Author's webpage: http://victoria.tc.ca/~wy236/fic.html
<PRE>
Ray Kowalski watched in alarm as his partner hit the ground. Falling was not something Fraser usually did. But he supposed that even Fraser miscalculated sometimes. The Mountie had been pursuing a suspect and had rounded a corner and run right smack into a lamp post. If Ray hadn't seen it with his own (admittedly weak) eyes, he wouldn't have believed it.
Ray walked over to the Mountie and offered him a hand. The suspect had long since vanished into the throng of people on the sidewalk, but he was a minor annoyance, a pickpocket, not someone terribly dangerous. Ray could always come back and look for him later. "You okay there, Fraser?" he asked.
Fraser looked up at the man standing over him. "Who are you ?" he asked. He couldn't remember ever having seen the blonde man before.
"C'mon, Fraser, stop playing games. I'm your partner, Ray."
"You're not my partner. Ray Vecchio is my partner."
Ray groaned. Were they going to go through all of this again? What did Fraser think he was doing?
"Fraser, we went through all of this months ago. Why are you bringing it up again? Welsh explained everything to ya. Ray Vecchio is undercover, and I'm undercover pretendin' to be him. Remember?"
Ben sat up and rubbed his head. "Well, no, frankly, I don't remember. Could you tell me who you are and what just happened here?"
Oh. Fraser had struck his head - he must have amnesia again. Kowalski had heard about an incident when that had happened before, when the Real Ray Vecchio was still around. Well, first thing he'd have to do is take Fraser to the hospital. Damn. He hated hospitals. Well, at least he wouldn't be the patient.
"C'mon, Benton-Buddy," said Ray. "You hit yer head. I'm taking you to the hospital."
Fraser looked at him with suspicion. "How do I know I can trust you?" he asked. "You could be making up all of this."
The man who called himself Ray pulled out his badge and showed it to Fraser. Sure enough, it said that this man was Ray Vecchio. Fraser acquiesed and got into the blonde man's car. He tried to figure out what he should do.
"So, according to you," he said hesitantly, "Ray Vecchio is undercover, and you are pretending to be him? You don't look anything alike!"
Ray - should he call him 'Ray'? - shrugged. "I know," he said. "But dat didn't seem to matter to the feds."
Ray remembered that Fraser had told him about another time when he'd had amnesia. "Fraser, do you remember having amnesia once before?"
The Canadian thought for a moment. "Yes, yes I do. I fell off the back of a truck and hit my head. Are you saying I've lost my memory?"
"Yes, dat is exactly what I'm sayin'. Do you remember where you live?"
"221 West Racine," answered the Mountie.
"No, you live at the Consulate. Who's the Civilian Aide at the precinct?"
"Elaine Besbriss."
"Nope, it's Frannie."
"Oh dear," said Fraser. He was terribly confused. This man was telling him all these things that he apparently did not remember. He looked at the detective. The story he'd just been told sounded too fantastic to believe, but the man did have Ray Vecchio's badge. And Diefenbaker was in the car, too, acting as if he belonged there.
The hospital confirmed that Fraser did have amnesia as well as a mild concussion The doctor suggested that Ray take Fraser to places that would be familiar to him. Ray thanked him and took Fraser out to the car.
"So, Fraser, when this happened to you before, what did Vecchio do to make your memory come back?"
"He took me to places that would have some meaning to me, places we had been together, ones from cases we'd worked on," answered the Mountie.
"Okay, I got just da place," announced Kowalski, and he drove to the cemetery. He escorted Fraser to a crypt. "Remember dis place?" he asked.
Fraser stared at the tomb. "No, should I?" he asked.
"Marcus Ellery? The eclipse? Ray Vecchio's birthday, you gave me a dream catcher?"
"Why would I give you a dream catcher if it was Ray Vecchio's birthday?" Ben asked the man who called himself his partner.
They entered the tomb. "You said that I was bein' Vecchio, an' it was Vecchio's birthday, so I should get a present," he answered. "Remember anything now?"
Fraser walked around the dark crypt. Something nagged at the corner of his mind. He looked at the blonde detective, and heard a voice saying, "You find me attractive?" He shook his head. Surely 'Ray' wouldn't ask that of another man!
"What were we doing in here?" Ben asked.
"Waiting for a guy named Marcus Ellery. I had a score to settle with him. While we waited for him to show I told you a bit about my life, my ex-wife, stuff like that."
"You were married?"
"Yeah, I was, to a Gold Coast girl. She's an assistant States Attorney. You don't remember me tellin' you any of that?"
"No, Ray, I don't. All I remember is .. well, it can't be accurate. It must be a figment of my imagination."
"What is it? Tell me, an' I'll tell ya if it's somethin' that really happened, if I remember it," Ray encouraged him.
Fraser blushed slightly. "I think I remember your asking me if I found you attractive."
"Yeah, I asked you dat. So?"
"So, then - what does that mean? Why did you ask me that?"
"I asked you cause I wanted to know. I'm not good at judging myself objectively. So I asked you."
"Oh." Fraser decided to change the subject. "What else did we talk about while we were here?"
"You said you had read my service record, an' that you'd be proud to call me your partner ... and your friend."
"And are we friends?" asked Ben.
"Course we're friends! Why d'you think I'd be draggin' you out to a cemetery to try an' get your memory back if I wasn't your friend?" Then it dawned on him. "Oh! You thought that since I asked you if you found me attractive that we were... that I was .. no, Benton-Buddy, we're friends. Just friends."
"Ah," replied Fraser. He felt slightly disappointed. This Ray was an attractive man. And he did seem to care about Fraser.
"Okay, enough of dis place. Let's go somewhere else," said Ray.
They ended up on the shore of Lake Michigan. "Remember what happened here?" Ray asked nervously.
"No, I don't. What happened?" asked his friend.
"I popped ya in the face," said Ray, slightly ashamed.
"You hit me? Why did you do that? I thought you said we were friends."
"Yeah, well, I, uh ... I was upset. You made me jump into the water to get away from some guys that were chasin' us. An' I couldn't swim. So I got mad."
"So then what happened? We're still partners, so somehow we must have worked things out."
Ray told Fraser the entire story of the Robert Mackenzie case. The stolen gold, the toxic waste, the pirates, and the replica of HMS Bounty. Even the 'buddy-breathing.' Fraser listened and didn't say anything.
"So, you said you weren't going to take your transfer, an' I decided not to take mine, and here we are." He cleared his throat and said softly, "You saved my life."
"Only after I endangered it," Ben stated.
"I've kinda gotten used to that," Ray answered. "Not like you don't endanger yerself ten times as much as you do me."
"But that's my choice," replied Fraser.
"Yeah, an' it's my choice to be friends and partners with you," Kowalski said. "You're my partner, an' if you're gonna put yerself in danger, I'm gonna be there to back you up." Suddenly a thought occurred to him. "C'mon, there's somewhere else we gotta go."
Fraser followed his partner, wondering about the sudden change in the man's demeanour. He'd talked about being Fraser's backup, and suddenly it was as if a dark cloud had settled over him. A bad memory?
They arrived at a building that had once been a nightclub but that was now closed and locked up. "What is this place?" asked Ben.
"Used to be a club that belonged to Willy Warfield."
"And who is Willy Warfield?"
"Mob guy. Thanks to you we were able to bring him in."
Fraser noticed that Ray wouldn't look at him. "What happened here, Ray?" he asked. "Something serious? Did someone get hurt?"
"You did," the detective answered in a voice barely above a whisper.
The Mountie placed a gentle hand on Ray's shoulder. "Tell me," he said.
"Okay, Warfield was a real bad guy. But we could never get enough evidence against him to lock him away. You saw him hit a busboy in a restaurant and you wanted to arrest him, but no one would admit to seeing anything. So then you decided you were gonna shame Warfield into giving himself up. You stood outside this club day an' night, tryin' to disrupt his business.
"But Warfield didn't take very kindly to that idea, an' he had some of his associates work you over. They beat you. I wasn't here to back you up. Someone called me to come get you. When I got here an' saw you in that alley ... I thought you were dead. An' it was all my fault."
"No, it wasn't your fault. I chose to stand out here on my own. It's not your job to babysit me."
"But I'm your partner! I'm supposed to back you up! I wasn't here, and you got hurt. They could have killed you, an' Warfield would've gotten away with it like he has so many other times."
"Ray, I didn't get killed. And you said that Warfield is no longer in business, so obviously you were able to take him in to custody. Everything turned out all right, didn't it?"
"This time," muttered Ray.
"Not just this time. You've been there for me many times. Who else would crash a motorcycle through a window or jump through a skylight because he thought I was in danger?"
A wide grin split Kowalski's face. "You remember those times?" he asked excitedly.
Fraser thought for a moment. "Yes, I remember, Ray. I don't know if I remember quite everything, but things are coming back to me."
"That's greatness, Fraser. I'm glad. C'mon, I'll take ya back to the Consulate. You probably need some rest an' recovery time."
So Ray returned his partner to the Canadian Consulate. Then he went to his own home. He sighed to himself. //What would've happened if I'd told him we were more than friends?// Ray wondered. //Of course, as soon as he got his memory back he'd know it wasn't true.//
Fraser was doing some thinking of his own. He felt as if he had gotten to know Ray Kowalski all over again. And what he'd seen had surprised him. Ray obviously cared for him a great deal. He had gone to a lot of trouble to try and restore Ben's memory, and had done it at no minor inconvenience to himself. Whatever plans he'd had for this day had been pushed aside as soon as Fraser had been injured. He'd taken Ben to places that held some disturbing memories, memories of times he'd obviously felt that he'd betrayed his partner.
He had to talk to Ray, and soon.
Meanwhile, Ray was feeling sorry for himself. //Fraser didn't remember me// he thought. //He hit his head and all of a sudden it's like I don't exist. Not like he lost his entire memory the way he did that time with Vecchio. He only forgot *me*. Guess that goes to show how important I am in his life. He still thinks of Vecchio as his partner. Me, I'm just some guy he hangs around with to keep Vecchio's cover. Well, I'll tell him he doesn't have to do that. I'll have to work on one or two cases with him to keep up appearances, but it's not like we have to be together 24/7.// He sighed. //Even though I want us to be.// But he was quite certain that would never happen.
When had Benton Fraser become so important in his life? He'd suddenly shown up in the precinct one day, completely bewildered as to where his partner had gone, and then they'd been thrown into the serial arson case. Fraser had taken his fingerprints, measured his face and made him eat a sandwich filled with window putty. Then, when Greta Garbo had shot him, Fraser had gone ballistic. And when he'd subdued Garbo, he'd bent over Ray, so full of concern Ray had almost hated to tell him he was all right.
Yeah, Ray had it bad. And he didn't know what the hell to do about it.
There was a knock at his door. Who would be visiting him at this time? It wasn't like he had a lot of friends. And Stella certainly wouldn't be coming to see him. She'd made that real clear at Christmas with her "In the spirit of the season, drop dead" comment. He went to the door and discovered Fraser on the other side.
"I see you remembered where I live," Ray said.
"As I told you earlier, I believe that my memory has returned. However, I can't really say if all of it has, because I can't remember if I have forgotten anything," the Mountie said with a small smile.
"Well, uh, come on in, Fraser." Ray moved aside to allow his partner entrance. "What can I do for ya?"
"I wanted to thank you for helping me to recover my memory today, Ray," said Ben. "It meant a lot to me."
Ray shrugged. "Ehhh, that was nothing. Big fat hairy deal. What are friends for?"
Ben stepped forward in to his partner's space. "And are we friends, Ray?"
Kowalski swallowed hard, suddenly finding breathing to be difficult. "You forgotten that already?" he asked.
"Not at all, Ray. Even when I had forgotten our partnership, our friendship, I could still tell by your actions that you cared for me. What I am wondering is ... could there be more to our relationship?"
"Fraser, I already told ya there wasn't. Besides, what kind of relationship have we got? Vecchio is your partner. I'm just his stand-in. You don't have to hang out with me all the time just to keep his cover."
"But I want to 'hang out' with you, Ray. You're my friend as well as my partner."
Ray frowned. "What are you trying to say here, Fraser?" he asked. "You forgot me soon enough when you hit your head. You didn't forget *him.*"
Fraser rubbed his eyebrow. "Ray, I don't understand what caused me to develop partial amnesia and not full amnesia. But when I lost my memory, it was as if I had met you for the first time. I saw you differently than I usually do. And you - you went out of your way to help me. I don't know what plans you had for today, if there were things you would have rather been doing than helping me get my memory back, but you just put everything aside to help me. And I felt drawn to you, even though I didn't even know who you were. I wanted to stay with you. I didn't want to get my memory back if it meant that you would leave me. And when I *did* get my memory back, I put it all together and I realized that I love you."
"How do ya know that you don't just love me like a friend?" asked Ray skeptically.
Ben put his hand on Ray's cheek. "Because I don't want to do *this* to any of my other friends," he said, moving his hand around to the back of Ray's head and pulling the other man close. He kissed his partner gently, tentatively.
Ray shuddered and pulled back, ending the kiss, but didn't move away entirely. "What do you want, Fraser?"
"I want you, Ray."
"What do you want from me?"
Fraser considered the question. "I want to love you. I want you to love me. Do you love me, Ray?"
Ray analyzed the look on his partner's face. It contained hope, longing, and yes, fear. He didn't want Fraser to be afraid. "Yeah, Fraser. I love you. But I've never loved a guy before. I've been, well, attracted, and I've kinda flirted with a few guys, but I've never ... never gone all the way, if ya know what I mean. An' the only person I've ever loved before was Stella. And look at how that turned out."
Fraser put his hands on Ray's shoulders. "Ray, I can't promise that if we become a couple, we'll never have any problems. What I *can* promise is that I will not run away at the first sign of trouble. I will do my best to work things out between us if you will do the same. Will you give me - give us - a chance, Ray?"
Ray swallowed hard. "Are you sure about this, Fraser? You sure that it's me you really want?"
"Yes, Ray. I'm sure. I love you, Ray."
And then Fraser's arms were around him, and they were kissing, and everything felt so *right* Ray wondered why they hadn't done this long ago.
"You're not gonna forget this, I hope," Ray said sternly to his partner.
Fraser looked thoughtful. "I may have forgotten some things, Ray, but one thing I will not forget is the way I feel about you."
Ray kissed him. "Good." He took Fraser's hand and led him toward the bedroom. "An' I promise you a night you will *never* forget."
END
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