Aliens (not quite) Made Them Do It
by little-b
Disclaimer: due South belongs to Alliance Atlantis. They make money, I don't. Natch.
Author's Notes: This is for janne's birthday.
Story Notes: Beware of the stonking great cliche!
Aliens (not quite) Made Them Do It
A birthday story for Janne, written by little-b
"Fraser, what are we doing here?"
Fraser himself felt he would rather persuade the world to stop spinning than to answer Ray's question. And he allowed himself this luxury, since Ray was bound to ask again in a minute and perhaps by then his location would be clearer. On the other hand, if Ray was asking where they were, clearly the visual clues available were rather scanty. That or Ray was a dizzy as he was.
"Fraser, I asked you a question, dammit. Where the H E double hockey sticks are we?"
Besides, there was something perversely attractive in this Ray's anger, unlike his, ah, predecessor, the way he was before the unfortunate accident with the armadillo smugglers and the ton of oiled herrings had left him under the delusion that he was actually a Polish cop with the quite ludicrous name of Stanley Kowalski.
No, nothing like the old Ray at all. That Ray's anger made him nervous and fearing for their tentative friendship, this Ray's anger made him feel alive. Except, that was stupid, he was indubitably alive and there was no proof to the contrary. Unlike his father, who had presumably gone to bother some psychic medium, he could hold a conversation with a wide variety of people and have tactile experiences. He rather like the sound of "tactile experiences", while he enjoyed poetry he rarely achieved it. Except of course when it involved Diefenbaker and de-lousing shampoo.
Of course, every task has a pleasant element; it is only a matter of finding it. When he had expounded this philosophy, Ray had muttered something about "Mary Poppins" and had proceeded to answer him in the most risible attempt at a cockney accent he had ever heard. At least, he presumed it was a cockney accent; the alternative was that a lifetime of shouting at people and threatening to kick them in the head had finally done some serious damage to his vocal cords.
Fraser tried to lever himself up from the floor and immediately regretted it. His head hadn't felt this bad since that day as boy he had gone bobbing for trout and Marvin Jjones had held his head under the water in some childish prank. Now he felt dizzy and light-headed and a small and distant voice said that it was "vertical hypertension and would disperse in a minute, that or it would transpire that he had a serious heart condition and subsequently expire."
---
"Ray, I don't feel terribly good" This was so much not greatness. Really. Since when did Fraser, his crimson crusader, his super Mountie, ever, ever complain of feeling bad? Even when Warfield's thugs beat on him, Fraser was so "it's only a scratch, Ray; it's only multiple contusions, Ray," and yeah, while Fraser owning up to how he feels might be good in other circumstances, Jesus he was beginning to talk like Fraser, maybe he was entering substitute Fraser mode, right now it was so not greatness. Even if it might prevent that recurring dream of his from happening, where a shadowy half-real Fraser leans over him and says, "Ray, it was only a land mine laid by killer marmoset rights zealots, nothing to worry about, I'm only dead, but when did that ever stop a Mountie from carrying out his duties? it never stopped my father..." and he'd be screaming "Shut up, shut up, shut up," wanting the dead Fraser to go away and hoping that he never would.
Right now a clueless, dizzy, and slightly sick looking Fraser was so not a good thing. Why? Get a clue-bus, because he had no fricking idea where they were and it was one freaky Mountie nose and magnetic homing instinct thing between them and whatever insidious plan their captor-of- the-week had. Insidious, huh? Clearly overcompensating. But captor-of-the-week, wouldn't miss if for anything, except maybe Ma Vecchio's cannelloni's. Sure, life BF (that's before Fraser) was 1) safer and b) saner, but life with the Mountie, that was greatness, that was adventure. It was everything he thought being a cop would be about back when he was a kid and his career plans consisted of finding a Green Lantern ring at the fleamarket and thus being able to eradicate Miss Wannamaker and the math homework of doom from existence. That was before he found out that cop work involved very boring stake-outs of equally boring people followed by a dose of boring homework. And it didn't anymore. Even the homework was interesting.
All he wanted to do now was take Fraser home. To, uh, help with his homework. Yeah. But honourable Mountie wouldn't do a thing like that and boy, did Ray know it.
However, right now he needed some real homework help, because the last time anything made any sort of sense was when they were walking down that alley, to try and get Dief back before he realised that a Jaguar was no mere pussy-cat for him to terrorise. Well, he presumed Dief terrorised cats, but Fraser said he was a working dog who should hunt for his own food ("But Frase, he's hunting for donuts, high energy food and that, to sustain him in the wilds of Chicago" "Ray..." "What's so getting on your beeswax, Fraser?" "That was my donut"), so maybe he ate 'em instead.
---
As he tried to block out the dizziness with a Tibetan yodelling spider mantra, which failed entirely because of his division of his attention, he tried to recount the events, which had led to this curious predicament. They were proceeding after Diefenbaker who was in hot pursuit of Fluffy, the State Attorney's pet Jaguar/Lynx cross, when a corona of light, rather similar to the Northern Lights, but a bright pink he had heard described as "bubblegum", surrounded them, and he was now on a lushly carpeted floor, but rather oblivious to the rest of his surroundings because his vision hadn't quite cleared up yet. This lack of vision somewhat worried him, but it had returned last time ad there was no cause to assume it wouldn't return again. Even if the circumstances were totally un-analogous.
So he asked a question he knew he'd regret, "Ray, my vision's rather hazy right now, could you kindly describe our surroundings? The process of putting our experiences into words often results in insight and elucidation..."
---
Okay, so Fraser was sick, but not sick enough to not spring words like that on a guy who'd just had a troom, traume, traumatic experience. Or maybe that was a sign that he was still sick in that freaky Mountie way of his. How to spot a healthy Mountie, glossy hair, a nose that smells everything, and a vocabulary like he swallowed the freaky dictionary.
Fraser wasn't sniffing anything so he scored a quite reasonable two out of three, bringing him down to the level of a mere mortal.
"It looks like a bedroom. A really well-appointed bedroom. It's very pink, so maybe it's best if you can't see it." The guy's clearly suffering; let's leave out the scary bits for now.
"Ray, I've picked up on the general pink style of the room. Perhaps they called Renfield in to decorate."
Aha! Snark! Our patient is well on the way to recovery and will soon be once again the world's snarkiest. And clearly he was back together enough to handle the next bit, Ray sure wished he was too, "And I've been detectoring, looking in the drawers, and they're filled with, uh, things."
"Ray, I do believe my vision has quite recovered. If you show me these drawers, I might be able to find a substitute for your metasyntaxic variable."
First law of playing with the Mountie: do not question the vocabulary unless strictly necessary. Okay, the one thing he didn't know in his sentence, "things", well actually he did know, but he sure as hell wasn't telling Mr Clean Cut Mountie that, he had been happily married for eternity and had no luck after, that was his story and he was sticking to it. One thing in Fraser's sentance he didn't know, "meaty sintastic thingy", which sounds like the name of one of the things in the drawers, so there is a direct coral, choral, correlation. Ergo (he so needed to get 'way from the Mountie and his stealth vocabulary exercises of death!), Fraser was just saying thingy fancily.
"Uh, you sure you want to look?" Christ, he did not want to explain this stuff to the Mountie.
"Of course, why don't we start with that drawer there?" Oh, fuck, not there.
---
"Ah, marital aides, Ray," Fraser said, somewhat baffled at his partner's unease, which was baffling as it was hardly as if this Ray was inexperienced, it was a well known phenomenon that couples in long term relationships resorted to such measures, to, what was the vanacularisation, "spice up" their lives. Unless, of course, Stella hadn't wanted to be spiced up terribly much and that had been a contributory factor...
"Is that what they call them up in the frozen north, Benton Buddy?"
"Sometimes, Ray, though the expression is quite dated even there, I sensed your unease and went for the turn that would least disturb your sensibilities." Not to mention that Fraser's sensibilities (and probably Ray's for that matter) were more than disturbed enough by the implications of being locked in a windowless room with only a large bed and prodigious collection of sex toys for company.
"Waitaminute, you callin' me disturbed? I'm so not, freak. You wouldn't know what this was if I hit you with it."
"It's a dildo, Ray, a rather expensive one by my estimation, note the quality of the moulding and it seems to be made out of latex, for, ah, added realism." Fraser could feel the blush coming, and with that a deep fear, things never went well when he let his mouth run away with him; what would Ray think of him now?
This continued to perturb him until Ray grabbed him from behind, and began to try and wrestle with him on the shag carpet. Clearly, it hadn't affected their relationship at all. Everything was normal. Perhaps this was the meaning of the phrase "jump bogart"?
---
They were still wrestling, and Fraser had gained the upper hand because of Ray's sporadic fits of giggles, when there was a cough. Cough is probably the best way to describe it anyway, it sounded more like a cross between your vacuum cleaner giving up the will to live and the cat yicking up furballs all over your girl's best cashmere sweater.
Then came the odd, high pitched voice, "It's not meant to work like that. It's commendable what you've done, not the worst we've ever seen, but..."
Ray interrupted, and this was one of the few times Fraser didn't secretly want to censure him for his lack of manners, "What the frickin' hell are you playing at? You've kidnapped two law officers in the middle of tracking down a very big animal and you say we're doing it wrong? And what the fuck are we doing wrong anyway?"
"Ah, perhaps it should be better if we reveal ourselves," and with that a screen opened in the wall opposite the bed, "we a Cupidons, of the planet Cupidos, and it is our mission, as decreed by our great ruler Sock Raties, that we sort out the woeful state of affairs on this world," they looked rather like pigs, green pigs, but pigs nonetheless.
"...that is in reuniting all the split halves, in finding "true loves" as you term it, and making sure they happen, when we detected your presence, our transferrantic beam picked you up and bought you here, to this environment, subtly designed to work on your subconscious wishes, on our mother ship. Clearly the design is a bit off, but your feedback will, of course, help us to rectify this failing."
"So how do we get back to rescuing the attorney's pussy?" Ray thought for a moment and added, "cat."
"Simple. You carry out your deep-set and passionate love."
Yeah, simple. Then Fraser goes all funny, "You know Ray, I have always desired you, with a deep and impossible yearning that I never thought would be fulfilled..." For a moment Ray thinks they've replaced him with an alien double, because they do that, he's seen the movies, and the docu-dramas, and Frannie's copy of the National Enquirer.
Then, wham, he gets hit by the clue-bus, but instead of it hurting, it feels, uh, good, "Oh yeah, Fraser the first time I saw you in that uniform of yours, I just knew it was fate," and then Ray leans in closer and grabs Fraser by the lanyard, ouch gotta hurt, "That and your uniform is the hottest thing to ever grace the human form." Yeah, it doesn't sound much like him either, but that's the idea. And Ray thanks God, for that afternoon, when aged ten he'd sneekily read his mother's romance novels, the ones with all the fancy-schmancey gold lettering, in search of the truth about the ES EE ECKS thing.
"But, Ray, I could never possibly act on these impulses unless we are totally unobserved. It is contrary to my vows of Mounite-dom," Fraser turns to the startled aliens on the screen, "Surely you've heard of Mounties? We are very distinctive, I mean, look at my sacral costume..." Way to go, Fraser, hit them with the dictionary of doom, it's not as if they'd have the faintest what he was going on about, because they were, like, foreign.
"Quick Broodlefunt, make notes," says the bigger hairier alien...
And Ray tries very hard to look serious, okay aroused, not as if that bit's hard, actually it's really hard, if you know what he's talking about, but he's trying real hard not to think about the Muppet Show.
---
One long round of O&C later, they were beamed back off the ship, leaving two very confused aliens in their wake. Fraser reckoned he got his talent from his father, apparently, and had whispered to Ray that he really ought to meet him one day, so perhaps the bump on the brain had done more damage than Ray at first thought. But then, it was like that time with the hypodermic, hypnotism. Ray had paid very close attention to what the sneaky Mountie had been saying, and reckoned that Turnbull and the Ice Queen would be getting a very unexpected day-trip soon.
"I'm not one to take the Lord's name in vain, but thank God that's over." Clearly, the O&C stuff was exhausting, and Ray was not going to even try saying that in full, because there were way too many "shuns" out there without him adding to them.
But his Mountie didn't just look tired, he realised, he looked kinda, sorta, awkward. Something was off as heckoola. "Fraser, is that your hand in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?"
Fraser flailed wildly, "Ah, no Ray," and slipped his hand into the bulging pocket, "It's, uh, this."
Ray stared at the dildo. This was the guy who, allegedy, couldn't steal milkduds. On the other hand, he could also use post-hypnotic suggestion for laughs. And he stole a, um, you know, thing...
Fraser took advantage of the silence, "I thought it would make a handy cosh with which to incapacitate our captor."
"Yeah, right," Benton-Buddy, Ray thought, I've seen you in action all afternoon, why do you think that the OC shit will work on me, not when he's seen the guy behind the curtain and all, "Why don't we start with the good old-fashioned classic, yeah?"
"Whatever do you mean, Ray?" Good, but no cigar, which is good, because there was no fricking way the Mountie smoked, even if Ray wanted to cave in right now, and resume the habit of half a lifetime.
"You, me and the bed. My bed, because I ain't going to yours to do it on the freaking cot."
"Ray?" Come on, lay off, Benton. You may be able to fall some of the people all of the time, but how the heck did that go? Ray couldn't think, because well, doh, his brain wasn't doing much right now, except taking instructions from what Fraser might (but hopefully won't) call his "lower member".
"You meant everything you said up in the flying saucer?" If he didn't Ray was screwed, if he did Ray was going to get screwed, and he was trying to look on the bright side here.
"Of course, Ray." Okay, Ray thinks he wants to take the Lord's name in vain here, too.
"Then let's get at 'er"
"There isn't an 'er in this, Ray."
"Yeah, I know, wonderful ain't it?"
FINIS
End Aliens (not quite) Made Them Do It by little-b
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