Author's Notes: Thank you kindly to annieb1955, LilyK and gothphyle for the beta work. Your effort and insight are always appreciated. Any remaining errors are my own. Thanks to lydialovestruck for Livejournal Technical Support. This story is for Melodie who gives up sleep and lunch hours to pull it all together.

"Do you ever regret it?" Ray blurted, then turned his attention back to poking at their nearly burnt out campfire with a stick.

"Regret what?" Fraser asked, wondering if they would retire to the warmth of their cabin soon or if he should throw more wood on the fire.

"You know, Fraser. It." Ray poked at the fire again, stirring a shower of orange sparkles into the cold night. The embers flickered and danced momentarily, then disappeared.

Resigned to spending at least another thirty minutes on the hard ground, Fraser reached behind his back to grab a small log then pitched it into the fire. "I'm afraid I have no idea what `it' is, Ray."

"It, Fraser. It," he said, irritation flaring up in his voice. "The whole shebang. You getting shipped to the States. Vecchio going undercover with the mob. Me going undercover for Vecchio. You and me hooking up and heading out. You and me spending the last twenty whatever years out here in the ass-end of no-goddamned-where." Ray used the stick to reposition the log in the fire. "It. Us. The whole shebang. You ever regret it?"

Fraser resisted the urge to smile. The arrival yesterday of an invitation to Ray and Stella Vecchios' eldest daughter's wedding had apparently upset Ray more than he'd initially let on.

"Do I regret the whole shebang?"

Ray glanced over, his eyes wary, and nodded. "Yeah. The whole shebang."

Fraser could have answered immediately, but that would have supplied Ray with only the truth and he knew his companion well enough to understand that he wanted the tale.

"Ray, my very good friend, there was a time when I believed myself satisfied with my lot in life." He looked up at the stars and into the past. "I was living in the land I was born to and I was performing the work I was meant for, but I was alone."

"Except," Ray interjected, "for Dief."

"Yes, with the very notable exception of Diefenbaker."

They were silent for a moment. Even now, a dozen years after Diefenbaker had passed on, there was a hole in their lives that no one, neither man nor beast, could fill. Fraser knew that a soul such as Dief's, bright, loyal and fierce, was rare indeed. He felt honored to have known two in his lifetime-one gone and one right next to him.

"Go on," Ray said finally.

Fraser cleared a wolf-sized lump from his throat. "Then someone who should have been closer to me-"

"Your old man."

"My father," Fraser agreed, "died."

"Was murdered."

"As you say." He recalled his angry dismay when the news had reached him. Until that day, he would have sworn that Robert Fraser was invulnerable and invincible. "To continue, while I was on the trail of the killers of my father, I found myself in the United States of America. Chicago, Illinois to be exact, and for reasons with which you and I are both well acquainted, I remained, attached to the Canadian Consulate."

"And your life totally sucked."

Twenty four years later, Ray Kowalski still nursed a bit of a grudge against Ray Vecchio and vice versa. Fraser didn't like to encourage the faint hostility between the two Rays. They were practically family, after all, but he couldn't help the twinge of petty satisfaction he found in knowing that their animosity had been present before Ray Vecchio had begun to court Stella Kowalski.

He was their bone of contention, Fraser thought smugly. Not her. Him. It was horribly arrogant, but there it was.

"No, Ray, my life didn't totally suck."

"No?"

"Well, perhaps my life wasn't all it could have been, but I had a good friend. I had an apartment and I had my career."

"And you got to do some other guy's job for him."

"I was able to assist a fellow police officer in accomplishing his duties on my free time," Fraser corrected.

"No matter how you dice it up, Benton buddy, Vecchio sucked a carton of raw eggs as a cop until you turned up and very kindly showed him how to pull his head out of his fashionably creased ass."

Fraser saw no point in having this argument again. No matter that Ray had eventually found some modicum of respect for Ray Vecchio, he would never admit that Ray-the-Former had ever been anything other than a "thick-headed goof" before Fraser had "combed his brain out."

"So," Fraser said, "my life moved along until a woman I'd once cared for crossed paths with me in Chicago."

"A freezer pop bitch from your icy past," Ray mumbled.

"She was a formidable enemy in the guise of an enchantress. I was completely enthralled and was preparing to perform a foolish, nefarious act when-"

"When your good friend tried to commit Mountie-cide."

"Until my friend mercifully, albeit forcibly, stopped my flight toward madness."

"Yeah, that fucking Dago is a prince among men."

"Ray!" Fraser tried to sound scandalized.

"Sorry." Ray tried to sound chastised.

"Things bumped along reasonably well and after a time the friendship between Ray Vecchio and I healed."

The yipping of their dogs out in the kennel momentarily distracted Fraser.

"The dogs are fine, Ben," Ray said. "Go on with the story. You're getting to my favorite part."

"The part when I discovered that Ray Vecchio had gone and I was alone once more?"

"Except for Dief," Ray inserted loyally.

Fraser ignored him. "The part where I looked about and was forced to admit that I was locked into a job where I was unwanted and unappreciated? Or the part where I realize that my home and what little I had left of my parents had been reduced to ashes? Did you perhaps mean the part where I finally accepted that two years of exile in a foreign land had brought me no closer to the life I wanted?"

Ray shook his head. "Nah. None of those parts." Ray smiled the brilliant smile that never failed to light up Fraser's heart. "I mean the part where you met me. The part where you fall for me."

"Ah, but Ray, all those parts of the story are the same part of the story." He blinked back a sheen of memories. "When I walked into the 2-7 that fateful day, I expected to find Ray Vecchio. Instead, in his place I found a perfect stranger."

"Uh, what kind of stranger?"

"A perfect stranger, Ray," Fraser said. "Perfect in every sense of the word."

"Ha!" Ray snapped. "Plenty of people in the know would disagree with that. Plenty of people would say that you, Benton Fraser, are full of malarkey."

"Then plenty of people, in the know or not, would be gravely mistaken." Fraser shifted slightly, trying to find a more comfortable position on the hard ground.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." Realizing there was actually no softer spot to settle on, Fraser gave up and continued. "Eventually, this perfect stranger became my perfect partner. He forced me to see that problems could be solved in more than one way."

"Did he?"

"He did. He showed me that it was possible to be more than merely satisfied with life. He proved, with his honesty and his instinct, that it was permissible for a man to want more from life than 'just enough'."

"This guy," Ray offered, "sounds pretty cool."

"Oh, he is, Ray. He is an amazing guy."

"Amazing, huh?"

"Most amazing."

"Did this guy give you any other insight?"

"Certainly. For example, he showed me that partners are not a luxury. A partner, the right partner, is an absolute necessity. The most important thing this sterling fellow imparted to me, however, was that even if one has failed miserably at love before-"

"And seriously, Fraser, you did with that flash-freeze bitch."

"Yes. Anyway, this perfect once-a-stranger-"

"Who had maybe fucked up at love before, too."

"Probably, yes," Fraser rubbed his eyebrow strictly out of habit.

His jealousy of Stella had dissipated decades ago. He'd reached a place in which he was quite grateful to her. Though he didn't relish the idea of Ray's pain during the break up of his marriage, Fraser was selfish enough to be glad that he and Ray had both been free when they'd met.

Fraser knew Ray loved him and together they'd forged a very good life. When he added that to the knowledge that Stella had made a workable union with Ray Vecchio and they lived thousands of miles apart, well, it truly cost him little to be generous in his dealings with the former Mrs. Kowalski.

"No probably about it, Fraser. The guy did fuck up the first time around." Ray poked at the fire again, sending a second spray of orange sparkles into the April night air.

Fraser shifted a few inches to his left so that his shoulder touched Ray's. "My father used to say that mistakes are merely guideposts. That we can look back later when we need to make a decision and save ourselves from the pain of error."

Ray chewed on his gloved knuckle for a moment. "Just because you can look back and check out how you screwed up last time doesn't mean that you're not going to make a fucked up mess the next time around."

Fraser leaned a bit heavier on Ray's shoulder. "I suppose not," he conceded.

Ray jerked his head to face Fraser. "You suppose not?"

"As you've pointed out, Ray, not everyone learns from their mistakes."

The corner of Fraser's mouth quirked and Ray knew he was being had. Ray leaned forward and kissed Fraser's teasing smile. "But you know what, Fraser? Some people do."

"Do what, Ray?" Fraser asked, his tone innocent and his eyes shining with humor.

"Some people," Ray said, looping his arm around Fraser's shoulders, "do learn from their mistakes. Some people don't really even figure out what they want until the second time around. Then, when they find it, they hold on tight."

"Some people," Fraser replied, "have no regrets whatsoever about the torturously rocky path that led them to where they stand."

"You don't say?"

"I do say." Fraser shook his head slightly. "Ray," he said seriously, "how could I ever have any regrets? It took the whole shebang to bring me to you."

And as they kissed, Ray felt the orange sparkles of doubt in his belly shower high into the night air, flicker for a moment, then disappear.