Disclaimer:

Author's Notes: Thanks to Justacat and Lynn for beta. Written to fulfill the 2-Lines Challenge and previously posted to my LiveJournal.

Story Notes:

*all of my sins are attempts to fill the voids / all of my voids, they are filled with sin

manic street preachers, "my little empire"*

I tuned out Constable Turnbull's voice as he skewed off onto yet another tangent to the story he was telling - this time a paean about haggis. I wanted to think about what he'd told me about his great-great-grandfather.

I knew of the concept - similar to that of the scapegoat - via old stories from the Old Country, but I'd never given it much thought. But that afternoon, in the windy rain of a Chicago autumn, with stacks of mind-numbing paperwork spread on the conference table and a very lemony cup of tea and Turnbull's marvelous shortbread at hand... what Turnbull described - it struck a chord in me. His ancestor - reviled and revered in turns - and I have something in common. Healey Turnbull, local championship curler, was also a sin-eater, it seems.

Not a sinful eater like Diefenbaker, whose hunting instincts have been turned, shamefully, toward the gluttonous acquisition of pastries instead of game, but a person who voluntarily assumes the sins of others for a price. In Healey Turnbull's case, the price was a few groats and a pint. My price? It varies.

I didn't eat a piece of bread off my dead father's chest, but I took on his sins just the same. I wasn't chased from his house and pelted with garbage and vituperation, but it sometimes feels like I was, exiled here as I am. The RCMP doesn't know what to do with me; I'm a treasure and a disgrace.

I took on Victoria's sins straight from her tongue, from her body. Her greed, her pride... they tarnished my own soul to the point where I nearly became a Judas to my best friend. My own sin was atoned for and forgiven, but I still carry hers with me.

Ray Vecchio. Whether he took the assignment in Las Vegas out of pride or his inexplicable envy of me, I don't know. I've borne his sins since shortly after we met, and I've done it willingly, gratis...

My teacup was gone when I reached for it, and so was Turnbull. Diefenbaker was lying under the table, crunching away at the shortbread he must have successfully begged from Turnbull. (I couldn't blame him, really; in truth Turnbull's shortbread could tempt the most ascetic saint to gluttony.)

God was supposed to - is supposed to - cleanse the 'eaten' sins from the soul of the sin-eater, because the innocent person didn't commit them. I'm hardly innocent, I know; I have my own share of sin without those I've taken to fill my empty spaces. However, that day it seemed to me that God wasn't holding up his end of the bargain with me. Would anyone ever?

I leaned back in my chair, resting my plate against my chest with a sigh. I picked up the single piece of shortbread I'd allowed myself, wondering half-heartedly if my own sins could possibly fit in something that small...

My spell of melancholy self-pity was broken abruptly as Ray Kowalski spun the chair beside mine, so he could straddle it rather than sit more conventionally. "Hey, Fraser."

"Hello, Ray. I thought you were busy this afternoon."

"I am. Taking a break, and there's something I've got to ask you. Turnbull told me that the Ice Queen isn't here this afternoon, so..." He shrugged, glancing at my hand, his right knee bouncing. "Hey, you gonna eat that?"

Before I could reply, he'd snatched the shortbread, winked at me, and eaten half of it in one bite.

"Ray, I -"

"What?" He finished off my sins in another bite, licking his fingers free of crumbs.

"No, nothing. Never mind."

He looked at me half-warily, half-amusedly. "What? There wasn't something wrong with it, was there? Dief didn't lick it or anything, right?"

I set down my plate slowly, the fingers of my other hand brushing my eyebrow in the nervous gesture I've never managed to train myself out of. "No, no, it was fine, Ray." I met his eyes. "Nothing in there that shouldn't have been, except for my sins."

"You're deranged, Fraser." He snorted.

I didn't reply.

"So, I just ate your sins? Tasty."

I nodded, fingers brushing my eyebrow again. "Okay, it's silly, Ray. You said there was something you wanted to ask me."

He stopped laughing abruptly, looking uncharacteristically nervous. "Oh, yeah, right. You know... you... Fraser... Speaking of sins..." He paused, taking a deep breath, then laughed again, very softly. He leaned forward, until his face was only inches away. Then, shockingly, his lips brushed mine. He pulled back, almost meeting my eyes. "Would you... do you think you'd be interested in coming over tonight and working on some new ones with me?"

I couldn't breathe. I tasted butter, sugar, Ray... For a dizzying moment I halfway convinced myself that Ray's kiss was nothing more than an expression of my own lust, passed to him in the shortbread. After all, it couldn't be his own; despite Ray's catalog of sins, he didn't lust for people.

The veiled hope in his expression faded as I watched and, as it did, I felt it growing in my heart.

No, Ray didn't lust for people. Ray... loved people.

"Okay, so... you don't have to, you know. I mean, okay, wow, Fraser, some sin-cookie there -"

And what I'd once thought of as a void - my soul - stretched before my eyes and I could see it for what it truly was. It lay before me, a tabula rasa, as wild and clean and full of potential as the ice fields of my home.

I reached out my hand and took his. "Yes. Yes, Ray." I took a deep breath, feeling lighter than I had in years. "I'd... I'd like that very much!"

End The Sin-Eater by Heuradys: heuradys_fox@comcast.net

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