Disclaimer: I own nothing, etc.

Author's Notes: Thanks to all who have written feedback. It has helped immeasurably. Don't ever think it hasn't.

Story Notes: It is doubtful whether there will be another story here; it is impossible to "end" this series, because Turnbull, in the series, except for having his health, is in all other respects me, and I am still alive. After I'm dead, I won't be able to write another ending. There is a good ending here.

SequelTo: Requiescat IV: Greater Love Hath None

Requiescat V: Perfect Love and Perfect Trust

The stack of empty briefcases tilted right over and fell from the top of the stacked boxes on the file cabinet and came down flat smack on McGuillicudhy's head.

During the general uproar, Ray just smiled, shifted his toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other and strolled off to get a coffee.

He was standing there, watching a thick stream of sugar arc in its smooth, pristine whiteness from the dispenser--he'd had such an appreciation for little things lately, finding beauty where he would never have expected to see it, such as the look on Mark McGuilllicudhy's face when those old briefcases nailed him and he went down under them and the boxes like a sack of laundry--when he knew Fraser had made it to the break room.

"Ray."

"Hi, Fraser," Ray grinned, not looking around. "Love ya honey." He'd known Fraser was coming for about five minutes. He'd also known Fraser was right in the squad room doorway when the briefcases toppled.

"You did that, didn't you? And don't say things like that here."

Ray watched creamer swirl. It was fascinating. Looking at all the differences in the temperature currents in this one little cup, this one little tiny liquid environment of coffee in this massive ocean of gas we all lived at the bottom of, held together by the cup because it was denser than the gaseous liquid of the air. "I didn't do squat. And nobody was around."

"Then--" Fraser stopped and lowered his voice. "I'm asking it as a personal favor. Even if you can tell that there's no one to hear, don't say things like that."

"Ask me to do it 'cause I love ya."

"Do it because I'll make your life hell if you don't." Fraser had come up right behind him by this point and whispered the last threateningly into his ear.

"There, was that so hard?" he quickly grinned at Fraser--rather, he turned his face with the grin already on it in Fraser's direction--ducked past the Stetson and kissed him on the ear.

"RAY!"

"Naughty, naughty, Frase, somebody mighta heard that. God, I love you."

Fraser controlled what looked like another yell of his name and then muttered tightly "Your name being shouted in an exasperated manner is *not* an uncommon occurrence here; it never has been. Don't kiss me, don't touch me any more than usual, don't tell me you love me--not when we're anywhere near anyplace anyone but you, me, Turnbull, or if absolutely necessary Inspector Thatcher, who may know but really doesn't need details, can hear or see it. Do you understand me?"

Ray pouted. "You don't love me no more."

"Of course I--" Fraser raised both hands to cover his face and sighed. "Of course I love you. Part of why I want you to quit that is that it makes it nearly impossible not to respond. That's not the issue. You, me and Turnbull have been maintaining a completely discreet relationship, with *three* of us, for months. No one has suspected even you and me of anything. No one has wondered about anything in the slightest. I am now beginning to realize that Turnbull had something to do with that. He...I'm not sure what he would call it, but he made it so that people simply didn't notice anything odd about things that might otherwise have been noticeably, markedly unusual. I don't know what route he used, or how he thought about it. I don't even know if he did it consciously. But he is otherwise occupied right now. We have to be discreet on our own. And you have to stop--doing whatever it is you're doing."

"I'm not doing anything, Frase. 'Cept thinkin' about you all this morning...mostly about *earlier* this morning, mm...you been eating more apples or something? You tasted like apples...you wanna coffee?"

"Ray, shut up and listen to me for a minute. I've been thinking. This is the third time you've assured me you aren't doing anything to motivate these...occurrences, as happened yesterday. I don't know what might have gone on all morning today. By the expression on your face when you say you aren't responsible, I am inclined to believe both that you are telling the technical truth, *and* leaving out something highly relevant--what did Officer McGuillicudhy do, anyway?"

"He asked me where my errand boy in the red suit was. It wasn't a friendly joke."

Fraser's mouth twisted. "Couldn't you have just used one of your usual threats of physical violence?"

"Didn't need to." Ray grinned again. "So did you want that coffee?"

"Why not," Fraser muttered. Dief trotted into the room, glancing around, then went to a chair and jumped up in it rather than sitting in the floor.

An empty pot that was sitting on one of the other coffee makers exploded with the heat from its still-on plate, making a *POP*-crash-bang-tinkle-tinkle that, without any noticeable elapsed time, caused Ray to be underneath Fraser in the floor, Ray with his gun in his hand.

The realization of what had happened struck Ray as he saw that Dief was scrunched behind the plastic chair back, out of the danger of contact with flying pieces of non-shatterproof glasslike material. The plastic portion of the pot, the handle and upper rim, was just wobbling to a halt under the chair he'd chosen. He leaned down to sniff at it.

Fraser got up and was giving Ray a hand as heads popped into the room.

"That was weird," Ray muttered.

"Why?" Fraser demanded, also in a mutter, as he went to the broom closet. "We have our reflexes, after all. Get the handle, would you?"

Ray checked his coffee for fragments, realized they'd be invisible at the bottom considering the density of the coffee, figured he'd just keep an eye out as the level in the cup sank, and went to pick up the plastic fragment of pot and wave carelessly at the onlookers. "Just somebody left an empty pot on the machine without turning it off, is all. If anybody knows of a free pot that'll fit this machine, feel free to bring it in." He paused and shut the potless coffeemaker off. "This is weird--I mean bad. We can't afford to do without one of these with the urn busted."

Passing close by him, Fraser said "Why weird? Someone forgot to shut a machine off, is all."

"I, uh. I guess I'm used to that kind of thing not happening around me for the last--or happening when I don't...when I'm not...of course, it didn't happen until you came in and were between me and the coffeemaker, and did your usual faster-than-humanly-possible thing and shoved me down, covering me all the way. That must be it."

"Are you saying you have an instinctive knowledge of these things now? Like Dief knew to sit in that chair rather than the floor, and to take the one which had a back facing the direction of the soon-to-be-exploding pot? Of course, he probably just noticed the fact that the pot was empty and the machine was on..."

"No. I don't know about it. It just happens."

"Then you're saying you didn't deliberately drop those briefcases on Officer McGuillicudhy."

"Nah, I wouldn't know how to do that." He grinned and fetched the waist-high trash can to where Fraser could dump his latest load of fragments into it. "I'd've done it in a cold minute if I did know how, though."

"That look is on your face again."

"I...appreciated the irony that the briefcases should be stacked in such a way that they were imbalanced to a very, very slight degree which finally became too much, what with the vibrations through the floor from footsteps and everything else, and they had micro-slid enough times they finally fell right when I sure could appreciate the fact. Just a nice thing. There are a lot of really nice things in the world, Fraser, there really are. Don't be so gloomy."

Fraser, having squatted to neaten the final load of fragments into the dustpan, looked up at him. "I suspect several things are going on. One, Turnbull is making some kind of progress, or perhaps has even made a significant breakthrough, and you are reacting to the fact. I also believe that in his absence--spiritual, as well as physical, since he's had to turn all his attentions inward, which is entirely appropriate under the circumstances, of course--you are...more affected by factors which his conscious presence kept more attached to him. I also suspect you know or suspect something like this, and are pleased about that, as well."

"Fraser, I'm seeing things I never saw before. I'm seeing all the things I've seen since I got here, but they all look different. I'm noticing them in ways I'd never have noticed them. It's amazing. I wish you could see it."

"I believe I have seen it. Versions of it, anyway. But in this case, it's more...internal. Your surroundings haven't changed. *You* have changed, and you are aware of it."

"That's exactly right, Fraser, I'm...I..." he laughed. "I'm different. I can see it. I *am* it; baby's right. The universe is sacred and so are we."

Fraser smiled, and dumped his pan out in the trash. "I'm glad you're so happy, Ray. Especially now, with Turnbull still...incommunicado, largely. And at least two more days of that in the offing. But you need to stop...well...the things you were doing at work yesterday, as well."

"Like how do I stop the rain from falling, huh? How *do* you solve a problem like Maria? Just what do you want me to do, Fraser?"

Dief woofed, and they looked at him. He barked a couple of times, and hung his tongue out, panting, in a grin.

Fraser's mouth quirked.

Ray gazed contemplatively at Dief. "He thinks...that I got friends?"

"He thinks Turnbull has friends, and they are watching out for you." Fraser didn't seem to want to comment on the hypothesis.

"Why?"

"I suppose to take care of you, because you're valuable to him."

"Why aren't they watching out for you?"

"Probably because they figure I don't need the help. I have a spirit guardian of sorts. Whom Dief is also quite friendly with, by the way. Ray, I don't know. I don't know anything about Turnbull's religion except that it believes that deity and sacredness is imminent as well as transcendent, believes--at least some branches of it, some more than others--in the existence and presence of noncorporeal entities, and that they have varying levels of ability to affect the corporeal world. I'm not at all unfamiliar with such beliefs, but my direct knowledge is of New World shamanic beliefs and practices, and the rest of what I know is largely secondhand, learned from books--though I'll admit, Turnbull's never had a human teacher; he, though, has been studying and practicing his 'craft', as he refers to it, for years."

"Your knowledge, whatever it is and however you got it, worked pretty good before, during the case you were talking to Turnbull's, uh, gods, I guess, about. And Dief sure liked your friend the Vodoun priest, too."

"I have been considering contacting both him and some other friends, from back home; I'm not sure what they could tell me, or if they could provide me with much help long-distance--Eric, and the others, I mean--you remember Eric, don't you, Ray?"

Ray stared at him a moment, then blinked and said casually. "Sure I remember Eric. Those stolen masks. I remember Eric. But--" he stared at Fraser. "You had...a vision."

Fraser stared back. "That wasn't in the report."

"I just bet it wasn't. But you had one. You have...instincts. You always have had."

"Ray...what I have is knowledge, a tendency to open-mindedness which, I should remind you, you have often derided--and always have--and a certain amount of faith in anything which has not been *dis* proven to my satisfaction. You're the one with the 'instincts'. You...haven't always been." Ray Vecchio was referred to here, Ray understood.

"Well, being raised in a Catholic family that devout doesn't teach you to trust them, or develop them really, I would imagine--though my folks..." Fraser made an I-know gesture; Ray Kowalski's parents had been born into Catholic families, but neither were more than occasional, and mostly surface-level, observers of the religion.

"But you...are receptive to things I'm not, not because I'm unwilling to be, but because *your* receptiveness is apparently unconcerned with your cynical attitude; no matter how you try to ignore it or belittle it, it continues to exist. I believe that you are experiencing a form of...awakening. And you need to control your reactions to it. I wish I knew more about Turnbull's religion, but it's a compilation of so many different regional traditions, and varies so much with each individual--as it is meant to do--that I have no hope of learning anything of great significance without the years of study Turnbull has put into his own practice. As I said, he's had no human teacher; but such is not always necessary. It's never *completely* necessary, there are many things one can learn and develop by the study of writings and by practicing--"

"--which you would know if anybody did."

"--and no human teacher is necessary at all, for some people, no matter the 'tradition', as I believe Turnbull calls it. I do not simply believe, but know--I have seen some of what he can do--Turnbull to be one such. You may easily be another; I've seen what you can do, too."

"You *believe*, you just got no *aptitude*, is that what you're saying?"

"I wouldn't go *that* far..."

"Yeah, nobody who has visions and just happens to know so much about various religions and gets along so well with Vodoun priests has *no* aptitude. Hell, nobody who knows what belief can do like you do has *no* aptitude. But you think I'm having something happen to me. Well, you're right, and it's great, and I ain't doing anything to get in the way of it. Nobody's getting hurt, it hasn't been going on long enough to say if my work or anything else in my life is suffering from it in any way, and geez, your eyes look pretty. The way the light is hitting you, across from the side, I can see right *into* the blue part, like they were made of smokey blue...glass..." he wavered nearer Fraser, gazing deeply.

Fraser banged the waist-high trash can on Ray's foot and Ray yelled and hopped around the room making sounds of pain.

"Whatever it is that's happening to you," Fraser said, "it apparently isn't going to protect you from *me*. Now listen. You have got to get yourself under control, or I am going to turn around and head right back to the consulate, and just do my best to invoke whatever powers that be to protect you, because I will not have you ruining everything the three of us have built by touching me inappropriately for this venue, no matter how much I might want you to. I'm fighting my own inclinations here, and I expect you to do your part and fight yours. I won't let you destroy your career. I'll leave my liaison post for the time and, as I said, simply pray for you as best I'm able rather than let that happen. Is that clear?"

Genuinely Pissed Fraser was not easy to ignore. Ray let his head fall, leaning against the counter where the coffeemakers were with one hand, and let go of his foot, flexing it experimentally. "I hear you, Frase. I just...it all seems so damn stupid, compared to what I can see now." He looked up, in a plea for understanding, even if for no more.

Fraser's expression softened, and he went and put the can down. "I know," he murmured. "It's hard for me, too; I miss Turnbull, and if I had something like that happening to me, I'd want to lose myself in it, too. But I don't, and it's a good thing. Turnbull wouldn't want to come back and find us both in deep trouble at work."

"I didn't even think of that, Frase, that you're missing him too and you don't have anything distracting you from it. You feel as bad as I did...as I do, when I think about it, don't hide from it in this...whatever it is. Fraser...you really need to be at the consulate, with him gone. You're only here to look out for me. Go on back, and don't worry about me. I'll cool it. Try my best, at least, promise. I'll take off early, and meet you there."

"I'll probably be staying late, not that I want to. But the Inspector is distracted--extremely soft-spoken, and distracted--and Turnbull's not there..."

"...and you're getting hit hard, and I'm being a jerk, and I'm sorry. I'll come in and stay late with you; there has to be some stuff I can help you with, if all it takes is filling in forms. Just gimmie the forms and the info. During the rest of today you can deal with the stuff that's gotta be done during consulate's-open hours, I'll help with the rest. And you got your own office; we're a lot less likely to make trouble for ourselves if we've got a little privacy."

"So long as we don't rely on it, Ray. We have a home now, you know," he murmured.

"Yeah. I know. I got that." He picked up his coffee and had a slug of it, then said "Wait just a few, and I'll drive you to the consulate."

"All right."

His voice suddenly broke, which he hadn't been looking for, and the heat of the coffee stung and brought tears to his eyes. "I want to touch you so bad."

"I feel the same way, Ray. Go to your desk." He turned his back and waved quickly at the door, his head lowering in the direction of the hat he had picked back up and now held in both hands. "Before one of us is indiscreet."

***

In the car they squeezed hands quickly, and Ray got them out of the lot and onto the road. Fraser let his hand rest lightly on Ray's on the gearshift; Ray let Fraser's finger's interlace with his own.

"I don't know how exactly, but I think baby is something we need in ways we didn't even know about."

"I concur."

"I'm so nuts. Everything is...is realer, is more itself, is...*connected* to everything else, everything. I can't see...how I was so blind to it before."

"I think I know why I'm not...inundated, like you are. I already see things that way, to some degree. It's...part of my..."

"I know. Hey, you're the shaman. You're the believer in this partnership. In people, things the ultimate niceness of the universe, name it."

"But what's happening to you...it sounds more specifically like his influence. Interesting it should come to such a head when he's withdrawn from us so emphatically."

"Maybe he primed me, like a well pump. I don't know. And you--I can't get near you without wanting to jump you, I can't stop thinking about you. I know, I've still got my head up my ass with loving you both like this and it'll take time for that to calm down, but this is different, and it's got something to do with his leaving."

"I feel that too. Ray, we likely just want to take comfort in each other because we feel how...in how many ways, not just physically, that he's withdrawn from us. It's making us feel the need for each other more, to try to shore up the lack, but that won't work..."

"...'cause neither of us is baby. And we're not us without him. We're only you and me, and we can't be us all until he comes back. There's nothing wrong with you and me, I love you and me, even when I'm so pissed off I'm an asshole. I know I can be an asshole, but that doesn't mean I don't love you and me. But we can't make you, me and Turnbull out of just you and me, no matter how hard we get over each other."

"Ray...it's all right. You've risked your life, sometimes against orders, to help me, several times now. I wouldn't doubt that you love 'you and me' anyway, but only a fool could doubt in the face of that. Despite your...sometimes abrasive demeanor."

"I'm not abrasive." Ray spoke in a seductive, cajoling croon. "Unless I need a shave."

"True enough. Your *body* isn't abrasive at all. In fact, it's soft and strong and inviting, and there's a blind alley up ahead if you turn sharply enough that's just broad enough to--no. No, no--" he took his hand away from Ray's, having to fight Ray's sad sounds and entreating expression and gripping of his fingers to do it. "*No.* We are not going to be able to hide in each other. You might be able to get the day off, but I have got to be at the consulate; you were right, I was only at the station to check on you. And I found you dropping briefcases on people."

"I didn't do that. You assumed."

"You have no way of knowing that you 'didn't do that'."

"All right, I didn't do that on purpose, *that* I know for sure. I didn't even notice those briefcases until they fell on him. Then I thanked them and went for a coffee."

"You--hold it, you *thanked* the briefcases?"

"They were pissed on my behalf. Well, on behalf of my being pissed on your behalf. So I just kinda thought 'Thanks, guys' and got out of Dodge."

"The briefcases? Were...angry?"

"Or something."

"Then you do know you were somehow responsible."

"I'm not saying I was responsible. Associated somehow, okay. Responsible, no. I didn't do it. I wouldn't know how. I don't think it's the kind of thing witches *can* do, so if this is exposure to Turnbull, it's not gonna make me able to levitate objects and shit."

"Why not? You *created* one in the kitchen."

"That was an accident, too."

"But you got rid of it deliberately, and it worked."

"*We*, as in you, me, Dief and Semmy were involved in that. And that thing was--I dunno, home is our space, baby's at home there, it's his space too, it's...it's our space, all of us. You haven't seen me leaving dangling loaded phrases around the station, have you?"

"I've hardly seen you at the station since that happened, but if you tell me it didn't happen this morning at any point, I believe you. It would be hard to hide something like that."

"It didn't happen."

"All right, why don't you tell me what did happen that made you think it was *strange* that a coffeepot exploded when empty on a hot element for too long, just because you were in the room?"

"Um."

"Ray."

"Just...stuff...yesterday, a butterfly flutterbyed me when I was about to slip on a slick patch of some kinda goo that was in the gutter, when I was stepping off the curb on my way up to the building, that some poor guy passed me and stepped into and man, took a hell of a spill. I helped him up; nothing was broken, but he was favoring one leg when he walked off."

"How did the butterfly make a difference? Just made you pause?"

"I stood there a minute to watch it. It just suddenly moseyed past my face only a couple inches from me, and I kinda whoaed and pulled up short, and watched it. It was so pretty...fuzzy little head. It was close enough I could see that...little rolled up whatchacallit that they snork up their flower power with--"

"Proboscis."

"Poor guy who came along and hit that grease patch didn't see it, I guess. Big, bright yellow butterfly."

"In the middle of inner Chicago?"

"There are parks. We got butterflys. We're not that deprived, you know."

"Yes, that's true, I suppose. That's all?"

"Well...not quite. This morning I got a weird feeling and stopped and stood where I was while I was on my way up, inside the building. A clerk was standing on a chair changing a light bulb, but I didn't notice her; I was standing there wondering what my deal was, and she lost her balance and fell, and I caught her."

"And this was before you even reached the squad room."

"Yeah."

"Anything else?"

"Yesterday afternoon, a guy came down the stairs while I was going up, he was carrying a box full of wrapping paper. Present wrapping paper, you know, party stuff. There was a red ribbon, I guess attached to a roll in the box or something, and it was hanging out and trailing along the floor for a few feet behind him. I saw it, and though I guess not much worse could've happened than somebody stepped on it and pulled it out, unrolled it or yanked at the box--don't think it was big enough to pull him over or anything--I decided to go back and catch him and pick up the ribbon, and he said thanks, and a metal desk trash can came crashing down the stairs over the well, around the stairwell and down to the floor and hit the wall hard enough to bounce off."

"So...among other things, you were saved from two accidents, and saved a clerk from an accident, once due to a warning from a butterfly and twice due to...nothing really."

"Well, the clerk, that was something. I don't know why I decided to stop there, it was like I'd forgotten something and was trying to remember what, just scratching my head, and the next thing I know she lands right in my arms. It's lucky she was a little thing. Pretty, too, I'd seen her around. Pretty little bitty. Her name's Ness something, she's just a kid. Maybe twenty-two at the outside."

"But you had seen her, had noticed her before this?"

"Yeah. Talked to her, too. She's got bright red hair, she kind of stands out, even small. But this time I didn't even see her until she landed on me. I almost asked her to lunch, since you were gonna be busy, but I figured I better not get into situations where anything but work-related conversation might come up. She was even more worried I might've hurt my back or something than I was about her, though, which was a little depressing. Do I look old or something?"

"You're as appealing as ever. Can you think of anything else?"

"Well...the Lou called me in to give me some stuff I'd asked for that'd come through from Milwaukee on the Carstairs thing. Turns out that guy's background ID's were legit, by the way, they had him on file at the places of employment he gave, at least; it was just a thought anyhow. Anyway, as I was leaving, I stopped, and I got this feeling, and I turned around, and he was looking at me. Not any different than he usually does, but he was...it *was* different, I guess, I just can't say how. I asked him what was wrong, but not like, 'what's your problem'--I felt like something was wrong with him. And he started to say something, and then he said "Nothing, just..." and he sat there a minute, and then said it was nothing and told me to get lost."

"But...he was thinking something unusual about you?"

"I don't know if it was about me. In fact? I don't think it was. I think it was about him, but for some reason, I had something to do with it, like maybe I reminded him of something, or someone. Maybe he was thinking about me, maybe...I dunno, Frase, but I felt like asking him...if everything was okay. Though I guess that's not what I ended up saying."

"You feel rather close to the Lieutenant in some ways, don't you?"

"I've known him a while. Before this assignment. He's why I'm on it, partially."

"I had some idea, yes."

"I just...you know how you feel if you see someone you know well enough to know, looking down, and you want to ask 'em what's wrong? It was like that, except he didn't look any different...not really, I guess." Ray shook his head, uncertain. "I'm not sure what I wanna say here."

"I think the fact that it stands out to you is enough for our purposes. Did anything else happen?"

Ray grinned.

Fraser's mouth quirked. "The briefcases."

"Hee hee."

Dief barked in the back seat.

Ray laughed. "Dief thinks it was funny too."

Fraser sighed resignedly. "He's never been that fond of McGuillicudhy."

"McGuillicudhy has a thing about Canadians, for some reason. I dunno why, it's not like you're anything but strange. Strange is not bad unless it's bad. You don't *really* try to take over the world or anything. Hey, you're polite. You're nice folks, far as I can tell."

"There is a reputation we have among some US citizens as looking down on Americans, though most of us don't even think about you as a group enough to have any sort of opinion at all--and many of us who *are* aware of those of us who might think of you as...rubes, or some such, are disgusted by that attitude, quite rightly pointing out that there are far too many of you to decide that you're *all* any one thing." He sighed. "But in the case of both your compatriots and mine, some people just need someone to hate, Ray. I don't understand it myself, but I know that when it isn't being used as a political or mass social power ploy of any kind, it comes from some sort of lack within a person, something that needs to be filled by the feeling of automatic superiority to another group. It's too different, person to person, to really pin down further. Sometimes there's also bias from personal experiences past."

"Yeah, but unless a Canadian did something mean to you when you were a kid, why pick Canadians? There's so many better people to hate. You people are so nice. There are not-nice people, if you wanna hate a group. Bigots, for example."

Fraser snorted. "Yes, I'm aware of your bias against the biased."

"I need a bumpersticker that says 'I hate all bigots'."

"You can put it next to the one that says 'I love paradox'."

"I love you."

"I love you, too."

"Black is black, Fraser," Ray sighed.

"Finish it, Ray.

"I want my baby back," Ray muttered. "It kinda loses the effect when I have to do that, you know."

"Do you want it hanging in the back seat?" Fraser demanded.

Ray sighed.

Fraser sighed too and murmured "And I'd never mentioned my vision in the lodge...and you're...I'm not sure what to call it. Empathizing with Dief in a communicative fashion. You've always had a sort of bond with Semmy, but he's not endowed with much brain, though if the briefcases are rooting for you I suppose we needn't consider that to be a qualification."

"It isn't. Ask baby. When you can. And as far as Dief, I've always done that."

"Not with mental pictures."

"Well...no."

"Can you tell what I'm thinking?"

Ray looked at him, a smoky, seductive look that made Fraser whimper before he could whisper harshly "Stop that!" and look away.

"Sorry." Ray's voice was still smokey. "But that's what you're thinking."

"Well for God's sake, can you tell what *else* I'm thinking?"

"Concentrate on something besides blowing me until we both come."

"I'm not *concentrating* on that," Fraser muttered, "I just can't get it out of my head."

"Think of a song you like. Make it easy, make it one I'd know."

There was a pause.

"Not that lullaby, that's too easy. I was thinking more like an early Ramones--" Fraser's ironic expression shut him up as he realized what he'd just done.

"Aw, *that* wasn't like reading your mind, I just knew. I doubt I can do that with anybody but you."

"That's quite possible. It's also possible it's a transitory phenomenon, or that it's only possible under certain circumstances, or that Turnbull's return--and he *will* return--will affect it somehow. You couldn't tell what the Lieutenant was thinking, for instance. It's possible you wouldn't have noticed anything at all, but his thoughts seemed to be connected to you in some way. If it's any comfort, he was probably just thinking you were acting strange, but couldn't put his finger on any problems, so dropped the thought."

"Maybe that was part of it, but I think it was more important than that. I think it was him more than me."

"I hope he's all right, then."

"I hope so, too. Here you are home again." Ray pulled into the little parking lot. "Jiggity jig."

They sat there a moment.

"Maybe I should come back with you," he said. "Just. You know. To see if I can help. I can be *your* errand boy." He winked.

"I want you on the hood of the car," Fraser moaned.

"Oh." Ray smiled down at his lap. "Uh, sorry. That didn't take much."

"At the moment, it doesn't."

Dief spoke at length, whining, muttering and occasionally barking.

"Who's the old guy?" Ray wondered, looking at Fraser.

Fraser sighed. "The man Dief was thinking of is my father. What he was saying is that it might be interesting to see if we can introduce you to him."

"You keep saying that. Your dad is dead."

"Yes. His office is in my closet."

Ray stared at him. "Okay. You introduce me to your dead dad in the closet, which I hope he's mummified enough it don't smell too bad. Then, if I'm not too grossed out, you can have me on the hood of the car. But I want you should fuck me, not blow me. You can blow me later."

"Done."

"Let's go."

***

There was a young woman sitting at reception, one of the few that worked at the consulate whom Ray had actually seen around, usually in Inspector Thatcher's office, sitting in one of the chairs that was usually on the other side of the big desk, but sitting now with a chair near Thatcher's and trading files with the IQ and talking about said files (presumably) in low voices.

"Constable Fraser," she said brightly. She was one of those perky receptionist types, perfect, Ray thought, to fill in for Turnbull, if only for that purpose. "Detective Vecchio. Welcome to Canada." She smiled at him, and he smiled back, more warmly than just politely than usual with women who were showing interest, because she had *always* seemed to find him interesting, *more* interesting, *even* with Fraser standing right there. Of course, it was possible that she thought she couldn't compete with Thatcher or something, or that she didn't date mounties; some women didn't date cops. But then why want to get to know Ray in the you-have-passed-my-once-over way? And even though Fraser oughtta be enough to make anybody revise their list of dos and don'ts in that area, Ray thought. Including male fag haters. Besides, with most women, and some guys, it seemed to happen automatically, like their brains shut off and their gonads took over. But not Christine.

"Hi, Christine. Covering for Turnbull today?"

"Yes, he's out sick. He must be very ill; he never takes off work. If it weren't for his making notes of *everything* in the daily calendar, I'd have no way to keep up with all this, and even with that..."

"A good deal of it is in his head by this time," Fraser told her kindly, "don't feel bad if it seems a bit overwhelming. Fortunately, he follows the usual rules and procedures quite closely, so just go by the book and I'm sure you'll do fine. And he does keep meticulous notes, yes."

"Are you here to pick something up? Or will you be working with the Constable this afternoon, detective?" She gave him a wide-eyed simper.

This chick was crazy, he loved her, and he wished he could say "This is damn nice of you, with the fallen angel standing right next to me, but the fallen angel and I are doing it and totally obsessed with each other. And with the guy you're replacing for a couple days. But I really wanna thank you, you wouldn't believe how little attention a guy gets when he hangs around with the Greek god in the red coat." But he couldn't say that, so he just smiled back at her and said "I thought I'd try to help out, since the ice--inspector and Fraser are having to cover some of Turnbull's usual work, too, though I'm sure you're doing a great job."

"Why, thank you, detec--" the phone rang. "Excuse me. Good afternoon, Canadian Consulate, Consulat du Canada...oui, m'sieur, un peu, mais j'suis une Americenne..." she continued as Fraser hustled him past her desk.

"She's quite a competent receptionist," Fraser said, "and does speak sufficient French for the occasional Quebecois-speaking caller, but thank God for that phone call or we'd never have gotten out of the foyer. She's unwaveringly fascinated by you whenever you're in her visual range; and you seem to like her too much to be rude enough to just break away, though that seldom seems a problem for you at other times." Fraser's tone of voice indicated what he thought of the rudeness, but only barely, not enough to comment on.

"Stop smirking. You don't know what it's like hanging around with you--Christine is not 'other times'. Why didn't she come along when I needed her? It's hell on my sense of self-worth getting brushed off by women everywhere I go with you, you know, even now, sometimes. I feel like standing up and saying 'Yeah, he may be the stone shit, you should see him in action, let alone standing still--but I'm not *total* dumpster pickings'. I got a lot more feminine attention of the cleavage-flashing variety before I started hanging around with you, you know. Come to think of it, on the rare occasions I can think of that I've been just with him and was paying any attention to what women were looking at in that area, I have the same problem with Turnbull."

"Turnbull is noticeable simply as a feature of the territory to be negotiated, like traffic, Ray; you can't blame him for stealing your rightful share of the libidinous attention of Chicago's female population when they may simply be making sure they don't get stepped on."

"Oh, sure, defend the other gorgeous Canadian."

"Ray." Fraser shut the door behind them, then pushed Ray up against it and spent a good minute kissing him nearly to death, with Ray's enthusiastic participation.

When they broke to breathe, Fraser panted "You are the sexiest man I know. It simply radiates from you. You have the ability to turn it on and off, and you use it, that's all. Turnbull and I simply barge through the world as Turnbull or I, but you...you're different. You are a different sort of cat, as my grandfather used to say."

Ray grinned and muttered "And you are the sort everybody in the world wants to fuck, that's the sort you are, you..."

Fraser started laughing, realizing Ray had gone from meaning it to just yanking him, dropping his forehead to Ray's shoulder while Ray, still grinning, poked him in the ribs and continued upbraiding him softly for being so inconveniently lust-inspiring.

Dief had been nosing Ray in the leg for a bit when the half-wolf finally gave up, grabbed the corner of Ray's jacket in his teeth and tugged.

"What's up with you, huh, fuzzybutt?" Ray asked him, grinning. "What's so...uh." Ray looked from Dief toward the closet door. "Fraser, why is there, um...firelight coming out of your closet? Oh Jesus, you burning the body in there or something?"

Fraser, without lifting his forehead from Ray's shoulder, sighed "No, Ray. That's the woodstove."

"There's a woodstove...? Never mind. I'm gonna assume this is one of those times it'd be a lot faster to show me."

"It would indeed. I'm just dreading the hell out of it." Fraser sighed and lifted his head.

***

As they entered their apartment that evening, Fraser trudged directly to the bathroom; there was a quiet moment, and then he was trudging right back out. "Ray, you apparently left several obscenities unspoken at the tail end of sentences this morning."

"I was late."

"You should just have *said* the words, Ray, now they're hanging in the bathroom. Though I admit they're not nearly as disgusting in form as the one that was in the kitchen. They look...rather like different-colored balloons in the shapes of letters."

"Your basic shit fuck damn jeezkrist whatever is just not anywhere near as disgusting a notion as what I left hanging in the kitchen, Fraser, it's no wonder they're not so revolting."

Fraser turned and looked back into the bathroom. "Apparently not. Just *saying* them has removed several of them. Could you come and get rid of the rest? One of them is sitting on the toilet lid. It's yellow."

"Oh. Uh, I was in a hurry and I kinda, uh, splattered."

"I don't need the details, Ray. Just come get rid of the words."

"How?"

"Say them. It worked for the ones you said just now, some of them, at least. I just don't want to have to tell you what they all are."

So Ray got his ass up and came to the bathroom to get rid of the words while Fraser went in the bedroom and got out of his tunic and boots; Ray then waved an all-yours to Fraser as the latter trudged back in his suspenders and stocking feet, and shut the door behind him.

When he came back out, he found Ray on the bed, lying there like a dead person with his feet still resting on the floor. He eased himself down slightly at an angle to the other man, so he could get his ass on the bed and still wrap Ray's shoulders in his arms, resting Ray's head on his biceps. "Hello, love."

"Hi, honey." Ray turned his head to Fraser and they kissed very gently.

"Don't get comfortable. We have to go to two places. Then we can come home," he finished gently, at Ray's look of half-pout, half-despair.

"Where we gotta *go*?" Ray demanded. "I'm so tired now I'll barely be able to have sex with you six or eight times."

"A bookstore. And an herb shop. Though I think we could get by for a bit with grocery-store herbs, we'll have to visit a more esoteric sort of shop to get what we ought to have on hand. We can't have this kind of thing going on and you the only one able to do anything about it."

"How do we know you can do anything about it at all? You can't get rid of my words. Though those are *my* words, I guess..." Ray shrugged. "Anything I can do you can probably do better anyway."

"*That* isn't true. But in this case, I'm not entirely without ability. I have belief. Shamanic experience. I have a ghost in my closet, who thankfully did NOT take you up on your offer of a guest room in the linen cabinet. I have the ability to speak with nonhuman animals besides Dief, under certain circumstances. And there is such a thing as magic by the numbers, if we're forced to fall back on that, which is why I'm going to pick up a couple of books on folk magic and herb magic. What it means to being a practicing witch as a *religion* will have to wait, for deeper study. We'll just have to let go of doubt as much as we can and know that what we're doing has its own veracity, even if we don't fully understand it. We can't have this kind of thing going on with no more control over it than we have."

"All right, all right..."

***

When they trudged back in again an hour and a half later, Fraser paused to take their purchases over to the little altar, which he augmented with a straight-backed chair and a footstool from the storage closet, to set things on.

"Fraser!" Ray was in the bedroom, and he sounded alarmed.

Fraser got up and ran in, skidding to a stop in his unlaced hiking boots. There were no lights on. Floating over the bed were two dark, purplish-pink hearts, about the size of Fraser's two fists, each of them; both of them were glowing softly.

Oh, God.

"Ray, those aren't...by any chance..." They weren't Ray's, obviously, Ray had hardly even been in here, but Fraser had to check. Besides, pink hearts? Even if it was a dark, reddish-purple pink? It had to be Turnbull.

"It's baby," Ray said, and scrubbed at his face with both hands. "I knew something was happening, that's why..." Fraser had been unable to get Ray to stay within the speed limits on the way home, and Ray had been unable to explain why. "What does it mean? Does it mean goodbye? We don't have any way to ask him! We don't know where he is--"

"Stay calm, Ray. Inspector Thatcher knows where he is and if he's in danger, she'll get in touch with us. For all we know, he's just saying hello to us."

"I don't think it's like that, Frase. I don't think he meant to...I think it's just part of the general weirdness, but it comes from him, I know it. I don't know what the hell it means, but I know it's from him. I just don't know...like I said, I don't know if he even knows they're here, he might, I'm not sure. I think...the way they look, this..."

"This manifestation?"

"I think this way, that's me. Or for all we know, it's us, it's just coming *out* through me. I don't know. But I don't know...what if it means..."

"Think, Ray. Or perhaps the thing to do here is *not* to think. Just...close your eyes, and think of Turnbull. I will too. Take my hand. Just be calm, and think about him. Think about how much you feel for him, just feel it...easy..."

The light changed against Fraser's closed eyelids, and he let them flutter open a little, trying to keep his mind on what he felt for Turnbull, mostly the great love he had for the young man, which he no longer questioned or cared about the source of; and his terrific need for Turnbull to come back.

The hearts were moving. Toward Fraser and Ray. And they were darkening to blood-red. And their light was pulsing. A lighter flash, then a dimmer one, a lighter one, a dimmer one...yes, a pulse. Heartbeat.

"Ray, don't open your eyes, just keep thinking of...baby. How much you love him, and how much you know I do. And more than anything else, how much we want him back. How we want him back more than anything. More than anything."

Ray kept his eyes closed, though he must have been able to see the light changing, moving, through his lids in the dark room. He clung to Fraser's hand. "Baby," he whispered, a single tear dripping from the corner of his left eye. "I want you. Frase wants you. Come...come on...come here...we love you. We'll take you in, for always."

The hearts, now nearly unrecognizable as classic heart-shapes--they were visibly pulsing and looked more like real human hearts--suddenly shot forward and smashed into their chests, knocking them both backwards.

It hit Fraser in the solar plexus. He felt soft heat rush into him, felt a hot, liquid energy, flowing upward into his head, out into his limbs, but mostly roiling there inside his chest, his solar plexus, the "empty" place, the hollow feeling below the heart, filled now. He heard, barely, Ray crying out next to him as they both stumbled back, Ray into the wall and Fraser nearly throwing his back out on the dresser; the occasional nerve pain he got from the bullet shooting up his spine and giving him a jolt back to clear-sightedness, though he still felt weak, floundering in the dark for the light switch on the wall. He found it, flipped it and got back over to where Ray was still in a jumbled pile of lankiness between the heavily present bed and the wall. He helped the other man out of the narrow space and onto the bed.

Tears were still trickling down his face. "You were right, that was...that was what he...what we...needed to..."

"What was it, Ray? Do you...God." Fraser ran his hands over his face, which felt heated from the inside out. Ray's skin was pinkish, though it was harder to tell with him. "Do you know?"

"They were so lonely. The little hearts. They wanted...in. They wanted to come in. They were out there in the cold, all alone. It was like a fairy tale, except it was like a real one, a bad one. The poor little hearts..." His voice was high and odd.

"We let them in?" It sure as hell felt like they were in. Fraser didn't know how to describe it, images in his head, feelings, deep in his gut, in his own heart. They didn't feel threatening. They felt good, even, as though he were being...caressed, from the inside. Still panting from the sudden shock and brief pain, he rubbed his arms with both hands, then rubbed at his chest and belly, slowly, with one hand. It felt as though something was there, rubbing back, touching back, right where he touched...

"He just wanted in," Ray was still saying, his eyes blank, in some kind of daze, and Fraser realized that the words were, at least in part, not Ray's. "That's all he's ever wanted. He was so cold. So cold and alone and tired. All his life and nobody...nobody wanted him...he just wanted in, just wanted to be warm...just once..." Ray wrapped his arms around himself, his eyes closing, his head bowing as he bent over his folded arms. "Not just once, baby. I said always. Always..."

Fraser didn't know what was going on, but this could be devastatingly important. "Always," he repeated. "Turnbull? I love you, always." Suddenly he remembered the words Turnbull had said to them the first time they all made love together, in this bed, months ago; he'd said "I love you, always" and he'd thanked them, for being, for letting him love them.

Just once, Ray had just said, in whatever combination of voices he was speaking in. He'd sounded like a child, there for a few moments...

Cold. Alone, outside. Oh, no--

"Always," Fraser repeated. "Always, Turnbull, always. Always. Stay. I want you." He folded his arms around himself, as Ray had, then suddenly turned and roughly pulled Ray's arms away from his body so he could pull them close, body-to-body. They embraced tightly, rolling onto the bed.

"Stay, baby," Ray said, "Right here, with us, we want you, we want you in here...stay...stay always..."

Fraser held Ray tight, feeling the confusion and tenderness and worshipful caresses inside, inside himself, inside Ray, and whispered into Ray's neck, "Stay, Turnbull. Stay always. Not just once. Always. Come back. We need you. Come back, come in, stay forever. We love you, always. We'll keep you warm."

It was already fading. Whatever it was, it might continue, but this first feeling couldn't be sustained. That didn't necessarily mean anything bad, he hastened to reassure himself. It might simply be part of the natural process, might simply be something like what he had suggested to Ray, a greeting, or a gift...or a question?

What was Turnbull doing?

What he felt inside was loving, loving him, and the muddled pictures in his head, fragments of thoughts--he knew how to embroider quite well for just a moment, he was completely certain--

"My poor baby," Ray was whispering, crying very softly against Fraser's neck. "My baby--Fraser, quick, before he's gone--Ray was pulling his clothes off, Fraser's as well, and Fraser joined in, following his lead. Ray reached down and had them both hard in a matter of moments, and they stroked each other, hard, fast, kissing, touching; Ray rolled Fraser over on his back and they embraced around the shoulders with their free arms, kissing deep and powerfully.

Ray broke the kiss first, crying out and coming, which easily sent Fraser over the edge, even as tired and bewildered as he was. Turnbull was there, he was, somehow, in Ray, he was holding them both--and inside him, he could feel what it was like for Turnbull--

"Benny," Ray panted into Fraser's ear, still shivering with spasms. "Love you..."

"I love you too," he panted, feeling tears rise. He was so tired, so worn, he loved so much, he felt like it was killing him...no. Turnbull felt that, and now Fraser knew how it felt. "Do you hear me? I love you, Turnbull..."

"He loves you too," Ray whispered.

"I know. He told me. And he called me Benny."

Ray smiled slowly. "He did?"

"Yes, through you. Did you miss it?"

"I guess I did. He called you by...finally. He...he wants to let you in."

"Us in," Fraser said. "There were two hearts. Both complete. Beating as one."

"They beat?" Ray panted.

"Yes...you had your eyes closed...they turned blood red...and beat like a pulse, like a heart, with the same beat...and they changed shape...they looked more like real hearts, and...they were just the same...both him."

"He's going," Ray sighed, and more tears squeezed out. "I feel it...leaving me, getting weaker..."

"He'll come back." Tears filled Fraser's eyes and ran off down his temples. "And all of him will come back this time. He'll let us in. I know he will. He has to." Fraser sobbed inaudibly, bared his teeth and growled "He *has* to."

"I wanna kill everybody who ever hurt him...didn't anybody ever love him?"

"I don't know..." Fraser shook his head, and the overhead light hurt his eyes, and he squeezed them closed. "I don't know. But I love him. You do. Inspector Thatcher does. She's protecting him with all the power at her disposal--which is a great deal--even from us."

"Nobody ought to have to learn how to...love, and be loved, when they're way past full grown," Ray whispered. "That's supposed to be...what do you...a native...a native gift. That's supposed to be for granted. He's so sweet, so kind. He's only so strange because...well, you know why."

"Because every move he made, every breath he took, every tiniest thing he ever even tried to do, they demanded he justify, defend, he was allowed nothing of privacy, they dragged out his very soul and judged it wanting. I know why. But he was too good. He's still good. That should have turned him into a monster, but they just couldn't."

"I'm seeing all the time where he has so much in common with you, now," Ray whispered. "But turning him into a monster, nothing could do that," Ray said. "That's what I'm afraid of."

Fraser looked at him.

"He'd die first."

"He felt dead already," Fraser groaned, covering his face with one hand. "Turn off that damned light, please, Ray--"

The light went out. The switch hadn't flipped, nor the filament popped, but the light went off.

"Power outage?" Ray said dryly.

"Mm, the opposite," Fraser said, sort of absently. "I think this room is full of power. Maybe most of it was released when...when we all came together, but there's still quite a bit lingering around."

There was quiet for a few moments, as they lay together.

"I'd better...check on Dief and Semmy," Ray said, and squeezed Fraser and kissed him, and started to get up, then paused. "Can...can you feel him at all, any more?"

"Not like I could, no," Fraser said, shaking his head. "But there's something...something there that wasn't before, I think. I'm just not sure what."

"Yeah," Ray whispered, and went to wipe his teary, snotty face, but his hand was all come-covered. "Jeez. Come on. We're both gonna rinse off in the shower and then go to bed. We're not fit for a goddamn thing like this."

"Yes." They helped each other up, silent now. Power was on in the rest of the house; Dief was on the couch, looking like he owned it. The TV was now on, though muted, and Dief was watching an action-adventure shoot-em-up of the sort Fraser was always trying to get him to quit wasting his brain cells on. Semmy was paddling easily in his pond, looking like he was winding down, under his new light.

"I need to get you a battery," Ray said. "It's time to turn down your light now anyway, but if we get a power problem on a regular basis..."

"You love that turtle," Fraser said, wandering around, looking at the apartment as if he'd never seen it, as though he was seeing it through some other eyes, incidentally flipping the occasional switch or checking in the oven to see if the elements were on.

"Semmy loves me," Ray said, satisfied certainty in his voice as he bent over the tank, letting Semimodo scoot out of the pond and onto his hand. He gummed at Ray's finger a little, not biting, and climbed down, onto a patch of soft dirt.

"G'night, Semmy."

Ray went to accompany Fraser to the shower. Fraser didn't tell him Semimodo was a *turtle*, or anything else; he just nodded.

He knew Semmy loved Ray. Of course.

***

He stirred on the quilt she had laid him on, on the floor outside the bathroom. She got up and came over.

He blinked, then opened his eyes. "Sir?"

"I bandaged your wound."

His eyes widened and flashed down to his arm, which was lying, with taped gauze, on the quilt in front of him.

"Stop panicking. It was barely bleeding, but I butterflyed it. I noticed it was through a scar. How many times have you done that--hidden additional wounds by cutting through already existing scars?"

"I have no idea," he said, "dozens," and laid his head down on the floor. "You weren't supposed to see anything to do with it until I could explain, sir, you weren't...I was going to make you see why, understand that it wasn't anything to be alarmed...a Band-Aid should have..."

"It would have, at the level it was bleeding when I dealt with it--it was only bleeding at all because I disturbed the scab, cleaning it. But it had obviously bled a great deal before stopping, and I didn't want to take the chance." She paused. "I entered the bathroom because you were nowhere else in the apartment. Dead silence from behind a closed bathroom door beneath which there is no light usually means no one is in the bathroom. In this case, I knew you had to be in there, not answering, so..."

"Sir, I'm sorry, honestly, I don't have any idea why I was unconscious."

"I don't know either; you lost perhaps a few tablespoons of blood--very messy-looking, but I knew better than to jump to conclusions; puddled blood always looks like more than it is. You didn't lose enough to worry about in those terms. Judging by the wound, you obviously had no intention, at that time, of suicide. Your vitals were fine, and my medications and the bathroom supplies were all untouched, except for the rubbing alcohol and Band-Aids. You seemed to be...sleeping. So I pulled you out here, where you could do it more comfortably. I'll let you clean the blood from the bathroom floor. Not out of pique, but because it's part of...your ritual, for all I know."

"I don't know, sir, but I'm glad you didn't disturb it, thank you. I didn't intend to bleed on your floor."

"I know. The bowl was on the floor next to your hand."

"Did it--"

"It does contain some blood. There was a bottle with a stopper next to the bowl; I poured the blood from the bowl into the bottle with the stopper and closed it, as I assumed, owing to the presence of the bottle, you did want some blood saved."

"Yes. I'll have to add a few things to it--clove oil and--but I did intend to save it, yes."

"I thought you didn't..."

"I don't. Please understand that. It's not a behavior I'm returning to; this is a different reason, a different need. It was a special case, not part of a pattern. I wouldn't lie to you, because I know there's no need. You've proven that. You wouldn't take any action I didn't want taken, and I wouldn't lose your friendship, even if...I were to begin cutting again. But I can't do that, and besides, whatever it used to do for me...doesn't happen any more."

"Did you just find that out?"

"No. I've known it for years. In my head is one thing, but...in the real world, it just doesn't help the way it used to. In answer to a question you asked some time back, I cut through a scar below which a small vein runs, which I usually use to obtain blood for spell work. Please understand that the use of blood is generally proscribed by modern witches, save for very tiny amounts, or menstrual blood, the latter of which is used in some sorts of love spell. But otherwise, witches don't use blood in their work--except me. Sometimes, a piece of cloth with an old bloodstain is used, but nothing closer to actual blood than that. And I only use my own. I use it as a significator, the way some people use hair, fingernails, saliva or other secretions, though I hesitate to speculate any farther than that. Other things, such as handwriting samples and personal possessions, can be used as well."

"Well...I suppose I can understand why you would choose to use your blood to represent you; given your warm feelings about it as...almost a protective entity to you, and carrying, in a spiritual sense, your essential self. Blood is not a horrific substance to you, it's...you have an actual affection for it, and a deep awareness of its various functions in the body. I can believe you'd use it as...something to represent you. So, this scar..."

"I had used it so many times I'm rather surprised I was able to reach the vein. As you see, it's right at the join line of hand and wrist."

"So, probably, no one even saw the first scar when it was fresh."

"That's right; it was hidden by the changing colors of the skin there. It's difficult even for me to find."

"Very clever. So, you needed blood for a spell. A few drops or something, and you thought you might as well...harvest an ounce or so while you were at it, for future use."

"Quite right, that's it. I didn't bring any of my preserved blood, I forgot the bottle. I keep it in a special locked box with my other significators--one *definitely* doesn't want to lose track of those. Some people prick their finger, as is often done when passing the chalice, where everyone presses a drop of blood into the wine or juice and one ritual formula is "I drink of my..." sisters, brothers, or other word for coven mates--it's simply a type of blood-siblinghood, a very ancient method of asserting family status between those not born in the same family; it was sometimes done in some form at weddings, too--and a wish or blessing is stated by each covener..." she cleared her throat very softly and he said quickly "Well--sorry, I was--rambling--anyway, I can't obtain enough blood by pricking my finger, and besides, I'm very squeamish about pricking my finger on purpose, though I've done it a thousand times sewing and embroidering, usually fairly violently, which is probably the reason I hate it so much. It's terribly difficult to find good thimbles the right size for me. Anyway..." He started to sit up and wavered, and she reached to help him. "Usually, if the knife is well-sharpened--I prefer a knife to a scalpel or razor blades; those may be *too* sharp, and I find them more painful--there is only a brief, cold, moderately unpleasant snick, the blood drips enough to perhaps half-fill a small bottle--you saw the size of the bottle--"

"Yes, I've bought ounces and half-ounces of potpourri fragrance and such in similar bottles. There was more blood in the bowl than would fit in the bottle; I'm assuming your hand stayed over it for a bit after you fainted. Do you know why you fainted?"

"I'm not...sure. I doubt I'll figure it out just as I lie in the hallway floor--but I'm sorry you came home to that, Sir. I would never have abused your hospitality that way, especially since you...seem to have come home late, due in part to my absence today. I really, really--"

"I know you wouldn't abuse anyone's hospitality, Turnbull, for God's sake, the term 'soul of propriety' could have been invented for you. That's why I was alarmed at first, until I began first aid and found you were no longer bleeding more than a very slow trickle--there was a large, half-dry clot stuck to your wrist impeding the flow, which I washed off in cleaning the wound. That's why I butterflyed it; it began to bleed just a bit when I pulled the scabbing blood off. I'm sure it would have stopped, but it had already bled an oddly large amount for such a small wound, considering there was no sign of arterial fountaining anywhere--the blood was all a puddle, as would flow from a vein, not an artery. Did...your hand slip? Was the wound unusually deep? That would be odd, considering...ahm, I found the boot knife, but I didn't touch it. It's a very old knife, Constable; the blade's field blackening is almost gone with repeated sharpening--and the point has been rounded completely off. I doubt a knife that's been so heavily used for so long can hold much of a safe, workable edge now." There was a half-scolding, half-inquiring tone in her voice. "I noticed the worn-away symbol painted on the hilt, and assumed the knife had...a significance of some sort, but no matter what, if you're going to be using a knife on yourself--"

"You're right, sir, of course. It's just that the knife has...sentimental value. I have another, new boot knife with a black handle, the same size, but...well, my current athame has sentimental value as well, and more edge, but the little knife in there...you're right, in any case, sir. And I honestly don't know what happened. I was planning a working, that was why I needed the blood, but I didn't plan *this*, you may be sure. How big is the wound?"

"No larger than the scar."

"Then...for some reason...I bled that much, from a regular, ah, I'm not sure what to call it--perhaps your word--blood-harvesting cut, which are so small and made in the place they are because they stop bleeding on their own. That little vein must have a very thick scar by now, though it seems at least to still be running. It's usually all I can do to make it bleed enough to half-fill the little bottle. The bowl was just to catch drips. I was working on the floor so as not to take a chance on staining anything; also so as to be sitting down while I made the cut."

"I see...hm. The bleeding went on, then, while you were unconscious?"

"It must have, sir. Also, the light was on when I started working."

"The reset button had popped on the outlet and the clock was off, too, I noticed. Let's get you up from here..."

Turnbull wobbled, then went down, his arm around her shoulders pulling her with him, but only because she went with him on her own, to his knees; she went down gracefully to one knee, holding him steady there. "Easy, Constable...should I take you to the doctor? I did say that if you were *ill*, you would be going to the---"

"I'm not ill, sir, just disoriented. I...I was with...I think..." he closed his eyes. "Sometimes it takes a while for memories to surface fully from an astral experience."

"Astral experience."

"That's what we call it. One thing, at least. Constable Fraser would probably call it a shamanic journey. Subscribers to other systems would call it a trance, or...well, any number of other things."

"That's why you were unconscious."

"Yes. Yes, I think I can say that with some assurance now. That's why I was unconscious. I can't explain bleeding that much, though, sir, you should let me go and clean--"

"Now, now. Sit." She half-dropped, half-shoved him down on the long couch. "Put your feet up. I know it wasn't much, especially considering your size, but you lost a little blood. I'll go see if the power's back on in there and take a look around; I won't touch directly anything connected to what you were doing if you think I shouldn't."

"That might be for the best, sir. There could be...loose energies. I don't think your energies would be harmful--I..." he swallowed. "I love you, and I trust you implicitly. But you might find it disturbing. It'd be best to let me handle it."

"I'll do that, then." She went to the kitchen and fetched a cup of juice, which she brought back to him. "Drink this."

"Thank you, sir."

"I'll be back in a moment." She went back to the bathroom.

He had, as he'd said, obviously come to do this in the bathroom floor because it was wise to be sitting down, if possible, for making a careful cut on oneself, and the bathroom in case of spillage, avoiding stains. Also the alcohol and Band-Aids were in here. She found nothing out of the ordinary now, the lights coming on when she turned the switch off, then back on, then the clock resuming it's illumination when she punched the reset button on the electrical outlet.

She came back. "The electricity is working as before. You want to talk about your...astral experience?"

"I think...I'd like to wait. It was triggered, I believe, by my...my current emotional and psychological state, coupled with the sight of the blood, and...I'd like to sort through it a bit more. Some people keep journals in which they write such things down, but I've never found that to be of any great help to me. In fact, the process of putting it into words on a page can often cause me to lose sight of the truly important aspects of whatever it is I'm trying to record. And...I do not seem to be someone who learns from journals. I write to record information, but I don't find it helpful as an aid to understanding."

"You have a very disciplined mind in many respects, Constable; if you feel it doesn't need to be written down, I suppose it wouldn't need to be. I brought a few things home with me in my briefcase; I'll just be working on them for the next while."

"Is there anything I can help with?"

"I'm afraid not; I'd gladly let you. I'll put the quilt away and begin; you should continue to relax, perhaps lie down in the guest room and close the door to minimize my noise and such, and rest until dinner. Unless you think you need food now?"

"I think I do, but I can get it. Eating is grounding, and I could use some of that. I still feel a bit...detached."

"I'll make you a grilled cheese."

"Oh, don't go to any trouble; I'll just have a bowl of instant hot whole grain cereal or--"

"Constable. Go lie down. I will make you a grilled cheese. Do we understand each other?"

He smiled. "Yes. We do. Very well."

"I had also thought I'd make the usual evening call to your...well, Ray and Fraser."

"Of course, if you--they might have--oh, my." Turnbull brought a hand to his massive chest, the slimming effect the serge tunic and its Sam Brown, epaulets, and other accoutrements had on it not in evidence now, and murmured "Yes, I think you'd better call them quickly. Tell them I'm fine. Tell them...everything is fine, for now. And that I love them. Very much."

She smiled.

***

"I remember...Ray. Being aware of him. He...was listening for me, but he didn't even know it. He was wandering the world surrounded by...by a net of some sort, that caught everything without *catching* it, simply...bringing it to his perceptions. He was looking for me, I think. Even *calling* for me. But I don't know if he knew it."

She sipped chamomile from her cup. "And he found you?"

"In a way. I found him, or his...the edges of the effect that he was creating, through whatever agency, and I...as to what happened, exactly, I'm honestly not sure now. I mean...this isn't a story like on TV, where everything has cleanly tied up ends. I know Fraser was involved too. I know that...that I feel strangely...unafraid now. The...the panic is gone. I'm still not sure...about a number of things, but I'm not...I'm not so certain, now, of death being--at the last--the only way out for me, because...I'm more sure of them. You know things about me--terrible things--that they don't, and you haven't...pulled away from me. And I find that almost unbelievable. The only reason I believe it is that..."

"You can't deny it."

"Yes." He ahemed a moment, softly, pulling the quilt that had been on the floor a little closer around him. She'd brought it in when she brought in his sandwich.

She smirked. "Don't worry about it, Constable. Rather an odd happening for me, too, though, as we're both odd," she reminded him, "we should be taking it in stride by now."

"Considering what I discovered--when you helped me, with...what I needed to do..."

"Yes," she said quietly. Turnbull obviously referred to when he had demonstrated to her--when he had *done* what he did when he was alone, but this time, did it with her, with her there. She was right, she had cried, they both had; but in her case, it was because she was so affected by what he'd done, so touched to the core. He would never be less than a friend in her eyes again, though, as she had said before, the way they were was the way they were, and there was no need for anyone else to suspect anything had changed between them while they were at work. No one but, perhaps, Fraser, and that was all right, of course. Fraser never shared others' personal information. And Ray, for his being so close to both men; but he would consider it something that was no one else's business, as well.

"...I don't know," Turnbull finished, "how he's going to react, since I don't know...how he perceived whatever happened, exactly."

"Are you worried?"

"Yes. Not as much as I probably should be. You're different from Ray, and from Fraser, though...I don't know. I think Fraser may react much as you did. Ray...has a more difficult time with accepting what *is*. He has never learned how to change a thing, or things, by working with them, instead of against them, or how to make peace with things through any way but that of the warrior--personifying that which needs to be dealt with so that he can overcome it. To accomplish the same goal via...cooperation--via *harmonizing*--is not his way. His is the way of...the warrior, not the healer."

"I'm assuming that while you mean 'healer' in a general sense--a way of functioning in all endeavors--you aren't referring to the 'way of the peaceful warrior', or any such generalized sense in his case."

"Well, no. I'll just have to trust to his recent ability to take me at my word and allow things to unfold--to follow, which has never been his way before, but he seems more willing to do so now, except in his work, of course, where he'll follow Fraser's lead when he deems it appropriate, much as Fraser will his."

"So you think that having found that having the person there while you love them, in the way you're used to doing while you do it alone, is different--doesn't change the need to do so with them."

"Oh, no. You're you. They're them."

"That's what I expected, actually. I just wanted to be certain. Assuming, and letting things go...unspoken..."

"Yes, that's a recipe for disaster under nearly all circumstances."

"You should know. You come from an example of the very worst of it."

"Yes, I do." He sighed. "But I feel more removed from it now, thanks to you." He smiled at her, fetchingly, she thought. Something was different about his smile now, she thought, though it would doubtless be unnoticeable to those who didn't know him well, especially at work.

"Do you want to try to describe it again?"

"I..." he shrugged. "It's as I said. It's still intense. I still become...enmeshed, enfolded by it. But the presence of the other person makes it impossible to go into any kind of true spiral. Though it was true that spiraling to exhaustion was...seemingly...a good thing, a helpful thing, about it...it never, in the long run, seemed to make a difference. I always had to go back. I always...had to do it again, *some* time. It..."

"It was like throwing energy down a black hole, you said."

"Yes. Like I was the accretion disk, and it just kept pulling in..."

"Your love was the accretion disk." her tone of voice said "No judgement is being passed here. What, you lookin' at *me*? HUH?" and he smiled a little.

"My poetic image could use work, but it's a functional metaphor. And my love...was the hole itself. Or, perhaps, the object of the love was the hole--but I was confused, giving the wrong name, to the object of the love."

"Do you know the right name now?"

"I don't know a good name to give it. Perhaps that's for the best. But I know a good deal more about the identity itself, of the black hole. Names are useful, and sometimes essential. Sometimes, though, they are emphatically not what is called for."

"So, do you intend to request Fraser and Ray let you do the same with them as you did with me."

"Not yet. Whether they know it or not, its what they want--and so they don't know they *don't* want it. They..." his voice dropped. "They couldn't understand like you did. They'll fear. I think it will answer many things, and...make certain things possible. But I think it's a step they aren't ready for, and...perhaps I'm not, either. Fraser will understand. He understands...everything, on some level, even when he can't name anything. Ray's instincts will lead him. He will...eventually follow them, though he will have to convince himself that it's his idea. Or perhaps he'll settle on another method, but he wouldn't ever forbid me. He wants...everything he can get from me. They both do."

"When what they couldn't understand was that you could not give them everything they wanted from you because *you* did not want everything you were, as much of it was--and unfortunately always will be--detrimental to your ability to function. It may have been important, but it was not something you wished to share around because it was something you did not wish to have to deal with and look at every moment of every day; it would be impossible."

"Yes, it is...impossible. I'll have to find ways, while still clearing dross, still learning the moment, still...finding the paths, around and through. It's not easy to follow the way of the healer."

"But you have no choice, do you."

"None of us do. There are certain things that can only be won over by...an acceptance of them so total that there is nothing for the 'enemy' to fight against. That's part of what Lao-tzu said in the Tao."

"He's had many adherents over the centuries."

"Mm."

"You're another."

"Mm."

"I'm not surprised. So..." she fiddled with her tasteful, if uncontinuitous, string of hematite beads. "You...what we did, it *was* of use. Your...actually loving someone else as you would if they were absent, only...with them there, not only present, but aware, unlike in your imaginings of their being sleeping or otherwise unaware...has...been helpful."

"Sir." He reached over and took her fiddling hand. "It's given me what I need to go back to them. It's given me...exactly what you expected, sir, an entirely new perspective on all of it. I haven't been wrong, at all, in the confines of the information within which I had to work...but now I have information I didn't have, and it has changed things."

"I hope it's improved your self-image to some degree."

"I don't know about that. It's too soon to say, and I'm a poor person to ask; my objectivity in the area is nil. But someone I loved...let me love them, and honestly wasn't repelled. Understood what it was, what it meant--worship--and accepted it. I would never have thought that someone I could respect would ever do that. If it's possible...other things may be possible."

"It is my opinion that you love too easily, Turnbull. I know it's the way you are, but it has ramifications that are very, very harmful to you. The feelings that are so constant--that those scars only represent the very worst of--are because you grant too much automatically to the rest of the world, and too little, automatically, to yourself. And now that I've said that, I'll be quiet on the subject. So. This that we've done together--the loving, worshiping--ties in with the working that seemed to happen on its own, when you went to draw a bit of blood for preserving and for immediate use as a significator."

"Yes. I can't yet...grasp details on the why of this, but I believe...that while the...bloodletting might not be something they could understand--Ray because he would be afraid and--well. Fraser, because it is a powerful reflex in him to react in the politically correct fashions...to certain things...at least as far as they apply to others, others being worthy of such, whether he sees himself being so or not. But they'll have to know, of course. In fact, I may tell them, and soon, but I have a feeling they'll see the scars now. Not first thing, perhaps, but they'll see them. I won't have to do anything different. They just will. But...I am surer of their love, now, even knowing...the things I fear them to know. Knowing me, in general, as I have prevented their doing."

"Then we have been successful." Thatcher could hear the relief in her own voice. "To...an adequate degree. *You* have been successful."

"And you have been everything I could ever have asked in a friend to help me deal with this. More than I had any right to expect, more than I could have hoped. You made no mistakes, sir, though you took risks, from your point of view. You took them on your own responsibility, and I thank you for that--oh, there just *aren't* enough thanks for that, so I'll stop there. And you were right, every time. You were right even when *I* was hesitant. You were right even when I was *asleep*. You were right...I..." his grey eyes were gleaming. "I was right, to worship you. And I still do. But your love has turned it from a hopeless and life-draining thing to a...loving one. I hope my feeling that way about you...doesn't discomfit you."

She smiled, not looking at him. "It does, a bit. But only...well. Not unbearably. It isn't something that will feel markedly different from the relationship we had before this, in itself. That we are closer is...undeniable, but I don't think we need worry that it will make any difference in our work. Except that I will be less impatient with you. That's a side-effect I can't change. And I will...probably...hell, I'll definitely want to see you after hours, as friends."

"It's a long way from something I think I can't handle, sir. And...our friendship being deeper could never feel wrong to me."

"I'm glad to hear that. Because, well...you know me..."

Turnbull giggled softly. "I won't hold you being you against you, sir, though I may find it necessary to slam a door here or there, or clean your office until you bark like a dog, if you're *too* churlish..."

"I'll keep that in mind." She grinned. "I noticed no change in your and Fraser's professional relationship--and I paid enough attention to check, at first; no offense, it's my duty--"

"Your duty is to report us and stop it, sir. I'm *grateful* that some eavesdropping was all that you felt was truly necessary to do before it was safe to feign ignorance where your report is concerned."

"We *are* talking about you and Fraser, the only men in the RCMP who could make me feel like a dilettante as far as the rule book is concerned...and your professional performances skyrocketed. It's a pity I can't recommend it as a morale booster in general. But you and Fraser...operate differently than most people. Your relationship doesn't have...jealousy--I should probably say "fear associated with unexplained but mandatory exclusivity, or...anything, but freely shared love and communication. You truly want each other's happiness more than your own, and that is far rarer than most people think. To honestly love someone is to give them their freedom, more than anything else; I would swear this after seeing the two of you the way you are. Oh, I could pretend it must be something that could be explained by it being the two of you, except that Ray is the same way. I should call them, speaking of that..."

"Ahm...I think I'd like to do that, this time, though if it's all right, I'd like to stay tonight..."

"My roof is available to you whenever you need it, Constable. I know you wouldn't abuse such a privilege, so I have no problem with making the offer."

"Thank you, sir. May...may I sleep with you again this evening? I promise, I'll make every effort, there are self-hypnotic trances I can induce--"

"I'm not afraid of you, Constable. And since it's a weekend, I'm not afraid being awakened in the middle of the night for whatever reason. Yes, you may sleep with me, of course; I did say you might, at need, for the rest of your stay. Now, I'm sure your family is worried."

"Oh, yes, of course, I'll just--"

"Sit down, Constable, there's a phone on the bedtable next to you. I'll just adjourn to my room and find something to relax in while I finish that paperwork." She got up from the bed and left quietly.

***

"Baby!"

Fraser's head came up at once. Ray's ringing cellphone had them both waiting with baited breath as he'd fumbled it out, but it definitely being Turnbull had both men on their feet and anxious. "Where are you?"

"I'm safe and comfortable, Ray. I hope you are, too."

"When are you comin' home? I don't...I don't wanna rush you, I'm tryin' like hell because--but we really miss you, and Dief and Semmy miss you, and we worry, and when are you comin' home? Monday? Sooner? We can do sooner. We can do now--"

"Perhaps if you'd let him talk he'd tell us," Fraser cut in gently.

"Uh, yeah. Shutting up. Okay, baby."

"I honestly wonder why you call me that, Ray. I admit to liking it---though it increases my tendency to giggle, which hardly needs the help, you have to admit--and the penchant for silly love names among gay and some bi men, even ones as butch as you, *is* well known--but why that in particular?"

"I don't know, I don't--so not now, okay. I can wait. Monday?"

"Probably. It's all right, Ray. I'll come back. I...I won't leave this time, it's...not necessary."

"We have some things we need help with, Turnbull," Fraser said, not even raising his voice. "Nonhuman animals and inanimates--though that designation is questionable in light of the reason I bring it up--are both taking it upon themselves to safeguard Ray. I, evidently, am well off enough without such--I do have a good deal going for me in that department already--but Ray is also leaving fat, balloon-shaped words in the air when he leaves a thought hanging. And you know how Ray communicates."

Turnbull was giggling. "I'm glad he's well cared-for, and I have every confidence in his ability to deal, himself, with his own actions."

"But we're not used to it. You got a baby shaman, Fraser, and a kinda proto-witch, me, going out of their minds here. How long before you think we blow something sky high?" Fraser's eyebrows went up at the words "baby shaman" and his expression indicated that if circumstances had been otherwise, he might have taken issue with the qualifier; but not right now.

"I doubt that will happen. You are a loving man underneath your protective exterior, Ray; and the shaman's primary role is that of healer, under several definitions of that word, though some are a bit contradictory. And he was that, always, before I came along. Benny is...a man of very deep love for everything and everyone, though I'm not sure how he'd react to my saying that directly to him, though I know he's turning pink right now. For instance, he's always been--like me--a speaker-to-nonhumans. Even rats."

"But that rat was *familiar* with human contact," Fraser muttered. "She told me so. She couldn't tell me *who* her benefactors were in terms of the barbecued food she'd been eating, though, humans aren't identifiable to rats like they are to--"

"Fraser, shut it. Baby, you sound good, and I'm glad, but I'll be gladder when I can kiss you hello. And fuck you in the hallway with your clothes on, and ask you to marry me, and oops."

"There was no oops involved, Ray," Turnbull said, very softly, his voice a little trembly. "We are already a family. And I you, Ray. You too, Benny."

Fraser didn't move--Fraser didn't even *breathe*--but his eyes slowly began to gleam with tears that stood undripped.

"I'm glad it's going good for you," Ray said, feeling scarily misty himself.

"It's...been an experience. Very eye-opening. Raising as many questions as it puts to rest, so far, but in all I must stay I consider it such a success to this point that not much could make it any less by now. The Inspector has been so very beautiful to me. She...she really loves me, and she's...she's been so wonderful." Turnbull's voice broke, but did it on a deep note, not the high whimpers that denoted...well, Ray wasn't sure he had all that figured out yet. He guessed he might never.

"Good, then. That's..." news to him, it sounded like, but he finished "...real good. I knew you were in good hands, Fraser made sure I knew that much, but I'm happy for you, you know, that you're *glad* to be there, too. That it's not just something awful you gotta do and shit like that. We'll see you...work on Monday?"

"Work on Monday."

"I love you, baby.

"I love you, Turnbull," Fraser whispered.

"I love you, too," Turnbull said gently. "And Ray, please hold Fraser so he'll cry. He gets a simply abominable sore throat when he refuses to. Failing that, very hot tea with lemon and honey will fix it right up. Have him hold it in his throat."

"Got it, baby, wilco," Ray said, tears running down his face now, though he was smiling. "We'll be here."

"I know. Anon, Ray."

"Anon, Turnbull," Fraser answered for both of them when Ray looked confused, and there was a click at the other end of the phone.

"You people are gonna make the conference-call feature passe," Ray said, and sat down with a flump in a chair next to Fraser's desk. "Anon?"

"It's an archaic English word, a poetic way of saying he'll see us later. He wanted to say something besides 'goodbye', with all of its various connotations."

"Oh. Like saying 'manana' or 'later' instead of 'bye'."

"Exactly," Fraser nodded. Then he got up and went to cot and sat, and held his arm out to Ray.

Ray came, looking interested, and Fraser said "You're supposed to be holding me so I'll cry." Fraser smiled, and wiped the trails of sparkles off his cheeks, gently smiling, not looking now as if he needed to cry much.

"How about we just sit here a minute before we finish up, if you don't feel like that?"

"That sounds lovely, though the tea sounds good, too."

"I'll get you some in a minute." Ray said, nodding toward the tea-making setup on a folding table by the closet door. Bob didn't seem to be in. Ray sighed, then said "I hate to do this...but I better, now if I'm gonna, waiting only makes things worse. Fraser, I hate the name 'Benny'."

"Ray," Fraser began quietly, his eyes dropping as he thought about what he wanted to say, but he didn't get the chance.

"Well I *hate* it," Ray continued, quietly but defensively. "It's stupid. It's a little wussy stupid name and it does. Not. Suit. You. It's a name for a small-timer's small-timingest small-timer."

"Perhaps. But it suited my friend, the one I knew before I met you. And I miss hearing it, and Turnbull is trying to let me know his willingness to...to be more open with me. It's unfortunate that it involves a name that you don't care for--"

"It's hideous. 'Benton' isn't the most runway model as names go, but I don't mind it, it's *you*, it's your name. Ben is nice. I like Fraser. Or Frase, and you do too, so that's okay. But BENNY? *That's* the guy with the swing band that got a bunch of German kids in trouble back *before* it became known to the general public that Jew-haters are a bunch of booger-eating pigfuckers."

Fraser sighed heavily. "Ray--"

"'Benny' is an eleven-year-old in a black-and-white school film wanting to know how much weighs more on Pluto, a pound of nails or a pound of cotton. 'Benny' is something you take when the look you want to project is 'sweaty and unreliable'. 'Benny' is--"

"--IS MY NAME," Fraser thundered, and Ray shut up and he shut up right now, because Fraser had not been taking the kind of shit lately that he had used to, and if he bellowed, it was time to listen, work-related or (especially) not.

"Do I have your attention?"

Ray was making sure his boxer-briefs were dry. That bellow had been right in his ear. He hemmed and hawed a few times, then said "Yeah. Yeah, uh, you got my attention, there, Fraser, buddy. You got it."

"I am aware of your feelings concerning the nickname 'Benny'--"

"Fraser, it's like calling Schwarzenegger's Terminator 'Percy'."

"Brave and honorable men have been named Percival, Ray."

"No, no, no. 'PERCY'."

"Ray." Fraser sighed. "You don't like the name, as applied to me, though you seem to think it worked well for Mr. Goodman of the famous orchestra. Well, try this--I'm going to let you in on a secret. I don't care for the name 'baby' applied to Turnbull."

Ray blinked at him. "You don't?"

"No. And it goes far beyond merely sounding stupid."

"Why the hell not?"

"I find that it does exactly everything I think Turnbull needs to get away from--largely a perception of overcuteness, but also a general feeling of his being less than a full adult who deserves the respect and insight into his depth of character that his own lovers, at the very least, ought to give him, and ought to be trying to encourage in others. AND in him. Deny it how you might, I know there *is* some of that in your automatically calling him that, when given your preference--"

"Lies. Foul slander and lies."

"--in 'cute' things, or lack thereof, despite the fact that there is also some purely innocent feeling and intent, unconnected to common meanings associated to it as a nickname--and also associated with the way he makes you feel. New, and young." Fraser smiled a little at him, and Ray felt warm snuggles inside, but Fraser returned to his serious demeanor almost at once. "His perspective on the world is a near-unique one, at least in your experience, and 'baby' is a reflection, to you, of his eyes for the world--a baby's eyes, full of wonder, the beauty in him, if not the world. You like that, in some people, and he's one. I'm another, though you see less of it in me. At least not enough to call me 'baby' because of it. Because you have to deal with it at work, you find it at least partially a drawback--as did your predecessor in partnership--but that doesn't exist with Turnbull."

"You can say that again," Ray muttered, but the air was blown out of him, and both of them knew it.

"I don't like it, Ray," Fraser said, folding him arms. "I really don't. And my concern is for Turnbull's *well-being*, where your concern is merely schoolyard finger-pointing about 'icky' names. Should I be looking for you behind the gym, lying in wait to beat me up because my name is 'Benny'?"

Ray muttered and stared off into the corner.

"What was that?"

"I said, whattaya *want* we should do? I can't help it, I don't like it. Listening to him call you that is gonna get to me, I know it is, and I don't want it getting to me at certain times, if you get my drift. It's gonna make me bugfuck. I don't..."

"Never call him baby and I won't ask him to call me Benny."

Ray glared. "Don't be an asswipe. He'd *hate* that."

"So? *You're* making this about you and me. About what *we* want. Despite the fact it's a matter of something *he* enjoys being called, and something *he* wants to call *me*, you're making it only and solely about what you want. What does the fact he'd *hate* your never calling him baby again matter? It's all about what *we* want, after all. So I'll make you a deal. I'll tell him not to call me Benny, though my *asking* him to precipitated a major panic crisis and attitude adjustment in him that's proving key in our whole relationship. And you can never call him 'baby' again. Sound fair?"

"Okay, Mr. Fair Guy, what do you suggest?"

Fraser lifted an eyebrow. It looked rather like something Turnbull might have done. "I suggest we bring what we have to Turnbull, when he's got the time to worry about such things, and see what he has to say about it. It's not something to be decided by only two of us. Any more than you would have allowed Stella to make such decisions without you when you were married, or made them without her--*all* our input is necessary in this problem. It may seem like a minor problem, but think about it. If either of us simply clamped it down when we heard another of us using a name for one of the others, that we out and out hated--"

Ray grimaced and sat down again. "Boom, eventually. It is a little more complicated with three, isn't it?"

"If you think it's *worth* it...not that much more, really."

Ray looked up at him. "You think it's worth it?"

"I can't even count the ways, Ray." He reached up and touched Ray's cheek with a fingertip, then let the hand fall.

"I have to admit...that it's the right people seems to be a lot more important than how many people. Love...grows. There's not only so much and you gotta divide it up. Nobody could ever have kids, if that were true. It *grows*. Love is real, there's always more than enough."

"I feel the same."

"And you feel like we're the right people?"

"Oh, Ray." Fraser pulled him close, kissing him gently at first, then more firmly as they moved around a little, Ray with his arms kind of tucked in because of how Fraser had been holding him in one arm in the first place when the kissing-hug commenced. "Oh, Ray," he sighed, in a very small voice, again, as their mouths separated. Then his eyes moved, and he looked behind Ray's head, red lips smiling. "Look behind you."

The word "love" floated behind Ray's head, in a mix of slatey, creamy, soft blues; paler, and deeper.

"That one looks pretty happy," Ray said, smiling at it.

"Still. People do come in here," Fraser said gently.

"Yeah. They're just thoughts people can see," Ray reminded himself, then looked at the word and said softly "Love."

The word went misty, like a pair of damp eyes, and softened, and slipped into Ray's chest with a little tiny ploosh of bluish mist in the air.

"That was a nice one," Ray smiled. "Felt kinda cool and whooshy, like seaspray."

"Do they all...come back in?"

"...well, no. I sorta invited it...you know, thinking of the hearts...I didn't really want the one on the toilet seat back. I just got in the head I was in when I was thinking it and I said it and it expressed off wherever they go."

"They don't all have to be obnoxious," Fraser shrugged, shrugging Ray along with him, since he was still holding him in both arms. "Though it might be a good idea to figure out how not to leave them around. Our apartment is one thing. Your car is...iffy. My office could be a real problem. We'd better finish this up and get home, and perhaps think on it."

"Yeah. Home. Home is good, home is always good."

"I love you, Ray."

"I love you, too."

***

"Monday at work," Ray was muttering, throwing peanuts at the TV screen. Dief was disposing of them for him. "I'll never make it."

"If it's any comfort, I don't think it'll be Monday at work," Fraser said, looking up from his book. Something called "Always Coming Home" which he claimed was giving him insights as to the exact *way* that Turnbull and he saw the world differently from others. It sure seemed to be making him thoughtful. He hadn't said much for a couple days that wasn't of immediate importance. Ray'd asked him if it was a witch book or a shaman book, and Fraser had just smiled and shook his head no.

"Why not Monday?"

"Turnbull knows our reactions will be...enthusiastic. I don't think he'd precipitate an incident in the foyer."

"Then it might not be 'til after work."

"It's my considered opinion he'll come home tomorrow night. I...probably shouldn't have said that. But I honestly believe it. I believe he'll come home then."

"Your word's good enough for me, man. You don't lie."

"Not about anything important, Ray, no, I don't."

"I should go read some more of those books you brought me."

"I especially think the one on the practice of pacific island shamanism--especially Huna, the Hawaiian version--would be to your benefit, Ray. It isn't a religion, it requires no assistance to reach trance--such as drumming--as all the versions of shamanism that I have personal experience with do. It's more an attitude adjustment. And you're allowed to simply take things on faith, practice them, and see if they work. You don't have to *believe*, literally, in all the precepts to follow many of the principles."

"Good, 'cause I ain't ever gonna believe my muscles are where my memory is."

"There's no reason you should unless you happen to be working with your Ku, Ray. You'll learn what's appropriate when."

"The one you gave me with the exercises, that seems...well, it's for a buncha women, is what it seems like."

"I bought it for those exercises, Ray. You have active abilities functioning. You need to learn to control them. The exercises will help you focus your attention--that's what most of them are for--which you have a bit of a problem with."

"Wiseass 'I can control my own heart rate'."

"That's not a hard trick to learn. My friend learned it rather quickly when it became the difference between life and death."

"You're still Mr. Concentration."

"I was raised to need that ability, Ray. You were raised to have to deal with dozens of stimuli striking you at one time. With the exception of lining up a shot...say..." Fraser pondered.

"What?"

"The proper use of firearms is not something you're going to find any exercises using visualisations of in any books written by the woman who uses the craft and pen name Starhawk. However, think about this, Ray. Think about lining up a shot."

Ray blinked at him, then lifted his arms. Fraser muttered "wow".

"Wow what?" Ray's eyes didn't waver. He didn't have his glasses on, but he was only visualizing, here.

"Your body. When you shoot at the range...I never noticed before, probably because you can pull into and back out of it so quickly and easily. You become rock steady when you're lining up a shot. Like a statue. Hold the image."

"I got it," Ray said easily, eyes never wavering. His extended arms were wirey-muscled stillness.

"Now fire."

Fraser didn't see anything happen except that the lamp across the room frazzed.

Fraser looked back to see Ray still holding the same posture. "Next shot?"

"No, no more shots, Ray, I think we've found you an exercise. One, at least. What we need is for you to--uh, first put the gun down, Ray."

Ray brought the nonexistent gun to his shoulder, unloaded and stowed it, then looked at Fraser, who was smirking and saying "I should have known you wouldn't just 'drop' a gun, even an imaginary one."

"I am the best fucking shot in the city for one reason, Fraser; I respect a motherfucking gun. I know what *it* can do if I do everything *I* can do with it, do my part. And my part involves respecting it. I don't fear it. Not one bit. But I respect it. I respect what it can do and I know my part--one thing of which is that a drawn, loaded gun *is a gun that is going to go off* until it is not drawn and/or loaded any more. If you don't know if it's loaded, it's loaded, and it's gonna go off if you don't stop it. If you don't know if it's a real gun or a fake, it's a real gun, and it's gonna go off if you don't stop it."

"I should have realized, as I said. I was trained by very similar rules--though not paraphrased so concisely, I must admit."

Ray smiled. "Yeah, and I know you take 'em as seriously as I do. I know what those patches on your red sleeve mean, holster empty around Chicago or not."

"Well, there are exercises in the book I gave you--the third edition of "The Spiral Dance" I believe it was--written by a woman whose rough-and-ready writing style, for such esoteric subjects, appeals to me. I do suggest reading the notes at the end of the book, though, as she's changed her opinions on many subjects, such as the male-female dichotomy, such that they come more into alliance with ours, and if you realized that a great deal of her philosophy as expressed in the first edition came from the times in which she wrote it rather than--"

"Fraser."

"There are exercises in the book I gave you that you won't need to practice--one involves imagining pounding a nail flat with all your strength; another, throwing a rock to a horizon that grows more distant with each attempt. I think that particular *sort* of exercise is one you need not spend much effort on. In fact, I think I'd better go through that book and redout some of the exercises for you."

"Yeah, that'd be good, since you mostly bought it for the exercises. I been readin' some of the other stuff, though. Interesting. Don't jive with all of it, but it's interesting. Like you were saying, the dichotomy thing? My 'inner woman'? Gimmie a break."

"To do her credit, she spends little time with that--and toward the good end of pointing out that covens need not be balanced male-female, nor need people do magical work only with a partner, or receive training or such only from an opposite-sex partner. As I said, part of that came from the times in which it was written. Starhawk has definite leanings toward feminist witchcraft, but her conceptualization--which didn't originate with her, it was popular at the time--of a woman as having an 'inner man' and vice versa, was language designed not to frighten people already alarmed at the nontraditional turn society was taking--especially not to frighten men. If they could take their feelings of compassion, empathy, and respect for and interest in the other, and confine those feelings within an 'inner woman' they could trot out at need, then their masculinity and its supposed lack of genuine emotion remained unthreatened."

"My masculinity ain't threatened by all that stuff. I only stop saying 'I love you' lately long enough to eat. And if you'd ever talk about your shitty day at work, which only you will--he either never has a shitty day or he doesn't talk about it--and even you not very often, I'd love to hear about it even if I *can't* fix it, just to know what's going *on* with you. Ain't that supposed to have been woman-like stuff to do, sometime back? Stell and me never really had any problem with--"

"You're bisexual, Ray."

"Oh. Yeah."

"An extremely butch bisexual, but bisexual. Oh, not that it necessarily makes you more prone to such things; and many totally straight men *are* just as you've described. It just means you're not a very good control sample. In any event, it became obvious, and accepted, in psychological circles, that the designations 'masculine' or 'feminine' that we affix to certain traits and mannerisms are purely and utterly random, and our affixing them only served to affix and socialize emotional and psychological imbalance in both men and women. All human beings have all human characteristics to one degree or another. Some to a vanishingly small degree, but they are all there. Even the T'ai Chi scholars knew this, thousands of years ago, with even the state of separation of "yin" and "yang" having, within each half, a part of that other half--and that this was a *fallen* state, *not* an ideal one. The ideal state was "Wu chi", symbolized by an either smooth grey or completely blank circle, in which all was *one*, not divided into two, as in Wang Chi, the first state of differentiation, with no yin in yang and no yang in yin; and then T'ai Chi, with yin and yang having those parts of each other intrinsic in themselves. Most people refer to the symbol, inaccurately, as a 'yin-yang' symbol."

"Uh. That's what I called it."

"Now you know better."

"Yeah, I do. Um, okay, I'll go read that book about herbs. Dief's gettin' a lot of peanuts, but I'm gettin' nowhere starin' at bad TV."

"That might be a good idea. Mind if I join you?"

Ray smiled. "Sure. Little reading club on the bed. Get comfy. You're gigglin' a lot over there. Your book funny?"

"Yes, in spots. Right now we're reading about the young man who goes on the adventure to the end of the inland sea and doesn't enjoy the boat much."

"Seasick is no laughing matter."

"I don't think he's seasick. I think he's afraid of having left his valley home. And the water is...wide."

"And I can't cross oooooooooo'er," Ray wailed, wandering into the bedroom. "How come you get a funny book?"

"Ursula Le Guin can be very amusing, but I don't think you'd find her subtlety all that attention-grabbing."

"You callin' me a barbarian? Fuck me now." Ray fell over on his back, grinning, catching Fraser in his legs.

"We came in here to read." Fraser, grinning, struggled halfheartedly.

"Ungh. Ray no read. Ray get fucked. Ray barbarian. Be glad Ray not wallop you over fat Canuck head with own book, then drag you in here."

"Ray's ass needs a rest," Fraser said, with unwonted firmness, but was vindicated when Ray made a bit of a face and said "Yeah, frankly, you're right. I had the gay-friendly doc Turnbull turned us on to check me when you started getting all bent out of shape, and he asked if there was a history of hemorrhoids in my family. I said, uh, yeah, and he said, oh, well, nothing to worry about, I was fine for now. Just use the lube, even when it feels like I don't need it, or need it much. I'll be happy about it later, he said. I pushed for info, but that was all I could get out of him. I didn't like the sound of it. And I don't wanna get piles right before baby comes home."

"True."

"He doesn't have your cute little turtleneck foreskin even hard, but he's got other stuff," Ray said, now trying to get into Fraser's pants, wrestling with the zipper.

"I think his foreskin is--" Fraser whapped at Ray's hands until he quit, cackling, "very cute. Take your jeans off if you like, I know they're not all that comfortable for lounging in, but I'm in the middle of a good part, here." Fraser opened his book again, then frowned and put the book down--not on its face, but with a bookmark he had in his fingers--and started getting his own jeans off.

"Yeah, I thought so. You're the one who can't fit into his damn jeans. You have to either buy relaxed fit, or buy two waist sizes too big."

"You needn't rub it in."

"Rub what in? That you got a glorious bubble ass and a package like a horse? We won't talk about those thighs...mm..."

Fraser turned pink.

"I love your blush coverage."

Fraser threw his jeans toward the "clean jeans" hook, that had three prongs, on the back of the door. They made it, hanging up on a beltloop, which made Ray make a face. Asshole perfect Canadian. Fraser was saying "Shut up."

"You shut up."

"You shut up first."

"Didn't we come in here to read?"

"Maybe we can if you'll shut up."

"Okay, okay. Jeez. Try to compliment a guy."

"I consider myself complimented," Fraser muttered very quietly. "Though the compliment was rather base. Thank you." Fraser laid back against a couple of pillows with his book, dressed in his tee and shorts.

"Base compliments are my specialty. Call me Dr. Longball."

"Ray." Fraser slapped the book Ray had been going to read from the nightstand into Ray's abdomen in about the most obvious sort of hint Fraser ever gave.

"Or I got your backhanded compliments. I hit from both sides of the plate, you know."

"Ray, I'm going to be sick and that's a baseball/tennis hybrid joke anyway."

"I love you."

Ray reached over and squeezed Ray's hand, grinning, without looking away from the page of the book he was holding. "I love you, too."

***

"Mm." Ray reached to run his hand down the warm skin of the back in front of him again. That always sent Fraser through the ceiling--the guy would *never* just *chill* and realize he wasn't on the northwest passage or some damn thing and needed at once--besides, who'd stroke his naked back if he were on the northwest passage and needed at once--? But it didn't bother Turnbull, for whatever fucked up reason--you'd think he'd be worse, but then he'd been stationed places a little less barbarous than Fraser's posts, even if only a little.

Turnbull squirmed and purred and didn't wake up, and Ray smiled and started going back to sleep, except Turnbull wasn't fucking in this fucking bed right now.

Ray made it upright in a couple nanoseconds; he could feel Fraser's heat against his back, but the other man only grmphed and pulled the covers up to stop the cold draft Ray's sitting up had caused. "Station?"

"No. Go to sleep, Frase."

Turnbull, who was glowing, slightly transparent, and looked a lot like Obi-wan had after his own goddamn padawan killed him gone--though Turnbull didn't have the robes--or anything, actually, in the clothes line--and Ray collapsed back to the bed.

Turnbull had finished turning over. He seemed to be asleep. Ray was afraid to touch him. He tried to remember if Luke or Leia had touched anybody who was glowing, then realized that had a lot more to do with the limitations of Industrial Light and Magic twenty-odd years ago and a lot less to do with right now, so he reached over.

And stroked. His shoulder, that big shoulder that Ray would never have believed could literally feel like a *rock* under there until he'd seen Turnbull doing those freestanding pushups, that perfect joint lineup, those crushed, packed-flat abs and pecs (on one occasion all his comp-type tops had been dirty), the Iron Cross, you name it, on the rings--and found out what a handstand-planche-maltese was from watching a guy do it on TV--and the leaps, jeeeeezus, he knew Turnbull said they were a long way from the hardest part of a floor routine, but godDAMN the sheer ALTITUDE the guy could achieve. Which was how he knew, Fraser having let the cat out of the bag about Turnbull's teachings, that Fraser, in part, managed a lot of the scary goddamn shit he did.

Which always ran through his head, these days, at super high speed when he saw Turnbull shirtless, or naked, or as close to naked as possible. Before, hell yeah, he'd been a babe, a hunk, the kind of guy that made you wanna get to *know* a body. Whole body. But now, when he realized that if he touched that skin and the muscle was flexed what was going to be under there was *granite*--gymnastics did that to a person, where weightlifting tended to build more obvious bulk, though he had bulk, yeah, he had--

Brain meltdown

"Fraser!"

In the air, there he went, just like Ray knew he would. Turnbull kept sleeping.

Fraser apparently came down facing the right way to see what the problem was, because he just slipped an arm around Ray and whispered "Be very still."

"I ain't moving."

"Can you touch him?"

"Yeah. Twice now."

"Odd." Fraser whispered "I'd say it was a sending, but I don't know much about those sendings that don't have to do with one's death--fetches. The body-soul, in the current state of the body, is supposed to travel to the loved ones at the moment of death, or just before."

"He don't look dead. He purred when I pet him."

"No, he looks fine. Um." Ray felt Fraser's luxuriant lashes sweep against his ear. "Boy does he."

"Is that...on his other side..." since they were sitting up, they could see over him, a little; and there was a vague, pale, shadowy shape to his other side.

"I think that's the Inspector." As Fraser said this, his hand clamped down over Ray's mouth before Ray could get a single yell out. This reading each other's minds thing was beautiful on the job, but at home it was beginning to tick him off just a little.

"We got the ice queen in the bed. Okay, I can see baby wanting to be here and so kinda...just...part of him moseying on over. But the ice--Inspector?"

"She's part of his surroundings, part of his current present, palpably there to him, even in sleep, just as I'm aware in sleep of anyone else around me."

"They are, too. You people are fucking weird, I'm saying it again, and I'll keep saying it. I mean it. It's weird. Say, she's...blurred."

"She didn't come to see us. She's only here because Turnbull rather brought her along a bit."

"Well, she can stay if he wants her, but she can't have any of my pillow."

"I don't think that'll be a problem Ray. Give him a kiss before he goes back to the Inspector's."

It was true. The ghostly couple of bed-invaders were fading. Ray leaned over and pressed a kiss to Turnbull's mouth, feeling one pressed back, just before the images faded completely.

Ray rubbed his deltoid. "Did you kiss my shoulder?"

"No. His."

"Oh. Okay." Ray nodded a little, then settled to the bed in Fraser's reassuring embrace.

"You think he'll come back?"

"Probably not. He's probably tired now, after that, even if not before--and sleeping very deeply."

"I sure would be. A...sending?"

"I think you'd probably better do the reading on that. I...have some ideas I'll contribute, but I'd rather wait for Turnbull."

"The ice queen was naked too."

"Mm-hm."

"You think they...?"

"If they...well, if he needed it."

"Oh, come on. She wouldn't take friend-in-need that far."

Fraser smirked at him. "On the contrary. I know she has a very soft place for those she perceives to be suffering; she's just not much better at showing it than you are. If she thought it would help him, I don't think she'd hesitate--for *Turnbull*. But we are talking about Turnbull. He may just have wanted a bit of skin comfort, no sex necessary."

"Yeah, he does like that. Hope she can, uh, handle that without having to excuse herself to see Bob or whatever."

"You know as well as I do that she has an amazing amount of control in almost all areas."

"Except you."

"I have a problem with her that way, too, so shut up about it." He reached up and rubbed the top of his head.

"Something the matter with your head?"

"No, by a stroke of purest luck. I think we should sleep again if we can."

"If baby comes home...tomorrow night..."

"You'll want to be rested, Ray," Fraser told him, patting him.

"So will you, you big fake."

"All right, so will I, now sleep!"

*You* gotta *woo*-dy," Ray singsonged in glee.

"Ray." Dangerous.

"You got the world's biggest woody right here in my hand. Turnbull and the ice queen snoozin' naked get you all hot and bothered, hmmmmm?"

"How do you know it isn't simply Turnbull!? He *was* naked, and she *was* a bit indistinct."

"Not so indistinct we couldn't tell who she was, and she must've been a pretty big presence there in his head for him to bring her along like that. She's hot. She's uh, not unwilling. And she's in bed with--"

"Ray!" But it was half-despair at the fact that he was moving his hips to slide his hardon in Ray's grasp.

"I got you, honey, just give it up for me, that's it, toss the sheet, don't wanna mess it, now just go for it, just go for it, just--"

"Aah!"

"Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, oh yeah--and easy, honey, easy..." Ray took him gently through the aftershocks and then rolled through where Turnbull---and god help us Thatcher--had been, for a towel from the stand. "See? I could tell it'd just take a second, and now you'll sleep better."

"We need one of these on my side," Fraser sighed, mopping, talking about the wicker towel stand. "We only put it over there because otherwise Turnbull would jump over us all, using the mattress as a trampoline, to get to the cleanup implements first."

Ray hee-heed at the image, as he was meant to, and added "Also, we could use some wet wipes, too, I was thinkin' yesterday. Get those flat packages, stick 'em in the drawers. I know you and paper waste, but we can be careful with 'em."

"Yes, they might help sometimes," Fraser said, finishing up, stowing the towel on a wooden men's suit rack that was currently bare, with all Fraser's uniforms in for a washing and detailing over the weekend--Turnbull's was in the front room; they just couldn't fit two of them in here--and pulling them back together again; he was ready to reciprocate, but Ray waved him off the mostly-soft part of himself that Fraser was investigating. "Nah. I'm too freaked out." He curled up small in Fraser's arms. Fraser began to pet him gently.

***

"Oh, my," Turnbull said, softly, and pulled Meg close.

"Mmn," she said, and went to sleep again. Her medication allowed for her to tolerate without fully waking the occasional bother, like a closed door or a loud noise, yet be functional enough for average standards of operation if she truly needed to be awake. A sudden cuddle, especially from Turnbull--who, as a result of his rather lengthily followed (in terms of lifetime exercise) gymnastics practice, could be soft as water rather than hard as stone, when he wanted to be--was not a good reason to wake up, though, especially if he was hugging.

He knew he felt them there for a moment, and the kisses...he had to go home soon. Things *were* happening, rapidly, from his end as well as from theirs, and his sudden withdrawal probably *had* precipitated it in some way, as Fraser had hypothesized.

How did he know Fraser had...?

Not Monday. He'd have to go home Sunday, as they'd been thinking. Thatcher didn't want an uncontrollable display in her foyer, and Turnbull didn't want to have to limit his hellos to what was appropriate for a public venue.

But he didn't want them tied in knots with waiting anxiety when he got there. It would be a surprise. If he walked in on them in bed, well, so much the better.

"I need to go home," he whispered into her hair.

And she was instantly awake. "Now?"

"No, Sunday night--I think we were right. I was just there. Home. I think...I should go, tomorrow evening."

And she was instantly asleep again, though saying "Ah. Well, then, as I expected. Yes. Well." She slumped back to a flump of deadweight in his arms, and he held her, in calm reassurance of her smell all around him, pressing his face to her hair.

He thought that some might think he was making, or they were making, rather a large matter of this decision--it was only a matter of a day, after all--but no farther than he'd progressed, a day could make all the difference. To go back to them too soon could be dangerous for their relationship, and for Turnbull. To go back too late could be the same, though, and he hoped that they would all agree, at the very least, that he had done what he honestly thought was best for all of them, and not only for himself.

"I love you," he whispered to her.

"Lfmvm," she murmured, and he smiled. She might like blueberry pancakes in the morning...

***

They were relaxing in the front room with the paper and what seemed, to Turnbull, by this time, to be an infectious state of US lassitude associated with Sundays. Those who didn't attend regular church simply never got it together at all that day, apparently.

That wasn't so, of course; he, Ray and Fraser had made frequent excursions to beaches, parks, hiking trails, and other daytime entertainments on Sundays since they'd been friends, then together. But they never seemed to get around to it until two PM, so maybe it was just them.

The Inspector seemed to have the Sunday Lassitude as well, though, lying on her front on the long couch with the paper on the floor beneath her, her tea within reach on the coffee table, and her bare feet swinging in the air over her knees, ankles crossed. He took a bite of his croissant, careful to keep the crumbs over the plate, over the plate's placemat.

"Are you sure about this?"

He looked over at her; she was gazing at him contemplatively, chin resting on her folded hands.

"Going home tonight," she elaborated. "I've gotten quite used to you, if that's any concern for you."

"I seem to have that effect on people," he said, shrugging. "On duty, they can't get away from me fast enough. Off duty, I seem to metamorphose into a huge teddy bear."

"You're rather like that on duty as well, Turnbull, not to disparage your competence," she said dryly, her lips curling at one corner in a fetching smile that invited him to share the joke.

He did, knowing--Mother, by now how could he *not* know--that she meant well. "I do like cuddling," he admitted shyly, playing with the nap of the rug, smoothing it down.

"And you're marvelous at it. So you think tonight?"

He sighed. "I think...sir, I would very much like to stay here another week or two, taking care of you and avoiding this problem altogether. I'd like to make it never happened..." his voice faded to nothing as his throat closed, and she was quiet, waiting, while he swallowed and rubbed his larynx a bit. "I...think that I *have* to go back too soon. I think it's part of what has to happen. I have to go back before I'm ready, because I never truly will be. Never truly. I still...have my knife. I still think of using it. Not just to get a bit of blood for spellwork, either."

"For the relief," she said, nodding. "I will not even try to make any suggestions pertaining to that aspect of your fear of returning home, but one; get a sharper knife. You handle knives well; you can make adequate cuts to meet your purpose without causing yourself serious injury. But you need a better blade. I'm aware of the sentimental attachment you have to your--does it have a name?"

"No, actually. It never seemed to need one, in all the years I've had it. Its name is 'knife', the same way a child might name a stuffed animal 'frog' or 'pony'. That's how I think of it."

"I know." She sighed. "I don't like to say things like this, because they sound judgmental. But I think it's terrible that your best inanimate friend, even when you were young, was the knife you used to make wounds in your body with to relieve the emotional turmoil you were in. NOT terrible of *you*. Terrible that your situation was such that a young boy was driven to such a thing, and even to feel so warmly about the implement he used."

"I know how you feel, sir, and I know that in your way, you're...trying...to express sympathy."

She smirked. "I deserved that, I know. But jab or no, you're right; I am, in my inept fashion, trying to express sympathy. And my continued statements of shock and horror at what was done to you are probably not much goddamn help, are they?"

"I'm afraid they're not, sir. But I do appreciate the sentiment *behind* them."

"I know. You would, of all people. Will you do that much? You needn't say a word to me about any future cutting that may happen, may not happen, or, if you like, will never, ever be mentioned, even laterally, between us again. But I will ask you to get a new boot knife. For all I care you can clean your nails with it."

"I think I can promise you that, sir. 'Knife' can stay with my sacred tools. He can have a place of honor among my few older possessions that I have fond memories of. This last experience...I'm not sure if a less worn knife would have prevented it--I'm not sure if anything would have. I'm still not sure what happened, though I think I've figured out a few more things, if you'd care to talk about them."

"Of course. Thank you for the promise; my mind is much rested. I know the harm you do yourself isn't ever severe--except that once--and that was an anomaly, and that anything that...eases what's inside you, that does you so little harm...I'm simply not in a position to judge you, Constable. I'm not happy about it. But I honestly don't think I have the right to make a judgement on it."

"I know. I'm glad you're so certain, though." He sighed. Then he picked up his strawberry-filled croissant and had another bite. Fraser always appreciated his efforts, but he was a meat-and-potatoes sort due to his diet as he grew up, and what he normally ate when at home in the Territories. Ray simply ate what was put in front of him--with much thanks and appreciation, and honest enjoyment, but he wouldn't have known if Turnbull had done a terrible job of the preparation or not. The inspector did appreciate such things, and was pleasantly forthcoming with knowledgable questions and comments about even his most highly refined and re-refined, subtlest culinary works.

"Can I come over a night a week or so and cook for you?" Turnbull wondered, having swallowed. "Or twice a month or so. I *am* your clerical assistant. We probably shouldn't push the bounds of propriety too far."

"Oh, Turnbull, I'd be delighted. I never have time to cook, and never developed your expertise, though I retained the interest, as you've noticed. Actually, your being here as my aide, it wouldn't be at all odd for me to ask your services for various minor duties at dinners on occasion, and even see that you're recompensed for the extra duty, especially for diplomatic occasions. Sometimes, sitting at home alone, I begin to feel very diplomatic around about dinnertime."

He giggled with her. "Understood, sir."

"Wait just one moment." She clambered up, stretching with a happy-sounding sigh as she turned and went into her bedroom, fumbled, it sounded like, in her purse, dropped it and made a monosyllabic comment--Sunday lassitude had some drawbacks--and eventually returned bearing a small object in one hand, which she held out to him. "Here you are. Before I forget," she said casually, then returned to her spot on the couch with the paper.

It was three keys, joined by a little ring of wire.

"Sir? Is this...?"

"Yes, those smaller two will unlock the knob and the deadbolt. The square key will let you into the building."

"I do have copies of your keys, sir, I am your assistant."

"It's traditional when extending a blanket invitation for the use of one's abode at any time, for any reason, to a friend, to present them with keys. Far be it from me to be remiss in tradition. Those will go on your own keying, not locked in a drawer in your desk at the consulate."

He misted up and made a squeak. "Thank you, sir," he managed, and sniffed.

She smiled and got up, and came over, and he made a lap by sitting tailor-fashion, and she sat in it and he cuddled her close, sniffling.

She said, very softly. "You must never question my friendship, because I will never betray you."

He nodded, and squeezed her tighter. He didn't need to repeat her words to her; they both knew it applied both ways. And she need make no promise; her word was as good as an oath, and he knew that.

"Sir, I would like it if you came to my apartment. And I would like it if you would accept keys as soon as I have them made."

"I'd be honored, but I had imagined...you considered Ray's apartment--well, wherever you all end up living. That apartment is far too small for three large grown men, one of whom has more hairstyling products and implements than I do."

"You have one hairstyling product. Leave-in conditioner."

"You know what I mean."

"I won't be giving up my...my little apartment. It's only a studio, but a nice enough one--in a safe building. Nevertheless, it has only the basic amenities, and the rent is low. The bills are flat rate. I think I can carry my weight in our new place, wherever it is, if we ever get around to moving there--and keep it the studio. After all, Fraser still has his cot and basics at the Consulate. I think it's a good idea for people to have a safe place they can go to be alone. I think, in fact, that many marriages could have been saved if it were taken for granted that husband and wife would each have their own place to be alone sometimes."

"You're probably right, Turnbull. It's too bad the economic realities many of us face prevent that."

"I've thought of that, too. Are you...is the circulation being cut off at all to--"

"I love it here. If you need me to move--"

"No--no. No." He arranged her in his arms and crossed legs again, careful, stroking, head bowed over hers. "My lap is always available if you need a place to sit."

"That's more comforting than you might realize. I...it isn't my usual policy...sometimes..."

"Sir, you have been so--so--" he started to mist up again and gave up, continuing "Take it for granted. Take me for granted. There is never enough I can do for you. A lap to sit in for a while, whatever else you feel the need for--that is certainly no problem at all. None."

"Thank you for saying it. Speaking of it, though..."

"No, they won't mind. We...don't believe the proof of 'true love' is in sexually limiting oneself to one partner. People do that constantly, every day, all over the world, without a trace of genuine love or respect for that partner. It's meaningless, in and of itself. When promises are broken, that is another matter entirely--but we have no such promises between ourselves. They simply aren't necessary with us.

"I begin to understand that, a bit, I think..."

"Fraser gave me his opinion once--he said that reasonably, all that anybody can expect to be to another person is maybe one third of everything. There is no being everything to someone else. This is true even of those who consider themselves of a monogamous persuasion--no more than a third, and that's a large estimate. The rest will be filled with other things and other people, and that is quite right and as it should be. People who are joined the way romantic tradition, of late in western human history, are supposed to be joined, would quickly go insane. Anyone with *any* depth at all *needs* love of a deep, meaningful nature for more than one person--not necessarily sexual love, but deep and significant love--and for more than one thing, more than a single love object of any kind."

"Well, I suppose that's true, when put that way...I think, mostly, that the emotional objection is a trained-in aspect of our society, and the more practical objection is sheerly one of practicality--traffic, basically. Everyone's lives, everyone's needs, everyone fighting about who left the butter dish out..."

He laughed softly. "Yes, that's more complicated with more than two. But if the love is real...the quality of the respect and friendship is far more important than the number of people involved. That they be the right people, people you can honestly respect, and treat with that respect, is all that matters. You know, when couples who have been married for forty years or whatever the time period being researched is are given exams and such by psychologists for the professional information, that is by far the greatest emotion that is mentioned--respect. Both parties feel deep respect for the other party, genuinely feel it. Love is mentioned as important, but it has never ranked as high as respect in terms of the longevity of relationships. This is assuming the respect is mutual, of course. If it were one-sided, it would be meaningless."

"Fraser is such a font of such information that one cannot seriously fathom where he comes by it. But I was aware of that fact of human psychology myself. When one reaches one's forties still unmarried, one wonders...and one researches, if one is me, at least. One thing I discovered...was a potential for bisexuality. In, um, me."

"I'd rather thought as much. And I understand. I suppose...Fraser was raised in isolation with access to many books and not much else, and I believe he developed a love of reading for its own sake. Now he will read anything, just as long as he's reading. He is quite fond of textbooks, as well."

"Yes, I noticed he has a number of well-thumbed ones among his things at the Consulate. I love him, and like many of us I fight a rather constant desire for him. But some things about him, endearing though I find many of them..."

"Yes. He...is an acquired taste, if one is interested in doing more than taking in the view."

She laughed softly into his neck. "That could easily be said about all three of you."

"True enough, sir, true enough."

***

"Ray, sit down."

"I *can't*, I can feel him, he's coming!"

"I'm sure he can feel you, too, and the last thing we need is to overwhelm him right now. He wanted this to be a surprise for that very reason."

"How the hell--oh. Mountie simpatico."

"No. Turnbull-and-I simpatico." Fraser's face was earnest, entreating, and Ray couldn't stand those eyes--he sat down, on the coffee table in front of Fraser, knees to either side of the other man's, and took his hands.

"You're scared," Ray said. "I mean, I'm scared, I knew I was scared. But you're scared of a whole different thing. I'll tell you mine if you tell me yours."

"I'm...I worry that we will pressure Turnbull, that we won't be able to help it, trying to *make* him believe us, our love for him. We feel compelled and insecure, because, as I've said, Turnbull is right in a way--there are things we don't know, because he has seen to that--in such subtle ways, sometimes, that we don't even know what we don't know. We know enough to love him, yes, more than enough. But what we don't know is significant, both in amount and in importance. He will be reluctant to expose that, though he will try--and we must *not* push him, he must not feel us to be pushing at him at all, for more speed than he can muster on his own, at that."

"You mean *I* must not. Because you don't ever, never, ever push him."

"No, I don't push him," Fraser said, "though it resulted in a bad scare for us all once--"

"That would have happened eventually, you know that."

"Yes." Fraser sighed. "But I can't push him, I honestly can't, Ray. If...if the bullet you took, you saw someone else take--the same kind of bullet, the same wound, the same pain, everything--would you walk over and kick that person in the place where the bullet had gone in?"

Ray looked sick. Fraser didn't have to finish, but he did.

"No. You would be more than usually horrified and not be able to rest until that person was well cared for, and even then, thinking of their pain would make you want to do something, just do something, to ease it, anything, because you sympathize so totally with it. Turnbull had it worse than I did, and different, but what we ended up getting...was the same. I'm so afraid of hurting him, just as I'd be...almost....almost as I'd be afraid of hurting the boy I used to be. I know what I would want, under the circumstances he's in now, and I'm determined, for my part, to give him what he wants, because it's what I'd ask myself."

"I got you, Fraser. And I'm worrying' you, 'cause I'm...me." Ray looked at the floor between them in a combination of embarrassment and disappointment. "It's okay. I'll try to be a little less me."

"Never. Never be less you; he loves you. So do I. You have patience and I've seen you use it. You *hate* it, but you can do it. It's part of you, too. Just try to exercise that part a bit. We don't expect you to become someone else for our convenience; we just want a little effort, a little bit of work, in that area, from you. We know you don't think that's too much to ask, because we know you."

"It isn't too much, Frase. I'll try. But you might help me out, okay? Might gimme a hand here and there? Like...like you've done. When I'm...when the instincts are talking and they're not saying things that are making anybody happy. Let me know."

"I can do that. I have. I will." Fraser squeezed his hands reassuringly. "I'm asking you to do something that involves work and effort, to make Turnbull and myself more comfortable. The least I can do is help you do it, where it's no trouble for me anyway."

"I'm just..." Ray squirmed on the table. "I wanna, I wanna, I wanna..." he deliberately child-voiced, and Fraser smiled.

"I do too. Just as much as you, I promise, I just also...have the fear of hurting him."

"I don't want that either, you know that, don't you? I think about that too, all the time, I'm always thinking about it. I don't want to hurt him either. He's already so hurt, so much more than I ever thought..." Ray looked away again. "Sometimes I really hate myself for just thinking 'Yeah, a freak' about him, earlier on."

"He wouldn't want that."

"It ain't for his sake I hate myself for it. I wish I could be more like you." He suddenly pinked. "Oops." He gave an oh-well smirk and a shrug. "Cat's outta the bag."

"The cat was out of the bag when you told me, with all sincerity--and we can't fake such things between us anymore, not without a lot of effort--that I was your shining light. Yes, it made me uncomfortable as hell and it still does. But it's not a surprise. You admire things in me and want to emulate them, just like I admire things in you and wish I could be...more like...more like you, basically. I respect you as I've respected few people--*as* people, I mean, not respecting their rank or any such thing."

"That means a lot to me, Fraser," Ray whispered, very still, looking at the floor, still pink and quiet. "It really does. It really fucking does. Hold me 'til I weep." He managed a chuckle, but he fell forward into Fraser's arms, and Fraser did hold him, getting them both as comfortable as they could manage on the couch.

"This couch is going," Ray finally said, when he thought he could stop squeezing Fraser so tightly.

"Going...?"

"Away. To its reward. To be burned as fuel for homeless people or something, I'll find some way to recycle it, don't worry."

"Actually, Ray, with a slipcover, it could be used in a buiding lobby or---"

"Maybe, but it was used when I got it. Giving it to somebody to be used as a couch would at least partly be regarded as 'foisting' if you were honest about it. It was pretty hard done by already when I got it. Stel got the couch. Stel got everything, I didn't give a shit about much at that point. I didn't know I was gonna end up in love with the two biggest Canadians I'd ever seen. In person."

"I'm not that big. And Turnbull, while he may weigh rather more than it looks like he does, and he looks like he weighs quite a bit--"

"You can say that again. I'll never forget the time I found out why he was so reluctant to rest his weight on me. God, my cock went soft. He about cried. You, though--you don't look like a wedge of meat like some of the guys at the gym, but you're a pretty big guy. You weigh one eighty, naked and dried off. None of it's extra fat, though you got a little layer under there to keep you warm--your ancestors are Scots-Irish, and the ones that came to the northern end of Canada would have to have had that subcutaneous thing going on pretty evenly over 'em, or they'd have headed south as fast as they could whip up the dogs. But you're still a big guy."

Fraser, smiling, nodded assent and wondered "So then, what kind of couch do you think would be suitable for three big guys?" He kissed Ray's temple.

"The kind you see in bigger apartments, for one thing, but to actually answer you, I think a big couch-loveseat set is called for here. If we all go in on it, we can afford it without breaking anybody's bank. If...um, if baby wants to, that is. I haven't been making any plans more specific than that our long legs and stuff need some damn room. Sitting on this thing for even one of us is like driving a Volvo. I've been...waiting, to ask about it."

"Yes. I know what you mean." Fraser sighed. "I wish...that finding a way to assure him we love him would be enough. But you know what?" Fraser glanced grimly into Ray's eyes.

Ray looked grimly back. "Yeah, I know what. Even if he honestly, right down to his boots, believed we loved him as much as he does us...that wouldn't fix his problem. This is *not* just a case of simple--not even massively bad simple--insecurity. That can be enough to wreck relationships all by itself, but he's got something...*something* even worse going on. I can't say what it is--though I could tell you what it looks like."

Fraser nodded grimly. "Yes. I can describe the appearance of it, too, but I'm no more aware of its precise nature than you are."

"I hope...I hope your buddy Meg managed to help him see things a little better. I hope he...hope he can do this, this...stuff he needs to do, with himself, for himself, by himself, so that he can be with other people, and...and be...like he thinks it should be. Love, like other people love, instead of...the kind of deformed version he got."

"If he were not so deeply loving a man, so intelligent, or so naturally fair minded as to overcome what was done to him even to the degree that he has...he would be a monster, Ray," Fraser said, and swallowed, like he expected some serious recrimination for saying such a thing about their yeti-sized, petal-soft-dispositioned 'baby'. "*Most* men would be. And most women would be...ciphers. Their personalities destroyed."

"Yeah," Ray said. "I know what he'd be."

Fraser locked large, wide eyes with him.

"My job, Frase, even my area of specialty in police work. I know people, I know good people, bad people, I know what makes 'em tick, I know what...what kind of thing turns out what. I don't know Turnbull's details...but I know a man who's been through something that'd turn most of us into, at least, total dropkick assholes. He's just too...sweet. Maybe that's why I call him baby, when a nickname came creeping in to the whole thing."

"Perhaps so. I forget that you don't need...did you know I watched Star Trek? The original series? When I could? When we were in areas with community centers that had television--"

"I know. You liked Spock, I remember you telling me." Ray smiled.

"He said some very intelligent things. He must have had good writers. One thing was that 'a lack of data is not the same thing as no information'. I always attributed a Vulcan saying such a thing to his being half human, but he's correct. Personally I can't work without data, but you, even without data, do have information, and of sufficient quality for practical use, at that, at least for the use of your own methods."

"Meaning I got intuition."

"Especially about Turnbull, yes."

"I think you and Spock would be great buds. I bet you could solve an awful lot of crimes together. He kind of did some of that, on the show, I think. Solved mysteries, at least, when he needed to."

"Yes, I used to fantasize about meeting him, as a boy. He would be very impressed with my worldliness and ability to remain unemotional and observe a situation objectively and reasonably, of course." Fraser smiled at himself.

"Of course. What's the good of fantasizing if your fantasy doesn't think you're *the* shit?" Ray laughed too. "I had plenty of those. Frase...I've been wanting to talk about some stuff, and I just don't know...if it's a good...I oughtta go ahead and do this with both of you, like when I asked you both to move in with me. It'd be the right thing to do, the respectful thing to do. I'm just...scared of a repeat."

"So, you want to...'check with me' before you talk with him about something you've been contemplating, some kind of change?"

"Yes. I gotta ask if I can first, though, because it makes you a complicitor. You're in cahoots in the disrespect to him if you let me talk about it with you alone first."

Fraser thought. "I would have been overjoyed, as little as a few days ago, and felt you had come around to the sensible way of seeing things--"

"Your way."

Fraser just smiled at him. "Of course, my way. Who of us thinks the sensible way to see things is somebody else's way, if we don't share that way? In any event...why don't you do this, Ray. Do you want to ask us another question, along the lines of the moving-in? A...change, or stepping up, perhaps, of the relationship?"

"More a question, that involves long-term togetherness."

"Mm." Ray couldn't help seeing the little smile that Fraser tried to keep hidden at Ray's wanting to talk about something like that. "It being a question, you could just ask me what I thought. Then when...when Turnbull gets here, you can ask him. You do need both our opinions, if what you're doing is...asking advice, in a way, but under those circumstances, there's no law that says you have to ask both of us at once."

"I guess. If it's...an advice thing. It kind of is. Past the first part, it definitely is an advice thing."

"Then I'd be glad to try to help. What's on your mind?"

"You and baby and the elbow grease--"

"Rayyyy..." Fraser grinned. "Stop being such a guy, as Francesca would put it."

"You're both major, major Canadians. Mounties to the core. I'm a cop and I went through some shit to get that, but I've also taken enough shit that I...yeah, it'd be an adjustment, but it's one I *know* I could make. It's different with you guys."

Fraser gazed calmly at him. "You think you should be the one to...relocate. Immigrate, if I speak plainly."

"You guys won't be here forever. Relationships get through the people in 'em having jobs that station 'em in weird places. With you and baby it'll be worse, because you'll both have postings and even if you have *some* pull, and the Ice Queen helps 'cause she loves him, I think, and wants him to be happy--it'd make sense if I could get into some kind of independent business, something I'm good at, show the folks who care that I can make money at it and not be a drag on the government. It also oughtta be something mobile, so that when you guys can't arrange being close enough to each other to at least take alternate weekends together or something, I can move between the two of you at least some."

"I noticed you'd been accessing the types of immigration possible under Canadian law--the independent business option is probably the best one for you, as you have your health and a good number of useful skills. I'm only going to say this once, because I have to, because I love you. Are you sure you want to leave your country and come with us to Canada? Have you truly thought it out?"

Ray smiled a little. "Thanks for the warning, or I might have blown up at you. Yes, Fraser. You have officially asked me, and I have officially honestly answered yes, I have thought it out. It might be easier for you and baby to get into this country on a permanent basis, but in terms of everybody being happy? It makes a lot more sense for it to be me. It's not like I'm from southern Nevada. I can come home for visits, with you or by myself, and see my family and stuff. I don't hang out with them exactly constantly anyway. I lost most of my friends in the divorce, Stel got 'em...and since then there's pretty much just the job. I'm kind of like baby. Outside you two--Welsh, I gotta lotta respect, some feeling there, and I think he does too, but I'd see him. There's nobody here I couldn't see, couldn't talk with on the phone. Even come down and stay a while if they needed somebody. It should be me, Frase. We both know that."

"I can't argue with you, and I don't really want to, I'll admit. You're right; it's a question of emotion as much as logic, and both are on your side in this case. So, your advice mostly concerns lines of work that your time might be best spent on and such, I take it, with all things considered?"

"Yeah. You guys know things I don't about your own jobs and what we can and can't have...though I'd be damn disappointed to learn either of you had to live in quarters someplace."

"I'm..." he sighed. "I'm afraid that's a danger in Turnbull's case, Ray. I have enough rank and years in the RCMP to allow me, under almost any circumstances, to live off RCMP property and outside quarters, unless there's a specific reason for me to be on the base. Turnbull, well, it would depend. The Inspector has enough influence to keep him as her personal aide if it's what he wants--and it might be better than some alternatives, we'll just have to see--but we would probably have to make the 'availability' of RCMP living quarters, or the lack thereof, a priority in choosing postings. Of course, there are also postings in which it would hardly matter if I slept with the dogs, much less my posting associates, but I get the feeling you and Turnbull would find that sort of posting, at the very least, monotonous."

"Yeah, more'n likely. So baby bein' able to get to us easy--however we decided to make it officially--would probably be the first problem. That's where I need your guys' help. You say I have a number of skills, but I have to make a decent enough living off them, and they'll have access to my records. You slipping me a few wouldn't cover it."

"It would if we invented customers, if necessary--"

"The mountie proposes *cheating!?* I'm *shocked, I say, *shocked*--"

"--or if I *was* your customer, Ray. There's nothing illegal about my retaining your services. If nothing else, you could easily get a license to teach dancing. You are well-trained in the basics and you move beautifully. No one would question the veracity of that, and it can be done almost anywhere space can be obtained. Working out of your home, if you have a large enough space and specialized in small classes or private lessons--personal attention, which would allow you to reasonably charge more--"

"Wait, wait, wait. I'm not so sure I wanna be a dance teacher, here."

"Not *primarily*, necessarily, but there's no law against having a sideline. All that matters is your gross income and whether you can support yourself and any dependents--Semmy, in your case--" Ray grinned, and Fraser smiled and continued "--to a reasonable degree above the poverty level. You could supplement your income with dance teaching if you needed to, and Turnbull and I would both be pleased to be your first customers. We make quite enough--and have, according to you, such outlandishly simple tastes--that we have no dearth of extra money for such things. Ray...I don't want you getting your hopes up, or thinking we should wait for this, but...there is legislation happening..." he looked pensive. "Turnbull and I can request extra time here, stay in Chicago a few more years, if it looks like either of us is going to be transferred soon, but considering the reason we're all here--"

"Grab a Snickers bar, I got you. You'll be here a while. But what legislation?"

"There are places in Canada--not entire provinces, yet, but smaller political divisions--where we could be legally married. That would be all that would require you to--"

"Wait--I could *marry* you guys?"

Fraser sighed. "No. Only one of us, I'm afraid. Canada is not a Muslim-ruled country and if it were, neither of us could marry other men anyway. But there is gaining momentum in the largely positive governmental reaction to the grassroots movement to redefine legal marriage in Canada, or in whatever level of government below the Crown that is in question in each case--usually at the province level. The idea is to make it an institution of legal life joining between two people--regardless of the two people's personal characteristics--to the exclusion of all others. If we married and had a third party in our relationship, well, that's been happening since monogamous marriage existed, but I tend to think it would be...hard, for it to be a legal joining between two of us, and not the third. Hard for *all* of us, but especially for whoever among us..." they looked at each other grimly, knowing what Turnbull would insist, "...who was odd man out legally, no matter how deep and genuine a part of us he was in the ways that really matter."

"Fraser...if they do do that up there, in the next few years, and we've managed to hang on to baby, I think one of us should marry him."

Fraser nodded. "Of course one of the legally married ones would need to be him, and if we did bring legal marriage into it, I would insist on that as well," Fraser said. "Owing to our work, you should probably be the other. If Turnbull and I married, we could end up in RCMP provided housing more easily for reasons I won't go into, and there are other problems it could create since you would be a part of us. The RCMP is very progressive as far as marriage within its ranks, but..."

"Two guys...legal or not..."

"That could cause both of us problems. I am prepared to face them--they honestly could not hurt me emotionally, Ray. I do not consider the opinions of others to be important when those others are not concerned with what they feel to be honor or responsibility, but with bigotry..."

"...but baby would be hurt."

"I thought of his not being married to one of us as possibly being for the better, but he would simply find it too great a reinforcement of his delusion that you and I are a complete--hell, practically contiguous, the way he seems to see it--unit *without* him, and that he is polluting something that is...well, he thinks his presence..."

"He'd find it a good excuse to leave us if we married each other," Ray finished.

"Yes. But I think you should marry him, Ray, if we get the chance. It would cause him much less difficulty to be married to someone outside the RCMP, even if it were a man. I could protect him more easily if I were not his husband, if it were assumed you and he were a typical monogamous marriage. And off duty, you could help and protect him as easily as I--perhaps more easily. You could, well..."

Ray grinned, slowly. "Kick heads. Physically."

"And well. *Without* the trouble it would bring on an officer of the law. You could even make it play for *you*, as a harassment suit or any number of other things--the laws aren't that different, and the differences are mostly in your favor in such cases. There is only the fact of the danger, Ray. You and Turnbull would be public. No matter how genial and likeable Turnbull can be, he...well..."

"There are already people who probably think he's a major fruit. He doesn't flame, but he's...uh..."

"He has some stereotypical characteristics as part of his...usual demeanor. Though as far as that usual demeanor..."

"...I know, it's to a degree kark, ain't it."

"I think so, yes. Though I find it endearing, and it's not something he does deliberately--it's rather like your undercover skills. The lie is so thoroughly entrenched it has become truth, and it is an eminently forgivable lie, a lesser of two evils in terms of the liar's safety, and harmless to the guiltless."

"You've thought all that out pretty good, haven't you," Ray said, slowly, tilting his head, smiling a little smile of sympathy. "On long dark nights."

"Looking around my office," Fraser sighed, "lying on my cot...wondering, is it worth it? Is it worth this? What *is* this, even? What exactly am I doing?" He sighed and shook his head. "I tell you things now, actually...say things to you, that I would not only have shied in horror of telling even my best friend, but shied in horror of *thinking* of if I were aware of it, or I wouldn't even have been aware of them, as things, in the first place...before Turnbull..."

"You say things to me that you didn't even know were there to say or not say, before baby helped us get together."

"That. Yes. Thank you. Though apparently I'm still not all that good at it."

"Ah, Frase, that's what friends are for." Ray squeezed him. "But back to us bein' together in Canada. I think we can table the marriage idea for now. We don't even know when it's gonna become legal, if ever, and even though it might make it damn near impossible for baby to leave us if I married him and got citizenship that way, I don't...I don't want to chain him to us. I want him to realize he belongs with us as sure as we belong with each other. We're..." Ray looked pensive.

Fraser suddenly sang softly. "'They are one person; they are too alone; they are three together--they are for each other'."

"I love your brain," Ray said. "And your voice, by the way. Even when it sings sad things. Even when it sings perfect sad things."

"I know you love my voice," Fraser smiled. "I can't sing without you holding forth on it for about five minutes. But I still appreciate your telling me that it makes you happy to hear it. It's wonderful to be able to make you happy so easily, after so long of...just not knowing how to...give *anyone* just what they wanted."

"That's easy. Breathe, in and out, on a regular basis. Eat, and I guess do what you gotta do after you eat. Smile at me sometimes. You're a freak. A total, utter freak, a scary, disgustingly dead-guy smelling dirt-licking freak. I love you. Never change. Though I still hate it when you--"

They were in the middle of the kiss Fraser shut Ray up with when the sound of keys came, startling them both since they were so wrapped up in each other, and Ray grabbed the words "shut me up by kissing me" which were floating over their heads in a shade of happy pink with a heart instead of a dot over the i. He pushed them under the coffee table and they floated there quietly. The way they buzzed and sparked against his palm was like little fireworks, pretty but undamaging to anything.

"Baby!" Ray was over the back of the sofa, shot toward the opening door, banged into a solid rock and was thrown almost back as far as the couch again, falling to the floor with an oof.

Fraser stood at once, calmly. "Inspector," he said, just before she came into view, from where he was, around the door. "Good evening."

"As you were, Fraser. This isn't an official visit." She came in, Turnbull following, with his duffel over his shoulder.

"You're a *rock*," Ray said in amazement, not too distinctly; apparently he'd banged his face on some part of her, somewhere. "You must--you--how'd you do that?"

"A mere trick of balance and perception. There are certain yogic aspects to it that I don't feel up to explaining right now, especially on this occasion. Though I will say I've gotten to the point of lifting nearly twice my body weight without strain."

"You're studying...?" Fraser asked interestedly.

"I'll talk about it with you tomorrow, Fraser, I know such things fascinate you. Let's just say I had an aunt Laine who was a circus strongwoman, and it's not as impossible as it can certainly look."

"Baby?" Ray said, and Turnbull, who had been looking big-eyed and scared--not because of Ray's banging off Thatcher like she was a cement piling, but just in general--said quietly "Hello, Ray. Hello, Benny. I'm glad to see you both. I...asked Meg to come up with me."

"Meg?" Ray said. "I think I bit myself," he muttered indistinctly.

"When both off duty and off the consulate premises, you may all address me as Meg, unless you would rather not."

Ray shrugged as Fraser was helping him up. "Fine by me. You say Ray, I say Meg, let's call the whole thing--it's bleeding."

Turnbull made an odd noise.

Fraser was looking at the lip. "It's not serious. Go put some Campho-Phenique gel on it."

"But--"

"Go, Ray, we can wait a moment for you."

Muttering, Ray shuffled off to the bathroom, and Fraser said softly "You came in first on purpose, didn't you, Meg."

"Turnbull knows Ray quite well," she smirked. "He asked me to accompany him up and told me beforehand to be ready, and just what for. A small enough service to provide a friend."

Turnbull smiled, though it was trembly and his eyes were watery. Fraser smiled too, though, and so did Meg.

"Turnbull has a favor to ask, and he's asked me to speak for him, since he feels tear-prone and is tired of crying for the time. It's making his head ache."

"I understand," Fraser said; Ray was coming back in, dabbing in his lip with a Q-tip.

"You can talk for me too," he muttered.

"I'm sorry about that," Meg said.

"It's okay," Ray sighed. "If baby didn't wanna get swamped, it's good he brought protection, 'cause I don't think Fraser could have held me down."

"Turnbull would love to be swamped, as you put it, but he has a request to make of you that might make you change your mind."

"I..." Turnbull managed to speak. Meg looked up over her shoulder at him, waiting; she had one eyebrow raised, so apparently this wasn't the program, but she was willing to wait for his cues. "I need her. To...sleep with me. One more night. And...there's room. She can sleep with me, I'll hold her so she...won't take up much space."

Fraser's head tilted as he considered. "Yes. We noticed the two of you were sharing a bed."

Turnbull and Meg both stared at him.

"You came and saw us, baby," Ray said quietly. "In your sleep."

"Yes," Turnbull whispered, barely audible.

"I was there too?" Meg said, looking bemused.

"As a much vaguer shape, but enough to be able to tell it was you," Fraser said. "Besides, who else would it be?"

"Ah. Of course," she said, nodding briskly. "We were visible to you, then. Turnbull told me he dreamed of your presence and felt your kisses. Apparently it was *our* presence, as I don't recall seeing either of you. You're sure you were awake? Not sharing some sort of astral thing that witches and shamans and such people do?"

"I ain't a witch--uh, not officially--I ain't a shaman, and I know I was awake," Ray said.

"I am also quite aware of, and able to control, to a degree, my own conscious and some unconscious states," Fraser said. "I was awake too."

"Well, thank you for not disturbing me. I'd had a tiring evening." She looked up at Turnbull, raising her eyebrow again.

He sighed and nodded, closing his eyes.

"We had, in fact, been making love," Meg said, "to answer your question."

"Hey." Ray held his hands up in a defensive posture. "I didn't ask nothing. Not a thing, here, not a thing outta little me."

Turnbull and Meg smiled, almost the same slow, smirky expression on both of them.

Fraser and Ray sighed and turned around. Bouncing like rubber balls in the air behind them were about six peppermint candy-striped balloon-o-grams, all reading "Were you doing it?!" Some of the sentences were in all capitals.

Ray groaned and put his face in his hands.

"That's a *very* powerful manifestation, Ray," Turnbull said quietly, still with that look on his face. "I've never seen anything like it. I *can* see we'll need to begin your training immediately. Would you like to take care of them before we move on?"

"Yeah." Ray turned to the dancing words. "They were doin' it, I got my answer!" When the letters only began to dance in circles--apparently some part of Ray felt that the sex between Turnbull and Meg had been a very good thing--Ray sighed and said "Rock a bye baby, the red and the white, somebody's cruisin' to get in a fight--rock a bye baby, the blue and the black, somebody's leaving and not coming back, and--you--are--sure--IT!" The sentences vanished as each passed his pointing finger, the last with a loud, lollipop-like pop and red-and-white sparkles.

Fraser was smiling. "That was impressive extempore, Ray."

Turnbull was staring again; so was Thatcher. "It wasn't entirely extempore, I don't think," Meg said quietly.

"'Somebody's baby was born for a fight," Turnbull said.

"'Rock a bye baby, the white and the black, somebody's baby is not coming back, sang the crow on the cradle'," Meg finished. "I don't know...where it's from, but it's..."

"Somebody's baby?"

Fraser looked nervous now, too, but he only said calmly "Ray is anxious about Turnbull. Turnbull left, and Ray calls Turnbull 'baby', no matter what any of us may think about it. I'm sure that's the only connection."

"I was thinking of it," Turnbull said quietly, "earlier today. That's what it is, Benny. And yes, he's anxious." Turnbull smiled again. "But I have to say I very much enjoyed his take on the piece. Interestingly, in British craft, the directional colors were red, white, grey and black. Ray used them except for the grey, which he changed to blue."

"There was a reason for *that*, for sure," Ray muttered. "You want I should get the ones out from under the coffee table?"

"Under the...?" Meg said, and everyone's attention was near the coffee table. Dief had come in from the bedroom by this point; they'd bought a rag rug that, while it was on the bed, marked both that he was allowed up there and on what he was to sleep, namely the rug. He made an odd noise, a whining bark, and wagged his tail when Ray made a tired beckoning motion with his fingers and the happy pink words "shut me up by kissing me!" drifted up from under the table for all to see.

"He was getting overelocutious," Fraser insisted.

"Shut up, Fraser. 'This old cop, he'll get pissed, he'll get rope and watch you twist, with a knickknack paddywack, go the fuck away, this old cop will ruin your day!" By the last of Ray's incanting, the sentence had fled behind the TV and seemed to vanish back there with a tiny explosion of pink frostinglike stuff, and a sound that was damn near a snicker.

Turnbull and Meg were laughing fit to die over by the door. "I've never seen such natural talent in my life," Turnbull said, "nor read of it, either."

"And I better never, because no nom de plume will save your ass, any of you," Ray snarled, pointing at the room generally; Dief actually jumped, but he failed to disappear.

"Okay? Are we calm? Can we sit? Can we talk?" Ray gestured broadly toward the sofa and couch. "I haven't even jumped on Turnbull, which I think is pretty fucking good manners, too. So sittdown, shut up, or watch live porn. Or participate in it, your choice."

Fraser zipped to the couch, where he held a hand out to Turnbull. Great, prevent Ray's threat right off the bat. Ray took the straightback and Meg the yellow chair. Dief sat in the floor and leaned in Turnbull's lap; Turnbull snuggled him and Dief took it like the studly wuss pillow lapdog he was on the inside. Who could blame him. He'd missed Turnbull, too. Ray would've sat right there but reaching Turnbull's mouth would've been problematic anyway.

"Okay, so I guess Meg's here because you got some things to say," Ray said, as gently as possible to Turnbull. "And you didn't trust...well, likely anybody involved to get them said without a bodyguard here to keep us all off each other."

Fraser glanced at Ray with a raised eyebrow, and ray stared a minute before he got it, then grinned and rolled his eyes and made a listen-to-baby motion with his head.

"That's the long and short of it," Thatcher said. "There are a few things he needs to make sure you can agree with, because they're aren't negotiable. They are subject to change, but they are not negotiable. There are things Turnbull is no longer willing to do, and that is put his own life in danger. He was willing to do that before, even though he wasn't willing to put *your* lives, in the course of trying to save his, in any kind of jeopardy or not, whether lethal or otherwise. He's still not willing to do that, but he's not willing to kill himself to prevent it. Whatever he has to do to prevent him from having to endanger his own life, and to prevent yours from becoming endangered by that, you are to allow him to do, and no questions asked. The subject will not be open to argument or to conditions. What he says will go. If that is understood, we may proceed."

"New mouthpiece, huh, baby?" Ray smiled, though, to show he didn't mean it bad.

"I can guess who it was before," Meg muttered, and Fraser turned a bit pink, glancing in her direction silently.

Ray smiled inwardly, and said "Okay, I am not happy about that and I want it on record. Maybe I should've come prepared with my own lists of demands and shit. But I know baby's not flexing muscle or anything like it. He just has to do what he has to do if he's gonna have a thing with Fraser and me. So okay. I don't like it, but I know he doesn't either, and he's got a decent negotiational advisor over there, even though I probably wouldn't recommend her as a family shrink. Turnbull, if you gotta do something to save your own life without risking mine or Fraser's, my say is you do it. I wish we could be part of it with you, but I know you...well...you know you got shit goin' on that we don't know about. It may not be a fair thing, for us to demand that you let it be so all-for-one, sight unseen, until we know the whole story. If, that is...if we ever do know the whole story. For all I know, that's comin' up, and if it's not, there ain't no law says your sense of honor has to run by *my* rules. If I love you, I'll get that. And I do love you. And I do get that. Frase?"

Fraser only nodded. "You covered it well. I agree with Ray, though I'll add that you needn't fear my tracking skills, Turnbull. If you should need to leave us without telling us where you're going, I won't hunt you. Though I may let Dief."

"Dief will be welcome," Turnbull said very quietly.

"All are agreed," Thatcher said. "Point the second: Turnbull?"

Turnbull said "Ray, will you switch that lamp on?"

Ray reached up to switch on a lamp next to the yellow chair, a standing one with a little table around it. Turnbull pushed up one sleeve of his henley just a little--whoever'd designed those things must have been in love with guys with hot upper bodies, Ray thought briefly--and held his arm out toward the light. Ray looked for anything different.

"Did you hurt something?" He wondered.

Dief sighed and pawed at the arm hard, leaving scratches. Turnbull flinched, but held the arm steady.

"Dief!" Fraser and Ray chorused, but Thatcher lunged to stop Ray and Turnbull pinned every bit of Fraser's unbelievable strength in the sofa with one arm, though Fraser lunged twice against it.

"They're turning re..." Ray trailed off. He glanced up at Turnbull to stare, and received only a shrug and a wan smile in response.

Fraser's eyes were catching it now, too. "Oh my God. They're...even white, they're brighter than the red scratches Dief just left. How long...how old...how much of you...."

"Years. Not very old. And over all of me, to a degree. You've had plenty of opportunities to see them, so don't wrack your brains and wonder how you could have missed them. You didn't see it for the same reason no one sees them--for the same reason no one sees why I am like I am more generally. No one wants to. It's easier not to. And it's truly amazing, the degree to which a human being can blind herself, or himself, if the individual really wants to--and that decision doesn't have to be a conscious one. The determination usually lies *much* lower than the conscious realm of the mind. I don't blame you two at all."

"All of you?" Ray said weakly. "I've...thought I've seen..."

"The other biggest one, on my thigh. I saw your eyes light on it. I won a bet with myself when you simply looked away again. I was able to eliminate a set of ab reps that day." Turnbull spoke almost inaudibly.

"You knew you'd win, too, didn't you."

"Yes, Ray, I did."

"You know people who talk a good game, but when it really *matters*? When they *personally* are called on? And nothing. No quietly taking someone aside and asking, no offering to listen, nothing. I've been bitching about that since I was a cop. And I'm no better, am I, Turnbull? And you are. That's what makes you better than me, doesn't it? That I've never been able to put my finger on."

"Better than me as well, Ray," Fraser said, very softly. "I chose not to see. And you're right. They're far, far from invisible to a man with my unaided eyesight who has been at such close quarters for so long with Turnbull's skin. At the level he speaks of, though for more complicated reasons...I chose not to see."

"But at the same level I *could* have chosen to," Ray reminded him in a short snap, then turned his head away. "I don't want to talk about who's got more fault any more. Turnbull, you showed us these for a reason, yeah?"

"Yes. You're familiar, to some degree, with cutting, and the reasons for it."

"To some degree, but mostly we only know the shit the people treating it know--namely, nothing that's any help, since no one ever *listens* to the people who *do* it. You tell us, from the point of view of the people who *know*, who *get* it, who *understand* better than any damn shrink will ever be able to, especially since you know the kind of shrinks cops usually listen to. You ain't a criminal mind or a--not the *kind* of vic mind that they know about, let's put it that way. Not a repeat vic mind or a self-destructive."

"I suppose that will do."

Turnbull did his best to describe what cutting--and, to a lesser degree, since he knew less about it, burning, and other minor, self-inflicted bodily injuries, since he didn't class them all under one heading, as modern psychology did--and after listening to him talk, Ray and Fraser didn't class them that way any more, either. Though they winced at a couple of points, and leading questions from Meg were necessary here and there, he managed to get through it without more than a couple of spots where he had to beg off for a rest.

"No happy-ever-after just 'cause he's back, huh," Ray, sitting at the kitchen table, said to a coffee full of chocolate while Fraser was in the bathroom and Dief sighed on the couch; Turnbull and Thatcher were walking around the block.

Pale bubbles floated on the surface of the coffee. "Well, you didn't really expect it."

"I know, and I'm glad he's back, but I hate myself here, okay?"

"Ray, everybody else loves you, except Fraser loves you slightly less than usual because you'd usually have been the one to point out that scars like Turnbull had could *not* be tossed off as the kind of thing one picks up in the active sort of life a nearly thirty-year-old-mountie from the greenhorn's idea of the north could be *expected* to pick up. And he knew you wouldn't know enough about it to know that. So when you didn't do it...some part of him *chose* not to do it, and he knows it. The same part of him that refused to realize what specific kind of scars Turnbull had--yeah, he saw them; but he thought he was doing Turnbull a favor--and by Turnbull's lights, he was--by not saying anything."

"I'm hearing you, but you're getting blurred. Can you do automatic writing?"

"I can fuck around with the Etch-a-Sketch in the back of the closet."

Ray, grumbling, retrieved the Etch-a-Sketch, shook it up and plopped it on the table. "Give it a try. I'll warn you those gears are gonna take more physical force to move than bubbles."

"That's why you're gonna do it. Grab the knobs."

"Oh, this is em*bar*rassing..." Ray sighed and grabbed the knobs, after another pull of coffee.

"Where were we?" said the Etch-a-Sketch.

"How everybody loves me so much except Fraser 'cause it's supposed to be my job with making him deal with things when he's being too--not logical--what's the word I want--"

"--emotionless."

"--emotionless about them. You're right, that's...he can. That's not a word you think about with Frase 'cause he's so sweet, sweet and thoughtful, but he can be--somehow, the opposite, not inconsiderate, just...he's thoughtful but he turns around and he doesn't *think* when it comes to people, that's what I mean, thanks, coffee. He can be emotionless about *himself,*, completely show no emotion, and this was something he...he had like in common with Turnbull. He's told me sometimes, when he's doing what he knows what Turnbull would want because it's what he would want himself. Come to think of it, Thatcher said something like that, just kind of in passing, a while back. Are all mounties repressed and retentive?"

"No, but the three of them all obviously are, though Meg managed to retain the ability to fire *away* some of that anger, though her target practice--in that area--needs some work. Ask her about her family. Go on. Ask her. She only ever says one thing."

"If she only ever says one thing, then I know what it is. She said 'My family are dead. Milk, Detective?' Well, I bet she leaves off the milk part. Why do they only drink milk and not cream in their tea up there?"

"I'm a cup of coffee with M&Ms in it talking through the guy drinking it. Why would I know?"

"Uh, sorry, good point. So, Turnbull...he doesn't hate my guts utterly for not...letting myself see?"

"If he doesn't hate Fraser's, and he knows Fraser saw--"

"But he knows Fraser gave 'em a lame excuse so as not to make Turnbull have to talk about it--he knew, he just did Turnbull a favor, keeping his mouth shut. Me, I just didn't *see*."

"Ray...have you ever wondered if Fraser..."

There was quiet while Ray waited for his hands to move the Etch-a-Sketch (which actually didn't feel at all weird--just like someone had gently taken his hands, and was turning the knobs with them, just without any finger grab places), and Ray realized that was it for the Etch-a-Sketch's contribution to the revelation, and he thought, and he said "Oh, shit, NO!"

"NOTHING YOU WOULD HAVE SEEN!" the Etch-a-Sketch screamed in all capitals. "Or at least nothing you'd make a big deal of--Fraser, beautiful skin or no beautiful skin, does have a truly fascinating collection of scars."

"You sound like him."

"He's thinking about you. Your yell disturbed him."

"I'm fine, Frase!" Ray yelled toward the bathroom. "Just a misunderstanding."

There was nothing from the bathroom, so Ray shrugged and went back to the Etch-a-Sketch. "So some of those scars...?"

"Only a very few from...that. Turnbull knows. He recognized them; Fraser didn't tell him. But when you chop yourself *on purpose* in the leg or foot with an axe, it's clean. There's no sign of infection and the scar is smooth at the base, even if the scar's raised--like a fresh-sharpened blade makes. It's like how medics in a war zone can sometimes tell that a foot wound is self-inflicted? In this, if it was an accident, the cut is a mess, maybe an infection, usually at least a skin flap, always at least jagged, and the scar isn't so neat. But Fraser has a couple of wood-splitting marks on his right foot that--"

"--look just the same as each other," Ray whispered, and gulped. "Just the same."

"Slightly raised and even. He put the second scar by the first for the same reason Turnbull would cut through an already existing scar, or so closely next to it that it was almost impossible to tell there was any unscarred skin in between. So he could cut again, and again, without ending up with scars over so much of him that no one could help but see. As far as Fraser, who used to chop wood with a double-bitted axe, two wood-splitting cuts near the same spot in one foot--especially if it's a vulnerable area of foot; cutters are clever, they wouldn't pick some weird place like their forehead to say 'the axe slipped'-- would be easily passed off as a tendency to getting going quickly splitting wood and tending to make the same mistake. Or always cutting yourself in the same place chopping vegetables. That kind of thing."

Ray took a swig of coffee.

"Hey."

"I'll pour some more in a minute. So Fraser is a cutter too."

"No, he isn't. He was. So was Turnbull. Turnbull was to a much greater degree, but both of them were, and both of them know what the *real* problem with cutting *is*--not the cuts. Never the cuts. They are not a serious symptom; they're a minor symptom of a serious *condition*. Making the cutting stop will do nothing for making the what *caused* the cutting stop. In fact, it could drive the cutter to *much* worse."

"And this cause...?"

"The cause is--horrible feelings inside, which you are absolutely, completely, and utterly forbidden to express in any way, shape or form, to anyone. You do not make these conditions; others with power over you do, or of course you'd express those feelings. But if you do express it and something bad happens to you often enough that you get conditioned against it without even knowing you *are* conditioned against it--by the time you realize you're conditioned against expression of unacceptable emotions--and it doesn't matter what kind they are specifically, just as long as they're unacceptable *to whoever drilled it into you in particular as a child*--you've already made a few cuts that you look back on and go "Oh my God, that wasn't normal" before it even *seems* abnormal. Until it hits--that that isn't a normal thing to be driven by the hounds of hell to DO until it's DONE--it just seems like one more thing about you that isn't at all acceptable and that nobody will understand, so you're careful to cover it up, just like everything else, the thoughts, the feelings, it's all unacceptable. The cutting doesn't seem any different than that. And really, the cutting is harmless compared to what's making it happen."

Ray sighed largely. "Why is my coffee so much smarter than me?"

"I'm not. You remember Mariarosa?"

He smiled a little. "Yeah." Then he stopped smiling. "But you don't kill yourself with this unless you screw it up. I mean, you can cut, and you can kill yourself, but they're not the same thing--cutting isn't para-suicide or practicing for the big show or whatever. It's just...relief."

"That's true--in fact, some schools of psychology teach practicing it safely instead of teaching stopping it, because sometimes it's all that's between a cutter and suicide; but sometimes the cutting can't relieve it enough any more, and when chopping on your body fails you..."

"You chop on your soul. I got it." He sighed. "I didn't know Mariarosa cut."

"You do now. All the times you saw her with her legs in splints, her arms in casts? All those straight, bright, red-black scabs--"

"Mariarosa?" Ray felt his face crumple. "I know she...I knew she...they killed...but I didn't know she..."

"Ray. Ray. Ray. Ray."

He looked down at where his hands had spelled out the name four times. "What!"

"You were eight. You didn't know what cutting was *then*. It was just scrapes and cuts where she'd been hurt, you thought. You had no idea what to look for. Think of this, Ray. All those grownups with all that experience, and they *did* have the experience to know those cuts were artificial. They thought they were abuse, like the rest of the things that happened to her, but it doesn't matter now. In the end, it wouldn't have mattered if you'd stood there and taught the whole room the book on self-cutting. They *knew* abuse was happening to Mariarosa, and against what they knew the cutting was small, small potatoes, and even they couldn't save her. You were never even in the running to, so just drop that right now.

"Okay, listen. The reason I brought it up is this. Fraser didn't say anything to you because he *didn't* see until tonight just how much Turnbull has cut--the arm he showed you was his favorite, but it's not much worse off than his other, or than his upper legs, lower abdomen, anywhere that you can see to drag a knife--and he honestly thought he was protecting Turnbull from more of the crap that happens in his head every single day--*not* triggered by the *scars*, the scars are *meaningless* now; but triggered by the *memories of the things that made him feel so bad he had to make them--horrible memories of evil things happening, every day...now, horrible, ingrained and irremovable reactions to *harmless* stimuli--stimuli that *used* to signal something bad, and in his head, still do--every day, something nice and cheerful instantly being turned into something deadly depressing and just another godawful thing to be gotten through, this happening every day, every day, every day. And damn well gotten through with a smile, too, we better not see any complaining. Remember that? Remember what happened when they'd complain?"

Ray was huddled around the coffee cup, crying, having let go of the etch-a-sketch handles.

"He remembers," came a soft voice from behind him, and Ray fell back into Fraser's arms.

Fraser went on "I think what the etch-a-sketch was trying to say was...that it was entirely possible that I feel worse about saying nothing about Turnbull's cuts than you do. I may not have known about them much longer--I saw scars on him first, but he was in the shower, and usually still soapy or under spray, or drying off or some such...and I know you're wondering, so yes, I'll admit I've always thought he kept himself in marvelous condition without letting it be a point of hubris or a major part of his personality, which is rare and admirable in young men, though it was only later I started appreciating that on a more personal level. I don't think I realized for quite a while that the big one on his arm had to be one big cut and a bunch of smaller ones. I probably didn't want to, and that goes to my blame, too. Like the night I didn't want to tell you why I was angry you'd 'proposed' to him at the same time as to me. I had been...I would rather...it was myself I was protecting, Ray, as much as him! Just like now--to tell you that I knew, I'd have to tell you *how* I knew and I don't want to talk about it any more than he does!"

"Fraser?" Ray sighed. "You ain't ever gonna believe it's okay. I won't tell you it's okay. I'll just tell you this. I forgive you. I forgive you. I completely forgive you. You fucked up and I wish I'd been there to help, but I wasn't, and you were on your own, and you made a choice for reasons you're ashamed of now, and I'm sorry that happened, and I'm sorry for you, and if you think you did bad, then I forgive you. I forgive you."

By the time he was done, Fraser was in the floor with his arms folded in Ray's lap, head resting in them, whimpering very softly, while Ray wiped at the stray tear that came down hear or there.

"Hey Fraser?"

"Mm-hm?" Fraser sighed, and sniffed. He wasn't crying all-out or anything. Like Ray, he was feeling too silly to indulge so much, expecting a happy-ever-after and then getting actual life thrown in his face.

"My coffee forgives you."

Fraser snorted into Ray's leg. "Thank it for me, and finish it up before it gets cold. I'm sure it's very embarrassing to be let grow cold when you're a cup of coffee."

"He says thanks," Ray murmured to the coffee, which bubbled a little with the last drops in the bottom, and Ray swallowed it down. He burped, then chuckled. "Asshole coffee."

"It just wanted to make you laugh."

"Isn't it you and Turnbull who have the deal with the nonhumans going?"

"You too, apparently, now. I admit we all seem to have different approaches. Speaking of which..." He lifted his head as the doorknob rattled and Turnbull and Thatcher came back in.

Thatcher turned around and shoved Turnbull back out the door; judging by the odd noise he made, he didn't know why. Dief went with him. She shut the door and came into the kitchen and put her hand on Ray's chin, turned it up. He blinked up at her, licked his lips once, swallowed. She wiped his cheeks with her fingers, made a soft noise of exasperation and glanced around, found the paper towels, and gave him one to blow into while she dried her own hand. Then she crouched next to Fraser, put her arm around him, and said "Constable. On your feet, now; back to business, and then we can all get some rest."

"Sir," he said softly, smiling; Ray had been about to tell her which way the door was in case she'd forgot if she was going to be like that, but when he saw the look on Fraser's face he understood. It wasn't serious, or even cruel to be kind; it was just a private joke.

He glanced at the Etch-a-Sketch, set his hands on the knobs, but they didn't turn. He sighed.

As Thatcher went to get Turnbull and Dief, who were waiting composedly in the hallway, Turnbull with his hands folded in front of him, expression quiet, and Dief sitting on his feet, resting his head on Turnbull's leg, Fraser said "Heathcliff is here, Ray, don't worry."

"Uh...I guess he'd bring his little toy guy, yeah, but..."

"No, I mean...Turnbull's...friend, whom he often calls Heathcliff, since said friend often resides in the toy, though that doesn't seem to make any difference to Turnbull--whether this other entity is in residence or not, that is. He values the toy equally either way."

"Who *is* it who's in residence?"

"Turnbull tried to explain to me once, but the closest he could get to something I could understand was 'the Universe'. No, just don't. After."

"Right, after," Ray sighed. "He ever give it a name besides Heathcliff?"

"Mother, sometimes," Fraser said, and looked distant. "He calls it Mother."

***

"Under no circumstances?" Ray said softly to his chamomile tea.

Turnbull had insisted he switch from coffee, which he didn't need the hyperness of right now, according to any of the mounties present. "Perhaps you *did* have a friend talking through your coffee bubbles, Ray, but I find, myself, that these people *will* find or make a way to communicate if they need to. If you were to switch to sugarless, non-caffeinated soda, the bubbles--"

"No. No. No sugarless uncaffeinated. I know it's your favorite but baby, just ick, okay? I'll go as far as grass tea."

"I'm not too certain how I feel about the sucralose, but under the circumstances..." Ray made to glare at him at the very *notion* of unsweetened herbal tea, then saw the soft smile and smiled back, touched his shoulder and went to rejoin Thatcher and Fraser in the front room.

Now, Turnbull was answering Ray's question. "No," Turnbull said quietly. "If I need to do it, I'm to be let alone to do it. Mostly I'll just slip off, but I don't want anyone chasing me down. If I simply say I'm busy--as I might say for any number of reasons, if I don't feel like yelling my innermost thoughts through a closed door--that has to be respected. If either of you notice a bandage or a scab that wasn't there before, you may not demand to examine it as of right. You may ask, politely, out of concern, if you have any; but you know that I am very well versed on how to take care of such things, thank you. I've been doing it all my life. I've even been *trained* in wound care at Depot." He looked up to see how he was coming across. As expected, Ray was fidgeting. Fraser was sitting back in the sofa with one ankle resting on the opposite knee, bootlaces hanging, with his arms folded over his chest. Even with his spine relaxed, the position looked defensive--but in a vulnerable way, not a ready-for-attack way. More like he had closed down and was simply accepting whatever came, as it came; absorbing it, dealing with what he could, setting aside what he couldn't to be dealt with later.

Ray plainly hated all of it, and Turnbull loved him dearly for it. He wished he could make it easier for Ray, of course, but Ray squirming around to the point of nearly standing on his head over there to Fraser's other side on the couch was making Turnbull feel loved, for some bizarre reason.

Another help with that was Dief sitting on his feet. Well, lying on his feet. Turnbull'd removed his hiking boots and Dief was dozing in a semicircle with his belly resting on Turnbull's toes.

Meg was sitting on the coffee table. Turnbull had brought her the butt-pad from Ray's super-bedroll and it made her an excellent tailor-fashion cushion; she sat in half-lotus, her back straight but not stiff; she switched the configuration of her leg crossing and shifted weight back and forth every now and then, keeping everything comfortable and undead in the proper fashion. He found himself wondering what she'd look like doing it naked, then nearly exploded laughing when he realized how that would sound. Having *seen* her naked in plenty of positions, he knew she was very good with balance and managing areas of bodily mass to the greatest long-term low-wear comfort of all such areas. What he wanted to see was her joint and bone lineup, though a great deal of it would be useless to him personally--she was a woman, which was a whole different deck of cards in such matters. Just the difference in the size and shape of the male and the female pelvis made you have to start over again at square one. Not that the same principles didn't apply, which was why it would still be interesting to see. Well, at some more appropriate time, she would likely show him if he asked--privately, in as close to the nude as necessary, or more publicly in tights and leotard.

"Is something funny, Constable?"

"I was just wondering what you'd look like sitting there naked, sir."

Ray, currently in a postural contortion from which he could not possibly save himself against a fall, went off the couch's edge as Fraser made a noise that sounded painful, and, judging by the way he sort of jump-winced with a hand coming up toward his face, as his eyes squinched, it was. Thatcher just smirked. "I won't say the obvious rejoinder; would you care to elaborate?"

"Your postural corrections. I just thought it would be interesting to see your joint lineup and degrees of extension and flexion. I know; you can show me later, if I'm still interested. But that's what I was smiling at, and..."

"And hey, she asked," Ray managed to snort, getting back up onto the sofa. They'd all been not touching each other, but Ray automatically threw a leg over Fraser's, hooking it through the one he had with the ankle resting on the other knee. Fraser unfolded his arms the rest of the way, still feeling his face with one hand, and rested the other hand on Ray's leg.

"Did you hurt yourself, Fraser?" Meg asked.

"No," Fraser said nasally, "not seriously. I believe I've blasted air into a maxillary sinus. The residual ache will continue to fade; it should be gone in a few minutes. I've done it before."

"I'm not surprised, you hatin' to laugh at the wrong moment, I'm surprised your brains haven't come out your ears by now. Although---"

Fraser sighed. "Say it, Ray."

"It might explain a few things. I'm *sorry*, Fraser, I'm a wiseass. I can't change my *whole personality* in one day just to keep from having stupid words floating around the place."

"Ray, I don't want you to change any part of your personality. There simply must be a way to avoid this problem, and we'll find it. It probably won't even be that hard. Until then, don't let things trail off for reasons of discretion when you're in a place you resonate strongly with--such as your home or car--and which lacks the personal impressions of enough other people who aren't close to you to offset them."

"Uh. Yeah." Ray shook his head once, then said "All right. It...the cutting thing...is gonna happen sometimes, maybe, or maybe not. It's unlikely. But if it happens, we're not allowed to say boo. We can ask, if we're worried, but we have to be ready to take 'butt out' for an answer--about anything, related to the cutting or not, 'cause there's some things you just aren't ready to talk about and may never be. Am I with you so far?"

Turnbull nodded. "I've never...I've very seldom, and only under great extremity and even then by accident, made any cuts that were dangerous, as long as they were minimally cared for."

"I'll have to ask that these rules be subject to review if one of us thinks they should be," Fraser said. "Cutting can escalate, but that doesn't concern me as much as the feelings which cause it. If you're going to learn to express, you'll need our help, and...if it becomes easier to hide more, than to ask for more help..." Fraser suddenly leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, hair messed up and henley pulled half-out of his jeans, planting the foot he'd had up back on the floor and staring at Turnbull with an intensity that Ray had never quite seen on him--not that he'd never seen Fraser intense; this was a new kind, that was all. Fraser was dropping as many walls as he could, and Ray had never seen him look so human. Not in the sense of fucked up, but in the sense of undefended, unenclosed, unmanufactured for public consumption. He was trying hard to do what he was asking of Turnbull, and Ray knew why--it wouldn't be fair to demand Turnbull try to do this kind of thing without doing it himself. Ray had never seen him so open except while they were making love or a couple of occasions during work when Fraser had been royally, *royally* pissed.

"I'm going to do everything I can not to push you, and so will Ray," Fraser said, adding with a glance over his shoulder at Ray, "even if I have to sit on him, which I'm sure he'd quite like anyway, so that should be no problem." Ray and Fraser exchanged a very brief smirk and Fraser looked back at Turnbull. "But the reason you knew that this...this was the point at which something had to break--change--radically modify--was because you knew that the feelings that cause the cutting will begin to escalate. It's only by very careful walling off that you've prevented them from doing so thus far into our relationship. You know now you can no longer fool us because we will not be able to help you do so, since things will become too obvious--and for what we've 'helped' with so far, I apologize, and so does Ray--"

"You did what you knew I wanted, and tried not to push me. Ray did it for his reasons, and you did it for yours--Ray because he simply trusts me completely, and his own instincts to a degree, to tell him what needed telling when it was the right time...in short, because he gave me too much credit. You did it out of fellow-feeling, knowing what you yourself would appreciate in such circumstances. If I live with you, that would no longer be possible. Things about me that I don't like to face and don't like to share will have to be faced and shared, and you will have to decide if they're things you can live with. They aren't things that will be changing. I have been in talk therapy on and off all of my life; it can't help me, and I won't consider the medications available with the possible exception of the benzodiazepine group." He glanced at Thatcher with a smirk; she smirked back. "Those can be very helpful in improving both the amount and quality of sleep people like me get, which can be of benefit in almost all areas of physical, mental and emotional health, and will not affect performance on duty if taken only at the proper time before bed. They would also require that I be under a doctor's care simply for their administration; it would not take a great deal of effort to obtain them so long as I abided by all the strictures, and it would probably make you feel better, both of you, to know that I was under even that much medical observation."

"It would," Ray said bluntly.

"I figured. Inspector Thatcher has agreed to help me find a doctor locally whom she knows will discreetly treat such problem with that sort of medication. As you probably know, the benzodiazepine group--"

"They're tranks," Ray said, "yeah. Oh, they're classified as antiseizure, anticonvulsant--but they're controlled substances, so we pull a lot of it in with small-time cache busts. If you took a trank to help you sleep, it'd probably help you calm down a little generally, though it wouldn't mess you up on duty, you're right."

Turnbull sighed. "There *are* certain forms of duty I would be barred from if I were on these drugs," he said. "It would be understood in my files that my taking them was not mandatory but at request, to aid in a period of insomnia I was experiencing. I would be able to officially go off the drugs at request, if I should be considered for duty that required officers who were not under special medical supervision of any sort whatsoever, even anything so minor."

"Understood," Fraser said. "I would prefer that you remained...where such supervision couldn't be considered a problem, but if I am fair, I must admit I would not tolerate being unable to get out from behind a desk when I had to, if given the opportunity. I won't argue, if that happens."

"Me neither," Ray said. "They know how to get you off this stuff so you don't have some kinda nasty withdrawal or shock or whatever it would be with this kind of drugs. They're not narcotics, suddenly stopping them won't kill you unless you take 'em to prevent seizures, and if you were taking 'em for that they'd never let you be a Mountie anyway."

"True enough. I'm glad the idea makes you both feel better, since I've had the chance to check my reaction to clonazepam, and found that it made no difference at all in my level of functioning except that it improved my sleep, and made me feel more refreshed and more functional in that way. It was Meg who convinced me to try it on a probationary basis. And then only after proving to me that you don't fall asleep in the middle of sex, generally, though if your dosage isn't right you may have trouble remembering whether or not you had a good time."

Meg snorted, then composed herself and added "I've never had any problems at all with it, but side effects do exist," she told Ray and Fraser. "Turnbull should be allowed the option of discontinuing the therapy if the side effects cause him any trouble. The easiest way to avoid that, when taking them for insomnia, is to take your dose at bedtime, lie down, and stay there until time to get up. They generally start with the slowest-acting, longest half-life benzodiazepine--clonazepam. It isn't actually a sleeping pill, but it's much safer than the benzos usually marketed as sleeping medication. Those benzos are not for long-term use, as they're extremely physically addictive and the side-effects are much more troublesome."

"Ativan," Ray said suddenly. "Halcion. Sometimes Xanax."

"That's quite right," Thatcher nodded. "Those are some of them. I presume you know this from work."

"The first two are popular as a knockout drop 'cause they're fast-acting. I guess they give those to people who have trouble falling asleep in the first place."

"Often, though not always."

"As far as what we've found as use for knockout drops, there are sublingual benzos they make that get into the system right *now* and stop seizures, bunch of different kinds of spasms and stuff. People with MS and stuff besides epilepsy. Xanax takes too long to work as a knockout drop, so it isn't as popular, but it's still fast-acting enough to see use. We get a vic full of it every now and then."

"Yes," Thatcher nodded grimly. "The RCMP *is* quite familiar with the use of benzodiazepines in illegal activities, voluntary and involuntary. Unfortunately, there will always be those who use illegal access to measured and convenient doses of legal and beneficial medications in illegal purposes. In any event, Constable Turnbull would have to go on medical leave as long as he were on any kind of tranquilizing or antidepressant medication *for that purpose*. Clonazepam is classified as an anticonvulsant, but its greatest use, like most benzodiazepines, is as a hypnotic or a tranquilizer to deal with anxiety or depression. But if it is being prescribed strictly for insomnia, it would not affect his current standing; only in postings where he might be needed at any moment would an officer on sleeping medication be disallowed from duty until such time as she or he were off the medication."

"So...on his own time, he could go in for talk therapy--"

"Ray--" Fraser and Ray both looked at him. Fraser continued for both of them "This isn't kneejerk 'no shrinks' behavior. Sometimes talk therapy is useful. Sometimes it isn't. Turnbull's been through years of it, and it's never done him any good." He glanced over at Thatcher. "I'm assuming his prescribing doctor can monitor his condition adequately if Turnbull keeps him or her up to date?"

"She has always done well for me. She is a psychiatrist, but that isn't automatic death in one's records; if job stress and insomnia are given as the reasons for the consultation and subsequent treatment, and a simple prescription with low-level monitoring to make sure it's doing the job is all there is to see--well, anyone with the sort of job history Turnbull has can get away with that. I could, and though I've fought it, I've been primarily administrative most of my career--not all of it, thank God, but..."

Ray's voice was quiet, sympathetic. "You're getting kicked upstairs fast as hell."

"They don't want a woman who makes them all look sick out there doing so," Turnbull said tightly, and they all looked at him, in mild shock, which he did not seem to notice. "They won't let her do what she was born to do because of the body she was born in. Case closed." He stared at the hardwood floor.

"We all sympathize with the Inspector's predicament," Fraser said softly, in his soothing, molasseslike voice, carefully. "But I suppose we should get back to talking about our situation. I assume you have more to add?"

Turnbull sighed. "Yes. I just..." he sighed again.

"Turnbull can't promise that any of this is going to work," Thatcher said quietly. "He simply has no experience with a relationship that was not eventually destroyed by some faction of, as he puts it, his 'head'. This is the first time he has tried...full disclosure, and an establishing of rules, so that at least protecting secrets will not be a factor in his having to leave. And there is more that you might find...upsetting."

Ray surreptitiously took Fraser's hand on the couch. "We're listening."

"He has other forms of release which...which you might find difficult to witness. They don't harm him, not physically, and as near as anyone can tell, not emotionally, either, though they are...very, very emotionally painful while they're happening. They're also...fulfilling to him, and...they make it possible for him to continue in a normal life. He's tried to describe the need to do it, but never having experienced that precise need, I suppose I would have to relate it to various urgencies I *have* felt, things that I *had* to do *now*. We all have such things as that, even if they're only bodily functions."

Ray made a strange face. Fraser pointed, and Ray glanced to his right to see "Good point" floating in the air in neutral grey letters. Ray only gave them a look and they vanished in a puff of what looked like pencil graphite dust. Ray offered "I know what it's like to kill for a drink, or even worse, for a cigarette," he said.

Thatcher sighed "I know what it's like to know I cannot take one more breath nor accomplish one more thing unless I get hold of a latte, or some tea--anything with caffeine in it."

"I...wish I could say the same," Fraser said softly. "But in my case, there is only..."

"I know," Turnbull said quickly.

"He told me, baby," Ray said quietly, and Turnbull widened his eyes a little, then nodded.

"May I know?" Thatcher asked, exactly as if she were asking if she might accompany them to the movies, with the obvious implication that she would not hold it against Fraser if he didn't choose to share.

"I have...cut," Fraser said quietly, not moving or changing expression. "As Turnbull has. Infrequently, in my case. And long ago. Turnbull recognized my scars as most likely not accidental, for various reasons. I felt...rather than a frantic rush for relief--more a constant, steady pull toward it, knowing the good this would do me, the relief this would give me, on an instinctive level. It was never...thought out, which is how it usually begins, as it did for him. In my case, it didn't proceed much farther at all--the cutting, that is. The...feelings...did. I never thought much about it until later, when I happened to read an article on 'cutting' written as though it were some kind of shocking new development, perhaps even a trend--much like the attention anorexia nervosa received in the media for some years a while ago. Just as then, the press behaved as though it were something people had never done before now, as though it were a new phenomenon of some sort." He shook his head, mouth quirked in scorn. "Much, I suppose, as people imagine that child sexual abuse, and hidden addictions of all kinds, have never been a widespread phenomenon until recently. The fact that they are called *hidden* addictions should clue at least a few of them in, one would think, but evidently they believe that nothing can *be* widespread before the existence of a global media to report it in a widespread fashion."

They all chuckled in sour agreement.

"So, this thing. This other thing that Turnbull has to do, that it's hard to watch...why is it hard to watch?"

Turnbull's eyes sparkled with moisture, and he lowered his head, and said nothing.

"Because it...it makes it obvious just how very badly he was made to hate himself for existing," Thatcher said. "I...had to warn him that I might cry, myself, in reaction, or show my upset in some other way, and that he was not to let that stop him doing what he had to do."

"He's done this with you?"

"It's...a way of making love, that he has," she said, very softly. "A way of...showing love in a way that seems to be the only...only way that..." she cleared her throat. "He wants to give the good parts of himself, as he sees them, to the object of his...worship."

There was quiet a moment, and then Fraser said quietly "Worship."

"Turnbull doesn't love quite the way other people do," she said, "and I know he'd say that was an understatement. He doesn't have to do this thing I'm talking about every time he...makes love, but...sometimes...he needs to. He's always made do with what he called 'thought-forms' before."

"This is why you didn't wanna give up your place, why--why you had to break it off because I wanted you to move in with me," Ray said slowly, slowly sitting up straight. "You...needed the privacy, to do this. Thing. Whatever it is, this worshiping thing, alone."

"Yes," Turnbull whispered, but the tone was thin, and it was obvious he couldn't talk without tears right now.

Thatcher continued. "He knew it would happen. He couldn't prevent it. And he knew it wasn't fair to you to get so close to you without your knowing this about him. He's now had the opportunity to...to experiment with other than a thought-form--other than alone."

"With you."

"Yes. And he believes...that it might not be something that would...drive you away from him. Now that he's done it, and the worst failed to happen--within himself, that is, not on the outside. My willingness to allow him to do anything he needed to do--and his sureness of my friendship, and lack of judgement--was enough to allow him to get through it without it turning into..."

"The black hole," he whispered. "Accretion disk..."

"Huh?" demanded Ray.

"I believe I understand," Fraser murmured, his eyes riveted to Turnbull's turned-away face. "I believe...I know what he...what he needs. From us. And I think I can say without reservation that if he will allow us to express ourselves as well--as he did you--he needn't fear that it will...frighten us off. Turnbull..." Fraser leaned forward. "We aren't normal. No one here is normal. We are all strange, all divergent thinkers, all unusual in ways that...make us unacceptable as...as lovers, as people that close, to most humans. Even Ray, who was married to a quite conventional woman--"

"She didn't used to be. She was weird. She still is, on the inside. That's why she dropped me. She wanted to play the super-conventional game, like you gotta where she is, if you want to get up the ladder, and she does. Unhitching me was step number one, no two ways about it. I was everything that was too strange to let anybody see, in her and me both. Since I wouldn't--fuck, you know I *couldn't*, or I'd have tried--I'd have tried--" Ray controlled his rising anger and finished "She was weird. She was gonna take her law degree and change the world. Well, she decided she'd had enough of my supporting us on a rookie cop salary while she worked her way through law school, and stayed with me long enough for us to both pay off the loans that paid for it, and by that time she knew that she was only sticking around until there wouldn't be any financial leftovers to cause problems before she got rid of me. I know that's true. She used me to get the degree, after about three years into the marriage that's what the marriage was. She told me. She told me why she was divorcing me. She left me in no freakin' doubt that I was too goddamn strange for her. She didn't like...well, what I know now are all the things that happened around me that I didn't get until baby came along, though when Fraser showed up in my life, or vice versa, that's when I first started to understand--just what it was about me she couldn't take. It wasn't that I was blue collar. It wasn't that I wasn't interested in get ahead, get ahead, get ahead. It was that I was a *weird* sonofabitch and the normals, the ones who like the normal-average game and *get* the normal-average game and want to play the normal-average game, the normals, they can all recognize us once they get close enough to us personally. Sure, we pass until you get close to us. But sometimes even one conversation, if it's just the wrong conversation, will show you up. And she knew that. So she kept me around 'til she got her degree and got everything paid off, with my help, and then she got rid of me. And she told me that so I'd quit chasing her. And you know what? I wouldn't believe it at first. But I believe it now. Because when I look at her, I can see it. She's a lie. Every move she makes is a lie. Every word she says is a lie. Everything she does is a lie. I know who she really is, and I can see the lie. She knows it. She hates me for it." Ray sighed. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to get all...anyway, that's not fair. She doesn't hate me. But it's like what Turnbull said. She knows she can't have me around because of it. She maybe...who she really is...maybe even still loves me. Maybe always will. But that's not enough. I gotta be 'normal' and I never will be. She knows that."

"If you're interested in my opinion, Ray--" Turnbull gulped, and stopped.

"Sure, why not." Ray smiled gently, lifting his head toward Turnbull.

"I think what she finds unforgivable, as opposed to intolerable--you are intolerable as you are, but she could forgive you, even if she couldn't stay with you...if you *desired* to be normal and strove day and night to be so, saw whatever specialists she thought appropriate, treated your being who you are as an illness to be excised, instead of being an inherent part of your personality. That is why she is...angry. She can't stay with you because of who you are, but she is *angry* about it because you will not try to be someone you are not, and treat your own personal methods of coping and functioning as illnesses."

Ray and Turnbull locked eyes for a minute. "You're right. You're seeing it from maybe a little bit of a biased viewpoint right now--"

Turnbull smirked. "It's very biased, Ray, I'm well aware of that."

"--but you're right. But who she really is...did love me once."

"Who she really is still loves you, Ray," Fraser said gently, "and if it would help you, I don't think you should give up on trying to regain her friendship."

"No." Ray looked back up from the rug. "I don't want her friendship if she can't handle us. That's me, you and baby. And that would be too weird even for who she *really* is, Fraser. *We* all know it's a load of bupkus, but most people in this society think the proof of true love is in forsaking all others. Not that it's more convenient to keep it to two, not that you need at least one man and one woman if you want to make babies, not that the traffic problems can get messy the more people in your family partnership. Just, no sex with anyone else. Since no matter what we'd like to believe, no one can honestly promise to *love* or to *not love*, we'll settle for sex. No sex with anyone else. That makes it true love. Okay, let's make the proof of true love the willingness to bungee-jump. Let's make it the willingness to live on synthetic nutrition powders and supplements all your life. Let's pick anything at all, so long as it's stupid and unnecessary and really, really difficult because it's not natural for humans to do it." He shook his head. "But she believes in it. Just like nearly everybody else. They think it's love, and all it is, is fear." He sighed.

"I'm sorry that realization has...robbed you of the chance to get your friend back, Ray," Turnbull said softly. "I know she was that, as well as your wife. At...first. Before your marriage, and for at least a few years into it."

"Yeah. For at least a few..." Ray visibly shook himself and said "Enough about me. Back to baby."

Turnbull didn't move, but there was a feeling about him, obvious to everyone in the room, of a startled sea creature zipping away behind a cloud of ink.

"You just made like Semmy," Ray said softly. "Sorry."

"It needs to be discussed, Ray," Turnbull murmured.

"Your mouthpiece can handle it. So this thing..." Ray addressed Thatcher. "It made you cry, or want to, when he did it with you."

"Yes." Her eyes, suddenly and startlingly, grew bright with big, undripped tears. "It also made me aware of how very lucky you are. All of you, but especially you and Fraser, Ray, to have someone who loves you so completely and so...passionately, but not in the usual sense of the word. In the sense of..."

"Powerfully," Fraser supplied, his voice very soft, as though this were not news to him, but he thought he'd help out anyway. "Emotional power. 'A passion' actually used to be, idiomatically, a temper tantrum. The 'passions' were considered to be all of the more intense emotions. It's only lately that it's idiomatically connected only with sexual or 'romantic' passion."

"Exactly. He loves you passionately, in the same way he's passionately devoted to the RCMP."

"But more to you," Turnbull said, and to Ray's surprise he had turned his head a little so he was looking at Thatcher when he said it.

A tear lost its hold on her long lashes and dripped. "Don't *do* that," she complained, reaching into her purse and whipping out--surprise, surprise--a large, perfect, brilliantly white cotton handkerchief, which she carefully applied to her eye to sop up the other tear before it could run, then forestall any potential damage by the first tear before it became too visible.

A little pink heart popped into view between Thatcher and Turnbull, behind Thatcher's elbow, where she couldn't see it.

Fraser gave Ray a look while Turnbull's expression became consternated and Thatcher finished with her face, beginning to fold and replace the handkerchief.

"Love," Ray whispered, and the little heart danced, but it didn't leave, and Turnbull extended a hand to it. At the invitation, it zipped toward him and went ploosh into his solar plexus. He smiled suddenly, and touched his chest, and looked back up at Thatcher with his Turnbull look of total adoration, the one usually reserved for female country music stars and the Queen.

"Turnbull!"

Turnbull glanced around.

"Ixnay on the ooldray," Ray said in a tight-lipped whisper, and Fraser started to add "Actually that would be "'roolday', Ray--"

"Shut up, Frase."

"Ah. Erm. Of course."

Ignoring this, since those two were always babbling about something in such fashion, Thatcher said "All right, now that my labors over a hot makeup mirror are preserved, where were we? Oh, yes. I was warning you. I don't think it can be described further. I will say this--he may need to cry a good bit when you receive it well, and you will receive it well, trust me. Don't worry, even if he cries...violently. He may need to, he may need the release."

"Why would he need...?" Ray looked worried. "Baby?" he looked at Turnbull.

"Relief," Turnbull shrugged, looking back down at the floor. He wiped at his eyes quickly.

"It'll be all right, Turnbull," Fraser said. "I'll be there. And to a degree, I...understand. To a degree. So don't be afraid to do what you have to. Oh, but don't think that I'm--honestly, I'm not intimating that I completely--"

"You're just trying to reassure me, Benny, not tell me my feelings are no big deal. I appreciate it."

"I'm glad you understand," Fraser sighed. "I wish I were better at this."

"We love you even if you suck at it," Ray said, squeezing the hand he was holding. "None of us are very good at it, you know?"

"I'd noticed that, yes. Men aren't, it seems, in our society. Perhaps that's why we have such a reputation for always trying to get right to the sex."

"Well, that and a lot of us are stone jerks who only want to get right to the sex."

"That too," Turnbull muttered in an undertone while Thatcher snickered.

She added "I don't think any of you really qualify for the stone-jerk thing

"Thanks I think," Ray said, smirking. "Okay, so where do we stand now?"

"We stand at bedtime," Turnbull said. "Despite it being so early. It...it *is* all right...Meg..."

"If you need her for another night, you need her for another night," Ray shrugged. "We got room in the bed. You promise she won't leave any puddles and I guess we're fine." He grinned at the oh-cute look she shot him.

Turnbull looked down at his feet. "Bad news, Diefenbaker," he said. "I'm afraid you'll have to take the couch tonight."

"He only sleeps in there when...we're not sleeping in there anyway," Ray said.

"And when we...we need another person to help make it feel more normal, when we're...missing you," Fraser added.

"Um. That too. I...could've said that. I just chose not to," Ray said.

"You would have left it floating in the air then. That has to be a priority, maybe *the* priority, in your lessons with Turnbull," Fraser said, tsking, as he got up to go start readying for bed. Ray would go after him--then Turnbull, which would leave the bathroom spotless for Thatcher's use.

"I brought my bedroll," Thatcher said. "Turnbull and I can use--"

"Pardon me, sir, but you haven't seen this bed."

"Yes, kings are large, but still, four adults--holy cow." She stopped in the doorway. "How do the three of you get around in here at all? That's a California king."

"Practice, and Ray having a flair for ergonomics," Turnbull said.

"I've lived in places you had to go out in the hall to scratch yourself," Ray explained. "And it isn't quite a California king; it's a custom. California kings are four inches longer and four inches narrower. Turnbull needs the longer. But while this one's four inches longer, it's not four inches narrower."

"Actually," she said conversationally, "it had occurred to me that I'm getting used to having more space than I'll have in a queen if I...should acquire a regular sleeping companion. We might have to look into getting a larger mattress in that case."

"Wait and see. It'll depend on how big they are and if they sleep big or small, warm or cold, that kind of thing." Ray pulled his shirt off. He had a ribbed undershirt beneath it, but he paused, and said "I know baby's got nothin' you haven't seen--hell, you're a grownup, you've seen a man. But should we all wear jammies?"

She shook her head. "I'm not particularly concerned either way, Ray. Whatever makes you most comfortable. I plan to sleep in the underwear I have on."

"I'll go down and get your case," Turnbull said, and she handed him her car keys. He took off with his usual mountie-on-a-mission demeanor.

"Why didn't you bring up your stuff?" Ray wondered, as he got his boots off, put away--neatness was a *necessity* in here--and started on his jeans.

"We didn't know if you would be amenable to my staying. Turnbull felt he should come back this evening, whether you wanted me here or not, then realized that he wouldn't want to be here if I weren't welcome, not this particular night. I had to make him bring his duffel up anyway."

"He hadda know you would be." Ray pulled off his undershirt and laundrybagged it, leaving him in his boxer-brief stretchies.

"Are you heavy enough for the weight requirements of the CPD?" she wondered, frowning at his physique. "Not that you're, ah, unattractive at all, just very...wiry."

He made a face at her over his shoulder, getting his gun stowed. "Glad you approve, and no, they haven't threatened to bounce me 'cause I couldn't make the scale tip at the annual physical yet. Though I did get bounced out of my best weight class in boxing."

"Everyone outgrew you?"

"Yeah. My age group, I was about average, and then everyone else kept growing out as well as up and I just went up. Though I did get a little more meat. I kept at it in welterweight up to middleweight, and stopped there; after a few years, I knew I was just not gonna get the right kinda heft--see, tall's fine, but a guy my height needs to be a light heavyweight, at least, see? Middleweight is for guys six inches shorter than I am. Nothing can stop you from *boxing*, but...it's kinda like Turnbull and his gymnastics, I guess, except he's even more into it than I am."

"I'll take your word for it. My athletic passion is riding, and it's nearly entirely frustrated here in Chicago. I never saw the attraction of boxing as a sport...though I see the attraction of understanding the principles, of course, they can be quite useful--knowing *how* to throw a punch, having been trained and practiced, can often completely eradicate the disadvantage of one's opponent being larger and heavier."

"So you know how?"

"I've been taught. I've practiced. I've punched men out. I suppose that means I know how." She grinned. "But you have no idea how horrible it is to know that you *could* knock this harebrained human irritant ass over teakettle...but you can't."

"Oh, don't tell me I don't know that one," Ray said, smirking back at her. "I know that one. That's Fraser's primary purpose as liaison, see. He makes Canada look good by keeping me from looking bad."

"Or at least from looking stereotypically US-born violent," Fraser said, standing in the doorway in a pair of RCMP sweatpants and a tee shirt. He was barefoot and his hair was still messy, now even worse from the shirts being pulled over his head, and his face was pink with a wash and a going-over with the electric razor. They'd all developed the habit of using it perfunctorily at night purely for sex reasons, whether or not they had anything planned; even Fraser, who didn't especially need to. Neither Turnbull nor Ray had said a word about it, though. If Fraser wanted to join in on the three floating heads ritual, hey, fine by them.

"I'm gonna go look after Semmy," Ray said, bolting out of the room before he could start leaving polka-dotted and otherwise goony-looking letters hanging in the bedroom at his attack of the giggles over the way Thatcher was trying desperately to peel her eyes off Fraser, and the way Fraser was staring back with his little overbite chin and pretty red mouth hanging loose 'cause he hadn't really thought this out, either.

Turnbull came in with Thatcher's case, which looked like the carry-on bag of a luggage set. He also had a garment bag over his shoulder--nice work clothes for the morning, no doubt. They could all ride in together. Ray felt kinda sad that he'd be going to work in the goat all alone, but then wondered what the hell was wrong with him and turned his attention to the care and feeding of Semimodo.

"How you doin', little guy? That supplement a help? Vet says it'll fix up that little potty problem you had for a while there. Have some fresh water...let's clean up your pond..."

He felt two very large hands resting on his back. He no longer had to notice that they were longer-fingered and slimmer-shaped than Fraser's to know it was Turnbull. "Hi, baby."

"You're next in the bathroom, Ray. Have I mentioned that you're quite adorable when you take care of Semmy?"

"Stella said I was a geek."

"Stella has given up her right to her opinion's mattering in anything to do with your life, and she has given it up quite emphatically," Turnbull reminded him, nuzzling his ear. He kissed the ear then. "Ray, I missed you. I was so afraid..."

Ray turned around and put his arms around Turnbull, keeping his turtle-pond hands off Turnbull's clean tee shirt, and they both squeezed so tight it was a wonder their dinner stayed down. "I was scared too," Ray whispered. "But it's okay now. Everything's gonna be fine now. You got your...your...I don't know what to call her."

"I wish I could help you, but I don't know what to call her either. Besides Inspector."

"You got your Inspector's word for it. You trust her, right?"

"Yes."

"Love her and everything? Know she'd look out for you?"

"I could hardly doubt it now."

"Then don't worry. I promise you; I'll never leave you. Whatever you need to do. And I know Fraser won't, though I won't have to speak for him. He'll tell you himself. You might want to go in the bedroom. Fraser's in there with Meg and he's in his underwear."

"Oh dear." A tiny snort escaped Turnbull, and a little ain't-I-a-stinker shoulder hunker. "I'll just. Um. See how they're getting along."

"Yeah, though if the bed's a-rockin you might bother knockin'."

"Ray." Turnbull slapped his rump very lightly, almost more a pat; an admonition no one had ever tried with Ray before--possibly fearing a cut hand, Ray had thought with a mental sigh--and Ray found it just tickled him to death, never failing to make him grin. At least, from baby. If anybody else did it, well...he guessed it would depend. If Fraser did it, it would have to be some kind of challenge, so he'd have to turn around and slug him in the shoulder, which would end with them on the floor in a scuffling pile. If, say, Welsh did it, he'd run for the precinct nurse. Thatcher, he'd just do it back.

Huh. He never thought about it that way, but everybody *was* really all one individual, all different, all...all their own world, like that poet, whateverhisface, in school, said. No, wait, that was a woman--or was he thinking of a different poem? Anyway, it was true. Everybody was a whole point of view. Everybody was a whole world. Amazing the things a pat on the butt could make you start thinking about.

Well, there were exceptions, in terms of everyone being a world, he thought grimly, as he entered the bathroom. But they could be ignored for the sake of this rumination.

Teeth all clean and face all smooth, generally freshly splashed and damp and smelling decent enough to get into bed with other people--sleeping with the poster mounties, it was amazing how fast he'd come to realize that it was rude to get into bed with your person or people without making sure you didn't offend in any way--he returned to the bedroom, crashed into Meg's bag, and fell forward in a full-out lunge, landing on the bed and everybody on it. "Who turned the fucking lights off in here and left something in the road?"

"Terribly sorry, detective," Thatcher's voice came from his right; turned out she was the only one he wasn't lying on. "I'll just leave that in the bathroom when I'm done with it. I'll be right back, Turnbull." There was the sound of a soft kiss and he felt someone trying to get past his legs. He got them out of the way and crawled up Fraser, who chuckled, and reached for the lamp on the bedside table, turning it on. "You guys just wanna see me fall on my face or what?"

"We were checking to see if I'd be more comfortable with a nightlight," Turnbull said very quietly, and Ray instantly rolled over onto him.

"You need one?" he kissed the younger man.

"I'll be fine. I have Heathcliff and Diefenbaker says he's sleeping on his rug by the door. And I'll have the Inspector."

"You call her that even...?"

"Yes, that's...that sort of thing is what we call each other. We...I suppose it's how we're most comfortable addressing each other, no matter what we're doing, or how...intimate we feel."

"Huh. Wouldn't've thunk. I guess I'll spoon up with the radiator over here, and you can curl up with Meg in front of you facing the other way, and she won't have to get too exposed to Frase and me in our underwear and drooling and morning stiffies and stuff, and she and Frase won't accidentally have sex or anything."

Fraser crammed a pillow over Ray's face while Turnbull hooted with laughter. "I will smother that mouth," Fraser was muttering, "I will smother you dead, outrage your body, bind its lips with twist ties and stuff the body in a Hefty bag and throw it off the top of the Hancock building--"

"Is this male-male love talk?" Thatcher wondered, leaning on one shoulder in the doorway, arms folded. She looked the same, except for a pinkish scrubbed-and-moisturized face that lacked makeup and looked very nice even so, probable brushed teeth, and what she was wearing, namely a woman's cotton undershirt and panties.

Ray had flipped the pillow off when Fraser's hands went lax. He stared. He whispered, because her possibly hearing the whisper was a hell of a lot better than her seeing something like who knew, pulsing red words made of letters that appeared to be made of erect penises floating over Ray's groin. "*Damn*. Whoa, mama."

Fraser groaned "*Oh* my *God*."

That, she heard, and she looked over at him, her big brown eyes flicking upward to where he lay tangled with Ray, both of them staring at her.

"Men are unbelievable," she muttered, one corner of her mouth quirked, shaking her head. "I think the two of you are hot as a stellar core lying there like that, but do you see me gawking like a six-year-old at the circus? No, you do not."

"Quite right, you two. We're all adults here, and she can't sleep in clothes," Turnbull explained, shrugging, and getting up to discard his sweatpants and shirt, leaving him in plaid boxers with a button. "Many people, especially those with sleeping disorders like the Inspector has, can't sleep with anything that might lump up or twist around them in their sleep." He lay back down and held his arms out to her, saying "All right, now, sir, before you catch a chill like that--leave the door open a bit for Diefenbaker. Are his rug and a blanket in place?"

"Right there, back where they won't be tripped over." She pulled the door to, leaving it a few inches open, and crawled up the bed, over Turnbull's legs; he let her in under the covers with him, turning so that she was on the outside. "There you are, then. Shall we get comfortable this way?"

"Um...actually, you know I sleep moderately deeply on the meds. It's not impossible I'd sleep through being slowly pushed over until I fell out, with this many of us, the other three of you all so large--"

"Oh dear, you're right, I hadn't even thought. And we're used to this much space all to ourselves. You'd better take the inside." He lifted and turned and she slid under him, neither of them seeming at all discomfited. Of course, they'd slept together and had sex and all now, but it didn't seem to be that. It seemed more like...exactly what Turnbull had said, two adult people just doing what needed to be done without getting bent out of shape about it.

"Ray, the word, please," Fraser whispered in his ear, and Ray realized the word "nice" in all lower-case was floating in baby blue, the letters bobbing gently, one at a time, like they were doing a slow version of the wave, over Turnbull and Thatcher's heads.

"Nice?" Ray said, a little wondering at his own psyche, and just then the back of Turnbull's head bumped the lowermost letter, which happened to be the "c", causing the word to bumble a bit before finding its little wave-pattern again.

Thatcher noticed the word as Turnbull twisted to try to see it, and smiled. "Just what do you think is nice, Ray?"

"I'm not sure. You guys. You got a nice thing. I'm glad you got it. I mean, it saved baby, of course I'm glad you got it, but...it's just...nice."

"C'mere, critter," Thatcher said softly, making soft trilling coos that Ray was a bit startled to realize were a dove call--if she didn't hunt, she'd learned it someplace, that and the hearing thing--and the word did a little circle-of-niceness in the air and on down to her chest, disappearing in there one letter at a time, poof poof poof poof, tiny sparkles of pale blue light. Her eyes closed, and she smiled, and put her arm around Turnbull's neck and kissed his cheek, slow and warm. Then she rested her forehead against his neck and said "Thank you, detective. That was very pleasant. It's quite a gift you have. I'm sure it'll be of great use to you, once you learn to control it."

"Yes. Control it," Turnbull emphasized, re-wrapping Thatcher in his arms and lying down with her against two flattish pillows. Turnbull's head was supported by the top one, Thatcher's by the bottom one, with his arm under her neck; he bent the elbow so his arm wouldn't hog space. Their legs wrapped together as they spooned, rubbing against each other unself-consciously, in what looked like a reflex so ingrained they could have been sleeping together for years, not days. His other arm was folded over her front, his left hand on her right shoulder, his hands large enough to enfold the lightly muscle-rounded joint easily; he squeezed and massaged it a bit, the act looking as reflexive as their leg-rubbing as they got comfortable. Her hands came up and settled on his forearm and grasped it gently, then were still.

"You two are beautiful," Fraser said in a dreamy voice.

Turnbull opened his eyes and smiled, gazing into Fraser's slate-blues with his own baby-blue happiness-gaze. Thatcher opened her eyes too, and she looked at him, and at him and Ray where they were still lying in the pose that had half been getting comfortable, half what their scuffle had left them with, arms, hands, and legs wrapped casually here and there.

"You two aren't so bad yourselves," Meg said, as Turnbull, eyes closed and halfway to sleep, nuzzled the top of her head.

"You wanna trade?" Ray asked, and got kicked by Fraser, who, in an excess of embarrassment, then turned the light out.

In the dimness, Meg said "I might have taken you up on that if it weren't for the fact I'm...here for a reason, and hunting up a hot time isn't it."

"Well, the reason is looking pretty hot from here."

"That's because from there, you can't see that he has Heathcliff tucked into his left elbow, between my waist and his ribs."

"I assume," Fraser said softly, "that you mean...you're there with him in primarily the same capacity."

"Primarily," she said. "Though he's never actually *called* me 'mother'. I can't swear he hasn't come close a number of times, though."

"You've heard that," Ray said softly.

"I've heard him calling someone that," she whispered. "Sometimes it seemed to be the toy. Sometimes I think it's his god, or goddess. The gender doesn't seem to be very relevant, but when it does come up, as with needing a pronoun or something, it's female."

"His religion does have, depending on one's particular tradition, a god and goddess, or primarily a goddess--or the goddess as primary, I haven't quite worked that out. Witchcraft is now, as it was when it was the aboriginal religion of the western European peoples, a religion of many, many forms and surface differences, with few differences that matter significantly. From my reading, I gather that most people..."

"They don't talk to God like baby does," Ray said softly. "I've thought about that. Or maybe I should say God doesn't answer in words, and I'm pretty sure that happens with him, sometimes."

"As am I," Meg whispered.

"But then I thought--he knows how things sometimes talk to you, and you can't hear them in words, but you can...tell. He knew that, and he expected me to know it, like it was nothing. He didn't expect even Frase to know it, but he looked at me and knew I would understand, just boom."

"In many cultures," Meg said softly, "it's not unusual for horrible experiences--some brief but quite terrible, such as being badly burned--and the aftermath healing--and some longer, some that go on for years...sometimes all one's life...these things are considered openers of spiritual ways. Doors inside of us, perceptions and abilities of other kinds, are forced open by the need to survive the experience or experiences. In some cultures, it's considered almost de rigeur. Fraser?" though she spoke in a low whisper, it was all the world as if she were ceding a podium to him. Ray reflected that this was a hell of a lot nicer and comfier a lecture hall than he'd ever sat in before.

"In shamanistic training, there is always, in both the new and the old worlds, a trial--a physical trial which the candidate for shaman undergoes. One may have been born to the path, or one may have chosen it, or been chosen--but the trial is still necessary. One comes away from it with something one didn't have before--one's name as an adult or a shaman, one's spirit totem, various sorts of spirit guide or protector...and sometimes it is simply part of the training, something that must be done. There are many traditions in which the unusually gifted are marked by some deformity or illness, where it's the usual practice to look for one's successor in one's practice among the born or early-made ill or crippled--sometimes, as I said, it is simply part of the way one does things, but sometimes it is done for the reason that the experience of the horrible, if it does not kill one, gives one different abilities than the norm. One will never be like other people, and so generally there is no dissension by anyone chosen by the shamans, the cunning men or wise women, the priestesses or the rememberers, whatever name they go by, whatever way they function in a given society. Whoever translated the Nietzschean phrase 'That which does not kill me makes me stronger' did the English-speaking world a disservice. It should have been something like 'That which does not kill me gives me what I did not have before.' In other words, if the horror does not kill me, I have had a way opened in me, a skill honed in me, a thing learned that I can use for things other than simply for surviving the abysmal trauma I experienced, which is the actual reason I learned it. It can be used for more than that. And it usually is, though often people are understandably reticent about it."

"Cause they'd trade back," Ray said, in soft realization.

"They would," Fraser murmured. "They would rather have had what the horrible experience, or experiences, stole from them, than the thing or things that were left in the stolen things' places. Nothing they could get in return could make them not want to be so badly broken, so badly scarred, never to be entirely free of their pain, ever again, ever for a moment. Very, very few of them *wouldn't* make that trade back if it were only possible, I suspect." Fraser's voice was slow, and sad.

"Baby's awake," Ray said, his voice also sad.

"I know," Meg whispered. "He's crying into Heathcliff."

"Don't let him go," Ray said, low and urgent. "You gotta hold on to him. Don't let him go."

"We must all hold on to him," Fraser said, and he reached over Ray and Meg to Turnbull's shoulder. It was too dim for Ray to see very well, but a major reshuffle started to happen, and soon Turnbull was in the middle, with Fraser holding him tight, wrapped as close as he could, and Meg lying half over them, while Ray pressed up against Turnbull and parts of Fraser, on Turnbull's side of them.

"I want...to go to...sleep," Turnbull finally managed. "Please just let me go."

"I know you see us as your torturers, Turnbull, not your saviors, we're under no misapprehensions about that," Fraser murmured into his ear. "But we love you too much to let you go. We're sorry. We wish we could just give you what you want, but we can't. We can't face it, we're selfish and we love you."

"Love me?" Turnbull didn't sound like he was fishing. He sounded like somebody had said something to him in Lesser Etruscan and he was wondering why, and what it meant.

"Love you," Meg affirmed, and kissed him. "Do you remember me holding you while you cried, and me crying, too? And you held on to Heathcliff, and we cried, and cried...we touched, and didn't hide from each other, and I said I would never abandon you, that if you needed to go anywhere you were to tell me, and I would go with you, because I've been many places...and maybe where you needed to go, I'd been? Take me with you, if you have to go. I won't abandon you."

"You can't lose me," Fraser said, "you know that. But I won't force myself on you. I'll just do as Meg has and tell you that I will never willingly give up your friendship, your companionship. I'm a tracker, and I know some of the tricks of the place you want to go. Diefenbaker can find the way anywhere. He can hunt for us. Let me come too."

"Take me with you," Ray whispered, tears flowing down his face. "I got nothin' to give you, I ain't ever been anywhere, and I don't know anything, I don't even know what I'm doing, and I got stupid words wandering after me and I can't even stop them. I got nothing, I never had anything, I'll never have anything of my own. All I got is a turtle that likes you...and I can't miss with any gun you give me, long as I got my glasses, no matter what type, no matter what distance. I got that. I got nothing else, I guess it isn't much, but please, baby, don't leave me. If you have to leave, don't leave me. Let me come. Maybe I'll turn out to be worth something along the way. I'm no good now, but...let me come and maybe..." Ray pressed his face against the shoulder of the arm that was holding Heathcliff.

"No good?" Turnbull seemed to focus slowly on that. "You're no good?"

"No good," Ray sighed, and began to sob again, silently.

"No," Turnbull whispered. "No. No. He's...tell him. Somebody tell him. He's good. He's beautiful."

"I think he needs you to tell him," Fraser murmured gently. His eyes were dripping, but like Meg's, his voice was clear.

"I can't tell him," Turnbull said slowly, looking puzzled.

"Why not, Turnbull?" Meg asked softly.

"I'm not here," he said, and the light falling on his face from the window barely revealed a glassy expression.

Fraser looked up at Meg quickly, but she only shook her head. No, he hadn't said anything like this before--not exactly, though his need to see and feel his own blood...

"Ray is sad, Turnbull," Fraser said. "Could you hold him for a while?" Fraser gently moved, pushing Ray into Turnbull's arms. Ray clung to Turnbull like a vine, shivering, burying his face in the younger man's neck. After a moment, Turnbull's arms moved, and he wrapped Ray close, and began to rock. His eyes, though, were still glassy, still not there. Turnbull *wanted* to not be there, to not exist--

Their rearrangement had put Meg and Fraser on the same side, in back of Turnbull, Ray in front in his arms. "He has said something like this," Meg whispered rapidly to Fraser. "Not that he wasn't here, but that he didn't want to be. That he dreamed of...giving what of him was good to someone real--someone real, that he loved--and then just letting the rest...dissipate. Remember? It's part of what we just talked about, less specifically..."

"Oh God," Fraser whispered.

Meg stared into his eyes, close enough to see his face even in the deep blue dimness. "You know what he means."

"I do. I suspect, though, that it never went nearly as far with me as it has with him."

"Then you--*you* should--"

"No. Someone crying for him to come to them, someone in need and calling, will bring him far more quickly than anything else could," Fraser said.

She nodded slowly. "That is quite probably true."

"I can dance," Ray was murmuring, between hiccuping, quiet sobs. "And I can build things. I rebuilt the engine on the GTO. I know, you don't care about cars much...but I can build other stuff. I can fix things. Please, please take me with you. Don't leave me. Don't leave me." He clutched Turnbull as tightly as he could.

Fraser couldn't stand it. His face crumpled in a sob. Back still pressed firmly to Turnbull's, he gathered Meg up and held her as tight as he thought she could stand it, which was pretty damn tight; she was a strong woman. "Meg," he whimpered. "Ray...and Turnbull..."

"Shh," she rocked him, kissed his face slowly, gentle kisses, warm. "It may never be over, for any of us," she sighed, "but we have them now. We have...all of us."

"You too," he choked, in a tone of realization, rather than question.

"Yes, in case you hadn't noticed, me too. I...understand...perhaps to the degree that you do. Perhaps to a closer degree. I don't know. But you and Turnbull are very alike, in so many ways. I think that...you will make a good...playmate for him, while he learns how...how to feel like a child, happy like a child should feel, cared for, while he learns the things he missed, that he wants, that he needs..."

"What...what do you mean?"

"My family are dead."

"I...yes, I know..." he paused. He sniffed, wiped a few tears she'd missed from his cheeks and asked carefully, thoughtfully, "What...what is in your closet, Meg?"

Her eyes were shiny with the light from the street, but flat, much like Turnbull's had been. "Skeletons," she said. "Skeletons...one is my friend."

He nodded, saying nothing, just looking back at her, into her huge brown eyes. He figured she'd explain her use of the common expression, but instead, she only whispered "She says nice things..."

He nodded again. Now he was unsure. He essayed "Some of them...don't say nice things?"

"They have bony hands," she whispered. "My friend, she comes to sleep with me sometimes, she's very cold...and bony. But they're only bones, you know...it's just that they're hard...she never hurts me, she's just...inconvenient sometimes. Sometimes I like her there. Sometimes I talk to her."

"Is she a good friend?"

"She's a very good friend."

"But the others."

"But the others."

"They have bony hands."

She made a little noise and curled up against him. He held her tight, saying quickly "But your friend is nice."

"She's nice. There's another, she's not bad. There's another..." she stopped again.

"Your friend, who sleeps with you, though she's cold, and you talk with her? Does she have a name?"

"Magpie," Meg said. "Her name is Magpie. Like my name, except I call her Magpie..."

"Shh..." Fraser lowered his head to hers. God. Holy God, he'd had no idea...so, what had made Meg Thatcher a shaman child, like Turnbull--to a lesser degree, like Fraser, or even Ray?

"Ray," came Turnbull's voice from behind them. "Ray, what's...what's wrong, Ray, sweetheart...little sweetheart...of course...Ray, I love you..." He still sounded distant, his voice high and soft, but he was aware of Ray, concerned for him, knowing who he was."Ray, my Ray..."

Ray made an awful, sobbing noise and threw his arms around Turnbull's neck. "Baby! Don't leave me, please don't leave me!"

"I won't leave...I won't leave. I won't leave you stranded anywhere, I couldn't leave you lost...I love you, Ray...sshhh..."

"I don't have anything you want."

"But...I want everything you are. You don't have anything I don't want, Ray. You're *real*. So real, and good, and beautiful."

"Stay with me. Please."

"You want me?"

"Yes! Forever, baby, *please*..."

I won't go, then...I suppose...I can't..."

"Listen, Turnbull, baby, I want all of you. I want the parts you *don't* want. I want the parts you *hate*. I want 'em, I want 'em all, don't throw them away--don't hide them--please, I want you, I want all of you--"

"Ray, shh, I'm here, I'm here..." Turnbull sounded confused, but focused on Ray's distress, not on whatever nothingness had been his focus before. "All here...see...Heathcliff is here...and Fraser is here, and Meg, and Diefenbaker is here...Dief, come in, please--"

Dief had jumped onto the bed before Turnbull finished speaking. Ray had Heathcliff kind of crammed under his chin while he held Turnbull around the chest hard, and Turnbull was puzzled, and dazed, and sad, his eyes tearing, little silent sobs escaping. He looked very upset and confused. But he was with them. He *had* come back for Ray, he couldn't leave him alone and crying.

"Do you think...if Ray hadn't--"

Fraser looked at Meg, and now he saw the woman he'd began to know this evening in the front room, and the woman he'd known for years. Not the woman with a skeleton in her closet that slept with her. The woman who, less inexplicably, now, took sleeping pills. Speaking of which.

"I don't know, Meg. I doubt it. I think he just would have lain there until he began to cry. That's what I always used to do. Then sleep, and wake, and...keep going. No reason, no good, no thing, beyond the next step, but...just keep going."

Meg reached up and stroked his hair. "Fraser. You know I love you. I understand...what you mean. Let me help, when I can."

"When we can. But I think they need our help. Have you taken your medication?"

She sighed. "No, I forgot, since it's not in the pill minder I keep in the bathroom; I just brought the bottle. I think perhaps Turnbull might benefit from one as well. He's taken them before, at my apartment. I have a few extras from nights that I don't get home at all, or simply forget the pill and end up awake without realizing why. As I said, they're the safest, gentlest-acting drug, by and large--there are always exceptions--in their class. Should I go and--no, in a few minutes, I think."

"I think you're right."

***

They were in a huddle in the middle of the bed. It couldn't properly be called a sleeping arrangement, but none of them seemed to want to move.

Fraser seemed the most calm and capable, and with Dief's help he made sure everyone had kleenex and water and their medication and anything else they seemed to need. He had walked everyone out to the little altar to light the candle there; set in a shallow cereal bowl with a layer of water at the bottom and checked on periodically by Dief, who got up a few times a night to patrol anyway, it would burn until morning. Turnbull seemed pleased by that, smiling at the candle vacantly. Ray had gazed at it with what looked like sheer, desperate hunger, and had almost had to be pulled away from it and back to bed by main force. If it weren't for all six of them sort of moving him that way like the tide, Fraser wondered if he'd have just stayed out there. There was just no place to put it, or, to make Ray and Turnbull as happy as possible, he'd have brought the altar in.

"It's orange juice," Ray said, his voice raspy. He held a small silver chalice from the altar, and the black-handled dagger, the latter of which he gave to Turnbull.

"Make a poink like this," Turnbull said quietly. "I don't like doing it this way, but most people don't like cutting a small vein, which is what I prefer. Plus, you can't cut with a dagger, really." He demonstrated making a poink in a hard-squeezed fingertip to get a drop of blood, as in a laboratory to get a smear for a slide, but instead of a lancet he simply squeezed a drop into the cup. One by one, Ray swearing while Meg sucked her finger and held the chalice--Turnbull gently pulled the finger out of her mouth and she sourly obeyed the silent injunction not to put it back in--they all followed suit.

"I drink of my fellows," Turnbull said, sipping from the chalice, rubbing a thumb along the edge of the pentacle, "and I swear that, as they have pledged never to restrain me or hinder me, I will never...leave them, in any way, without telling them, and that...I will try to let them have as much of me as I can, whether or not I believe they could want it." He touched a bit of juice to Heathcliff's muzzle and handed the cup to Fraser.

He sipped, and said "I drink of my fellows, and I promise to listen better to their wisdom, as they have listened to mine; to share more with them, as they have with me; and never shall any of them appeal to me in vain." He rested his hand on Dief's head, and put a drop of the juice on Dief's tongue, which Dief sort of mlahed at but didn't spit, and Fraser handed the cup to Meg.

She swallowed, and spoke. "I drink of my fellows, and I will remember more carefully that my troubles are not of their making and that I must not involve them any more than necessary in them...and," she went on, as Turnbull and Fraser looked sternly at her, "I will remember...that they love me, and that...I am not alone any more." She said the last bit almost as though it were frightening rather than reassuring. She let her head drop and passed the cup to Ray.

He kissed her hand as he took it, and she looked up at him with gratitude. He looked like shit, all cried up and tear streaked and bedhead and miserable, but hell, none of them looked better, sitting there in their underwear, hiding under the covers with Ray's flashlight, with the dog, and Turnbull's toy, and a little sleepy turtle.

So, what the hell. She caressed his cheek before letting the hand fall.

"I drink of my fellows...so does Semmy--here you go, here, Semmy...it's fruit juice...there, not so bad..." he gently placed Semmy in a shallow bowl of water held out by Fraser. Semmy propped himself, resting his upper half on the rock in the bowl to peer over the edge. Ray went on "And I promise that I will love and honor and cherish them until death do us part, and death won't make me leave if I have any say." He looked up at their shocked faces and said "I know. But it's how I feel and it's what I mean. I love you." He looked back down into the cup. "And I promise to respect them and listen to them and make them listen to me if they're being dumbasses and need my help, and I promise to go to them when I got a problem and be there for them when they got a problem, and I guess everything else that Fraser managed to say with one nice sentence where I gotta say a whole page. I guess I can't promise to love them, but I promise I *do* love them, and that if I ever didn't love them, which won't happen, I wouldn't pretend I did when I didn't. I can promise never to lie about it. And I would be kind about it. And I hope they would do the same, and I know they would, I'm just saying it 'cause I'm thinking about it--"

"We would, Ray," Meg said.

Ray gave the chalice back to Turnbull, who said "In the name of Love, we abide by the rede...and we will seek the Love we have not found. And we will be that, for each other, until we don't need to. We are together while love shall last, and respect shall be our guide for our journey together. For we are handfasted. And we are a coven."

"Are we married?" Meg asked very quietly.

"In this faith, yes," Turnbull said. "Though the ceremony is somewhat spontaneous, to put it mildly. But that doesn't matter. And we needn't be handfasted to be a coven. That's simply...what *we* are. While it's proper and right."

"While it's proper and right," she said. "But we've all said, at some point...we'll never leave at least one of the others, or all of them."

"That's friendship," Ray said, and managed a smile. "Like when you don't walk away and leave somebody crying, you might do that just to be nice, but if you get back off a plane before takeoff and take a cab sixty miles to get back to where you were leaving because they were crying--that's friendship."

"That's love," Fraser smiled.

"That's...the same," Meg said.

Dief hrufed. Semmy splashed. The word "love" came glowing pink and settled against Meg's breastbone, radiating softly.

"Do I get to be a priestess?" she wondered, her hand over the word, her eyes closed, smiling.

"You can be anything you want. You can play first base," Ray promised her.

"You can sleep in the Super Bedroll," Fraser added.

"You can sleep with us," Turnbull said softly, looking up. He still looked like shit too, but so did they all except Dief, Semmy and Heathcliff. Ray's word glowed on her chest, and Fraser reached up to gently touch her cheek. Nothing needed saying between them.

"Tonight, sleeping--actual unconsciousness--sounds wonderful," she said.

"I'll take everyone who has their own bed to it--no, Dief, there simply isn't room, and you feel you have to patrol anyway--it would wake Turnbull and Ray and Meg, and they need to sleep."

Dief grumbled about at least being allowed his rug and blanket on the floor in here. He could move in the morning, take his bedding out of the way. He was needed here, right now.

"That sounds right," Meg said.

As Fraser was climbing out of the blanket tent to take Semmy back to his heated tank, Meg was stroking Ray's word. It wasn't going ploof, or sinking in. Her eyes were getting slitted, but that wasn't too surprising, as worn out as they all were. She was rocking a little with the stroking motion.

Ray said "Meg."

"Mm-hm."

"Uh..." Ray was panting very softly, slumping in place where he sat, rocking in time with Meg. "When you do that, it's like you're petting my whole body."

"Uh." She paused, looked at the word--it glowed love at her--and she looked at Ray. "Does it feel good?"

"Yeah. Real, um. Really fucking good. All over. It's making me warm and happy and fall asleep and get a hardon. Maybe you better just take it in for tonight."

Meg smiled while Turnbull blushed. "All right. In you come, love..." she made the little low trilling dove calls, and the word sank into her, making her sigh, and Fraser came back and let Dief out of the tent, and got his covers situated and came back in.

"We can't sleep in here. We'll suffocate and fall out and suchlike," he pointed out. "All the other things our adults used to tell us when we had a perfectly good tent made out of the bedclothes."

"But we'll all be here. Who wants to use me for a teddy bear so I don't get shoved out of the bed?" Meg asked. "I'm up for grabs, although Turnbull--"

Turnbull held his arms out at once, and no one had really expected otherwise; she moved into the middle of the bed with him, then there was scuffling and rearranging with pillows and people's incompatible anatomy and such, and finally they ended up as they'd begun, with Fraser on one side, Turnbull on the other, holding Meg, and Fraser and Ray on the other side, facing inward as the other two were.

"You *are* beautiful," Ray said, and leaned forward and kissed Meg softly on the mouth. Then he leaned up and kissed Turnbull's forehead and exhanged a smile with him. Turnbull seemed to honestly *feel* the smile, for the first time since he'd fallen half-asleep, earlier that night.

"So are you, as much as any of us are right now," Meg said gently. "Well, except the asshole behind you, of course, making the rest of us look bad."

Ray laughed and Turnbull muffled a snort in Meg's hair.

"Asshole?" Fraser demanded. "I told you. With the exception of some occasional trouble with my hair..."

"You always look perfect and the rest of us look like dog poop," Ray backed Meg up. "If you want to get insulted by that, go ahead."

"Uh...I don't think I'll bother," he said, and they all smiled.

Under the bed, Dief chuckled to himself and watched sparkles swirling.

"That light..."

"It's Heathcliff," Turnbull said. Then he yawned, and seemed to fall asleep.

"The light under the bed is Heathcliff?" Meg said.

"I gave up when I thought it was the toy wolf critter," Ray said.

"I think we can worry about it tomorrow. Turnbull knows what it is, and he obviously feels no threat. Nor does Dief, which would seem to close the case." Fraser yawned.

"I guess. Everyone sleep good. I love everybody. Thank you for helping me when I lost it."

"Ssh, Ray, we all lost it," Meg said softly.

"She's right. But you are, and always will be, welcome," Fraser said.

"Don't forget that," Meg said, and seemed to nod off, too.

"Do you think it's safe to go to sleep?" Ray said.

"I think so. I also think it's a good thing we were tired and decided to go to bed early."

"Yeah, if we sleep now we won't be too dead tomorrow. I love you. Sleepy-byes."

"Goodnight, Ray. And Dief."

Dief said goodnight and for godssakes shut up before he woke any of those poor exhausted people.

"Good point," Fraser whispered, sighed, and closed his eyes.