Author's Notes: Written for the Episode Title Challenge at ds_flashfiction.

Story Notes: I bet I'm not the only person who had this idea. Throwing rice would remind almost anyone of a wedding, and of course the dead men would be Fraser Sr and his fellow dead Mounties, so that gets us.a Fraser/RayK wedding in Fraser's closet.
Warning: The ceremony itself is a little cheesier than I would like, but that may be an unavoidable hazard of the subject matter.

"Dead Men Don't Throw Rice"

"Fraser." Ray opened the door a few inches and stuck his head into the office. "You hafta help me with this." He held out a silk necktie, dangling it from the thin end as though it were a snake.

"It's bad luck," Fraser reminded him. Ray had been the one who was concerned about that particular superstition. Not that he had particularly minded spending one last night in his office, putting a period to that part of his life. He'd thought of it as just a tiny bit like a vision quest, an opportunity to be alone with himself. They had the whole future ahead of them.

"Yeah, well, you said I had to wear a tie." Ray sidled into the office and stood with his back to Fraser's front, holding the necktie over his shoulder.

"I didn't say you had to," Fraser reminded him, folding up Ray's collar and draping the tie around his neck. "I said that formal dress was a way of marking the importance of the event, and that I would appreciate it very much if you did." He adjusted the length of the ends, buttoned Ray's top button, and began the knot.

"Yeah, well, I know what side my bread is buttered on."

"I appreciate the sacrifice." He adjusted the finished knot so that the dimple in the fabric was centered, then threaded the skinny end of the tie through the loop on the back of the wide end. "There. You look very handsome."

Ray smiled sheepishly over his shoulder. "Thanks. You too. You just about ready?"

"Yes."

Ray nodded. "I'll get my jacket," he said, and slipped out.

They hadn't discussed it, but he knew that Ray had bought his new suit at the same South Side menswear store where his father had taken him for his wedding suit when he was nineteen. He was a romantic at heart, although he tried his best to hide it.

Ray returned, the jacket on. Ray had categorically rejected the notion of wearing his own dress uniform-- "It's nicer than the duty uniform, but it is not an attractive outfit, Fraser"--but the suit was dark blue, and in it, the line of Ray's back was slim and straight, like an arrow, or a dagger. Beneath the cuffs of his trousers, his shoes gleamed. "I'm ready if you are," he said.

"Ready," Fraser agreed.

He opened the door, and they went through it together.

For once, it wasn't snowing outside his father's office. It was early spring, wildflowers dotting up all over the tundra, the sun shining overhead. Dad had arranged this, somehow, he knew.

Dad--also wearing the full-dress uniform--got up from behind his desk. "Everyone's outside. Ray, you go on ahead."

Ray looked a question at him.

"I want to have a private word with my son," Dad said.

"Go on," Fraser told him. "I'll be with you in a moment." His father, he knew, did not completely approve. He wouldn't be surprised if he had in mind to make one last attempt to change Fraser's mind.

But he'd also made all the arrangements for today. So.

Ray hesitated, then nodded. "Okay. Okay, I'll just be...." He gestured toward the door, and exited.

"Son." Dad looked him in the eye.

"Dad," he answered.

"The day I married your mother, my own father gave me two pieces of advice. Neither of them turned out to be any use whatsoever, so I won't repeat them. I might not've been a particularly good husband, but you can't go through life without picking up a few things. You remember what I told you about never following anyone off a cliff?"

"Yes." It was one of his father's few useful pieces of advice.

"Well, when it's your--when it's somebody you're married to, it's different. Just remember to tie a rope to something topside before you start on your way down."

Fraser wondered if his father was being metaphorical. It sounded like he was, but with Bob Fraser, you never knew. Either way, it was sound advice. "I'll bear that in mind."

"Do." He straightened the tabs on Fraser's collar--which didn't need it in the slightest--and thumped him on the shoulder, rather as if he were a horse. "Best not to keep everyone waiting."

"Everyone" was a fairly small crowd--a half a dozen friends of his father's, most in the RCMP dress uniforms they'd been buried in, Detective Huey's old partner Louie, and Ray's grandmother who, despite being dead, remained partially blind and almost entirely deaf. Fraser wasn't sure where Dad had found her, and doubted she had any particular idea where she was, but it was a nice gesture. There were six rows of folding chairs--far more than necessary--the guests scattered among them.

Ray stood up at the front, near the officiant Dad had found for them. There weren't too many clergy in this portion of the afterlife, but Daniel Blackfeather had chosen to stay in the Borderlands for a time. He ran the orphanage. He turned and gave Fraser a sheepish little wave.

Fraser took a step towards him, and the bagpipes skirled. The piper didn't know anything but dirges, but on the pipes, everything sounded like a dirge, so it didn't much matter.

"Ten-hut," Dad said softly, behind him, and all the late Mounties in attendance stood and saluted.

That was traditional, but he hadn't quite expected it. His vision was likely a bit worse than Ray's as he made his way to the makeshift altar. When he arrived, finally, Ray took his hand in his.

Blackfeather cleared his throat and began. "Love is a gift from the mystery that understands us all, and as this gift has been accepted, we gather here, in this time and in this place, to join these two bodies and these two souls in marriage. Who witnesses this marriage?"

Most of the guests mumbled, "We do." Bob Fraser's voice sang out clear above the others.

"Benton Fraser, I believe you have prepared a statement," Daniel prompted him.

He swallowed hard. It was time. He turned to face Ray. "You are my partner. My feet shall run because of you. My feet dance because of you. My eyes see because of you. My mind thinks because of you. And I shall love because of you." Ray's one request about their wedding was that it be free of Inuit stories, but he hadn't said anything about Inuit vows. Fortunately. "Or, as someone once told me, there are red ships and green ships, but no ship like partnership," he finished. "Marry me?"

Ray ducked his head and grinned. "Yeah. Yeah, okay, since you went to all the trouble. My turn?" He fumbled in his suit coat pocket with his left hand, since Fraser was still holding his right. "It's, um, a poem. I didn't write it or nothing." He unfolded a piece of paper and read,

"Sometimes our life reminds me

of a forest in which there is a graceful clearing

and in that opening a house,

an orchard and garden,

comfortable shades, and flowers

red and yellow in the sun, a pattern

made in the light for the light to return to.

The forest is mostly dark, its ways

to be made anew day after day, the dark

richer than the light and more blessed,

provided we stay brave

enough to keep on going in.

"Um, that's it." He stuffed the paper back in his pocket. "Okay?"

"Okay," Fraser agreed.

Blackfeather continued, "Benton Fraser, do you take this man, Stanley Raymond Kowalski, to be your partner, to love, honor, and cherish, in sickness and in health, for as long as you both shall live?"

"I do."

"Stanley Raymond Kowalski, do you--"

"Yeah," Ray interrupted, bouncing slightly on the balls of his feet. "I sure as hell do."

Fraser reminded himself that Ray had, after all, been born three weeks early.

"In that case, we'll move on. Sign the register, please." Blackfeather offered them a pen, and they took turns signing. "Gentlemen, you are married. You may kiss, if you like."

They liked, but Fraser, mindful that his father was watching, kept his mouth closed and broke it off after a few seconds. The piper started up again, and they hurried back between the folding chairs to the cabin.

Once inside--out of sight of the deceased Mounties who were, after all, representatives of a very different generation, Fraser backed his Ray up against the nearest available wall and kissed him more thoroughly. When they finally came up for air, Ray said, "You know, I think marriage suits you."

"You, too," Fraser agreed. They moved toward the closet door--they did have a plane to catch.

Ray had manfully offered to honeymoon in the Northwest Territories, but after Fraser had pointed out that they planned to vacation there every year, and a honeymoon was traditionally a once-in-a-lifetime trip, he'd admitted that he'd always wanted to see Hawaii. Fraser had booked the tickets, and Ray was in charge of packing and supplies. He'd resisted the temptation to check up on the packing. Despite his fears that he'd open his suitcase on arrival to find that Ray had supplied him with lubricant in industrial quantities and perhaps--if he was lucky--one small bathing suit, a gesture of trust seemed necessary at this new stage in their relationship.

And he was fairly sure that they had stores in Hawaii, even on the small island where they were planning to stay.

"I liked the poem," he told Ray as they left the closet.

"It's, uh, Wallace Stevens. Read it in college."

Fraser nodded. "`Like the water of a deep stream, love is always too much,'" he quoted, turning off the lights in his office.

"Should've known you'd know it."

"It was a good choice. Mine was, ah...." He hesitated to confess.

"Inuit," Ray supplied. "I figured." He waited while Fraser locked the Consulate doors behind them, and held the passenger-side door to the GTO while Fraser got in.

After going around the car and settling into his own seat, he asked, "What did your Dad say to you? Or don't I want to know?"

"He told me to follow you off a cliff."