Title: Painful Lessons
Author: Erika
Feedback: funhapjoy@yahoo.com
Pairing: RayK/other, RayK/Fraser implied
Rating: Slash
Disc: yadda, yadda, yadda ... the only things I own are my bed, computer, books and bookcase. Everything else belongs to my parents, the government and the aliens.
My alien is nodding!
/weird beta/
Summary: What is pain? Have you ever loved someone so much it hurt to even breathe?
Beta reader: Pollyanna, who is writing weirdly fantastic, creepy Highlander fic. /Kid who wants to read more of Cruella's fic/ Hmm, I wonder if I should again kidnap her Gorilla. Here, King Kong ... see a banana. P.S. I have a pic of him doing the Monster dance.
Also would like to thank Sylvie, for helping us pick the correct version.
Dedicated: To Carla.
website: http://www.crosswinds.net/~carlajane/EEpart00.html
Mailing List: http://www.egroups.com/group/EvilChild

Ray moved away from the windows and sat down on the couch. He ran his thumb across his eyebrow to his temple. Thinking. Reflecting. He thought back, measuring the steps he had taken leading him to the here and now. Ray sprawled back on the couch, his eyes closed, thinking back to a time before Fraser. A time when he thought he had nothing left to lose.

Whispering in the empty apartment, with only his turtle to bear witness to his rambling, he recounted the steps he had taken.

"I don't know when I first fell in love with you. Was it the first time you called my name? Was it the first time you called me friend? Or was it the first time you looked beyond the cover and saw the man?" Ray paused briefly, remembering back to a darker time.

"When I was first approached about this job, all I could think about was how this was a new beginning. Here I could start again. No baggage. No hurt. It seemed so simple. So right. Back then, I had truly thought I understood pain. After all, over the years, pain and I had become friends. Buds." He stopped, as his heart again felt the agony it had learned to experience. "By then I had lost Stella. My California girl. My California dream was gone. The only dream I've ever had," he thought sadly. "The only dream, I had allowed myself to have. How much of a freak could I have been?" He shifted in his seat, feeling again the butterflies and nervousness that attacked him whenever he thought of his ex-wife.

"Maybe if I had been stronger, more sure of myself, more sure of who I was." He threw the pillow on the floor. "Damn!" he shouted loudly. "Damn," he whispered softly. He got up and retrieved the discarded pillow, bringing it close to him. Hugging it, wishing the pillow was someone else instead.

"You see," he bitterly laughed, "along the way I had lost myself. Over the years I had been so many people. Answered to so many names. Bob, Mark, Ted, Craig ..." he listed them disregarding their order only remembering what each persona had eventually cost him. He went over to the cabinet and picked up the picture of Stella and him, at a happier far more uncomplicated time. A picture that captured the moment, where everything had been well with his world.

Ray put the picture down and moved back to the couch. He put the pillow beside him.

"When I was first told about this assignment, I must admit that one of the reasons I accepted it was to answer my overwhelming need for someone, anyone, to call me Ray. I could have. After all, I could have picked whichever assignment I wanted. I was a chameleon. A man with no identity. No family. I had nothing to lose, but also nothing to live for. They gave me an option. I could either work with a Mountie and experience a semi-normal existence. Mostly desk-work I was told, nothing strenuous or I could work undercover in vice, fighting drug dealers and other scum of the earth. But I was so tired. My marriage had ended. My life had ended. I was a body without a soul."

Ray again got up, his body rebelling against the forced stillness. The tired cop walked over to where he kept his pet turtle. "I admit it," he told his confessor. "I was weak. A Mountie? What is wrong with a Mountie, I'd thought? If only I had known. I thought I had experienced it all. I thought the pain of losing Stella would have prepared me, but I was wrong. So wrong." Ray looked out at the window to the clear sunny day that mocked the turbulent spirits resting within him. Sunny like Fraser, Ray thought.

"I had no idea what pain was until I met you," he whispered as though afraid that even in this solitary room, his secret would somehow be carried to ears that heard everything except Ray's beating heart.

You keep staring at me, Fraser thought with concern. When I asked you what was wrong you became defensive and withdrawn. Lately you have been so quiet and distant. Focussed solely on your job and nothing else.

We don't communicate anymore. I have run out of stories and anecdotes to share with you, and instead all there exists between us is silence. Oh we talk, about the cases we are working on and the suspects we should apprehend, but it is not the same.

I had thought ... I had thought we had worked through this. That once we decided not to accept the transfers things would go back to normal. It did for a while, that is, until you started to withdraw, spending less time with me and more time by yourself. I was concerned. I needed to know if you were in any danger and your place really was not that far from the Consulate, and Dief needed the exercise.

It become a daily routine. You would drop me off at the Consulate and after supper I would walk Diefenbaker to your place. Every night I would wait outside looking up at your window yearning to take that extra step and knock at your door, but something held me back. Something kept me outside. Outside looking in. Catching glimpses of you as you danced alone. Whom did you think of as you danced? Was it Stella? At one time I had hoped that it would have been ... but no longer.

Pain. Before I met you I thought I knew what pain was, how else could I describe what I felt when Stella left me. I was wrong. Pain was in loving someone who could not love you in return. Pain was in knowing that every time you called my name you were instead calling someone else. Pain was in knowing that I was a convenient stop while you waited to go to your true destination, Vecchio. Ray closed his eyes trying to forget the image of Fraser the first time they met. A Fraser who was expecting to see his friend only to find his doppelganger.

I couldn't take it anymore. I needed to get away and refocus; to learn how to breathe again and to learn how to live. I had hoped at the beginning of our partnership I would be able to put the past behind me but instead it had gotten worst. I had to start anew. To start fresh, where there were no memories of you and I no longer had to compete with your memories of him, the man I had replaced. The man we both protected, by having you call me friend and by having me answer to that man's name. I am tired of feeling second best. I swore after Stella ... I swore. If I can't have you then I guess it is time I moved on, time I accepted the inevitable that I never had a chance to be with you.

You kept staring at me when I told you I was going to take off for a few days. I wondered if you knew? I wonder if you knew that I would not be coming back.

No. You can't! You weren't supposed to leave me. You have to come back. You have to. Why do I get the feeling you are not coming back? Four days you said. You will be gone for only four days.

Every night Diefenbaker and I would walk to your place hoping to see a light but your apartment was always dark. On the final night, I saw a light at your window and as we hurried to cross the street and reach your place, I saw a silhouette. I stood across the street from your apartment building. I stood and watched as a man approached you and gathered you in his arms. Stood and watched as he kissed you. Stood and watched as you turned off the lights and darkness settled.

I travelled to New York City hoping that in its vastness I would better be able to lose myself and hide from all those who would later seek me.

I had decided to take a walk, get to know the city and as I walked toward the park I saw a crime take place. It seems that I could get in trouble even without having Fraser at my side.

Things happened so fast. One moment I was enjoying the beautiful sunny day, and the next moment I was running toward danger with no back up in a strange city -- with no gun. It seemed the gods were smiling down at me that day. I was shot at but he missed. I lived. He didn't.

I was not expecting this to happen. I had come here to escape my own problems, to find a new perspective, to prepare myself for the end of a partnership not to start a new one. But how could I resist you. I turned around and there you were, the answer to my dreams. Fraser but not Fraser.

You were even from up north, polite, a cop, had worked vice, and were now working undercover. You understood the difficulties I was experiencing, you listened, and when you kissed me I forgot everything but the feel of you in my arms.

Here we were, two people who wanted to get away from their present lives. You wanted to again experience the freedom of movement, something that your current assignment did not permit, and I wanted to again experience life.

He couldn't move. All night he had stood across the street from Ray's apartment building. All night he had stood, unable to move. How could he move when his unspoken dreams were being shattered right in front of him? He held no illusions. At least that was what he had told himself. Ray had never hinted he was interested in deepening their relationship. Their partnership. Friendship to something else. Never was the right word.

Was that why you kept staring at me, my friend? Did you hope I'd make the first move?

Fraser heard Diefenbaker's whine and finally glanced down at the wolf. "Yes, we will be leaving," Fraser told Dief, but did he mean leaving this corner or leaving Chicago? That was a question to which he still had no answers.