untune the sky

Author's Notes: Many grateful thanks to my betae (two of the three were unofficial, conscripted betae): Luzula, Lucifuge_5 and Podfic_lover. These three kept me on the straight and narrow by keeping an eye on my grammar, my punctuation, my structure, and my plot. They made sure it all made sense and that I spelled everything correctly. Any remaining mistakes are mine. All three of them were the source of emails, IMs and virtual gifts, cheering me on relentlessly. Additionally, they kept me from throwing in the towel with constant reassurance that no, I didn't suck, and yes, it was a good story, one worth reading. I couldn't have made it without these wonderful people. There were also a huge number of people who encouraged me by wearing short little skirts, shaking pom-poms and doing cartwheels at one time or another over the last nine months. I was going to make a list, but really, it's most of my flist. *twirls entire flist* Some especially loud cheers came from Dugrival, Et_tu_lj, Godess_jessie, J_s_cavalcante, Keerawa, Kimboosan, Leafy22, Love_jackianto, Mizface, Nos4a2no9, Prudence_dearly, Neu111, Miss_zedem, and Sisterofdream. *hugs all of you* I'm probably forgetting somebody; please remind me if I am. In addition, Prudence_dearly introduced me to the William Morris poem at the end of the story which fits so well. And lastly, I would like to thank Monroe_nell for wanting a Big Bang for the due South/Canadian Six Degrees fandoms and Sansets for taking on co-modding duties.

Story Notes: Warning: this is post-apocalyptic with all the death and destruction that implies. Most of it has happened in the past, though.

So when the last and dreadful hour

     This crumbling pageant shall devour,

The trumpet shall be heard on high,

     The dead shall live, the living die,

     And music shall untune the sky.

From A Song For St. Cecilia's Day, 1687 by John Dryden, 1687

Before the Smash, if you'd asked him where he was going to be in ten years, he certainly wouldn't have said here. Burnt-out city, broken land, dying world. The stink of soot and the bitter taste of ashes.

They called this guy the Mountie; I guess he used to be one, Before. Canadians weren't so uncommon in Chicago back then, it being a multicultural city and all, but now the border was locked down tight and we didn't see so many of our friends from north.

He agreed to meet me down by the Lake Market at noon, at Buckingham Fountain.

Frannie was the one who vouched for this guy, said he was good people and that I should help him if I could. She told me that the Mountie would lend a hand at her school, sometimes. He was gentle with the older kids, she said, made a connection with them and didn't talk down to them.

And he brought books for them, which was icing on the cake as far as Frannie was concerned.

The first meet, Ray liked to do in public. Not just in public. In public. At a crowded diner, at a busy train station, in the middle of the ration lines down by the hospitals. Public.

It made him feel safer. It was easier to drop back, blend in with the crowd, disappear, fade away. That didn't stop him from looking over his shoulder, though. There was no one watching his back, hadn't been anyone doing that for years, and it made him skittish.

I found a dinky food stall on the outskirts of the Market - nothing more than a solar-powered food cart and some beat-up tables with rickety chairs. I spent a few moments haggling in my broken street Greek with the guy before getting a cup of strong tea. Like I always did, I pulled out the picture of Stella and asked the guy if he'd ever seen her. He studied her picture for a moment before shaking his head. "Ohi, ohi."

It had been worth a shot. "Efkharisto," I said, tipping my cup in thanks.

Sitting down at a table, I reviewed everything I'd heard about this Mountie - Fraser, Fraser, something Fraser. Benjamin? That felt close. No, no, it was Benton. Benton Fraser. Kind of an old-fashioned name.

I liked to have a feel for the people I dealt with. Easier to see a deal turning sideways when you had an idea of what to expect. It had saved my ass more than once.

Before the Smash, Maria Lagrangia had been a professor of cosmology at the University of Arizona. She'd come from a family of scientists, and when she was little, she'd wanted to study the stars. In college, she found that she wanted to do more than just study the stars, she wanted to know how they formed.

Eventually she had found herself working in the field of physical cosmology, which concerned itself with observing the university in its totality, how it began, the state it currently exists in, and how it was going to end.

Maria had been lucky—she'd taken a vacation to her family's ancestral home in northern Italy, and that's where she'd been when the Smash had happened. If she'd still been in Arizona, she would surely have died in the aftermath.

She found herself in the smallish city of Como, and after things had settled down, she took up teaching.

She taught the children of Como reading and writing, and of course, math and science. And in the course of her teachings, she would help the children conduct basic science experiments so they could understand certain fundamental concepts. They repeated Galileo's Leaning Tower of Pisa experiment, they built a volcano, and attempted to ascertain the circumference of the earth with children in other cities.

And that's when she noticed the problem.

The numbers were off, so far off that it didn't really make any sense. Even given that children were making the measurements, she expected a certain degree of accuracy. She had the children try again, and again, and each time the calculated circumference was the same value, the same wrong value.

The simplest answer was that they were doing the experiment incorrectly.

It wasn't until years later, when she'd had a chance to consult with fellow scientists, that she discovered that it wasn't an isolated incident.

The Mountie was kind of famous in Chicago. I'd heard about him and his pet dog, the one that followed him around almost everywhere. Even now, after the Smash, word still got around. And like Before, you had to take everything you heard on the street with a grain of salt.

Frannie said he was nice, smart and trustworthy. Jack Huey said he was fair and always willing to help. Dewey said he was bug-fuck crazy, but harmless. Which was funny, coming from Dewey. 'Cause Dewey and sanity did not have a good long-term relationship.

No one had anything bad to say about him. He was an all-around nice guy.

Didn't see too many of those anymore. These days, with the world so fucked up, it was everyone for themselves. Nice mostly just gets you killed.

"Mr. Kowalski?"

Ray had arranged to meet the Mountie at the north-east point of the fountain. It was a nasty day, overcast and chill, with the smell of something chemical heavy in the air. The Market was remarkably busy in spite of it.

The Mountie was broad but underweight, about Ray's height, with neatly combed brown hair and sharp blue eyes. Ray suspected that like many people, Fraser didn't get enough calories on a regular basis to sustain his normal weight. He could have easily passed for early thirty-ish, except for the crows-feet radiating from the corner of his eyes and the white streak of hair that ran from his left temple to his ear. He was polite and earnest. He was dressed in a worn flannel shirt and faded blue jeans.

Frannie had told Ray that Fraser was a good man, one of the best she'd ever met. Honorable, trustworthy. He'd been a friend of her brother's and she'd known him for a long time. Even Ma Vecchio had loved him like a son and he'd spent most holidays Before the Smash at the Vecchio family home, a beloved and well-fed adopted son.

Ray had never asked Frannie what happened to her brother. With the tremendous number of people killed by the Smash, and its aftermath, it was safer not to.

When they met, Ray got a weird vibe from Fraser, a sense of distance, like he was just here to observe but not participate in the world around him. There was a story there, definitely something broken inside of Benton Fraser, but Ray wasn't about to ask.

After the Smash, everyone had a story. Most of those stories ended badly, in starvation, in disease, and death. Those that survived had scars to show for it.

"Nah. Mr. Kowalski was my dad. I go by Ray," I said, shaking his hand.

"Ray, then." He looked me over, sizing me up. He had the cop-stare down pat. No surprise. Mountie meant Royal Canadian Mounted Police and once you tore away the mythology of the red uniforms and the Dudley-Do-Rights, you were left with cops. "You may call me Fraser."

I gave him a once-over in return. It's been a long time since I was a cop but I hadn't gotten out of the habit. Chicago had been a dangerous city Before and the Smash had just made it worse. The breakdown of society had a tendency to do that.

"Let's take a walk and you can tell me what I can do for you," I said, flexing my bad leg. Sometimes, like today, the knee ached something fierce. Years ago, the doctor had told me after he'd fixed it up that this was as good as it was going to get. That I couldn't expect too many more miracles—I'd already gotten more than my share and I should just count my blessings.

That was Before, of course. Before the Smash, before the divorce, before medical disability. So many befores and not enough afters.

We walked around Buckingham Fountain, the green smell of algae strong in my nose. They called it Buckingham Pond these days; no one had bothered to fix the fountain pump and so it just grew pond scum and stank. Some geeks harvested the algae and managed to convert it into a rough bio-fuel—it would run your engine but it sure wasn't pretty.

"Mr. Kowalski—Ray, Francesca has told me that you 'procure' goods and supplies and trade them at the Market."

Swear to God, he actually did the prissy-finger-quote-thing around the word procure. Like I was some kind of fancy-smancy uptown fence. "Scavenge."

"Obtain."

"Cannibalize."

"Secure."

I smiled, enjoying the back-and-forth. "Scrounge."

He sighed, agreeing, "Scrounge."

After the Smash, the world had become a much emptier place. Without the populations to sustain it, the social order broke down and collapsed, taking much of the infrastructure with it. Without that complex framework, the flow of goods and services stumbled to a halt.

An urban legend once claimed that since a majority of the food in the United States was transported and distributed by truck, once the system was disrupted, people would be starving in less than a week. There was some truth to that.

The first year after the Smash, an uncountable number of people around the world died due to a lack of edible food, clean water, and basic sanitation. Many of them, weakened by starvation, froze to death the first winter, when the ash was still thick in the air and blotted out the sun for days at a time.

Afterwards, most people abandoned the suburbs for the urban centers. It hadn't been a mass exodus, just a steady trickle over the years. Life was easier in the cities. You could get food and medicine, you could barter for things you needed. If you had any practical skills, you could put them to good use. You could survive, with the help of family, friends and neighbors.

The suburbs were different from the heart of the cities; the falling population turned them into the modern equivalent of ghost towns. The suburbs attracted the wandering, the broken, the mad, the feral. The quiet emptiness opened its arms, embraced those lost souls, and hid them away in the abandoned houses and buildings.

Chicago had been a sprawling city which could be mapped out into ringed regions. The downtown area which was surrounded by the semi-urban neighborhoods like Lincoln Park and Pilsen, which in turn were enclosed by the border communities, both inside and outside of the city limits, like Edison Park, Norridge and Evanston. Beyond that were the true suburbs like Deerfield and Palatine, and the far suburbs, the gateway cities and finally the far cities.

Before the Smash, the greater Chicago metropolitan area boasted almost ten million people. Now the population was less than a sixth of what it had been.

The suburbs were treacherous. It wasn't monsters and mutants that would get you, it was the people.

The people that formed thrill-gangs and went around looting and killing just for the fun of it.

Others, who were survivalists at heart, had hunkered down and taken shelter in the suburbs, armed to the teeth and ready to defend themselves. Shooting first and asking questions later. Plus all the people we used to consider criminals, back where there was a justice system and laws. Murderers and rapists, the dregs of society, savage and dangerous and free.

That was what made the suburbs so fucking dangerous.

Ray had heard stories about the far suburbs for years. Most times, they sounded like ghost stories and urban legends. Cannibals, mutants, monsters. A friend-of-a-friend of Frannie's saw a Bigfoot-like monster in the woods near Gary. Cults of horribly mutated humans who took the Smash to be a sign from God were said to be living in Joliet. There were rumors of a twisted freak who kidnapped women and took them to Waukegan as sex-slaves. Zombie-like people were wandering the streets in Eglin, unresponsive, their minds broken by the Smash, leaving nothing behind but a slowly starving shell.

Ray believed little of what he heard about the out-lying suburbs. But he did listen, and file the information away. Because after the Smash, the impossible wasn't so impossible anymore.

"Yeah, that's what I do. I go out to the outer suburbs, sometimes, and find stuff that people here in the city need, or want, or will barter for." I shrugged. It was a living. "Sometime I go into the empty parts of the city. It depends on what I'm looking for and how lucky I feel."

"Ah," Fraser said.

"Ah," I echoed, annoyed. "What does that mean?"

Fraser glanced at me, sideways. Not a sly look, but a shy one. "What do you look for, when you're out scrounging for things?"

I put my hands into the pockets of my jeans and shrugged again. "Whatever I think might be useful." We drifted close as we walked and our shoulders bumped. "Sorry. Um, electronics, working is good, non-working is fine. Preserved food, bottled water, medicines, fuel, batteries, weapons and ammunition, tools." I thought about it for a moment. "Warm clothing, shoes. Stuff that's small and light."

"Books?" There was something in Fraser's voice, something wistful and sad.

"Sometimes. Not often. If I see a book that looks useful, I'll pick it up, but that's about the extent of it. There isn't a big demand for poetry and literature. And eventually, people will start using books for fuel—"

"No!" Fraser looked absolutely horrified. "No, that can't—"

I stepped away from him, a little weirded out by his intensity. We were just talking about books. "Easy, there, buddy."

Fraser reached out and grabbed my shoulder, his touch sending a weird frisson of heat though my body. I shivered and he stepped back, looking a bit lost. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean—" He wiped his hands on his jeans and looked at me, wide-eyed. He'd felt it, too.

"S'okay." I waved it off, hoping he would follow my example and let it go. For once, my luck held. He opened his mouth to say something, thought better of it and closed it, sighing.

"I have a proposition for you, Ray, if you're willing to listen."

In 1850 Léon Foucault, measured the speed of light to be 298,000 kilometers per second. He used a clever set-up which included two mirrors, one stationary and one rotating, a focused light beam and a tuning fork. He had been off by 0.6%, which was an astonishing accomplishment in 1850.

In 1926, using a slightly different set-up with more accurate instruments, Albert Michaelson measured the speed of light to be 299,796 kilometers per second. His figure was off by only 0.001%

In 2000, a group of students at the University of Pune in western India attempted to replicate the experiment using Foucault's methods. Under the direction of Dr. Jawaharlal Bhoraskar, the students carefully timed how long the light took to reflect back. They determined the differences in angle of the rotating mirror. They measured the distance of the change of the light's path. They repeated the experiment a few times, to get a larger sampling of data. Carefully, they calculated and double checked their numbers and presented their findings to Dr. Bhoraskar.

Dr. Bhoraskar was extremely unhappy with the results—the students had somehow managed to calculate the speed of light at almost fifteen percent faster than it should be.

The students tried again, using Michaelson's set-up this time. And they got the exact same incorrect value for the speed of light as before. Dr. Bhoraskar was at a loss. The speed of light was a constant; it wasn't supposed to change.

But according to their data, the speed of light had increased since the Smash.

Sex was different after the Smash. I didn't mean the actual sex part, but the rituals that used to lead up to getting laid. Things that had once been important simply weren't anymore. It used to be that you'd have to impress a girl (or guy) with how much you made at your upwardly mobile job, how well you dressed, how often you bought gifts and flowers and took them out to dinner.

The Smash had swept that all away and reduced everything to the simplest, oldest question in history: what can you do for me?

Men and women prostituted themselves, not for money or power, but for safety and shelter. Which, when I thought about it, wasn't such a new thing.

Not long after the Smash, I'd met a woman named Luanne Russell. She'd been a beautiful woman, smart and fascinating and sweet. Under normal circumstances, she could have been someone I might have been involved with, someone I might have married and had a future with.

She had been looking for security, looking for someone to protect her in the terrifying new world. It hadn't worked out for us, because while she'd been looking for someone to take care of her, I'd been looking for a partner.

I was afraid I would never find someone to fit the bill.

Anyone with a government-issued identification card and some amount of patience could wait in the dole lines for food. Some days it was a packet of coarse brown Pseudograin—just add water and heat for a bowl of insta-gruel. Locally known as Mush, Glop, or Slop, it wasn't particularly tasty, but had enough nutrients and calories to keep people alive. Some enterprising souls added hard-to-find spices or flavorings in an attempt to improve the taste. That usually didn't go so well.

On other days, the government handed out packets of Green, which was mainly compressed and processed algae that was specifically tailored as a food source. Neither palatable nor filling, the fishy aftertaste made it extremely unpopular and most people would do almost anything to avoid eating it.

It was not surprising that gardening became a popular hobby.

Fraser was trying to start a community garden in an abandoned lot near the Canadian Consulate, where he lived. The people in his neighborhood would benefit from the addition of more vegetable and fruits into their meager government-dole diets.

There were things that he needed for the project, things that Ray could get. Some of those things were: plastic sheeting, PVC piping, any kind of plastic bottle, but two liter soda bottles were especially prized, seeds, egg cartons, newspapers, any wood lumber or scraps, window and glass sheets. Dryer lint, socks, chicken wire, pallets, earthworms, tires and any sort of plastic bin. Garden tools. Barbed wire.

He made a three page list, neatly printed in blue ink and sorted according to need and necessity. Diefenbaker had laughed at him for that.

We stopped walking so I could read his list.

"We thought about putting the things most likely to be easy to obtain first, but realized that what I thought should be simple to find might not actually be...simple."

"Huh." I skimmed over the list, noting that most of the stuff was actually not going to be that hard to find. And what I couldn't find, I knew who I could trade or haggle for it. But I still had one important question—

"So, Fraser, how are you going to pay for all of this?" I indicated the list in my hand. "We're looking at a significant investment of time and energy here."

He looked down at his booted feet for a moment before looking at me with a cross between a deer-in-the-headlights look and sad-puppy-dog-eyes. "This is a project that would benefit the entire neighborhood, Ray. People would—"

"No."

"—have a chance to grow their own food, be more self-sufficient rather than—"

"Nyet." He wasn't even listening to me.

"—depending on the government handouts. You would gain the respect and gratitude of the whole neighborhood."

"Nie." He continued to look at me, pleading silently with those bright blue eyes. I tried to ignore how pathetic he looked, how earnest and boyish he seemed, even with that white streak in his dark hair. "Nein."

"Ray, please—"

"Oh, fuck it! Fine, fine, I'll do it! Just stop with the pitiful, I-just-kicked-your-dog-look, please!"

Frannie had taken Fraser and Dief aside and told them how to handle Ray Kowalski. She explained that Ray was like an old junkyard cat, full of angry hissing and spitting and scratching, but he was actually soft and fluffy on the inside like a little baby chick. A little bit of pressure in the right direction and Ray would crack like an egg.

Fraser ended up spending the morning practicing looking pathetic and sad, using the cracked mirror in the bathroom to try to judge if it was working or not, and generally ignoring Dief's snarky comments. By the time he'd left for his meeting with Ray, asking Dief to stay behind, he was sure he had the "Bambi-eyes" down pat. He was right.

"Thank you, Ray. Your help will be tremendously appreciated by those who will benefit from this community—"

"Enough." I held up a hand to stop the flow of thanks. "Deeply grateful yadda-yadda, don't know how to thank you yadda-yadda. Yeah, let's skip all that, okay?" I skimmed the list again. "When did you need this stuff?" I looked at him and watched, stunned, as he slowly smiled.

Don't get me wrong. Fraser was a handsome man. After the divorce from Stella, I could stop pretending not to notice things like that. But this smile transformed his face, stripped away unhappiness and weariness and left behind the beauty.

I could see his mouth moving, hear words, but couldn't understand a damn thing. I shook my head, hard. Get a grip on yourself, Kowalski. No need to moon over the man like a fucking idiot.

I took this bus, I drove this car, I got on this train, I walked down this street, I turned this corner, I opened this door, and I stepped into a bank.

Ray met Stella when he was thirteen years old. For him, it was love at first sight. He loved her through high school, through college, through her years at law school, through his own tenure at the police academy, through getting shot while stopping a jewelery heist and being put on medical disability. Through thick and thin, through richer and poorer, it was always Stella-and-Ray, until one day it wasn't.

It was hard, and it hurt a lot, but he let her go. It wasn't that she didn't love him anymore; she did. But she wanted something different and he couldn't walk down that path with her. So he let her go.

They were separated for two years before the divorce and in those two years Ray learned a lot about what he liked, and didn't like. His life was different without Stella in it, without her being the focus of everything. It was a surprise to discover that maybe he wasn't as straight as he'd once thought he was.

It freaked him out a little, but Stella helped him through it, still his best friend, still the one who knew him best. She helped him see that this didn't change anything, who he was attracted to didn't define him, didn't make him anyone other than Ray.

In the months before the Smash, they'd lost touch. Stella had gotten a promotion and Ray had suspected that she'd been seeing someone. He'd been too afraid to ask.

"...is better, of course, but truly, whenever you can manage to procure the items is fine."

"Yeah, okay, then." I stuffed the list into my pocket and turned away, heading deeper into the crowded Market. "I'll be in touch," I yelled over my shoulder. I didn't look back.

The United States government hadn't handled the aftermath of the Smash very well. There had been too many critical losses of key people and the government had floundered for a while before collapsing under the weight of its own bureaucracy.

It had been disheartening, to watch and wait for the government to right itself and start rebuilding, only to realize there was nothing left to rebuild, and no one strong enough to do it.

Eventually, a loose coalition of grass-roots organizations had banded together to form a 'government.' They were primarily concerned about two things: food and illness. Everything else was a secondary concern and they'd get to it, eventually.

It worked, sort of. It was better than nothing.

It wasn't until much later that I realized that I hadn't shown Fraser the picture of Stella, asking if he'd seen her since the Smash.

I had never forgotten before.

Sometimes, I wondered if I should just stop trying. I'd been showing that picture of Stella to everyone I'd ever met since the Smash and no one had ever said they'd seen her. Maybe I should just put the damn picture away and admit the truth to myself—she was dead, probably had been since the Smash.

Fuck.

I just couldn't bring myself to do it. Somewhere in my heart, I refused to believe it. Stella had been the best thing that had happened to me—how could she be gone?

Ray got the hard stuff out of the way first.

A lifelong resident of Chicago, Ray had an almost encyclopedic memory for parks, tourist attractions and museums in the Chicago area due to his mum and his ex-wife.

For some of the items he went to a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend down in Flossmoor. Before the Smash, the Iron Oak Learning Center was a place for education and recreation in a nature preserve setting. As a child, he'd gone to summer camps there.

Now, it was mostly deserted, just a few hard-core die-hards hanging on and helping those they could, while the wilderness slowly reclaimed the park. They set up parts of the park as garden lots, encouraging everyone to come and grow their own food.

Ray was been surprised how much food could be grown on a small four foot by four foot plot of land. And he hadn't been terribly surprised by the number of people willing to do so. Of course, anything was better than the Green that the government handed out.

It took a little bit of fast-talk, and a little bit of trading, but once Ray explained that it was for a community garden, the people at the Center were glad to help him as much as possible.

For plastics, I met up with my friend Sandor. He and his brother Joe had a plastic smelting business. They took all those plastic grocery bags that had been such an eyesore on the landscape, sort of melted them down in a big tank and poured the melted plastic into molds. The bags made a hard, durable plastic that worked well for certain things.

Joe was skilled at hand-tooling the hard plastic to create parts that were no longer being manufactured. I'd seen him make parts for washing machines, for sophisticated laboratory equipment, for manufacturing machinery, for medical equipment. He'd even made engine parts for the old METRA trains that still lumbered along their tracks like old, broken dinosaurs.

Sandor scoured the city for plastics and brought it all back to their warehouse. They'd sort it, using what they could, setting aside everything else for trade. It was fun to watch them work, to put lie to all the "plastic is evil" propaganda that I'd heard on the radio and TV Before the Smash.

Now we could only be glad that our society had thrown away so much in the way of useful things—it left a huge amount of raw material to be reused.

I left the brothers' warehouse with the promise of more plastic bottles, bins and bags than Fraser and his garden would know what to do with. I was also a little buzzed, having brought along a couple of six-packs of home-brew as a friendly offering to Joe and Sandor, who insisted that I drink my fair share.

So I did. We'd sat around the warehouse, bitching and moaning about power outages, the lack of professional sports teams and how hard it was to get laid after the end of the world. Some things never changed. Before the Smash, we would have been complaining about ComEd, how badly the Cubs sucked, and how hard it was to get laid.

I staggered home, stripped and fell into my cold, solitary bed.

At the University of Chicago's Department of Physics, there was an antique metal chamber, a little less than two feet in diameter. Inside were two charged metal plates and an atomizer that sprayed oil droplets into the chamber. An x-ray tube ionized the droplets and a viewing port was used to watch the droplets of oil as they rose and fell in response to the charged plates and the currents of gravity. The laboratory set up had been built in 1909 by Robert Millikan and Harvey Fletcher.

From this apparatus, were able to approximate the elementary electric charge on an electron. This was one of the first steps into the wider realm of subatomic physics and Robert Millikan won the 1923 Nobel Prize for his work.

Rose Lomantiz had been a promising young student, planning to go to Rice University in Houston to study nanomaterials. Rice was where Buckyballs had been invented, after all. Instead, the Smash trapped her in her small mid-Western university town where she conducted experiments of her own devising in the empty laboratories.

She'd found an oil-drop apparatus in the freshman physics lab and spent three years recording the velocity of the falling oil droplets. According to the manual for the apparatus, a careful student should get a result of ±3% of the actual value. Rose was an extremely careful student and got a value that was off by about 13%, consistently. The value of e was constant, but it was wrong and she didn't know why.

"Hey, RayK, Frannie's looking for you." Jackie laughed, shaking her head as she sorted through a plastic bin of metal parts. "I think you're in trouble now."

"Oh, yeah?" I dug through another container, looking for a smallish bracket. "She say what she wanted?" The compressor on my elderly fridge had blown during the last black out and I was trying to find parts to fix it. I didn't often have enough perishable food to really need a refrigerator, but sometimes it came in handy for storing other stuff. Medicines, batteries, that kind of thing.

I looked up at Jackie, surrounded by the clutter of her shop. Buckets and baskets and plastic containers crowded the shelves and the counter tops, overflowing with bits and pieces from a million different types of machines. Some electronic components, some mechanical parts. I had to turn sideways to get through some of the aisles that were jam-packed with even more junk.

Jackie had an extremely haphazard organization system. There were many containers filled with nothing but springs of all sorts and sizes; others containers might contain gears and cogs of a specific size. Some things were organized by type of item, others were grouped by what they did, or how they worked. Sometimes I suspected that this was an expression of Jackie's wickedly sly sense of humor.

Strung from the ceiling, hanging low on almost invisible wires were dozens of scale models, metal and plastic: airplanes, cars, spaceships, regular ships, and war machines. Some I recognized—the USS Arizona, a '66 Chevy Chevelle and a TIE-fighter—but I had no idea what the other models were. I had to duck a lot while I wandered around the shop.

Jackie laughed again. "Nope. Just said to go see her asap."

I sighed. I was still mad at Frannie for siccing Fraser on me. She knew I wouldn't be able to say 'no' and she sent him to me anyway. That particular adventure had cost me a bundle in terms of favors and trade. It would be a while before I recovered.

"Thanks, Jackie. Tell her I got the message."

"Maybe something like this?" She held up a metal t-shape that she'd found in a bin, almost what I needed, but not quite.

I shook my head. "An inch and a half longer, and a little wider. And it's gotta have a little bend in it, see?" I showed her the broken piece.

"Hmmm. Yeah, yeah." Jackie looked up and grinned. "So, when you going to let me take you home and show you the rest of my tattoos, Kowalski?"

I couldn't stop the answering grin on my face. Jackie was blonde, athletic and had some intriguing tattoos winding down her arms. I could only imagine what other tattoos she had, and where. "As soon as you get rid of your extremely jealous husband."

"Aw, Ray, you're no fun."

"Maybe not, but I'm still alive." I ran a hand through my hair, ruffling the spikes. Jackie's husband was one scary dude.

She sighed regretfully. "Okay. Let me get some scans of that part and I'll try to find you a replacement somewhere. Or get someone to machine you one."

"Thanks, Jackie."

She put the part on the glass platform of a 3D scanner that was hooked up to an ancient looking computer. Inside, it was a top-of-the-line machine, built from the newest generation of micro-micro optical components. On the outside, it was scuffed and looked older than dirt.

Jackie was fond of the irony. A few keystrokes and the scanner hummed happily to itself and in minutes the computer was displaying a schematic of the broken part.

"I'll see what I can do, Ray, and let you know."

One of the things that the Smash fostered was an uncontrollable wave of novel technology. People were endlessly inventive and new techs sprouted and flourished in the aftermath. Bio-fuels and fuel cells became extremely important as the supplies of petroleum became difficult to acquire. Engines became smaller and more powerful, and at the same time, more efficient. A booming business emerged to re-tool vehicles and machines to work with the alternatives.

Once a rudimentary power grid was re-established across the globe, computer technology leapfrogged ahead. Smaller and faster computers with more flexible programming became common and cheap. Before the Smash, technology has been edging toward quantum computers, which used quantum mechanical phenomena to perform operations on the data. After the Smash, though, the few prototypes had stopped working. Physicists had proposed that the Smash had changed something on a quantum level, but they had very little evidence to support with the theory.

Instead, computing technology when in a different direction, toward optical and chemical computers, using light and natural chemical reactions to drive the operations. It was a different way of computing and it was feasible in this new, broken world.

It was survival after the Smash, a twisted chimera, half technology and half old-school bubble-gum-and-duct-tape engineering. It wasn't perfect, it wasn't pretty, but it worked.

Frannie caught me at the Market.

"Ray, I've been looking for you all over town." Frannie put her hand on her hip and tapped her foot impatiently. "Didn't you get any of my messages?"

"Messages?" Oh, fuck, I was in trouble now. "Sorry, I've been busy, Frannie."

"Doing what?" She had a smirk on her face.

"Um—" I racked my brain frantically for a good excuse but couldn't come up with a damn thing.

She smacked me hard on the arm. "Liar. You've been avoiding me."

"Frannie." I looked into her eyes, trying my best to project sincerity. "I would never try to avoid you. You're my friend." She was a beautiful woman, lush and curved, chocolate eyes and long black hair. Smooth olive skin and a mouth made for smiling. She would be a great partner for someone; loving and sweet, and smart.

She was a wonderful person and I felt nothing for her other than friendship and affection. I loved her like a brother, and sometimes I wished I felt more for her.

"You're sweet." She grabbed my arm and steered me away from the Lake, toward her favorite bakery stall. "I need you to do me a favor, Ray."

She led me down the twisted aisles of the Market, past the enticing smells of fried and barbecued meats, past tea sellers and their fragrant goods, spice merchants and fruit vendors. I'd missed lunch and was starting to regret it. "What do you need, Frannie? I'm not finding you any more fingernail polish," I teased, smiling.

She smacked me on the arm again. "Idiot!" We stopped long enough to pick up a couple of pastries from Misha, who was experimenting with alternative grain flours for his baking. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. Acorn flour donuts were not something I ever wanted to experience again, please God.

"No, I'm worried about Benton and that damned dog of his."

"Fraser?" I was surprised. "Dog?" It'd been a couple of weeks since I'd last seen him at the community garden. He'd looked fine, as he always did, hale and hearty. It wasn't until you looked close that you could see the traces of unhappiness. There was a loneliness in his eyes that I wanted to erase, and I had spent all of my time with him biting my lip and fighting not to respond to his careful overtures of friendship.

It had been hard, and it had hurt, but I think in the long run I would be better off for it. I couldn't afford to be friends with him. I had a tendency to wear my heart on my sleeve and if the attraction I felt was any indication, I could fall so hard for him.

In this uncertain world after the Smash, nothing was guaranteed, but that didn't mean I had to expose myself to unnecessary risks if I could help it.

Fraser had taken to exploring some of the suburbs on his own. He tended to be a cautious individual by nature, but that hadn't stopped him from getting into difficult situations, even with Diefenbaker as his backup.

He surprised one elderly gentleman armed with a gun, who didn't seem too interested in Fraser's calm and rational explanations. The man fired a warning shot and Fraser and Dief made a hurried escape.

Fraser managed to avoid several packs of feral young men, armed with clubs and smeared with paint, once by hiding in a trash dumpster. Dief thought that they might not be amenable to discussions and Fraser agreed with him.

He was too trusting with the young waif, who used the threat of a very large gun to force him to sit in a chair and hold still while she tied him carefully to it. She stole his knapsack and it took him several hours to work himself free. His wrists were sore and chafed for days. He was lucky that she hadn't been truly dangerous, because Dief had been distracted by her curly blonde hair and innocent smile. They made an oath between them to never mention that particular incident again.

It wasn't long after their encounter with the young girl that Fraser and Diefenbaker ran into their first so-called zombie.

Fraser and Dief had stumbled across the home of a literature aficionado—the entire house had been lined with handmade bookshelves and filled with books. They'd spent the day there, sorting through the books, picking out the ones that they would take back. They had a limited amount of space in the metal shopping cart they used to haul books back to the Consulate.

He would, of course, carefully note the location of the book trove and make the attempt to come back for more books. In the meantime, Dief had helped him to choose which books to take now. Sometimes they had argued good-naturedly about the merits of specific books. Dief had peculiar interest in literature of the Objectivism movement, while Fraser found the philosophy too cold and clinical; it left no room for faith or passion, both of which were contained in the human heart.

They had, in the end, decided to put The Fountainhead into the pile to be retrieved later.

Fraser had packed up the cart and continued to argue with Dief about Ayn Rand and her philosophies. As they'd walked through the deserted streets, they had come across a man shuffling his way through an intersection. He had been painfully emaciated, wearing clothes that had appeared to have mostly rotted off of him and he stank.

Fraser had spoken to him gently, trying to ascertain if he needed help, but the man just continued to walk, and after a moment, repeated Fraser's words back to him in a low mumble. Stepping quickly, Fraser had placed himself in front of the man, blocking his path, hoping to get a reaction. Without looking at Fraser, the man had shambled around him and kept walking forward.

As carefully as he could, Fraser and Diefenbaker had herded the man toward the nearest open hospital. He hadn't been sure what was wrong with the man, outside of his obvious catatonia; it would better that he was seen by a medical professional.

They had made a strange little group as they traveled through the streets of Chicago.

Sometimes, Fraser dreamed about the man; the shuffling walk and the mumbled words. In his dream, the man was transformed into an actual zombie, his face partially rotted away, bone gleaming white under the putrid flesh. He usually spent the first few minutes after he jolted awake swallowing convulsively, trying to keep the bile down.

Other times, Fraser dreamed of himself as the empty man, shuffling along uselessly in a life without hope or purpose. He usually woke from that dream screaming.

"He's determined to go exploring on his own and he won't listen to me when I tell him how dangerous it is." Frannie looked worried. "I'm afraid he's going to get seriously hurt, or killed." She squeezed my arm and took another bite of her pastry. "He got beat up last week, came back with a black eye and a limp."

"What do you want me to do about it, Frannie? He's grown man, capable of making his own decisions." I looked at her, seeing the concern, the fear. I had a sudden suspicion. "Oh, Christ, you're not in love with him, are you?"

Instead of a flustered denial, she just looked sad. "I thought I was. You should have seen him when he first came to Chicago, Ray, dressed up in that beautiful uniform. He was..." She shook her head, a small smile on her face. "Perfect. And I threw myself at him, repeatedly, until one day he took me aside and told me that it would never work out between us, that it would be better if we were just friends."

I pulled her close and hugged her. "I'm sorry, Frannie. That must have hurt a lot."

She hugged me back, nodding against my chest. "I went home, ate an entire container of double fudge chocolate ice cream and cried myself to sleep." She sighed. "I really miss double fudge chocolate ice cream."

"Me, too, Frannie. Me, too."

Frannie's solution to the problem of Fraser's recklessness was simple enough on the surface. They would work together. Fraser would help Ray on his excursions into the dangerous suburbs, watching his back, being an extra set of eyes. Fraser had some experience, after all, with perilous situations. Together, they could explore the suburbs a little more safely.

Before the Smash, the Chicago Public Library system consisted of seventy-nine libraries scattered across the greater Chicago area. A library in every neighborhood. The libraries had been vital, busy places. Now, only ghosts and Fraser visited them.

Fraser wanted books. He'd told Frannie they needed to be looked after and cared for, rather than moldering to dust, unread, in the empty parts of Chicago.

Frannie had mentioned to me that sometimes Fraser would help out with the kids. He'd bring in a stack of books and hand them out to whoever wanted one. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, he'd be surrounded by children, faces rapt as he read to them from Peter Pan or White Fang. He was patient with their questions and Frannie was always encouraging him to spend more time with the various children that came to Frannie's informal school.

Books. It was all about books for Fraser. The guy sure did have a weird fetish about books.

Ray had to think about it. Books were heavy and took up space. They were worth nothing in barter. You couldn't trade most books for water, or food, or shelter. The exceptions were few and far between: medical books, books on practical skills like gardening and preserving, any kind of repair books. Beyond helping with Frannie's kids, he wasn't entirely sure what Fraser was going to do with the books he collected.

They met down at the Pond again, to discuss the details.

"Plus, I'll bring Diefenbaker with us, and he has an exceptional sense of smell that will come in handy, I'm sure."

"Diefenwho?" I skirted around an old woman pushing a vegetable cart, double-stepping to keep my balance. She shouted obscenities at me in what sounded like Spanish. Maybe Portuguese. I thought about yelling back, but decided it wasn't worth the effort. My Spanish was bad, my Portuguese nonexistent.

"Ah." Fraser did this fiddly, nervous-looking thing, rubbing his thumbnail over his eyebrow. "My animal companion, Diefenbaker. Named after the Canadian Prime Minister John Diefenbaker who served from 1957 to 1963."

There was something fishy about this. "Animal companion? You mean your dog?"

"Well..." Fraser looked at me, all innocent and earnest. "Dief is an Arctic wolf." There was a long pause. "Well, really, he's only half-wolf."

I just waited him out.

"A deaf half-wolf." Looking sheepish, he did the thumb-eyebrow thing again. That was definitely turning out to be one of Fraser's tells. "With a terrible junk food habit."

"A deaf half-wolf?" Sounded kinda dangerous, junk food notwithstanding. Weren't half-breeds prone to going wild and tearing out throats? "Is he trained?"

Fraser looked relieved. "Oh, Dief's very well behaved."

Fraser was right—for a wolf-dog hybrid, Diefenbaker was very well behaved.

Wolfdogs had a tendency to be unpredictable. They could be extremely aggressive and territorial like their wolf ancestor, or well-socialized and even-tempered like their dog ancestor. Even when they were more dog than wolf, they still retained an element of wildness that made them companions rather than pets.

A lot of people didn't understand that. They looked at wolfdogs and saw a wolf, but a wolf you could take home and feed dog biscuits to and play fetch with. Every year, wolfdog hybrids attacked and sometimes killed people, usually small children. People often forgot how dangerous wolfdogs really were.

Fraser never forgot, even though Dief was special, even among wolfdogs. He'd inherited all the intelligence and cunning of his wolf parent, but very little of the aggression. Fraser sometimes got the impression that he was the alpha of their pack only because Dief couldn't be bothered to challenge him for the position.

Dief was a wolf, as well as a dog, and Fraser was always glad that he'd willingly chosen to share his life with Fraser.

We walked around the Pond while I contemplated the idea of working with Fraser. Years ago, Stella had taught me a simple trick when facing a difficult decision: separate everything into pros and cons and go from there.

Pro: I could have a partner, if we worked well together. Someone to watch my back, to see things I missed. Someone trained to deal with dangerous situations, someone who wasn't likely to get me into more trouble than I tended to get myself into. Came equipped with a bad-ass half-wolf, which was frosting on the cake.

Con: I would have to trust him. Completely. I didn't know if I could do that.

Con: I didn't know what motivated the guy. There was a lot of honor and duty tangled up with the need to try to save the world and everyone in it. I could see that, feel that radiating from him like warmth from the sun on a cold day.

He would have been fucking dangerous as a cop, always asking the impossible from his partner, defending the defenseless, doing his best to make sure that justice was served.

Con: Fraser was not entirely sane. That was obvious, even without Dewey's warning. But then again, very few people were these days. I couldn't really hold that against him. He seemed more inclined toward the wacky kind of let's-help-everyone-in-the-world craziness, which I could live with. Mostly.

It was the cut-out-your-liver-and-eat-it-because-the-voices-in-my-head-said-so kind of insanity that I wanted to avoid. I didn't think Fraser would ever get to that point.

And last but definitely not least: the attraction thing. Mixing business and pleasure was always a bad idea. That was true Before the Smash, it was just as true now.

When Fraser had joined the RCMP, all those years ago, applicants had been required to take the RCMP Police Aptitude Test, which measured the applicant's potential aptitude for police work, including observation, judgment, memory, logic, computation, composition and comprehension.

He'd done very well on the RPAT, as both he and his father had anticipated.

A couple of high profile cases involving the tremendous levels of stress, burnout, depression and suicide in the RCMP brought mental health issues to the forefront of public concern. The RCMP introduced a variety of personality tests to the annual RCMP physical.

Fraser liked the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator the best. The questions were logical and easy to answer. He usually scored ISTJ "the Duty Fulfiller," with a bit of ESTJ "the Guardian" thrown in. Both of those personality types seemed to describe him well.

The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory perturbed Fraser, mostly because he couldn't figure out what the questions meant. There was no direct correlation, in his mind, between "I seldom or never have coughing fits" to any particular mental health issue. Additionally, it bothered him that they never let him see the results of his MMPI-2. It worried him, and the more they said, "Don't worry yourself about it, Constable," the more anxious he got.

On the other hand, Fraser enjoyed both the Rorschach Inkblot Test and the Thematic Apperception Test. It was relaxing to look at the pictures and make up tales, often based on Inuit mythology, for what he saw. On occasion, the testers would look at him strangely, but he pretended not to see.

He'd never had reason to question his sanity. Until the Smash.

I don't know who I was kidding. Even though the cons outweighed the pros, I was going to do this. Partner up with someone who was probably crazy, who would most likely get me killed by asking me to jump off the roof of a tall building. I would have to fight hard not to touch in him in inappropriate ways, try hard not to pretend he was touching me when I was at home alone, late at night, touching myself.

This was so fucked-up.

Over the years, Ray had learned a lot about the many forms of insanity. He'd taken some psych classes when he'd been in college, and of course, he'd been required to pass the CPD's psychological screening, which had included the MMPI-2 and several in-depth interviews. Later, there had been the officer-involved shooting board (OISB) reviews and the mandated counseling sessions.

After he'd kicked a suspect in the head (one suspect, and not very hard, at that), there'd been the anger management classes. He'd been forced to enroll in meditation classes as well, which just relaxed him so much he fell asleep while sitting cross-legged on the smelly blue gym mats.

As his marriage started to falter, when it got to the point that he and Stella were arguing and fucking more than talking to each other, they'd gone to therapy, together and separately. It hadn't saved the marriage, but it gave Ray the ability to step back from himself a little and really look at his behaviors. Once he saw those behaviors and how destructive they could be, he could take steps to correct them, if he wanted to.

So Ray had a passing familiarity with crazy, and with not-crazy. Fraser took all of his perceptions about crazy, twisted them into knots, then threw them out the window.

"Diefenbaker, this is Ray. Ray, this is my companion, Diefenbaker."

I glanced at where Fraser was gesturing, but there was nothing there but empty air. Fraser's blue eyes were sincere and earnest, and I wondered if he was pulling my leg. Maybe this was a joke...

"Fraser—"

"No need to be afraid, Ray. Dief is very friendly once he gets to know you."

Or maybe not. "Heya, Diefenbaker." I held out my hand toward the space that Fraser was smiling at, hoping I guessed right about Diefenbaker's location. I let Fraser's imaginary half-wolf sniff me, learning my scent. "He's a beautiful animal, Fraser."

Fraser leaned closer to me, like he was going to share a secret. I could feel the heat from him. "Don't say that where he can see. He's deaf, but he can read lips, and I don't want him to become any more vain than he already is. He can be very arrogant for a wolf."

Yeah, Fraser was unhinged, all right. "Sure, Fraser."

Later, I gave him the box of dog treats that I'd managed to scrounge for Diefenbaker, back when I thought he was a real half-wolf.

"Thank you, Ray." Fraser smiled, shy and proud. It made my insides twist up with some weird combination of lust and affection that I really wasn't ready to deal with.

He looked at the space that Diefenbaker supposedly occupied and nodded. "And Dief thanks you, too. Though he does wonder if next time you could 'procure'," and there were the damn air quotes again, "wolf treats rather than dog treats, since he is half wolf."

I could only laugh and promise to bring wolf treats next time.

"Very good, Ray. Wolf treats are infinitely preferable to donuts or candy bars, which are Dief's favorite foods." Fraser pursed his lips in disapproval.

Oh, yeah, the half-wolf had a junk food habit. "I can get donuts down at the Market—there's this Russian guy who makes them out of potato flour. But candy bars—" I shook my head. "They're impossible to find these days."

"Regardless, we thank you for the treats. Dief will enjoy them."

I was sure he would.

Just when I was sure that the world couldn't get any more fucked up, along comes Fraser. Good-looking guy, sharp as a tack, crazy as a bedbug.

As a cop, Ray had spent years refining his natural talent for reading body language. He had been able to tell if a suspect was lying by the way they held themselves, the physical way they told their story. Ironically, he couldn't have quantified how he knew, could never put into words what he saw and understood. It didn't matter because it worked, and he was usually right.

This ability, combined with his usually spot-on instincts, gave him a solve rate well above the average for his district. There had been some grumbling, some resentment from the other detectives in his squad. Ray had heard the muttering but had ignored it.

Now, this particular skill came in handy for keeping track of where Fraser's imaginary 'animal companion' was. Ray didn't want to accidentally step through Diefenbaker. It would probably upset Fraser and there was no reason to do that unnecessarily.

We settled into a routine. Two or three times a week Fraser and Dief would come over and we'd pack up my beat-up old Jeep and head out to explore.

A couple of times a week, when we weren't busy exploring, we'd take Fraser's imaginary half-wolf out for walks and I'd introduce them to some of the people I traded and bartered with on a regular basis. I took him to meet Sandor and Joe, Jackie and her jealous husband, Muhammad al-Khwarizmi and his family of metalworking-engineers, Gladys and Sophie, who kept me supplied with motor oil and hard-to-find auto parts, and Blind Pete, who sat next to his shortwave radio and his computer and had a finger on the information pulse of the world.

Some evenings Fraser and Dief would return to the Consulate and I'd go back to my place alone; other nights we'd find someplace to eat and have dinner together. On those nights, we'd sit around in some tiny little hole-in-the-wall restaurant, talking about our lives Before the Smash.

For a little while, the loneliness in his eyes would fade away. And for a little while, I didn't feel so alone.

I learned a lot about growing up in the far north, in the icy wilderness of the Northwest Areas. I learned about his father, a famous Mountie, and his murder, which led to Fraser's journey and exile to Chicago. And in return, he learned more about Stanley Raymond Kowalski than anyone except Stella had ever known.

I wasn't sure how I felt about that, being so open and vulnerable.

Before the Smash, Allan Rahill had been a computer programmer and in his spare time, an amateur astronomer. He had saved his money and bought himself one of the Russian Maksutov-Newtonian 8-inch telescopes and spent every spare evening staring at the night sky. His wife had the patience of a saint and kept him well supplied with hot tea on cold nights.

Most of the sky had long since been mapped and cataloged and categorized, so amateur astronomers tended to concentrate on photography of celestial bodies, finding and tracking asteroids and comets, and observing changes in the brightness of stars.

Allan had a passion for photographing the Moon. He'd hook up his camera to the telescope and spend hours taking hundreds of detailed pictures. Then he'd process them on his computer using imaging software, tweaking and fiddling until he had the perfect image.

He'd won awards for his lunar photography, and he made a bit of money selling his shots to various magazines. One of his pictures of the Moon during an eclipse made the cover of Amateur Astronomer Magazine. His wife had bought a copy of the magazine and had it framed. It was one of his prized possessions.

Allan knew the geography of the Moon like he knew his beloved wife's face. He was familiar with the place heavy with the weight of history behind them: Statio Tranquillitatis (One small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.) and Mare Imbrium (And it's been a long way, but we're here.), Oceanus Procellarum (Whoopie! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that's a long one for me.) and others.

Allan knew the Moon.

Until the Smash happened.

Months afterwards, on a rare clear night, Allan went out, looked up at the full Moon and didn't recognize it. All the familiar landmarks were gone, this new surface configuration of craters, dark maria and light terrae unknown to his eyes. Even the well-known radiating star shape of Tycho Crater was missing.

He set up his telescope, hooked up the camera and thought about how much he missed his wife, and his life Before, and the Moon.

It didn't take long to figure out we worked well together. We were a duet.

Fraser was a 'truth, justice and Canadian way' kind of guy, which meant that we ended up helping a lot more people that I'd planned. As much as I complained, it made me feel useful for the first time in a long while. We helped several families reunite, relocated several others to safer places, started up a small school, a recycling center and two more community gardens.

I fixed more engines than I could count while Fraser coddled babies and reassured toddlers and their mothers. We helped distribute medicines and food to those who weren't well enough to leave their homes, collected and handed out blankets and warm clothes to those in need and tracked down several runaway kids, reuniting them with their worried parents.

We helped Margaret Hutchinson and her crew of biomedical geeks built and set up three deep-tank fermenters to grow penicillium and other molds for use as antibiotics. I found a stash of top-of-the-line camping supplies in the back of an old house and tried to trade them off before Fraser found out and gave it all away. I was partly successful.

Twice I found myself pressed up against Fraser, his warm breath tickling my cheek and his body solid against mine. He felt so good and I found myself staring at his mouth hungrily, wanting to kiss him so bad. I leaned closer, closer, watching as his pink tongue darted nervously, only to stop myself at the very last moment, a breath away from a really big mistake. I walked away from him, both times, but I wasn't sure how much more self-control I had.

We fell into the Lake and got stuck in a broken elevator in a crumbling building, ran from crazies with guns and knives and electrified cattle prods, and tried to forget some of the horrific things we saw.

Things like the house in Joliet, where the stench of decay had been strong and cloying. There'd been fifteen or more people, emaciated and hairless, laid out around a big metal container that had been cracked open and glowed blue in the dimness. I don't know if anyone was still alive; Fraser dragged me out of there so fast it wasn't even funny. He took a moment to carve a crude radiation symbol on the outside of the door before hustling us off to the nearest hospital to get examined by doctors.

Sometimes I had nightmares about that house.

Ray lived in an old two-story warehouse not far from the Lake. He needed the space, mainly for his elderly Jeep and all of the stuff that he'd collected since the Smash.

The bottom floor and part of the second was packed full of the things that he'd scrounged—things that he hadn't found a use for but couldn't bring himself to throw away. Someday someone might need it. So he kept all of it, haphazardly piled on wooden pallets and shoved onto bookcases and work benches, but organized in some arcane order that made sense to only Ray.

Vacuum tubes. Printers. VCRs. Glass electrical insulators. Test tubes and other laboratory glassware. Typewriters.

The walls were lined with bins filled to overflowing with automotive parts and electronics parts and other bits and pieces. He'd raided several hardware stores and had enough nails and screws to build or repair anything he could imagine.

Welding equipment. Building equipment. Plumbing equipment. Crate after crate of scrap metal. Generators and equipment racks and broken solar panels. Wooden wire spools big enough to use as tables and used water heaters. Fifty-five gallon drums.

It was an indoor junk yard and Ray let a tribe of feral cats live there to keep the rodent population under control. So far it worked. He never saw mice or rats and the cats always seemed to be plump and happy.

He lived upstairs, in the northwest corner of the building. There'd been a manager's apartment on the second floor that he'd claimed as a living space for himself. A tiny kitchen, a bathroom with basic amenities, and a bedroom. It wasn't very big, but he really didn't need much, mainly somewhere to sleep. Some place to be safe. Home.

Once upon a time, home had meant Stella, and the promise of their life together. He'd wanted kids, wanted the stereotypical house and white picket fence. He'd wanted that with Stella. That was the home he'd always dreamed of.

He'd learned the hard way that not all dreams come true.

Sometimes, on bitterly cold nights, the cats would wander upstairs and pile on top of him as he slept, purring happily like little motors and keeping him warm.

Sometimes I made mistakes. I tried to be careful, to think things through, because after the Smash, mistakes were often deadly.

Sometimes I let my guard down. Sometimes I didn't pay as close attention to things as I should. Sometimes I just fucked up.

One of these days it was going to get me killed.

Ray didn't notice the two men who followed him from the hospital district. He had a lot on his mind, juggling errands he needed to do before he could get the re-manufactured crankshaft timing sprocket he'd had his eye on. Detroit had started manufacturing again and was offering new parts, but they were expensive and Ray couldn't justify the cost to himself. Re-manned would work fine for his beloved Jeep.

If he hadn't been distracted, there would have been no way he wouldn't have noticed them. They weren't trying to be stealthy, they were just determined to roll him for whatever medicines he'd picked up from a local biochemist.

They waited until Ray led them into a quieter part of town, one that didn't have the constant hustle and bustle of the Market or the dole lines. Crime was always more successful without witnesses.

They waited, and then, like the predators they were, they sprang out of hiding.

I woke up, and I knew something was wrong.

My head was killing me. It felt like a hangover and a migraine and a concussion all rolled into one. I moaned miserably and reached up to keep my brains from leaking out of my ears.

Something grabbed my hands and kept me from touching my head. "Easy, Ray. Don't move."

"Fraser?" I struggled to open my eyes. The dim light hurt, and everything looked blurry. Glasses. I needed my glasses. "Fraser? What happened?"

Fraser pulled my hands down and let go. "Ssh. You're safe and everything will be all right. You need to rest and heal." He placed the flat of his hand against my chest and I could feel the warmth of him through my shirt. "Just rest. There's plenty of time for questions later."

"But—"

"Sssh." He rubbed his hand in soothing circles.

I gave up the fight and let the darkness swallow me down.

Fraser was sure that Ray was suffering from mild traumatic brain injury, otherwise known as a concussion. Part of RCMP training included advanced first aid, since RCMP officers were often first on-scene at accidents and emergencies.

When he'd opened the door of the Consulate in response to the loud pounding, he'd found Ray, passed out and held up by a couple of the young men who were regulars down at the community garden. They'd found him in an alley, the victim of a beating and Ray had been drifting in and out of consciousness for about ten minutes.

They carried Ray up to what had once been the Queen's bedroom. Fraser thanked the young men and ushered them out, then gathered his first aid supplies. He administered the Glasgow Coma Scale and Ray scored a reassuring 13, which roughly corresponded to a minor brain injury.

After cleaning and applying a bandage to the rather large but shallow cut on his scalp and checking the dilation of Ray's pupils, Fraser tucked Ray into bed.

For the next twelve hours or so, he woke Ray periodically, checking his pupils and his verbal responses to simple questions about who he was, where he was, and the date. The first few times Ray displayed a great deal of confusion, but as the night wore on, his responses became more coherent.

Fraser, who had stationed himself in a chair next to the bed, finally let himself relax a little.

When I woke up, my head was aching. I was in an unfamiliar bed and before I could start to panic, a soft snore distracted me. I suddenly had a vivid memory of being hit on the head by some asshole with a stick—but I couldn't remember who he was or why he beaned me with the club.

Slumped in a chair, sound asleep, was Fraser. It looked uncomfortable as hell and I bet his back was not going to thank him later.

It hurt to move too fast, so I slowly leaned and touched his knee. "Fraser. Fraser. Fraser." I squeezed his leg a little harder. "Fraser, wake up. It's not good for you to sleep like that. You're going to be hurting in the morning."

He woke up and blinked owlishly at me.

"Fraser, come to bed." I lifted up the blanket, gritting my teeth against the pain. "C'mon."

"Nonsense, Ray, I'm fine. I'll just grab my bedroll and sleep on the floor—"

"Fraser, damn it, if you sleep on the floor I'm going to join you." I breathed out hard against a sudden wave of nausea. "Get into the fucking bed."

Standing up, he stripped off his shirt and jeans before sliding carefully into bed. I scooted back so he wouldn't cram himself against the edge. He settled, stiff and uncomfortable. "Relax, Fraser." I rolled over, wincing, and snuggled my pillow. "Thanks for taking care of me."

I didn't think he was going to answer, but just before I drifted off to sleep, he whispered, "You're welcome, Ray."

The next time Ray woke it was dusk and his head had mostly stopped hurting. There was a slight lingering headache, but not the fierce throbbing pain from earlier. For which he was extremely grateful. He got up, put on his glasses and slipped on the shirt and sweats that had been neatly folded at the foot of the bed.

Fraser was still sound asleep, curled around himself, almost protectively. Ray was surprised; Fraser seemed to be the type who would sleep flat on his back, straight as a board and twice as stiff. Ray was the opposite; he tended to sprawl into whatever available space there was, usually starfishing in the middle of the bed. It had pissed off Stella more than once.

He pulled the quilt up and made sure that Fraser would stay warm before wandering off to find the bathroom. It took two tries. The first door he opened was for a closet, which seemed to be filled with Fraser's various uniforms— the formal scarlet one, plus a dark brown one and a navy blue version. He touched the rough wool of the iconic red serge and tried to imagine Fraser wearing it.

There was something vaguely erotic about the thought of Fraser in the uniform. Ray stroked the fabric, petting it like he would a cat. It was rough against his fingers, a little itchy. He imagined that the texture would be a constant reminder—it would be hard to forget you were wearing it.

Leaning into the closet a little, he sniffed at the uniform, the intoxicating combination of wool and sweat and Fraser smells making his mouth water. He rested his face against the uniform and wondered how hard he'd been hit in the head. He was getting turned on by Fraser's uniform and he was sure that was against RCMP regulations.

Ray opened the second door and stepped into the small bathroom. He pissed, flushed, washed his hands and splashed some water onto his face, trying to shake off the sluggishness that was threatening to overwhelm him. His stomach grumbled and he realized that some food might help.

Peering into the darkened hallway, Ray hesitated. As bad as his eyes were, he was liable to trip over something and crack his head open, again. He ducked back into the bedroom and grabbed the old-fashioned oil-filled lantern that Fraser had left on the bedside table.

I shut the bedroom door behind me, lit the lantern and lowered the wick. It took a minute for my eyes to adjust to the warm glow. Looking around, I found myself in a carpeted hallway, a pretty, elegant one. The walls were wood-paneled, with high ceilings, and there was what looked to be a hand-carved wooden banister. About what I would have expected a Canadian consulate to look like.

What I didn't expect were the books. There were books everywhere. Paperbacks, hardbacks, textbooks, new books, antique books; all of them lining the hallway, piled on the floor to Ray-height and higher. Books and books and books.

I looked over the railing on the stairs and could see nothing but books. There was a pathway, like a river had cut through the bedrock of books, leading to other parts of the Consulate. It was a narrow path, one person wide. If I wasn't careful, I could knock over a mountain of books, start a landslide and be crushed. Fraser wouldn't ever find my body; I would petrify over the years into a lasting monument to clumsiness.

As an officer of the law, Ray had seen a lot of strange things during his career. Chicago had been a city with its fair share of crazy people in it. He'd seen a fellow officer savaged by a pack of chihuahuas. He'd caught this guy who had been breaking into people's houses and stocking their pantries with food. He'd spent a week tracking down a counterfeiter who'd been printing fifteen dollar bills and couldn't figure out why she'd gotten caught.

And once, Ray had come across a compulsive hoarder, someone who couldn't bear to throw anything away. This guy, Mitch, had barricaded himself in his house by piling all of his junk in front of the front and back doors; the only way in had been through a small door in the garage. Inside the house, Mitch had piled all of the useless stuff he'd actively collected over the past twenty years. The only rooms that could be used were the bathroom and the kitchen, and there was a twisty little pathway between them.

This reminded Ray of that. Instead of sewing machines, newspapers, cardboard boxes, rakes, umbrellas, pianos and bowling balls, Fraser collected books. Everywhere they'd gone, he'd gathered all the books he'd seen, like a squirrel collecting nuts for a long winter.

Fraser had talked about preserving mankind's knowledge, but Ray had a suspicion that this went far beyond that.

I scrounged a pretty decent dinner in Fraser's book-cramped kitchen—a couple of homemade soy tortillas, some leftover goat kebabs I found in his fridge and a sapodilla for dessert. I washed it down with the solitary home-brew I'd found and belched contentedly while pondering the mysteries of Fraser's freakishness.

There was a door in back of the kitchen, and curiosity drove me to see what was behind it.

The Consulate had a walled courtyard in the back. Made of reinforced cinder blocks, stretching twelve feet high, with coils of concertina wire barricading the top. It seemed a little excessive until I saw the tomato plants swaying in the night breeze. Oh. Fraser had his own little garden back here. No wonder he'd strung up the concertina wire. If he hadn't, the garden would be picked bare every night.

New foods composed of artificially created, single-celled organisms filled in some of the niches left empty once the wheat and corn and oats had finally died off. Genetically modified algae, phytoplankton and yeasts were engineered to grow quickly in the poorest of environments with little labor. It was cheap and easy and it kept many people from starvation.

As the climate changed and plants either adapted or died, new crops were introduced. Foods that had been rarely seen in the United States outside of ethic food stores became widely accepted and cultivated where possible. Fruit and vegetable species came up from the warmer climes of the south, following new trade routes and a demand for new flavors.

Sapodillas were small brown furry fruits that tasted a lot like caramel. They were originally from Central America, but were hardy and slightly frost tolerant, and grew well in the southern states. They were popular and in high demand. Breadfruit had become a common sight, as had nopales, sunchokes, burdock and manioc. Exotic fruits were no longer exotic; lychee, jakfruit, black sapote and Mexican breadfruit were all easily found in local markets.

Alternatives to the now-extinct wheat and oats sprung up and what had once been relegated to proponents of 'natural food' was now mainstream. Amaranth, kamut, millet, quinoa and teff were the grains used by most people on a regular basis. Potato, soy and nut flours were still widely added to recipes, especially those for baked goods.

It wasn't the same. But after the Smash, there hadn't really been much of a choice.

Eventually, I realized that it was useless to try to figure out how Fraser's mind worked. And in the long run, it really didn't matter. Crazy, sane, or somewhere in between, he was my best friend. My partner. And I wasn't going to let him go because he had an obsession with books.

There was no doubt in my mind that Fraser had problems. Big problems. Problems that would probably take a professional therapist years to sort through. Abandonment issues. Perfection issues. Neurotic tendencies. Compulsive behaviors.

Very few people could say that they didn't have problems. I certainly couldn't, not with a straight face, and I'd gone to a counselor for years before, during and after the divorce. Not that it had helped, in the long run...

Suddenly, I was exhausted and my head still hurt. Time to go back to bed and try to get some more rest.

Fraser was awake when Ray crept back into the bedroom. He watched with shadowed eyes as Ray stripped off the sweats and shirt, then crawling back into the bed. Ray had gotten a little chilled, so he squirmed up against Fraser, trying to steal some of his warmth. Fraser radiated heat like the sun had Before the Smash.

Carefully, unsure of his reception, Ray draped his arm over Fraser's side and rested his hand on Fraser's flat belly, trying to ignore how tense Fraser was. He moved closer until he could bury his nose in the soft hair at the nape of Fraser's neck, inhaling his scent.

Feeling a shiver run down Fraser's body, Ray closed his eyes and relaxed against him. He could feel the slow flush of arousal that being so near to Fraser always woke in him, shortening his breath, hardening his cock, making him want.

"Ray—" Fraser's voice was rough and hoarse, like he hadn't talked in a long time. "I need—"

Ray rubbed at Fraser's belly. "What do you need, Fraser?"

"I'm so tired of being alone." The admission was quiet and hesitant. "I need, I need—" Fraser grabbed Ray's hand and pulled it down, down to his erection, wrapping Ray's fingers around it. He sighed as Ray squeezed firmly.

Ray let go of Fraser's cock and tugged at the waistband of his boxers. "Take this off." Fraser squirmed and twisted to comply. It turned Ray on, how much Fraser wanted Ray to touch him. Ray pulled down his own shorts and pressed close.

"You need this?" Ray asked, slowly stroking Fraser's dick while mouthing the back of his neck. Fraser's skin tasted salty against his tongue, and it roused a thirst in him for more. "Tell me what you need and I'll give it to you, Fraser."

Fraser moaned, so softly, and shifted forward into Ray's hand, then back against Ray's dick. "I need—harder," he whispered, "harder, please and—faster, faster..."

Ray could do harder, but he wanted to draw this out, make Fraser feel so good. Faster was for back-alley fuck sessions and gropes in filthy bathroom stalls. This was so much more than that and Ray didn't want to rush it.

"Ssssh. What's your rush, hmmm?" He slowed his hand down and lightened his touch while continuing to explore Fraser's ear, tracing the curves with his tongue. "We've got all the time in the world, Fraser. You got somewhere else to be?"

Shaking his head, Fraser bit at his lip. "Nooo."

"You sure? 'Cause we can do this some other time." Ray stopped moving, just held Fraser's cock in his hand, feeling the faint heartbeat racing just under the skin. It was sexy and it made Ray all kinds of hard. He let go, pulling Fraser's leg back over his and slid even closer.

Fraser had automatically reached down to replace Ray's hand on his erection with one of his own, and Ray clicked his tongue reprovingly at him. "Don't, Fraser. I'll give you what you need, trust me."

And he did trust me. I could feel it in his body as he let go of his control, some subtle slippage of the tension as he gave himself over to me. One broad hand flailed upwards to grab at the headboard, holding tight. I curled my hand around his, helping him hold onto the wooden slat. His other hand buried itself in the sheets, fisting the fabric. He was desperate, panting, his cock hard and eager. He was having a hard time keeping still, and his body was shivering and twisting, searching for more.

He was beautiful.

I ran my free hand over his hip and down the long muscles of this thigh, feeling the roughness of my palm catch on the sparse hair, amazed at how solid Fraser was. I enjoyed the play of muscles under my fingers and he flexed his leg, urging me wordlessly to continue touching him. "More?" I asked, retracing my path up toward his waist.

I was starting to think that this was one of my favorite parts of his body, the dip of Fraser's hip, the long glide of his flank. I dragged my fingernails lightly back and forth, smiling at the goosebumps and shiver that elicited.

"Ray, please—"

I could feel how tightly Fraser's hand held onto the headboard. "What do you need, Fraser?" I whispered into his ear. I adjusted my dick so I was resting against his hole, making tiny thrusting motions. "You need me to touch you? You need my mouth?" I nipped at his shoulder, and laid my palm flat against his stomach, urging him back against me.

I couldn't get any closer and we were both sweaty and slick. I rocked against him, a strange, arousing parody of penetration, listening to him moan and gasp. I reached up and pinched his nipple, a little harder than I intended.

"Ray! Oh, god, please—"

Figures that Fraser would have a bit of a pain kink. Well, dirty talk was my kink. "You like that, hmm?" I kept my voice low and intimate, letting the words vibrate along his nerves, and mine. "What else do you like, Fraser? You want me to spank you?" I had to bite my lip at the surge of arousal that image sent through me. I hitched his thigh a little higher, exposing his cock completely to me.

"I can do that," I whispered as I cradled his balls in my hand, tugging on them gently. "Flip you over my knee, smack your ass until it's red and hot, until you're squirming, rubbing your dick against me like a dog in heat...you want me to do that to you?"

Fraser keened softly in his throat and I could feel the tension in his body growing. He was panting like he'd run a long marathon and his eyes were squeezed shut. I could tell he was on the verge of begging me to do something, anything.

I thrust my cock against his ass, gasping at the friction. "Or I could fuck you. Push you over, hold your hands down and fuck you hard, pounding into you over and over, fast and hard and—"

Fraser froze, breathless. "Ray—"

I grabbed his dick and stroked hard, once, twice and he was gone, crying out like it hurt, shivering and twitching and sobbing. I gentled my hand but continued to rub against his ass, breathing hard, moving closer to my own orgasm. I closed my eyes to feel everything better: the hot slide of skin against skin, the sound of my panting, the thundering of my heart, Fraser's voice whispering my name, over and over.

He rocked back against me, a counter-rhythm that pushed me to the edge. I could feel it starting, the electric prickle curling my toes and arching my back, the rush of blinding sensation washing over me, drowning me, pulling me under—

They had both fallen into a post-coital sleep, deep and dreamless.

Fraser woke the next morning at his accustomed time and reluctantly climbed out of bed. He went into the bathroom and shut the door quietly, trying not to wake Ray, who was still healing and could use some more rest.

Looking in the mirror, he was surprised to see the signs of last night's passionate activities so visible on his body. His hair stuck up in sweat-stiffened, unruly tufts. He had a reddish rash on his neck that had to be stubble burn. On his right shoulder he found several bite marks and his lips looked swollen. Perspiration and semen had dried on his belly and chest and back and he stank. He looked wanton and—depraved.

It was so different from how he was accustomed to seeing himself. After a moment's thought, he decided he liked it. He liked the idea of being marked, of belonging to someone, of being wanted.

Fraser was glad that Dief couldn't see him; he'd never hear the end of it from him. Dief had insisted some time ago that Ray was interested in a relationship with him but Fraser had refused to give credence to the thought. He could already hear Dief's 'I told you so.'

He cleaned up quickly and went downstairs to make some breakfast, leaving Ray buried under the quilt, snoring quietly.

The smell of cooking woke me up. I stretched and yawned, feeling pretty good for a guy who'd gotten bashed in the head not too long ago. Of course, getting laid always helped. I washed up in Fraser's bathroom, using the antique pitcher and wash basin he had.

I put on the clean clothes Fraser left for me and wondered if he had a stash of Ray-sized clothes hidden away somewhere. As long as I didn't have to do laundry, I was happy.

Following my nose, I wandered toward the kitchen. The windows were boarded up and barred, but the top few inches were clear, allowing the light to shine in. The place looked even more depressing in the light of day. Just books, books and more books, dusty and old and stacked like a free-form sort of library.

There was nothing personal here, nothing to indicate that Fraser lived here, had lived here for a number of years. No photos or knick-knacks or treasured possessions scavenged from the wreckage of a past life and proudly displayed. Just the books, and scattered about, some homemade candles he probably got from Siobhan, who raised bees on her rooftop two streets over.

Nothing to mark the life of a man who had dedicated his life to duty, first to his country, then to humanity. Nothing to show of the intelligent, lonely man who'd been given so little in life and yet deserved so much.

I wanted to give him everything. Everything he'd missed in life— the warm, familiar comfort of family, the close affection of friendship, the rock-solid certainty of a partnership. I would give him everything I could, if he'd let me.

Ray found Fraser in the kitchen chatting with Dief and making duck-egg omelets. Chickens hadn't done very well after the Smash; something had changed and they were having a hard time surviving. Their numbers were slowly dwindling and someday, not too far in the future, they would be gone forever.

Domesticated ducks, on the other hand, seemed to have no problems at all. They survived and thrived and quacked their way into any number of recipes that had previously called for chicken. They laid large, tasty eggs which were more flavorful than chicken eggs had ever been.

It had been so long since Ray had eaten chicken that he wasn't entirely sure he remembered how it tasted.

Walking over to Fraser, he hugged him briefly and kissed the side of his temple before sitting down at the tiny kitchen table. He accidentally elbowed some books which fell to the floor. "Oops, sorry." Ray leaned down and picked them up, glancing at the bright covers and restacking them.

"Good morning, Ray. I hope you like omelets." With a practiced flick of his wrist, Fraser flipped the omelet over like a fancy chef would.

He inhaled deeply, his mouth watering. "Yeah, omelets are great. Can I help?"

"No, thank you, Ray, I'm—oh. Actually, could you pick a couple of tomatoes from the garden? If you just go through the door there—" Fraser pointed with his chin.

Ray grinned at him. "Yeah, I saw it last night. I was curious. How many you want? Two?"

"Two should be sufficient," he said, smiling back. "Dief doesn't like tomatoes."

"'kay." Ray opened the door, letting in sunshine and a gentle breeze. "It's a beautiful day."

I stepped out into the garden. It really was a beautiful day. For a moment, the shining sun made me think that the Smash was just a figment of my imagination, some scary nightmare dreamed up in some broken corner of my mind.

Fraser's garden was neat and orderly and weed-free, broken down into little square plots of different plants. Ray hadn't gardened in years, not since he and Stella had lived in that tiny apartment with all the window boxes, and even then all they'd grown were fresh herbs: basil, oregano, mint and thyme.

Ray's mother had gardened, whenever she'd had the space, so Ray could still recognize a lot of the plants that Fraser had growing. Some he couldn't even guess what they were—they were probably some of the newer vegetables. He could identify the tomatoes, lettuce and eggplants and bell peppers. Some kind of bush bean and broccoli. Strawberry plants on a tiny terraced hill and raspberry brambles in the corner. Or maybe blackberries. He went closer for a better look; he loved raspberries.

He studied the upright, bushy canes, noticing the wicked-looking thorns. He couldn't tell for sure what kind of berry plants they were. Shrugging, he was about to go find some tomatoes when he caught a glimpse of something on the ground behind the bushes. A piece of concrete or stone, rectangular in shape.

It reminded Ray of a gravestone.

Kneeling, Ray shoved aside some canes, trying to get a better view. "Ow!" He got caught on a thorn and it scratched, drawing blood. Sucking on his bleeding finger, he pushed more carefully and managed to clear a big enough space for him to examine the stone.

DIEFENBAKER

friend and loyal companion

December 1996

"Oh, Fraser."

He slumped to sit on the ground, numb. Mourning for Diefenbaker, and Fraser. Dief had been gone for almost six years. A long, long time for Fraser to be alone, struggling to survive in a changed world.

I sat there in the warm sunshine, wondering if Dief's death had been the last straw, the breaking point of Fraser's sanity, after every other shitty thing that had happened in his life. The brutal murder of his mother by a family friend, and later his father's death due to the greed and corruption within the ranks of the RCMP.

His first, unforgettable love—the woman he'd tracked through a blizzard and had fallen in love with as they'd huddled close together on a mountainside, waiting for death. Fraser's heart had balked at turning her in, but his honor and sense of justice had not. His last memory of her was the look of betrayal on her pale face as his brother-officer took her away.

Exile from his cold, wintry home. And then the Smash, an uncountable number of dead and twice as many suffering through the aftermath. With the future of the human race still hanging in the balance.

It would have been enough to send a majority of people off the deep end. And it had. A lot of people had lost it, just...snapped and ran screaming into the night. Or sank into a deep depression that ended with a strong rope and a kicked-over chair. Some people just retreated further and further from reality, ghosting into a catatonic state, lost forever. The end of the world hadn't been a pleasant experience and most people had been hard pressed to survive it, let alone deal with it rationally.

I understood the feeling. Some days when I woke up, it was a fight to push myself out of bed. I'd think about pulling the covers over my head and just sleeping the rest of my life away, warm and comfortable. If I could ignore the world, maybe it would go away.

Other times, usually nights when I'd been drinking alone and mourning my life Before the Smash, I thought about killing myself. Who would miss me, after all? Stella was lost to me, my family was dead—my parents and my brother had been in Yuma when a swarm of tornadoes had devastated the area. I had some friends, some acquaintances, and on a couple of rare occasions, a lover. But no one who would really miss me when I was gone.

I would ask myself, What do you have to live for? What is there in your life that makes it worthwhile to get out of bed every fucking day? I never had an answer, could never point to the one thing that made my life worth living, but I figured as long as the answer wasn't nothing, then I was okay.

Now, Fraser was in my life. And that changed everything for me.

Fraser was surprised when Ray didn't come back from the garden after a short while. Surely it didn't take that long to harvest some tomatoes. He asked Dief to check on Ray, but Dief refused, saying he had other, more important things to do as he flounced out of the kitchen, tail held high.

Ray was so lost in thought that he didn't hear the kitchen door open, didn't hear Fraser call his name, didn't hear Fraser walk up behind him where he sat on the grass.

"Ray, what are you—" Fraser looked between Ray and Dief's gravestone, pale as death in the strong light. "What—" He shook his head, dazed, and started to back away from Ray. "I—" Fraser turned away from the pity he knew he'd see in Ray's eyes, heading back to the safety of the Consulate.

"It must have been hard, being on your own. The two of you had been together for a long, long time." Fraser stopped in his tracks, his broad back to me. I could see his shoulders rising and falling rapidly as he fought to keep himself under control. "He was just a pup when you found him, wasn't he?"

I got up and limped carefully over to him, reaching out and touching his arm. He was shaking, trembling with the effort of holding back. He was about to explode and the only thing I could do was hold on and try to keep him together.

"C'mere." He tried to turn away, to hide, but I wouldn't let him. There was a brief struggle as I attempted to hug him while he tried to hide his tears, but his heart wasn't in it. I pulled him close, pushing his face into the hollow of my shoulder and laid a kiss on his ear. "It's okay, Fraser."

He shuddered, a strangled sound escaping from his throat.

"It's okay," I crooned, "it's gonna be okay." I held him tight, as tight as I could, running my fingers through his silky hair and rubbing at the back of his neck, feeling the knotted muscles there.

Fraser and Diefenbaker had been lucky. They'd made it through the Smash and the terrible events after it mostly intact. Shaken and disturbed, maybe, but unhurt and alive. Their apartment building on Racine had been structurally damaged by one of the many strange earthquakes that had rumbled through Chicago after the Smash and so they had moved into the Consulate with Inspector Thatcher and Constable Turnbull for safety.

They had expected a short disruption as the American government got back onto its feet, bruised, damaged, but unbroken. It wouldn't be long, they had assumed, until everything was back to normal. Instead, the country had floundered under the weight of confusion and fear, a different voice speaking for the government-in-absentia every few days.

They had huddled by the radio, listening to reports of food and water riots, of coup d'etats and political assassinations around the globe, of virulent diseases and inexplicable events. Horrified, they had listened as a series of tsunami surged inland seven miles and more against the Pacific coast, sweeping everything in its path out to sea. By the time an unprecedented volcano erupted under Lisbon, Portugal, growing several hundred meters high in a matter of weeks and choking the Tagus River with molten lava, they had been numb and detached.

Inspector Thatcher had insisted on trying to get back to Canada before things got any worse; Turnbull had been honor-bound to accompany her. Fraser had thought about joining them, but Diefenbaker had seemed listless and off-color. It hadn't seemed to be an ideal time to be traveling.

Instead, Fraser had promised Inspector Thatcher and Turnbull that as soon as Dief was feeling better they would close up the Consulate and head toward Canada. The Inspector had taken him aside and pointed out that sooner was better than later; things were only going to get worse as time went on. She'd shaken his hand, told him that it'd been a privilege to work with him and wished him luck before ushering Turnbull out the door.

He never heard from them again.

I guided him to the steps by the door, and pushed him down to sit. I pulled at his rigid body until he gave up and leaned against me, trusting me to hold him up and to not let him fall.

He tried to speak, but his voice cracked and broke. He cleared his throat and wiped his damp face with shaking hands before trying again. "Dief had seemed sick—he hadn't been eating very much and his energy levels were down, but when I asked him, he said he was a little depressed and he'd be fine. He was snappish about the whole subject, so I respected his privacy on the matter."

Fraser paused and tried to gather his thoughts. I kept one arm around his shoulders and grabbed his hand with mine, holding onto him, trying to keep him anchored in the here-and-now.

"A week later, Diefenbaker asked me to leave for Canada without him. I scolded him, told him he was being ridiculous, we would go together. We were partners, a pack..." Fraser choked on a sob and buried his face against my neck. "He started getting progressively worse over the next week. He couldn't keep any food down, he didn't even have the energy to get up. Dief started having problems breathing and I used the phone book to try to track down a veterinarian." Fraser's voice was starting to wobble and he was having breathing problems of his own.

I could feel Fraser's tears soaking into my shirt. " Ssshh. Easy," I whispered. "Deep breaths, Fraser."

He did as I told him, concentrating on slowly inhaling, then exhaling. "The two that I'd managed to find were busy with sick and dying people. No one had time to examine a sick half-wolf. Dief kept urging me to leave him behind, to go to Canada now, before it was too late."

Fraser shuddered as I rubbed his back slowly, soothingly. "In less than a week he was gone. I was alone. I—I think I went a little mad, then." He paused and tried to collect his composure.

Fraser lost about six months to his grief. He had no conscious memories of that time.

He woke in someone else's bed, in someone else's underwear, bearded, filthy and terribly thin. He didn't know where he was or how he got there.

Eventually, he got up and explored the tiny apartment he found himself in. Fraser picked his way carefully through the debris on the floor—mostly empty tin cans of food and boxes of dog biscuits. He headed toward what he guessed was the bathroom, but the smell of raw sewage made him stop and reassess his options.

He found some pants, a shirt and shoes that almost fit him and put them on, disturbed and disgusted at his state of slovenliness. Even when on long patrols back in the Territories, he'd never let himself get this repulsive.

"Dief, come!" The words were out of his mouth before he could think about it and it was a moment before the sorrow stole his breath away. "Oh, damn."

After that, I managed to bully him back into bed, silencing his protests with a glare and a kiss.

I cuddled him close, wrapped myself around him, pulled the covers up over our heads and hummed a lullaby my mum had sung to me as a child.

"Już ci nigdy nie uwierzę lskiereczko mała. Najpierw błyśniesz, potem gaśniesz,

Ot i bajka cała."

Hush! Wojtuś won't believe you anymore, little ember. You flicker but for a moment, then you die.

And that's the whole fairy tale.

It was an eerily appropriate song for what had happened to the human race. We'd shone so brightly, only to end up here, lurching to an awkward stop at the edge of a long drop. I still wasn't sure if we were going to tip over or not. Some days, the sheer will-to-live that echoed and resonated from the people in the world was so loud you could almost taste it, feel it vibrate across your skin.

Other days, all you could see was gray despair and hopelessness, people too tired to even lay down and die.

Before long, Fraser's breathing slowed and he relaxed into sleep. I touched his hair, traced a dark eyebrow and let myself drift.

The next few weeks were uneventful. Ray had discovered a small farm that had been inhabited by a survivalist family out in Palos Park and he spent a lot of time bringing back boxes of MREs and high energy food bars, water purification tablets, antibiotics, painkillers, basic first aid supplies, thermal blankets, light sticks, emergency radios, fire starters, camp shovels, chemical toilets and best of all, books.

He argued with Fraser about it, a little, because this wasn't literature, this wasn't the New York Times Bestseller List, these were books written by crackpots survivalists who had actually been right about something for once.

How To Survive When Technology Fails. Gardening During Hard Times. Being Prepared For Any Crisis. Planning For Retreat. The Total Book For Self-Sufficiency. Water Storage After The Fall of Civilization. Living Contentedly Off The Grid. Basic Butchering Techniques. Wilderness Medicine.

An entire set of bookcases dedicated to books on how to survive something like the Smash.

Ray could take these books down to the University. There was a group of people there, mostly what Ray used to call bleeding-heart-do-gooder types, who maintained a bank of working photocopy machines. They'd take useful books like these, photocopy them and then distribute them to people who could use the information, free of charge.

"What, you thought I'd sell this stuff at the Market or something?" I lifted another box of books into the small trailer attached to the Jeep. "I'm not a total asshole, you know."

Fraser looked shame-faced. "I'm sorry, Ray. I didn't mean to imply—"

"S'okay, buddy. I don't you didn't." I sighed, and swiped at the sweat trickling down the back of my neck. "Just, sometimes, it doesn't seem like I do enough to help..." I trailed off, biting my lip. "Sometimes it just feels hopeless, like we're circling around the drain..."

He pulled me into a rough hug, burying his nose behind my ear. When I'd first met him, Fraser had been starved for affection, both physical and emotional. He'd probably been going without for most of his life. It'd taken a few weeks of me sharing his life and his bed before he finally realized he could touch me whenever he wanted, that touching me was expected and appreciated and normal.

I pulled out the picture I'd found tacked up next to the bookcase and looked at it—mom, dad, three beautiful kids of various ages. We hadn't found any sign of them in the house, or in any of the out-buildings. Did they survive the Smash, only to succumb to any one of the many disasters that had followed? "What do you think happened to them? Do you think they made it?"

Fraser wouldn't look at me, just stared into the distance beyond my shoulder. "Human beings have an amazing capacity for survival," he finally said.

I sighed. "You're preveri—pervari—"

"Prevaricating?"

"Yeah, that." I studied the smiling family in the picture again, before sliding it back into the pocket with Stella's picture. "Sometimes I wonder what I'm doing, why I'm still here in Chicago. Sometimes I think I should just hop in the Jeep, hit the road and see where it takes me."

"Why don't you, Ray? There's nothing holding you to Chicago—no family, just friends and acquaintances."

I stared at him in disbelief. I couldn't understand how he didn't know, how he couldn't see what was right in front of his nose. "Fraser, I love you."

"Oh." His voice was small and unsure and he certainly didn't look convinced of my sincerity. After a moment, he replied with a hesitant, "And I you, Ray."

I kissed him, trying to show him with actions how much he meant to me. I'd show him more later, when we got home.

Later that month, they'd run into some trouble and Ray had ended up splattered in bio-sludge, which displeased him enormously. They went back to the Consulate where over the course of an hour they boiled enough water to fill up the bathtub. Once the tub was filled, Ray peeled off his clothes and climbed in, relaxing into his first real bath in what seemed like forever.

While Ray was busy in the bathroom, Fraser carefully picked up the ruined clothes, emptying the pockets of all the flotsam that Ray tended to collect, then tossing them outside. With some effort, he might be able to salvage something out of the clothes.

He sorted through the contents of Ray's pockets and paused to examine the picture of Stella that Ray always carried. He'd never shown it to Fraser and Fraser had been afraid to ask. Too often it seemed like Ray was still very much in love with his ex-wife.

The picture was old, blurry, scratched and faded. Judging by Ray's extremely youthful appearance and the clothes he was wearing, it looked like it'd been taken while he was still in his late teens. He had his arm comfortably around the waist of petite blonde girl who looked up at him, laughing.

She was beautiful and that hit him like a punch in the gut. Fraser hadn't been expecting that and as he looked at the picture, he tried to see what Ray saw in her, searched for the qualities beyond physical attractiveness that had captured his attention, and his devotion.

She had a pretty smile and long, straight hair and as Fraser tried to imagine what she'd look like today, an unpleasant certainty settled into the pit of his stomach. He'd been introduced to her once, a long time ago, before the end of the world.

Ray Vecchio had met, wooed and married Stella shortly before the Smash and she had died with him not long after, both of them victims of some new virulent strain of what Fraser had later deducted from the symptoms to be cholera. It had been fast.

Francesca, disheveled and in shock, had instinctively gone to the Consulate for help. There'd been no one else to turn to—she and Ray had been the last of the Vecchio clan and now Ray was gone.

Fraser had awkwardly patted Francesca's shoulder, made her some tea and had eventually taken her back to the Vecchio residence to help her bury the bodies. The two of them had collapsed in the backyard afterwards, exhausted and lost, the tear-tracks cutting through the dirt smeared on their faces.

They'd had no time to mourn for Ray, or his beautiful wife. They'd been too busy trying to survive.

When I finally felt clean enough to get out of the bathtub, Fraser was gone. He'd left me some stew, rabbit by the smell of it, and a note about needing to run a few errands. I shrugged and ate the food, scavenging some weird-ass bread from the old-fashioned bread box Fraser kept on the kitchen counter. The bread was chewy and nutty and not half bad. Made from amaranth, maybe.

I stood in Fraser's kitchen, barefoot and damp, and felt content for the first time in a long while. The emptiness in my chest, the cold and loneliness I'd felt since me and Stella had gone our separate ways, was missing.

It made me smile for a moment.

And then the stew I'd eaten turned into a hard lump in my stomach. I remembered that every time life seemed to be going well something would come along and knock me on my ass. Please, I thought, please don't take this away from me.

Fraser arrived back at the Consulate a while later, accompanied by a pale and subdued Frannie. They found Ray in front of the building working on the Jeep, loud curses and metallic clanking noises coming from under the hood.

"Ray?"

Ray straightened, wiping his grease-stained hands on a rag he kept stashed in his back pocket. "Fraser." He turned to Frannie and smiled. "Hey, Fran, how are you doing?" He automatically hugged her and pulled back at the tension in her body, the subtle flinch away from his touch. Looking down, Ray noticed that tell-tale traces of tears on her face. "What's wrong?"

"Oh, Ray, I so sorry—please don't be mad at me—"

She burst into tears and Ray hugged her close, rubbing her back soothingly. "It's okay, Frannie. It's okay." He glanced at Fraser, who looked sad and...afraid. "What's going on?"

Fraser took a deep breath, bracing himself. "Francesca has information about your ex-wife that she needs to share with you."

Ray tightened his arms around the weeping woman in his arms and met Fraser's gaze. "Christ. She's dead, isn't she?"

Fraser could only nod, slowly.

He pushed Francesca away and stared down into her face. "Why didn't you tell me before? I showed you her picture, talked about her—" Ray's voice was hard, unforgiving. Frannie just looked at him miserably. "Take me to her," he demanded.

I slammed the hood of the Jeep shut, gathered up my tools and threw them back into the tool box. Both Frannie and Fraser watched me wide-eyed, like they were expecting me to explode at any moment.

"Get in."

They both scrambled to obey, which in any other situation would have been funny. Frannie sat between us, unnaturally quiet while Fraser gave directions.

Twenty minutes later I pulled up to a two-story house in what used to be a solid, middle-class neighborhood. The grass had grown wild, knee high and weedy, but the house was still in pretty good shape, just showing its years a little around the edges. It was the kind of house that was perfect for an extended family.

My parents had lived in a house like this the first few years they were married, living with my paternal grandparents in an effort to save money up to buy their own place. My uncles Józef and Stanisław, their wives and kids and widowed cousin Anna, plus me and my brother. I remember visiting there when I was older; the house had echoed with boisterous Polish voices, laughter and love. Not just a house, but a home.

I'd bet that this house had been like that, Before the Smash. Instead of bigos and pierogi cooking on the stove, it would have been minestrone and stuffed cannelloni. Basta! and Sta zitto! rather than Na zdrowie! and Samknij się! I knew this house, this home, because I'd spent a lot of my childhood in one just like it.

Fraser and Frannie sat watching me as I studied the house. "Show me," I said again, calmer this time. I could feel a strange numbness creeping over me, sucking all the warmth and hope from my heart.

They took me to her.

The backyard, like the front, was overgrown. There was an old, rusty swing set and a picnic table. A typical yard, designed for giggling children to play tag in. Mostly wide open, only a stray bush or two to break up the space.

Frannie had picked a nice spot for Stella's grave, back toward the corner under a blooming lilac tree. Next to Stella was her husband, her second husband, Ray Vecchio. I had heard all about him from Fraser, who'd been his partner, and his friend the whole time Fraser had been in Chicago. According to Fraser's stories, the ones he'd shared during meals and while we'd explored the ruins of the city, Ray Vecchio had been instrumental in helping Fraser catch the killers of his father, the killers whose trail he'd followed to Chicago.

Fraser had told me once that the only reason he'd managed to survive here in the city was because of Ray Vecchio. He'd also told me, hushed as we'd laid in bed, that the memory of Ray Vecchio had been one of the reasons he'd stayed in Chicago, after the Smash. He wanted to help make a difference in the city that Ray had loved so much.

Ray sat down in the grass next to the grave, silent and somber, Stella's picture gripped tightly in his hand. Fraser and Francesca retreated to the picnic table to wait, and to give him some privacy during what had to be a difficult time.

"He's never going to forgive me, is he, Fraser?" He had given Frannie his handkerchief and she nervously twisted it in her hands, winding it between her graceful fingers before pulling it free to start over again.

Fraser looked out at Ray, shoulders hunched, arms wrapped around his long legs, grieving. "I think, deep in his heart, he's known for a while that she was gone. He wasn't ready to admit it yet."

Francesca choked back a sob. "I just didn't want to hurt him more—"

Hugging her awkwardly, he sighed. "I know, Francesca. I know."

"Hey, Stella." My voice was rough. "I miss you. You know that, right?"

I remembered the day I asked her to marry me, my palms sweating and nervousness crawling across my skin, making me twitchy. The serious look on her face as she weighed the pros and cons of taking on a Polak loser with a bad hair cut.

I remembered her smile when she said 'yes' and how it'd made me light-headed and shaky. She'd made me sit and shoved my head down between my knees, laughing and crying and hugging me tight.

I remembered how angry she was the first time she'd had to strike a deal and cut loose a low-life career criminal because the D.A. had bigger fish to fry. And I remembered holding her while she wept when the same low-life criminal robbed a convenience store and killed the Nigerian owner, who'd left behind a devastated husband and two kids.

I remembered when she said the words I hadn't wanted to hear and how much it had hurt: "I can't do this anymore, Ray. I want a divorce."

So many memories, a lifetime of them. It was time to set them aside, the painful edges worn smooth by time and constant handling. Pack them carefully away in a box, mark the box 'done' and get on with my life.

I looked at the photo of us as teenagers, and bit my lip, hard, as my eyes started to tear up. "I hope he made you happy, baby doll."

The trip back was silent. They left Frannie behind and she watched them drive away, framed by her childhood home and quietly fading memories.

Ray drove back to the warehouse automatically, wanting the comfort of the familiar. He was hurting inside. His family was gone, his Stella was dead; all he had left was Fraser and what little bit home he'd made for himself and right now he needed both.

We were sitting at my tiny kitchen table, drinking hot spearmint tea. It helped me relax a little, calming the nerves that had been rattled by our visit to Stella's—my breath caught. Stella's grave.

The power had gone out, again, and I lit a lantern to give us some light. Maybe we would be better off in the darkness. The dark sometimes made it easier to tell the truth.

Fraser was silent, staring down into his teacup like he could see the future in the tea leaves. Maybe he could.

We sat there for a long time, lost in our own thoughts. I couldn't shake the image of Stella's face, her sharp intelligence lighting up her eyes and making her so beautiful.

My Gold Coast girl. Best friend, lover, wife, better half. Soul mate, for a time. I'd held her in my heart, loving her as best I could. She'd been mine. A moment later and she was gone, forever out of my reach.

I'd known she was dead, but for all these years I'd had some hope of her surviving, somehow, somewhere. I should have known better.

"I loved her." I heard Fraser sigh. "I mean—I loved her, but I wasn't in love with her anymore. I hadn't been in love with her for years."

Fraser just stared down at his porcelain cup, fidgeting with it, rotating the cup a quarter turn, again and again. His big hands made the cup look tiny. "I see."

I reached across the table and took his hand in mine, squeezing it. Fraser was here, with me. Solid, warm, alive. Stella had been my past; Fraser was my future. I just had to convince him of it. "Hey, look at me."

I didn't think he was going to do it. He kept staring into his cup. Slowly, he looked up, eyes shadowed and wary, like someone who was expecting to be told 'no,' someone who'd heard 'no' too many damn times in his life.

"I love you, Fraser." I'd told him before, but I don't think it had really sunk in.

He looked shocked. "Ray—you don't have to say that—I don't expect—"

I interrupted his stuttering. "I love you." I dropped a kiss on the back of his hand.

There was a flush high on his cheeks and he kept looking over my shoulder, like he couldn't meet my eyes. "Ray, I don't think you really—"

"Okay, that's it." I stood up quickly and pulled him out of his chair. Luckily I managed to surprise him; otherwise I never would have gotten him out of the chair. He outweighed me by a good twenty pounds and those pounds made a big difference.

I grabbed the lantern and pulled him toward the bed. If he wouldn't—couldn't believe the words, then maybe showing him would convince him.

All I could do was try. And keep trying until he believed it.

Ray set the lantern on top of his dresser and pushed Fraser to sit down on the edge of the bed. Kneeling, Ray untied Fraser's ancient hiking boots, noting absently that one of the laces was getting ragged and would need to be replaced soon. He was pretty sure he had a spare that would work, and then he pushed away thoughts of extra laces and scuffed boots.

He unbuttoned and stripped off Fraser's flannel shirt, and the carefully mended undershirt beneath it, revealing the expanse of Fraser's chest, so pale in the faint light from the lantern. His fingers briefly skated over the visible scars, his hands followed the smooth curve of Fraser's ribs, settling in the hollow of his waist. He leaned, laying his head against Fraser's sternum and listening for a moment to the steady thump-thump thump-thump of his heartbeat.

Fraser wrapped his arms around Ray in a hug, holding him, just holding him as the rhythm of their breathing gradually became synchronized.

A duet. That's what we are, a duet, partners, two halves of a whole. Yeah, that worked for me.

I inhaled deeply, smelling musk and male and Fraser. It made my mouth water. I moved my head and nuzzled at a flat nipple, sending goosebumps racing across his skin.

"Ray—"

"Ssshh." I moved my hands back up his sides, thumbs extended. "Let me do this for you." I felt Fraser relax, slowly, his hands sliding back, slipping under my shirt to rest at the waistband of my jeans, the backs of his warm fingers just barely touching my skin.

I dragged my palms across the muscles of his chest, rubbing against his nipples and listening to the sound of his breathing as it got faster and more labored. I licked them, flicked them into hardness with my tongue and heard the gasp that Fraser tried to stifle. He was really sensitive. "You like that?"

He blushed. "Mmmmm."

I grinned. "Cat got your tongue?" I cupped a hand behind his head and drew him down, kissing him, licking at his mouth, coaxing him to open to me. He did, and he was wet and warm and tasted of mint. I touched his tongue with mine, stroking it then backing off to nip at his bottom lip. "Nope, it's still there." I dove back in for another kiss, keeping it light, teasing him by pulling back when he tried to go deeper.

"Ray," he breathed, "please..."

"Ssshh." I let him kiss me, and while he was distracted I let go of his head and blindly found the button on his jeans. I flicked it open, eased the zipper down and reached in. The fabric of his boxers was thin with age and he was hot and hard behind the softness of cloth.

The back of my fingers brushed against his cock and he gasped into my mouth. I broke the kiss and went back to his nipples, the sweet-salt-sweat taste of him making me want more. I wrapped my fingers around his dick and slowly stroked, feeling the extra slide of his foreskin. I loved the feel of him in my hand. I mapped out the geography of his body with my mouth, tracing the ridge and curve of muscles with gentle bites, followed the path of dark, soft hair with my mouth, down to where it disappeared into his jeans.

Ray reached up and pushed on Fraser's chest until he fell back against the bed, propping himself up on his elbows to watch Ray intently. Ray nuzzled at his bellybutton and he laughed, twisting away from the ticklish sensation. Grabbing Fraser's hips, Ray stilled him and moved lower.

"Ray—Ray—you don't have to—Ray!" Fraser yelped as Ray nipped at him, leaving behind a reddened mark.

Kissing the mark, Ray mumbled, "I told you to shush." He tugged on the waistband of the pants. "Lift up."

Fraser flexed and arched his back a little, allowing Ray to pull his boxers and jeans off. He wasn't totally comfortable, naked on the bed while Ray leaned over him still fully dressed, and he blushed hotly. "Wait, Ray—I—"

"Sssh."

Unexpectedly, Fraser twisted and rolled, using his greater weight to trap Ray under him, pressing their bodies together from chest to thigh. He dipped his head and kissed the surprised expression off of Ray's face. "No, Ray. It's my turn to take care of you."

Ray opened his mouth to argue, to deny, but the truth in Fraser's blue eyes stopped him cold. He swallowed hard and nodded, slowly. "Okay."

"Thank you." Fraser kissed him again, humming softly when Ray opened his mouth and let him in. Reaching up, Ray buried his hands in Fraser's hair, loving the silky slide of the dark strands between his fingers. He twisted his head and moaned, wanting more of the heat and wetness of Fraser's mouth. He was addicted to the taste of him, sweet and dark and uniquely Fraserish.

Fraser methodically stripped Ray's clothes off, exploring the firm muscles and golden skin, tasting with his tongue, testing texture with his teeth. Fraser left little red marks behind in the bend of Ray's elbow, behind his knee, on his left shoulder. He tasted every part of Ray, intrigued by the flavors he found on the length of Ray's leg, pooled in the dip above his buttocks, hidden by his collar bones.

Ray had never given Fraser the opportunity to explore, had never trusted himself enough to let go and give himself over to Fraser. Now, Fraser was making up for lost time. There wasn't a part of Ray's body that he didn't touch, with his mouth or his fingers. Ray couldn't hold back anymore; all he could do was drift along helplessly in the currents of pleasure Fraser drew from his body.

By the time Fraser wrapped his fingers around Ray's erection, Ray was panting and shivering, pushing into Fraser's hand. "Fraser—please—"

"Tell me what you want, what you need, Ray." That was what it always came down to between them. Want. Need.

Fraser's words, spoken in a rough, husky voice, sent a cascade of sparks through Ray's body. He groaned, arching his back, searching for more friction. "Fuck me, fuck me, fuck—"

Fraser kissed him, hard. "Roll over for me," he muttered against Ray's mouth, coaxing him with a gentle hand on his shoulder. He reached for the bottle of lubricant while Ray scrambled to his hands and knees. Leaning down, he bit Ray's buttock, smiling at his yelp before soothing the bite with another kiss.

Opening the bottle, he carefully coated his index finger before pushing in slowly, steadily, listening to the rhythm of Ray's breathing, keeping an ear open for any sign of distress. He paused, waiting for Ray to relax and open to him. "Okay?" He rubbed his cheek against Ray's sweat-slick skin, darting out his tongue to steal a taste.

Ray's head hung low, his hair brushing the pillow, sheets clenched tightly in his hands. "God. Fraser." He paused, breathing fast and shallow. "Fuck. More."

Fraser gave him more, until Ray was rocking insistently back against his fingers, gasping and groaning. Fraser couldn't wait any longer. He applied the lubrication to his erection, grabbed Ray's hips and pushed steadily into him, gritting his teeth at the heat and tightness. He bit the inside of his cheek, trying to keep his orgasm at bay for just a little longer.

"Oh." Ray's voice was small and shaky.

"Ray?"

"You're a part of me."

Fraser wrapped his arms around Ray and hugged him. "Yes, Ray."

"Don't leave me." He sounded lost, and a little scared.

Fraser pulled back slowly, paused, and then moved forward again. "I won't."

They moved together like they were dancing, their groans and the rattling of the bed a loud counterpoint to their rocking movements. Ray had been reduced to single words panted out between grunts and whimpers, while Fraser kept his eyes closed and concentrated on giving as much pleasure to Ray as he could.

When Ray stiffened and shook, moaning gutturally, tremors twisting his body, Fraser let go of his tightly held control and let the pleasure wash him away.

I roused myself long enough to roll onto my side, cuddling up to Fraser's warm body. I was exhausted and sore and as I drifted off to sleep, I could feel Stella's presence watching over me.

Fraser woke up and carefully climbed out of bed, trying not to disturb Ray. The last couple of days had been difficult for him, and the sleep would do him good. He still looked sad and exhausted to Fraser's eyes. Maybe he always would. Stella had been a part of Ray's life for so long Before the Smash—

It wasn't doing his nerves any good to dwell on such thoughts. He took a quick sponge bath and changed into clean clothes, gathering the dirty ones and folding them up carefully until he had a chance to wash them.

In the kitchen, he tidied up what little mess had been made the previous night and brewed some fresh tea for himself, enjoying the early morning quiet.

There was a soft scuttling sound behind him, but when he turned, he saw nothing. He idly wondered if Ray had pests of some sort—maybe rats or mice, or possibly that new breed of cockroaches that had been turning up around the city. Fraser shuddered. There was something inherently wrong with insects that big.

He heard the sound again, and this time, when he looked, he saw a pair of pointed fuzzy ears sticking up from behind a box. A moment later, several furry faces popped up to look at him with wide, curious eyes. Cats, not rats. Or kittens, as the case happened to be.

Fraser wondered if Ray knew he had an infestation of kittens and found himself charmed by the irony of it.

Growing up in the far north, Fraser hadn't been exposed to many pets. The harsh conditions made pets something of a luxury. Sled dogs were a different story. They were working animals; often necessary for travel over long distances. Cats—the only cats he'd ever seen, outside of wild lynxes and bobcats, were barn cats.

Crouching down, Fraser sat on the floor to appear less threating and clicked his tongue against his teeth, making the universal cat-calling sound, not sure if it would work with feral cats.

When I woke up, Fraser was gone, but I could hear him puttering around in the kitchen. He hadn't gone far, then. He was talking to himself, and the indistinct sound of his voice rising and falling was strangely soothing.

I let myself drowse for a little while longer, warm under the blankets that smelled like me and Fraser. I wasn't ready to get out of bed and face the world.

Some small part of me was still mourning Stella, I know. I felt lost, remembering being thirteen years old and seeing Stella as a striking girl with ribbons in her hair. We'd held all the potential in the universe in our hands. It was gone now, nothing but dust and ashes remained.

There were no second chances, no do-overs left for Stella and me. We'd made our choices all those years ago and now she was gone.

I had to live in the now. And my now included this man that I'd come to love. Benton Fraser, who was crazy, intense, brave and broken.

Yeah, okay, I could face the world now.

Fraser wasn't sure if it was the tongue clicking or the natural playfulness of kittens, but it took just a few minutes for them to stop being afraid of him and to leave the shelter of the boxes.

As they came out into the open, Fraser got a good look at them and wished he hadn't. Close to a dozen brown and gray tiger-striped kittens, bouncy and fluffy and deformed. It hurt to look at them.

In spite of their deformity, it wasn't long before he had kittens climbing up his back, kittens batting at his fingers, kittens tussling in his lap, all soft fur and tiny, prickly claws. Out of the corner of his eye he could see several older cats, likely young juveniles, watching warily.

He tickled the belly of one of the kittens, unable to stop the smile that bloomed on his face as it attacked his finger with kitten-ferociousness.

Eventually, I got out of bed, stretching, wincing at the soreness in some of my muscles. The bum leg was achy and stiff. It sucked getting old. I washed up and sniffed at yesterday's clothes—nope, they were too rank to wear again. I dug out some clean clothes, listening to the murmur of Fraser's voice, still talking to himself.

Or maybe he was discussing things with Dief. I'd been too worried to bring that particular subject up and I didn't know if we would go to go back to pretending that Dief was still alive. Didn't know if that was a good thing or a bad thing, either. Intro to Psych didn't cover these kinds of things, plus it'd been well over ten years since I'd taken that class.

I went into the kitchen and found Fraser sitting on the floor with the kittens. Well, at least he wasn't talking to himself, or Dief. "I see you've met the cats."

I poured myself a cup of tea and wished for the millionth time that it was coffee. Some plant disease had sprung up after the Smash, decimating most of the coffee plantations in South America and Africa. The shifting climate had made the tropic-loving coffee plants even harder to grow.

On rare occasions a shipment of coffee would make it into Chicago but I couldn't even dream of affording any. Tea was easier to grow and therefore cheaper, and I'd learned how to make it strong enough to stand a spoon up it. It wasn't the same, though.

Before the Smash, an occasional headline would scream "Six-legged cow heralds the apocalypse!" or "Four-legged duckling shocks owner!" Birth defects were not uncommon in animals, and extra-legged (polymelia) animals and even people had been well documented through the years. Most times, such defects could be attributed to a conjoined twin that degenerated except for the extra limbs; in rare cases it was due to forking along the wrong body axis.

Either way, the extra limbs were usually non-functional or located in the wrong place. Before the Smash, if the animal survived birth, surgery was usually necessary to remove the extra limbs.

These cats, from the leery adults to the playful kittens, had six perfectly formed, perfectly working legs. They walked and ran and pounced and tumbled like they were supposed to have six legs, like it was the most natural thing in the world.

I sat down next to Fraser, handing him his still-warm tea, close enough to brush shoulders with him. "Cute, aren't they?"

Fraser was closely examining a kitten paw, squeezing gently to get the claw to pop out. "Ray, they're—it's wrong—. Surely something is causing these birth defects...some chemical or source of radiation or something..."

Taking another sip of my tea, I shook my head. "Nope. I had a biologist-type, used to work at UC, come and look at them after the first litter of kits were born. This is a true mutation, a favorable one, she said, not a—whatchamacallit—a—a—" I snapped my fingers, hoping to remember the word. "Teratogenic! She said it wasn't a teratogenic birth defect."

I wiggled my fingers at a kitten, enticing it to pounce playfully. "She said that normally it would take a lot of time and a lot of luck for cats to mutate like this. Something about the Smash—she's been seeing a lot of impossible large scale changes happening over a short time." I shrugged.

Fraser carefully peeled a kitten off his shoulder where it was trying to nibble on his ear. It rolled over in his hand and did its best to look adorable. "Hmmm."

"Kowalski cats. That's what she's going to call them. She's writing a paper on them, but she wants to examine their insides and I told her she couldn't do that until one of them died naturally." I grinned. "Hey, they're the world's only six-legged cats. My fifteen minutes of fame, some day." One of the older cats came over and curled up in my lap, purring.

I leaned against his warmth. "The world is changing, Fraser. We've got to make the best of it, for however long we have left. Together."

"Indeed." He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me closer. "Together."

Love is enough: though the World be a-waning,

          And the woods have no voice but the voice of complaining,

          Though the sky be too dark for dim eyes to discover

The gold-cups and daisies fair blooming thereunder,

Though the hills be held shadows, and the sea a dark wonder,

          And this day draw a veil over all deeds pass'd over,

Yet their hands shall not tremble, their feet shall not falter;

The void shall not weary, the fear shall not alter

          These lips and these eyes of the loved and the lover.

From Love Is Enough: Song I by William Morris, 1872

-fin-

End untune the sky by Akamine chan

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untune the sky