Disclaimer: I don't own them - I just like to play with 'em!

Author's Notes: Thank you, as always to nicci_mac for a first read and to missapocalyptic for the careful beta. Any remaining errors are my own.

Story Notes: Written for the Dream Challenge on dsflashfiction.

The click of the closet as it opens is swallowed by the gentle tick-tock of Fraser's alarm clock on the nightstand. A pale, watery kind of light spills gently into the darkness of the room and slants across the sleeping forms, curled carelessly together on the bed.

"This is completely unnecessary, Caroline. I know what they are to each other, I don't need to see it to understand it."

The speaker is propelled into the room with a kind but insistent hand against his back.

"Keep your voice down, Robert," Caroline Fraser admonishes in a whisper. She takes him by the hand and leads him to the foot of their son's bed.

"Now what?" Bob asks gruffly, his eyes firmly on the wall above the bed where a photograph of a snowy landscape hangs, the distinctive trail of a sled scored across the pristine foreground.

"Oh, Rob, can you not even look at him?" Caroline sighs. "Our son. Our only child. He's happy. Why can't you be happy for him?"

"He doesn't need me to be happy for him. He obviously knows what he wants," Bob sniffs and continues his appraisal of the dimly lit bedroom. It's simply furnished with wooden floors and plain cotton curtains at the window that have been left drawn back, letting in the moonlight and the cool night air.

"You haven't been to see him in five months, Rob. He thinks you can't come anymore. He's missed you."

Robert Fraser grunts and rolls his eyes. He walks to the window and looks out into the night. "What is this place? This isn't where he lived before. Is this the Yank's place?"

"No, this is Ben's new posting, remember? I told you that he was coming home. We're near Liard River." Caroline says patiently.

Diefenbaker pads into the room, his claws clicking on the wood when the rugs run out. He comes around the bed and sits down beside it where a foot sticks out from beneath the sheets. Tipping his head to one side, the wolf regards Bob with an almost amused air about him.

Bob tips his head too and stares at Dief. "What's wrong with the dog?" he mutters. "Looks like it wants something."

"Probably wonders why you're behaving like such an ass," Caroline whispers.

"Caroline!" Bob says, plaintively. Dief wuffs very quietly and Bob swears he's laughing. He scowls at the disrespectful lupine, who ignores him, turns around three times and settles down to sleep again.

"It was you that finally made his mind up, you know? While they were chasing Muldoon," Caroline says, her eyes never leaving the shadowed form of her boy.

Bob looks stunned. "What? What are you talking about? I never said anything to encourage this," he waves a hand at the two sleeping men, then averts his eyes again. "As I recall, I told him to leave the Yank in the snow."

"You knew perfectly well what Ben was feeling. You knew for a long time even before they came to Canada."

"Nonsense."

"Oh, really? 'You need the Yank, son,' 'You've got to trust your partner,'" Caroline made her voice low and gruff in a fair approximation of her husband's. "'Partnership is like a marriage.' Ring any bells?"

"Yes, but..."

"No buts, Robert. I don't know why you are being so pig-headed and stupid about this. I never thought that you were a man to hate someone on the grounds of their sexuality. Particularly your own boy. And don't give me all that rot about grandchildren. You don't even like children until they can shoot straight and track a moose fart halfway across the Territories."

"Caroline!" Bob gasps. He's never heard his good-tempered, gentle wife so cross as to say "fart", except that one time when he burned down the cabin. He thinks he wants to laugh, but she's got still more to say.

"It's not illegal. It's not immoral. It's not disgusting. It's love and he's happy, Robert. For the first time in years he has a home, a real one, with someone there for him at the end of the day; someone who loves him. Would you seriously deny him that so you can maintain your mental ideal of what constitutes a loving relationship?"

Bob watches, shocked into silence by Caroline's outburst. She closes her eyes and breathes deeply through her nose, composing herself. When she finally turns her gaze on him again, her eyes are suspiciously bright but her voice is soft once more.

"Look at them, Rob. It can't be wrong." And she turns away to disappear back through the closet door.

Bob sighs and rubs a nail across his eyebrow. Out of the window he can see that the moon is just about to set, silvery and sharp behind the mountains. He turns back into the room and walks around to the foot of the bed where Caroline stood. He takes a deep breath and looks at his son and his lover where they lie tangled together in dreams.

Benton's hair is longer, Bob notices; it falls over his ears and onto his forehead. Where they lie so close together on the pillow, Benton's dark curls and the Yank's blonde spikes mingle, twisted together like the rest of them.

He's not young anymore either, Bob is surprised to see. There are lines around Benton's eyes and mouth that even sleep can't smooth. He looks... peaceful and untroubled. And he sleeps deeply now, not like he used to - alert and ready for action even as he rested.

In the mixture of moonlight and the glow from the closet, Bob can make out the line of the scar that tracks along his son's jaw. He still recalls the day he got that; it had been on one of his intermittent visits. Benton had almost been a man; fifteen, tall, slim and with a quiet gentleness to him that had made Bob think of his lost wife.

He'd been involved in a fight, protecting a classmate from the taunts and, ultimately, fists of his peer group. Benton had always refused to say what it was that had provoked the attack on the unfortunate boy or who it was that had scarred him. With his characteristic poise, uncanny in a teenage male really, Benton had endured the lecture, completed his punishment without complaint and never revealed what had really happened, or why he was now persona non grata, both with the bullies and the rest of his class, including the boy he'd championed.

Bob sighs and wonders if he might now have his answer here, twenty-odd years later. It's a long time to have been silent for. A long time to have been alone.

Benton's arm is thrown over the Yank's body, paler than the slender, tanned form of his lover. Bob is glad to see that his muscle tone doesn't show signs of aging too; he's obviously still fit and strong. His moving in with the Yank hasn't made him complacent and soft. When he first married Caroline, Bob remembers, he put on twelve pounds in four months. He'd had to endure Buck Frobisher's teeth grinding wit until he'd learned to say no to seconds without offending his pretty young wife.

In deference to the warm night and thankfully, for decency's sake in Bob's opinion, the men are covered by a thin sheet up to their waists. The Yank has managed to escape from his hospital corners, his feet and calves sticking out. He sleeps like he dresses, Bob thinks, haphazard and careless. Natural. Like a child.

The Yank looks different in his sleep. It's a few months since he saw him last, but Bob remembers very well the twitchy, nervous energy of the man - almost aggressive in a strange, inwardly focussed way. The man asleep against Ben's chest doesn't look aggressive; when Ray Kowalski isn't proving himself, he looks younger, more vulnerable, more... peaceful. That word again.

Ben is chest to back with Kowalski, his son clutching this wiry, slim man against him with a possessiveness that is plain, even in his sleep. In turn Kowalski has his fingers twined through Ben's and held under his chin, almost touching his lips as if he fell asleep kissing his hand.

It's a big bed - a real bed, Bob notices, not a cot or a bedroll any more - yet despite all the space, they are wrapped up together using only a third of the mattress. For two tall men, it seems terribly impractical, but neither of them looks uncomfortable; on the contrary, they look like there's nowhere else they'd rather be.

The last of the moonlight angles across the pillow casting blue shadows on their faces. Like Ben, Kowalski's face shows the hard-won signs of experience. It's the look of a man who has known happiness and disappointment, who has done things he's not proud of, but who's still standing and being held accountable for them; a man who knows his own mind. Like Ben always did - even as a child he was never one to follow blindly. Bob remembers how proud that made him, and how uneasy.

"Ah, son. You always had to choose the hardest path," Bob sighs. He walks to the head of the bed, stepping over the sleeping wolf and takes a long look at Ben and the... and Ray. With a quick glance over his shoulder, he reaches out and puts a gentle hand on Ben's hair. He hesitates, and then does the same to Ray. "You look good on it though," he whispers.

As Bob steps back, Ray takes a deep breath and swallows. "Ben?" he mutters. Sleepy eyes blink at Bob, and then widen in surprise.

"It's okay. I was just going. Tell Ben I'll be by to see him sometime soon, would you?"

"Rob," Caroline whispers from the closet door. "It's time to go."

"I'm coming, dear. I was just talking to Ray, quickly."

"Oh, Robert, really! You know you shouldn't. As if he doesn't have enough to deal with right now."

"Stop fussing, Caroline. This was your idea, if you recall. And if the man is family, then he needs to get used to this sort of thing."

Caroline comes up behind Bob and smiles at Ray softly. "Go back to sleep, dear. It's just a dream." And she takes Bob's hand and leads him, protesting all the way, back to the closet and quietly closes the door.

Ray blinks and strokes Ben's knuckles with his fingers. "Frase? Ben? You awake?"

Ben grunts and murmurs that of course he is.

"Was your Mum's name Caroline?"

"Mmm. Why?" Ben asks thickly.

"Had the weirdest dream. I'll tell you in the morning - go back to sleep."

Ben pulls Ray even closer, breathing against his neck. Ray brings Ben's fingers up against his lips and they fall back into dreams.

Fin