Author's Notes: Many thanks to Stormy Stormheller, Lyn Townsend and LilyK for their time, patience and beta. You are each greatly appreciated. As always, a special thanks to Melodie for general hand holding and cheer leading.

In the end, it was letting go of the dream that had hurt the most.

In the beginning, while Ray was still holding tight to the battered shreds of their marriage, it had been the tangible things he'd missed the most.

Life had sucked in those early days, back when he could still pretend that Stella wanted to find her way back to him.

Each morning he'd awakened alone in their bed. There'd been no tawny smooth limbs sliding against his body, no glossy blonde hair fanning over his chest. And always, just a fraction of second before consciousness could slam into him, a wisp of hope had teased him that her abandonment was a lie. That if he'd reached out an inch farther, his hand could have brushed her naked shoulder.

On those first winter mornings alone, Ray had learned that hope could be completely groundless and utterly cruel.

Work had been the only oasis in his desert of pain. Understanding he'd never make it without the job, he'd pulled his aching, hung-over bones into the bathroom and surveyed all that was gone.

The bathtub ledge might have still sported a glut of beauty enhancing hair products and a sliver of Irish Spring, but it'd been empty without Stella's pink loofah and jar of floral skin exfoliate. The bottom shelf under the sink had still held toilet scrub, basin cleanser and paper towels, but the top shelf, the one that had once held her tampons and pads, had been bare. The medicine chest had been crammed packed with their favorite brands of toothpaste and headache remedies, but Stella's diaphragm and eyebrow tweezers had been conspicuously absent.

Taking a shower or taking a piss, he'd been reminded of the tangible things that were gone.

Their bedroom had been a fucking Elephant Graveyard of tangible things lost.

The vanity top should have been cluttered with the lotions, creams and potions that Stella imagined she'd needed. Ray'd known since they were thirteen year old kids that she'd needed nothing more than to breathe to be breathtaking. Still, he'd always enjoyed lounging on their bed, watching her brush expensive colors across her checks, eyes and lips.

Her jewelry box, an antique rosewood piece that her folks had given her for her law school graduation, had no longer been in the center of their dresser. Her jewelry box, laden full of delicate gold chains, tiny opal earrings and fashionably slim bracelets, had been moved across town to an apartment where he hadn't been welcome at all.

Opening their closet each morning had been excruciating. It had been full of things, his things. It had been a closet full of nothing.

There were had been no satin blouses tangled up in his tee shirts, no pleated skirts pressed tight against his old jeans. None of her tailored wool slacks had brushed by his blue dress uniform. No longer had pricey pumps or pink-striped tennis shoes or dainty dancing slippers been jumbled up with low cut boots, or high top tennis shoes or leather-soled dancing shoes.

The closet had been full of empty. Nothing but his pants, his ties, his shirts, his jacket, his shoes. No simple summer shells with mother-of-pearl buttons or sigh-soft angora sweaters or shimmery see-through lingerie.

He'd pull his stuff out as quickly as possible and slam the closet door.

The living room had been a goddamned museum of tangible things gone. From the missing crystal vase her grandmother had given them as a wedding present to the laptop Stella'd purchased for work, but had mostly used to play Solitaire, the living room had been full of empty spaces.

Her blue flip-flops should have been under her rocking chair and her reading glasses should have been on their end table and her "Lawyers Do It In Briefs" coffee cup should have been on the breakfast bar, but none of those things, not one of those things that should have been there, were there.

Most evenings, he'd found it impossible to just sit on the sofa and watch TV. The echo of the empty spaces had been too loud.

Even opening the refrigerator had jabbed at him with reminders. The wire rack shelving held no more than bachelor grub--beer, ketchup, expired milk, assorted cheeses-gone-bad and a few take out containers. The shelves had been stripped of tiny cartons of low fat yogurt, cans of diet soda and fresh fruit.

Pulling out of the parking lot each day had mocked and reminded him of items gone missing. The spot next to his nondescript, department issued Chevy was vacant. Her Toyota, blue and well-worn, had found another place to spend its nights.

In the beginning, when his pain had been so fresh he could smell it with each breath, when his pain had been so sharp it cut at him with every step, it had been the tangible things he'd missed the most.

He clawed through days, then weeks, then months and his suffering had faded from bonfire bright to light bulb dim. He'd begun to believe that he could live without the tangible pieces of Stella in his life.

Seven months after Stella had delivered her Emancipation Proclamation, Ray'd accepted an invitation to his second cousin's third daughter's First Communion.

That April morning, as sunlight had burned through the stained glass windows of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ Catholic Church, Ray had discovered that tangible things were only things. Tangible things could be bought and sold.

Tangible things were nothing, Ray had found out, as the priest washed his hands and the choir sang the Agnus Deo.

Surrounded by family and strangers, the scent of wax and lilies perfuming the air, Ray, like Saint Paul on the road to Damascus, had had an epiphany.

He would never see Stella round and full of their child. He'd never stand at the Baptismal Font, an infant in his arms, as the priest anointed his son with oil and water in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. He'd never sit in the second pew from the front, Stella's hand in his, and watch as their daughter, decked out in a crisp white Communion dress, walked proudly down the aisle to accept the Body of Christ.

He would never watch his boy, the altar server, light the candles before mass or his daughter, the alto, sing in the choir.

He would never lean in the doorway of his children's bedroom to listen to them say their nighttime prayers. He would never look over a Thanksgiving table and see his lovely Stella and their beautiful children with their heads bowed, reciting a blessing.

Ray had barely made it though the service, fuck the reception, that spring morning. Rushing back to his empty apartment had been a wasted effort, for the floodgates of truth had already been flung open.

He'd lost so much more than trinkets and objects. He'd lost much more than a wife. He'd lost a future.

There'd be no "Congratulate me, I'm a new daddy," cigars passed around at the station. There'd be no tiny, cowboy pajamas or messy diaper changes or puke stained shirts. There'd be no toddlers with sun-kissed noses and droopy drawers running through his life.

The garage would never be cluttered with Big Wheels or skateboards or minibikes. He would never share giggly secrets over bedtime stories. He would never see blue eyes or toothless grins shining up at him at the end of the day.

His future held no possibilities for first days of school or first dates or first broken hearts. There would be no Easter egg hunts or Chuck E Cheese birthday parties or high school proms. No longer would the coming days be bright with the hope of ballet recitals or little league games or college graduations.

He'd sat alone on his sofa that April day, getting Jack Daniels stupid, trying to figure out how everything had gotten so fucked up.

Losing the dream meant there would be no split-level ranch on a suburban cul-de-sac. There would be no summer nights spent on a porch swing, Stell tucked up tight beside him, watching the neighbor kids chase one another through the quiet streets.

Losing the dream meant letting go of the one person he'd believed he was supposed to be with for all times.

Ray had known Stella when she'd been a shy, pudgy teenager. He'd held her when she'd been a brilliant, coltish college girl. He'd loved her when she'd become a strong, slender woman.

Losing the dream meant he'd lost the right to know her as she turned into a mature woman. He'd lost the right to hold her beautiful hands as they turned thin and blue-veined. He'd lost the right to love her when her blonde hair turned white.

Somehow, while he'd been busy lamenting the loss of Here's My Heart perfume on his dresser and hand-painted china in his cupboard and fur lined leather gloves in the closet and all the other fucking tangible things he'd thought so damned irreplaceable, he'd overlooked what he'd miss most of all.

He'd been fucking petrified that weekend, as he waited for his bourbon anesthesia to mercifully kick him in the head.

When he'd lost the dream, he'd also been stripped of the innocent belief that there was such a thing as happily-ever-after. He'd lost the love-colored-glasses that had allowed him to view the world with optimism. He'd lost his gig as someone's knight in shining armor and he'd lost his own companion in the process.

Losing Stella, losing the dream meant finding the lie in his life, the fault in his thinking. It meant facing the possibility that nothing lasts forever. It meant that promising to always be there for someone, swearing it before God and man, didn't make it true. It meant that there was no one a guy could count on, no matter what.

When Ray had finally surfaced from his liquor la la land early Monday morning, it had taken all his determination to climb off the kitchen floor and shuffle into the shower.

Ray'd remembered well the lesson he'd been taught while drowning and drinking in his ocean of self-righteous pain--the job was the one lifeline he dared not release.

When Monday had rolled around, he'd soaped and scrubbed until the smell of booze oozing from his pores was washed down the drain. He'd pulled on his favorite jeans and his lucky shirt and headed out to his new undercover gig at the 2-7.

Walking into the unfamiliar station had been strangely soothing. No one tried to get to know what made the new guy tick because, in this unreal reality, he wasn't the new guy, he was the old guy. The other guy. Classic Coke Vecchio.

The small talk that had buzzed around him as he pored over Vecchio's case files, had nothing to do with him and everything to do with everyone pretending new Ray was old Ray.

The days had been relatively easy.

There'd been no room for Stanley Kowalski in Ray Vecchio's swivel chair at the precinct. There'd been no room for his lamentations in a brain that needed to absorb Vecchio's life story. There'd been no place in Ray's life for anyone who wasn't part of the other Ray's life.

The nights had been relentlessly difficult.

Everything that was Vecchio would whoosh out of him as he crossed the threshold of his apartment. It left him weary, deflated.

How, he'd wondered as he sat and smoked on his fire escape landing, was he going to live through another minute? How was anything supposed to mean anything when everything was gone? What the fuck was the point?

A week after he'd lost both the dream and his identity, the Mountie walked into the precinct and tangible things began to dot the stark landscape of Ray's life. The tangible things Fraser'd brought to him were vastly different than those that Stella had taken from him. They'd been masculine rather than feminine, Canadian rather than American, freakish rather than normal, but they'd been welcome just the same.

Partnering up with Fraser had kept Ray distracted. Running from crazy case to crazy case, each solved with improbable solutions, leaping off buildings, blasting through windows, tooling down the highway with a detachable Mountie hood ornament, had all managed to capture and redirect Ray's attentions.

When he'd finally found a moment to look around, the world had shifted.

Stella had swished past him at the station, her eyes icy and her heart hard, and Ray'd remembered how much had been stolen from him. He'd turned to find Fraser sitting beside the Vecchio desk, his eyes trusting and his heart open, and Ray'd realized how much was being offered to him.

So, his old best friend had been a pretty blonde. His new best friend was a, well, pretty brunet. Could Ray make the adjustment?

The first time Stella had kissed Ray, closed mouthed, tentative and Dr Pepper flavored, he'd been fifteen and had gotten a glimpse of the dream. The first time Fraser had kissed Ray, open mouthed, nasty and sex flavored, Ray had been 37 and had gotten a glimpse of the truth. He could be happy again. Maybe happier than he'd ever been; it was within his reach.

All he had to do was let go of the dream, the one he'd held in his heart and in his head since forever. All he had to do was forgo everything he'd thought was important to him, from silk stockings to baby buggies to grandkids.

All he had to do was give up on the lover who'd liked to talk to his mom and grab hold of the lover who liked to talk to a deaf wolf. All he had to do was turn away from everything he'd thought he knew about himself and understood about the world.

In the end, it was letting go of the dream that had hurt most of all.

Looking at the past and longing for a future that could never ever be, had to stop. The tangible things were lost. The dream was over. It was time to open his head and let it all go--the hope, the fantasy, the inkling of possibility that the universe would shake, rattle and rock to give him back what he'd always thought he'd wanted.

Letting go.

It had seemed nearly impossible when Ray thought of Stella with another man. It had seemed ridiculously simple when Fraser had his fingers in Ray's hair and his tongue in Ray's mouth.

While fumbling with a decision, he'd found Stella alone in the station lunchroom. Before he'd had a chance to gather his words, the too familiar wall of exasperation had gone up in her eyes.

"What, Ray?" she'd bitten out.

The people they'd once been, he'd realized, no longer existed. Smiling at her, he'd said gently, "It's really done."

The angry impatience had faded from her lovely face. For an instant, Stella was that girl, that perfect-for-Ray girl, he'd once pinned his future on.

"Yes, Ray. It's really done." She'd turned from him and walked away.

He'd been left lightheaded, nearly giddy. It was done; he'd said it, she'd meant it.

For a long moment, as he'd slumped into one of the lunchroom's blue plastic chairs, his world had been white, silent, and blessedly numb.

Then Jack and Dewey had slammed the door open and Ray's world imploded.

This was it, he'd thought. The ultimate blow, the thing that would kill him. Gathering up his jacket and cell phone from Vecchio's desk, he'd yammered some lame ass excuse to Welsh and fled.

If he was going to have a coronary or put on a one-man freak show or whatever, he'd wanted to do it in the privacy of his own apartment.

How, he'd puzzled, was it possible to hurt so bad, to practically vibrate under the force of it, and still be breathing? He'd sat on his sofa, dry-eyed and sober, as the afternoon dragged into evening. Hollow, he'd thought. He was hollow.

For the better part of three decades, Ray had viewed himself in terms of the dream. He'd been Stella's friend, Stella's boyfriend, Stella's lover, Stella's husband. He'd planned on being the father of Stella's children.

He and Stella were supposed to be together--living, fighting, laughing, just goddamned being together.

Let go of the dream and what was left of Ray Kowalski? Who was he if he wasn't part of Stella's life?

The knock on his door hadn't been totally unexpected. From the start of their association, and especially since he and Fraser had become intimate, there'd been a kind of mojo Spidey sense between them. What he did not know was if he wanted to open up the door.

"Ray," Fraser's voice was soft, but insistent. "Please, let me in."

"Not now, Fraser," he said.

"Just for a moment, Ray." Fraser tapped quietly again. "Please, Ray. I need to see you. That is, I need to see that you're all right."

Knowing there was no way out of it, Ray pushed himself off the sofa and opened the door. As if he feared Ray would change his mind, Fraser slipped around the door and used his back to shut it.

"Are you, Ray?" Fraser asked earnestly.

"Am I Ray?"

"No," Fraser shook his head. "That is to say, yes, you're Ray, but no. What I meant to ask is, are you all right? I was sure we'd agreed you'd pick me up at the Consulate this afternoon. I called the station when you failed to arrive and Francesca told me that you'd left earlier in the day. She seemed quite concerned."

"So you dropped everything and rushed right over?" It came out less kind that it should have.

Fraser's cheeks reddened, but his resolve didn't waver. "Well, yes. Are you all right, Ray?"

Ray momentarily toyed with the idea of lying, of saying everything was hunky-dory and seeing if he could get Fraser to fuck the mattress stuffing right out from underneath him.

"No, not really." Ray turned from Fraser and flung himself back on the sofa. "I'm not all right, I'm not okay. I'm not sure what I am anymore."

Fraser gingerly perched on the sofa, taking care not to touch Ray. "How do you mean that?"

They were both silent for a moment then Ray leaned back, his head tilted and his eyes closed. "See, Fraser, I used to have this plan, this dream, that I'd find the right girl and I'd make her fall for me and we'd live happily ever after. Only, it didn't work out that way. Somewhere between getting married and having kids, she figured out that I wasn't worth her fucking effort. She packed her stuff and divorced me and it totally sucked, but I thought I was doing okay."

Fraser remained motionless as Ray drew in a long breath, then continued. "See, I thought that losing her, losing the future I wanted with her, was the worse damned thing that could happen to me. Turns out, I was wrong."

"What," Fraser interjected, "was worse?"

Ray ignored him. "At first, it was the real stuff that I missed, you know? Like, uh, her perfume and her shoes."

"Perfume and shoes?"

"Exactly. Her dirty coffee cup and her old blue car."

"I see."

"Then, I started to miss the stuff that never was and that's just plain dumb, d-u-m, dumb, because how can you miss what never happened, huh? How can a guy miss the life he's never going to live or the kids he's never going to have or the front porch he's never going to swing on? That doesn't even make sense, right, Fraser?"

Ray turned his head to look at Fraser. The blush that had colored Fraser's cheeks earlier had been bleached away, leaving his pretty face white and pinched.

"Fraser?"

"It makes perfect sense, Ray."

"It does?"

"Certainly it does."

"Okay, then," Ray said, settling back into the sofa and his story. "So, anyway, after I stop missing her shampoo and I start missing First Communion, I get tuned into the fact that even losing the dream isn't the worst thing."

"I know," Fraser whispered.

"The thing that hurts the most," Ray said, "is letting it all go."

"The realization that all was for naught," Fraser said. "That everything one thought was of value, everything that one agonized about and toiled toward is, in reality, nothing more than nothing."

"For knot?"

"I, too, held a dream, Ray. And although the woman who'd captured my affections was in no way comparable to Stella, I'd thought that she...that is, that she and I would...well, I'd harbored some hopes that someday..." Fraser trailed off for a moment. "I suppose it goes without saying that I was wrong."

Ray supposed it did go without saying since, even with his detective mind, he'd never caught a whiff of the said woman's existence. Or maybe he sort of had. Maybe what he'd seen was the lack of her existence, the hole in Fraser that matched the hole in him.

"So, um, what did you do, Frase?" Ray wasn't as interested in knowing how Fraser coped as he was in keeping Fraser talking. Somehow, the idea that Fraser had loved some previously unmentioned mystery chick who'd returned the favor by shredding his Mountie ass up, gave him a fresh shaft of pain.

How could anyone have been lucky enough to have Fraser want them, to have Fraser fucking dream about a future with them, then turn around and thrashed him, trashed him and throw him away? And it kind of painted his buttons, in a really un-PC, insensitive, jealous way, that Fraser had cared about someone else that much. Someone else who wasn't Ray.

"There was little I could do," Fraser said, looking in every direction but Ray's. "Time, as trite as it sounds, and I am in no way attempting to demean your experience, does lessen the severity of suffering."

"So, what are you saying? One day I'm going to what? Wake up and think, 'Gee, Ray, that, uh, wasn't so bad?'"

Fraser shook his head. "No, because that would be a lie and I don't ever want to lie to you, Ray. What I'm saying is letting go of your dream, as profoundly life changing and painful as it may be, can eventually lead to something good. Something unexpected, perhaps, but good."

"Yeah, so what's the great thing that's going to happen?"

Fraser turned at last to look at Ray. For a moment, his eyes burned bright, glittering with something Ray couldn't identify, then it was gone and Fraser's eyes were merely flat and blue.

"Nothing, Ray," Fraser said, his voice as flat and blue as his eyes. "I really should be going."

Ray's instinct yelled for him not to let Fraser leave the apartment. He'd just fucked up big, he knew that, but he wasn't exactly sure how. However, whatever Fraser was mumbling and stumbling through was important.

"Don't go, Fraser," he said, grabbing Fraser's arm. "Stay and explain it to me, okay? In small, non-Canadian type words."

The corner of Fraser's mouth quirked up briefly and he sat back on the sofa. "My father used to say that a man can't pick fruit if his hands are full of locce cake."

"What the hell is locce cake?"

"It's a traditional dish made of locce fish, locce liver, eggs and cranberries, but that's not important."

"What is important? That peaches are better than..."

"No, no," Fraser cut him off. "Perhaps I'm... My father also used to say that a thirsty man can't fill his bowl with water if it's already filled with sand."

"Wait," Ray bristled. "Are you and your old man comparing my marriage to dirt and fish guts?"

"No, Ray."

"No?"

"Well," Fraser said, rubbing at his eyebrow, "yes, but only in a metaphorical way. What I'm attempting to say is..."

"In small, non-Canadian words," Ray said.

"My father never let go, Ray. Even now he holds on to the short time he and my mother spent together."

"Even now?"

"I mean, until the day he died."

"He must have loved her a lot."

"In his way, I suppose he did. I'm not saying that my father stopped living. He continued working, continued striving to uphold the law." Fraser tugged on his ear. "Honoring a memory is to be expected, but he could never let go of what he and my mother should have had. He closed a part of himself off. He could never look past what he'd lost to see what he had, what he could have had instead. He could never see..." Fraser cleared his throat. "Well, that's neither here nor there."

"You," Ray said, turning and sliding on the sofa until he was pressed side-to-side against Fraser. "Your dad could never see you."

"No," Fraser agreed, "he couldn't."

Ray knew he didn't want to the make the same mistake Fraser's father had. He didn't want to end up being a good cop and nothing else. He didn't want to hold on to nothing and let Fraser slip away.

"I see you, Fraser," he said, pressing a soft kiss on the other man's mouth. "I see you."

Fraser wrapped his arms around Ray and, after pushing him supine on the sofa, began kissing him hard.

In the end, it was letting go that hurt the most.

Still, Ray wasn't one to eat fish innards if there were apples, or to keep stones in his glass if there was beer. So his dream was gone. Maybe it was time to dream a new dream. Maybe replace dancing shoes in his closet with hiking boots, maybe replace living in a suburban ranch with living in a tundra igloo. Maybe replace heartache with happiness.

Ray turned his head slightly, brushing his lips across Fraser's ear. "I see you, Fraser," he murmured. "Seriously, I see you."

Fraser's smile was small and sweet. "And I you, Ray."