully, I left Deifenbaker at the Consulate, not wishing to be subjected to yet another of his dissertations on my idiocies. Dief's light colored coat would have been more difficult to conceal that I am in my dark jeans and leather jacket.

Can Ray sense me? Not me, Benton Fraser, but rather a stalker, a hunter, observing his movements, invading his territory, shattering his illusions of privacy.

More than once in the Yukon, I felt the eyes of predators upon me. Although I could not visualize my stalkers, I could feel them measuring my steps, determining my strengths, my worthiness as an adversary. Is Ray experiencing the same sensation? The same hunted, haunted one?

Perhaps. Perhaps not.

The blinds fall closed again and I inhale sharply, only just realizing I have been holding my breath. Perverse creature that I am, I almost wish he had seen me, almost wish he would storm out of his building, eyes angry and sparkling, to demand an explanation for my behavior.

As quickly as the desire for confrontation comes, it departs. What do I imagine the end results of such an occurrence would be? Fisticuffs? A confession? A kiss?

Or perhaps I wish only for an opportunity to allow Ray to see me as I truly am. As June and Eric and Mark refused to see me until it was too late. As Victoria saw me from the instant our eyes met.

Would he, like Victoria, find the vein of darkness running through me as unexpected as gold in a phosphate mine and just as irresistible? Would he, like Victoria, find the gnawing hunger growling inside me as unexpected as opals strewn on a city street and just as irresistible? Would he, like Victoria, spy the violence locked up in me and lust to drench himself in it?

Would he, like Victoria, become the worst possible version of himself by associating with me?

I redeemed Ray Vecchio. Or so he told me. One night, after a particularly ugly and difficult case closed, Ray came drunk and unannounced to my apartment.

"Benny," he'd slurred, leaning heavily against my stove, as snow melted on the fine fabric of his overcoat, "I was heading to hell in a hand-basket when you came along."

Still dressed in my brown uniform, I'd sat at my kitchen table, Dief by my feet. "What do you mean, Ray?"

He'd stared at his shoes, their expensive leather stained from the wet streets, for a long moment.

"Ray?" I'd prompted.

"I've done some stuff, well, I don't want to go into it specifically, Benny. Let's just say I've almost crossed the line into becoming a bad cop more than once."

I'd known that, of course. I'd watched as Ray played fast and loose with search warrants and interrogations. I'd watched as Ray took shortcuts when logic and good deduction would have led him to the same conclusion.

I'd also watched as Ray slowly adopted a new attitude toward his calling to justice. I watched as he learned once again to put clues together. I watched as he struggled to place past errors behind him and remember what had brought him into law enforcement to begin with. I watched as he became a partner I could truly be proud of.

I could have take advantage of him in those drunken moments. I briefly toyed with the idea.

His heterosexuality and our partnership aside, seducing him would have been child's play. Inebriated, shell-shocked and pathetically grateful, he was easy prey. Despite living in his hometown, surrounded by an extended family and life-long friends, Ray was as wounded and lonely as I've ever seen anyone.

I had no sexual attraction to him to speak of, but standing there in the unforgiving light of my kitchen, I found his green eyes lovely and his scent enticing. Cull the herd, the serpent in my brain, the evil that slithers and struggle so desperately to be given free rein, counseled me.

Take him, it hissed, for all the times he tried to belittle you, the times he mocked you, the times he refused to take you seriously. Show him how quickly he can be made to sink to his knees and howl your name. Show him that pleasure and decadence can be intertwined, the snake taunted. Make him do the very thing that will cause him to question his sanity and his manhood.

Make him, the snake coaxed, face the possibility that he is not at all the man he believes himself to be.

Luckily for both of us, Ray Vecchio's moment of vulnerability occurred a few months before Victoria made her reappearance. For quite some time after her, had the opportunity presented itself again, I would have seduced him as effortlessly and as effectively as I had June twenty years previously. I would have done it solely for the chance to watch to watch him wrestle with self-doubt and suffer with remorse. After all, at the time I was.

"You're the best friend I ever had," he'd gushed that night as I tucked him into a cab destined for the Vecchio home. "I mean it, Benny."

He will never know how close he came to becoming yet another of my casualties.

The lights in Ray Kowalski's apartment go off one by one. I am relieved and disappointed in equal measures. I could watch endlessly, even if what I see is more a product of my imagination than the scene that Ray is actually playing out.

In my mind's eye, Ray drifts aimlessly through his apartment, touching an item or two with his long fingers, reflecting on the day. As he turns off the music, clicks off the lights, he thinks of me, of things we've done together, of things he wishes he had the courage to say to me.

In my mind's eye, Ray picks up the telephone, wondering if I'm still awake, if I'd welcome his call and the words he longs to speak aloud.

In my mind's eye, he holds the telephone receiver tightly, pressing the cool plastic against his cheek. Hesitating, he runs his side of the conversation through his quick mind, then dials.

I pick up on the second ring.

"Frase, see here's the thing." He stops then starts again. "The thing is, I want more." Anticipating my incomprehension he rushes to explain. "From you, Fraser. I need more from you. More than buddies. You have any idea what I'm talking about?"

A cat screeches in the alley behind me, splintering my elaborate fantasy into dust. I am tempted to reconstruct it, to replay it and allow it to run to some satisfactory conclusion, but I resist. Tonight is about letting go. Tonight is the night I allow Dief's good judgment to supercede mine. Tonight is the last night I indulge myself in this particular line of stupidity.

I swear it. I vow it. I mean it.

Yet, I linger, not quite ready to accept my fate nor prepared to let him go when I know he could so easily be mine.

"You always were a dreamer, Benton." My grandmother's whisper blows passed my ear. I turn quickly, fearing I shall have to put up with yet another dead relative running interference in my life, but no, I am alone.

Over the course of time, her voice and that of my conscience have become one in the same. Doubly disturbing to me is that often when she speaks to me in dry, worn cliches, I sting in the same places she opened in my soul when I was a boy.

"Pretty is as pretty does, Benton." I can't begin to count the number of times I heard that while growing up. How was my physical appearance such a burden to her? If she could have foreseen that her admonishments that looks were of no importance only served to make me realize that beauty is a wondrous weapon to wield, perhaps she would have chosen silence on the subject.

"You're too smart for your own good, Benton." And really, who's fault was that? My grandparents never let an "opportunity to learn", as they called them, pass by. A herd of caribou and the stars above were merely math problems waiting to be solved. A lost traveler, merely a language tutor and a lesson in geography. A spring day, merely a chance to study botany. There was no time to stop and smell the roses unless I could recall not only the author of the quote, but how Mendel's experiments helped breed a better blossom.

"Silence is golden, Benton." In other words, the normal chatter of a curious boy was far too much stimulation for an elderly couple. After a dozen years confined in the silence of their home, I still find myself unable to use ten words if I can find a hundred to say the same thing.

"There is never an excuse for sloth, Benton." Honestly, what does a traumatized six-year-old know of laziness? Yet, to this day, I can't sleep passed the dawn nor allow myself the simple joy of sitting without purpose.

These two, my grandparents, were of course, the couple who'd reared my father before me. Their parenting skills had acquired little discernable polish in the decades between molding my father into a cold, duty-driven workaholic and attempting to nurture me.

No matter what the intended purpose of her many lectures, what I learned from my grandmother was to frost over my true nature with a sheet of ice.

She might have wished to stamp out of me all traces of the high strung beauty who bore me, but she didn't. I only learned to hide my nature better than my mother had.

Carolyn Pinsent was not the daughter-in-law of choice for the Frasers. Several years younger than my father, she was, according to my grandmother, a chippy hoyden.

She'd gotten herself into some sort of trouble, so her parents had packed her off to live with relatives in the remote village my grandparents lived in. My father met her, wooed her and married her all during a two week leave from his post.

My grandmother had been less than thrilled to have an outsider bride dumped on her doorstep when my father returned to work. I'm sure she wasn't much happier when, eight years later, my father dumped me on their doorstep.

I don't think my father had a clue what to do with my mother and me. He loved her, or so he's said since he's died and returned. He's told me she was a wonderful woman, a good wife and a devoted mother. How could he possibly know? Robert Fraser played only a cameo role in my childhood. Even when he did grace us with his presence, he'd squandered more time and affection on his dogs than he did on us.

I remember my mother with the crystal clarity of a child. She was pretty and smelled like summer flowers. Her hair was dark and shiny and her hands were smooth. Most of the time she was kind and sweet and playful.

The rest of the time, she frightened me.

A year before I was born, my father moved her out of my grandparents' house and into his cabin. For a teenager who had been raised in a real town, the reality of the rustic, isolated conditions she found herself in must have seemed horrific. Left alone with only a child and sled dogs for company for weeks on end must have been more confining, more lonely then she could bear.

There were days that no amount of my coaxing and pleading could rouse her from her bed. Days that I filled my belly with whatever I could forage from the open shelves of our cupboard. Days that I slept with the dogs, huddling for warmth and comfort. Days that I went unbathed, unheard, untouched.

There is no anger in my heart for her. For all my mother's stubborn, youthful pride, she was inherently breakable and laughably ill-suited to life on the tundra. My father should have known. He couldn't be bothered to notice, I suppose, that my mother was only putting on a brave front, a show as it were, when he came home to us. Paying court to his wife and son would have diverted his attention from his duty and duty was his God. As it became mine.

"You'll never change," Mark had shouted at me that final morning in Chicago.

"Did I somehow intimate that I had?" I'd retorted.

Mark had realized immediately that he'd made an error and gamely changed tactics. He'd dropped his shirt and sat on the mattress next to me. "I don't want you to change, Ben. I just want you with me. That's all I've ever wanted. Come with me."

"Back to Canada?" I'd been, I'll admit, somewhat intrigued with what he thought he had to offer me.

"Canada, Hawaii, Tahiti. Anywhere we want. I've got some money stashed away, some stocks. We could live like kings. Come with me, Ben."

His offer had been generous. Ludicrous, but generous.

"Has living like a king afforded you much happiness thus far, Mark?'

He'd dropped his eyes to examine the bare linoleum of my apartment floor. "No, it hasn't, but it could be different this time."

"How could it be different?"

"We'd be together."

"And how would that work precisely? I'd be required to give up my career to follow you about the world? If I'm not mistaken, I turned down a similar offer from you years ago."

I had known, sitting there on my bed, that nothing Mark said or did would ever convince me to leave with him. He must have been equally aware of the futility of the conversation and yet he continued to try and I let him. A perfect example of my own brand of cruelty and his own brand of self-loathing.

"I didn't have squat back then. I was a nobody, Ben. Now, I could give you anything you want, everything you want."

"Oh, Mark," I'd said, taking care to shade my voice with the perfect amount of regret so that he would spend the next twenty years wondering if he could have changed my mind if he'd only picked his words more judiciously. "Mark," I'd whispered then kissed him deeply. "If you knew me at all, you'd understand there isn't enough money or fame on earth to purchase what I want."

"Justice," he'd spat. "Duty, right? I remember the lecture from our goodbye scene at the Depot. You really haven't changed, have you, Ben?" He sounded more resigned than angry.

"I don't believe that a person can truly change, Mark. We are what we are."

I lean back against the cold brick wall, treating myself to another look at Ray's darkened window before beginning the trek back to the yawning emptiness of the Consulate. I could have had him. I could have him even now if I could trust that, in the process, I would not use him, would not scrape clean everything that makes him crackle with life, everything that makes him Ray.

"You like a...like a succubus," Jamie Danson had shrieked at me.

I had glance about to ascertain that we were indeed alone before answering her. "I assume you mean incubus."

"What?" Her momentary distraction had allowed me to study her. A year older and a class ahead of me at the Depot, Jamie had appeared in the beginning of our brief, secret affair, to be a sensible, worldly young woman. She had after all, been born and reared in Moose Jaw. When I ended it, she'd transformed into a demanding shrew, expecting to collect on promises I'd never given.

"Pardon?" I'd inquired politely, giving her a chance to pull herself together. She'd waylaid me on the edge of the athletic field as I'd been setting out for an early morning run. Looking back, I suppose I was fortunate she hadn't demanded a showdown at sunset in the main dining hall.

"Incubus?" she'd said, shaking her head, thick blonde hair fanning side-to-side.

"Ah," I'd said. "Well, you said I was a succubus and, strictly speaking, a succubus refers to a female demon who has relations with slumbering men and steals their life essence. I'm assuming you meant to call me an incubus which is the male equivalent, although I can't imagine why."

"You're an ass, Benton Fraser." She'd raised her fist as if to strike me, then dropped it to her side. "I'm going back home," she'd said quietly. "I'm quitting."

"Why?" I'd been genuinely shocked. "You're just a few months from graduation, Jamie."

She'd laughed bitterly. "I can't do it, don't you get it? I can't be here. I can't see you everyday and know that it's over." She'd sniffed and wiped her eyes. "What did I do wrong, Benton? I need to understand."

"You did nothing wrong. Nothing. Sometimes things just don't work out as one hoped, that's all."

I'd tried to remember exactly what it was that had attracted me to her in the first place. She'd been very lovely, with a heart-shaped face and green eyes, but in retrospect, I think it had been her independence and swaggering confidence that led me to seduce her.

All the independence and swaggering confidence that, at that moment, seemed to have been drained away, sucked out as it were.

When Jamie had left the Depot, I'd felt nothing but relief. And I'd wondered if I were indeed a succubus, or more correctly, an incubus, as she'd claimed.

If there is even the possibility that is true, and Jamie's claim did seem to have some basis in fact, then I can't risk doing something similar to Ray. I won't.

Oh, but what amazing pleasures he and I would share before we crashed and burned. We'd discover hidden treasures and exotic rhythms within one and another just before I turned him inside-out and hung him to dry.

"You're like some kind of a tick," Eric had said, half-amused, half-ashamed when his call reached me a month after he'd stolen the masks and left Chicago.

"I beg your pardon?" I hadn't been at all certain what the expected response was to that statement.

"You're latched on to me. I can't get you out of my head."

"Ah." There was little I could add to the conversation. His call had come over Ray Vecchio's cellular telephone and at that very moment, Ray and I were in the front seat of the Riviera. Ray had glanced at me curiously while maneuvering the car down the twilight-washed city streets.

"You still there?" Eric had demanded.

"Yes, I'm here."

By then Ray's curiosity had gotten the better of him and he'd been mouthing "Who is it?" at me.

"Did you put some kind of a hex on me, Ben?" He then asked quietly, "You didn't, did you?"

"That's just silly, Eric," I'd admonished him, answering both of their questions with a single statement.

"I have the true masks," he'd challenged me.

"I know." I had.

"So, Mountie, you failed. You didn't fulfill your duty. You left your case unsolved."

Eric had always had a far clearer understanding of my motivations than Mark did. He'd been off this time, however. "The case is solved to the mutual satisfaction of my superiors, the nations involved and your people. One can hardly ask for a more fortuitous outcome than that." Besides, Ray had finally convinced me to let it go.

"You could come here after them."

"After them?"

"Them. Me. Whatever. You could come home for a while and it would be official business."

"I don't think that will be necessary."

"It could be necessary." His voice had deepened a register and become as tempting, as smoky as the sweat lodge we'd made love in as teenagers. "Come home, Ben."

"You know I can't."

He'd sighed. "You mean, you won't"

"I'm sorry, Eric." Actually, I wasn't. I was glad, glad that those thousands of miles separated us. Glad he wouldn't be returning to Chicago. Glad I wouldn't have the evidence of another casualty in my line of vision.

"Bye, Ben."

I'd hung up without answering him.

I push away from the wall. The wind is cold tonight. Underneath the city smells of human flesh, car exhaust and rotting trash, is the scent of soon-to-fall snow. That's something good, I suppose.

As I take the first hesitant steps that will bring me back to the Consulate, I am filled again with longing so strong I nearly stagger from the weight of it. I long for home, where I am surrounded by the wild and the familiar. I long for even a moment where thought and memory don't race wildly through my brain. I long for Ray and the wildness I know would exist for us in each other's arms.

Hunter, stalker, succubus, incubus.

I can't keep doing this to myself. If I must keep my baser emotions under control, I have to find a means with which to rid myself of these useless, wretched feelings for Ray. If I found the strength to put Victoria into the past, surely I can repeat the process with Ray.

Hunter, stalker, user, defiler. I am all that and more and less.

Perhaps it would have proven better for my sanity had I never known that to have Ray, all I need do was stretch out my hand and beckon him closer. That makes it hard, so damned hard, to keep from taking what I want, from taking what I'm beginning to fear I need.

Knowing I could have someone, that I possessed the power to lure someone had been enough in the past. Meg Thatcher, Francesca Vecchio and any number of strangers throw themselves at me on nearly a daily basis. Never once have I been in any danger of taking what was offered. It's not that they aren't attractive and desirable. They are. I've even dipped into the turbulent waters of foreplay with Meg and a few others, giving kisses and innuendo, but it has always been easy enough to back away.

A half-block north of Ray's apartment is a small park. Despite the lateness of the hour, I settle unto one of the benches near the walkway. From here I can see the corner of Ray's building, although not his window. A perfect distance, well beyond the hundred yards a restraining order would require and yet well within the distance a seasoned hunter might use for tracking game.

Diefenbaker is correct. I am a stalker not a hunter, however, not for the reasons he believes to be true. I could capture Ray, he is utterly within my sights, within my snare, within my grasp. I can't tell Diefenbaker the truth--that I choose not to close the noose about Ray's desirable throat.

I know for certain that I would go no further than partnership, no deeper than friendship. when I realize not only was I in love with him, but he was in love with me.

Ray's case had been rather run-of-the-mill. Two teenagers had been pick-pocketing around the theater district. It had gone on for several weeks until the boys made the grievous error of stealing the wallet of the Deputy Mayor's sister and their petty crime wave took a position of priority at the 2-7.

It had taken Ray and I a single afternoon to apprehend the culprits, squirreled away as they were in the alleyway that had become their hideout. Hungry, cold and dirty, the runaways had barely survived on what they had been able to steal. They'd needed a bath and a meal more than the weight of justice rained down upon them. Still, it had been our duty to bring the boys in.

The pair of bandits had tried desperately to hide where they'd come from, but after a short, sympathetic interrogation admitted they were from Dayton, Ohio. They'd come to Chicago in an attempt to find work and start a new life together.

The boys were impossibly young, impossible naive and very much in love.

When their respective parents had arrived to take them back, separately, the boys had been nearly hysterical. It seemed that parental disapproval of their relationship had been the catalyst for their flight in the first place.

I could see no happy ending to their story and I told Ray as much that night as we'd driven to his apartment.

"Why, Fraser?" he'd said belligerently. "Because they're just a couple of queers they don't get a happy ending?"

I'd been taken aback by his misinterpretation of my observation. "Of course not, Ray. I'm merely stating the obvious. The boys are minors and their parents are dead-set against their continued association. They said as much at the station."

"Maybe," he'd said as we pulled into the parking lot of his apartment building. "Or maybe they'll be able to change their parents' minds."

We'd stopped at the Consulate on the way from the station so I could change clothes and get Diefenbaker. Then we'd gone through the drive-thru of Ray's newest favorite restaurant, Senor Pepito's Italian-Mexican Grill, so it was quite late by the time we exited Ray's car and made our way across the darkened lot.

I'd been more than ready to let the discussion go as it seemed to be upsetting Ray, but he hadn't been so inclined.

"So, don't you think those boys might be able to make their parents change their minds, Fraser?"

Sighing, I'd turned to him at the open doorway leading into his stairwell. "It's been my experience, Ray, that people are what they are. So, no, I don't think the boys' parents will change their minds."

"Even if they can show their folks that what they have is special and serious?"

"The boys ran away so that they could be together," I'd pointed out. "I would imagine that act alone would impress upon their parents how very serious they are."

I'd seen it in his face then, illuminated in the cold, reflected artificial light of the street lamps. He hadn't been speaking about the boys per se. He'd been referring to us--our relationship was, to him, special and serious. He'd fallen in love with me and he wanted some sign that I reciprocated.

"Don't you think people can change, Fraser?" When I didn't reply, he'd been insistent. "Do not tell me that people can't change. Do not do that."

Ray then dug his strong fingers into the butter soft leather of my jacket, jostling the bag of pepperoni burritos I had balanced against me.

"Ray, I..." It had been my dream and my nightmare. My secret wish and what I'd feared the most. He'd come to me, sweet and willing, appealing to everything good and everything evil inside me. "Perhaps you could clarify exactly what you mean by change."

He, my wise and foolish Ray, had not been distracted.

"No niggling, Fraser." Inhaling deeply, he'd pressed his face into my shoulder, clinging to me with his body and his breath.

The paper sack of food and my common sense had prevented me from wrapping my arms about him. Instead, I'd stood sentry-still, not allowing my shape to mold to his. God, but I'd wanted to. After another awkward moment had eked by, Ray had stepped back and ground the heels of his hands against his eye-sockets.

"Jesus, that was butt stupid of me, Fraser."

I'd thrown him a lifeline. The darker side of my nature, the part that had savored Jamie's humiliation and Eric's longing and June's pain and Mark's regrets and Victoria's inability to pull the trigger, was beaten back in the piercing light of Ray's sorrow. In his own strangely strong and brash way, he was a thousand times more fragile than either Ray Vecchio or Carolyn Pinsent could ever be.

Stella had nearly crushed the life from him. I could very easily completely the task.

Therefore, I'd wondered, as we'd stood in the windy entryway, if I'd perhaps been incorrect. If perhaps a person could change.

Ray had meant his attraction, from one woman to one man. Or, more specifically, from Stella to me. I'd always known he had bisexual tendencies, like knows like after all, but he'd not been looking merely for sex. He'd been in search of something far more dangerous. Ray had been seeking to share love and affection. My love and affection. I couldn't let that happen.

I'd clumsily patted his shoulder with my free hand. "Not at all, Ray."

"No?" He'd dropped his hands from his face and the flair of hope in his blue eyes had been painful to witness.

"No," I'd answered quickly, hurrying to snuff that glimmer of hope out. "A case could certainly be made for finding oneself somewhat overwrought about such a situation."

He'd forced out a jagged bark of laughter. "Overwrought, huh? Sounds like something out of Frannie's Sword of Desire, buddy. Overwrought."

The cord of tension between us had snapped and broken and we'd run up the stairs to watch ESPN and feast on Senor Pepito's questionable cuisine. And we'd pretended.

We still pretend to this day. We pretend we aren't always just on the precipice, about to fall over into each others' arms and mouths and hearts. That we aren't always just a hair's-breadth from devouring one another, from giving in to this thing that pulsates between us.

We're both so very good at pretending.

I lean forward to rest my elbows on my thighs and my head in my hands.

This is all so silly, really. Wallowing in what I could have and what I should have and what I won't have. I'm acting like a hormone driven adolescent mooning over a classmate. I need to let this go; I will let this go.

I swear it. I vow it. I mean it.

Yet, I sit here like a simpleton, head down contemplating my boot laces as the cold night wind blows along my nape and into my jacket. I am like a spoiled child, refusing to do what must be done.

This is absolutely the last time, the last minute, the last second I will allow myself to dream of the possibilities. It is the last time to let my foolish heart take wind and imagine a lifetime of his smile slanted at me. A lifetime of feeling his hand brushing against mine while we walk, a and seeing his eyes sparkle in the half light of dawn. A lifetime of his laughter filling my ears and my name in his mouth.

"Fraser."

Even now, as I slowly, decisively shut the door to my dreams, I can hear his voice and smell the tobacco-scented musk of his flesh as if he were with me.

"Fraser?" Warm fingers stoke my exposed neck and, startled, I look up to see Ray, familiar and lovely, standing before me.

"Hello, Ray."

He pulls his hand away from me and tucks his fingertips into the front pockets of his jeans.

"Why didn't you come up?"

"Come up?"

"To my apartment, Fraser. Why didn't you come up?"

"I was not out visiting, Ray. I was merely walking."

"Without Dief?" he said, skepticism flavoring his question.

"By myself, yes," I answer, scooting over to make room for him on the bench.

"You were standing," he says, sitting closer to me than strictly necessary.

"Excuse me?"

"You weren't walking." He lights a cigarette and lets it dangle from the corner of his mouth. "You said you were out for a walk, but you were not walking. You were standing." He drags hard on his cigarette. "You were standing outside of my apartment."

"Yes, well." I reach inside myself for the protection of my icy veneer, but discover it melting in the heat of Ray's company. "I may have inadvertently passed by your building while I was walking."

"While you were standing."

"Strolling," I counter.

"Standing," he antes.

"Meandering."

He laughs and pull again on his cigarette. "What? Like a river?" he asks, the words drifting out on white puffs of smoke and condensation. "You were standing, Fraser. By the alley across from my place. I saw you."

"Perhaps I did stop to rest for a moment near your building."

He knows I am lying and judging from the curl of his lip, I see he is not going to let us pretend I am telling the truth. God, Ray, please let us pretend.

"Stopped to rest? The Mountie who can jump off a building to chase a speeding car for fifteen city blocks without breaking a sweat had to stop and take a breather while he was on a meandering stroll?"

I try anger. "You realize I do get tired."

"I realize you get tired, Fraser," he says, crushing his cigarette butt beneath the heel of his boot. "you're just human, right? And humans, they get tired."

I nod, not at all sure I want to understand where this discussion is heading.

"Humans get a lot things, Fraser. Like, they get lonely or they get scared or they get fucking impatient with other humans, right?"

I nod.

"See, here's the thing. I'm human, too. I'm not made of stone or gold or glass or whatever. I'm just human."

"I know that, Ray," I begin.

He jabs the first two fingers of his right hand in my general direction. "I'm doing the talking, okay? Do that polite Canadian thing and snap your trap."

As I nod my acquiesce, I notice for the first time how very weary Ray appears. The fine, fan of lines about his eyes and the grooves on either side of his mouth are more pronounced than usual. It's not merely the result of a late night or two, I realize.

"You haven't been sleeping," I accuse.

He looks at me in disgust. "Did we not agree that you'd shut up?"

"Yes, but..."

"Yes, but nothing. I'm busy talking and you're busy listening. Got it?"

I nod.

Scrubbing a hand over his eyes, he turns so that he is facing me directly. "I'm just a human, Fraser, but I got eyes and I got hopes. How about you? You got eyes to see what's in front of you and maybe a couple of hopes?"

I am happy he has demanded I remain silent. I am afraid of what I might say. I nod.

"Okay, I figured as much." He reaches into the pocket of his black jacket and removes his pack of cigarettes. Rather than taking one out, he begins to flip the pack over in his hand, over and over as if it were a deck of cards.

As he watches the pack twirling in his hand, I watch him. I love the stark, modern lines of his face and the sparse grace of his body. I love him.

He looks up at that moment, looks into my eyes and give me a determined smile. "I know, you know."

Understanding the value of not responding verbally, I cock my head to one-side, inviting him to continue.

"With these eyes in my head," he says, pointing at his face, "I can see. I mean, I hoped it and I wanted it and then I suspected it, right? But when I finally got the balls to make a move, you shut me down. See, I go to myself, you were wrong, Ray. Except I didn't really believe I was. My gut was telling me I was right, but hey, I've been wrong before. I have been wrong plenty of times before. Stella is just the tip of the iceberg. You can't always go on your gut, right? So I tried to go with logic."

I nod.

"Right. Okay, I tell myself, Ray, just because you look at Fraser like he's the World Pennant or the Second Coming or something, does not mean he feels the same way about you. Take a page from the Stella fiasco and back off."

I call upon reserves I was not even aware of to remain seated. I want desperately to cover my ears, to close my eyes, to run, anything to keep Ray's words, his siren song, from reaching me.

"Only, well, I can see with these eyes and what I'm mostly seeing is you just being you. Mostly. Sometimes, though, I see you looking at me like maybe I am the Second Coming and maybe you want what you turned down. Then maybe sometimes I see you standing under my window, looking up when you don't know I can see you and I have to wonder why."

Horrified and rooted to the bench, I wait for him to continue.

"Why would you turn down what you want? I start to think it through. Maybe you thought it wasn't good enough for you. That I wasn't good enough for you, but I know that's bullshit because you look at me like I'm plenty good enough."

Either I possess nowhere near the stealth and discretion I'd believed or Ray is even more observant than I'd previously given him credit for.

"Then," he continues, "I wonder if it's because you don't think I want it, too. But that's just fucked up because I offered before so you know I want it. You know I want you."

Of course I know it. I'd known it and tried to dismiss it for a long while. Why then, are his words, words I fear and long for, making hope fizz in my veins?

"You do know that, right, Fraser?"

I nod.

"Yeah, I thought so. Maybe you think I'm too knotted up in the past, like I can't let the ex-wife thing go. But I can, okay? People change and move on. I get that now. I figure you get that, too."

Before the protest in my mind can pass my lips, he goes on.

"So, I keep turning it over in my head. I know you want me. I know you know I want you. More than want you. What I just cannot figure out, not for the life of me, is why you'd rather make us both fucking miserable then give in."

I slowly shake my head.

"Is it because you don't know what comes next? Is that what the problem is, Fraser?"

"Oh no, Ray," I surprise us both with my venom. "The problem is that I know exactly what comes next."

"You do?" He sounds doubtful.

"Absolutely, Ray."

"Okay, what? What do you think happens next?"

"It's not what I think happens next, Ray," I say adamantly. "It is what I know happens next. What I've witnessed on many occasions to happen next."

He taps a cigarette out of the pack he has been playing with and holds it, unlit, in his hand.

"You smoke too much," I blurt.

"You think too much," he replies.

We both laugh a little, letting the tension between us recede enough that we can tolerate sitting here; sitting so close our thighs are pressed together, Ray's right to my left.

He finally asks, "What do you know happens next?"

I briefly consider putting him off, letting this all go away and hope we can find a way to pretend again. Is there really any point in continuing this charade, though? Is there? He thinks he knows me. Perhaps it's past time to come clean, so to speak. To lay my cards on the table, to let the chips fall where they may, to...

"While I'm still young, Fraser," he says. "What happens next?"

"At first," I say, deciding to give him this much of the truth, "at the very start, it is all excitement and pleasure. At the middle, it is recrimination and hurt. At the end, it is regret and relief."

Ray gifts me with a small, sad smile. "Love has kicked you in the head a couple of times, huh?"

I can't control my sneer. "Only once, actually. I've been the kick-er, not the kick-ee."

He looks confused for a second, then his features sharpen in comprehension. "Left a few broken hearts behind?"

I nod.

"That's understandable, Fraser. A guy who looks like you is bound to attract his share of the lovelorn. I guess it's like an occupational thingie. An occupational hazard. You can't feel bad for that."

"Oh, on the contrary, Ray. I enjoyed it."

The shock I'd expected to see on Ray's face doesn't appear. Instead, a wide knowing smile spreads his lips.

"That's because you're not just a human, Fraser. You're a male human."

"What I am is a despicable human."

"What you are is a regular guy," he insists, "and you let it blow a little smoke up your ego."

I want to wipe that smug grin from his mouth. "Is that what you think? That my behavior is typical? That I am, as you so quaintly put it, just a regular guy?"

His smile tightens a notch. "That's what you are. Well, as much of a regular guy as a Mountie-type Canadian can be."

I am quite sure Dief would empathize with my desire to fling my head back and howl at the sky in frustration at this juncture. I am finally ready to let Ray know how very fortunate he is that I have decide not to engage in some deeper relationship with him and he wants to dismiss my true nature out of hand.

He presses his leg more firmly against mine. The contact is oddly comforting.

"Tell me, Fraser," he says softly.

"Tell you?"

Denying him has never been easy for me. With the heat of his body seeping through his jeans and mine to warm me, resisting is impossible. So, I begin, honestly, truthfully, sparing myself not at all. When I finish telling him about June, he gently pats my left knee.

"You were a fifteen-year-old kid, Fraser. Sure you were thinking with your dick. At that age, all boys are thinking with their dicks. Hell, boys that age are dicks."

"Still," I say.

"Look, did June end up being some Eskimo nun? Is she a man-hating, ball-stomping biker chick or something?"

"Well, no, actually. She's an elementary school teacher back in our village. I doubt she's a man-hater as she's married and the mother of three sons."

"So, she got over it."

"I...yes, well, I suppose she did."

"Time for you to get over it, too."

I notice his left hand remains on my left knee, his forefinger and thumb stroking slowly back and forth. It should make me feel awkward, but I find it calming.

"What happened next?" he says.

"I'm afraid I don't have teenage stupidity as an excuse for my treatment of Mark Smithbauer." I immediately regret the indiscretion of using Mark's full name when Ray lets out a snort of laughter.

"Wait a second. Mark Smithbauer? The Mark Smithbauer, hockey player?"

"Yes."

"Fucking A, Fraser. When you fuck around, you don't fuck around."

His teasing smile eases a tight cord around my heart and I speak without hesitation of my history, both recent and ancient, with Mark.

"What a horse's ass," Ray says.

"I suppose I was."

"Not you, Fraser," he says vehemently. "Smithbauer. There's nothing wrong with being a sports star. Most of my life I would have given my left nut to be a celebrity athlete, but you're a cop. A fucking amazing cop. He shouldn't have expected you to give that up to be some Canuck boy-toy. What a moron."

I catch my bottom lip with my top teeth to prevent a smile. Ray is so fierce at times. It warms me, further cracking the hard packed snow within me. And I start to believe, as Ray apparently does, that perhaps Mark was as self-centered, as single-minded, as very young, as I had been two decades previously.

"What else?" he asks gently. "What other terrible, human things have you done?"

He uses the fingers of his right hand to traces circular patterns on the side of my neck. I tell him about Jamie.

"How were her grades?" he asks when I finish.

"Her grades?"

"Her marks, her test scores. Whatever you call them in Mountie School."

I vaguely recall overhearing some talk amongst classmates about Jamie's classroom performance, but I can't remember exactly what they'd been saying. "I'm not sure. She may have been having some difficulties with the curriculum."

"That all boils down to trouble with school?"

"Perhaps so, yes."

"You ever think maybe old Jamie was using a fucked-up relationship as an excuse to bail out before she could fail out?"

"I, well, no. I hadn't." It could be a valid point. Her upset that fall morning certainly was disproportionate to the demise of a casual, youthful relationship.

I become aware that I am nearly encircled by Ray. His left hand on my left leg, his right hand cupped around my neck drawing smooth lines, his face close enough to my cheek that I can feel the moist exhalation of his breath. There is something familiar about his actions and the tone of his voice that has nothing whatsoever to do with Ray and everything to do with, well, with something I can't quite put my finger on. I have no opportunity to further search my memory for clues about the situation because he says to me, "What happened next?"

I tell him about Eric, being careful to omit Eric's name in the retelling. His is, after all, a man in possession of stolen goods. Even if everyone involved is somewhat aware of Eric's criminal activity and has chosen to ignore it.

"He tried to manipulate you. Tried to trade in on your childhood, Fraser."

"How did you deduced that, Ray?"

"Easy. He knows that you respect that whole Canadian-Indian heritage thing." He shakes his head when I would interrupt to correct his terminology. "Whatever you call it. What I'm saying is, he knows you think the masks belong to the Indians. He knows you. Taunting you with that duty stuff later, that was pure genius."

Before I can give voice to an angry retort, Ray continues. "Fraser, you and this guy, you been friends since you were kids. Despite everything, all the shit you both did or didn't do, you're still friends, right?" I nod. "Okay, you guys are even then. That how friendship works. You do some shit, he does some shit and if you're still friends, then it's okay. You're even."

Maybe Eric and I are at that.

Ray turns slightly so that he and I are pressed together shoulder to knee, his right side to my left. It feels good. Too good. Even so, I can't help risking this wonderful proximity by telling him about Ray Vecchio when he asks me, "What happened next?"

"I contemplated seducing my best friend and work partner. He is a heterosexual."

"You think you could have?"

I merely cock my eyebrow and give a slight curve of my lips.

He laughs hard. "Fuck yeah, you could have. I guess you could pretty much get into whoever's pants you wanted to." He settles down. "You know, I've had a few thoughts about that myself. Seducing my partner, I mean."

"I didn't want to seduce him because I desired him." Ray has to see the truth about me before I forget why it's important for him to stay away from me. "I wanted to settle the score, so to speak. To show him, in all my vanity, that I am a force to be reckoned with."

He looks at me with admiration. "You sure as hell are."

I refuse to allow him to let me off the hook so easily. "I was prepared to use sex as a hurtful weapon."

"You and most of the married couples in America. Look, Fraser, you thought about doing it, but you didn't, right?"

"Yes. I mean, no. I didn't."

"See? Just like every other human on the planet, you thought about doing some shitty, cruel stuff. Unlike ninety percent of them, you didn't."

A heavy frozen weight in the pit of my stomach beings to dissolve like frost in the morning sun.

He grips the back of my neck firmly. "You got to cut yourself a little slack, Fraser. I swear, sometimes you make me crazy."

"Does insanity run in your family, also, Ray?"

"Also?"

"Suffice to say, 'You're just like your mother,' was not meant as a compliment in my grandparents' home."

I am glad he and I are afforded some degree of privacy provided by the semi-darkness and the trees, for Ray leans forward, closing the few inches that separate our faces and briefly, tenderly touches his beautiful mouth to mine.

"You're not crazy, Fraser. At least, you're not any more crazy than everybody else."

With the achingly sweet residue of his kiss still on my lips, I begin to think.

I think of my mother's depression, my grandmother's repression, my father's desertion and subsequent, non-corporeal reappearance. I think of cabbage-covered uncles and the injustice of punishing the righteous for exposing the wicked. I think of my faithful friend Diefenbaker, who speaks to me clearly and often and I think of my faithful friend Ray Vecchio who spoke to me last in code and then not at all. I think of closets filled with cabins and Italians who are Polish.

And I think that perhaps Ray's instinct is correct. Perhaps I am no more insane, no more hideous nor hurtful than the other humans who inhabit planet Earth.

Ray tugs me close and I swallow the salty sting of tears that scorch the back of my throat. Dry-eyed, I turn into his shoulder. He pats my back and murmurs nonsensical phrases into my ear.

"S'okay. S'okay."

Our positions, his actions and words strike a memory chord within me, but before I can figure out why, he says, "Tell me the rest, Fraser."

Like a fairytale that begins once upon a time, I recite my story of Victoria to him. I recite it as I'd once attempted to recite it to Ray Vecchio, as I once recited it to a priest, as I'd recited it to myself a hundred-thousand times over the ten years Victoria had wasted in prison.

When I come to the part in my own Greek tragedy where she and I are reunited in Chicago, I find I can go no further.

He whispers, "Let it go, Fraser. Tell me what happened next so we can let it go."

In a pathetic series of starts and stops, I tell him. I tell him how she was everything I'd ever believed I wanted and needed. I tell him she was so beautiful on the outside and so evil on the inside, that I would have traded anything to be with her--my soul, Dief's life, Ray Vecchio's career. I tell him the only reason I am here on this bench with him is that Ray prevented my flight with her by putting a bullet in my back.

For a long time the only sound I can hear is his precious heartbeat and the sharp whistle of air being pulled into my lungs.

"Wow," he says.

I attempt to pull back so that I can look into his face and see the revulsion I know will be there.

He presses my head more firmly to his shoulder. "Listen to me, Fraser. You and her, you two were one seriously fucked-up pair. I get that. It was a mightily screwed relationship. Everybody has them. Love leads you to do some bad ass shit. I get that, too. Makes you forget you had any sense or pride and you end up pulling stunts you never dreamed you would."

His voice breaks, he clears his throat and I wonder if he is recalling his own mightily screwed relationship with Stella.

"Yeah," he says, "love can really run your head through the rinse cycle. I totally get that, but I'm not your priest. I can't give you allocution."

I'm almost certain he means absolution, but I keep my council.

"I cannot do that, Fraser, because you didn't commit any sins against me. You didn't hurt me. You did hurt Vecchio, but the way I see it, he's already forgiven you. If he hadn't, we wouldn't be here, we wouldn't be in this duet right now, right?"

I nodded as much as I can with his hand holding my head in place.

"And Dief, you hurt him pretty bad, but he must have forgiven you, too, because I see he's still hanging around. You don't have a cage or a leash and he follows you like you got lasagna in your pocket, so I'm figuring he's forgiven you for fucking up."

Again, I attempt to nod. Ray is right. Ray Vecchio remained by my side until duty called him away. Dief could have deserted me any time. Both are free, intelligent, independent and capable creatures and they'd both chosen to stay.

I'd committed grievous acts against them and without so much as my uttered mea culpa, they'd both given me their own brand of absolution.

There was more, of course, and Ray, a man who understands himself more thoroughly than I shall ever understand myself, is aware of that.

"She forgave you, too, Fraser."

Furious, I pull away from him. "You're wrong, Ray. I took her youth from her. I destroyed her life and allowed her to languish in prison. I betrayed her."

"You didn't," he says, quietly.

Anger fills me, roaring in my ears. I jump up and hurry deeper into the half-lit park, stopping only when Ray grabs my arm and spins me to face him.

"You did not take anything from her. You did not destroy her life."

I could easily yank away from his grasp, but I don't. "How dare you presume to know anything? Are you suddenly an expert on the human condition?"

"No," he answers, the hand that holds my arm now caressing.

It would be far too easy to let this moment pass, to step forward and let his arms go around me, his mouth to silence the ugliness that is about to spew from mine, but I can't let that happen. This is my last chance to make him see how important it is for us not to cross the line from partners to lovers.

"No," I agree with him, "you're not an expert are you, Ray? If you were, you'd be at home with your wife and children rather than chasing me."

I score a direct hit for he stumbles back a few feet to lean against a tree. I hear him draw in a quick breath and watch as he rubs his hand over his heart. "Ouch, Fraser," he says. "You fight dirty."

"I'm sorry," I reply automatically.

"You're not," he says, "but that's okay because I fight dirty, too." He shoves his hands into his jacket pockets.

"Is this a fight, Ray?"

"Everything in life is a fight, Frase. You know that."

I incline my head in agreement. If I've learned nothing else in these thirty-odd years, it is that life is a struggle, a fight if you will, to survive.

"You didn't destroy her life," he says again.

"No?"

"No, she destroyed her own life. She robbed a bank, she murdered a man, she did God-knows-what else. She lied and cheated and did everything she knew how to do to get what she wanted. And she tried to take you down with her."

"I loved her and I turned her in. I loved her and I should have protected her."

"Could-a, would-a, should-a, Fraser. The important thing is, she forgave you."

The anger that had faded when I struck out at him, is stoked again. "And how do you know anything about her and her forgiveness? She was, after all, a thief and a liar and a murderess. What makes you think you understand her? How do you know her inner most thought and feelings?"

"I don't need to." He taps his index finger to his temple. "I just got to look at the evidence. She wanted you to come with her. Despite all the fucked up shit that went down, she asked you to go with her."

Stunned, I stand looking at him. Then he opens his arms to me and I finally, finally fall into them.

"Nothing is perfect, Fraser," he says as he enfolds me in his arms. "Not you, not me, not life, not the fucked-up situations we keeping finding ourselves in." He places a few soft, dry kisses along the side of my neck and I burrow in closer to him.

"And, see," he continues, "that's pretty much okay. That's pretty much good because perfect is dull. Perfect is, uh, stagnate. Perfect is like a rock, it's always the same. Perfect can't change; it can't grow."

Using the fingers of his left hand, he rubs deep circles in my hair, massaging the scalp beneath. I can't help the small moan of pleasure that escapes me. I feel his smile against my skin.

"You don't have to be perfect for me, Fraser. Still, the striving for perfection thing is in your nature and you're always going to go for it. I understand that. What I need you to understand is that I know you're going to fail sometimes. I know you're going to fuck up sometimes. I know we're going to fight and scream and hurt each other sometimes. I know that."

Before I can give voice to my fears, Ray kisses my mouth hard and hot.

"The important thing for you to get is that I know all this and I don't care. You're worth it. We're worth it. I believe that with all my heart." He uses his hand in my hair to tilt my face up until I am looking through the shadows into his eyes. "I need to know that you believe it, too."

It's then I recognize what Ray has done, what Ray is. The careful consideration and plans, the slow encirclement of his body about mine, the gentle, nearly hypnotic tone of both his voice and touch--he has trapped me.

I might have been a mere stalker, but Ray, my full of wonder and bravado Ray, is a hunter. A successful one at that.

I take in his stance and I wonder if Quinn saw something similar in mine when, at twelve, I had that first caribou within my gun site. If he sensed the heady concoction of excitement and fear that had pulsed in me; the want to pull a trigger combined with the ignorance of consequence; the exotic flavor of bloodlust minus the aftertaste of regret.

It is the epitome of foolishness to view Ray in the light that Quinn must have viewed me. I was a green boy, Ray is a man grown. Still, what defense do any of us have against the unknown?

"Fraser?" His voice is suddenly not as confident as it had been a moment previously and I realize that I have not as yet answered him.

I hesitate.

To lie to him, to give the answer we both wish were true rather than the truth is, at this juncture, unconscionable. Therefore, I must consider--is this worth it? Are we worth the risk? Can I believe in us?

Believing in Ray Kowalski is child's play. From the beginning of our association he has shown himself to be, beneath his brusque exterior, a kindhearted, sensitive man. He has proven himself to be reliable and dependable in the midst of adversity.

Ray has been hurt and abandoned by those he should have been able to trust implicitly--his father and Stella included.

Yet, through each disappointment, he has remained steadfast for others and faithful to himself. No, believing in Ray is no hardship.

"Fraser? Give yourself a break." His voice falters. "Give us a chance."

His self-assurance is waning before my eyes. The cocky, almost swaggering predator who'd neatly cornered me only seconds before, is rapidly giving way to the wounded poet.

Still, I can't answer him. It's me I'm not sure I can believe in. What if he's completely wrong? What if my past actions and the consequences of those actions are precisely as I had previously perceived them?

What if I am stagnate not in perfection, but in imperfection, selfishness and cruelty? What if Ray has been blinded by my beautiful wrapping as other have been?

Can someone really change? Can I believe that?

Ray Vecchio had. I had watched him mature from a sloppy and walking-the-line cop to a methodical and walking-the-straight-and-narrow officer of the law. I'd witnessed Eric's transformation from a wild boy to a hero for his people.

Even my father express remorse and a too late desire to change after discovering he'd sired Maggie MacKenzie. My father had lamented he'd been a terrible father not once, but twice.

I'd been quick to assure him that he'd done what he could. Had he? Would I?

Perhaps those who do not change, the Frank Zuckos and Victoria Metcalfs of the world, don't change only because they don't chose to. Perhaps they have the power, but lack the desire to do so. Perhaps, when they review their past wrongdoings, they accept no responsibility.

And perhaps, as Ray ascertains, some of us accept the responsibility for too much.

"Fraser?"

I can see he is shutting down, pulling in emotionally as he prepares to accept my impending desertion.

Life is always a fight.

Perhaps it is time to allow myself to fight for something other than ideology.

Looking at him, I realize that I can do this. As the warmth of his breath saying my name melts and cracks the last of the ice in my veins, I realize that I will do this.

I swear it. I vow it. I mean it.

I fit my mouth over his, probing it's wet sweetness with my tongue, swallowing up his sigh of relief.

"This won't be easy," I warn.

"No," he agrees. "I know that."

"You're mostly right, I understand that, but you may have to remind me on occasion."

"I know. I will." He moves his hands to my shoulders and pushes a bit, placing a half-step between our bodies. "I'll remind you every day for forever, if that's what it takes. I'll do whatever I have to, but first you've got to say it, Fraser. Even if it's just once, I need you to say it. I need to hear it."

I am touched beyond measure by this simple request. A few words are all that is necessary to bind me to this modern warrior, this brave hunter, this man who possesses the stalwart and courage to grab what I only had the strength to observe, this man who...

"Before I die of waiting," he demands.

I close the tiny distance between us to present him with the love and devotion he has hunted for so long. I kiss him, then whisper across his lips the words that will forever ensnare me.

"Ray, I believe."