Disclaimer: Due South and its characters belong to Alliance Atlantis and a bunch of other people who are not me. This is just for fun, not for profit. No copyright infringement is intended.

Author's Notes: A gift for Slidellra, who was having a lost zebra day.

The perpetrator had made a daring escape involving a unicycle, two Pomeranians, and a trio of yodelers costumed in sadly inauthentic lederhosen, but at least he had left some trace evidence behind.

"Jesus!" Ray shook his right arm vigorously, but Fraser grabbed him by the elbow and stilled him.

"Please, Ray. That's evidence."

"It's freaking cold, Fraser, and it's dripping down my--" Ray stopped and, unaccountably, blushed.

It was an unaccustomed look for Ray, and Fraser found it disconcertingly stirring. He cleared his throat. "The substance on your wrist, Ray. It's evidence." He raised Ray's arm and examined his wrist closely - thick and viscous, the substance was pink and white, with dark flecks and a streak of brown.

Ray tried to pull away. "Let me go! It's running up my arm."

"It's just ice cream, Ray," Fraser said, holding tightly to Ray's arm. He sniffed. Chocolate, some sort of nut, vanilla, and... grapefruit? "Or more likely, gelato." He bent his head.

"No! No! Fraser, do not do that! Do not lick my--"

Fraser touched his tongue to Ray's wrist. Yes, the pink was grapefruit. Ray squirmed. He licked the spot next to it; ah, that was hazelnut mixed in with the chocolate. He slipped his tongue under and around the strands of the bracelet; yes, that was pure vanilla bean, not the inexpensive imitation.

"Oh, fuck," Ray whispered, and Fraser suddenly became aware that Ray had gone very still, his breathing strangely shallow.

Fraser lifted his head. "Ray?"

Ray's eyes were closed; his face was flushed. "Could you stop that now, Fraser?" He shifted, turning his body away from Fraser.

"I beg your pardon, Ray. I didn't mean to cause you any distress. I simply hoped to ascertain the composition of the substance in hopes that it might lead us to our suspect, and in fact, I believe that--"

"Fraser." Ray's voice was quiet, intense. "Could I have my arm back?"

"Oh." Fraser dropped it. "Certainly, Ray." Ray's eyes were still closed, and if Fraser didn't know better, he'd have to say that Ray was displaying a number of signs of... arousal. The thought was painfully enticing; it was something Fraser had never permitted himself to envision, not even in the privacy of his own mind, and now that the reality appeared to be right here before him, in the very real flesh, he could not look away. "Ray? Are you... all right?"

"No, Fraser," Ray said. "I am not all right. I'm standing in the middle of downtown Chicago in front of God and Mayor Dailey and all the citizens I'm supposed to serve and protect, not to mention my freak of a Mountie partner who doesn't know how to keep his tongue to himself, and I've got a goddamn hard-on. Does anything about this sound all right to you?"

Fraser felt himself flush. He stepped around so that he was standing directly in front of Ray and looked down. Ray's penis was blatantly erect, straining at the front of his jeans. Fraser felt a rush of arousal swelling his own penis in response to the sight - clearly an inappropriate reaction since Ray was obviously distressed by his condition, but one that was difficult to suppress. "Oh, dear."

"Yeah." Ray opened his eyes. "No shit."

Fraser swallowed, forcing his eyes away from the enticing sight of Ray's groin. "Did... what... ah..."

Shifting uncomfortably, Ray held up his wrist, still showing streaks of multicolored gelato. "It's my wrist. I got a... thing... you know, hot zone."

Fraser looked at it. "Your wrist is an erogenous zone?"

Ray's blush deepened. "Yeah. Both of 'em, actually. So when you..."

"Licked it," Fraser said, his own cheeks hot.

Ray's ears turned scarlet. "Yeah, it sort of made me..." He gestured downward, in the vicinity of his crotch.

"Ah." Fraser didn't take Ray's wrist in his hand and raise it to his mouth. He didn't lick every remaining trace of gelato from Ray's wrist. He didn't listen to Ray's breathing quicken as he tongued his way with great thoroughness around Ray's bracelet, licking every single bead clean. Instead, he dug in his pocket, pulled out his neatly folded handkerchief, and offered it to Ray. "Perhaps you'd like to take a moment to clean yourself up and..."

Ray took it. "I hope you're not going to say..."

"And compose yourself," Fraser finished, "while I look around for additional evidence."

"Yeah," Ray said, and he sounded grateful. "Okay. You do that."

Ten minutes later they were in the GTO, Ray having washed up in the restroom of a nearby deli, to his apparent relief. Fraser had failed to find any additional evidence, but they had radioed Francesca to look for nearby gelato vendors that carried chocolate hazelnut, vanilla - "Madagascar vanilla bean, Francesca... no... Madagascar... no, automobiles have nothing to do with ice cream... it's an island nation in... M-A-D-A-G...yes, that's correct" - and pink grapefruit flavored gelato. "I suspect that pink grapefruit may be the key, Ray. I find it difficult to imagine that it's a terribly common flavor."

Ray just nodded, both hands on the steering wheel and his eyes on the road in front of him. He still looked flushed.

Fraser watched as Ray dropped a hand to the clutch, downshifting as they approached an intersection, his bracelet shimmying over his wristbone and coming to rest at the heel of his hand. An echo of his earlier arousal stirred in his groin. "Ray?"

Ray made a noncommittal sound, returning his hand to the steering wheel to make a right turn at the corner. The bracelet snaked back over his wristbone, settling above it.

"Don't you find the movement of your bracelet over your wrist..."

"Don't go there, Fraser."

"Stimulating?"

"Jesus!"

The bracelet danced back down Ray's arm as he reached down to shift back into third, gunning the engine considerably harder than necessary.

"But... isn't it... distracting?"

Ray's face was going pink again. "You never did know when to let something go, did you?" He put his hand back on the wheel, and once again Fraser watched the bracelet slither over his skin.

Fraser wanted to feel the bracelet's cool beads slither over his own erect penis. "But... surely..."

"Okay, yeah," Ray snapped. "It feels good, okay? And if I get a little turned on every time it moves, what the hell's the matter with that?" His voice got softer as he spoke, a little sad, almost wistful. "Who's it hurting?"

The afternoon light glinted off the bracelet. Fraser shifted in his seat. "No one," he said, and forced himself to look away. "No one at all."

Ray, Fraser reflected, was frequently in the habit of playing with his bracelet in distracted moments, shaking out his hand, sending the beaded strands skittering over his skin. It appeared that Fraser was going to have a wealth of opportunities to observe Ray... masturbating in public.

He couldn't imagine how he was going to bear it.

~ fin ~