Author's webpage: http://members.tripod.com/~mannaladroit

*The Cabin*

by

Manna LaDroit

Title: The Cabin
Author: Manna LaDroit
Part: 1/?
Pairings: Fraser/Vecchio
Rating: NC-17 for m/m sex
Warnings/Notices: This is a sequel to "The Fan," which is archived at hexwood and at my own site, http://members.tripod.com/~mannaladroit. I use spoilers for all sorts of episodes, in my universe the series ended with "Flashback," and there's major hot Mountie love ahead.

Raymond Vecchio, Chicago PD, up-ended the lighter fluid and squeezed for several seconds, then tossed the can aside, stepped back, and threw a lit match onto the pile of sticks and logs.

*Whoosh!*

He smiled. Mountie magic was pretty good, but no match for having the right tools. The fire burned hot, dispelling the early-spring chill of half-thawed Canada. Now, he just needed to get the water hot for the coffee.

"Nice fire, Ray."

"Thank you, Benny." He turned from the flames with his smile still going, then started to laugh. Benton Fraser, RCMP, looked at that second like an over-grown elf escapee from Santa's workshop. Despite the fact that there was snow on the ground, Benny was only wearing those red longjohns and his Mountie boots, unlaced, like a half-opened Christmas present. His hair was mussed and his cheeks flushed pink and his strong, pale hands rested on his hips, accentuating those long legs.

Benny smiled at him, but Ray's laughter tapered off. Comfortable, familiar affection was starting to get crowded out by more disquieting emotions. That red cotton wove and hugged and stretched over all the right places, including the bulge below the final button.

Ray wanted to muss up that hair some more. He wanted to make a joke and punch Benny on the shoulder and play some football. He wanted to go to his knees and suck Benny off right there in front of passing moose and God and everybody, grab that fantastic ass and listen to his screams echo through the nearby forest and he really needed coffee before he thought things like that.

"Ray? Are you all right?"

Ray scowled down at himself, avoiding those blue eyes that he'd allowed to get to know him so well. He'd slept in his clothes last night, cold inside the tent until he'd gotten Benny in his arms under both sleeping bags, and now he was a long, scrawny, wrinkled mess. What was the point of being suddenly gripped by the desire to have Benny unbutton those last couple buttons and then, while still wearing that red bodysuit, ride him senseless and make his own screams echo everywhere when he looked like the "before" picture of the *LL Bean Catalog*?

"I'm fine, Benny. You want some coffee?"

"I want you, Ray."

Oh man. Benny's voice had gotten all husky, and when Ray looked back up he was still standing there in the morning light like a big Mountie cinnamon stick. They'd done no more last night than pull the jeep up to the remains of Robert Fraser's cabin, set up the tent, snuggle, and fall asleep. It had been the night before last since he'd had a chance to touch Benny more than a little here and there. He nodded vaguely and waited for Benny to get more specific, or at least walk up to him. It was somehow too much to expect him to ruin the image Fraser made, standing there, with his own grubby body. He needed a shower. Benny did too, he supposed. He wondered if Benny would let Ray lick him clean.

"You got me, Benny."

The dark brows raised high over bright eyes. "Why don't you take off some of that thermal wrapping, then, Ray? The fire is nice and warm."

Ray looked around: yellow sun, blue sky, snow covering the ground in large patches, ice dripping off the tent ropes - even Dief was still in the tent, enjoying the blankets and sleeping bags Ray had left only out of the most extreme caffeine requirements. Sure, Benny could scamp about in nothing but his underwear, but he was Super Mountie. Ray was just...well...Ray.

"I'd freeze to death, Benny!"

Benny shifted his weight and emitted a long-suffering sigh. Ray's eyes narrowed at the familiarity of the sound.

"Am I going to have to finish the cabin and equip it with central heating before I can get you back in my bed, Ray?"

"Yeah."

Benny blinked, and let his head sway back just slightly. "'Yeah?'"

"Yeah. And I want the bathroom done too. That john I bought wasn't cheap. I don't want it going to waste in the crate while you wander off in the bushes and commune with nature."

"Well...what if I told you I'm not touching the commode until you and Mr. Vecchio make it worth my while?"

Ray struggled to keep his brain working. "If Mr. Vecchio came out to play right now, he'd freeze off!"

Benny's mouth made a little moue of sorrow. "So throwing you on the ground and having my way with you right now is out of the question?"

"The ground's all wet and cold." He really needed to get his breathing back under control. Benny was mopping the floor with him.

"You'll warm it up, Ray." Benny took a small step towards him, those long boots swaying ominously as his voice again grew husky with lust. "You could melt an iceberg in January."

Ray scooted around the fire as he backed away, his heart pounding and his palms sweating. It was a week, today, that he and Benny had first figured out where their friendship didn't end. He was still off-balance, and it wasn't fair that his friend/lover/whatever was dancing circles around him. Where was his sexually repressed friend who looked like a squirrel in headlights right before you hit him with your car?

"You'd get your longjohns all wet," he protested as best he could, then was assaulted with images of Benny in the afore-mentioned wet and clingy longjohns.

Benny lunged, knocking them both to the ground, which was indeed wet and cold. Ray squealed, felt ridiculous, and then bellowed "Benny!" even as that firm, delicious body rolled them over and over, rubbing their bodies together and kissing his face over and over as well, until "Mr. Vecchio" was insisting that it really wasn't too cold outside to come out and play, honestly.

Ray gave it up, growling, and sought Benny's hot, sweet mouth as his hands slid down the warm, damp cloth to cup and squeeze two rock-hard cheeks and press Benny right up against him. Once he was sure the Mountie was distracted, he rolled them again until he was on top.

And he was looking at a pair of black mukluks.

Blue and green eyes looked up together, seeing the dark jeans, the black belt, the dark green coat, the somewhat curious dark eyes.

"Hello...Eric," Benny managed.

The Inuit man regarded them steadily. "What are you doing back here, Mountie?"

Benny let his head fall back the extra inch to the ground and shrugged the shoulder that wasn't pinned under Ray. "I'm fixing up my father's cabin."

Eric's eyes turned to the burnt-out shell of logs and trash ruined by snow and sun and neglect. Bob Fraser had built it to last, but wood burns. People can't do anything about it.

Fraser and Vecchio were standing up when he looked back, brushing grass and snow off their clothes.

"You need logs," Eric said.

"Yes, well, I have, er, two axes," Fraser said, backing now towards the tent as he had towards his closet once, evidently uncomfortable in nothing but his red underwear. Eric couldn't help wondering why he'd left his tent that way in the first place, since he'd taken the trouble to put his boots on. It was somewhat pointless, unless Vecchio was kinkier than he looked, of course.

"So, Eric," the cop was saying now, swinging his arms around to clap them quietly together in the front, back, forth, clap, repeat. "What are you doing around here? Somebody steal some wood carvings and hide them in the forest?"

"Not that I know of. You ever built a cabin before?"

Vecchio shrugged. "I helped a few friends redo apartments, things like that. I figure what I don't know Fraser will show me."

"Ah."

Fraser emerged from the tent in jeans, work boots and a sweater. "Ray and I were about to make some coffee. Would you like some?"

"I'm heading to Anthuk. Somebody's having trouble with birds."

"Birds?" Vecchio echoed.

"Bad medicine." Eric looked at the cabin. "There was nothing good here, after the fire. People liked Bob Fraser. It will be good for you to rebuild it."

"I think so." Fraser looked at Ray, then back. "Do you need me to come with you to Anthuk?"

"No." Eric frowned at them. "I didn't know you were here." He looked at Fraser only, focusing disapproval. "You have been gone too long, Mountie."

Benny didn't flinch. "I have two homes now."

"There was a brother and a sister once, lived in the same village. When she ran away, his torch went out."

Fraser frowned.

"Yeah, thanks for the history lesson," Ray said, stepped towards Eric a bit. So what if the guy had forty pounds on him? "If you don't want coffee, we don't wanna keep you."

"It's not far." Eric turned away, though he threw a last look at the cabin. "You need more logs."

"Yeah, we'll get on that." Ray had his hands on his hips as he watched Eric walk over to the jeep they'd driven up in, give it a look, then walk around it, settling his pack on his shoulders and then moving on until he was lost in the trees.

"Nice neighbors you got here, Benny."

"The sun and the moon."

Ray leaned forward, brows raised. "What was that?"

"The Inuit legend says that a young girl kept getting a night-visitor who would blow out the light in her igloo, then kiss her and leave. She wanted to know who her visitor was, so she put ashes on her face. That next morning, after yet another kiss from this stranger, she went outside and found to her horror that the boy with ashes on his face was her brother. She grabbed her torch and ran, and he chased her. She became the sun, and when his torch blew out, he became the moon."

Benny paused, frowning at Ray, whose face was doing an impression of a gathering thunder cloud.

"That *bastard!*"

"Ray?"

"How - who the - just what does he think he's doing? Did we ask his opinion?"

"Ray, I don't think -"

"Just let him show his mask-stealing butt around here again and -"

"Ray! I don't think he was talking about you and me."

"Well, what the hell was he talking about, then?"

Benny's eyes were puzzled, and even while he still wanted to kick a certain Eskimo's butt, Ray felt his heart beat unevenly as the snow around them chipped into those ice-blue irises. Benny belonged here, which meant that he, Raymond Vecchio, child of Chicago, would have to find a way to belong as well.

God, in a few years he might start spewing out Inuit legends on busts. He'd have some perp on the floor, cuffing him, and he'd tell the story of the moon trying to kiss the sun.

And screw Eric over good if the guy tried to stop him.

Of course, the fact that no one in "his" world but Elaine knew about them was just not something he was going to think about now. He and Benny hadn't nearly gotten over the super-hots for each other in the three days they'd had at his house before the mob returned. Hell, they'd only been inside each other the one time apiece, neither of them wanting to admit how sore being on the receiving end had made them, but neither of them wanting to do *that* to the other until they'd felt all better themselves. He wanted to explore every inch of Benny's body at least a dozen times before he had to think about Real Life things. Coming up here to work on the cabin was supposed to make them safe.

Eric better just keep his Inuit stories to himself...except that Benny really looked puzzled, his ice-chipped eyes resting now on his own, as though seeking solace.

"You think maybe he was talking about you, Benny, being someone who lives in two homes?"

The eyes cleared somewhat. "Perhaps, Ray."

"Well, the sun and the moon balance out, right? Maybe that's all he means."

Benny smiled. "Perhaps."

"I love you, Benny."

The smile deepened, broadened, became the beginning of a happy sigh, slowly expelled. "I love you too, Ray." His eyes went to where Eric had disappeared, then back to Ray, before he confessed, "I don't want to go."

"Go where?"

"With Eric, to the birds, to help. I should, but I don't want to. He really didn't know we were here."

"That's right." Ray's head lifted up slightly. "Wait a minute, are you saying you'd rather stay here with me than go help somebody?"

"Yes, Ray."

"Wow."

Ray stood there blinking in the brightening morning sun and Benny ended up laughing.

"Do you believe I love you now, Ray?"

Ray laughed as well, and reached into the pack on the ground for the coffee. "I'm getting there, Benny."

Smiling, Fraser got out oatmeal and jerky for their breakfast, then broke out the tools. He and Ray needed to get measurements of the site before they started selecting trees for their axes. The plumbing for the washroom was beyond them both, so they had some plumbers coming next week.

Next week. Three weeks here with Ray. The best medicine in the world.

After breakfast, Benny made a few signals towards the tent, but Ray seemed eager to get to work, so they wound up standing with the tape measure and marking off each side, then across the diagonals, then from the ground to the foundation on all four corners, then up along the original beams that were still standing.

They would have to tear almost all of it down, of course, except for the west wall. The fire had been started in the middle of the cabin, burning through the floorboards right above the concrete foundation. There was a depression in the concrete where Victoria had chipped out a space for the box with the stolen money. Benny tried not to look at it.

The wind had been from the west, so while the east wall was totally gone and the north and south walls were irreparable, the western wall was barely charred, and a section of the roof over it was still intact as well. This had provided some unexpected shelter for the table and the chest inside which Benny had yet to look. He wanted to believe that some of his childhood souvenirs might still be recognizable. Besides, the chest was buried under charred trash. He and Ray would sift through it later.

Benny nodded over the pad in his hands. "Well, we can start cutting trees now, Ray."

"Hm." Ray was looking around the blackened ruin and scowling. "He's right, you know, Benny."

"Who?"

"Eric." Ray's eyes met his, and Benny felt abruptly pinned and wriggling against the unburnt wall. "Her stench is here, Benny. She tried to ruin everything you had."

"She loved me and she hated me, Ray. It's the most powerful combination there is. And it took you to free me from it."

Ray shivered while his eyes continued to glint with purpose. "Where do you suppose she stood to start the fire?"

The hair on Fraser's nape was beginning to stiffen, and though he didn't want to, he protested, "I don't think Victoria was Tupilak, Ray."

"Like I know what that means, Benny. Where do you suppose she stood?"

"Here, Ray." He pointed to the center of the floor where almost all the wood had been burned back, and the concrete was charred black as night.

Ray nodded, then walked to Benny, put his hands on his hips and guided him to the same spot.

Benny was trembling and part of him was terrified. He'd begged Ray only a few days ago to drive Victoria and that man's touch from his body, and while he'd gotten what he wanted, and while getting what he'd wanted had saved his soul, he hadn't thought about the power he'd handed to Ray. He trusted Ray like he trusted no other, but with that had come such a loss of power and control over his own life.

Ray was going to do something now, something he'd been planning to do, and while there was no question but that he, Benton Fraser, was going to go along with it, there was also no question it was going to be a significant event. His father's cabin had come to mean a great deal to him. And whatever Ray had in mind was now going to be a part of him, a part of his relationship with his father.

And so he was trembling.

Ray turned him gently, getting him to face out towards the forest. Then Ray knelt down in front of him.

"Great Scott!" Ray had opened the first button of his jeans, and the realization of what Ray was about to do burned like ice on bare, vulnerable skin.

"Shhhh. I wanna do this, Benny. Look at the trees and stuff."

He shuddered and tried to do what Ray said, but it was hopeless. He stared down as those elegant, nimble fingers undid his fly completely, then opened his boxers and pulled out his sheathed length, already starting to harden.

"You know, Benny, I can't believe what the sight of your cock does to me." Ray's breaths caressed his cockhead, and he moaned. Ray chuckled, but it was almost a grim sound. "I watched guys shower for years, change in the locker room, hell, all but do the nasty in front of me at bachelor parties, and I could really gives a rat's ass, you know? And now the sight of this pink skin peeping out from the foreskin...God..." Ray's warm tongue licked over the swollen knob, lingered in the slit, swirled around the sides. Benny whimpered and let his palms caress the soft bristle over Ray's head.

And from his center came a jarring protest. "Ray...I'm not doing anything for you..."

Ray leaned back on his heels, meeting his eyes with a wicked gleam. "I'm sucking you off in the middle of nowhere, Benny, and you're gonna come down my throat and scream my name."

Benny stared at him, his heart pounding so hard it hurt.

"You ever done that for anybody else, Fraser?"

"No, Ray."

Green glimmerings warned him. "If I ever chased you, Benny, I'd catch you, whether you turned into the sun or not." And then Ray leaned back in, sliding Benny along that velvet tongue into a warmth he'd never known this way before, and it seemed to Fraser that his consciousness pulled back slightly from the moment. He saw himself standing among the ruins of his father's cabin, shameless, wanton, plain and simple and human, thrusting into Ray's beautiful face as though it were his birthright. Strong, clever fingers cupped his buttocks, pulling him deeper, wanting him. Wanting all of him.

"Ray!" The name was a rifle shot, cracking and rebounding through the wilderness that owned him, and that the man who owned his heart was trying to let inside him as well.

"Ray!" The name was a call to his own buried needs as they spilled out and were taken in, accepted once again.

"Ray!" The name was all he wanted. He hadn't really believed in it before.

"Ray." A mere whimper now, the echo of his spent self.

A final gentle touch, a lick to clean him, he thought, and then a kiss. He was tucked back inside and nestled against the slick warmth of his own body. Regal fingers covered him back up with each button, one by one, then Ray rose up and kissed him: an agreement, a treaty signed in blood and semen.

Fraser shook himself slightly. He wasn't thinking right. There wasn't any blood in the kiss.

"You're mine to love now, Benny. Don't forget that."

He found his breath, and breathed it in. "Yes, Ray. Yours."

@@@

Ray rested his noodle arms and watched Benny chopping down his fifth tree. He had two on the ground himself, and felt pretty good about it. They were big damn trees, after all.

God, Benny was beautiful. He'd taken off his shirt a tree ago and that ice-white body was all muscle and sweat.

He was surprised at how good he felt about himself. Going down on Benny to "see off" the old, ruined cabin had been a great idea. Hearing Benny shout out his name like that had been better than getting a climax for himself. Once again, and yet for only the second time in his life, he'd started out hard, ended up soft, and felt like the orgasm he witnessed was somehow his own as well.

He'd once made the claim that coming here would put Victoria "behind them," but that was before he'd appreciated how much damage she'd done to Benny, how deeply her poison had reached into him, how black was the darkness she'd smothered into his soul.

Ray wouldn't get rid of Victoria that easily, though he would get rid of her in time. He'd spend his life searching out the tainted places she'd touched and driving out the ghosts of her. It would be the hardest thing he'd ever done, and worth it in spades if Benny slept a little easier for it.

Standing there, getting just a little cool now as his sweat dried in the early air of frozen-tundra spring, he admitted that loving Benny wasn't the problem. If he could somehow put what he was feeling in a box and just hand it over to Benny, everything would be so simple. The Mountie could come by whenever he felt the need and Ray could give him a little packaged love to keep him happy: the Vecchio convenience store.

But even when they were "just" friends it had been more complicated than that, hadn't it?

Benny took a really good swing at the tree, cut through deeply, wedged out his ax, pressed a broad, square, pale hand against its trunk to see if it would fall, then heaved up the ax and swung again. *Crack!* *Crack!*

Ray felt his body go heavy and fresh sweat start up.

True, he was still reeling over his sudden expansion of sexual orientation - how was he supposed to be a good Italian Catholic and know he was bi? - but he knew he had noticed Benny's beauty before. How could he not? The guy was a poster boy, and every woman he knew fell for him on sight. He'd even told Benny he looked good in his uniform, though at the time he'd only been trying to reassure the guy because he'd lost his memory...

Ray frowned a little, thinking about the rude, super-casual and not terribly likable version of Benny he'd seen then. He knew that meant Benny was at least a little like that, underneath. Ray would have to explore that in time, bring it out...though maybe it was already connected to the good non-Fraser way his friend was when he got all sexy and evil in bed.

Man, look at those shoulders. Look at that chest! Benny's muscles were flexing with the weight of the ax, and Ray was beginning to feel faint. He didn't understand it. The idea of seeing some other guy with his shirt off didn't get him hot. But then, other men weren't Benny.

Nothing had ever really made sense with Fraser. Why had he ignored the forty-one cases on his desk to chase leads all over Chicago on the "dead Mountie thing?" Why had he thrown his own body towards the bomb and Fraser out the window when he'd known the guy all of about two days? Why did he believe whatever Benny told him? The guy tasted mud and quoted history books and knew the atomic weight of potassium. How could he stand hanging around him at all?

Ray knew they were both still scared and in some sort of shock over the whole Ms Socks thing. He was still sweating at night through replays of the van rides, and dreaming of meat cleavers and pruning shears. And he knew Benny was still thinking about all that stuff too.

Coming up here was supposed to be a chance to make things real between them, to figure out just what was going on. But after his impromptu stunt at the cabin he knew his own motives better now. He was trying to make things perfect. He wanted to give Benny everything.

The horrible part of it all was that he'd been raised with *Cinderella* and *Sleeping Beauty* and Benny'd had Inuit stories to boot. For some reason, people kept raising their children to believe that you had One True Love. And it had taken him a hell of a long time, and a busted-up marriage with a good woman, to get over it.

Now he knew. If you were lucky, you found someone who got you excited and whom you could stand for forty years or so, and you lived with that someone and didn't feel alone forever and counted your lucky stars one by one.

But this was the hard part: remembering during the "honeymoon stage" that love wasn't ever perfect.

And so what? He was incredibly fortunate to have found Benny. So it wasn't perfect, that was just fine.

Yeah, sure. He had to know even as he gave his heart away completely and left himself vulnerable to who knew what that if he and Fraser hadn't been forced to get together sexually to stay sane they'd still just be friends. Whatever urges Benny claimed to have had before that, they'd both been satisfied with things as they were. They certainly weren't soulmates or destined to be together or any of that crap.

And, once again, what the hell difference did it make? There was still a really good chance that he could go over to that god-like body and be able to do pretty much whatever he wanted with it. What more could a hawk-nosed cop ask for without drawing laughter from all sides?

Oh God. He wanted Benny, and he wanted Mr. Alabaster Greek God to want him back, to want him *right now.*

Benny's fifth tree fell with a *crack* and the whispering after-applause of snapping branches and rustling leaves. The Mountie watched it fall, nodded, then turned, threw his ax on the ground, and strode towards Ray.

"Benny?" Ray asked when his friend got close enough.

"You're looking at me, Ray."

"What? Don't I...uh...get to?"

Benny smiled and Ray felt his knees melt.

"Yes, Ray." And then Fraser bent over and got out of his boots, then shucked his pants and underwear and just stood there. There was still snow on the ground in spots, but he just stood there, shiny and panting. "Look all you like."

And one second he was looking. The next he had Benny in his arms, pressing him in close, desperate for the taste of him. He kissed him, thrusting his tongue inside for the flavor he craved, seeking incoherently to draw him in, like oxygen, to burn his lungs. Benny's hands moved over his many layers of clothes even as his own hands slid down to cup that perfect ass.

"God, Benny, I want you."

The tall, solid body shivered with the insubstantiality of a willow and that deep, musical voice groaned affirmation.

"Now, Benny."

"We need...supplies, Ray."

Ray forced himself back, looking away before he lost it completely. "Tent."

"Right."

Benny turned and walked to the tent some fifty yards away, and Ray followed, his eyes raking up and down all that raw power and beauty until he was dizzy with it. And the dizziness wasn't all good. He managed to shed his jacket despite the way his guts were twisting up, and he would have stopped to take off more, but Benny ducked into the tent, and not being able to see that luscious body suddenly filled Ray with rage. With a soft roar he burst through the opening, then fell, quiet as a held breath, to his knees before the image of Benny laying on the sleeping bags, his hand holding out a small tube and a thin little foil package.

Ray took them with numb fingers, his eyes enormous and itching to blink. When Benny began to roll over on his stomach, Ray's throat emitted a quiet, shattered sound.

Concerned blue eyes turned back to him. "Ray?"

He shook his head, and if his legs hadn't gone to sleep he would have run out of there all the way back to Chicago.

"I can't do this, Benny."

The naked man said nothing.

Ray gestured feebly. "When I look at you...when I see you in my mind, on your hands and knees, taking it...taking it up the ass, God, Benny, damnit..." Ray's eyes closed, and the foil packet crinkled with the force of those fingers. "I'd kill any guy who tried to do that to you. I'd kill him, I swear to God."

"Ray."

Ray's eyes were green-tinted slits in a shuttered face.

"I want you inside me, Ray. Only you, Ray."

"You shouldn't want it, Benny, and I shouldn't want to give it to you."

"We love each other and we want to be as close as we can. It's as natural as -"

"It ain't natural, Benny!"

"Animals do it, Ray."

"We ain't animals! Look, I'll suck you off and kiss you and whatever else, but you shouldn't be letting me do this to you, Fraser!"

Benny bit his lip, and Ray felt himself groaning despite himself. He was so *fucking* beautiful, it hurt to look at him - the perfect pale curves of strong muscles on his legs and arms and over that tight, firm, smooth...he dragged his eyes away, meeting Benny's, and watched in awe as they suddenly went soft and seductive.

"You won me, Ray."

He flinched.

"You killed dragons for me, and now you get to take what's yours."

Ray strangled out his name, and tried to shake his head.

"You fought all my demons." Benny reached over almost languidly and took the tube, flipped open the top, and spread some over the fingers of his own left hand. "You loved me and cared for me and brought me back to myself." Benny reached back behind himself, propped up on one elbow, his legs spread out, looking back at Ray over his shoulder. "You gave me a new family and a new reason to care about people again." Ray stopped breathing when those pale fingers slid down between the smooth, cool curves to circle the dusky ring within. "You believed in me." Ray shivered. One finger disappeared inside Benny's body and Ray's own hands were cramped and clinched between his folded legs.

Benny breathed out, his eyes half-closing with pleasure as his finger slid in and out of himself. "I can't wait to feel you in me, Ray."

Ray gasped and started breathing again, his heart pounding out the demand for air, his cock pounding out its own even more insistent need.

"You love me so much, Ray." Benny had two fingers inside now, and was writhing slightly, his face blissful but pleading. "You're going to love me with your body."

"Benny..." The protest was faint, but survived the struggle past his clenched teeth. Blue eyes seemed to narrow slightly, then perfect lips twisted wickedly.

"You won me. You won the right to claim me. No other man has, or ever will." Slowly, Benny's hips pressed back against his own fingers. "My body belongs to you." While Ray's eyes stared, unblinking, dry and wild, those pale fingers withdrew, shiny with oil, and Benny lifted himself up and back, offering himself up as he whispered brokenly, "F...f-fuck me, Ray. Hur-ry."

With a primal, feral scream, Ray threw himself forward, tearing down his pants and underwear and adding the protest of ripped cloth to his assault. He sprawled out over Benny's hot, slick back, thrusting inside the body he'd watched prepare itself for him as his hands grabbed Benny's smooth hips and forced him back to aid his own impalement.

"Ray!" Benny's voice was harsh with lust and high with joy. "Oh, God, yes! Ray!"

Ray withdrew, thrust in deeper, then withdrew to thrust again and again, taking everything Benny offered, driving so deep inside him, over and over, he could almost feel the connection become permanent, intractable, irreversible. But mostly he just felt the heat of him, so soft, so giving, so tight. So damn tight and hot he threw his head back and screamed again, more spirit than man, more sensation than thought. Benny's skin under his hands was no longer snow or marble. For him it became the thin covering over a man he knew better than himself, too thin to keep him out, an insubstantial drape over the soul he loved, the heart that beat with his own heart, the pure pleasure he was claiming with each sharp, perfect, thrust.

He screamed again and tightened his grip, seeing the sparks he could feel behind his eyelids, getting ready to reach around Benny's body and bring them both home.

"Ray. Stop. Please."

His rhythm broke, and he trembled to a jerking stop, half-in, one breath from fracturing to a billion little pieces of himself. Somehow, he croaked out, "Benny?"

The red-mottled pale body slid forward, easing itself off his iron-hard shaft. Ray shook harder. Had he hurt him? There wasn't any blood on his cock. Oh, but there wasn't a condom either. Had Benny simply needed him to put on a rubber?

Please, God, let that be it.

Benny turned to look at him, shaking as hard as Ray, his own arousal as painfully obvious both between his legs and in his eyes. His lips stretched into a creaking smile that his pink tongue wet with a little dart before he spoke, his voice a splintered whisper.

"Do you see now, Ray? You can only do to me what I want. That's...how you're made."

He found his voice, and there was undeniable resentment and injury in it. "And what do you want, Benny?"

"You, Ray. Any way I can get you, every second of every day of every year for the rest of my life, I want you, Ray."

Ray felt awe at the steadiness of his own hands as he opened the condom and covered himself with it. When the pain receded with those soft words he felt almost as if this time didn't exist, as if his heart would only start beating again when he was back where he belonged.

Benny made to roll over again, but he took those strong thighs and folded them back over Benny's flushed chest. Pale hands grabbed Benny's shins, and those blue eyes closed as the dark-haired head leaned back, arching his neck in an undeniable display of contrition and submission. Ray's hands took those hips again, raising him up, before he slid back inside and Benny sighed with pleasure.

Only a few thrusts, and the wildness was back, softer, at first, than before, robbed of the urgency of fear and doubt. This was a little like the first time he'd taken Benny: so sure and right. But now when possessiveness swept him he reveled in it, pressing in tighter, changing the angle to get just where he wanted.

"Oh God!" Benny's crazed eyes locked onto his even as Ray's lips stretched back in a wolfish grin of satisfaction. His hips slammed forward to that same spot and Benny screamed. Then another scream, joined by his own. They thrashed and thrust together to urge the crescendo on, two pairs of hands grasping to quicken the pace of each combustive impact.

Benny stiffened, flailed, screamed his name and erupted over his own chest and shoulders, his body drawing tightly down over Ray's cock even as it pulsed and rocked into soft, sweet heat. Ray rode it out, that wave of fire from his groin out to his fingers and toes, thrusting one last time through the aftershock, gasping as tingles turned again to quicksilver, then gracefully folded forward to cover Benny's shuddering body and let himself fall free of all thoughts and feelings but soul-deep, heart-sure, love-filled fulfillment.

Sometime during the next several minutes he became aware of Benny's arms flopping over his back. Much later, he realized he was no longer inside his friend and had to fumble a bit to retrieve the condom, which he tossed into the little trash bag. Benny took advantage of his movements to strip him before, with mutual sighs of pleasure, they dragged their somewhat sticky, groggy bodies inside one of the bed rolls, curled around each other, and slept like the dead and reborn.

@@@

They'd started to get the dead birds two months ago. There had been five now, all eagles, and all of them seemingly dead from the cold in this warm early spring. All of them had been found without their eyes.

Eric was no shaman, but he served his people. Anna needed to know more about the birds, and it was a simple enough task to go to Anthuk and see if there really had been another bird there, or if it was just people needing to keep the story going.

Many of the young people today didn't understand the power of stories, and they were bored now that food could be had so easily, and only at the cost of giving up their entire way of life. It was enough to make him wonder if he'd gotten the masks back too late to do any good.

It wasn't good that the Mountie was back. Eric let himself hope for a moment that the wolf was still back in the States. But that was unlikely. At least the cop was nothing more than a loud-mouthed tourist. The most harm he could do was dump trash or take a picture.

His feet made it to the pavement of Anthuk's only road. This place wasn't big enough for a store, but Doc had some drums of gas in his shed for people who needed it, and the three Corven sisters wove baskets they sold out the side door of their A-frame house.

"You come about the bird?"

Eric nodded at Pete Lookstwice, twenty years old now and losing the color from his eyes, like his mother, though his gangly elbows and sharp cheeks made him look like his dad's skeleton with one meal inside him. Pete would be the type to enjoy a good story. He'd worked last summer at some hotel in Moosejaw.

Eric nodded.

"We kept it in Doc's shed. You want to see him?"

"Who found the bird?"

"Ma."

Eric nodded again, not asking if she'd been drunk at the time. There was a faint odor of gasoline from Pete's clothes. He might have been sniffing it. The boy turned now to lead him to the shed, and Eric followed, though he didn't care now what he found there.

@@@

Pleasure. Unbelievable pleasure. And a faint pain, burning. Hands on his hips; he was being ridden, hard, but only after he'd begged for it.

Inspector Thatcher had something for him to file. He looked up into her eyes and saw the taint of disgust. Ray laughed, and her dark eyes rolled.

Fraser woke up with his mouth open, a protest between his tongue and teeth. His rectum hurt. His body was sticky with dried seminal fluid. A fire-warm body pressed against his, with strong, slender arms draped over his back. His head rested in the hollow of Ray's shoulder. Even in sleep, Ray's heart beat fast and strong.

Shaking a little, he lifted up his head and turned for the reassurance of his best friend's face, peaceful in slumber. It really was Raymond Vecchio, his best friend, who had said he loved him.

How could such a soft kiss to the man's chin bathe him in almost liquid calm? How could feeling Ray's light stubble against the tip of his tongue make the ache deep in his body suddenly seem sexy? His fingertips caressed that high smooth forehead, then went on to brush the soft hair along that sweeping curve.

Would Ray just be completely bald one day? He thought it more likely he'd always have a fringe of hair, softening him, preparing witnesses for the beauty of his eyes.

Those eyes opened, somewhat glazed, to focus on his.

"Heya, Benny."

Fraser fell into the kiss, warm and soft from Ray, loving and a little desperate from him. Ray seemed surprised at first, then rallied, and the arms around his back pressed him in tight and close. Ray's lips opened under the pressure of Benny's tongue, and one of them moaned softly, even as another long, wet tongue lapped excitedly at their faces.

"Augh!" Ray broke the kiss and tried to roll away from blood-tainted wolf breath. "Diefenbaker! That is disGUSTing!"

Benny looked with some foreboding to Diefenbaker's feet. As he suspected, a plump rabbit lay as an offering, and Fraser was buffeted with both concern for Ray's state of mind and pride in Diefenbaker's accomplishment. Unfortunately, before he could resolve his own state of mind and commend his friend on his prize, Ray saw the rabbit too.

"Augh! Augh! Gross! What did you bring that in here for?" Ray pushed Benny away and sat up, pulling his legs far from the rabbit and groping for his shirt.

"Diefenbaker, thank you for sharing your kill with us," Benny said clearly as the wolf looked at him, panting for praise. "Ray and I will enjoy the rabbit very much."

"Yeah, yeah. It's like arctic pizza service, but couldn't you have left it at the door?"

"Ray, the act of laying it at our feet, as it were, indicates that he's offering it up to us in recognition of his packmates. Moreover, I believe he's trying to repay us for the food we've shared with him in Chicago." Benny looked at the wolf carefully. "In fact, he may have been offering it to you more than me, Ray."

"What, a hundred jelly donuts gets me a rabbit? What do I gotta give him for a moose?"

Ray found his shirt and briefs, then edged past the rabbit and out of the tent.

"I really do appreciate this, Diefenbaker," Benny told the wolf solemnly.

Dief snuffled, then yawned and curled up on a bed roll and closed his eyes.

Outside, Ray had washed himself off with some unused coffee water, standing naked by the fire. Benny reached into one of their packs and retrieved a towel, holding it far from the rabbit in his other hand.

Ray took the towel with a smile. "Why don't you drop the rabbit on the ground and I'll wash you off, Benny?"

"I wouldn't want Diefenbaker to feel we didn't appreciate his offering, Ray."

Green eyes looked over his body. "Well, just hold it out of the way, all right?"

Benny complied, and Ray moistened the towel, cleaning him with soft thoroughness and finishing off the bath with a kiss to each nipple, then a long, lingering kiss on his lips.

"So, what say you make the rabbit into something humans can eat and I chop down a couple more trees? We're never going to get the cabin rebuilt at this rate."

Benny couldn't help smiling. "You sound so domestic, Ray."

"Well, that's me, Mr. Domestic." Ray stepped back, threw on his shirt and briefs, then stomped into the tent for his clothes and some muttering at Diefenbaker, who was evidently using his jacket for a pillow. Benny got out some fresh clothes from his pack, nodded when Ray came out again, then turned to the serious business of gutting and skinning the rabbit. While it was cooking over the fire, he used the late afternoon sun to fell two more trees himself, forcing himself not to watch Ray wielding his ax with increasing skill.

They ate soon after that, with Ray making comments about how Dief had managed to find the tastiest rabbit in all of Canada, then they packed the trash and sat together looking at the fire for hours, arms around each other, talking about nothing in particular, sometimes not talking at all.

Benny felt those hours pass like the healing work of strong medicine. He hadn't known how much he needed this, how much both he and Ray needed this. Three weeks of this work and talk and making love would give them a foundation on which they could build a relationship to last a lifetime. By the time the stars were brilliant and the day long gone, they were yawning and moving amiably about the fire, banking it for the night, more than ready for sleep.

Diefenbaker left soon after sundown, and as he trotted back towards them Benny smiled at the sight of yet another animal in his mouth. The wolf was making up for those hunt-less years in Chicago with admirable energy.

But when the white shape was close enough, Benny could see the bristling of his fur, and the alarmed arc of his back.

"What's wrong with Dief?" Ray asked, standing at his side.

"I don't know. Dief? What is it?"

The wolf stopped before them and dropped the animal on the ground. It was a dead eagle, and by the light of the fire both of them could see that while it looked freshly dead, its eyes were gone.

@@@

"This is Anthuk? You're kidding, right?"

"I told you the village was small, Ray."

"Fraser, I see four buildings here. That's a street corner, not a village."

Benny shrugged and swung his legs out of the jeep, then retrieved his Stetson and set it on his head, brushing his fingers across the brim. Ray got out from behind the wheel and ran his hands together, pushing the black gloves back up his fingers. He could never get gloves that fit quite right.

Dief hopped out of the jeep and began to nose around. The wolf had been almost subdued since the previous night, and seemed reluctant to stray far from his pack. Ray had no idea why the bird would have bothered him so much, though the thing had been creepy, no question.

Fraser hadn't had to tell him that animals usually lost their eyes first to predators, though he'd let the Mountie drone on about it for a good three minutes before making him stop. Eyes were tasty and juicy.

But the bird had been so completely untouched except for the eyes, and there'd been no reason they could see for it to be dead.

Ray blamed Eric completely. Without his bit about the birds and the sun and stars they'd have ignored the damn bird and they'd be working on the cabin, or better yet not working on the cabin right now. Instead they were in the sinkhole of the grease spot of the armpit of the frozen north.

One of the buildings was a shed, and while he and Benny stood there trying to pretend they knew what they were doing, the door to the shed opened and a scrawny teenager with dark hair slumped out into the sunlight, blinking, his hands resting on his lower back, his arms up like picked-over chicken wings.

Fraser started walking towards the kid, and Ray followed without betraying the sudden sensation of being watched. He thought he saw the curtains twitch in the gray little house closest to them: some old lady maybe, watching the business in the street without getting involved. He rode a little wave of Chicago homesickness.

Fraser stopped before the kid. "Aren't you Peter Lookstwice?"

"Yeah." Dark eyes slid away from Fraser's gaze. "You looking for Eric? He was here yesterday."

"Do you know why he was here?"

The kid looked at Ray, who kept silent and smelled gas. Lookstwice's nose was red, and the skin was a little cracked, his pale skin had a yellow tinge that went all the way to his jagged nails. Back home, the kid would be carrying weed, but it looked like inhaling fumes was the best the guy could do.

Benny, of course, was waiting respectfully for the kid's answer like he was dressed in a business suit and accompanied by his lawyer.

Lookstwice shrugged, and it made him look like a bat. "I saw a bird and he wanted to see it."

"What sort of bird?"

"Eagle. Dead. Didn't seem to care."

"You mean that Eric didn't seem to care about the bird?"

"Yeah." The kid sniffed.

"Is the bird still here?"

"In the shed." Dark eyes were looking at Ray again.

"Oh, forgive me. This is Ray Vecchio, a friend of mine. He and I are very interested in seeing this bird, if you could show it to us."

Another shrug, then gangly shuffling back to the shed.

Inside the tin-and-wood box, the smell of gasoline made Ray's eyes water, but on the little workbench lay a dead eagle, molting, dried out, and eyeless.

"I found it near the house. Just dead with no eyes."

"Had you heard of the other birds before that?"

Ray kept his smile to himself. *Slick, Benny.*

Lookstwice shrugged again, and Ray had this image of the guy getting airborne and flapping away. "Everyone has."

"Did Eric say where he was going?"

"Back to Anna. She wanted to know about the birds after they found them two at the river."

"Thank you kindly for your help, Peter."

Ray avoiding another shrug-show by turning and walking out, breathing real air with relief. Lookstwice and Benny followed.

"He thought I done it," Lookstwice announced, looking at the ground.

"Eric thought you did that to the bird, just to get attention?" Ray asked. After all, it was what he was thinking too.

The kid seemed amazed that Ray could speak, his mouth dropping open as he nodded.

"I'm sure Eric was simply being careful," Fraser said calmly.

"Ma found it. Not me."

"We will speak to him about it when we see him."

*We will?* Ray thought with a little sigh. The cabin would have to wait, it looked like.

Lookstwice shrugged. "Don't matter."

"It does matter. I'm sure the bird upset your mother greatly."

*Bingo.* The kid was looking at Fraser now the way cops thought they could get people to look at them when they offered to help...for about the first five minutes on the job. Then they knew better. But Benny was always proving the world wrong, whether he knew it or not.

Ray fumbled for his keys and turned away. Lookstwice was mumbling his thanks to Benny now. Didn't mean he wasn't going to go back into the shed when they left.

He got behind the wheel, waited for Fraser and Dief to get in, then cranked the motor and drove the jeep back the way they came, rocking with the car over the unpaved road, until they were about a mile away. Then he killed the engine, and looked over at his friend.

"Ray?"

Damn bucket seats meant he couldn't slide over, so he just leaned, leaned into Benny's warm, sweater-covered chest and drew his arms over those strong, broad shoulders, closing his eyes and breathing him in. More warmth and strength were added as arms went around his waist and held him close. Something soft and furry rested several pounds on his shoulder, and there was this little high-pitched whine.

God, this was his life now, a Mountie and a wolf comforting him in a rented jeep about two thousand miles north of anywhere man was meant to live. Only the fact that he felt about a thousand million times better when he pulled away kept him from running off into the woods screaming.

He put a light kiss on Benny's lips, then rubbed Diefenbaker with both hands behind his ears. The wolf ended up licking his face, but not even that was enough to ruin the moment. He found he could almost laugh about it, especially since he had a handkerchief on him that sopped up the drool okay.

"So where we gonna find this Anna woman, Fraser?"

"I need to kiss you, Ray."

He'd learned better than to argue with that tone, but the look in Benny's eyes still shocked him. He found himself shaking his head a little bit, sort of laughing, then leaned back in and oh God Benny was going to eat him alive. This wasn't a kiss, it was communion and it was lust, it was a full frontal assault and pure fireworks. What the hell did Benny do to get his lips that soft? And where did he learn that tongue thing?

He opened his mouth, seeking more, then threw his head back with a yelp as a warm hand covered his groin. Oh God. *Here?* Right *here?*

Oh God. Right there.

"Benny, either do something about what you've started or stop it."

Pale fingers worked on the button of his wool pants even as Benny nuzzled his neck, mumbling against it, "You started it, Ray."

"I just wanted a hug!" The fact that his hands were buried in Fraser's hair made it clear his comment wasn't a serious protest.

"You touched me, Ray."

"I needed it, Benny."

A harsh, low moan against his neck, and then his pants were opened and the head in his hands sunk down, seeking him, until a hot mouth took him deep inside.

It happened again, like it hadn't happened since that one time with Benny almost a week ago, when Benny had suggested they move in together. There was a space inside him he hadn't known about, and that space had relaxed, releasing tension he thought necessary to his survival. He had welcomed the ease inside him like a coke-head welcomes the first taste of crack, instantly addicted, and as that tension flowed from him yet again into the heat of Benny's lovemaking, he was home.

"Benny..." The name was sex in his mouth, like Benny's tongue or his cock. He felt his lips pull apart to make the name again, his eyes stretched wide to confront blindly the endless blue sky, streaked with the dark arrow of a bird cutting through all that blue, blue like Benny's eyes, pure and clean like his lover's soul made his soul now as the tension poured out even more and he was a boneless nothing sprawled out over the bucket seat.

A tiny little nibble on the head of his cock and his senses surged. So much pleasure he couldn't be sorry even for the end it brought. He felt the pull as Benny drank him in, and then for a while he wasn't really thinking about much at all. Warmth in his lap was Fraser's head, and that lightning-quick flick across his sensitive cockhead came from a wicked tongue he wanted to take and own. Even so, he couldn't help smiling at a dozen images of Benny tasting things. He wondered if he ranked higher or lower than mud on the taste scale. He knew it was no use comparing himself to Benny: pure maple syrup.

And he felt like being a pancake, even if he could only get the arms and legs moving in slow motion. When he got his head upright one look in Benny's eyes just made it all the harder to coordinate his body. That slow, sexy, smug smile was going to kill him right here. He ached, suddenly, to press kisses against that smile, and with a shiver of hot anticipation, he reached -

Dief's howl scraped along each and every nerve ending connected to his spine. Ray and Benny were out of the jeep before the sound finished, and before the echo was done they had found him, about twenty yards from the road, whining and staring at a dead bird that looked to Ray just like the one he'd seen flying across the sky minutes ago. Except for the missing eyes, of course.

"Benny! Damnit! Don't touch that!"

"I want to see if the body is warm, Ray."

He grabbed Benny's arm and pulled him away. "It must be some sort of toxin, Benny, something in the air, or something the birds are eating. I don't want you near it."

"We'll need to have it analyzed, Ray."

Ray looked back at the jeep. They had a bag with them, with some food and a few supplies Benny probably didn't know he'd packed. It would do. He dumped the contents in the back of the jeep, turned the bag inside-out, and used it as a glove to pick up the bird, which was warm in his hand. A few twists, and the bird was inside the bag, then the bag was back in the jeep. The food and supplies he shoved into the console, watching Benny watch him with wide eyes.

"Just wanted to be prepared, Benny."

"Ray..."

He turned, but Benny was shaking his head, obviously to himself.

"There's a station in Axehandle."

"Right."

They got back in the jeep, and Ray restrained himself from shooting Dief a dirty look. It wasn't his fault he had ruined the mood, and he'd just have to show Benny that much better a time tonight.

Axehandle turned out to be little bigger than Anthuk, and the Mountie station looked like the sheriff's office from *Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman,* but the constable on duty, Jane Davenport, turned out to be competent and efficient. In her late forties by the look of her brown eyes, older by the look of her hands, younger by the lack of gray in her straight black hair, she responded gravely to Fraser's name, but made no personal comments. Ray couldn't help noticing she wore the old brown uniform, even if her forearms didn't look as good as Benny's did with the sleeves rolled up. Her shoes had a high polish, and the station was perfectly ordered.

Before too late in the afternoon, they saw the bird on its way to the lab (only a few hundred miles away in Danes via Davenport's jeep with her part-time assistant behind the wheel) and had discussed all the as-yet unsubstantiated "eyeless bird sightings." Ray and Benny promised to keep her informed, and she promised to let it stay unofficial for the time being.

They got back in the jeep and waited for Diefenbaker to show up.

"So, who's this Anna? Tribal elder or something?"

"Not officially. I only met her once." Fraser looked at him oddly. "She cooks."

Ray grinned. "Great! I'm starving."

Dief appeared and jumped into the back, and Ray got the jeep warmed up just as Davenport rushed out of the station. Fraser moved to the back as she took shotgun, her mouth set in a grim little line.

"I need you to take me to Anthuk."

Ray nodded and got on the road before he asked it. "Trouble?"

She turned and met Fraser's eyes, then looked back at Ray.

"Peter Lookstwice is dead."

@@@

Constable Jane Davenport left the two men alone to argue and took a long, circular hike around the village.

She was happy for the help. Of course she was. But she couldn't stop the feeling that her life had been invaded by characters from one of those television shows they only did in America, where two really different guys ended up being best buddies right before they dragged out impractical guns and shot up some Hispanic drug dealer.

And what was the deal with the dog? It looked about half wolf, and seemed to consider people as though he understood what they were saying.

She'd heard about Ben Fraser. Who hadn't? She'd even met Robert Fraser a few times, and worked with him once. The strongest impression he'd made on her was that he could walk five hundred miles in one day and then wonder what the big deal - was that a fire someone had built?

She knelt down at the small patch of burnt leaves, but the signs of fire had faded. A small trash fire, most likely, a couple weeks ago. She stood, dusted off her hands on her brown pants, and took up her circuit again.

Ben Fraser was definitely a chip off the old block, which made her wonder - despite the conditioning of American entertainment - what he and Vecchio were doing together. The Chicago cop was doubtlessly competent, and his help was as welcome as Fraser's, but one more crack out of him and she was going to pull her gun.

Vecchio must have seen more ODs in his time than she could imagine, but the guy still didn't have to look at Peter Lookstwice and remark that some people didn't know their own limits. The kid's face was a mess, and the stench of gas on his clothes and that bloody nose had made her regret lunch.

Davenport sighed, and widened out the circle. It wasn't Vecchio's fault that she envied his cynicism. Eighteen years on the force now, and she felt as bad for the people she helped now as she had then. If Vecchio didn't spend his nights remembering rape cases and wanting to give anything to find the murderer of some long-dead victim, that wasn't something to hate him for. It was just surprising that Fraser would hang out with him. Fraser *had* taken on the whole RCMP and the Canadian government over his own sense of right and wrong, so what was he doing...bah! She shook her head, dismissing it. She knew nothing and she didn't care about it anyway. If Ben Fraser had made her heart beat a little louder with those baby-blue eyes, that was her problem. She wasn't old enough to be his mother, but he was still young enough to think she was.

She realized she'd come to the place the bird was supposedly found. Its carcass was still in the shed, but she doubted after all this time with it soaking up gas fumes that a toxicology screen would show anything one way or the other.

She couldn't live the life she'd lived without developing a healthy respect for tribal customs and oral traditions, but she was still a Mountie, born in Ottawa. Fraser's theory that the birds were dying from some sort of toxin suited her a hell of a lot better than hysteria over the Raven, or whatever it was that had the locals jumping at shadows.

Her circuit complete, she was walking back into the village from the north. The Corven sisters weren't home, which was a little unusual, but they often left to sell their baskets in Arrowhead, or Little Ro. Doc was fishing, and would be back tomorrow or the next day. She'd already questioned Mrs. Lookstwice, who said she didn't know anything about her son sniffing gas to get high, then proceeded to throw up her last drink over Vecchio's shoes.

This was the worst part of the job, dealing with dead kids. Peter was twenty, but he was still a kid. And it was such a stupid way to die.

Last year, there'd been a kid down south who wanted to get drunk, so he mixed gasoline with milk and drank it. Would have been all right, except that he puked into the fireplace. The fire had killed him and his sister. God-awful waste.

She saw Fraser and Vecchio talking by the shed, the skinny guy using his hands as much as his mouth. She approached quietly, trying to hear what he was saying.

"...and no way you could have known what was going to happen. Not everything bad in the world that happens is your fault, Benny."

"I'm not saying this was my fault, Ray, but I do believe Eric wanted to ask us to come with him."

"He wanted to ask you. He didn't want me tagging along, and he knew you'd bring me."

"Well, I'm not sure that's entirely fair, Ray." Fraser put his hand on Vecchio's shoulder, and startled green eyes lifted and connected.

Then they noticed her.

"Did you find anything?" Fraser asked, his hand sliding off Vecchio's shoulder as the two of them shifted just slightly away.

Davenport shook her head, privately rolling her eyes. What was it with men and touching each other, anyway? So she'd seen them seeking a little human contact. Did they think she was going to take a picture? Did they think she was going to think they were "fags?"

"The kid's packaged and ready for the trip," Vecchio said, his shorthand, evidently, for saying that he and Fraser had finished bundling Lookstwice in a tarp and put him in the back of the jeep. She looked over to the battered rental and saw the dog near the passenger door, as though standing guard. It made her think of McDermot, who needed to be fed, and suddenly she couldn't stand being here anymore.

"I'll come back tomorrow and talk to the sisters."

"Lookstwice had sisters?" Vecchio seemed just slightly outraged.

"No, the Corven sisters. They live in that house." She waved vaguely and started for the jeep. The men followed her. "I might get more out of the mother tomorrow as well." She looked back at Fraser. "You want to be here for that?"

Fraser hesitated, then opened the jeep door for her and said, "Ray and I will be visiting Anna tomorrow."

Davenport nodded, privately suspecting Fraser should leave Vecchio behind for that one.

"Where are you staying?" she asked as she settled into the seat. The American was already behind the wheel.

"We're rebuilding my father's cabin."

"Ah. I heard about the fire."

They said little on the ride back, and Davenport knew she wouldn't shake off her depression at least until morning. She'd get Lookstwice into the freezer, call for a pick-up tomorrow, go home, have a drink and rub McDermot's tummy until bedtime. Damn Vecchio, anyway. If Fraser were alone, she'd be able to offer him the drink, and the tummy-rub too, for that matter. Sure, he'd turn her down, but she'd at least have a story for the cat.

The men helped her get the body in the freezer, and took a couple steaks she pressed on them, unable to keep herself from smiling at the image of Vecchio putting one on the end of a stick to hold over the fire like a marshmallow. How had Fraser ever talked the city slicker into coming up here?

"Check in with me later in the week," she told Fraser, shaking his hand. "We'll see what we've got."

"Thank you kindly."

"Yeah. Thanks for the help."

She watched them through the window as they drove off. She should have asked them both for a drink, damnit to hell.

Ray felt the Mountie woman's eyes on his neck as he drove the jeep out. She was a fellow officer of the law, and he respected that, but he hadn't been able to get a line on her at all. He would have asked Benny, but Benny's breathing hadn't been right since they got into the jeep.

It was a lot of miles back to the cabin. Ray put three of them on the right side of the jeep before he pulled off the road and killed the engine. Since he wanted to get out from behind the wheel for this, he didn't meet Benny's eyes, just swung his legs up and out and then was walking away from the road into the bushes, like he was about to relieve himself or something.

Relieve himself. Relief.

It was sort of appropriate, if completely inaccurate.

He turned to watch Benny take the last few steps towards him. Trees shielded them now from the non-existent traffic on the road, and the ground suddenly seemed more than sufficient for a bed. He started to take off his long jacket when Benny just grabbed him up, stared into his eyes like there was something magical to be found in them, and then came in for the kiss they'd needed for hours and hours and hours.

He wanted to savor the taste and feel of Benny, sip him like good wine until the stars were shining all around them and there was nothing but the two of them and nothing could touch them at all. But Benny was already grinding his hips against Ray's, and moaning deep in his throat, and in all honesty he was grinding and groaning himself.

He got his hands down between them, and opened up Benny's jeans, but when he went for his own waistband he was suddenly falling back. Considering that they kissed all the way down, it was a miracle neither chipped a tooth. Benny was thrusting now without rhythm or aim, but Ray managed to get his own pants down and then they were pressed together for real and both of them had to break off from kissing to groan out loud.

"Ray. Ray. My sweet Ray..."

God, did Fraser have any idea what that particular phrase did to his insides? He brought his legs up and wrapped them around Benny's folded-down jeans and pressed up, needing contact, needing connection.

"Love you, Benny."

"Ray! God! Ray! Harder! More! You feel so...Ray...sweet Ray..."

Moisture and determination had them sliding together easily now, friction and nerve endings and soft, soft skin: the reality of Benny's cock against his own.

"More, Ray, please..."

"Everything I got, Benny. What...ever you want."

Their words led their lips back to each other's, sharing everything now, desperate and knowing that this time wasn't going to last long. Ray's body was burning up, and every jolt of heat through his groin was making it all the way out to his fingers and toes and even the tips of his ears...or was that the grass tickling him? He didn't care, spreading his legs out wider and arching up for more.

Benny's next groan was almost a scream, and he felt that solid body quake and flutter above him, grinding down now on just the spot he needed for the perfect pressure on his cock and balls and there...*there!*

"Benny! God! Oh *fuck,* Benny!"

Hot cum splashed across his stomach, soaking his shirt, and he only knew it was Benny's, not his, when the pleasure continued to spike, higher, and then higher and then he wasn't even there anymore, not in his own body, or at least in his right mind. He knew he was screaming and clutching on tight and then everything was exactly the way it should be and he didn't need to hold on anymore and the whole world was just warm and cozy and...he couldn't breathe too well. Benny weighed a ton.

He tried to shift a bit, until he got the message across and Benny slid over to the side, still holding him close. Ray tried to think about nothing, but the grass was itching his ears and neck, and God knew what sort of bugs they were lying on. The sun was going down, and the evening was chilly already.

"I wish we could stay here. I wish we didn't have to go back."

"To Chicago? Or to the cabin, Ray?"

"To wherever. I just want it to be me and you, Benny."

The dark head turned until Fraser's perfect mouth was nuzzling gently at his neck. Benny seemed to like his neck. He was glad. He'd always thought it was a little too long, maybe kinda geeky. But if Benny liked it, then it was just...distinctive.

A clever tongue traced up the side of his throat, and Ray shivered. He could maybe stand the bugs for another couple minutes.

"Diefenbaker." Benny's voice was hesitant, his warm breath cooling the moist line his tongue had painted.

"Yeah? What about him?"

"Diefenbaker and you and me, Ray."

What little energy Ray had at the moment fizzled out in irritation. "Yeah, yeah. The wolf too, Benny. Geeze."

Benny leaned up, showing him eyes blue even in the gray of twilight. "Before I had you, Ray, he was all I had...to take with me."

Ray's mouth opened, and for a moment he could only shake his head, gently, hearing and feeling the grass rustle against his scalp. Then he reached up and brought Benny down for a kiss, then another.

"You and me and Dief, okay, Benny? Stranded on a...floating on an iceberg, with no one to visit us but the penguins." He wondered if his eyes were twinkling. "All we'd have to worry about is him chasing them off the edge."

Benny reached down, kissing softly along that same line of his neck. "I'm sure they'd be safe, Ray. Diefenbaker is nothing if not practical."

Ray let himself smile into the dome of almost-stars. "I don't know, Benny. All those penguins...from the back, they'd look like big chocolate bars."

@@@

Ray wasn't sure how they managed to keep the steaks away from Dief all night. Sure, they put them in the cooler and the cooler had a little lock, and they'd put the cooler up inside the cabin's remains where Dief shouldn't have been able to get at it, and Fraser had told the wolf in no uncertain terms, holding his muzzle so he couldn't look away, that he was not to go after the meat. But that didn't mean anything. When Benny walked back from the cabin in the morning with the steaks in his hands, wearing his longjohns, boots, and a grin, Ray's jaw almost hit the ground.

It was a true testimony to their hunger that they actually managed to eat the steaks once Benny finished cooking them over the little camp stove, though they did complicate matters slightly in the process.

"This must be some sort of special Canadian steak, Fraser."

"Actually, there's a good chance that the meat is American, Ray."

"Prepared by a Canadian, though, and he's a pretty tasty dish all by himself."

"Thank you kindly, Ray."

"Ha! Your face is turning all red! I can't believe how easy you are, Benny."

"Hm. When I'm done with my steak, Ray, may I fellate you for dessert?"

"Oh, man."

"Ray! You have your own steak! You don't need to encourage Diefenbaker by stealing from my plate."

"Well, I figure if you're going to plan on eating my m-"

"I trust you are not actually going to use such a crude expression as that to describe the act of love that I wish to perform upon your body when we're done with breakfast, Ray."

"What? You don't know 'going down on,' but you know that one?"

"Obviously a sign that my time in America has compromised me in ways I cannot even begin to calculate."

*Whine.*

"Don't go giving me your little wolfie act! I already gave you part of my steak!"

"Yes, Diefenbaker. Since you have finished your breakfast so quickly, you would do better to get in a little exercise before we drive up to Toyotuk."

"Hey! You still got your own!"

"Hm. Your steak seems to taste better than mine."

"Yeah?"

"You have tasted both as well as I, Ray."

"I don't remember yours."

"Well, perhaps you should try it again...ohhh, dear."

"Don't you like that?"

"We...need to get to Toyotuk."

"You really think we'll make it all the way up there without a tide-me-over, Benny?"

"I'm done with my steak, Ray."

"Here, ya mangy mutt."

*Yelp!*

"Mmmm. God. I can't believe what happens to me when you kiss me, Benny."

"Ray? Would you..."

"Probably, Fraser. What do you want?"

"Would open up your shirt? I want to see you."

"It's chilly, Benny."

"We're in the sun."

"What do you want me to do when I get my shirt open, Benny?"

"Wet your fingertips and put them -"

For several casually confronted minutes they waited in silence.

"Hello, Eric."

"Anna wants to see you, Mountie."

For the first time, Benny felt a surge of genuine irritation towards Eric. He suspected - well, he was actually pretty certain - that Eric had the real masks, and that there would never be a way for him to prove it, or to return the masks to their rightful, or at least lawful owners. Yet he accepted Eric's deception as the work of the Raven and as the work of a man who valued and protected the heritage of his people.

But this was just plain rudeness, and he didn't for a minute believe Eric didn't know what he was doing. He'd seen them the day before yesterday, so he knew why they were really here.

"We're headed that way after breakfast."

"Yeah. Benny tells me she cooks."

Eric frowned at Ray. "She only said she wants to see Fraser."

"Ray is my partner. If she wants to see me, then she wants to see him as well."

Eric turned and walked back to his motorcycle, hands thrust into the black leather jacket over his jeans, his long hair slapping against his back.

"Nice to see you again too, Eric," Ray called out. "We gotta party some more real soon!"

"I'm sorry, Ray."

Those green eyes that undid him met his own, and Ray smiled. "He's just jealous 'cause he ain't got a sexy Mountie to talk dirty to over breakfast."

"Well, actually, I think he resents an American police officer's intrusion on what he perceives to be a native and spiritual matter, Ray."

Oh. Ray's eyes were letting him know he already knew that. They gathered their plates and utensils, made sure the tent was zipped up tight, and headed for the jeep.

"Hey, Eric!"

The Inuit man looked over his shoulder, not taking his hands from the bars of his bike.

"We gotta stop for gas on the way!"

Eric nodded, then started up the bike and roared off. Ray followed him at a comfortable distance.

"So what do the Inuit think the birds mean, Benny?"

"I'm not sure, Ray, though obviously they're being taken as a bad omen."

Benny watched Ray's face close up. "Yeah. Obviously."

"Ray? What did I say wrong?"

Ray flashed him a smile. "Nothing, Benny. I'm just...thinking about our iceberg."

Benny's hand went to his shoulder, then trailed down softly, until it rested on his hip, and stayed there.

The open jeep and Eric's bike made enough noise that talking was an effort, so apart from the words they exchanged while they got gas, they spoke only through the touch on Ray's hip and the occasional kisses over Benny's hand that Ray would place there, bringing the hand slowly up in his own right hand, then lowering it again to the same spot.

Toyotuk was no Little Ro, but it was no Anthuk either. There were actually several roads crossing over each other, and a variety of houses and warehouses along one highway where trucks came by during the right seasons. The village had a combination store/gas station, and a place that served breakfast and lunch. Anna thought people should eat dinner at home.

While Ray followed Eric to the house at the end of Ard Lane, Benny looked around with calm familiarity, then in faint surprise.

He hadn't seen this village in years, and long before he'd first come to Chicago. Was that why it seemed smaller, grayer, flatter than he remembered? Was this what rural Canada looked like to Ray?

Just a whisper of it, but it was there, in his soul: a desire to be elsewhere, to be sitting next to Ray in the Riv, Diefenbaker panting in the backseat, the forest of buildings inviting another hunt, another chance to do something that made a difference. He wanted that feeling, but he resented it too. The Yukon was his home, and if he didn't belong here he couldn't help the people he'd been trained to help. He meant what he said to Eric about having two homes, and he wanted to belong to Chicago because that was Ray's home, but he didn't want to feel it this way, didn't want to be pulled away from the land that had made him who he was. He *needed* Canada to feel...like what? Like an extension of himself? Or just less gray and flat?

"Well, I see she keeps a low profile," Ray noted as he parked the jeep under the hand-painted "Anna's Caf" sign. "That's good coffee I smell."

Benny refrained from making a comment about the impatient look Eric threw Ray's way. Eric had no way of knowing how much coffee Ray had given up to be here with him. Benny had meant to make some to go with the steaks, but he'd gotten distracted. Ray had packed enough coffee to keep the entire Chicago police department alert on duty for a month. It had been quite inconsiderate of him not to remember. He made a little promise to himself about making coffee every morning from now on.

Ray got the door to Anna's place open, and Benny smiled as those green eyes lit up just slightly. There were just a few tables inside, and the chairs didn't match, but it was clean and the light from the windows made everything bright without actually having any tables catch the rays directly. Anna's two sons had grants from UT for producing native woodcarving, and several of their early pieces - including some very early pieces - hung on the walls, along with a neon Miller Lite sign and a framed needle work that read, "A clean kitchen is the sign of a disorganized mind."

"Smells great," Ray said loudly, looking around the empty tables. "We miss rush hour?"

"Everyone's at home." Eric looked at him blankly from his assumed stance just inside the door.

Ray was still looking around. "Where's the menus?"

"This isn't MacDonald's, Cop."

Benny hid a wince by looking down at the Stetson in his hands. Ray rounded on Eric with his knees just slightly bent, his hands waving.

"What's that supposed to mean? Did I say I wanted a Big Mac? You got something on your mind, why don't you give us all a treat and spill it?"

"The fact that you didn't know what you were protecting didn't matter last time. This time it does. Why don't you just go back to Fraser's cabin?"

"Eric -" Benny began.

Ray held up a hand, looking deep into Eric blank face. "You want to deal with Fraser, you deal with me too. Something concerns him, it concerns me just as much. If this doesn't concern him, then we're both out of here."

"The white men bring nothing but trouble here."

"You wanna know what they say about Eskimos in my neighborhood, pal?"

Eric's eyes narrowed. "You don't understand, and you don't want to."

"I understand that you're scared."

Fraser felt his eyebrows raise in surprise. He hadn't thought Ray had picked up on that. He hadn't even been sure of it himself.

He was now.

"You're so scared you can't even keep that Joe Cool act going, and I bet it's got something to do with the fact that you let Peter Lookstwice know you thought he was full of it, and now he's dead. I bet it's got something to do with how me and Benny have found more of those birds. And I know it's got something to do with you not wanting the White Man here, and your Anna woman wants to see Fraser!"

"It's not safe for you here, Cop."

Eric's voice was soft. Fraser wondered if his anger before had been feigned. Ray was staring at the man with open distrust.

"You should take the Mountie and go."

"What the hell is that -"

"Don't swear in my house."

Benny eye's flicked to the hard-weathered owner of that command, and suddenly it was eight years ago, and he was telling Anna that her only daughter had been found dead in Toronto after her Honda Accord had been pinned for two hours under a semi that had run a red light. She had been driving. Her two-month-old baby girl had been in the backseat. Anna had asked if he knew who the father had been.

When he'd said he didn't, she had turned from him and walked back into her kitchen. His posting had changed soon after, but he'd heard she went to Toronto for her daughter's body, leaving the baby's behind. It was then that Fraser learned the infant's father had obviously been white.

Ray had whirled around to look at Anna before the sentence was half-complete. She wore jeans and a man's red shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a grease stain over the right-hand pocket. A red beaded necklace hung around her scarred throat, her long gray-black hair twisted down her back, and her feet rested in slippers. Her body made her look forty, her hands a hundred, and her eyes older than anyone Benton had ever known.

"Yes, ma'am," Ray said quietly, Fraser found himself fighting a most unexpected smile. It was Ray's "Yes, Ma" voice.

Anna was looking at him now, Fraser realized, his back straightening that last millimeter. He couldn't help wondering what she saw.

"Eric told me you'd changed," she said, her own voice neutral. Her eyes dropped to Diefenbaker, who was standing directly beside him. "I'd prefer you left him outside."

The wolf whined, and looked up pleadingly into Benton's eyes as the man looked down. He wanted to argue on his friend's behalf, but it was Anna's house.

"Diefenbaker, I know you want to help. Perhaps you could wait outside for us. We won't be long."

The wolf's nose dropped along with his tail, but he shuffled to the door, which Fraser opened, and walked outside.

Anna was frowning at him when he turned back around, then flicked her eyes over at Ray. Fraser's back went even straighter. Some things were not negotiable.

"According to white law, your father owned the land near Tears Creek."

"Yes. And now I do."

"Then you could sell off the forest there."

Fraser felt himself blinking. "Legally...yes."

"There's a developer out of Moosejaw wants lumber like you got there. You could sell it off to him, and he'd chop it down by winter."

He blinked again.

"What the - what's going on here?"

Everyone looked at the Italian hands as they flew up and out. "No Inuit people are rude to a wolf, and no Inuit people want the *white man* to chop down trees!"

"Ray..." Fraser broke off, shook his head, and looked at Anna. "Ray is right. If you want me to help you, you need to tell me what's wrong."

Her eyes were hard now. "You won't sell the land."

"You're talking about almost a thousand acres of prime Canadian forest that my father bought specifically to protect. It was with the understanding that he would protect and refrain from developing it that the government let him have the land so cheaply. He didn't even build his cabin on it."

"You shouldn't have come here." She looked at Eric, then began to turn away.

"Anna..." He let himself turn slightly to Ray, then let the sudden hunch work his mouth. "Did the masks bring trouble?"

She looked at him oddly, then turned around and went into her kitchen. Benny turned his hat's brim around once, then looked over at Ray, who looked disgusted and fed up. Eric, however, made no move to the door.

Anna reappeared with a steaming mug of coffee and put it on the table next to Ray. He looked at her in surprise, then quietly sat at the table and brought the mug to his lips. She then drew out a chair herself and sat down, arms folded across her stomach. Benton and Eric sat as well.

"Wolves killed a boy up in Little Ro last week. Carrie Heartwood's dog went rabid, almost took off her hand. Eagles dying without their eyes. Pete Axel's rabbit farm's gone bust from some disease made his herd die off in six days."

Fraser looked to the door. "Ah."

"Ah, what?" Ray wanted to know.

"Eric told us, Ray. Bad medicine. Animal spirits express their displeasure through animals."

"But those masks weren't of animal spirits, were they? Or...wait. Is that the problem? The animal spirits don't like their neighbors coming back?"

Eric was looking at Ray with open surprise, then those dark eyes narrowed again. "You know nothing about spirits, Cop."

Ray shrugged. "No, but I know about turf wars." He took a sip of coffee with overt relish. "Ms Anna, I gotta tell you, this is just about the best coffee I ever had."

Anna didn't acknowledge that, but Ray happily took another swallow of his coffee. "What is this man to you?"

Fraser hesitated, wanting to avoid labels, and became aware of Ray's rather widened eyes on him.

"The man I'm going to spend the rest of my life with."

Well, now Ray was really staring at him, and when he managed to look back, Ray smiled.

Anna caught his attention by tilting her head to one side. "You have changed."

"You mean I'm not my father."

"When you came here eight years ago to tell me about my daughter, you were lonely and hard. What could you know of loss, of feeling the world take what you loved away? When I heard the spirits had come to your forest, I knew they had chosen a place no one loved, where no one hunts except the children who do not care. I knew the Raven had left this place because there was nothing for him to care about."

"What exactly are the spirits doing in Benny's forest?" Ray demanded.

Anna ignored him. "According to your laws, the forest is yours."

"Selling the land will not move the spirits, or solve your problems. There may be many reasons for the problems you've been having. I will do what I can."

Her eyes slid to Eric, then back. He could read nothing in them. "You came here to rebuild your father's cabin."

"Yes."

She nodded, and stood. "Build it, then go. That is what you can do for us."

"And just screw Peter Lookstwice if someone murdered him, huh?" Ray was standing now as well. "Look, I know you gotta worry about the spirits, but we got a corpse. Maybe he was a stupid kid, and maybe someone didn't like him knowing something, but little birds falling out of the sky ain't gonna tell us which one's true."

Always before, when Ray got pushy, Fraser found it easy to respect his friend. Anna and Eric didn't want them to know something - or several somethings - and Ray was objecting to their secretiveness when there was a murder investigation at stake. It wasn't the approach he chose to take in such matters, but it was often effective, and it was...well...Ray.

And certainly he still felt respect. He just also felt the blistering need to bury himself in a kiss upon Ray's lips until that quicksilver anger turned to fire, until the whole world became a backdrop for the smell and feel and taste and sound and sight of Ray: Ray who loved him, Ray who needed him, Ray his savior, Ray his lover, Ray his friend.

Ray who was making a somewhat grand exit now, flinging open the door and almost getting knocked down by an ecstatic Diefenbaker. He rubbed the wolf behind the ears, then stomped down the three squat steps and on out to the jeep.

Benny placed his hat on his head, looking at Anna, who was showing nothing but her clothes and her beads and her long twist of black and gray hair.

"If you feel you can help us in the future, just call us."

He followed Ray then, his body singing with anticipation. It was only two hours back to the cabin. He would lay his friend's body out over the sleeping bags inside the tent, and make love with him until dawn.

But only a few miles down the road, Ray grew restless. "Where's that forest, Benny?"

He pulled out his compass. "Take a right when you can."

"I didn't know your father had land and stuff."

"As I said, his rights over the land are limited. Despite what Anna believes, I couldn't have the area deforested. He basically paid a small fee to the Canadian government, then agreed to watch over it. I hadn't really thought of the forest until Anna -"

Ray stomped on the brakes, just a little softer than would cause the jeep to skid. Benny said nothing until the vehicle came to a stop, calming the fluttering thought that Ray wanted to make love again. Ray's body was tight with tension, his hands white-knuckled on the wheel, and when the jeep was still he cut the engine and leaned forward until his forehead rested on the ring of metal and plastic. A long, quiet minute passed.

"Ray?"

"It ain't fair, Benny."

He didn't have to ask what Ray meant. Ray would tell him, of course, but he knew.

"You and me, Benny, for the rest of our lives, we're going to have to fight people about us. I just - you and me, we just wanted a few days not to have to think about it. We just wanted to come up here and happily screw each other's brains out while the rest of the world just left us the hell alone, and do we get that?" Ray was sitting up now, looking ahead into the road. "No! We get dead animals and people who don't care that we're gay, but think we're the devil because we're the 'white man!' Did I enslave these people? Did I oppress Eric or Anna? No! I just wanna find some kid's killer, if he has one, and make everyone leave us alone again. Is that just too damn much to ask?"

Fraser had no idea what to say. He and Ray could no more walk away from this case than they could get married in Ray's church. Before they had become lovers, what would he have said? That this was their duty? That things would look better in the morning?

He reached out. His hand was shaking, but he reached out and put his hand on Ray's hip. Ray turned almost instinctively towards him, and the ache in his heart loosened and fled as they huddled to each other.

The Ray was murmuring. "I can't believe you said that to her...about me. I can't believe you just said it out loud like you didn't care who knows about us. God, I love you, Benny."

Then Benny found something to say, stunned by the joy this discovery brought with it.

"Ray, there's an emergency shelter. My father built it, in the woods, near the river. It will have a cot and a stove, maybe a chair and a table. I have the key, on the ring with the key to the cabin. I brought it...I have it. We could stay there tonight."

Ray pulled back enough to show his slow, sly smile. "You think maybe we could make enough noise to scare off the spirits, Benny?"

Ray was warmth. His body, his eyes, the things he did to Benny's body with his words.

"We could try, Ray."

@@@

When lightning strikes a tree, one of several things will happen, and most of them involve fire.

One of the most common reactions is simply that: fire, which burns along the point of impact and consumes the tree in part or in whole, depending on whether the lightning is accompanied by rain. Usually, such trees fracture or splinter along impact lines as well, leaving long gash-marks from root to branch. Sometimes, trees receiving strong electrical discharges will simply explode. Occasionally, such trees will be sliced in half. Occasionally, all of the above will happen.

The grand fir tree which grew along the tree line around Bob Fraser's cabin had been struck by lightning many years before his son was born. Since there had been a long dry spell before the thunderstorm, the fire had burned quickly even as the bark had been saturated, hollowing out the tree just shy of injuring it fatally.

It stood now, gray with age and weather, having known Benton Fraser's hands and feet and the games he played there as a child, his presence no more damaging than that of the countless arboreal creatures that had nested or rested within its shelter. Being a tree, it had no preference in its usage by others, though perhaps it bore some vague ill-will towards the those animals that chewed upon its bark or dug around its damaged roots.

It certainly seemed unaware of the creature currently perched within its embrace, who had chosen it both for the shelter it provided and the wide but hidden crack high up in its trunk through which one could peer easily for a comprehensive view of the cabin and its land.

It was certainly a prime location to see such things as the men with axes as they climbed out of the truck, looked around, and got to work.

@@@

"I can't believe I've been living in the wild so long this place looks like a Hilton."

"Ray, my father's cabin is hardly 'the wild.'"

"Considering that your father's cabin is currently something less than a cabin, Benny, I'd have to differ with you on that one."

Benny let it go without regret, looking around in satisfaction at the emergency shelter his father had built. The walls were thick and windowless, and the stove and flue easy to clean. Using the ax from the jeep, he was able to gather up more than enough branches to see the fire through the night, and, once it was lit, the shelter began to warm up quickly.

He and Ray, who had spent his time airing out the covers on the small cot, brushing off cobwebs and stomping on spiders, until Benny objected and made him simple "relocate" them, left the place to warm and walked down the vague path to Tears Creek. It was still early enough in the spring that the creek was just a small ribbon banked by high walls of rock. Ray picked up a smooth pebble and flung it into the water.

"Does it ever flood?"

"Sometimes, I think. My father and I almost never discussed this place."

"So why does Anna think this place is haunted?"

"Well, she doesn't think it's haunted, Ray. She thinks spirits are expressing their displeasure here. Doubtlessly, she thinks that because this was the first place a dead eagle was found...or rather, about two kilometers from here."

"Uh huh."

"We only have about thirty minutes of daylight left, but we could make it to the top of that hill. You'll have a good view of the woods from there."

Ray started to walk. "It's funny. All this time listening to you talk about the Inuit, listening to how much you admire and respect them, and now I find out you're just one more bad guy to them."

"Well, we've encountered more than the usual level of antagonism, but I never have been in a position to help the Inuit do more than survive through a day, Ray. The Inuit have little use for me."

Ray stopped, turned, and reached up until Benny's face was between his hands. He leaned in, and his voice was soft and warm.

"Then they're fools, Benny."

Ray leaned in and allowed himself to become lost. Benny's arms went around him, so he knew he could find his way back when he was ready, when he had had enough of this sweetness and strength, enough of the knowledge that he was being kissed just as much as he was kissing. Benny's tongue explored his mouth, his lower lip was nibbled and caressed, even as he explored and caressed. They cherished each other, breathing softly, exchanging breath.

Ray rested his forehead on Benny's shoulder. "You're a fabulous kisser. Did you know that, Benny?"

"You'd inspire anyone to kiss well, Ray."

He chuckled and leaned back to meet those blue eyes. "Let's look at the forest, and then go get it on."

Benny smiled. "Understood, Ray."

Ray laughed and turned back towards the hill. "Good. I was afraid we were going to have to have another lesson in slang."

"Actually, Ray, I believe I've resolved that issue permanently."

"How's that?"

"From now on, when an American says something I don't understand, I'm going to assume it's sexual in nature."

Ray laughed again, then thought about it. "Actually, that's a pretty safe bet."

"I believe so, Ray. After all, even if it's not sexual, as long as I'm vague enough in my reply, I should encounter no further difficulties."

"Ah. But what if the person you're talking to takes your vague comment as sexual, Benny?"

The Mountie thought this one over for several minutes. "Then I believe I will need you to come over and rescue me, Ray." Blue eyes darted over to him, sparkling slightly. "Perhaps your giving me a passionate kiss would be sufficient to convince them that I could not possibly have any interest in anyone else."

"You think that would work with - ooh, boy."

Benny smiled, looking out with Ray over the forest. "It is lovely, isn't it?"

The hill was higher than Ray had thought, and below them yawned a cliff and stretched out an endless dark green canyon. The woods were deep with twilight, jagged trunks and new leaves whispering up against the sky, reaching out from that fathomless expanse of miles. It was beautiful, but somehow cold, Ray shivered in unease that grew with the sudden feeling of being watched.

"Yeah, it's great, Benny."

"Ray, what's wrong?"

"It's gonna be night in a minute. Let's get back."

"All right, Ray." Benny kept an eye on him, obviously concerned, as they turned back.

"Where's Diefenbaker?"

"Around, Ray. He'll probably hunt something for dinner."

"Shouldn't we keep him inside with us? I mean, the spirits and all."

"Ray, you don't believe in spirits."

Vecchio took a deep breath, held it, nodded. No sense in panicking, even if this place was giving him the creeps. "Still, we should keep him with us."

"Well, I don't see him, Ray."

Ray stopped, looked around, then threw back his head. "Hey! Yo! Dief! Come out here!"

A high whine answered him, and the two men moved quickly back to the shelter. Diefenbaker was already there, standing by the door. When Ray opened it, letting out a pleasant wave of warm air, the wolf immediately slipped inside.

Ray looked at Benny, who shrugged, then they walked inside. It was quite toasty inside, and the room glowed from the light of the lantern Benny had brought in from the jeep. Diefenbaker curled up by the stove and went almost instantly to sleep, leading Fraser to believe his stomach was full of another rabbit.

Ray pulled out water and granola bars and pemmican, and they had dinner on the bunk.

"I'm sorry there's no coffee, Ray."

He shrugged. "Still feeling good from that cup at Anna's. Too bad she doesn't care for Italians in her place. I could sure go for more of that."

Benny finished off the bottle of water they were sharing and Ray gathered up the trash, paying no attention to the hand Fraser put on his arm. He knelt down and put everything into the pack on the floor, then stood for a minute by the stove.

Then, slowly, he turned around.

Benny was watching him from the bunk, his eyes soft and his mouth just slightly open. Ray could see the tiny wet glisten of his tongue.

He slid from his jacket and threw it behind him, over the pack. Next his top button, then each button in turn, was undone. He pulled the edges of his shirt apart slightly, then stood there a moment, feeling his body flush.

He hadn't even come close to getting used to the way he felt when he knew he and Benny were going to make love. Before - he made himself think it - with women, he'd enjoyed love and tenderness and possessiveness and joy, affection and lust, satisfaction and mutual appreciation. They were good feelings: challenging and comforting.

But making love with Benny was just as different emotionally as it was physically. It wasn't that he was self-conscious so much as he was just so incredibly self-aware. Everything had twice as much meaning when Benny was watching. And the vulnerability required was all hyped-up, too. Benny outweighed him, for Pete's sakes. And that solid body was all muscle and slick, white skin over - how *did* it all turn him on so much even while he was so frightened by what it meant?

He wasn't "normal" anymore. And even worse, he didn't want to be.

He wanted Benny.

The light from the lantern graced Benny in gold and turned his eyes jade. He looked a little like those dragons they sold in Chinatown.

Dragons. Ray knew Benny had only said that stuff before about belonging to him to get him over his moment of heterosexual panic, but it had been a nice thought: slaying dragons for Benny. He didn't own him, of course, though Ray was beginning to feel that he himself belonged to this man watching him, dictated to by those gold-glitter eyes.

But more than that, he felt they were making between themselves a private world, a safe house of words and understandings. It protected him now as he ran his fingertips up over his own chest, smiling slightly when Benny gasped. He brought his hands up to his lips and licked at his thumb and fingers, then lowered them until he could stroke his nipples, half-hidden by his shirt.

"Ray..."

"Yeah, Benny?" Hm. He sounded like a blues singer again.

"Please."

"Tell me what you want."

Benny held his breath, and Ray could see a hint of sweat on his brow. It wasn't that warm in here.

"Everything, Ray."

Vecchio just stood there. Benny could figure it out.

"Your shirt, Ray."

"What about it?"

"Take it off, please."

Ray shrugged out of the chambray shirt and let it fall over his jacket, then ran his palms over his chest slowly, savoring the way it felt. He was fairly certain he could make himself come just from the feel of his hands and Benny's eyes on his body. This was really kind of groovy. He'd tried doing this for Ange once, and she'd just laughed. It had been a sweet moment, though, if something less than hot. He could tell from the way Benny was breathing that laughter was out of the question. He shivered and pinched a nipple, shooting Fraser a little smile, then closed his eyes and let the little heat wave rock him.

Benny spoke, startling.

"Your pants, Ray."

"Hm. What about them, Benny?"

"Take them off...so...you'd better take off you shoes...first, I mean."

Hiding his broadening smile by bending over, Ray unlaced the water-proof hiking boots and pulled his feet out, then slithered off his pants and stood back up, his erection pressing against the one item still constraining it. Benny looked at his legs, his tongue moving over his bottom lip, and Ray let his hands play in his own chest hair a while.

"Your underwear, Ray."

"Yeah, Benny?"

"Take it off...slowly."

Ray didn't hide his grin this time, taking a good twenty seconds to slide the briefs down to the floor. He pulled off his socks too, while he was down there, then slowly straightened up again, running his fingertips over his thighs.

Yet somehow he was still unprepared for Benny's eyes. The color and depth he had seen before was giving way to a luminescence of...was it reverence? It seemed to go beyond appreciation, so far beyond that for the first time in his life, without a stitch of clothing on, Ray felt attractive. In fact, he felt absolutely gorgeous, and as a reward for this moment of insanity, he did a slow, hip-dropping turn, laughing just a little once he'd made it all the way around.

"Ray..."

Oh God. Laughter died, and the enjoyable weight between his legs was taking on a hot, sweet ache.

"Touch yourself."

Ray steadied his hands and brought them casually up to his shoulders. "Touch myself? Here?"

Benny shook his head.

"Here?" Ray put his hands on his head.

"No, Ray."

Ray pretended to consider things, frowning slightly.

"Touch your...cock, Ray."

He couldn't keep back a small moan as his hands went down his body and took gentle hold. He took a moment, steadying himself, then stroked with one hand while the other hefted the weight of his balls, amazed at the arousal he felt not only from his hands on himself, but from the feel of his own dry, soft skin and the hard flesh resisting his fingers. He concentrated, showing Benny what he liked, and soon there was a thick drop of moisture for his thumb to work with. He smeared it over his cockhead, groaning and staring so deeply into Benny's eyes he almost seemed to see himself. A few more hard strokes and he would come, and Benny would see it.

When his friend's pale-gold body slid off the bed, he faltered.

"Benny?"

Those eyes met his only a moment, then the dark head bent, warm hands pushed his out of the way, and a hot mouth went down on him in one long, smooth glide.

"God! Benny!" Ray almost came, lifting himself up on the balls of his feet and leaning down over those broad shoulders. He tried to back off, but warm hands had cupped his butt, and Benny was sucking harder. "Geeze, Benny. Don't you want to be inside me?"

Benny looked up at him, not stopping the motion of his head, back and forth. His fingers spread, touching more of Ray, while those blue eyes closed in bliss. Ray felt devoured, as though he were nourishing his lover. The sensation spiked, and the shock of heat whipped his head back even as it rushed down his cock, spilling into Benny's mouth. Those warm lips continued to milk him, spurring aftershocks, then continued on, until the sensation became unpleasant on his overly sensitive skin.

"Benny. Hey...Benny." He pulled back, placing a gentle hand on Benny's chin, nudging him away to reveal wet lips and brilliant eyes. Ray stopped breathing, staring down into beauty that masked something almost feral.

With a growl, Fraser rose up and pulled Ray to the bed, pushing him down first and then himself a second later, sprawling over him and thrusting down in a jagged rhythm while he tore open his pants and shoved them down. Ray almost protested, then realized he didn't want to. It was so *hot* that Benny wanted him this badly, and even now his lover was taking care not to hurt him, not to smush him on the cot or grab him too hard.

He let his head loll back, and was nipped and sucked on his neck for his trouble. God, how had Benny learned all the hot spots on his neck so quickly? After all, he had a lot of neck and - "Oh, yeah! Oh, Benny, YES!" God, he was hard again, thrusting up into the honey-friction Benny was making. The hard cot only made the contact stronger, fiercer, and there was so much silky, sweaty flesh for his hands to stroke and his own mouth to seek.

Benny was arching up now, his eyes dark and seeking as his mouth worked soundlessly, then emitted a strangled groan, then finally a name, infinitely repeated, "Ray...Ray...Ray...Ray..."

"Benny..."

"My sweet Ray..." Benny's movements lost none of their power, but slowed slightly, becoming tender. Ray met his gaze, and saw a need there he couldn't identify. Then Benny was kissing him, offering his tongue to be suckled, and Ray felt the heat flash again, stronger, coming at him. When Benny groaned down his throat he thought seriously about passing out, but instead matched it with his own garbled ecstasy, overcome and letting it all go...

It was heaven to drift, anchored only by Benny's body over his legs. Benny was making little soft snoring noises, and suddenly he realized he was going to go right to sleep, just like this, covered in semen and not giving a damn. Benny would probably wake up in a while and get out of his clothes the rest of the way. But Benny was a grown man, and could manage it on his own.

A little whine alerted him to Diefenbaker's presence by the bed. The wolf was sniffling instead of sniffing, and seemed a little spooked, his eyes roving. Ray reached out with his thankfully unsticky hand and rubbed the animal behind his ears until he calmed down. Dief licked his palm, and it tickled. Then he dropped down, evidently curling up under the cot.

It was so quiet outside.

@@@

The Mountie looked down at them: one man naked and sprawled on his back, the other draped over him with his pants pushed to his knees and his shoes still on. He frowned and tried again.

"Benton! Son! Wake up!"

"Hmph. Ugh...Dad?"

"Yes, son. Get up. You're needed outside."

"Outside?" Fraser sat up, blinking and pulling up his pants. Had his father lost all sense of propriety when he was killed? He had thought his father was going to be careful when he and Ray were...engaged.

"Yes, outside, son. What's the matter? Hasn't the blood made it back to your brain yet?"

Blinking at his father's crudeness, he slid carefully from the cot, causing Ray to stir, mumble, and drop back into sleep. Great Scot. He was still in his jacket. It was a wonder Ray hadn't protested.

"Come along, Benton." His father seemed slightly angry. Odd. He'd never seemed angry before, not even when dealing with Gerrard. "They won't wait forever."

"Who?" he whispered.

Fraser Sr. looked startled, then frowned. "Hurry up."

Obediently, Fraser Jr. opened the door and slipped out. The night had turned bitter cold.

*Whine*

*Snuffle.*

*Bark!*

"Mphh...what? Dief? Where's Benny?"

It felt horrible to wake up alone, nothing to think about but the dry gunk on his stomach and chest, and how cold it was in here. Had someone held the door open? The fire was low. Ray got up and added some wood, then, feeling really gross, put his dirty clothes back on, stomping into his boots and shrugging back into his jacket. He and Benny *had* to find somewhere to shower tomorrow.

Benny...where was he?

Dief was standing by the door, and when he opened it the wolf slipped out, then waited, making sure he was following, before heading for the hill. Benny was standing at the top of it.

"Benny! Yo! Fraser!"

Nothing. Benny didn't turn, didn't seem to notice him or Dief at all. Ray began to trot. Damn, but it had gotten cold.

"I don't understand," Benny murmured when Ray got within earshot. "I don't see them."

"Benny? Benny!" He grabbed Fraser's shoulder and spun him around.

The eyes which met his were gray in the starlight, the face deadly pale. But even as Ray opened his mouth to ask if he were all right, Fraser shook himself slightly, blinked, and stared.

"Ray? What's going on?"

"You tell me, Benny! What are you doing out here?"

Fraser looked around, but didn't find whatever he was looking for. "I...came for a walk."

"Benny, don't even think about lying to me."

Those gray eyes met his helplessly. "I thought there was something out here I needed to see."

Ray looked out over the darkness hiding the forest, and again felt eyes looking back at him.

*You can't have him.* The words formed in his mind instinctively, irrational but right. *You can't have him.*

Something flashed, or was it just his eyes, hating the dark? Where was the damn moon, anyway?

"Come on, Benny. Let's go back." Dief was pressed against Fraser's legs, and the wolf was whining again.

"Of course, Ray." Fraser's voice was serene, but he didn't move. Ray grabbed his arm and dragged him back down the hill.

Inside, closing Dief in with them, Ray drew Benny to the cot, made him take off his shoes and jacket, but them kept them both dressed the rest of the way. It would only be a few hours until morning.

Benny slept, his head cradled in Ray's lap, while the detective listened to the roaring silence just outside.

@@@

Constable Davenport forced herself to acknowledge that if she had it to do over again, she'd have invited Fraser and Vecchio for a drink. Then she pushed harder, and admitted that she'd pay money to have it to do over again.

The just-post-dawn air stung her cheeks and chin as she drove the open jeep to Anthuk. She wanted another look in the shed, and she wanted to talk to one of the Corven women, who were bound to be back now from Little Ro.

Davenport considered herself a fortunate woman. While she was often lonely, it was not a chronic condition, nor one she considered permanent. At this time in her life, she was more concerned with the satisfaction she derived from her posting to what her brother-in-law had once called "the backyard to a vacant lot."

She had worked in cities, and found she spent her time "busting" everyone she met. Out here she knew people during the course of their daily lives, not just when they were drunk or guilty of some crime that would now ruin their lives. True, she didn't know many people, and the Inuit population would rather see the back of her, and sometimes she got snowed in for weeks at a time, but there was peace here, and a fellowship only known to those who not only worked for a living, but worked to live.

McDermot had come to her this way, a stray who'd been making his way on his own when she found him on her porch one evening, evidently attracted by some seed she'd put out for the birds. She fed him, and he regarded her with suspicion, and for over a week their relationship had consisted only of meals and snubs.

And then one morning she opened her door, and there he stood, sniffing slightly. She opened the door wider, and in he walked.

He almost never left her cabin now. Like this place, he'd walked into her heart and stayed there because it suited the both of them just fine.

Jane sighed. Benton Fraser was extremely attractive, and Ray Vecchio was sexy if annoying, but it wasn't the men she kept thinking of. It was their friendship. She'd never seen two people who more obviously belonged together as a team than the two of them. She'd noticed it subconsciously at first, then rejected it as a TV-style pose, then...thinking back over it later while she combed flour out of McDermot's coat, and while she made dinner and listened to her radio for calls from headquarters, she'd picked out a dozen little things only close friends did for each other that the two men had done with ease.

Not to mention that talk she'd interrupted about things not being Fraser's fault. She got the feeling Vecchio did that for the man quite often.

In any event, their friendship had made her feel her aloneness as she never had quite felt it before.

When she'd first come up here six years ago, she'd thought she was making a good friend right away with someone who would be very helpful to her in a number of ways. Anna Silvernail had first come to her door to discuss her daughter's problems with the last Mountie, Chester Claiborne. Rina Silvernail had been making a habit out of getting drunk and breaking car windows with rocks. Usually, the cars were old junkers, but sometimes Rina got too drunk to tell the difference between an abandoned vehicle and a parked one.

She'd taken to the woman immediately, and had thought it was returned. She'd been a regular at Anna's Caf for months, and through Anna she'd met Keri, and Doc, and the Corven sisters, and Justin Dearhorn, and Eric, and a few shamans and a storyteller named Ellis from Bushwood, and more, all socially, all so very friendly-like. She'd thought then that she was making a difference. She'd thought...

Jane frowned and concentrated on the road. She'd thought a lot of things, but not once had she realized Anna was simply keeping an eye on her, making sure the new Mountie didn't cause the trouble the old one did. The first time Davenport had had to arrest someone she'd met in Anna's Caf - for spousal abuse, of all things - Anna had come to her to request that she release the man from "white man's law" and let the local Inuit government - as if there were such a thing - handle the case. When Jane had refused, Anna had turned her back without a word, and that had been that.

She'd almost left then, just as she now suspected Claiborne had left. None of Anna's friends knew her after that. Oh, they'd say hello, but they wouldn't mean it. No more great coffee and fresh bread and sitting around in the room that never got too much sun and just talking about the weather and fishing for hours on end. Ellis the storyteller, himself half-white, still looked her up when he was in town. Sometimes he brought his wife, Kate Thistle. But that was it.

Luckily, she hadn't been so taken by the Inuit welcome that she'd forgotten to make white friends - though at the time she hadn't even thought of them as "Inuit friends" and "white friends." So she still had folks to keep her company, but that special charm of this place had died for her the day Anna had turned her back to her and kept it there.

Rina had come to her once, right before she'd left for the city, and asked her how she bore it, how she could possibly stay here when she was white and could go where she pleased.

"I like it here," she'd said. Rina hadn't understood, but it had been the simple truth.

Davenport gasped and stomped on the accelerator. She was about three miles from Anthuk, and over the trees where Anthuk would be rose thick black smoke. Soon, she could smell it: gasoline and wood burning hot.

Anthuk was half-gone when she got there: Doc's shed and house nothing but black embers. The wind, thank God, had kept the fire from spreading to the trees or the Corven house. Constable Davenport slipped into her rubber boots, then stomped on the few ground fires caused by the embers that had blown loose. She was just putting out the last of them when she saw the boots sticking out from behind the storage shed.

"Doc!"

She ran to him and put her hands to the pulse point on his neck. Strong and steady. He had a nasty bump on his head, and blood had pooled back and caked in his hair. She worried about how to move him until he began to stir.

"Doc?"

The man groaned, surprising her with the strength of it. Doc was almost in his sixties, but he had redefined the word "feisty" for her.

"Don't try to move yet," she warned.

"Mph. Damn bastard." Blue-gray, almost white eyes opened in pain and looked up at her.

"Did you see who hit you?"

"A man. I saw that much. Was in the shed."

She put a hand on his shoulder to keep him from sitting up, then took off her jacket and put it behind his head before going to her jeep for the first aid kit. When she got back, he was already bitching to beat the band.

"Don't know why everyone wants inside my shed all of the sudden. Peter used to go in there and sniff gas, but what the hell else was he supposed to do? Tried to talk him out of it, but was I supposed to throw the gas out? I locked the place up and he'd just bust it open anyways. Besides, the gas was for everyone to use. That was the point of having it there..."

She nodded and clucked a bit as she wiped the blood off. There was a lot of it, but the wound wasn't deep and the bone wasn't soft. It had been a glancing blow, meant to stun, not kill. She told him as much when he paused for breath.

"What did the fire get?" he wanted to know.

"The shed and your house."

He bitched a bit more, but it wasn't his main house, just a place to get away from Trudy for a while, and she doubt he kept anything of value there. Trudy wouldn't stand for it.

He was steadier now, and she let him sit up. She'd have to take him to Little Ro to get that wound looked at, but she'd take it slow and steady.

"So what exactly did you see?"

He frowned and looked embarrassed. "I heard noise in the shed. I was looking for one of the sisters. They're not back yet."

Jane frowned.

"So I see the door is open, and I know about Peter, so I'm thinking it's someone who wants to check out where someone died, or maybe some native fool doing a ritual about death and dying...so I go in there ready to shoo them off, and this man - I didn't see his face, and he had a knit cap on over his head - he turned and clops me one. Don't remember anything after that."

"What was he doing when you got in there?"

"Don't know. Looking at the ground."

"The ground?"

Doc looked annoyed. "Yeah, the ground, I guess. Looking down, anyway."

"What else was he wearing besides the cap?"

"Jeans, dark jacket, boots."

"What kind of boots?"

"Dark...leather...you gonna take me to Little Ro?"

She nodded and helped him up.

"You said the Corven sisters aren't back yet. Do you know where they went?"

"Ottawa."

Jane almost stumbled in surprise. "Why did they go there?"

"Some sort of arts and crafts festival. Bunch of kids went."

"Guy and John Silvernail?" She shook off the small clutch of dread.

"Yeah." They came into view of the road and Doc groaned. "That jeep of yours bounces like a buckboard."

"I'll take it slow."

Doc sniffed and bemoaned the loss of her predecessor, who'd ridden year-long in his Range Rover. She hid a smile. Doc was feeling all right.

When they got to Little Ro, she'd have to call for backup.

*Well, you said you wanted company.*

@@@

Benny snuggled into the warm luxury of Ray's arms, oozing decadence. He'd never liked it when people exaggerated about love and "heaven on earth" before. Now he knew better.

"Benny? You awake?"

Ray's concerned voice scraped away some of the warm fuzz surrounding his mind.

"Mmm. Yes, I'm awake, Ray."

"Benny? You okay?" Ray's arms were moving him now, trying to get him to sit up. It was very hard to open his eyes. Had he been ill?

Diefenbaker whined, and was suddenly in his face, his front paws on the cot, licking at him and sniffing. When Benny realized Ray hadn't objected to this lupine intrusion, he managed to struggle fully awake.

"Ray?" He dodged a pink tongue long enough to see his friend's tired and pale face. "What's wrong, Ray?"

"What's wrong? You scare the hell out of me like that and you ask me what's wrong?"

Benny tried to think of what Ray meant, but his brain wasn't working right. Had he consumed alcohol last night?

"Benny...hey, are you all right?"

"What happened, Ray?"

Now those green eyes looked really scared. Diefenbaker snuffed up to Ray's chest, and those elegant hands sunk deeply into the white fur, seeking comfort. Benny felt a wholly inappropriate twinge of jealousy.

"Ray?"

"You left last night, Fraser. Do you remember that? You left the shelter and went and stood out looking at the forest. And it's been creepy as hell all night."

Benny frowned and tried to think. "Left the shelter?"

"All right! That's it!" Ray was off the cot so fast Diefenbaker yelped and trotted backwards. "We're so outta here! Now! We're leaving! Help me pack everything we got!"

"Ray -"

"No questions, no arguments, no discussing this in committee! We're gone!" Vecchio threw open the door to the dim gray of dawn.

Fraser reached for the pack on the floor, and almost fell on his knees. Ray grabbed him, getting him to stand on wobbly legs.

"Ray?"

"Benny, you'll be all right." Ray soothed him as well as he could with such a desperate voice. "We just gotta get out of here." Dief whined and kept by their legs as Ray reached down for the pack, ready to throw Benny over his shoulder if need be.

Fraser rallied and got to the jeep pretty much under his own power. Ray tossed the pack in the back, waited only until Dief was safely settled, then started up the engine and sped away.

"Where's the nearest doctor, Benny?"

"Hmm. What, Ray?"

"Doctor, Benny! Damnit! Where's the nearest doctor?"

"There's a clinic in Little Ro, Ray. Go west"

Ray cursed. They were going north but the outlet road they were on now would hook up with the main road in a few miles. God, he could feel eyes on his back, and when a bird flew out of the forest on his right, he had a sudden vision of being attacked on all sides, a la *The Birds.*

It was just a crow though, or some big black bird. It didn't bother them.

"Benny? Benny! Talk to me! Tell me an Inuit story or something!"

"A story?" Fraser's head was rocking around with every bump in the road. Ray stepped on the gas.

"Yeah, damnit. For once I wanna hear one of your stories, okay?"

Fraser seemed to be thinking about it.

"Please, Benny? Okay?"

"There was...an Inuit man, who was unhappy because he wasn't a good hunter, Ray."

"Not a good hunter, huh?"

"Yes. One day he decided to leave his home. He left all his weapons and began to walk away from the sea, thinking all the while that he would rather be an animal, instead of a man."

Fraser seemed to drift off.

"Benny! Benny! It's bad that he wanted to be an animal, right?"

"What, Ray?"

"It's bad that the guy wanted to be an animal, isn't it? He should have wanted to be a man!"

"Have you heard the story before, Ray?"

"No! No, please. Keep telling it to me. I really like it."

Fraser smiled. "You do, Ray?"

"Yeah. Go on with it."

"Well, the man saw some ptarmigan eating the leaves and berries and making little noises. They sounded very happy, Ray."

Ray grinned savagely as the main road came into view. Rubber burned as he turned west. "I'm sure they did, Benny."

"The man followed the ptarmigan all day. He wanted them to feel sorry for him and use their magic to change him into a ptarmigan too. Finally he found a village made entirely of ptarmigan who had become people. He asked them..."

"He asked them what, Benny?"

"He asked them to make him a ptarmigan too, Ray. But they wouldn't. They told him he wouldn't like it there because big birds would try to kill him, and men would hunt him."

"Yeah, that would suck, Benny. So what happened next?"

"What, Ray?"

"Oh, God."

@@@

"The injury isn't severe," Dr. Talfard was explaining, his voice a little tired even though it was still mid-morning. "But I'm worried about the time he was lying on the ground. He's got a bad chill, and it may turn into an infection. I'm keeping him warm, and -"

"Where's the doctor?" a man shouted from the door as he carried another man in over his shoulder. A white dog was with them, but went immediately into a corner, as though it somehow knew it wasn't supposed to be there and was keeping out of the way. "Where's the doctor here?"

Talfard and Davenport rushed towards Ray Vecchio, whose eyes latched immediately onto the Mountie, pleading with her silently as she and Talfard eased Fraser off his shoulder and onto a nearby gurney.

"Ray?" Fraser said weakly, his eyes unfocused. "I can't feel my legs, Ray."

"Oh, God!" Vecchio grabbed Fraser's hand and stroked his hair back from his forehead. "You're gonna be all right, Benny."

Talfard was busy, shining his light in Fraser's eyes, checking his pulse, opening up his shirt and listening to his heart. He frowned and checked Fraser's throat, then felt his glands under his neck and armpits, then lifted up the man's unoccupied hand, staring at the fingernails.

"Sir, where did you find him?"

"We were at his father's forest, at the emergency shelter!"

"You were together?"

"Yeah! Except...he was walking in the woods, at night. I found him and brought him back. And he doesn't remember it!"

"Ray?" Very weak and thinly spoken, and yet Vecchio reacted as though shot.

"Yeah, Benny? Yeah?"

"Thirsty, Ray."

"I'm sure he is," Talfard muttered, grabbing the gurney to push it into the treatment room. Vecchio moved with him fluidly, helping to guide his friend inside.

"You know what's wrong with him?" Ray demanded.

"He's showing all the signs of toxicological shock. I'd say he's been poisoned."

"Poisoned?" Ray's eyes were enormous. Davenport looked away to grab latex gloves and then the IV. "How? By what?"

"I'll have to wait for the lab results, and that will take awhile. But it looks like a neural suppressant. Possibly an insecticide."

Ray stared. "You saying that because of the way he looks, or just because people get that around here?"

"Ray...thirsty, Ray."

"You gonna get him something to drink, or what?"

Talfard was unfazed by Vecchio's tone. "There's bottled water in the lobby. You could help by getting it."

Vecchio nodded and went to leave, but Fraser tightened his grip on the man's hand. "Ray!"

"I'll get it," Davenport said, rushing into the next room, looking in on the recovery room as she passed. Doc was sitting there calmly, wrapped in blankets and watching the little TV. When she got back with the water, the IV was hooked up with a drip, Fraser's shirt was on the floor and the pants would soon join it. Vecchio and the doctor were both checking over Fraser's body for needle marks. She handed the water to Vecchio and helped get the rest of Fraser's clothes off.

Considering how shrill and whiny he could be, Vecchio's voice was amazing soft and musical as he spoke to Fraser, urging him to open his eyes and drink, soothing him as they turned him over on his stomach, then soothing him again as they got him again on his back. In-between his words, she could hear the little noises Fraser made as he drank the water. Vecchio, she noted with approval, was keeping him from gulping it down.

Talfard rinsed out Fraser's eyes with saline, then rubbed his body clean with solution and a soft cloth. Then he tied a robe around him and pulled up the sheet.

She kept her eyes averted while Fraser was naked. She'd never been one for peeking at people, and besides, she thought there was a good chance Vecchio might punch her lights out if he thought she was making moves on Fraser. Did the guy hide their relationship this poorly at home? Or maybe they didn't hide it, but she thought gays had a tough time of things in American cities like Chicago.

Oh well, it was none of her business.

Talfard was drawing blood now, and talking loudly enough to get Vecchio's attention.

"He's definitely been poisoned with something, so we're going to put a broad-spectrum anti-toxin in the drip and pump him with fluids. Keep making him drink as much as you can. And keep him awake. I'm fairly certain he's going to be fine, all right? But let's keep him awake."

Vecchio blinked several times, his body rocking slightly as he heard the good, if guarded news. Then he looked down with a smile. "You hear that, Benny? I told you you were going to be okay, but you gotta stay awake, okay?"

"Yes, Ray." Fraser whispered.

"He'll be a little out of it, because of the serum and because he's gotten so dehydrated. Don't be alarmed."

Vecchio nodded, then looked down at Fraser and got him to drink more.

"Get those clothes in a bag," Talfard whispered to her. "Then get this guy -"

"Vecchio."

"Get him to change into scrubs and put his clothes in another bag."

"I'll get the lab in Danes to compare it to whatever they find on the bird."

Talfard, who'd already heard from her about the eagle, nodded. Together, they looked at Vecchio and Fraser, then Talfard headed to his small lab.

"So what happened after the guy got good at being a caribou, Benny?"

"He...he wanted to see his family again, Ray."

Vecchio smiled and got Benny to drink from the bottle once more, slowly smoothing his hand back over the sweat-matted hair.

"Makes sense, Benny. But wasn't he still a caribou?"

"Yes, Ray." Another drink. "The chief caribou warned him...that it would be hard for him to be a man again, since...he'd become such a good caribou."

Davenport left the room for another bottle of water and two garbage bags. Doc waved at her, then went back to staring at the TV. She took a moment, looking out the window. It was getting cloudy, and the temperature was staying low. Perhaps it would snow, though it was very late in the year for it. She saw Vecchio's jeep parked outside. When she shot a look at the dog, he was pretending to sleep.

Benny was talking when she went in, his voice faint, but more relaxed now, probably picking up Vecchio's attitude. "He felt very foolish for getting caught in the trap, Ray, but he was so excited to see his family again."

"Makes sense to me, Benny." Vecchio took the bottle of water from her.

"You need to change into these scrubs and put your clothes in this bag. We'll need to test them."

He looked at her and nodded, then looked like he wanted to ask her a question. Fraser claimed his attention, however, and she turned her back. She would have left the room, but if Fraser got suddenly worse, she'd need to get the doctor back. Fraser's grip on Vecchio's hand looked tight enough to bruise.

"In the evening, two boys from the village came to the trap, and they were going to shoot him. But then the caribou spoke, and asked them not to kill him."

"I'm glad he could still talk, Benny."

"Yes, Ray."

She heard cloth moving now as Vecchio shed his clothes. "And then what happened?"

"He said they only needed to skin him with their knives. The boys did as they were told. Ray..."

"Just let go for a second, Benny. So I can get the jacket off, okay? See? There you go."

She heard the jacket being shoved into the bag. Then the thump of Vecchio's boots, then a zipper and what was probably buttons being undone.

"And what happened when he didn't have his skin, Benny?"

"You're so beautiful, Ray."

"Aw, geeze, Benny. We got company."

"But you are beautiful, Ray. Don't you like it when I say that?"

"More than anything, Benny. But I like it more when we're alone, all right? Now, tell me what happened next with the caribou guy."

"Well, he told them to take off his skin with their knives."

"You said that part already. And they did. So what happened then?"

"They saw that he was a man, Ray. And more than that, they realized he was their father, whom they'd missed for so many years."

"Aw, that's great, Benny."

"You still have a bruise on your back, Ray."

"Yeah?"

"Yes. From when he beat you, when he was going to -"

"Shhh. Let's not think about that now, Benny, okay? Finish your story."

"I did finish it, Ray. They saw he was their father, and then they took him home."

"What? No big dinner to celebrate?"

Benny laughed, then made a sound of distress that almost made Davenport turn around.

"Do you have to put clothes on, Ray?"

"I think the people around here would appreciate it, Benny."

"But I like seeing you naked, Ray. You look really great that way."

"Thanks, Benny. But it's cold, you know?"

"Oh, then you should get dressed, Ray."

"Thank you, Benny."

"Do you need your hand again, Ray?"

"Just for a minute...there. I got ya."

"Yes."

"Tell me another story, Benny."

"Why?"

"'Cause I like your stories."

"You hate my stories, Ray."

"Well, that was before. I'm, you know, warming up to them. So come on, tell me another one."

"No."

"No?"

"Want a kiss."

"Okay. Later though, all right?"

"No."

"Benny..."

"Want a kiss, then I'll tell you the story of why there are tides."

Davenport heard the very quiet noise of a quick kiss.

"I want a proper kiss!"

"Aw, geeze, Benny!"

"I want a proper kiss, then I'll tell you the story."

"Benny!"

"It's a very long story, Ray."

"You promise?"

"Yes, very long, goes on for ages, and involves the Fog Man and his hat."

Vecchio sighed, then for quite a while there were noises of a very long, very proper kiss indeed. Davenport risked it, and saw that neither man could possibly notice what she was doing, and grabbed the bag. She tied off the top, and brought both bags into the lobby. She got another bottle of water, checked in on Doc again, stared out the window, then went back into the treatment room. Vecchio looked sallow in the green scrubs, but Fraser's color had improved quite a bit. His lips also looked just a little swollen, and he was obviously enjoying the story he was telling.

She handed over the bottle, checked to see if they needed anything else, then went outside to get on the phone. She got a helicopter this time, and within three hours the two bags of clothes, two samples of Fraser's blood, one of Vecchio's, and one of the dog's (taken with surprising ease once Vecchio had told the beast it was important) were on their way to Danes. The chopper could also have taken Fraser, but it was clear by then that he was going to be all right. Talfard didn't even use the whole bag of drip he'd prepared, and switched off to plain saline.

The dog, whom Talfard told her was half-wolf right before he'd given "Diefenbaker" half his sandwich, stayed curled in his corner. Talfard's nurse finally arrived, and when they wheeled Fraser out so they could scrub down the treatment room the wolf/dog had gotten his front paws on the gurney and licked at Fraser's face until Vecchio had ordered him down. He returned to his corner and remained quite silent. When she thought about it, she wondered who had trained him so well, Fraser or Vecchio.

Not long after that, Fraser was allowed to sleep. Talfard wanted to keep him and Vecchio for twenty-four hours for observation, so Vecchio wound up on the sofa in the lobby, wrapped in blankets. Diefenbaker was lying with him, and was possibly asleep for real this time.

Davenport sat down across from him quietly. He was a cop. She didn't have to lecture him.

His eyes were closed, anyway, though she knew he wasn't asleep yet. She got a pen and pad from Talfard's desk and wrote the date at the top of the first sheet. Danes would be sending a team down to check the area around the shelter for toxins. She needed to make sure she had all her questions for Vecchio in order. She didn't want him to think she was some amateur.

But as soon as she sat down all she could think about was that kiss.

It should have looked awkward. One man was lying on the gurney, the other man was standing and leaning over him.

It should have looked freakish. It was two men kissing, on the lips, passionately.

It should have at least looked wrong.

It should *not* have looked so damn sexy.

"Why are you here?"

Vecchio's voice startled her, for all that it was so soft. He sounded bone-tired.

"Someone hit Doc pretty bad. He's in recovery."

"Doc...the guy with the gas in his shed, right?"

"Right. It was burned down, his house too. All he saw was a man in dark clothes and a knit cap."

"Hm. Yeah. We get that guy causing trouble in Chicago too."

Davenport felt herself smiling. "You think he might be out on parole?"

"Probably." Ray's sigh became a yawn. He blinked at her, then sat up slightly, not dislodging the wolf. Then he talked, in detail but without once straying off-topic, and reported he and Fraser's arrival at the forest, their sleeping in the shelter, his waking to find Fraser walking on the hill, and the subsequent hours spent until dawn.

She wrote it all down, nodding, then watched as he sat there in silence for many long minutes.

"I should have taken him out of there first thing, instead of waiting for dawn."

"You'd have gotten lost and you'd both be dead by now. You did exactly the right thing."

Vecchio shrugged, then looked at her with those green eyes that really made her regret his sexual orientation.

"You gonna put it in the report?"

She frowned, then realized what he must be talking about.

"Only if it's germane to the case." She let a few beats go by. "Is it?"

He shook his head, looking miserable. She got the distinct impression his next words occurred only because he was exhausted.

"We came here to get away, be by ourselves for a while. Last time we tried it, the plane crashed. I ended up carrying him then too. We're cursed."

She had to say it. "You have each other. That's pretty great."

Vecchio smiled. "Yeah." He leaned back against the sofa, one hand sinking deep into the dog's fur. Another moment, and he was asleep.

@@@

Ray cracked one eye and looked at his watch. 11:45 PM.

His legs didn't want to move, especially since Dief's warm weight was pushing them into the surprisingly comfortable sofa with a pressure just the right side of cozy.

There, that did it. He wasn't getting cozy with the wolf.

Davenport had taken her near-silent self elsewhere, but the door to the doc's office, that's furnishings included a cot, was ajar, the better to hear calls of help from his unexpected patients. Ray didn't have his shoes on, and Dief only crack-eyed him as he extracted his legs and put his stockinged feet on the cool floor.

The clinic smelled of antiseptic covering damp wood, but the heater was working great. In the glow of the outside light he could see frost on the windows, and would have been glad to be here instead of in the tent, except for the reason why he was here.

Only a few steps took him into the treatment room, where Benny's face could only be seen in the green glow of the monitor by the bed. He didn't want to wake his friend, but it wasn't just enough to mouth the words silently from the doorway.

He let his hand creep forward until it found the foot of the gurney, then walked around the side until he was by Benny's shoulder.

He bent down and placed a soft kiss on one smooth, pale cheek, smiling at the hint of stubble.

"I love you, Benny," he whispered, checking his watch again, superstitiously, to make sure he'd beaten the deadline.

He stayed another few minutes, risked another breath-close kiss, then padded back to the sofa.

A dark shape moved outside the window, and his heart thudded painfully in alarm.

But the shape moved closer, and took on a face, pale and flat.

Ray found the doc's coat and some green rubber slippers. Damn, it was cold outside. Shutting the door on the heat from the clinic felt like closing the lid on his coffin.

"Hello, Eric."

Eric nodded. "How's Fraser?"

"The doctor says he's going to be okay. He thinks it never was life-threatening, but that Fraser would've been sick a long time if we hadn't flushed it out." Ray stopped babbling and took in ice-air deep, chilling himself. He needed Benny's warm arms around him in the heat of their bed...except that they didn't have a bed yet, not here in the ruins of the cabin, not in Chicago in his family's house, not that single slab of discomfort in Benny's apartment.

They would have to make a bed, a life, a world. He loved Benny, but he didn't know if he could be strong enough to accomplish the tasks that love required, not when he was standing in the cold looking into Eric's quietly scornful face.

"They've already started in at Tears Creek," the Inuit man announced.

"The poison control guys?"

Eric nodded.

Ray felt his brain rev a bit. The pieces were all there, and in the bitter cold it was somehow easy to put them together.

"So the developer who was pestering you guys about buying wood decides to cash in on the dead-eagle thing by planting a few pesticide traps. A few more dead birds, and he or they figure you'll sell to get rid of the bad spirits. Benny trips a trap while walking through his father's forest. Now we can nail the bastards for illegal use of controlled substances, reckless endangerment, trespassing..."

Eric was looking at him in surprise. What? Had he thought Ray Vecchio was some sort of idiot?

"Did Anna know?"

The impassive mask returned.

"Did Anna know they were killing the birds? Did she wind Benny up so he'd deal with white men making trouble?" Ray snorted, and realized his nose was stopped up. He had to get back inside before he was nothing but ice. "She could have just asked, and saved Benny from getting hurt. But no." He threw up his hands, wincing at frozen fingers, and started back towards the door. "Constable Davenport will be dealing with it now. Benny and I got a cabin to build."

The clinic was so warm inside it hurt for a moment, and little black spots blotted things out for a moment. But then he shivered and began to move towards the sofa. Diefenbaker was awake, and got off the pillows to come nuzzle his hand. He buried cold fingers in that warm fur and scratched until things settled down.

He wanted to stand by Benny's bed all night and watch him sleep, but there was going to be a good day tomorrow, and he needed his rest. He took off the coat and hung it up, then went back to the sofa with Dief. The wolf settled over his legs again, and then there was nothing to keep him from going under, deep and warm.

He dreamt of some big black bird, and was surprised that it had eyes.

"Ray?"

Diefenbaker whined, then panted happily, and Ray's eyes creaked open to the sight of Benny in a hospital gown squatting by the couch and patting his wolf on the head.

Ray's voice broke from sleep. "You shouldn't be up, Benny."

Serious blue eyes regarded him. "I feel fine, Ray. Thanks to you. Dr. Talfard says I'm quite recovered."

Ray sat up slowly, scratched behind Dief's ears, then rubbed the sleep from his eyes. He was still coming to the surface, but he thought he'd slept well. He ran over his plans for the day in his head and smiled.

"We need to chop down twenty trees today, Benny."

Fraser smiled and looked like he wanted to kiss him. "Twenty at least, Ray." He stood as Ray got up from the couch and looked around. Talfard was in the recovery room looking over Doc. No sign of Davenport.

"The constable has gone to Tears Creek. Dr. Talfard says they've found several wires tripped to small pesticide containers. It would seem I stumbled into one last night."

Ray nodded and told Benny his theory about that.

"In all likelihood, Anna probably did know," Fraser acknowledged. "But all that matters now is that Constable Davenport find a connection between the traps and Del Rae Industries."

"They the guys who want the wood?"

"Yes."

They were looking at each other carefully, neither wanting to offend the other with the suggestion that they weren't wildly avid to pursue the bad guys once again.

"Constable Davenport strikes me as a really competent officer, Benny."

"Agreed, Ray." Fraser thought a moment. "We will doubtlessly be called in to help at some point."

"Well, they know where to find us."

"Agreed."

And, as incredibly as that, the matter was settled.

Ray didn't let himself think about what their trip to Little Ro's sporting goods store did to his credit card. Wearing borrowed and ill-fitting clothes, he and Benny got jeans and jackets and boots and socks and shirts, along with gloves and hats and two new packs. Then at the grocer's they bought food for several days, even though they still had food at the cabin site.

Then they pointed the jeep east and let the wheels eat up the miles. Ray's watch said they beat the noonday sun by eight minutes.

Ray's watch said nothing to explain the pile of logs next to the swept-out remains of the tarp-covered cabin.

They were really nice logs. Cut to length, notched on the ends, bark-peeled and smooth on the sides.

The burned walls of the cabin had been cut away, leaving only the west wall and three logs' worth of ceiling intact, though the charred ridge-pole would have to be replaced. The chest and table and one chair that had escaped the flames were placed under the thick blue tarp that now hung from the bit of roof.

There was no note, no explanation, only hundreds of mukluk footprints and a half-dozen charred bits of ground from campfires.

"Oh, wow!" Ray exclaimed, startling Benny slightly. "Oh, wow! This is like that movie! You know? *Witness?* Yeah, where Harrison Ford and the Amish guys all raise up a barn in one day!" He walked again to the pile of logs and gestured at it. "This is like...the community came out and did this. Wow. You'd never see this in Chicago!" The close-shorn head shook in amazement, flashing a happy, slightly bemused smile to the great outdoors.

"My father was greatly respected."

Ray shook his head and danced back over to Benny to punch him lightly in the arm. "I think the son's respected too, Fraser." Ray pulled a face, though his eyes were twinkling. "Besides, they probably only did it to make sure we left on time."

The Mountie smiled back, but his eyes were dazed. "It's an incredibly generous gift."

Ray clapped his hands together and rubbed them together as though starting a fire.

"Then it's not a gift to waste, Benny. Let's get cracking!"

Benny felt himself relaxing. Ray was always good at figuring out what to do next.

"Yes, Ray."

The next four days they only stopped building the cabin to eat, sleep, answer the call of nature, or make love.

The food came out of their packs and the occasional rabbit from Dief. Sleeping took place in the tent. The call of nature was answered downwind. Making love was usually a quiet affair, conducted with equal parts love and exhaustion. Both of them got as much, if not more from the touches and stares and talk they wove into the work, using the loom of the cabin's logs to intertwine Ray's wolf-whistles at Benny's bare arms glistening in the ever-warming sun and Benny's silent gazes upon Ray's litheness moving between the dwindling pile of logs and the growing structure covered by the crackling tarp.

Every one of those four days they worked until the last light flickered from the sky, and awoke the next morning to work at dawn. Every day each word not of love planned out the next part of the cabin. Every day they watched to see if Davenport needed them. Every day they were relieved that she did not.

They did have two visitors, both of them hired before they had left Chicago. One delivered glass in the frames and hardware, such as knobs and locks and hinges. The other brought paint, mortar, and shingles.

Early on the morning of the fifth day, they levered the last of the logs they needed into place against the ridge-pole, closing the cabin's basic pointy-box-with-bathroom-bump structure, sealing the inside from the rest of the world.

There was still much to be done, of course. They had to seal the logs to each other, replace the thin boards with glass-frames, make and hang the door, and sand everything in sight. They needed to work with the plumbers when they came. They needed to shingle the roof.

And somewhere in there they needed to repair the small damages done to the barn, so that a team of dogs could stay there in comfort. They had managed to clean it out a bit, so that it was now home to the rented jeep as well as to the small generator they were using for the power tools, including Benny's lifetime-guaranteed-not-to-rust power saw.

But it was hard not to feel a sense of completion as they finished the basic structure of the cabin. They'd even gotten the charred bricks of the chimney and fireplace cleaned up a bit, and cleared out, so they could light a fire and warm the place up. Smiling, they took down the tent and spread the bedrolls on the floor, then lit the lantern. After that, they agreed that the most important thing to do next was the windows.

By mid-afternoon the windows were set in place and the mortar was drying. The cabin was more than warm enough for their plans, especially since the spring had finally taken firm hold outside, and the day was sunny and clear.

They'd been using the stream less than a half-kilometer away for bathing, with all-natural soap and lots of elbow grease. But that was usually done in the late afternoon. The extra three hours of sun left made them feel decadent as they washed, gazing at each other, taking their time, posing a bit.

They dried quickly in the sun, and dressed even faster. The lazy mutual seduction was faltering a bit before the steady prospect of making love properly for the first time in days and days. The cabin would keep them warm as they spent the whole evening touching each other, being inside and around and within and pressed close to each other for hours and hours.

It was a perfect plan.

It didn't work out.

They made it back to the site just fine, though they weren't watching their feet very carefully and Ray almost stumbled on rocks and branches twice. They'd cleared away a lot of the debris, though the wonderful part about working with logs was that what they chopped away ended up in the fire, so there really wasn't that much debris in the end. The sky had turned an amazingly deep blue shade, though it was still quite light, with a couple puffy white clouds floating around just to give a sense of scale.

Ray shouted and threw out his arms, laughing. "Damn, but it's beautiful here."

Fraser turned, wincing with hope. "You think so, Ray?"

Ray met his eyes, understanding everything. "Yeah. It's growing on me. Still nothing compared to civilization, you understand."

"Of course, Ray."

"But it's not bad."

"Ray?"

Green eyes smiled. "Yeah...Benny?"

"You told me I was a 'little out of it' at the clinic, and that I said some things that were not entirely appropriate, but nothing that should cause me concern."

"Yeah."

"You told me Constable Davenport didn't seem interested in reporting our relationship to anyone."

"Yeah. She's all right."

"You said nothing about how I told you how beautiful you are, or that I blackmailed you for kisses."

Ray's eyes had gone wide. "How did you -"

"I remembered two nights ago. I dreamed it, actually. Then when I woke up I realized it hadn't been a dream. I'm afraid my comportment must have been most distressing to Constable Davenport. I would apologize to her, except that such an apology would be likely only to cause her more discomfort."

"Probably."

"You are beautiful, Ray."

Ray looked ready to object, then shot him a little smile that made his heart race. "Last time you waited until I was naked to say that, if you remember."

"I do remember, Ray. I also remember that despite my objections, you got dressed too soon."

Ray's smile never wavered as he shrugged out of the gray flannel shirt, looked around, then walked the few steps to their make-shirt workbench and draped it over a roughly hewn board. He peeled off his undershirt, then got out of his boots, his socks, his pants, and then, slowly, his black briefs.

Benny made no moves, nothing to distract him from the still-unexpected sweetness of Ray's trust and desire for him. He knew his body was swaying just slightly, rocking with the ripples of heat through his body.

In just a few of his wildest moments of sexuality before had Ray allowed him into his arms, he had known what it was to be lost. It had frightened him, thrilled him, fascinated and enthralled him, much to his sorrow. This feeling, now, in his body, he had known before only at the cost of himself, whether with Victoria or...yes, that moment on the train, with Meg.

Everyone he had ever loved, with the possible exception of his dimly remembered mother, had insisted that he love them only on their own terms. His father would take a handshake, not a hug. Girls he'd tried to woo, awkwardly, hesitantly, as a youth had thrown down challenges for mere kisses: from telling him to stand up to that otter-swinging bully to scoring the winning point in a hockey match. Victoria had claimed his soul. Meg had demanded his patient obedience.

Only Ray...only his sweet Ray would allow him to make demands, to take and give control in equal measure. Only a few days ago Benny had offered himself up like a prize, and had been claimed in a way that still made his toes curl to contemplate. But Ray wasn't interested in ownership. Ray Vecchio was trying to offer him a type of love he'd never known before...just as he had done that night in the diner, bringing Benny in his lonely grief home to a loud, almost violent display of familial love over an Italian dinner of pasta and polenta.

And now looking at his lover standing naked and gently aroused against the backdrop of a perfect spring late-afternoon made Fraser feel he had stepped into some sort of allegorical painting, something drawn to represent pleasure, rather than something he was actually allowed to...to...

"I want you so much, Ray."

His lover's grin widened. "Then come over here and get it, Benny."

He managed to walk forward until he could feel Ray's heat. Those clever fingers went to the buttons on his shirt, but he took them softly in his own hands, kissing each finger one by one. Then for a long while there was only the sweetness of Ray's mouth.

Each time he kissed Ray he loved it more, yet somehow he found the discipline to leave those gentle lips and talented tongue to trail kisses down the kilometer of a perfect neck, through the downy softness of chest hair, until he found one of those spice-sweet nipples and sucked. Little shocks ripped through his own body and the body in his arms. It was amazing, holding a naked Ray while still fully dressed, sucking this pert nub while his hands felt that smooth, fire-hot skin flush. When Ray moaned, he felt the vibration between his lips. His pants were beginning to hurt, but he couldn't let go.

"Benny...God...Benny..."

Those long fingers were in his hair now, stroking his scalp, teasing his nape, never protesting, accepting, urging him on.

He sought the other nipple and began it all over it again.

Ray groaned and forced his hands flat between them to open Benny's shirt. He hadn't put his undershirt back on, having washed it in the river and left it to dry over a rock. He shuddered and sucked harder as his bare back felt the sun and heat of Ray's hands. This is what it means to drown without fear, without the need for fear. This is what it feels like to be loved without conditions, to be taken in with joy, to be wanted back as much as he wanted.

He left Ray's chest at last to savor another kiss, then another, then simply let his knees buckle and bring them both softly down to the dry, cool ground. He laid Ray back gently and watched the limber body roll out without protest of any sort. He'd expected Ray to insist that he fetch a bedroll from the cabin, but then, the state of Ray's arousal might have something do with it. He put his palm tenderly against the hot, wet length of him, feeling the pulse. Again, the expected protest did not emerge.

Instead, Ray spread his legs out a bit, his eyes turning to the soft moss of a Japanese garden, inviting him inside yet again.

Benny fumbled at his jeans, easing the pressure of tight cloth there, before bringing his own wet cock to the open air, feeling the foreskin pulled well back from the head.

"Oh, yeah..." Ray breathed. "Do it, Benny."

Fraser groaned in frustration. "The...the lubricant's in the cabin."

Ray only smiled again. "Check the pants, Boy Scout."

Benny reached behind him, found Ray's jeans, and dug into the pockets until he came up with a small tube and a foil packet. The latex went to its place and the gel went over his fingers, then he was applying what he hoped was a practiced touch to Ray's warm cleft, seeking that butter-soft opening. The skin quivered, Ray gasped, and then he was inside, carefully stretching, wandering the garden of Ray's eyes once again, until with surprise he found that his third finger was snugly inside.

He folded Ray's legs back, so very gently, then slid home, resting on his arms, adjusting, accepting. Ray's lithe arms came up to his neck, stroked his nape, pulled him down, sighing into his mouth as Benny moved his hips just slightly.

"You feel so good, Ray. God. You feel so good."

"Yeah?" Ray's smile was pure indolence, and then the channel around his uncut cock squeezed down, tighter, making Benny gasp so hard he almost choked, eyes wide, then shut tight with pleasure.

Feathery kisses over his lips drew his eyes open again, but though Ray's expression encouraged him to thrust, he could not make his body move. To move was to begin the end of this.

"I want to stay here inside you forever, Ray."

Ray looked ready to make a joke, then simply shook his head slightly before kissing his lips once again.

"You are always inside me, Benny. You will always be inside me, Benny."

Ray let go of Benny's neck with his right hand and let it fall quietly back on the ground. Then his left hand went to the ground, before his arms stretched out, wide, spread out like his fingers, like the openness of his gaze, without guard. Ray's back arched slightly, then settled to the earth.

"Ray?"

"Do whatever you like, Benny. If you like it, I will too."

It wasn't an out-of-body experience, but Fraser did see himself suddenly, his pants down around his thighs, flesh bare above, still in his boots; Ray, naked, spread out before him; joined together where Ray had let him inside.

He gripped those slim hips and raised them. Ray seemed to weigh nothing. He bent forward and thrust deep inside, controlling the motion with his hands, bringing them gently together.

"Oh, fuck," Ray groaned, his eyes rolling back slightly. "Oh, yeah. God. That feels..." another gentle, rolling thrust, "...fantastic. God...Benny..."

Ray was a sheath of pure energy, fire and sunlight made flesh, and as Benny moved with him they joined like the dance of flame, consuming yet sustained, moving together and apart, merging without the loss of heat and light.

Pleasure threatened to spike, and he clamped down on his control. He wanted more of this, more liquid bliss bubbling through his veins and pouring from his skin like sweat.

"Yeah...oh yeah...oh *yeah,* Benny..."

"Can you feel me inside you, Ray?"

"God...feel you? There's nothing...nothing else, Benny. Just you."

He couldn't help moving just a little faster, pressing just a little harder. He would need to let go of Ray's hips soon to caress his cock. They had to climax together. He'd be useless after he came, and he had to see that look on Ray's face, the almost-pain of orgasm that allowed him to know his love for Ray was a good, worthy thing, not just the selfish need he had now, the need for more fire to melt away so many years of ice.

He groaned Ray's name and angled his hips to contact the small gland inside perfectly with each stroke. Ray was shaking and calling his name in return, yet still those arms remained, splayed out, letting Benny do this, do whatever he wanted to this perfect, beautiful body.

"I love you...Benny."

"Ray!" Oh no, the heat was rushing up from his thighs, propelled by the heat from each breath drawn to moan Ray's name, drawn by the inner heat of Ray's body. His eyes locked on the hard, swaying length, so exposed, so beautiful. He needed to touch it, but he couldn't let go, not when it was change the connection of their bodies, so perfect, so perfect. He called out to Ray to touch himself, emitting the words in a garble that only made Ray moan. He sobbed, unable to hold back.

And watched as Ray's cock released his seed into the air. His perfect lover was coming from the penetration alone.

Ray spasmed around him, and even as his eyes sought for and drank in the sight of Ray's expression he was lost, sinking deep, seeking and finding even more than he sought, in pleasure, in love, in pure sweet lust.

He felt his own body fold, felt a strong, furry, slightly sticky chest against his cheek, and then for a while he felt nothing at all, except the glow of embers banked safely inside.

Not fifty feet away, the lightning-hollowed tree stretched up against the deepening blue Alberta sky, and a pair of dark, unseen eyes peered steadily through the high, narrow crack to watch two men sleep amongst the almost impossible snarl of long arms and legs.

@@@

Snowglobe. A small village inside, a little universe of perpetual snowfall. A hand gripped it, shook it, set it down on the table. Except there was no table, and the water and glass and snow and village all tumbled together and fell on the concrete, breaking up the dream.

His dream.

There was a light flurry of snow outside. He could smell it, faintly: most unusual for this late in the year...except that here it would snow whenever it pleased. The sky knew no calendar.

Snow, yet he was so warm. How had thought Ray only fire? He was the sun, brought down to Fraser by the Raven, tricking him into love and contentment.

He had broken the snowglobe himself, to get the key and save Ray. Only then had there been hope, even then the heat had reached him.

He was here, at last, in the cabin with Ray. And Ray said he liked it here, and Ray had acknowledged the significance of it when he said it. That hurdle, one of the thousands that had lain before them, was now behind.

*I will not let them take you from me, Ray.*

He sealed the vow with a kiss on the warm, smooth shoulder in the middle of his chest. Ray was half-on, half-off, and the blankets and sleeping bag were tucked in around them, the bedroll between them and the floor that needed sanding. Lots and lots of sanding.

He was assaulted by the image of tying sandpaper to Ray's back and buttocks, then moving him around the room with each thrust. Ridiculous. It made him laugh and stirred his cock and it felt great. He hadn't known any of this, before Ray.

Ray was stirring too, probably because his personal Mountie mattress was still rocking up and down with each poorly suppressed giggle. He should calm himself, let Ray sleep, but Ray awake might mean Ray making love to him. It was far too early - just after midnight - for them to work on the cabin.

Deliciously, he let his hands slide down between the warm covers and that long, smooth back. Ray was so well-proportioned: long in both the waist and his slimly muscled legs. And his neck, of course. His incredible neck.

He rolled them over, staring at the dim low-lantern-lit line of the perfect white column. He savored that instant of art history before he was pressing his lips to the pulse-point. Ray's heart awakened and beat along the warm artery. So fragile. So full of life and light.

"Ray." So apt a name, really. Too obvious. Like Big Ben.

"Benny?" Ray's voice was muffled, but it led him to his lips. Sleep turned that sweet mouth a little dry, like paprika. Benny pressed down with his hips, and Ray moaned. He ended the kiss, gently, and settled over his lover.

But Ray moved slightly away, and Benny tensed.

"Sorry." Ray's face seemed uncomfortable. "Really. But you're right on my...I gotta go, Benny."

Fraser relaxed, loosened his hold...and then found himself suckling gently at Ray's nipple.

"Benny!" Ray's voice was half-protest, half-anger, and half-breathless. Or something like that. "Benny...really...I gotta..."

"Go on if you like, Ray." He slid his hardening cock along Ray's thigh, reveling in strength. "But I think it's snowing outside."

"Aw...geeze..."

He captured another long, slow, sugary kiss. Ray responded with enthusiasm, and yet when he tightened his arms again, Ray squirmed.

"Damnit, Benny. I'm in pain here."

He made himself let go, withdraw, pry his hands off hot satin skin and move away.

Ray kissed his lips with regret.

"I'll be right back."

"I'll keep the bed warm."

Ray took a breath, then got up and put on the many layers he needed, stomping into but not lacing up his boots, shoving the knit cap over his head, twining the scarf around his neck, zipping up the jacket, not bothering to fish the gloves out of the jacket's pockets.

Ray's eyes, gray in the low-lantern-light, met his before he pushed open the make-shift door, letting in the mist of flying ice, then slipped outside.

With a sigh, Benton Fraser rolled onto his stomach and pressed his pelvis down into the warmth of the bedroll where Ray Vecchio had been. He was surrounded by Ray's warmth and Ray's smell. He had this sudden feeling of being protected by Ray, as though the sleeping bags and blanket were a magic cloak. For some reason, it made him think of the Stetson currently being tested for insecticide in the Danes lab.

Duty nudged at him. He nudged it firmly back and away.

He closed his eyes and drifted. Any second now, Ray would return, slide inside these covers with him, and then...

Would Ray be cold? He'd say he was cold, of course, but would he feel cold? Benny almost couldn't imagine it.

He humped the bedroll a few more times, and thought of ways to take his pleasure with Ray over and over and over.

Benny realized he was drifting off, and snapped awake. Ray had been gone a long time. Much too long. Something was wrong.

But even as he was about to sit up, the door opened, and he let his eyes close in pleasure, shivering simply at the thought of the snow coming through the door as its chill wind blew over his face, stirring hair that needed a trim.

Only when Ray didn't move from the door did he open his eyes.

Only then did he see it wasn't Ray.

"You're waiting for him, aren't you? But he's not coming back."

Oh, God. He knew that voice.

@@@

Ray looked down at Benny, and knew if he weren't in serious danger of ruining his entire Canadian wardrobe, he could never make himself walk out that door.

*Damn,* but it was cold out here. He hadn't thought it would be so cold, or he'd have invested in industrial-strength wool underwear before coming up here. At the time, he'd thought all they would have to be careful about was the plane not crashing.

He made it to the nearest tree, keeping his hands tucked under his arms so he wouldn't freeze his dick off with his own fingers. He made short work of the fly, then finally, oh, yes...oh, that felt good. He wanted to hurry, to get back to Benny and their bed. But this was going to take awhile.

"You sure you don't want to bring your faggot out here to help you do that?"

Ray closed his eyes and felt his shoulders slump. His old man could even ruin a good piss, never mind being dead and all.

"I ain't discussing it with you, Pop."

"My own son." The words dripped with disgust. "If you are my son. Maybe your ma -"

"You being dead doesn't mean you can bad-mouth Ma," Ray snarled while pain chopped up his guts like kindling. Even for his old man, that was out of the ballpark. He'd never talked about his wife like that before.

"Well, how'm I supposed to explain it? My own son a fag? Maybe you're the limp-wristed milkman's kid."

Ray shook his dick and shoved it back into his pants. His father was standing between him and the cabin, so he plunged into the trees, taking the long way around.

"You make me sick. You make me glad I'm dead so I don't have to listen to the guys talk about my son the pervert. I just wish I'd left Frannie the house. You'll probably sell it to buy your bitch jewelry, or something."

"Who the hell do you think you're talking to?" Ray turned on his father, hands curling into fists that didn't know they had nothing to punch out. "You can't talk to me that way!"

But his father was gone.

He looked around, adrenaline loud in his ears, shaking in his hands, setting fire to the kindling in his belly. Nothing but trees and snow. A little filtered moonlight. No stars.

Trees.

Where the hell was the cabin? He'd only walked a few feet, but it was so dark. It was stupid to have walked into the woods like this, but it was only a few feet.

He kept calm and undid his scarf. There was a young tree next to him. He tied the scarf around an eye-level branch, set his back to the tree and walked ten steps forward.

More trees.

He turned completely around and walked ten steps back.

Ten steps out, ten back.

Ten steps out...the cabin, behind just a few more trees.

And Eric, and Benny, getting into Eric's jeep. Ray ran forward, but the jeep was moving off when he broke through the trees.

What the hell?

He rushed to his own jeep and started the motor after a few tries.

He didn't know why, but he knew where they'd gone.

He'd sensed it, as much as he'd tried to think only of Benny and logs and ridge-polls. He'd known it wasn't over. Just like he'd known it wasn't just insecticide that had made Benny leave their cot in the shelter.

Was it his pop? Could his father have some sort of...gang? But his pop wasn't really a ghost, right? He was just...all those years of fearing and hating and loving him, refusing to go away just because the old man had boozed himself into the grave.

He'd felt eyes on him. He'd known they wanted Benny. Everybody wanted Benny. Was it supposed to end because "they" weren't...weren't whatever they weren't?

And Anna and Eric had known it all along. They were in on it. They wanted his Benny too.

*You can't have him. You can't have him, you bastards.*

The jeep sped over the road, its headlights just skirting the promise of the outline of the jeep ahead of him.

@@@

She had a gun. She wasn't pointing it at him, but she let him see it. She didn't offer to turn her back so that he could get dressed.

She was beautiful, as beautiful as she'd been on that train, reaching for him. The hood of her black coat was pushed back, twinkling faintly with melting snow. The cloud of brown hair floated around a face bright and flushed with cold.

*Come with me.*

And he almost had.

"Did you think I wouldn't come for you?" Victoria asked now, as though their conversation had only been broken by the passing of minutes.

"How did you know we were here?"

She frowned at the flatness of his tone, then relaxed as she seemed to know, as she had always been able to know, that it was a mask, covering a depth of feeling that shocked him. How could he still be so...open there? So raw and desperate for something to keep him from shattering: he couldn't believe the loss of it. In three seconds...perhaps two, everything had changed.

"I love you," she said, her voice snow and a poem repeated over and over, rising and falling.

False snow, in a snowglobe, but still snow, falling around them as it had amongst the candles in his apartment. He remembered being drunk with it, with the possibility of that impossible second chance.

"I want you back."

"Or else?" His eyes went to the gun.

She held it up. Shook her head. "It's only to cover my retreat if you say no."

"Does that mean if I'll say no you'll leave?"

She looked at him, looked through him. She always knew how to possess him with that look.

"Are you saying no?"

Benny found that he'd made a little laugh, sort of.

"What did you do with Ray?" If she'd hurt him...oh, God.

She frowned, as though the matter weren't important. "He left in the jeep. There's nothing for kilometers so I don't think he went for bread and milk. I'd say he's decided he can't handle it."

He had no idea if she were telling the truth, but her eyes held his. She lied, but he felt the truth of her. She always made him feel it.

"Handle what? What did you say to him?"

She smiled, a smile that knew what was going on inside him. "I didn't speak to him." Her eyes made it a dismissal. "I saw you with him. You always did ask so much of others, too much. I saw what you demanded of him, the level of love you need. Did you really think he could give it to you? Did you think anyone could but me?"

He did that laugh thing again. "You love me?"

"As much as I hated you." She looked away, looked back, and suddenly he knew it was true. This second chance wasn't a lie, a con. She had come back to him, as she had never come to him before.

"I will always hate you," she whispered. "Hate you for every year in prison, for taking the money, for not doing what I needed you to do for me." She faltered.

"For not letting you go."

"Yes."

He nodded, sitting there on the floor in the bedding that smelled of Ray. But all the heat had gone.

And then she said it, giving him more than he had thought she could, even before, when he had believed her innocent of all but one bank robbery.

"But I love you. I belong to you. You can't let me go."

He said nothing.

"And you belong to me." She smiled, and he could feel her relaxing. "You know it's true." She held out a hand, and a drop of melted snow slipped from her wrist. "Come with me."

He stood, straight and tall and naked. Her eyes widened, and he waited for her to settle before he stepped forward and took the gun from her, as he had before. He took her hand in his own, felt the reality of her.

"You were right," he said. "I can't let you go."

@@@

The jeep was running low on gas. He probably couldn't get back to the cabin without more. But it didn't matter.

The shelter was empty and cold. No sign of Eric's jeep.

He went up the hill, calling Benny's name, first and last. Damnit, but this was the creepiest place in the world. He felt the eyes on him even before he reached the top.

And then, there was a wave of it: nauseating. It actually stank here with the press of that...desire.

"Benny! Benny, answer me! Benny!"

"Fraser ain't here, Raymond. Get out of here."

He turned away. Pop was the last person, or whatever, he wanted to see. Hadn't he said enough already?

"Raymond. Look at me."

He frowned, staring into those eyes out there that had Benny. Pop had almost sounded like he was begging for something. Pop never begged. God, he was cold.

"Damn Yank. No good to Benton at all."

Ray blinked. Who the hell was this guy? Dressed like a Mountie, but not in the red uniform, or the blue one: snow clothes, but there was a badge on his hat. The guy was old and looked a little like Benny.

Ray realized he hadn't bad-mouthed him for that racial slur. Opened his mouth. "Where's Benny?"

"Where do you think he is?" The old guy jerked his head down the hill, into all those black eyes. "Go get him!"

"Don't listen to him, Ray. That ain't Fraser's father."

"Unlike you, I don't doubt the paternity of my own son."

"I don't either!"

Ray stared at his father. Were those bruises on his face? Did ghosts get into fist-fights? He'd never seen his pop look so scared, either. For the first time since his old man had died, those eyes looked at him with...entreaty?

"You gotta get out of here, Raymond. They wanted Fraser, but when they saw you, you're the one they want now."

"I can't leave without Benny." His teeth were chattering.

"He ain't *here.* He's back at the cabin. They tricked you."

"Some friend to Benton you are. The boy needs you, Yank. Get down there. Can't you hear him?"

Ray whirled around. He *had* heard it, hadn't he? Hadn't he heard his name?

His father was in front of him again. "Think about it! Would Fraser have just left you like that? Just gone off with that Eskimo and not said a word?"

The old man was right about that. Except..."I saw him. I saw him get in the jeep."

"You see me, Raymond. You see...him." Vecchio waved at the Mountie. "You can see them too, can't you? Looking at you? They want what you got. It's a trap. You're supposed to be a cop, damnit. Can't you see it?"

"What do I got they want?" It was snowing harder.

His pop looked uncertain. The Mountie snorted. "Same thing you tried to beat out of him."

Vecchio Sr. flashed in anger. Same old Pop.

"It doesn't matter what you got if you can't keep the world from ripping it off you. Ray wouldn't be here if he'd listened to me in the first place."

"Listen, Yank." Ray realized the Mountie was talking to him, not his father. He was beginning to get numb now. It helped bring the nausea down. His forehead was icy from sweat. He couldn't feel his feet, though. How could he find them? He looked into cold eyes that looked like Benny's, a little.

"You really think anyone would want you over my son?"

"Don't listen to that crap, Raymond."

The Mountie sneered, and suddenly it hit Ray: the truth in bight neon lights.

No *way* was this creep Benny's father.

He stumbled back. It was some sort of sick dream, except that he was awake, and about to freeze to death.

Oh God. He would have frozen in the woods, wandering around, looking for Benny, who was back at the cabin and probably scared out of his mind.

From the forest below: "Ray!" Very distant, Benny's voice. But not Benny's voice. The wind, more like.

"Go, Raymond. Get out of here."

It hurt to obey his father, but he was so numb anyway. What difference did it make? He stumbled and tripped down the hill and almost lost his boots because they weren't laced up. He realized he had gloves in his pockets. Why hadn't he put them on?

Benny. He'd abandoned Benny at the cabin.

He started the jeep, swore at the gas gauge. He didn't have enough to make it back.

Eyes were on him again, pressing on his neck. The snow stung. The wind and his name.

Think of Benny. Benny strong and beautiful and waiting for him in their bed.

He got the jeep on the road and pointed it towards home.

@@@

Over twenty pesticide traps had been recovered so far, most of them around Tears Creek, but some as far as right outside Little Ro and Dearhorn. The Danes lab had reported that preliminary findings showed massive pesticide traces in Fraser's clothes, and not a little in Vecchio's as well.

To Davenport's surprise, and to that of Dr. Talfard's, the insecticide used had no hallucinatory properties when applied to humans. Fraser's illness was explained, but not the level of mental impairment before treatment. Though his reaction could simply have been stress- and dehydration-related.

Jane sat back in her chair, nodding slightly at the dawn light now making its way through the station windows. She'd neglected to go home and rest once again. Good thing she had McDermot for company.

He was curled up on the desk now, or rather, on the large pillow she had on the desk with his name embroidered over the top. He'd caught his rear left paw in the gold brocade tassel once again, and he tugged on it slightly in his sleep, twitching as he chaced mice or caribou through snowy fields.

She told herself firmly that today she would pay a visit to Fraser and Vecchio. It was really far past the time that she should have consulted them on the case. The traps had rather obviously been set by Del Rae Industries, but she had to find a more tangible connection than Peter Lookstwice's fingerprints on the canisters and some unexplained money in Lookstwice's account. There was, of course, the fact that Del Rae Industries made the sort of pesticide used, and that their local corporate representative was stonewalling her, but she needed more to prove that Lookstwice had been "bumped off" to keep him quiet.

The coffee she'd started was ready, but a cup of it wasn't nearly enough to make her forget she hadn't slept more than a couple hours on the couch by the front door of the station. McDermot got under her feet as she went to the radio to check in, and she set him out some dried food that he ignored with a sniff. He accepted a scratch behind the ears, however.

The radio crackled, and she sent back her codes.

"Jane? Harvey."

"Yes, H. T?"

"You send that American over to Tears Creek a couple hours ago?"

"No, Harvey." Vecchio? What was he doing there? If he'd wanted to help with the investigation, he'd have involved her, wouldn't he?

"Well, one of my men says he saw the guy last night, acting awful strange, too."

"Strange, eh?"

"Yeah. Walking around talking to himself. Says he shouted out to the guy, but didn't know his name, eh? Couldn't get his attention. Was pretty far away, anyway."

"Well, I'm going to see them today. I'll ask about it."

"Yeah. Let me know, eh?"

"Will do. Out."

Jane thought about that for a while, and didn't like any of her thoughts. Where was McDermot? She always thought better when she was petting him. Just as she found him by the desk, however, pounding at her front door sent him scurrying under the couch..

"Davenport! Constable! Hey!" *Pound pound pound.*

Vecchio's face, wild-eyed and pale, stared through the door's window at her as she approached, and she felt her hand settling by her gun. She opened the door with caution, ready to strike or protect, but found herself half-catching the man in her arms as he burst inside.

"I need some gas for the jeep!"

"What's wrong? Where's Constable Fraser?"

"At the cabin!" Vecchio stared at her, staying within her arms, just staring at her like she should realize the world was about to end. "I need gas for the jeep!"

Had he stumbled into another pesticide trap at Tears Creek? "Detective Vecchio -"

"Please." His voice had gone so quiet and soft, and his green eyes pleaded. She wasn't exactly sure she'd ever seen a man before with legitimately green eyes. "I need some gas."

"I store some in the shed. In the back."

He nodded and turned from her, walking back out the door. She grabbed her keys off the desk and followed.

Promised what he wanted, Vecchio seemed to be making an effort to explain himself when she caught up to him.

"...didn't think he would be there, of course, but I had to check. But I should have just realized he'd be right back...from going outside, I mean."

"Fraser?"

"Yeah." Vecchio wouldn't meet her eyes now. She suspected he was lying.

"But he's gotta be worrying about me. He might be trying to track me or something...thinking I'm lost in the woods. I gotta get back before he calls out the National Guard of Mounties, or something."

Vecchio's hands were shaking. His voice was too, for that matter. But nothing he was saying was actually all that suspect. It was what he wasn't saying...

"Why did you go to Tears Creek?"

He rounded on her in shock. His mouth opened, worked, finally spoke. "How did you know I was there?"

"We have people in those woods looking for pesticide traps. One of them saw you. Said you were acting strangely."

Vecchio relaxed in a *whoosh.* "Oh. That." He turned back to the shed and waited for her to open the padlock. "I was just trying to walk through the night Benny got hurt. You know, reconstruction."

"In the middle of the night?"

"It was the middle of the night when it happened. But I should have told Fraser where I was going."

She swung the door open and reached down for a gallon of gas in its red plastic container, then stood up to face him, blocking his entrance into the fume-filled shed.

"Why didn't you?"

His eyes slid off again. "I told you. He was out, taking a...you know."

*Oh, that story is completely believable, Detective. Not completely full of holes or anything.*

Yet even as she stood there, Vecchio was getting close to panic again, and she had no reason to stop him from returning to Fraser and the cabin.

"Detective Vecchio, in return for the gas, I want you to tell me the truth."

He looked at her in open apprehension.

"Do you think it's just pesticide and Del Rae Industries? Or is something else going on at Tears Creek?"

"I don't know!" The words exploded from him, echoing behind her from inside the shed. His arms flailed. "Benny knows more about this stuff!"

"What stuff?"

"I told ya I don't know!" He put his hands on the gas container. Warm hands, but she didn't let go.

"I gotta get there," he said, voice soft again. "Come with me and you can ask him about it yourself."

She met his green eyes and felt her hands leave the rough red plastic. He looked almost obscenely grateful, and she could only turn from him and get another gallon, muttering as she did so that she would be up there later in the day. By the time she stood up again, he was running back to the jeep.

They got his tank about half-full before he roared off under the last of the dawn sun.

The day was getting on. She spent a few minutes with the cat, radioed in, then got into her own jeep and headed for Toyotuk.

Anna's Caf hadn't changed a bit. And somehow she wasn't surprised that the parking lot was full.

@@@

"Be okay, Benny. Be there and be okay. Oh, God. Be okay."

He took the turn onto the dirt road too quickly and almost went into the ditch. It was several more miles to the cabin. He couldn't walk from here without taking up the whole day. He forced himself to ease up on the accelerator.

Davenport had wanted an explanation. And she deserved one. But what the hell was he supposed to say? He had no idea what had happened, and it was starting to feel a little fuzzy. He remembered Pop and that other guy...but come to think of it, he'd seen a picture of Fraser's father, back when he was working on the "dead Mountie thing," before Benny came along. He must have...used that somehow, when he was...what? Hallucinating?

But he'd felt eyes on him, from the forest. And he'd never had such a strong case of the heebie-jeebies before in his life.

Oh, that would work. *You see, Constable Davenport, I had a case of the heebie-jeebies...*

"Be okay, Benny. Please be okay."

He couldn't believe how long it was taking, like some dream where he would run down a hall and not go anywhere, his feet stuck to the ground and his whole body straining and not getting even a foot father along the -

There! The cabin was in sight. He stomped on the gas, roared up to the structure, skidded to a stop, flew up the step, burst through the door, and felt his heart stop working.

Victoria. Sitting on the chair by the table, her hands in her lap, her beautiful hair falling around her face, her beautiful little demon face.

"Ray!" Benny came at him from the side, smothering him in arms and shaking him out of it.

"Benny?" He turned inside the embrace, looking into and losing himself in deep blue eyes tight with worry, but easing now as he reached up, touched Benny's pale face. "You okay?"

"I'm fine, Ray. Are *you* all right? Where did you go?"

"The woods." Ray shook himself, looked back across the room. "What's she doing here, Fraser?"

"She came for me, Ray. But I arrested her."

"Arrested?" Ray squinted in the lantern-light and finally saw at last the dark ropes that bound her to the chair at the waist.

"I told you I would, Ray. What woods?"

"Your dad's forest. You just arrested her, Benny?"

"She came here right after you left. Why did you go to Tears Creek?"

"I thought I saw you going there, with Eric. Something really strange is happening, Benny. How did she know we were here?"

"She didn't say."

"Didn't you ask her?"

"Yes, but she only says that she loves me. I haven't been able to get anything else out of her since I arrested her."

Ray turned to look into her face. She was saying something, all right, but he shut her up easily by turning away again.

"So she came up to the cabin and asked you to go with her?"

"Yes." Benny flushed suddenly, and his arms tightened around Ray's still-shaking body. "She's been watching us. She saw us...yesterday."

Ray's eyes narrowed. If there were anyone in the world who could be trusted to tell the whole damn world about him and Benny...Oh well. It couldn't be undone. And he refused to have her taint that moment. In fact, before he even thought it through he was kissing Benny, open-mouthed, hungry and desperate. Claiming him? A little. But mostly just reveling in him, feeling him, knowing at last, only with the press of those soft lips and the gentle suction of his breath, that Benton Fraser, RCMP, was here with him.

Everything else would just work itself out in time, wouldn't it?

Benny broke tenderly from the kiss, and seemed to understand, his eyes shining a little in the light through the door.

"I made you coffee, Ray."

Ray smiled, even laughed a little. "Yeah, Benny? That sounds great."

Benny nodded, pressed a quick kiss to his lips, and released him. He threw what seemed like a practiced look over his shoulder to check on Victoria, then walked out the door and down the stairs to the coffee pot on the fire.

Ray let himself collapse on the chest Benny had yet to open and buried his face in his hands. His heart still wasn't beating right. Last night...like a nightmare, but he hadn't really woken up yet. Did that mean he hadn't been asleep? Did it mean it was all real somehow?

"Vecchio."

He looked up at her, saw the hate in her eyes. Something else was there too. Something like shock wearing off.

"You hurt him," she whispered, "and I will kill you."

She didn't mean to make those words anything more than a threat, no sense of camaraderie in repeating his words back at him. No sense of being connected because they both loved the same man.

And yet he felt his latent anger bubble up only to begin to dissolve. He still wanted to shoot her about twenty times through her whole body on a search for her heart, but he knew he'd done worse than that. He'd done to her the worst thing he could think of, the very thing he couldn't forgive her for for trying to do to him: he'd taken Benny from her. She must have realized it, even when she was watching them yesterday, the perverted bitch. She must have known he and Benny belonged together now.

"Hurting him's your department," he told her.

She didn't answer, not even with her eyes, and a moment later Benny returned with Ray's coffee.

Ray took the cup and sipped at the strong, bitter, life-giving liquid while Benny sat beside him on the trunk, put an arm around him and was just sort of *there* for a quiet long while.

"I need to talk to Eric, or Anna, or somebody, Benny."

Benny's voice was low and ashamed. "Were you in a great deal of danger, Ray?"

"I don't know, Benny."

"I could feel it. I could *feel* that you needed me, but I couldn't leave Victoria. I couldn't let her escape again and come after us and...I thought she might hurt you. I couldn't let her -"

"I was miles away, Benny. There wasn't anything you could have done. I'm glad you stayed."

Both arms were around him again, and Benny's face was buried against his neck. Ray turned his head to whisper in his ear, "God, Benny. If she wasn't here I'd just throw you on the floor and take you right now."

The strong body holding him shuddered, then warm breath caressed his own ear.

"I'd let you, Ray, even with her here."

Ray was shuddering pretty fiercely himself when he heard Dief bark outside.

Benny eased out of his arms, stood up and went to the door, explaining, "He's checking to see if I'm all right. I couldn't let him stay in here, not with Victoria. He kept growling at her."

"I always knew he was the brains of the outfit."

Fraser frowned at him, then turned to wave out the door at Diefenbaker, who wolfed back.

"She did shoot him, Benny. You can't blame him."

"We need to take her to the station, Ray."

Vecchio stretched, lazily, enjoying it, then scratched his stubbled cheek.

"Davenport's coming up here later today to talk to us about the pesticide stuff. We can hand Victoria over to her, or go with her back to the station. We go there now, we might miss Jane."

Benny considered this and nodded.

"I say we keep an eye on her and get some work done around here. Our damn vacation is going to be over, and we're not even going to have the door hung."

"But Ray..." Benny walked back to him, squatted down, looked at him gravely. "Where were you? What happened last night?"

Ray tried, but it was like remembering a dream. Mostly he only knew that he had driven for hours. His ears ached now from the cold, thawing out in the warmth of the cabin and the morning sun.

He'd never told Benny about the way he talked to his dad sometimes. He didn't want to start talking about it now. Later, when they'd lived together for a few years, he might be able to convince Fraser it didn't mean he was completely screwy. Then he'd talk about it.

Besides, that was just him seeing something out of his own head, some sort of, what do you call them, manifestations.

"I gotta talk to Anna, or Eric, or someone...someone who knows about spirits and visions, Benny."

"Ray!"

He looked into Benny's eyes. He thought he could spend his life looking into those eyes.

"Let's not talk about it now, okay? Just for a few hours. I want to work on the cabin and just...just be normal awhile, Fraser. Okay?"

His friend, his lover, the other part of himself looked bewildered, but nodded.

"All right, Ray."

They took Victoria outside, still tied to her chair, and left Dief to watch her, with strict instructions not to bite. Fraser was making the door, so Ray went around the cabin filling up the space between the logs with mortar. Then he went up on the roof and measured everything exactly before setting out the shingles and cutting them exactly.

They broke for lunch, feeding Victoria, who did not speak again, until she announced at the end of the meal, defiantly, "I need to be untied."

"Hold it until Davenport gets here," Ray snarled.

"Ray..." Benny looked at him.

Vecchio shook his head, ready to fight for it. "No, Benny. She'll use your embarrassment and get away from us, or something. I'm not risking it. She's a grown woman, she can cross her legs and hold it in."

Fraser sighed, then nodded.

"It's not too late for us, Ben." Her voice had never been more beautiful.

Ray watched Fraser look down at her, shaking inside with joy now with the lack of love in those deep blue eyes.

"Do you know that I offered to let Ray own me, Victoria? That's what you taught me. But Ray doesn't want to own me, he just wants *me.* Looking at you now, I know you can't even understand the difference."

Her dark, cold brown eyes narrowed at him.

Benny shrugged. "I'm only trying to make you understand that I'm not even remotely tempted by your offer."

And so Ray kissed him again, defiant before Victoria, standing on a stage before evil spirits and nights he couldn't remember properly and a whole future that threatened them both.

@@@

Constable Davenport kept having to fight the sensation that she was some sort of token white marshal of a "Native Pride" parade.

With Anna Silvernail sitting impassively at her side, and two more Inuit leaders in the back, Davenport's jeep currently led a long line of trucks and rovers southeast to Fraser's cabin. Whatever was going on in the "spiritual" world had tribes as far as Runamukluk consulting the winds and calling each other on the phone.

She hadn't understood much of the conversation at Anna's Caf, but she'd downed two cups of coffee and three fresh donuts, and no one had said anything about whites having to wait outside. Doubtlessly only because Anna found her useful now, the woman was looking into her face when she talked and treating her like she had those first few weeks of Jane's tenure here.

Davenport knew that when this crisis, whatever it was, had passed, she would again be the outsider, but for just this drive to Fraser's place it was nice to be simply a Mountie doing her job.

Fraser's cabin came into view only a moment before the entire vista became clear: a woman sitting in a chair, Fraser working on a thick plank of wood, and Vecchio painting a cabin wall. All three of them watched her approach.

She pulled the jeep into position and killed the motor. Vecchio set down his brush and began walking down to her. Fraser and the woman stayed where they were.

Jane realized the woman was tied to the chair.

Other engines switched off behind her. She saw Vecchio and Fraser looking behind her.

Vecchio reached the side of the jeep, nodded to Anna, and looked at her.

"We got a fugitive. Wanted for murder and a few others things. Victoria Metcalf."

Jane blinked, then opened her mouth to acknowledge his words and said instead, "The elders want to investigate this area for spiritual disturbances."

Ray blinked at her, and then, suddenly, those impossibly green eyes twinkled, and Jane Davenport knew as she had never known before that she was in danger of falling head over heels...and for an American no less.

*He's *gay,* sweetheart. Forget it.*

"It's just one big party up here in Canada, you know that?" Vecchio asked her, very cop-to-cop, and she felt her buried concerns ease. She wondered if the man would care that he'd just made a friend.

"Well, since you two showed up there's been more partying than usual." She nodded back. "You know Anna Silvernail. This is Con Dupont and James Beartree."

"Nice to meet ya," Ray said, stepping back from the jeep to let her climb out. The elders simply nodded at Vecchio and began to walk around, joined soon enough by the riders from the other cars.

Fraser had come up to Ray's side. Was it the fact that they were almost exactly the same height, and yet filled out the space from their heads to the ground so differently that made them look so...*right* together? She felt a strange flash of annoyance at the elders as they walked around sniffing the air. If they wanted something to sniff...

"They're checking out the place for spiritual disturbances, Benny."

Fraser looked surprised.

"That's all right, eh?" Davenport asked, automatically. She doubted Fraser would file trespassing charges.

"Of course." Fraser looked around. "I'll be happy to cooperate with their wishes regarding any such matters." His gaze rested on the woman in the chair, and Davenport shook herself and pulled out a pad.

"Victoria Metcalf," she noted. "Wanted for homicide, you said?"

"Yeah, of her old bank-robbing partner." Vecchio's voice was oddly subdued, and it might have been that tone which made Fraser turn almost sharply away from Metcalf and look at Ray.

Fraser spoke, however, to his fellow constable. "She was the driver in the get-away car of a robbery eleven years ago. She was arrested and jailed for that crime. Upon her release from prison, she attempted to launder the unrecovered money through an illegal diamond transaction, during which she shot Peter "Jolly" Roth and Diefenbaker, though Diefenbaker did recover. She also attempted to frame Detective Vecchio and myself for conspiracy. She is guilty of several other crimes as well."

Davenport kept her eyes from going wide, even as she finally noticed that Diefenbaker was watching the woman as though debating which way to tear her throat out.

"Sounds like a lot of paperwork," she managed.

Vecchio laughed, and Fraser's face echoed a smile.

"You got that right," the detective said. "Look, why don't I help you get Victoria to the station, and Benny can stay here and look after our guests, okay?"

"Ray, I'm technically the arresting officer. I should go with her." The reluctance in Fraser's voice was obvious.

"What? And rob you of the chance to gather up who knows how many new Inuit stories? Besides, you'll have to be there later for the full reports and all. We'll just get the ball rolling." *And get this bitch out of here.* The unspoken words were clear on Vecchio's face.

"Thank you, Ray. I would like to stay here and learn what I can from Ms Silvernail and the others." Fraser's face was all innocent duty. Davenport filed that expression away for later consultation.

She and Vecchio fell into an easy pace, a loud contrast, she knew, to the vague milling about from the dozen-plus elders consulting the winds. Diefenbaker lifted his nose to her when she passed, but she thought it was simply a greeting. Perhaps he could smell McDermot, though.

The woman, Metcalf, looked quite calm, and rather like she'd just come out of a beauty parlor. As she and Vecchio untied her, Davenport noted the care towards comfort that had been put into the knots. Metcalf hadn't struggled against her ropes. There were no signs of chafing. But she did stand up somewhat unsteadily and her muscles seemed cramped.

Vecchio looked like he'd rather die than touch her, so Davenport helped her stand. Metcalf walked around a bit, then accepted the Mounie's handcuffs on her wrists before heading without word or instruction to the jeep.

It really wasn't right not to have Fraser join them, but he could come later to deal with the formalities. Just to be safe, at the jeep she went through the official arresting procedure. When Metcalf had to acknowledge that she understood what was happening to her, Davenport made sure her eyebrows didn't go up at the sound of that musical voice. Metcalf got in the back of the jeep while she and Vecchio climbed into the front. The detective sat sideways, keeping an eye on their guest.

Davenport watched the road.

So, last night while Vecchio was wandering around Tears Creek, this woman magically appeared to Fraser. Vecchio hadn't mentioned the woman when he came for gas. Had Ray somehow known Fraser was in trouble? It weren't as though there were phones at the cabin or the shelter, though.

The thing was, she would have asked Vecchio about it all if it weren't for their prisoner in the back. Instead, she let the jeep take up the miles in silence, then slowed down to turn onto the road to Axehandle.

When Vecchio lunged back she kept the vehicle from swerving, took her foot off the gas and braked gently to a stop. When she turned, Metcalf's eyes were furious, but she'd been unable to get out of Ray's two-handed grasp.

"Trying to jump from a moving car isn't very wise, Ms Metcalf," Davenport instructed as she reached back to remove the handcuff from around the woman's rather dainty wrist. She looped the cuffs through the roll-bar, then clicked the metal ring back into place.

It was a relief to get the woman locked up in the small cell at her station at Axehandle. Her assistant, Carlton, was there, thank God, along with some reports from the Danes lab. Vecchio sat at her computer with open technophobia and typed in his part of the report and a statement, which he then printed and signed. Jane did everything she could as well. After a couple hours, she got orders from her chief to hold Metcalf overnight. Fraser would need to be there in the morning, around 10 AM, for the wagon and the official transfer.

"You want some lunch before we head back?" she asked Ray, watching him drink up the last of the coffee he'd made. Damn good coffee, too.

"They got caribou burgers to go around here?"

"No, but I know a place serves chili dogs out the window."

Green eyes lit up again, and she warned her stomach away from any flip-flops. "Sounds great!"

She checked with Carlton, forced herself to see that Metcalf was all right in her cell, then led Vecchio out to the jeep and headed for Mandy's.

"So..." she began, not looking at him.

She saw him shrug anyway. "She and Benny got some personal history. She showed up to talk. He arrested her instead."

Jane nodded, then pressed her luck and then some. "She know about you and Fraser?"

"When she went to see him? Yeah."

Jane nodded, let a moment go by. "Dumb bitch."

Vecchio laughed, startled and breathless, and Jane felt rather pleased with herself. Mandy's A-frame wooden house came in sight.

"Hey, you weren't kidding about the window," Vecchio announced, his voice still bubbling.

She drove up the gravel path and rapped on the window. Mandy herself opened it, though her son, Keith, was hovering behind her in the same color T-shirt. Keith was always trying to make things more professional. Mandy bore it with motherly pride and refused to buy new pots.

"Four dogs, please."

"Coming up."

She turned to Ray. "You want onions?"

He nodded.

"Onions on all of 'em!"

Mandy's voice drifted through the window. "Right."

"What do you want to drink with that?" Keith asked, sticking his head through.

She drove the jeep next to a hill looking over Axehandle, what there was of it to look at, and they stretched out a little, their dogs in their laps and their Cokes on the dashboard.

The account Ray gave of Fraser's relationship with Victoria Metcalf was doubtlessly incomplete, but it told her more than she had any right to claim. He told her more about his own role than anything else, protecting Benny, more than likely. She let him know she appreciated it by telling him a bit about her life up here, and her troubled relationship with Anna and the others.

He nodded and started on his second dog. "People like that, you can't ignore them, not when they're so useful and other people turn to them and all, but it...it's a pain when they gotta make you feel like a jerk just for wanting to help."

She said something appropriate and was glad she'd told him. She did *not* dwell on the sudden memory of two men kissing at the clinic.

"You gonna be here a while, then?" he asked.

"Until I'm ordered to leave, I guess. I love it here."

"Yeah." Vecchio breathed the word out with a depressed sigh, but she only waited.

"Benny loves it here too. If you're here in a few years...it'll be nice, knowing someone else." Vecchio laughed a little. "Maybe you can help me hunt down a job."

"Something wrong with your job in Chicago?"

He shifted, restless, his hand wadding up the grease-stained napkin. "Gay detectives don't make lieutenant. I'll stay until I'm not doing my job well, then I'll leave. Fraser misses Canada, so if he's out of the doghouse by then, I figure we'll come up here."

She really shouldn't say what was coming to her lips, but she did anyway. "Does Fraser know you've made all these decisions?"

Vecchio shot her a somewhat sly look that made flip-flips threaten again. "I ain't decided nothing. Just talking aloud to hear how it sounds."

She nodded, then grabbed the litter bag so they could clean up. She started up the engine again and got back on the road.

"So, you got any idea what the spirits want?"

Ray shrugged, turning troubled eyes from hers. "That's Fraser's department."

@@@

Diefenbaker put his head in Fraser's lap and watched along with the Mountie as the jeep disappeared from sight.

It really had been his duty to go along, but it was also his duty to stay. And having to ride in the jeep with her, to have her so close when he felt...

What did he feel for her now? He pitied her. He disliked her. Or better yet, he pitied and disliked the man he had been when he loved her.

How could he ever love Ray enough to thank him for saving him from her?

Dief growled.

"I know," he soothed, almost absently. "You don't need to come with me when I make out my report."

Dief laid his ears back, then nuzzled his hand.

"No, I think you did very well, considering the circumstances."

Dief wuffed gently, agreeing, and Fraser looked up to see Anna and James approaching him. Eric was coming towards him as well. It was odd to see the man behaving almost diffidently towards his many elders.

James Beartree, of whom Fraser had heard long before, squatted down by Diefenbaker and offered his weathered hand for sniffing. His eyes had gone almost completely gray with age, grayer even than the sparse hair on his head. Fraser was tempted to believe that the faded but untorn jeans were as old as the man who wore them. His black shoes were startlingly new by comparison. The plain shirt was buttoned to the neck under a long beaded necklace. "Was he with you last night, or Ray?"

"Me...and Victoria."

James nodded, then looked into Fraser's eyes. The sensation was quite unsettling, but Fraser didn't turn away.

"You're in love, then?"

Fraser almost shouted a denial, tasting Victoria's name still bitter in his mouth. But then realized that wasn't what James Beartree meant. But the man hadn't waited for his affirmation anyway.

"New love. Fresh and passionate." James nodded to himself. "You gotta watch those Italians, you know, son. I watch *The Sopranos.* HBO. Scary stuff, but probably pretty nice in bed, eh?"

Before Fraser got his wind back, James was up and walking towards the cabin.

"They can't resist it, you know."

Fraser followed him, almost knocking the chair down as he parted from it. "No, I don't know what you mean."

"They can smell it, like blood. They would have left, we figure, with spring, except for sensing you. They almost got him last night, too."

Fraser sputtered slightly.

"Winter chills," Anna spoke from behind him. "Freeze a man to death, take his spirit, steal the warmth of his soul."

"Ray's got fire in him, eh?" James was laughing at him openly now. Fraser knew his face was red.

"And magic," Anna added. *For a white man* was implicit.

Somehow Rita Hawke was standing at his shoulder now. He'd certainly heard of her before too - had seen her once, actually, at a lecture on native religions at Ottawa.

"Not a little fire and magic in you too, Mountie. I guess you two never stood a chance."

Everyone within hearing distance, except Benny, laughed hard at that. And yet it was easy to see they were all worried, all concerned. Fraser couldn't shake the feeling that he had been surrounded by a rescue party.

"How much of this will he believe?" Rita wanted to know.

Fraser felt himself shrugging, arms wide. "I'm not sure how much of this I -- that is...I mean -"

"You mean you respect our beliefs, but you don't share them," Rita said calmly.

"I...I mean that if you have need of my assistance, you...have it."

"He means he respects our beliefs," James said, walking through the cabin door.

"...but doesn't share them." It was Eric's voice now, and Fraser turned gratefully, even though the dark eyes that met his looked stern. "We need you and the cop to stay here tonight, so we can ask the spirits to leave."

"You sure you haven't seen any spirits, Fraser?" Rita asked suddenly. "They take the shape of spirits you know. Spiritual Tupilak."

Fraser blinked, a possibility striking him like a flash of memory from a bad dream. The last time he'd seen his father...had it been something else in his father's form? The question made him flail inside, and he grasped what he could.

"You're asking me if you should tell Ray that he has fire and magic in his soul that has made him an attractive target to spiritual forces."

"That's right," Rita acknowledged.

"You can tell him all you like, but I doubt he would find your information credible."

"Ahh," James said, emerging from the cabin. His necklace was gone. "But will he respect our beliefs?"

Fraser flailed again, though he kept his arms at his sides. "He's...Catholic," he managed.

James frowned. "Don't they disapprove of gays?"

Fraser had settled finally into parade rest. And he'd thought facing Victoria was a struggle.

James laughed suddenly, but it wasn't cruel. "I bet you two came up here to be alone together, eh?" Fraser nodded cautiously. "Didn't work out though."

"Not...yet."

They basically let him be after that, though Rita drew him aside for a request that made him blush to his hairline and eventually sink down into the chair. He watched, hands pressed together in his lap, as fires were lit and arranged, and various other preparations he dimly understood were made.

After a couple of hours, a van pulled up and five people got out carrying food. It looked to be an impressive feast from they were preparing, but Fraser hoped they finished gutting everything before Ray came back.

Several more bits of jewelry were placed inside and around the cabin. Circles and other shapes were drawn in the ground. Several people, including Eric, pulled drums from the van and set them aside.

And, of course, the sweat lodge was soon puffing away.

Ray and Jane Davenport made it back just before it occurred to Fraser to worry about them. He couldn't help smiling at Ray's relaxed posture. It had done his friend good to be a cop for a while, he reasoned.

It was something of a long walk from the jeep to his chair, so he had a while to admire the view. Ray's jeans were a little tighter than his usual attire, and though they were new they hugged his body just right. The green flannel (but not plaid) shirt brought out his jeweled eyes and the afternoon light played around his close-shorn hair like a halo.

"So what gives, Benny?"

Fraser stood, nodding at his fellow Mountie. "They feel this location will be a good place to perform their ritual to end winter, Ray."

"They need a ritual for that, Benny?"

"This year, yes. They feel the spirits of winter have been tempted to remain here too long and must be encouraged to depart."

"The guests who won't leave, huh? Guess you just can't pretend you're out of beer and call the spirits a cab."

It felt good to smile. "Yes, Ray."

A presence at his elbow got him to turn. "Ray, this is James Beartree."

"Yeah. Jane introduced us. Nice to meet you."

James smiled at Ray and Fraser braced himself. "Benton has explained the ritual?"

"Yeah. Sounds cool."

"Then you don't mind being the bait?"

Ray blinked, then looked at his friend. "Something you need to tell me, Benny?"

"I hadn't gotten to that part yet, James." Fraser swallowed. "The elders seem to feel that the spirits are attracted to us, Ray."

"Us?" Ray looked around, frowning. "What's so special about us?"

James lifted his brows, and looked expectantly at Fraser.

"Heyyo!" someone shouted from the treeline, and everyone looked to see Con Dupont holding up a bright red scarf.

"Hey, that's my scarf!" Ray said, moving towards the man.

Benny put a gentle hand on his shoulder. "Ray, I think they're going to want that for their ritual."

"Fraser!" Ray rolled his eyes, frowned at James and Jane, then dragged Benny up the stairs and inside the cabin, mustering all his will to keep from trying to slam the temporary door closed.

"What's all this crap?" he demanded, barely managing it keep his voice down. Beaded necklaces and other trinkets hung about the room like Christmas decorations. Someone had hung make-shift curtains over the windows as well, and filled all four corners of the room with dried flowers. He shuddered at the thought of what they might have done in the unfinished john.

"Part of the ritual, Ray."

Benny leaned against the wall he had helped to build only a few days ago. James was right. Little had worked out as planned.

"Ray..." No, he couldn't just announce his news like that. He frowned, then remembered. "Ray, are you ready to tell me what happened at Tears Creek last night?"

Ray looked embarrassed. "Yeah, of course, Benny. It's just...geeze..." He ran a beautiful hand over his head and Fraser fought the urge to follow that touch with kisses. "It's stupid, now, thinking about it. I was sleepwalking."

Benny blinked. "Sleepwalking."

"Yeah, you know, and dreaming. I thought I was awake. And I guess when I was driving I was awake, but when I got there, it was so cold and all, and I haven't slept well in a while, Benny, what with being so worried about you. So I was just seeing stuff. Doesn't matter."

"The Inuit elders believe their winter spirits are coming after us because we're so much in love."

"You told them we're in love, Benny?" Ray's voice echoed around the almost empty cabin and was doubtlessly heard outside.

"No, Ray." Fraser's voice was quiet.

"Then how did they...aw...damn it to hell, anyway. A bunch of strangers can take one look at us and know. You think we're gonna keep it a secret for long at home?"

Fraser was so torn he felt almost schizophrenic. "But the spirits, Ray..."

Ray put his hands on his hips. "Benny, do you honestly believe in these spirits?"

Fraser thought about it, and felt himself shaking his head, just slightly. "I believe that their opinion is to be respected, Ray." James was right. It wasn't enough, but it was all he had right now.

That *hadn't* been his father, had it? But perhaps Ray was right, and he had just been feeling the effects of too little sleep...and the insecticide as well, perhaps.

His lover's wiry body shrugged. "Then let's respect it, okay, Benny? What do they want us to do? Go out there and dance around the fire?"

"No, nothing like that, Ray. They just want us to eat dinner with them, and then sleep in here...in the cabin."

"Well, we can do that."

"And make love."

It would be harder to say which opened wider: Ray's mouth or his eyes.

"Benny! You can't be *serious!*"

"It is what we have been asked to do, Ray."

Pale hands whipped through the air. "But you want to...with all those people out...Benny, I can't believe..."

"I don't think we actually have to have sex, Ray."

"But you just said -"

"Making love can be all sorts of things, Ray. We can agree to their terms without agreeing to do anything that would make us feel awkward."

"But...the door...and it doesn't lock."

Benny shrugged. If Ray hadn't been able to see his hands shaking he thought he might have had to hit him. "We can leave our clothes on, Ray, and just hold hands and say...nice things to each other. That's 'making love' too."

"But that's not what they meant, Benny." Ray's eyes were weakening, however,

"Actually, I believe it is, Ray. They want us to...call up our love for each other. To 'make love' quite literally. To lure the spirits."

Ray sighed, and the sound tore at Benny's heart.

"It's just the one night, Ray."

"Yeah, and then we gotta spend all day tomorrow processing Victoria. And then we gotta help them find out what jerk-off's been poisoning the birds. Then God knows what it will be! Our vacation's half used-up as it is, and then we gotta go home and..."

"...and tell everyone something that may well offend them."

Bleak eyes met his, then melted, and Benny's arms were suddenly, wonderfully full of warm Ray Vecchio.

"You wanna make a little love right now, Benny?"

"Yes. Yes and always yes, Ray."

God, how many hours had it been since their last kiss? How had he gone so long without this sweet taste and the warmth and tenderness of it? When Ray began to ease back, he heard himself whimper slightly and pressed forward, demanding more, and even more was given to him. Ray's arms around him kept him on the ground, but he soared, and Ray was there with him.

A long time later he allowed Ray a moment to catch his breath.

"So, you will do it, Ray?"

"All right, Benny, if only to thank 'em for helping us with the cabin."

Fraser nodded, then sought another kiss. And another, his hands warmed by Ray through the soft flannel of his shirt.

This was making love, all right.

Outside the cabin, inside the sweat lodge, Anna Silvernail poured another cup of water on the rocks and breathed the steam in deep.

The woman with her made a noise of pleasure, then frowned at herself and fell quiet and still.

"You're allowed to enjoy it," Anna said dryly.

Jane Davenport shifted slightly in her towel and looked uncertain, then closed her eyes and made a visible effort to relax.

Anna closed her own eyes and tried to get the image of Jimmy Bearclaw telling her she was being unfair out of her head. She didn't need some white-loving man, no matter how many winters he'd seen, telling her about fair. Did anyone talk about how unfair it was when she'd been only fifteen three white men raped her? And this woman in the lodge with her who had eaten her food and become a friend to her friends, when she had needed Davenport's help, had it been given? Had Anna done anything that wasn't fair? No. No. And no.

Those three men had died within a year of touching her, all in different accidents, and she hadn't lifted a finger to make it happen. That's when she'd first known what her life would be. For so long it had sustained her. But then her own daughter, the flesh of her flesh, had turned from her, and she'd doubted. But her faith was strong.

Even now, with this woman in the lodge with her, she slid easily into the vision, running to the call of her spirit guide, a wild cat with sharp claws and kind eyes. She followed her guide as they ran now through the trees, but unlike times before the cat didn't stop. He seemed different today, tamer, but more mischievous. She was almost ready for it when her guide stopped and spread out, turning black, flapping wildly as the Raven laughed at her, leaving her amid the tangle of forest, his eyes flashing with the triumph of his trickery.

Her eyes flew open as she gasped, the Raven's call still sharp in her ears.

"Anna?" Jane asked, worried, as her hands helped the woman regain her balance and sit back. "You all right?"

Anna's retort, sharp as the Raven's beak, never came. Jane's sweat had flushed her cheeks and brightened the dark, deep eyes. Anna felt the gentle touch of her hands on her shoulders, heard the genuine concern of her voice, saw sweat-plastered night-black hair falling to shoulders softly curved, felt the strength of a solid, beautiful body, and within Anna something she'd thought long-dead...stirred.

Biting back nothing less than a moan of horror, flushing with shame, Anna stumbled out of the lodge with unintelligible words and stood blinking in the sunlight a bare moment before she marched down the short path to the stream and its cold, clean water.

*This will pass,* she chanted defiantly. *This will pass.*

And the Raven laughed at her.

Jane watched her go, then scooped up her clothes and had to follow down the same path to get clean. She went quite a ways down the creek, however, and turned her back, giving the woman privacy and waiting long after Anna had left to take her own quick, chilly bath.

She admitted to herself she'd hoped for something, some sort of understanding with the woman, after Anna had invited her to be her lodge partner. She'd even thought she'd had a vision in there, sort of. She'd wanted to share it with Anna, and perhaps get her to laugh. Foolish hopes.

By the time she was back in her uniform the party - that is, the ritual - was starting to get underway. She went to take her leave of Fraser and Ray, and ended up accepting a warm invitation to dinner. Everyone was grabbing plates and sitting on whatever they could find. Rita Hawke got the chair, she saw, but quickly gave it up for Con, who had arthritis. Jane sat on the cabin steps at Ray's side and traded cop stories until her stomach was full and her entire repertoire depleted.

Benny spent most of his time talking to James and Rita, and what she heard of the conversation sounded so academic she almost sneezed from the dust.

"What'd you do to Anna, anyway?" Ray asked her while discreetly picking caribou out of his teeth. The woman had been giving Jane strange looks all night.

Jane shrugged, and her brown eyes looked a little sad. "I believe she had a vision she disliked."

"How was your vision?" Ray asked, then was surprised when Jane's eyes darted away. "No way! You really had one? Get outta town! What was it?"

Jane licked her lips and Ray grinned.

"I'm not sure it was a vision. I saw my cat."

Ray roared with laughter and clapped her warmly on the shoulder. Off to his left he saw Anna frowning at them. Talk about uptight! He was tempted to give his new Mountie friend a kiss on the cheek, but didn't want any lectures from Benny.

"That's a great vision," Ray said finally, wiping his eyes a little. "Did your cat do anything special? Play with yarn? Dance under the moon?"

"You're a smart-ass, Vecchio," Jane said, enjoying herself.

Ray roared with laughter again.

"You didn't go in the lodge," she noted when he'd calmed down.

He shrugged. "Nah. Only thing I ever used one of those for was getting...uh...friendly with someone."

Jane smiled, then frowned at herself. Ray could tell she'd thought something she shouldn't, and wondered what it was.

The evening still came quickly, and the sky was only beginning to darken when James stood up and touched Fraser on the shoulder. A moment later, and an extremely self-conscious Mountie was walking back to Ray, who stood to meet him.

"Time to go inside, Benny?"

Fraser's smile was innocent as a baby's. "Yes, Ray."

He turned to Jane and wished her goodnight. Her eyes twinkled at him.

"Are you staying here for the night, Constable?" Benny asked.

"Yes, in case there's any sort of trouble on *this* astral plane," she said quietly, her eyes making it clear she wasn't being disrespectful. Ray grinned to himself. "I'll camp out in the jeep."

"I set up a tent," a quiet voice said from behind Ray, making him fight the impulse to jump out of his skin. They turned to see Anna, who was already moving away. "You can use that."

"Thanks," Jane called, surprised.

Anna waved vaguely and went over to James.

Ray shot Jane his own look of surprise, then grinned at his partner and walked up the steps, shivering a bit as the air temperature went down along with the sun.

It was actually pretty cozy inside the cabin now. The fire was going and the lantern was on low. Their bedrolls and blankets made a soft-looking nest on the floor. The dried flowers even made it smell nice.

"Well?" Benny was asking Dief as Ray turned back to the door. "Are you coming in or not?"

Diefenbaker whined slightly, then turned around and laid himself down over the step just outside the door. Before Benny could close the door, Ray walked over and patted the wolf on the head.

"I owe you a donut for this one, furball."

"Don't encourage him, Ray."

Dief's tail thumped once, then he set his muzzle on his paws and closed his eyes. Benny closed the door gently.

Ray smiled and was about to reach for his lover when the drumming started. It was a deep, steady thrumming, a little uneven for a moment, then perfectly in rhythm, the clockwork noise of the entire night sky.

"What's wrong, Ray?"

"They gonna do that for long, Benny?"

Fraser shrugged. "All night, I should think, Ray. Although if they feel the ritual has been successful, they'll stop then."

"Awww." Ray moved back towards the fire, pacing. "How we supposed to sleep with that going on?"

"Well, actually, Ray." Benny looked at him uneasily. "We're not supposed to sleep at all."

"All *night?* You mean, we're supposed to make love all night?"

Benny smiled in just that way that let Ray know he couldn't help it. "Does it really sound so bad, Ray?"

Ray felt himself flushing a bit. "Well, right *now* it doesn't sound bad, but later..."

"It's not later now, Ray."

Ray smiled and let the heat of Benny's eyes curl his toes. "No, it's now, now."

Benny took a step forward. "Now?"

Another step for both of them, and they were in each other's arms. Ray laughed. "This part is always so easy."

Benny breathed him in deep, and held it, for all the world like someone savoring a joint, and Ray smiled as his fingers carded through that silk-soft hair. "You're so beautiful, Benny."

But his words had the opposite effect from what he intended, and Fraser drew back.

"Benny?"

Uncertain blue eyes, almost green again in the light of the lantern, met his. He was biting his lip, and Ray wanted so much to kiss him.

"I don't want to keep anything from you, Ray."

Ray tightened his arms and nuzzled Benny's snow-white neck. "So tell me what's on your mind, then."

"James and the others...they said that you're full of fire and magic, Ray."

"Mph. Hope they said the same thing about you, Benny."

"Ray..." Benny drew back with purpose and Ray looked up with a sigh. "They're serious, Ray."

"And so am I, Benny. It's nice that they said that, but what am I supposed to do about it? Sounds mostly like they're blowing a little white-man smoke our way, trying to get us to go along with this whole crazy ritual thing of theirs. Besides, I bet they *did* say it about you too."

Benny frowned. "Well..."

"Yeah, yeah." Ray pulled gently and Benny got back up next to him where he belonged. The drums had an almost hypnotic rhythm going, and for a while they stood there, swaying, almost dancing. When Ray realized he was about to fall asleep in Fraser's arms, he reached up for a quick kiss and disengaged.

Ray wanted to head for the bed, but Benny gently tugged him towards the chest, and they sat down together on the floor as the Mountie produced a key.

"I finally get to see what's in the chest?" Ray asked, smiling like a boy presented with a new bike.

"Yes, Ray," Fraser said almost shyly, then reached for the lock.

Ray's long fingers covered his hands, holding them. Benny looked up in concern into troubled green eyes.

"Fraser, I shouldn't be keeping things from you, either."

"What things? You know you can tell me anything, Ray."

"Yeah." Ray sighed. "I know, I just...damnit, Benny. I really wanted this time to be *ours,* you know? And look at us, half the Inuit nation outside the door beating drums and thinking we're doing the nasty all night long!"

Benny seemed puzzled. "You haven't been keeping your irritation from me about that, Ray."

"No. I know." Ray collapsed slightly, with a breath, then straightened. "I was talking to Jane today, just talking, but I got to thinking out loud, and I was thinking about the future."

"Yes, Ray."

"I love you, Benny. I said that yet today?"

"Now you have, Ray." Benny smiled, dazzling. Ray took the kiss he couldn't resist, then settled back with a will.

"I was just BSing about how I'll need to be looking for a job up here in a few years. I want you to know, I'm thinking along those lines, okay? I ain't thrilled about it, but it's okay and all."

Benny was frowning. "But your own career -"

"Is pretty much over when people realize about us, Benny. I ain't saying I'm going down without a fight, but if it ever, you know, comes down to a choice, I just want you to know I've made up my mind."

"A choice?"

Ray rolled his eyes. Did Fraser need *everything* explained to him all the time? "Yeah, a choice. Like, between you and my career. There's no contest, you know? I'm a cop, but I'm not a cop like you're a Mountie. I can be other things and still be happy."

He looked Benny in the eye now, and it was like a straight shot of joy to see how brightly they shined, how much they loved him. He swallowed, the noise clear over the drumbeats, and a square, pale hand lifted to his face, stroking his cheek. Those perfect pink lips smiled faintly, and Ray just felt faint.

"What else could you do, Ray?" Benny whispered.

Ray tried to shrug, but only shivered. "I dunno, Benny. All sorts of things. I could, like, open up a store, or sell men's clothes, or run a bowling alley."

Benny laughed and stroked his other cheek, so gently it felt like a kiss. "You'd be miserable running a bowling alley, Ray."

"Yeah, I guess so. But I'll find something, Benny. I don't want you to worry about it, okay?"

"But you did say you'd fight it, Ray."

"Damn straight."

"And you'll let me fight at your side."

"I feel like I couldn't do anything if you weren't with me, Benny."

"Thank you for telling me about this, Ray."

Ray nodded, leaning into the new caress on his face, and then they were kissing again.

A while later, Benny got the trunk open, and they spent a solid two hours going over the things inside: some books, and old Sam Browne belt, a cigar box with medals in it, a shoebox full of old photos, one of Benny as a baby with no clothes on, sitting in the mud, more photos of Fraser Sr., of the grandparents, of people who were just names to Benny and barely faces to Ray, a broken watch, two compasses, more books, drawings, maps, a tiny pair of shoes Ray couldn't help holding in his hand.

Somewhere in the middle of all the memories Benny let Ray slip him out of his shirt and, eventually, cover all that luscious, creamy skin with kisses. Ray was separated from some of his clothes as well, and Benny's hands and lips had touched him everywhere they could reach.

The trunk was empty, but Ray peered inside to be sure, exposing his neck to gentle nibbling that made him forget what he was looking for. He made to lean back and seek those warm lips, but Fraser put a hand flat on his back, keeping him there. He let out a moan and dropped his head lower, leaning over inside the trunk, breathing in the light dust of old books and the sweet tang of neatsfoot oil.

"I love your neck, Ray." Fraser's breath feathered across his skin to dance on scattered nerves, making him shiver. "I love that it's so long." Little kisses now, right where it counted. "I love that it's so sensitive." A tiny bite over the jugular made Ray grip the rim of the trunk with hands knuckle-white. "Will you always let me touch you like this?" Another nip, lower down, near his collarbone.

"Ohhhh. Yeah. Whenever you like."

"Wherever I like, Ray?" Fingers found his right nipple and played with it.

"Oh, yeah. Benny. Yes."

"In the Riveria, Ray?" Fraser had found his nape now, and was licking it, stroking it up and down with his tongue, tickling himself on the bristle-hair at the top, lingering along the warm, salty skin sloping towards the shoulder.

"Wha...what?"

"Can I do this to you in the Riveria, Ray?"

"You wanna neck in the car, Benny?"

"Mmmm. Neck." *Nibble.*

Ray moaned again, shivering and shaking as Benny's other hand toyed with his other nipple. He arched back into the warm curve of Fraser's body, his rear pressing into a somewhat lumpy lap.

Benny groaned at the gentle pressure, rocking slightly in rhythm to the drums, unable to prevent the vision before him of Ray looking as though he had appeared from inside the trunk, pulled out like family photos to be cherished. He moaned softly as this combined with another vision of Ray naked with his legs spread, waiting to be gently ravished over and over.

They really shouldn't go that far, though. It was hard enough to stay awake without adding in post-coital stupor.

"Ray, I want you so much," he whispered, pressing that long, lean back to him with hands laid flat.

"You have me, Benny. Anytime you want me, take me."

Benny's moan was rather loud this time, and his urgency went to his arms and his cock with equal force. "Me as well," he was mumbling into Ray's neck. "My body...for you, anytime you want me. Just tell me, or touch me..."

Ray sighed and leaned back, whispering pleasure as Benny's lips lightly nipped his ear. When he spoke, however, his voice was full of regret.

"Any time but now, of course."

Fraser stilled, then resumed rocking, more gently now. "That does seem to be our predicament often, of late."

"I dreamed of being up here, Benny, of the cabin and wood furniture and no one knocking on our door for days. I saw the two of us only getting out of bed to roast up some caribou and use the john."

"I saw myself returning from a starlit walk, half-frozen, to thaw in your arms. I saw you telling me the forest isn't so bad, and agreeing to come back here not because you had to, but because you wanted to."

"I saw your blue eyes happy because you're home."

"I saw your naked body lit by firelight."

"Damnit, Benny. As soon as this stupid ritual is over, I'm gonna...oh man, the things I'm going to do to you..." Ray buried his face in his arms, and Benny followed the arch of his body to bury his face in Ray's neck. For several long moments, they did not speak, could not speak.

Finally, Ray mumbled, "Aren't there islands around Tahiti where people have still never gone?"

"Yes, Ray."

"We could...find one of them."

"Live off the land?"

"Spend the days making love in the sand and swimming around naked and stuff. You'd look really hot with a tan."

"I'd just burn. But I could stay in the shade during the really intense sun hours."

"I'd go out and get fish and bring it to you, and you could reward me for my service by..."

"...pleasuring you, Ray?"

"Yeah, Benny. By pleasuring me."

Benny kissed his shoulder.

"Of course," Ray continued, "Dief would get all hot, so maybe we could shave him or something."

Benny's breath caught, his arms squeezing so tight Ray cried out into a sudden silence. Frantic kisses covered Ray's back as the arms loosened and warm hands caressed his chest and sides desperately.

"Ray, Ray, Ray..." Benny was chanting, his voice rusty with need.

"Benny!" Ray pushed back against the trunk, lifting them both up until he was sitting in Fraser's lap again.

"Yes?"

"Listen."

"The drums."

"Yes."

"They've...stopped."

"Yeah. I mean, it's so quiet."

They sat there, hearing only their own breaths.

"That's good, isn't it, Benny? Doesn't that mean the ritual's over?"

"I think so, Ray."

But they didn't move, their breathing growing ever-more controlled, their ears roaring with silence.

"It's so quiet," Ray whispered. He shivered. It was getting cold.

Benny's hands felt Ray's skin cool slightly. "It's all right, Ray. I'm sure they just -"

Benny's head whipped around to stare at the wall. Was someone watching them? Perhaps...he looked to the windows, but they were covered completely. Yet somehow he felt he could feel someone, perhaps several people, standing just behind the curtains, trying to peer through, seeking them: a crowd covered by the thin fabric, dozens of eyes staring blindly.

They were both shivering now, both staring at the windows. Benny thought he could see Ray's breath curl up in the air, like a finger beckoning.

Ray's frozen hands grasped his wrists, making his bones ache. There was a shuffle, or scrape, some sort of half-heard noise, and Fraser was gripped by the insane urge to run to the fireplace, grab a burning log with his bare hands, and set the whole place on fire simply to feel some heat again.

Ray twisted, brutally, lifting up his legs and then settling them on either side of Benny's flanks, and they were face-to-face, or rather chest-to-chest as Ray pressed his face into Benny's neck. Benny did the same, and finally there was warmth, a flicker of it, and the sound of Ray's heartbeat. After an endless moment, he could hear his own as well, a counter-rhythm, frantically beating, until it seemed that his own heart slowed, or perhaps it was Ray's heart, and the sounds joined, two hearts drumming as one.

Drumming. That ritual beating of the Inuit who needed winter to leave.

"Benny," Ray whispered, his breath warm on Fraser's chilled shoulder.

"I hear it, Ray."

The drums had never stopped. Their vibrations filled the room.

Ray laughed, his body heat returning as he pulled just slightly away. Ray's eyes were wild and wide and his smile shaky.

"Ha! Geeze, Benny. We really freaked ourselves out, there."

"Ray? Are you all right?"

"Yeah, of course I am. You're all right, aren't you?" Ray's eyes were calming now, though they took on concern.

"Yes, Ray." They pulled away from each other completely and stood up. Ray shivered and grabbed his shirt and Fraser's white, high-necked sweater. Benny covered himself with his Henley and Ray's extra-large sweatshirt.

They regarded each other solemnly, then Ray broke into giggles.

"I guess we killed the mood there, huh?"

Benny couldn't help laughing either. "Perhaps we could just hold hands for a while."

"And say nice things to each other?" Ray asked, sounding almost shy.

Benny finally felt warm again, and reached out his hands, smiling as Ray's hands twined around them.

He was hardly at peace with himself. The demand for truth almost made Fraser object even to a momentary delay, but what was the truth? If he insisted that they had just narrowly avoided being killed by winter spirits, would that even be close to what had just happened?

He and Ray had found many truths together in their past. This was no different. Whatever magic or religion needed to be confronted would be, in time. It would have to be.

For now, he reveled in being pulled once more into Ray's arms. Moments passed in a dozen sounds: the drums, the crackle of the wood in the fireplace, the rustle of people moving and occasionally talking or singing outside, the creak of the settling wood of the cabin, Ray's breath and heartbeat, and his own body echoing his lover's life.

The drums fell silent once more.

They froze, not breathing, but then there was a cheer raised outside, and the sounds of people evidently congratulating themselves.

Ray broke from Benny's arms and raced to the door, flinging it open and almost off its make-shift hinges. Benny was right beside him.

The Inuit elders were still celebrating the evidently successful end of their ritual. Bottles were being pulled out of the trucks and jeeps and those who looked to the cabin laughed and waved to the men in the door. Constable Davenport crawled out of her tent and squinted at the sky. Benny was astonished to realize that it was almost dawn.

"It can't be," Ray objected when Benny spoke.

"And yet," Benny gestured to the sky, "it is."

Ray sagged against him. "Tell me this is the end of all this freaky stuff that's been happening to us, Benny."

Fraser opened his mouth, but could not, in all conscience, quite bring himself to say the words.

Diefenbaker got up and barked at them. Ray sighed and knelt to scratch the wolf behind his ears.

Jane walked to the bottom of the steps and yawned as she looked up. "I guess the spirits are all right now?"

Ray shrugged and laughed. Only Benny could see the forced quality of it. "I guess so! Looks like we're gonna have some drinks now."

"Actually, I need to stay sober. They're coming for Metcalf at 10 AM."

"That means we should get on the road soon, then," Benny noted.

Ray sighed. "So much for the vino."

"Ray, I hardly think drinking is foremost on the elders' minds now."

Ray looked at him, the green eyes gray in the starlight, but unmistakably wry.

"Benny, in about twenty minutes, your lawn is going to be lousy with drunken Inuit. I say we get outta here before they strap us down and cover our bodies with celebratory tattoos."

"I doubt they would do any such thing, Ray."

A long, pale, elegant finger curled in the air. "Ah. But do you know that for certain?"

Fraser regarded the milling crowd a moment, then went into the Cabin for his boots. Ray flashed Davenport a grin, then went after his own footwear.

Ray and Benny managed a shower in the tiny bathroom at the station in Axehandle, separately, to their mutual but unexpressed disappointment. Not that there was ever a chance for such things, but Benny told himself it was a shame to waste the water, and Ray just ran through a few dozen swear words in his head when the water made him hard and Benny wasn't there to let him take advantage of it.

Ray avoided the cell and spent the morning at the station helping Davenport with her background checks on Del Rae Industries. He'd done all he could with his Victoria stuff, so at first he only read about pesticides and lumber to keep himself occupied.

About 9 AM, he asked Jane for the use of her computer.

Benny stood outside the door to Victoria's cell and tried to know what he was feeling.

This was not, he recognized with a private smile, his strength.

He did hate her a little. He had loved her too much not to. And he supposed he would always feel guilty about her.

Fraser opened the door. She was reclining on the cot and reading a magazine. She was beautiful, the dark beauty of snow in the night. One look at her made him ache for the sight of Ray's eyes.

"The officers who will take you to Ottawa will be here in an hour."

"Are you sure you've made the right choice, Ben?"

A thousand answers came to his mind, and yet the only one to make it to his lips was truly his response.

"My life does not concern you. It never did."

Her paleness stared at him: the arched brows perfectly poised.

"Do you need anything before they come?"

"No."

He nodded and left. Her head was bending back to the magazine before he finished turning away.

Ray and Constable Davenport were hunched over the computer.

"I don't believe this," she was muttering.

"Crooks! Always stupid!" Ray announced. "And thank God for it, or we'd never catch 'em, right?"

Jane laughed.

"Benny! Come 'ere!"

Fraser walked over and looked at the screen. It was an inventory of damaged goods from a recent fire at Del Rae Industries' central Alberta warehouse. Though a few other items had been placed on the list, evidently for obfuscation, the inventory read almost exactly as a list of the devices and chemicals found in the woods.

"Someone panicked big time," Ray said.

"It's so obvious I would never have thought of looking for it," Jane breathed, looking at Ray with open admiration.

"That's me, Mr. Obvious!"

"It's extremely incriminating," Fraser acknowledged.

"Oh, it's better than that, Benny. The guy who made out this list is none other than our lumber-buying friend himself. At least, it was done by his department. I bet Jane here goes up to Del Rae's PR guys with this and a few suggestions about how they shouldn't let their people run wild, and they'll be turning him over to the law so fast his Rolodex will make skid marks on his desktop."

"Hooray for damage control," Jane said with a somewhat glum smile. She'd rather have the higher-ups who doubtlessly knew what their man was doing, but she'd take this and count herself lucky.

Victoria Metcalf's transfer took up the rest of the morning, especially as she came complete with some of the most meticulously circumspect reports ever filed in the history of the RCMP.

Helping Jane Davenport close the Del Rae case took Fraser and Vecchio two more days.

They spent another day traveling to Ituokvuk, so they could attend Peter Lookstwice's funeral. At the services, they found Doc, who needed a place to stay, and happily settled for one of the beds in their hotel room while Benny took the floor and Ray stared at the ceiling from the center of a mattress ditch.

It was noon, with only a few more days to go in their vacation, before they were within five miles of the cabin again. Ray was speeding, and Benny didn't mention it.

"So I just told the plumbing guys on the phone to leave the stuff. We'll figure out what to do with it, or we can just store it."

"Makes sense, Ray."

"We can get the shingles up, at least, and do the weather-stripping, board up the windows, and finish the door. It will be here for us next time."

"Yes, Ray. I'm not worried about the cabin. We still have a few days."

"That's what I'm saying, Benny. We can do the rest of the stuff we *have* to pretty quickly. That gives us...somehow in there we can manage a full day and two nights in bed, even though I told the guys not to deliver it. I mean, bedrolls and some damn privacy is bed enough for me, Benny, if you're in it."

"Could you...hurry, Ray?"

Ray scowled and drove even faster, though he had to slow down for the final bit of road. Then...

"Aww, damnit!"

Jane's jeep was parked in front of the cabin.

But then they both noticed that the cabin looked...strange.

It was painted, for one thing, and a lovely, solid-looking door, stained dark and lightly filigreed, hung in the equally solid-looking door frame. The roof was shingled.

"The plumbing's done too," Jane told them as they walked up to the steps on which she was sitting. Diefenbaker ran ahead to sniff her hand, looked up at the cabin, then bounded off into the woods. "Furniture came yesterday."

She stood and held up two sets of keys. "Anna and I took the liberty of getting you guys some curtains and linen. Hope that's okay."

"Thank you kindly," Fraser said, taking his set of keys in a sort of slow-motion gesture and putting them in the pack thrown over his shoulder.

Ray leaned over and kissed her cheek, then grabbed his keys and laughed. "You Canadians! I'm gonna have to get a maple leaf bumper sticker, or something."

Jane laughed and headed for the jeep.

"Don't you want...shouldn't...some coffee?" Benny called after her.

"There's some in the cupboard, along with some food you'd better eat." She made it almost to the jeep, then turned around as though remembering something. "Oh. You guys got some mail. It's on the table."

She drove off then without looking back.

Ray and Benny exchanged a look, then walked up the stairs and inside. Both set their packs down on the floor with a *thump.*

The fire was going and the lantern lit. Benny's chest was in the corner. All other similarity to the last time they had seen the room ended there.

There was a bed made up with dark, soft linens and a wooden headboard, a chest of drawers, a table and two chairs, a rug in front of the fireplace that went nicely with the bed, light curtains over the windows, a dark blue sofa that screamed "Make out on me!" and an armchair perfect for reading.

Ray went into the bathroom and whooped for joy. The water worked in the sink and the shower, and the toilet flushed, quietly.

Benny looked at the beautiful but currently empty bookshelves along the east wall. Above them, the ceiling had been sealed and painted and the beams stained dark brown.

"They must have had a city-full of people working on this place," Ray said, his expression dazed as he walked back into the room.

Benny looked at him. "They're not here now, Ray."

"And do you know what now is, Benny?"

Benny smiled.

"Now is later, Benny."

Ray crossed to the door and shut it tight. Benny was already taking off his shirt.

"Let's not put our clothes back on, Ray. Not until we absolutely have to."

Ray stripped himself bare in less than thirty seconds, then threw his clothes into the corner. He reached into his pack and came out with a tube and a box.

"Bed, Benny."

Benny flushed at the possessiveness in Ray's tone, and the sight of his lover, already hard, walking towards him let him feel that first rush of warmth even before Ray's perfect hands reached him.

"Benny...I gotta be inside you, Benny."

"Oh, yes."

This is what it feels like to count on love, Fraser thought, sinking back to the soft, firm bed that even Ray couldn't claim was uncomfortable. This is what it feels like to take love for granted, to know it without question, with no more concern for its existence than for that of the sun or the moon. In Ray's eyes he could see everything he needed his lover to feel, everything he felt himself. And when Ray's eyes burned even brighter he knew his own eyes were showing what Ray needed to see.

"It's so easy to love you," he whispered, reaching up to stroke Ray's cheek.

Ray reached down to kiss him, and the bed was big enough to allow Benny to roll him over, pressing him down with his weight, clasping his long, whip-like body to his own pale, solid self. He plundered Ray's mouth, and there was the honey-fire he needed, the nectar and elixir and pure, straight drug of him.

Ray rolled him back over and draped himself over Benny's chest. Hot kisses blessed his face and neck while Ray's knee nudged his legs apart. Nimble fingers danced over his chest and found his nipples, and his own hands followed this perfect example with a dance of their own.

When their cocks brushed, it was almost all over right then, but Ray pulled back, moaning Benny's name and reaching for the cool gel that he warmed with his hands.

Benny scooted to the middle of the bed, waited until Ray was looking at him, then raised up his legs and spread them wide, holding his shins in his hands.

Ray's eyes went even wider in astonishment than they had gone in fear, though perhaps there was a little fear there as well.

"Ray?"

Ray groaned and closed his eyes, then opened them and dropped down over Benny's body, nestling between his legs and nuzzling his chest.

"You look so hot, so sexy, I can't believe it. I can't believe you, Benny. I love you so much, Benny." A hot tongue licked at his nipples, lapping heat into his body that collected low in his belly. When a slick finger grazed his cleft, his body strained to welcome it home. A stroke along the sensitive rim of his opening, and then pressure, sweet and hot: a prelude to bliss.

Benny's eyes were closed, but he could see everything clearly anyway: the light on Ray's body, the flex and play of his lean muscles, the love etched in his tender care and jade eyes.

"Your cock will be there, where you fingers are now," he hummed joyously. "You'll take me, and make it last as long as you can, and then you'll come inside me."

Ray groaned, and the lips on his chest were sucking at him now, deeply, leaving marks, probably. He hoped so. He reached down and caressed the hard flesh poking his hip. Ray was so soft, the naked length so bare, and his warm sac was like fine tissue or an antique silk scarf. The soft hair tickled his palm.

"Will you let me touch you like this all the time, Ray? Even in public?"

"Oh, God, Benny. You know I can't stand it when you talk like this." Benny felt himself stretch as Ray added in the third finger. Not long now.

"I was thinking, if I lock the door to my office at the Consulate, I could suck you off while you sat on my desk."

"Benny!" Ray wailed, the fingers retreating. Benny heard a foil pouch being ripped open.

"I can't think of a good place to have sex at the precinct. I doubt Lieutenant Welsh would allow us to use his office."

Hands moved to his thighs, caressing him, and then lower down, parting him. Blunt pressure nudged his center, shooting heat up his erection as it dripped onto his belly.

He forced his eyes open, and there Ray was, just as he should be, golden and magnificent. If the Inuit elders could see him like this, they'd know it was no secret Ray was made of fire and magic.

Ray met his eyes, and held them as he pressed his hips slowly, delicious forward. Pressure increased into pleasure, painfully, then eased, and he was filled up, replete.

Ray rested, leaning on his arms. A bead of sweat slid redolently from his neck and landed near Benny's right nipple. Ray eyed the drop, then arched down to lick it off.

Then he moved, and Benny could think only of drums. The vibrations of Ray's rhythm seemed to fill the cabin, and he, Ben Fraser, was spread gently open further and further until the gentleness itself was a type of violence. His heart, his life, his soul, his every last emotion lay exposed under the knife of those tender, perfect thrusts -- his skin, his reserve, his fear discarded, dry and empty on the barren rock of his past life.

"This is...who I want...to be," he whispered, cresting the wave of heat in his body, made desperate by the tingling lights that signaled the end.

"Yes," Ray whispered back between his own labored breaths, as though he had spoken Benny's words. "Oh God." His head rocked back, and the speed of his thrusts increased. A hot hand found Benny's cock.

Benny sobbed once, but the end only meant they could do it again, didn't it?

"For the rest...of my life," he whispered next, then began the long, low moan that would be with him through the last of it.

"Yes!" Ray shouted, thrusting hard, stroking in time. "Oh, God!"

Benny felt him convulse inside, and the hot flood, and then he was lost in his own writhing, white-burn release. His arms released his legs and reached up to urge Ray down, softly, down onto his stomach and chest, their thundering hearts pressed once again together to calm and soothe in a union that released passion as though it were the bonds of gravity which hold men to earth. Together, they drifted.

It would be hours before they'd remember Jane's words about the mail on the table, and another hour after that before they would open the letter from Ottawa that commended them on their exposure of corporate corruption and environmental tampering, as well as the incarceration of dangerous felon. In recognition of his heroism, Constable Benton Fraser, RCMP, was granted an additional two weeks' vacation time, and in what both of them considered recognition that Ray would scream bloody murder otherwise, Detective Ray Vecchio, Chicago PD had been granted two more weeks with pay from his superiors as well.

Ray pronounced the letter a miracle, but later he would have to admit that the true miracle came later. In the following almost-three-weeks, not a single visitor came to their door, not a single femme fatale came to steal one of them away, and not a single dead bird fell from the sky.

"It's downright unnatural," Ray muttered at one point.

Benny his thrusting for a moment, wiping the sweat off his face with a hand still a-tingle from a lengthy session of sensual finger-sucking. "What, Ray?"

"Nothing, Benny." Ray gripped him tight, smiling into the pillow as he heard his friend gasp. "Get back to what you were doing."

"Ray, tell me -"

"I love you, Benny."

A quick kiss between his shoulder blades, then the perfect drumbeat was resumed.

THE END