Fraser stepped back, biting his lip. Not blushing, like when he was harmlessly embarrassed, but deathly pale, like all the color had drained out of him, turning him into a negative of himself. "Oh, God, Ray, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I -- I'm going." He turned and stumbled toward the door, utterly graceless -- like some kind of baby moose or something -- stopping only to grab his hat, and then to spin around and mumble, "I'm sorry!" over his shoulder, while fumbling for the doorknob.

It was the final "I'm sorry" that broke Ray's trance. "Wait!"

Fraser stopped with his hand on the doorknob. His shoulders heaved once, and when he turned around, he squared up his feet, staring at the floor and clutching his hat hard enough to leave a dent. "Yes, Ray?" he said, his tone heartbreakingly desolate. Like he figured Ray was about to rip his heart out and hand it to him, and he knew he deserved it.

Boy, did Ray know that feeling. And he didn't want to make Fraser feel that way. Hell, he didn't want to make anybody feel that way, but especially not Fraser. But now that he had Fraser's attention, he didn't know what to do with it. "Wait," he said again, more gently this time, trying to put everything he felt into the single word.

Fraser risked a tiny glance up at him before tucking his chin down against his chest again. "I shouldn't have ....please, if you ... that is to say, if you'd be so kind as to forget I ever ....I'm so sorry, Ray."

Somehow, Ray knew he'd fetch back up there again. "No. I mean, I don't want to forget."

Fraser ducked his head even lower, somehow. "Understood. I'll just -- " He went for the doorknob again.

"No! God damn it, Frase." He scrubbed his face with his hand. He might not know much, but he knew that if he let Fraser out the door before he managed to dig up some words out of the stew of arousal, curiosity, and good old fashioned terror that was currently passing for his brain, Fraser'd hightail it straight back to the frozen north before Ray could get his boots on. "I didn't ... you surprised me, that's all." Surprised, yeah. That was one word for what a guy would feel if he was chatting with his partner and trying to maybe dig up something to have for dinner, and all of the sudden his was grabbing him and kissing him.

A real kiss, right on the mouth, and Ray wasn't underwater this time -- he was next to the sink, but the faucet wasn't even turned on. So, yeah, surprised.

Fraser glanced up at him again. Before he dropped his eyes again, Ray caught a glimpse of this hungry, hopeful, terrified look, like a skinny stray dog looking at a bowl of food that was his for the taking, he just had to walk past a bunch of people to get it, only they'd probably kick him to death first.

"It's okay," Ray said. But even though he was going back and forth between fan-fucking-tastic and no fucking way, he had yet to pass through okay on the way.

Fraser swallowed hard. "Okay," he said tentatively, like he could maybe live with okay.

Ray couldn't. "Okay," he repeated. "Let's ... let's try that again." Because he couldn't make up his mind without more evidence, could he?

"Try ... what?"

"You know." He raised his hands and made a come at me motion. He couldn't quite say kiss me again, you stupid Mountie. Just thinking about it, terror started to gain the upper hand. It wasn't a kiss, really. It was an ... experiment. Yeah, that's it. If he did it again and hated it, it would cancel out the first time. And if he didn't hate it -- well. If he didn't hate it, then he'd really regret it if he didn't try it again.

Fraser nodded once and approached him tentatively, as if he wasn't quite sure if Ray was going to sock him one as soon as he got in range.

Which was fair, since Ray wasn't 100% sure about that either.

But he didn't take a swing, and didn't step back, either -- even though he sort of wanted to -- when Fraser got close enough to touch. It was only when Fraser turned sideways a little to step between his hands that he realized he was still holding them up from when he'd beckoned to him.

No wonder Fraser was looking at him like he'd gone unhinged. He dropped his hands as Fraser squared up in front of him, settled them on his -- well, not his waist. Guys didn't have waists, did they?

They were as close as dancing at an eighth-grade formal, and he could feel the heat of Fraser's body all along his front. Fraser raised his own hands, hesitated, and put them on his -- waist, or whatever it was.

When Fraser started leaning in, he shut his eyes fast.

Last time, Fraser had practically shoved his tongue down his throat, all heat and desperation. He was shyer this time, brushing Ray's mouth with his closed one. Ray found himself responding -- he didn't let himself think that he was choosing to respond. He opened his mouth, letting Fraser in.

Fraser's hand came up to cup the back of his head, twisting into his hair. The other hand slipped under his jacket, tracing a line of icy fire along his ribcage.

Pulling away from Fraser's mouth just long enough to drag in a deep breath, he gasped, "Oh, God." It was so fucking good, and why hadn't he thought -- why hadn't he allowed himself to think -- this was Fraser, his best friend in the world, and if there was one thing Ray knew about love, it was that best friends was the only way to go.

"Oh, Ray," Fraser answered, and Ray almost succumbed to a fit of the giggles.

Instead, he leaned into the kiss and took a half-step forward, bringing his hardon up against Fraser's hip.

Fraser had his own little freakout then, but it was Canadian-style, so muted Ray would have missed it if all of his senses weren't hyped into overdrive. He stiffened and he took a step back and to the side, getting his lower body about as far as he could from Ray's while still staying joined at the lips. But it only lasted a second, and then he stepped back up, letting Ray rub up against him like a horny dog.

And that was nice, it really was. But it couldn't be doing much for Fraser, could it? That wasn't buddies.

His hand went, all on its own, to Fraser's fly. That sure as hell wasn't a roll of quarters -- or Loonies, either -- so they were even-Steven there. But either he'd lost all coordination in his fingers, or Fraser's pants fastened in some weird Canadian way Americans weren't meant to understand. He was pretty good at unfastening bras one-handed, but he didn't have any experience with Mountie pants.

Giving up, he just rubbed at it through the cloth. Fraser didn't seem to care much -- he gave an encouraging little buck of his hips, and kept kissing.

He didn't have a lot of moves in that department, but he earnestly copied everything Ray tried, so that was okay.

Another minute or two of that, and he started to wonder where they were headed. They had first base taken care of, and second didn't seem to exist. They'd made a good start on third. What was the goal, here?

Fraser had started all this, so he ought to be the one leading, but he didn't make any attempt to move up to the next level -- whatever that was. Ray pulled his mouth away from Fraser's long enough to ask, "Whaddya wanna do?"

Fraser kissed him again. "Don't know," he said into Ray's mouth, and continued with something about, "Not much ... experience ... exactly, this sort ... of thing."

Ray drew back enough to look at him, squawking, "You think I do?"

But Fraser looked so alarmed at his withdrawal that he quickly closed the distance between them again, and Fraser's response was so muffled Ray could only make out the word, "married."

"Well, yeah," Ray answered. He was married, had been for almost his whole adult life, which went to show you he wasn't the one to ask what exactly came after kissing and groping when you were both guys.

Fraser answered something about "twice" and "arrest you after."

Ray put that aside to think about later. "Okay." Clearly, somebody had to take charge here, and if it wasn't going to be Fraser, that left him. "Okay, I got it. I got us." He went at the front of Fraser's pants again, and finally Fraser took his hand off Ray's head and helped him out.

Fraser must've known his way around American pants, because in a moment he had them both out. They'd make a hell of a picture, two grown men standing in the middle of the room, fully dressed -- one in a red suit -- with their dicks hanging out.

But one thing he knew about sex, if you weren't ready to look like an idiot in front of the other person, you had no business having it. And he'd looked like an idiot in front of Fraser lots of times.

"I got us," Ray repeated, gathering them both into his hand. Fraser's cock felt good against his -- hard, and hot, and -- well, good. He tried a few experimental strokes -- just like he was doing himself, but getting used to the strange double handful. Fraser gasped, like somehow he hadn't quite expected that, or hadn't expected it to feel good, or something. "It's okay, you're doin' good, Frase," he said, not sure why he was saying it. He brushed his thumb across both of their heads, earning another gasp and a full-body shudder from Fraser. "That's it, you like that? Okay, come on, that's good ...." He kept up a good line of chatter as he stroked, not paying much attention to what he was saying. Just enough of a filter on to make sure he didn't say anything really dirty, since he didn't want to scare Fraser off.

He wasn't going to last long. He hoped Fraser didn't, either. With a girl, if you came first -- well, their equipment took longer to warm up. As long as he didn't roll over and leave her hanging, even Stella wasn't bothered about that. But that was another thing that had to be different with guys. It would be easy to get competitive.

The thing to do, probably, was cheat. He gave Fraser's cockhead a couple of extra swipes with his thumb. That must've been the "on" switch, `cause Fraser started talking then, even though all he could say was, "Ray, Ray, Ray, Ray, Ray," and it was like that George Carlin bit about how fuck can be every part of speech, because in Fraser's mouth, Ray meant a dozen different things, all of them filthy.

With a final, ecstatic, "Ray," Fraser came, spurting all over his hand and belly. A part of his brain was shocked, horrified, repelled -- but it was quickly outvoted by the part that was racing Fraser to the finish.

His knees went out from under him as he came, and he had to grab onto Fraser's Sam Browne belt -- with the hand that wasn't full of come, and Fraser had better thank him for that later -- to keep from going face-down on the floor.

Fraser -- both hands fortunately jism-free -- caught him by the elbows and held him up. "Are you okay?" he asked, suddenly all concern, as much as he'd been all lust a few seconds ago. He wasn't even breathing hard, the bastard.

"Couch," Ray answered, panting for breath.

Fraser backed him up to the couch and guided him into a controlled collapse, then sprawled next to him, legs apart, head thrown back. Now he was breathing hard, the freak. Trust him to have the post-orgasm slump only after he'd made sure his partner wasn't going to end up with a concussion.

After a moment or two, Fraser dug out a crisp white handkerchief and offered it to him.

Ray stared at it dumbly for a moment, saw Fraser's solemn expression, and cracked up.

Even while he was laughing so hard he couldn't catch his breath, he knew it wasn't that funny -- the orgasm apparently hadn't been enough to drain off all the tension and emotion of the last few minutes. But knowing that didn't mean he could stop -- or not for longer than it took to drag in a lungful of air, anyway. So he gave himself over to it, while Fraser -- smiling slightly -- caught his come-spattered hand and cleaned him up.

He was just starting to calm down -- enough that he could take two or three breaths in a row between sobs of laughter -- when Fraser raised their hands to his mouth and took an experimental lick from a finger he hadn't cleaned yet. "Ew, God, that's disgusting. Is there anything you won't put in your mouth?"

Fraser met his eyes with a sheepish shrug, and Ray was off laughing again. By the time he finally wound down, he was sprawled across Fraser's lap, his abdominal muscles aching, thinking that if Fraser made him laugh again, he'd probably puke.

Maybe Fraser knew that, because now he just patted Ray's back in a way that was more soothing than hilarious. "Are you okay?" he asked quietly, once Ray had been silent for a minute or two.

"Yeah," he said, sitting up. Fraser was sitting on the middle couch cushion, so he scrunched himself up on the corner and stretched his legs across Fraser's lap. "Yeah, I think I'm done."

"Good." The slight smile that was still on Fraser's face slowly faded. "I guess we should, ah, talk."

"'bout what?" Yeah, he was playing dumb, but sometimes it worked.

Fraser wasn't having it. "What we just ... did."

"What's there to talk about? There's really only two ways it can go. One, we never do it again and pretend it never happened." Fraser opened his mouth, but Ray didn't let him say anything. "And since neither of us ran out the door as soon as we were done, I guess we're not doing that."

Fraser smiled tentatively. "So, ah, what's the other one?"

"We don't pretend it didn't happen, and we do do it again."

"Ah." Fraser made some tiny adjustment to his belt. "So you ....you do? Want to?"

Hadn't he just said that? "I'm not a queer, you know." It was a funny thing to say when you were snuggled up on the couch with a guy, but he felt like he had to say it.

Fraser looked away. "So you don't."

He sighed. "See, this is why talking is bad."

Biting his lip, Fraser said, "So ... do you mean we can do it, but not talk about it?"

Ray hadn't gotten as far as figuring out that solution, but it sounded pretty good to him.

Before he could say so, Fraser continued, "I don't know if I ...." He went quiet for a minute, like he was thinking hard. Ray didn't interrupt him. "No. I'm sorry, Ray, I can't agree to that. I do -- I do try not to do anything I'd be ashamed of afterwards, and I couldn't ... if that's the way you feel about it, I couldn't." He blushed now, like refusing to be Ray's dirty secret was somehow embarrassing.

Which wasn't how Ray had meant it, at all. "Hang on, hang on. Nobody said anything about being ashamed of anything. How could you -- I mean, that's not it at all." Then he had to stop and think about what he did mean. Fraser didn't jump in to help him out, either, just watched him with this serious look that made Ray feel like whatever he had to say ought to be really important.

Exactly what he'd been trying to avoid. He knew -- boy did he ever know -- that he was good at doing. The physical stuff, especially, but he wasn't too shabby in the romantic gesture department, either. But when it came to the deep conversation about What It All Means, he was bound to say the wrong thing, trip over his own tongue, and end up feeling stupid and useless. But trying to explain why he didn't want to have the relationship conversation would only make the relationship conversation longer, so he might as well skip over that part and try to say what he felt.

As soon as he figured out what that was. "We're buddies, right?" Might as well start with what he was sure of.

"Yes, Ray." Fraser's head went down. Defeated.

He'd fucked up already. But backtracking, pleading I didn't mean it like that, never helped. Maybe if he just steamrollered on ahead, it would come out okay. Maybe. "Best buddies," he added, in case that helped. "And we had sex." Sort of, anyway. "And we're gonna do it again. Maybe, uh, maybe lots."

Fraser's head came up, and he nodded once, hopefully.

"So when you have sex with your best friend ...." The logical conclusion to that thought was coming up way faster than he wanted it to, not a steamroller, but a freight train. A train going full tilt took over a mile to stop; even if he bailed out now, Fraser would put it together soon -- he'd know, then, and he'd also know Ray was too much of a pussy to say it, and that wouldn't help at all. "Most people call that, um." He gestured helplessly -- he just could not say it. The word literally would not come out of his mouth. "Um, starts with L, rhymes with ...." He couldn't think of anything it rhymed with. "Uh, move, only not."

Smooth, Ray. Very, very smooth. Right up there with a note that said "Do you like me (circle one) Yes or No."

"Louvre?" Fraser said, brows drawn together in puzzlement. "Lmoove? Mloove?"

"Are you making fun of me?" Ray demanded. Fraser couldn't possibly be that dense, could he? The RCMP had to have some kind of IQ requirement.

On the other hand, he was the one who couldn't say a simple 4-letter word. If Fraser was dense, what did that make him? So dense that he didn't even know the word for something that was beyond dense.

"No, Ray," Fraser assured him. "I'm trying to figure out -- oh!" He tilted his head to one side. "Ah ... you mean, the, um."

Maybe not the only one who was beyond dense. "Yeah, that one."

It suddenly occurred to him that he was going pretty fast. He'd known from the first time he danced with Stella that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her -- but that was 9th grade. Grown people usually took things slower, didn't they? Hurriedly, he added, "I'm just, you know, thinking out loud."

Fraser nodded. "Understood."

But he wasn't sure Fraser did. "Stella was my best friend, before." He'd let that pass as before she divorced me, even though it was really more like, before she ripped out my still-beating heart, stomped on it, and shoved it down my throat.

Fraser lowered his head again. "I know you still love her."

"I -- " He couldn't deny it. "Yeah. Yeah, I do. But it's more like, the guy I was when we were teenagers, still loves the girl she was back then. And that guy -- well, sometimes I want to knock some sense into that guy's head, or at least tell him to be careful, keep something for himself, you know?" Now he was really being stupid -- he'd be lucky if Fraser didn't call the guys with the butterfly nets to come take him to the loony bin. "But I haven't been that guy for a long time, and she hasn't been that girl for -- well, even longer, probably."

Fraser was nodding like that made some kind of sense. "That sounds like a useful ...." He sat back, smoothing his eyebrow with his thumb, looking at something off in the distance, something that wasn't there.

"What?" Ray asked, alarmed. Fraser didn't look like he was composing a mental list of Things That Were Wrong With Ray, but appearances could sometimes be deceiving.

He shook himself a little. "I just hadn't thought about it that way before." He smiled crookedly. "I guess you ... you probably read about, in -- in Detective Vecchio's files."

For a long moment, Ray was baffled. Fraser couldn't mean he'd done this with Vecchio -- and if he had, it wouldn't be in the CPD's files, anyway.

Then he remembered Fraser, mumbling into his mouth, only done this twice and as long as I don't have to arrest you after.

Victoria. Fraser's old flame -- Fraser's Stella, maybe, except without the best-friends part. And with an extra side helping of evil.

Except that thought was crowded out by another, even more pressing one. "So when you said twice you meant ... twice. Not two relationships. Two ...."

Fraser nodded. "Nights. But I can't discuss it in any detail, Ray. A gentleman doesn't -- "

"She's a bank robber! A jewel thief! A -- Dief-shooter!"

"Well, yes, but I am none of those things."

"I don't need to -- I don't want to -- hear the details. But you don't owe her anything."

"Oh, I think I do." Fraser went quiet. "You see, I thought ... I had never ... felt that way ... about anybody before her. And I'd started to think ... I started to wonder if I could. Or if maybe there was something ... something wrong with me. That I wasn't able to ... feel that way."

He paused, and Ray nodded encouragingly. How on earth had Fraser made it through adolescence without falling in love, he wondered. And his next thought was, poor bastard. Because as much agony as he'd felt over Stella -- wondering if she liked him back, if she'd talk to him, if she'd go out with him, if she'd do the things gentleman-Fraser wouldn't discuss in detail -- planning and scheming to get a look, a word, a touch -- hating her parents and his for trying to keep them apart, hating school and friends and life because it kept him away from her -- he couldn't imagine how those years, without that, would have been anything but empty and barren and awful.

"I suppose that's why I ... why I held on to it for so long. I wanted it to mean ... something it didn't. It was just such a relief, to know that it was possible for me to ... feel that way. So I owe her for that, anyway."

"That wasn't anything she did," Ray pointed out. "It was something she took advantage of."

"Maybe," Fraser admitted. "But I did love her, and she felt ... something ... for me, and I'm still grateful for it."

He shouldn't have to be. No one -- especially not a great guy like Fraser -- should have to count a one-sided passion for a murderess as the peak emotional experience of his life. But he didn't seem to love talking about it, and Ray wanted to ease back to less loaded territory, so he said, "And you never -- I mean, there wasn't anyone else? You didn't, um, fool around with anybody?"

Fraser blushed and looked down. "Naturally, I've had ... thoughts, about pursuing an intimate relationship, but before Victoria, I hadn't met anyone that I felt I could give my whole heart to, and I felt it -- inappropriate, to pursue a relationship on purely physical terms. And after ... after, I was ... reluctant to even consider giving my heart away again." He glanced shyly up at Ray, wrapping one hand possessively around his ankle. "Until now."

It was funny how much just saying something could feel like getting punched in the gut. Because he hadn't thought about it before -- certainly hadn't thought about it before he invited Fraser to take that second kiss -- but they had blown straight past any possibility of this ending well. He could still remember how it felt when he finally got it through his thick head that he and Stella were D-U-N done: if he thought about it too much, he could even call up the physical sensations of nausea and crushing despair.

And if this ended, Fraser was gonna feel like that. Hell, he would too. The only way to avoid it was to stick with him for the rest of their lives.

Yeah, definitely not something he wanted to mention twenty minutes into the relationship.

The next day, Fraser turned up at the precinct around mid-afternoon, Dief trotting at his heels. He was like a vision in red serge, except this time he had civvies on -- a flannel shirt and jeans, which looked damn good on him too.

But Ray only had a second to appreciate the view, because it didn't occur to him until he saw him that it was very possible Fraser wouldn't realize he wasn't supposed to kiss him or anything like that right there in front of everybody. He'd know better than to slip him the tongue and shove his hand down his pants, sure -- Fraser lived in the world, he knew how you acted at work -- but he might not entirely get that a peck on the cheek, a "Good afternoon, honey," the kind of thing that would be perfectly okay if they weren't both guys, wasn't okay. Because Fraser lived in the world, but it was a world where everybody got the same fair shake, no matter if they were a slum dweller on welfare or a stripper or the ambassador from Bolivia. So in the crazy place that was Fraser's head, it might not occur to him that if their pals at the 2-7 found out about their new relationship, their first reaction wouldn't be to wish them every happiness.

But as it turned out, Fraser just said, "Hi, Ray," and sat on the other side of his desk like always, and before Ray had a chance to decide if he ought to try to give him some kind of signal, he picked up the draft report Ray had just finished and started telling him -- in his usual nice way -- all the things he'd fucked up and ought to fix before he gave it to Welsh.

The rest of the day went like that, without Fraser doing anything weird and embarrassing -- or anything weirder or more embarrassing than usual, anyway. And no new cases, or hot leads on old cases, turned up, so they actually got to knock off at a normal hour for once, around six. "You comin' over?" he asked, paying much more attention than was really necessary to the stack of files he was straightening up.

Fraser nodded, his expression unreadable. "Sure."

"Okay, then."

"Okay."

They went. As they got into the car, Fraser said, "Would you mind stopping by the Consulate on the way? I'd like to pick something up."

"No problem." Ray wondered what the hell the mysterious something was. Something to do with sex? If it wasn't, would Fraser have said? If he wasn't wondering if it was, would he have asked?

There was no way to know, and he certainly wasn't bringing it up. When he stopped the car in the no-parking zone in front of the Consulate, Fraser said, "Dief, wait here. I'll be right back," before bounding up the steps and into the building.

Ray glanced at Dief in the rearview mirror. "What's he up to, huh? Did he say?"

Dief calmly licked at his balls.

"Thanks, pal, that's real helpful."

Hell, maybe the whole reason Fraser hadn't done anything weird and/or embarrassing was that he was regretting the whole thing. Maybe he'd decided that pretend it never happened was the way to go after all.

If that's what he wanted, Ray wasn't going to argue. (He told himself.) It would be easier that way. For everyone.

Fraser came darting back out of the big double doors, knapsack slung over one shoulder, and jumped into the car. "Sorry it took so long. Inspector Thatcher wanted to know where I was going."

"Oh." He put the car in gear and eased back out into traffic. "What did you tell her?"

"That I was fairly sure I wasn't on duty this evening, but I'd be happy to consult the roster if she thought I was."

Ray grinned. Pissy Fraser -- it might have been worth finding an actual parking spot to have seen that. "Good for you. They take advantage of you in that place, you know."

"Hm, yes. It's terrible of them to provide me with gainful employment and a rationale for being in this country while allowing me considerable latitude to pursue investigations over which I have no conceivable jurisdiction. I should call the Hague."

"Well, when you put it like that," he muttered.

Fraser looked out the window and said, "It's not an ideal posting. There are more ceremonial and administrative duties than I'd personally prefer. But it's not as if the Chicago PD can hire me. So."

That was another thing he'd been avoiding thinking about. That if they went with the till-death-do-you-part thing, instead of the crashing-burning-agony-heartbreak thing, the fact that they belonged to two different countries was gonna come up.

But they didn't have to figure that one out today. "I guess you're right. You spend as much time working for us as you do for them, and the CPD doesn't give you a dime." He didn't want to ask Fraser why he put up with that arrangement, because what if the answer was that he was in that-word-they-couldn't-say with a certain Chicago cop?

Worse, what if that wasn't the answer? So he just said, "Guess we lucked out that way. Us Americans, I mean." And he couldn't quite figure out why they're talking like they just met.

Except that he knew perfectly well why they were. Last night, after -- after what happened -- they'd had some food, hung out, like normal except for a goodnight kiss just inside his front door, before he drove Fraser home. But this was the morning after. Or the afternoon after.

So it was okay that things were a little awkward. They'd get past it. "Home again, home again," he commented as he pulled up to the lot behind his building.

"Indeed," Fraser said.

There wasn't much else to say about that, so they trotted on up to the apartment.

He stopped just a step or two inside the door; Fraser, close on his heels, looked startled and almost bumped into him. "Door," Ray said. "Shut it."

Fraser motioned for Dief to go in ahead of them and shut the door, then looked a question at him.

Ray backed him up against the door and kissed that look right off of his face. Fraser responded enthusiastically, tongue probing, hands sliding under his jacket, dick sitting up and taking notice. When Ray broke it off, he licked his lips, pulled himself together with a visible effort, and said, "I take it you, ah, haven't had, ah, second, ah, thoughts."

"Boy have I ever had thoughts, Frase. Thoughts like you wouldn't believe. C'mon." He backed his way to the sofa, with a quick glance behind him to make sure Dief wasn't in the way.

They sat down, side by side, Fraser's thigh pressed up against his. No "I'm not a homo" space between them, `cause, Christ, they were. "I hoped you hadn't," Fraser confessed. "Although, of course, if you regretted -- "

"I don't," Ray interrupted him. "Regret. I'm a little freaked out, okay? But no regrets."

Fraser nodded. "Understood."

"Cool." Now that they were here, he wasn't totally sure what to do next. Kiss him again? Grab his dick? Instead he nodded toward the bag and asked, "You stayin' over?" `Cause if he didn't have his toothbrush and jammies in there, Ray wasn't sure what he could have.

Fraser looked stricken. Like he'd been struck. "Oh, no. Ray, I didn't think -- did you want me to?" He looked toward the door. "I could -- "

"No, no, it's okay." He wasn't sure he was ready for that step, anyway. Fraser had crashed on his couch a few times before, but this wasn't like that. "So what's in the bag, then?"

"Oh!" He brightened, and pulled the bag onto his lap. "Books."

"Books?" Fraser brought him books? Even Stella's quest to Turn Ray Into Something Fit For Decent Company hadn't started with a bag full of books on their second date.

Not that this was a date.

"Yes, Ray, books." He opened the bag. "I think I mentioned I don't have much experience with this sort of thing -- "

"I know, and I said I don't either, it's okay," Ray interrupted him.

"Well, yes, but you were married, for years, so you must know more about it than I do. And -- "

"I was married, yeah, to a woman. It's not exactly the same thing," he pointed out.

"How different can it be?"

Ray stared at him. Fraser had that whole adorably nave thing going, but he couldn't possibly be that naive, could he?

"I'm aware of the basic anatomy, Ray. But surely you know ... you must know how to ... well, I feel at a bit of a disadvantage," he finished, and took out the books.

Ray had a fairly good idea of where Fraser was going by that point, but it was still a shock to see him -- Fraser, the Super-Mountie from the Great White North -- sitting there with a stack of sex manuals on his lap. And there was nothing subtle about these books: the one on top of the stack said The Joy Of Gay Sex right there on the cover. The one under that was even worse: the Joy thing at least had a plan cover. The next one had a guy on the cover with his shirt off, arms thrown over his head, back arched like he was -- well, like something was going on just out of the frame, and the words "Gay sex" in big red letters. "Where did you get these?"

"A bookstore, Ray."

"What bookstore?" He couldn't quite imagine Fraser going to a sex shop, even if it was for reference books and not actual porno.

"Borders, on Michigan Avenue."

That was a regular bookstore, where they had normal, non-sex books. "You just walked in and bought these?" He couldn't quite imagine Fraser -- anybody -- doing that.

"The library didn't have anything available on the subject. Evidently they have a problem with theft."

Right, he went to the library. For sex books. Because he was Fraser. "I don't believe you."

"It's difficult to imagine why someone would steal from a library," Fraser agreed primly. "When all that's necessary to obtain books for free is to apply for a card and supply proof of address. But evidently -- "

"Yeah, yeah, that wasn't quite what I meant." He took the books out of Fraser's hands and put them on the table. "Look, we don't need these."

"We don't?"

"No, we don't. We're both smart guys -- " both guys, that was the important bit, wasn't it? " -- we can figure this out." He and Stella hadn't had more than a basic idea of what doing it was like when they started, and they'd been fine.

Of course, he'd learned when he started trying to date other women that he hadn't so much learned how to have sex as how to have sex with Stella. But he didn't want to learn how to fuck guys; he wanted to learn how to fuck Fraser. So that was okay. General knowledge wasn't the point.

"I'm sure we can, Ray. But a little research will allow us to proceed more efficiently."

"Efficiency isn't exactly the most important thing here, Frase."

Fraser looked away. "I don't want to disappoint you, Ray."

"You can't. It's not possible. I've got a dick, as long as it's rubbing against something that's warm and attached to you, it's gonna be okay."

"Okay isn't enough. I mean -- " He looked even further away, so Ray was looking at the back of his head. "You deserve more than okay."

"So do you," he said impatiently. "And it will be. But this isn't something you research."

"Why not?" Fraser turned back to look at him now.

"It just isn't." And here they were, talking again, when he'd figured out last night that that wasn't the part he was any good at. Maybe he'd better just show Fraser what he meant. So he kissed him again, and that got Fraser where he wanted him, responding instead of thinking.

Matters progressed. Ray slung his leg over Fraser's, straddling his lap on his knees, kissing him, sinking his weight into his hands on Fraser's shoulders. Fraser's hands settled on his pelvis; Ray jerked his hips, shaking Fraser's hands down onto his ass. C'mon, buddy, you can do this. Show me what you want. Just let you body tell you.

And Fraser did. Pulled him down and in, lining them up, rubbing their dicks together like they had yesterday. He got them out again -- just like yesterday, and Ray was going to have to learn how to open those damn pants -- and this time it was his hand, stroking them, rubbing Ray's tip with his thumb.

"Frase -- " he gasped.

Fraser's hand stilled. "Yes, Ray?"

And Ray knew, just knew, he was wondering if he'd gotten it wrong. "No, it's fine, you're good. Just -- not gonna last long."

Fraser nodded once. "Understood."

And he must've, because he eased off, holding their dicks loosely, stroking slower. "Good, good, okay, doin' fine," he told Fraser, between kisses. What next? "Here, how `bout this." He shoved his hand in between them; Fraser started to pull his hand away, like he thought Ray was taking over. "No, keep doin' what you're doin', you're good." He found room to get his hand in between Fraser's lags and grab his balls; Fraser gasped. "Okay?" They felt good in his hand, sort of warm and heavy and important.

"Okay," Fraser confirmed into his mouth.

He took his other hand off Ray's ass and tried to get it in to grab his balls, but there just wasn't room. "Too many hands down there, I think. `sokay, I'm good."

Fraser gave a slightly disapproving, "Hm," but put his hand back on Ray's hip.

He wasn't totally sure what to do with Fraser's balls now that he had them, but he just sort of rolled them in the palm of his hand, and that got Fraser breathing hard and jerking faster, which had to be a good sign.

A minute later he started saying, "Ray, Ray, Ray," again, and this time Ray caught on that must mean he was about to come, because he did, and he did that thing with his thumb again, so Ray did too.

He collapsed against Fraser's chest, forehead on his shoulder, a rapidly-cooling wet spot between them on their bellies. He didn't care. "See?" he asked. "No research necessary."

"Research can be very useful, Ray, but we did manage just fine that time," Fraser admitted.

"Yeah, I liked it too." He rested for a minute, enjoying the afterglow, soaking up the heat and solidity that was Fraser. "You're all messy now," he observed when he finally picked his head up. Fraser wasn't going to be too happy about besmirching the uniform with bodily fluids.

"So we are." He tried to play it off like he didn't care, but Ray could feel him getting antsy. "Are you going to laugh again if I take out my handkerchief?"

He considered. It hadn't been that funny, really -- it was just the situation, and the sheer incon -- not-matching-ness of Fraser's crisp white handkerchief, that usually didn't see any more action than a weeping witness or a bloody nose. "I think I can handle it."

He dismounted -- heh -- and Fraser solicitously cleaned them up -- him first -- and tucked them away. "I'm going to have to have this uniform cleaned before anyone sees it."

They stayed there on the couch for a while, not talking, not touching except where their knees and shoulders bumped up against each other, but it was comfortable. Good. Not awkward, even though it probably should've been. Fraser unbent enough to put his feet up on the table, which probably shouldn't have seemed like a big deal from a guy who'd just been jerking off on his couch, but it kind of was.

When they'd rested enough -- his brain was starting to come back online, and Fraser was looking around the room like his was too -- he suggested, "Food? I don't think I've got anything, but we can order somethin'. Pizza, maybe."

Fraser cleared his throat. "Actually, Ray -- " And for a second Ray thought he was going to say, "Thank you kindly for the sex, Ray, but I believe it might be prudent for me to return to the Consulate," before he continued, "I hoped you'd let me cook for you."

He blinked. "Okay. Yeah, sure. But we'll have to go to the store, like I said, I don't have anything." He didn't really -- or maybe even really didn't -- want to get up and go back out, where he and Fraser were going to have to pretend like they were just buddies instead of buddies-with-sex, but if Fraser wanted to cook for him, Ray wanted to let him.

Fraser looked embarrassed and reached for his knapsack again. "I brought some supplies. I hope you don't mind," he said, like there was a chance Ray actually would.

"Frase. I don't mind. You wanna cook for me, you get to cook for me. Easy as that."

It wasn't until Fraser beamed, picked up his knapsack, and headed for the kitchen that Ray started to wonder just what he was planning on fixing. Could be they were having pemmican. Could be even worse, although he wasn't totally sure how.

But Fraser was taking out some normal-looking cans and packages and lining them up on the counter.

That was funny, too, because if it wasn't going to be pemmican, he'd have somehow expected Fraser to be some kind of hotshot chef, with special knives and spices normal people had never heard of. But Fraser was just making steaks and some kind of rice out of a box. Normal bachelor food -- maybe more trouble than he'd go to on a week night, but overall pretty average.

Of course, being that it was Fraser, he did it all with a sort of quiet competence that Ray personally found sexy as hell, but that was just about what you'd expect.

The food was good, too -- which was also about what you'd expect. Fraser'd gotten the outside of the steaks nicely seared, so all the juices and flavor stayed in -- which Ray knew, theoretically, was what you were supposed to do when you cooked steaks, but his normally didn't turn out that way. "This is really good, Frase," he said, even though he figured Fraser already knew that.

But Fraser blushed a little and said, "Thank you kindly, Ray," and it occurred to him that what with Fraser being so goddamn perfect all the time, a lot of people probably didn't bother to tell him when he'd done something right.

Wasn't a mistake Ray wanted to make. Maybe Fraser was okay with being unappreciated at the Consulate, but it wasn't gonna be that way here.

Going along with that, after they were done eating, he insisted on doing the dishes. Fraser would've done `em -- not only was there the polite thing, but Ray was also starting to figure out he was so damn eager to please it practically hurt to think about what must've gone on to make him that way -- but Ray didn't want it to be like that, with Fraser giving and giving, and him sitting back and taking it.

So he washed the dishes, and put on a pot of coffee, and they went back to the couch. And this time he was the one saying, "Frase, we gotta talk about something."

He'd managed to plan this out pretty good -- he was sitting sideways on the couch, his legs thrown over Fraser's lap, one of Fraser's hands held loosely in his. With that kind of body language, there was no way Fraser could think, even for a second, that he was heading up on some version of it's-not-you-it's-me.

And it worked pretty good, `cause Fraser said, "All right, Ray," nice and calm, no apologies, no stammering.

"Right, so here's the thing. I hafta make sure you know. Cause maybe you do and maybe you don't, but I gotta be sure, `cause it's real important."

Fraser nodded.

"At work. They can't know about this. About us. Word can't get around. And it's nothing to do with bein' ashamed of this, or bein' ashamed of you. But cops do not like queers, and if we're gonna stay cops and stay ... you know, what we are -- and we are, `cause both of those things are real important to me -- nobody can know. Got it?"

Fraser went still, thinking again. And Ray wondered what the hell he was going to do if Fraser said, No, Ray, I'm sorry, but if this has to be a secret we can't do it. `Cause he wasn't throwing away his career, and he wasn't throwing away Fraser, and if somehow that ended up being the choice he had to make, he'd just explode or something. But when he was done thinking, Fraser said, "Yes, I understand. But while I understand the need for discretion, I won't -- I'm not comfortable with prevarication."

Ray took a minute to untangle that, and he thought he had it -- but like he said, he had to be sure. "You wanna put that in words of one syllable for me?"

"I won't tell anyone -- that's two syllables, Ray, I'm sorry -- but if asked, I won't lie, either." He stroked Ray's leg with his free hand. "If someone asked -- I can't imagine why they would, but if someone did -- I'd have to say something like, `I can't answer that.' And that would be as good as confirming it. I know that. But I can't lie about it."

He sounded sorry about it, but real sure, too. Ray wasn't totally happy with that -- if someone asked him, he'd have no trouble saying flat out, "Having sex with Fraser? No way. We're buds, but I don't go that way." But he wasn't gonna ask Fraser to make that kind of impossible choice, between doing what Ray wanted and his sense of -- well, honor, or whatever you'd call it. The way it sounded, if he did, he'd explode, and Ray didn't want exploded Mountie on his hands. So he said, "That's fair. But we've also got to make sure we don't give anybody a reason to ask."

Fraser nodded. "I understand. It's largely the same way in the RCMP. Not as -- overt, maybe. But I wouldn't be doing my career any favors either, if -- well. I'm sure my superiors could find a worse place to post me than Chicago." He looked doubtful, and added, "Somehow."

"It's not just our careers, Frase. I mean, it's that too." God, it was so important that he understood this, and it was just the kind of thing that Fraser didn't tend to understand. Or maybe that he understood, but ignored anyway -- like the fact that you didn't make friends with the guy who just tried to steal your car, or ask crack whores about their mothers, or lend money to strangers on the street. He had to know normal people, normal cops, didn't do those things, but he did them anyway. And it usually worked out for him -- but this was different. "You do this job, you have to know that the rest of the force has your back. Anything happens to you, you get shot, every other cop in the city's gonna treat it like it was somebody in their own family got shot. You're in trouble, every other cop, any other cop's, gonna help you. You call for backup, backup's gonna come. You don't have that, you come down with a serious case of dead."

"And you think -- and if the others know that you're -- that we're -- they'd let that happen?" Fraser was having a hard time wrapping his head around that, just like Ray'd thought he would.

"Yes."

"But that's not ... I understand that many people would find this kind of ... association ... distasteful. But surely the fact that you're a skilled detective, a good man -- that has to count for more."

"Not for everybody. I'm not sayin' it's right, I'm not saying that at all. But that's the way it is. I've heard of it happening. Nobody I knew personally, thank God, but you hear about it. And another guy -- this guy I did know, back at the one-nine. Uniform. He kinda kept to himself, didn't have a ton of friends, but nobody had a problem with him, until one night somebody from Vice saw him goin' into a gay bar. Few days later, everybody at the station knew. Everybody turned on him. His paperwork got lost -- his perps got lost, sometimes -- porno turned up on his desk -- both kinds -- somebody took a shit in his locker once -- he came in the locker room, everybody left. You know. Went on for about a month, until one day he didn't turn up, two, three days in a row. A couple of other uniforms went over to his place, found out he shot himself in the head with his service piece." Ray shook his head, remembering it. He shoulda done something. He hadn't joined in, but he shoulda at least said Hey, that's not cool. "And you and me, we're not gonna eat our guns if we get picked on. I mean, he musta had other problems, right? But nobody was sorry. Lot of people were glad, and they didn't make a secret of it. Day of his funeral, everybody assigned to his honor guard called in sick."

"That's ... vile, Ray."

"I know it is." He touched Fraser's knee. "So you understand, what we gotta do and why?"

"The why, definitely. I'm not sure ... what do we need to do differently?"

"Nothing. Absolutely nothing. We act any different -- we even start avoiding each other or anything -- people are gonna wonder why, and that's exactly what we don't need. You were fine today -- perfect. We just keep on like that, we should be fine."

"Ah." Fraser nodded. "Understood."

"Except one thing," Ray had to add.

Fraser gave him his full attention.

"You think maybe anybody at the store sold you those books is gonna remember? `Cause I'm sure they sell a lotta books in a day, but you kinda stick out."

Fraser blinked. "I wasn't in uniform, as it happens."

"Good, great. That helps a lot. And did you have, like, a conversation with `em? Tell `em you came to Chicago on the trail a' your father's killers, ek-cetera?"

"No, I didn't. We just talked about the books. The young man highly recommended one in particular -- "

Ray waved him off. "Okay, fine. Good. We're okay, then. He talks about it, all he's gonna say is he sold some gay sex books to a hot guy in a funny hat. He don't know he sold `em to Chicago's own personal Mountie."

Fraser looked across the room to where his hat was sitting on the table by the door. "I don't think there's anything funny about my hat."

Actually, Ray didn't either. Handsome. Sexy. Cute, even. But not funny. "I meant funny unusual, not funny bad."

"Ah," Fraser said, with a smile that lit up his eyes. "Like us."

Ray looked over at the hat. "Yeah, Frase, exactly like us."

The next couple of days, they didn't have time for any quiet evenings at home. They mighta had time for sex, but Ray wasn't sure how Fraser'd feel about a quick grope in the car on the way home, and he wasn't sure he wanted to know. `Cause if they could have sex any time -- well, what was to stop them?

It started when they were working on a red-hot case involving some possibly counterfeit watches, and Fraser took a break from all the excitement to give some directions to a lost tourist.

Anybody else, that would be the end of that. But being as it was Fraser, the lost tourist turned out to be the daughter of the king -- or emir, or whatever they had over there -- of a small middle-eastern country, on the run from both a gang of kidnappers from a different small middle-eastern country and her own family, who wanted her to go into an arranged marriage with a prince from still a third small middle eastern country. (Ray hadn't known there even were so many small middle-eastern countries, and couldn't keep them all straight in his head. Eventually he had to make Fraser call them One-istan, Two-istan, and Three-istan, just so he knew who was chasing them at any given time.)

So by the time they'd blown up a car (not his, thank God), he'd gotten shot at, Fraser had deflected the princesses romantic interest, they'd arrested the kidnappers, he'd gotten shot at some more, and Fraser had convinced the king of One-istan to let his daughter go to medical school (in Canada, when he pointed out he didn't really want his little girl living in what the folks back home considered the most sinful country on the entire globe) instead of marrying a guy twice her age who she didn't know and had invisibly shepherded the prince of Three-istan into a romantic attachment with the older lady the kidnappers had brought along to chaperone the princess once they caught her -- by the time all that had happened, Ray was totally over any lingering worries he might have had about the sex affecting their working relationship.

Best of all, they'd prevented all different kinds of international incidents, and wound up with the leaders of One-istan and Three-istan pronouncing themselves in personal debt to Canada and the United States, so both Welsh and the Ice Queen were pretty happy with them. Happy enough to overlook the exploding car incident -- which hadn't even been any kind of Ray's fault, but he tended to get blamed for things like that, for some reason.

Better than best, it was late by the time they broke the case, and even later by the time they'd done as much of the paperwork as couldn't wait until morning. Fraser'd reported in by phone, and everybody knew they'd been going like gangbusters for the last few days. It wasn't gonna look funny to anybody if they went back to Ray's place to unwind, and Fraser ended up crashing there.

Tired as they were, Ray was too hyped up to go to sleep any time soon -- but he had a good idea of what might help. As soon as they got inside, he backed Fraser up against the door and kissed him. Okay, so maybe that was getting to be a pattern, this kissing against the door business, but they'd ordered a pizza from the car, and he didn't want to get too comfy and then have to get up to answer the door and pay the man.

Maybe Fraser was worried about ending up in a rut too, `cause he did some kind of thing that wound up with Ray's back to the door, and no clear idea exactly how it happened. And that was just enough of a wrinkle to keep things interesting -- the solid wood door against his back, Fraser in front of him, right up in his space, hands planted on either side of his head. Like he couldn't get out of it if he wanted to, which he didn't, but just thinking like he couldn't sent a shiver the whole way down his body.

Fraser sucked at his lower lip for a moment before releasing him to move down, across Ray's jaw, down to his neck, until he was right at the jugular, the vampire spot, Ray's blood beating just under his lips. "Mm, yeah," he mumbled, moving his head a little so he could press his own mouth against Fraser's temple. Fraser knew better than to give him a hickey, right?

If he knew what a hickey even was, yeah. And maybe he did, `cause he was just nibbling lightly, not getting enough suction going to leave a mark. So it was all good.

Good.

Fraser untucked his shirt, skated his hand under it, stroking along his belly. Ray leaned into him, thinking Fraser was heading down into his pants, but he headed up, instead, stroking his chest, circling a nipple with his fingertips, and holy shit, it turned out there was a second base after all. It was obscene how little bits of flesh that any guy could show off in the street could feel that good. "Oh, God, good."

He scrabbled at the front of Fraser's tunic, hoping to return the favor. He managed to get one button undone and shove his hand inside, but, shit, there was still Fraser's undershirt in there. He stroked experimentally at a nipple anyway, and Frase gasped into his neck, "Ray, Ray, Ray, love you, Ray."

Ray took a deep breath, and -- nearly had a heart attack when someone pounded on the door against his back. He jumped away like a scalded cat, shouting, "What the fuck -- ?"

"The food, I think," Fraser said quietly.

"Oh, right. Coming!" he called, glancing over himself and Fraser. He was fine, everything still buttoned up, shirt was untucked, but that wouldn't look suspicious. Fraser, on the other hand, while still fully dressed, had a swollen-lipped about-to-be-fucked look to him. Hell, maybe he looked the same way. "Go in the kitchen a minute," he hissed. If he didn't open the door too far, the pizza guy could think he had a girl in here, and that would be fine, just fine.

With a terse, "Understood," Fraser beetled off for the kitchen, and Ray opened the door. "Hey," he told the guy, getting out his wallet. "We kinda forgot you were coming. What is it, fifteen?" He handed over a twenty and accepted the pizza box. "Keep it, thanks." He shut the door, threw on all the locks, and carted the pizza to the couch. "All clear, Frase."

Fraser came back, carrying a couple of plates, a beer, and a Coke.

"Oh, good idea, thanks." They didn't really need the plates -- as far as Ray was concerned, pizza was meant to be eaten straight out of the box -- but whatever. He popped open the beer and slapped a couple of slices on the plates while Fraser sat down.

On the far end of the couch.

Stiffly.

Oh, shit.

There was still just enough time for this to be a simple misunderstanding, though. "Hey, buddy, you know I was `what-the-fuck'-ing about the guy knocking on the door right on the other side of my head, right? Not about the -- you know. What you said."

Fraser said, "I know," but unbent a little.

"Then what'd I do?"

"Nothing, Ray. It's not your fault."

At least he was admitting there was an it. Now it was just a matter of asking the right question to get him to say what it was. "What's not my fault?"

"Anything."

"I got it, but there's some specific thing that's bugging you right this minute that isn't my fault, and I wanna know what it is."

"It's nothing you need concern yourself with, Ray."

"Yeah, it is. Something's bugging my -- " He fished for a word " -- buddy, it concerns me."

Fraser sighed. "Having to hide in the kitchen from the delivery boy. It -- bothered me." He looked away, blushing around the ears. "We weren't even doing anything."

"Did you get a look in a mirror while you were in there? You sure looked like you were doing something."

"I did?"

"Yeah. Downright pornographic."

Go figure -- that made him happy; he slid on over and ate his pizza, pressed up against Ray's side.

After he finished his first slice and tossed the crust to Dief, he reached for his Coke, and -- deliberately -- stopped his hand, and grabbed Ray's beer instead, and took a long pull. And that, too, was downright sexy, Frase's mouth on the lip of the bottle, sucking down beer that tasted like Ray.

Putting it down, he looked sheepishly at Ray, who grinned back and said, "Good, huh?"

"Indeed."

They ate another couple of slices each, finished the beer, and another one that Ray brought them. He had most of a six pack left, so they could've each had their own, but there was something weirdly intimate about sharing a drink like that. And since they'd already been swapping spit the fun way, you couldn't really say there was anything unhygienic about it.

Then, full and a little sleepy under the buzz, they sat on the couch and made out for a while. Best date he'd been on in years. He wanted to say -- what Fraser had said earlier -- but when he pulled his mouth away from Fraser's long enough to try, he found out he just couldn't.

Instead, he blurted out, "I got you a toothbrush."

Fraser looked confused. "I have a toothbrush. A perfectly adequate one, I had thought."

Like maybe he thought Ray was trying to tell him somethin' was wrong with his oral hygiene.. Jeez. "No, I mean -- for here."

He smiled slowly, like ice melting. "Understood."

He woke up the next morning -- shit, almost the next afternoon -- with a sleepy Fraser draped across him. God, he'd forgotten how nice it was to sleep with somebody else. Alone, you had to figure out something to do with all your limbs, and once you'd come up with something, you really couldn't tell if it was gonna work. With somebody else, all you had to do was figure out the one right way you'd fit together, like puzzle pieces. His left arm was numb where Fraser was laying on it, but he didn't care one bit.

Last night had been good, too. They'd tried some different stuff. Fraser'd put him up on his hands and knees, and at first he'd been like, Uh, no, buddy, way too soon -- but it turned out Fraser just wanted to rub up between his thighs, which he thought -- well, okay, whatever floats your boat.

But it had turned out to be great. Fraser's cock slid along the back of his balls, and he'd held Ray's cock so that every thrust drove him into Fraser's hand. Fraser'd been warm and solid and oh-so-fucking-heavy on his back. Gave him enough of an idea of what actual fucking was gonna be like that he was starting to look forward to trying it, a little bit.

Well, maybe even a lot.

He was still thinking about that when he realized Fraser's eyes were open, looking at him. "Hey," he said softly.

"Hey, yourself," Fraser answered, propping himself up on his elbow. Blood rushed back into Ray's left arm, pins and needles all the way.

"We should probably try to make it in to work sometime this week," he observed reluctantly.

"Probably." Fraser sounded just about as reluctant, but rolled off of him a moment later. "Unless -- do you want the first shower?"

It occurred to Ray that they could maybe shower together. To save time, like. Only he knew perfectly well that showering together never saved time, and while two guys who had just averted several international incidents could get away with being late to work, they couldn't quite get away with not even showing up until everyone else had gone home. "You go ahead," he yawned. "But if I fall back asleep, get me up when you're done."

It didn't occur to him until Fraser was gone that there was a dirty way he could've taken that.

Unfortunately, he didn't. Even though Ray pretended to be asleep when he came out of the shower.

So he took his own shower, feeling a really wussy thrill of pleasure when he saw the second toothbrush sitting next to his in the glass. Fraser was just getting back from walking Dief when he came out, and they downed a couple of slices of cold pizza, standing up in the kitchen. Christ, it was like they lived together. Just like. And how great would it be, if they really could -- but they couldn't. A night and morning like this, every now and then, was going to have to do it for him. No point cryin' over what you couldn't have, especially when what you could have was pretty damn good.

******

So it went like that for a couple of weeks, then a month, then a couple more weeks. Staying the night after they'd just ended a big case got to be their tradition, and when Ray strutted into the station the next day, proud as a banty rooster, everyone else could figure it was just over putting one in the can, and not over having gotten to spend the night with his partner, his best pal, the hottest guy in the entire Midwest, if not the entire world.

And it just happened that it was one of those mornings, one of those post-case, post-sleepover mornings, that he followed Frase into the bullpen to hear Detective O'Brien complaining, " -- just because some faggot got his mascara smudged, doesn't mean I have to -- "

Fraser's back stiffened, and blood rushed in Ray's ears, drowning out the rest of what O'Brien had to say. Damn it, he'd known something like this would come up sooner or later, and now that it had --

Now that it had, he wasn't sure which he was more afraid of. That Fraser would jump in with some speech about equal rights for homos, like Ray was sure he'd have done if they weren't doing the horizontal waltz every chance they got --

Or that he wouldn't, because Ray had beaten into his head how important it was that nobody know. Because if he didn't, it would be because his lo -- because this thing he and Ray had going, had somehow made him less than he was, and Ray just couldn't take that. A fragment of a poem, some dumb thing he'd had to read in 11th-grade English, floated through his head. I could not love you half so much, loved I not honor more. Somethin' like that, anyway. Fraser was honor, shining out through every pore of him, and if Ray had made even a tiny bit of that light go out --

He got his hearing back just in time to hear Fraser say, " -- orientation doesn't make him any less deserving of police protection than any other taxpayer, I'm sure."

His knees almost went out from under him, with relief that Fraser had made the right choice. The choice that might get `em both killed, yeah, if he made it too many times, but the one that meant he was still Fraser. He gave O'Brien's partner a conspiratorial sort of look, the "Hey, he's a crazy Canadian Mountie freak, what're you gonna do?" look, and plodded on to his desk while Fraser was still speechifying.

Sorting through the papers on his desk, he pulled out the forms he was gonna need to get the last case wrapped up. A 47-Z, and a 6791, and, because of the thing with the duck, he was gonna need a whole handful of HP-93's.

Fraser came over and sat down, pulling his chair a little closer to Ray's than was usual. Even though he worked here all the time, he still didn't have a desk of his own. They worked sitting on either side of Ray's. It was cozy, kind of -- he wanted to talk to Fraser, all he had to do was look up. "The young man -- he's a boy, really, he's nineteen -- was beaten in the alley behind a nightclub with a predominantly homosexual clientele," Fraser said softly, urgently. The pattern of marks indicate at least three assailants. He's in hospital, in coma. He may not live."

Ray nodded. "It sucks, Frase. Poor kid."

Across the room, O'Brien was saying, " -- have to go to the actual bar, the same room where guys do stuff to each other every friggin' night of the week. If my shoes stick to the floor, I'm gonna puke."

Fraser's eyes burned into him. "He's nineteen, Ray. And if he regains consciousness, that's who he gets to give his statement to."

Ray glanced at him, and over at O'Brien. "Life's hard, Frase."

Fraser kept looking at him.

"We all have to make choices."

Fraser dropped his eyes, nodded once. "Understood."

At least Fraser'd tried to talk some sense into him. Maybe when O'Brien was faced with the kid, he'd .... Hell, even Ray knew that wasn't gonna happen.

He'd been so relieved that being with him hadn't made Fraser less than he was. What if --

He stopped breathing for a second.

What if it could make him ... maybe even both of them ... more?

He sighed, and shook his head theatrically, in an "I'm only doing this to indulge the Mountie`s weird Canadian ethics," way, and called, "Hey, O'Brien. If you're so insecure about your masculinity you can't handle taking statements from a coupla fags, we'll take the case off your hands."

O'Brien stopped mid-harangue. "You will?"

"Hey, man, I've got nothin' to prove. I'll trade ya -- " He scrabbled through the open case files on his desk. "Here, I got a coupla muggings and a liquor store holdup."

Bringing him the folder, O'Brien moved so fast he was just a streak of ugly brown suit. "You sure you're okay with it? Thanks, man, I owe you one."

"Check with Welsh, make sure he doesn't care." Ray was pretty damn sure he didn't, or he wouldn't have given O'Brien the case to begin with.

O'Brien took off with a spring in his step. Like trading three cases for one was a good deal as long as he didn't have to talk to homos.

Showed what he knew.

He started familiarizing himself with the case file. The victim -- the kid -- was called Miguel Ramierez. Address, a crummy Puerto Rican neighborhood, where fags probably weren't any more popular than they were at the 2-7. Kid probably still lived at home. Bet the folks didn't know where he spent his evenings.

Uniforms had responded when a bar patron called 911. Took the kid to the hospital. And there was the MD's report. Broken ribs, head trauma, internal bleeding. Boot prints, two different sizes and three styles, how they'd added up the three assailants.

The kid was a little fuck, too. Five-seven, hundred and twenty pounds. Even if he was a scrapper, he'd never had a chance.

Yeah, no wonder Fraser couldn't hack letting O'Brien stomp all over the poor bastard again.

Uniforms had done a semi-decent job -- talked to what witnesses as were left, although none of them had seen a damn thing. Taken a few names and addresses, mostly bar staff who couldn't very well hightail it out in the middle of a shift when they heard the cops were coming.

O'Brien came out of Welsh's office. "He wants to see you," he said, jerking his thumb toward the door.

"Okay. Anybody talk to the kid's next of kin?"

O'Brien squinted at him. Right, it was stupid of him to think that O'Brien might have done even that much, like the Ramierez kid was human or something. "I sure as hell didn't. Maybe somebody at the hospital."

"Okay." He gathered up the file and the Mountie and went in to Welsh's office.

"You wanted to see us, sir?" Fraser said brightly.

"Yeah. There some kind of Canadian angle to this gay case that I don't know about?"

"Not that I'm aware of, sir. I received the impression that Detective O'Brien was uncomfortable with the case, and I felt that his handling of any potential witnesses might be less than -- tactful."

Good Fraser, good man, taking this all on himself, keeping the heat off Ray. Like Ray was gonna sit back and let him do that. "Fraser knows how to be polite to people," Ray explained, like that was something Welsh might not have noticed about him. "They teach `em at Mountie school or something. I think we'll handle this a little better than O'Brien would."

Welsh was nodding. "Okay. Go ahead. But Detective?"

Ray turned. "Yeah?"

"This case is not exactly your highest priority. Make sure you get to Allesandroni paperwork -- it goes in front of the grand jury next week, and you'll need to have all the i's dotted and the t's crossed by then."

Ray looked back at the door. "Understood."

They picked up the wolf and headed back out to the car. It was good to be out in the bright sunlight, the fresh-for-Chicago air, after only a few minutes in the bullpen. Police stations were not pretty places. "Where d'you wanna go first?"

Fraser considered as they got into the car. "The hospital, I think. We should see if there's any change in the young man's condition, and find out if his family has been informed." He buckled his seatbelt.

"Sounds good. Hospital, then the family if they don't know, then we'll go back around to the bar. If we get there around ten thirty or eleven, the staff'll probably be getting ready to open." He started the car and put her into gear.

"Ray."

Ray turned to look at him. "Yeah?"

"I -- you -- that was very brave."

Ray ducked his head. "Stupid, you mean."

"I meant just what I said. I`m proud of you."

No matter what Fraser said, it was stupid, and it was gonna come back and bite them on the ass -- but he wasn't sure anybody's ever told him he was brave before. At least, not the way Fraser said it. Like it wasn't a ridiculously corny, cheeseball, dumbass thing to say. So he just said, "Thanks."

Ramierez's doctor and nurses clammed right up when he showed them his badge -- O'Brien must've made one hell of an impression. Ramierez's main nurse was a guy called Cizowski, who had an earring and a noticeable swish to his step. But Ray couldn't even point out that they had probably two things in common, since his being a Polack was right now as much of a secret as the other thing, so he just stayed quiet and let Fraser do the talking. " -- apologize for the other detective's behavior. He's been reassigned. Mr. Ramierez's case will receive our full attention."

After a few minutes of Fraser doing his thing, Cizowski agreed to sit down with them and the file, and even bought them a cup of free coffee in the staff lounge.

Cizowski told them a lot of stuff, most of which boiled down to that Ramierez was in bad shape. He'd lived through the night, which was a good sign, but they wouldn't know if he was gonna get better or die until he did one or the other. "If there's any improvement in his condition, any sign that he might be able to identify his attackers, notify us right away." Fraser gave him one of Ray's cards. "People who do this sort of thing usually don't just do it once. I'd like to stop them before they do it again."

Cizowski held on to the card so tight it curled. "I will. If he wakes up, it might not be for long. Should I try to ask him, or -- ?"

"Normally we prefer to question victims ourselves, but under the circumstances -- " Fraser glanced at him; he nodded. "Under the circumstances, if you think he might not remain conscious long enough for us to arrive, find out what you can. A name, a description. Even just confirming the number of assailants may help. Write down anything he says."

"I can do that."

Ray jumped in. "Has anybody talked to his folks?"

"Not that I know of. There was no next-of-kin information in his effects."

Ray nodded. "We'll go by his address, see what we can find out."

Cizowski hesitated. "Detective, the circumstances in which he was attacked ... I wouldn't necessarily expect his family to know about his sexual orientation. A lot of Latino youths aren't out of the closet at home."

"Yeah, a lotta Italian ones ain't either." Or Polish ones, for that matter. "Maybe we'll say we have reason to believe the assailants thought he was a homosexual. Sound okay?"

Cizowski looked at him measuringly. "That might be for the best."

Ray realized belatedly that it might have sounded like he just outed Vecchio. All his lecturing Fraser about being discreet, and what did he do? Numbnuts. "They say it's one in ten, right? And we're Catholic, I got like forty cousins." Hopefully he'd re-established his hetero cred, even if it came at the price of outing four of Vecchio's hypothetical cousins.

"I'm sure they appreciate your support," Cizowski said, standing up and chucking his paper coffee cup into the trash. "I have other patients to see to, but I'll let you know as soon as anything changes."

"Great. See you."

They clattered on out of the hospital. They hadn't actually seen Miguel Ramierez, but there wasn't much of anything that looking at his unconscious body would tell them, and Ray already knew perfectly well what a guy who'd had the shit stomped out of him looked like.

As they got in the car and buckled up, Fraser said, "Ray, do I need to remind you about the need for utmost discretion?"

He shook his head. Didn't need Fraser rubbing it in how fast he'd gone from brave, proud-of-you guy to a fuckup who didn't know when to keep his mouth shut. "No, I know. I got it, I just ... " He blew out through his teeth, lifting his hair off his forehead a little bit. "I wanted to show him I wasn't an asshole, and I screwed up. I wasn't thinking."

"I think you covered it well enough."

"You think I should stick with the `I got a gay cousin' story?" Would Vecchio care?

"That sounds ... prudent."

"Not at the precinct, I mean. But even if they find that out, thinking that I got some theoretical gay cousin and I don't think he deserves to die shouldn't do too much damage."

Fraser nodded. "Understood. Should we go?" He nodded toward the steering wheel.

"Oh. Yeah." He cranked the engine.

Ramierez's neighborhood was about what he expected -- lot of people sitting on stoops, standing on corners, talking in Spanish. You couldn't really tell if they were fighting or discussing the weather -- Italians were a lot the same way, except they did it mostly in English, so it was a little easier to tell.

Polacks mostly fought inside, but not always.

Ramierez's place was on the third floor of a walk-up building. They had Dief wait in the car, and walked on up. A little woman in a flowered dress and plastic slippers opened the door. Ray didn't have a chance to say anything, he'd just pulled away the lapel of his jacket to show his badge when she lurched forward, wailing. The only words Ray could make out were madre de dios, but that was enough for him to get the general idea. Their kid was gone all night, and then two cops show up at the door -- couldn't possibly be good news.

Fraser caught the woman's shoulders and patted her back. "Habla Ingles, Senora?" Ray said awkwardly. More people from the household -- a couple of guys on either side of Miguel's age, probably brothers, a girl, maybe in her twenties. Another woman, older -- had to be the grandmother. "Hey -- anybody here habla ingles?"

The girl took Ramierez's mom away from Fraser, glaring at Ray over her shoulder. "We all do, Officer. What happened?"

"Uh, are you -- this is where Miguel Ramierez lives?"

"Yes," the woman said, accepting Fraser's hanky. "My son. What's happened to my son?"

"I'm sorry to have to tell you. He was attacked last -- "

More wailing, more Spanish. Somehow, they ended up inside the apartment, sitting on a plastic-covered living room suite. "Ma'am, your son is alive," Fraser said as soon as there was a moment he could be heard. "But he's been very badly injured." Fraser told them what hospital he was in, and what room. "Do you have a way to get there? No? Allow my partner to call a taxi. At the department's expense, of course."

At Ray's expense, more like -- the department didn't pay for taxis for cops, much less for victims' families. But he took out his phone and dialed.

"I know it's intrusive, but I hope you won't mind giving us a little information before the taxi arrives," Fraser continued. "Are you aware of anyone who might want to do your son harm?"

They didn't, of course. Miguel was a good boy, didn't go with the gangs, didn't give anyone any trouble, hadn't fucked anyone's sister -- well, of course he hadn't. Eventually, Fraser worked his way around to saying, "Ma'am, we have reason to believe that the attackers believed your son was a homosexual."

Everybody in the house insisted he wasn't, there was no way, not Miguel, not their boy. Fraser soothed them down, said, he knew, certainly, "Your son was most likely just in the wrong place at the wrong time. But in the absence of any other appreciable motive, we'll have to pursue that area of inquiry, even though the attackers were obviously mistaken."

They decided that was okay, even if the idea of Miguel getting the shit kicked out of him on account of a mistake made them start going a mile a minute in Spanish. But by the time the taxi got there, Miguel's family knew that the Chicago flatfoot and the Mountie were going to be finding out who gay-bashed their kid, and if he woke up, he'd still have a family.

And that was about the best they were gonna do, so after Fraser secured the loan of a small framed photograph of Miguel, they trooped down, and Fraser got everybody settled in the back of the taxi while he found out from the driver how much this was gonna cost, with mileage and pick-up charge and extra passengers charge, and an extra tip to make sure he was nice to them, and handed over a bigger handful of money than he wanted to hand over and have nothing to show for it.

Fraser thumped the top of the taxi to send it off, and they got back in their own car to go to a gay bar.

When they got there, the place was locked up tight, no sign of life. He checked his watch. "Still a little early. Let's go around the back, check out the scene. If there's still nobody here, we can grab something to eat while we're waiting."

The alley was ... an alley. Trash cans, dumpsters, back doors. A lot more condoms on the ground than average. A lot of stains Ray didn't want to look at too closely, only he had to, on account of needing to figure out which ones are blood.

Nobody bothered to put up any crime scene tape. Somehow, Ray wasn't too surprised.

"Do me a favor, Frase."

"Yes, Ray?"

"Don't lick anything you find back here."

"Understood."

There wasn't a whole lot to see. Blood spatter on the walls, a puddle of it on the ground.

When he was nineteen, he had sex with Stella in her pink-and-lace bedroom, in the backseat of his buddy's car, in the back room at the store where she had her part-time job.

And Miguel got this fucking alley.

"Lotsa DNA back here, but no way to connect any of it to the crime," he said, just for something to say.

Fraser nodded. "Dief, don't you lick anything, either."

They split up and searched the space, Fraser and Dief starting at one end, him at the other. He bagged a couple of pieces of trash, more for something to do than because there was anything to distinguish them from the rest of the litter. No sign of anything like a weapon. More bloodstains.

"He was standing here when they jumped on him," Fraser said quietly, indicating a space between two dumpsters. "He kept his back to the wall -- that was smart, but it didn't help him. Once they had him semi-conscious, they dragged him out here -- " He indicated a spot in the middle of the alley " -- so they'd have more room to ... work."

Fraser went down on one knee to take a closer look at the spot. Even once it was clear that there was nothing to see, he stayed and looked at the spot for a while, Ray standing over him and looking too. Finally, he met Ray's eyes and they both shrugged. Fraser got to his feet, calling to Dief, and they walked out of the alley.

As they walked back to the car, a man came out of the narrow doorway next to the bar. Guy who lived in the apartment over it, must've been. He was wearing a purple bathrobe and carrying a Yorkie. "Can I help you, gentlemen?" he said, blinking a little more often than was strictly necessary.

And oh, Christ, was he -- no wonder O'Brien hadn't wanted to come down here and get hit on by an old dude with a tiny dog.

"Perhaps you can," Fraser answered. "Did you happen to see the incident in the alley last night?"

"I've seen a lot of incidents in a lot of alleys, officer," he said coyly. "Care to be more specific?"

"Yeah," Ray broke in. "Incident where a nineteen-year-old kid got beat almost to death. Ring any bells?"

"My dear God, I had no idea." The man clutched at the neck of his bathrobe in apparent horror.

"Perhaps you saw or heard something important, even if you didn't understand the significance at the time," Fraser suggested.

He was shaking his head. "I was at the theatre last night, and then at a private party. I didn't get home until almost three AM."

"The incident occurred at about half-past midnight," Fraser said. "But perhaps you can still be of help. Are you a patron of the, ah, establishment?" He gestured at the gay bar.

"I own the building, but I don't go into the bar often. It attracts a, er, younger, and somewhat rougher crowd than I prefer." He held the dog out a little. "Would you mind if I put Duchess down? We only came out because she had to use the facilities."

"Oh. Be my guest," Fraser said. The guy put the dog down and let it sniff around the telephone pole. Ray wasn't too good at wolf facial expressions, but he was pretty sure Dief was laughing. As Duchess went about her business, Fraser continued, "Actually, we came here hoping to speak to the staff who were on duty in the, ah, establishment last night."

"I have the manager's telephone number. It's upstairs in the apartment." He collected his dog and went back upstairs, doing everything but muttering "Oh dearie me."

Ray leaned against the car to wait. "You suppose there's some kind of rule about guys like that and weenie dogs?"

Fraser glanced at Dief, who was pissing over where Duchess had. "I hope not."

"Maybe we could put a bow on him or somethin'."

"I don't think he'd like that."

"Point."

Ray was just starting to wonder if the old queer was coming back down or not when he showed up. No dog this time. "Tom -- he's the manager -- is on his way, and the rest of his staff should be here in under an hour."

Ray had thought he was going to bring them the guy's number, so they could call the guy and demand he show his face, but Fraser just said, "Thank you kindly," and Ray decided not to make an ass of himself by complaining -- it would work out the same way. "Since we have some time, perhaps you could recommend a place nearby where we might get a bite to eat while we're waiting."

That rocked the guy back on his heels, and Ray could practically see him wondering if he ought to send them someplace he actually liked, or point out the nearest doughnut shop, or possibly just tell them to go fuck themselves. Finally he said, "There's a rather nice tea shop about halfway down the block. I'm especially partial to their scones."

"Sounds delightful. Thank you kindly." Fraser actually, literally, tipped his actual, literal hat, and set off in the direction of the tea shop.

Inside, there were fewer doilies than he'd expected, and way fewer old ladies. It was one of those places that was set up to look like somebody's living room, with lots of couches and overstuffed chairs, and a few mismatched little tables. Just about everything that could be purple, was purple. Purple couches, purple pillows, purple walls, purple mugs. Most of the people there were kids -- college-age kids -- with piercings and hair more experimental than his.

The kind of people Ray always felt like were laughing behind their hands at him.

Fraser exclaimed in delight when he discovered they had something called Lapsang Souchong, which he eventually figured out was a kind of tea. He and the cashier, waitress, whatever you called her were laughing and chatting like old pals, until Ray said, "Yeah, and could I get a coffee?"

All the life went out of her face as she looked down at his badge and said, "Sure, Officer," in a sort of Eddie-Haskell voice that made Ray want to smack her one.

Except Fraser sure as hell wouldn't be proud of him if he hit a woman, so he just said, "Detective."

"I'm sorry?"

"I'm a Detective." He was embarrassed now, like he couldn't quite remember why it mattered.

"Sorry, Detective. Jay, one Lapsang Souchong and one Americano."

He waited until she turned away to mutter to Fraser, "Americano means coffee, right? Not, like, cup of warm spit?"

"Yes, Ray. Coffee."

"'kay." He handed Fraser some money and wandered over to a table to sit down.

Fraser stayed at the counter, chatting up the waitress some more, until he turned to the table with a mug in one hand and a plate in the other. "Ray," he said, nodding toward the other mug, still on the counter.

Oh, his coffee. Right. Place like this wouldn't have table service. He got up and got his coffee.

Fraser made appreciative noises about the tea, adding, "I wonder if they'd be willing to sell me a supply to take back to the Consulate. I'm sure Turnbull would appreciate it, too."

Ray shrugged. "Doesn't hurt to ask." If he asked, he'd probably get kicked in the balls, but since it was Fraser, they'd probably send him home with a bag of it for free.

Fraser sipped at his tea, watching him over the top of the mug. "Is something wrong, Ray?"

"No, I just -- " He couldn't really say, I'm annoyed because everybody likes you.

But Fraser nodded encouragingly, and he felt like maybe he could. So he said, "It's kind of annoying how everybody in the world likes you, that's all."

Fraser traced a circle on the mug with his thumb. "I do have a certain -- facility with superficial social interactions, I suppose."

Ray snorted. "You wanna spell that one out for the dumb flatfoot here, buddy?"

Fraser thought. "Most of the people who like me have known me for less than five minutes, and only will ever know me for five minutes." He looked away. "I find I have more difficulty with -- well, with the sixth minute, so to speak."

And when he put it like that, Ray found that he did understand. It was the Super-Mountie that people liked. Even some of his biggest fans -- Frannie, for instance -- didn't really know the real guy underneath. Maybe didn't even quite know there was a real guy underneath. And maybe Fraser didn't really know how to let them get to know that guy, or was afraid of what would happen if he did.

Fraser continued, "You, for instance, frequently express a desire to wring my neck."

He was trying to lighten the mood, and Ray let him. "Yeah, that would be what happens in minutes six through ten."

"Ah." Fraser sipped again. "And what about, ah, minute eleven?"

Ray couldn't really answer that the way he wanted to in the middle of public place, even if it was the kind of public place that would have the rest of the 2-7 clutching their balls as they ran the other way. But he grinned and bumped Fraser's foot with his own under the table, which he figured oughta get the message across.

Fraser muffled a grin with his mug and said, "Understood."

And after that, he did feel better. All he needed was that little reminder that Fraser wasn't Superman, wasn't some kind of angel or saint, he was just a guy who kept his vulnerabilities in maybe different spots than was the usual. And who didn't mind showing them to Ray on occasion.

Fraser pushed the plate to the middle of the table. There were two sort of triangular cake-things on it. "Scone? I wasn't sure which sounded better, the ginger-peach or the cinnamon and chocolate, so I got one of each. You can pick."

And Ray didn't care anymore that he had no fucking idea before this very minute what a scone even was. If pressed, he'd have thought it was maybe something like a pancake. "You know me, I'm all about the chocolate. Uh, which one is it?"

"That one, I think." He pointed.

Ray broke off a piece and popped it in his mouth. It was full of melted bits of bittersweet chocolate, and the cinnamon didn't really hit his tongue until he'd already swallowed. "Hey, that's pretty good. We oughta take a bag of those back to the station. Nice change from doughnuts."

Fraser hesitated. "Perhaps not, Ray."

Took Ray a minute to catch up, but when he did, he saw what Fraser meant. Two of them came back from investigating a gay bashing, with a bag full of fucking scones and Fraser's Lapsang Souchong. They'd look like a couple of frigging fairies. "Yeah, maybe not," he agreed. "But it's good. Here, try some of this one, and I'll try some of yours."

The peach-ginger thing wasn't half bad either, although not as good as the chocolate one.

A minute or two later, the waitress girl came over. "Hey," she told Fraser. "That guy who just came in? He's the one I told you about."

Fraser nodded. "Thank you. I'll speak to him in a moment." After the girl left, he explained to Ray, "I took advantage of the time while our drinks were being prepared to ask Mathilde if any of the regulars here also patronize the, the establishment down the street."

Ray nodded. "Okay. You go ahead, okay?" He'd let Fraser do the Super-Mountie thing. Less likely to scare off the potential witness that way. "I'll come over in a minute or two."

"Understood."

Fraser waited until the guy was sitting down on one of the couches with a cup of -- well, something -- before he made his way over. Ray watched -- if Fraser's ability to put people at ease wasn't supernatural -- and he knew damn well it wasn't -- maybe it was something he could learn, if he paid attention.

Fifteen seconds or so after they started talking, the guy jerked away like he was having a half-second or so's thought about just bolting. Then Fraser opened his hands and said something else, and he was relaxing, leaning forward, nodding.

Ray wondered what he'd said to get that kind of reaction, that kind of openness. Maybe the body language had something to do with it. There was a reason cops liked suspects to show their hands -- it proved they weren't a threat.

There could be something to that. Ray was a fighter, always had been, from little on up. When he met somebody, without even thinking about it he puffed himself up, like a cat trying to look big, carried himself like he was getting ready to throw a punch. Fuck, no wonder nobody liked him.

Fraser looked over his shoulder, then, and Ray got up to join him. As he got into earshot, the kid said, "I don't know, man, cops ...." Ray noticed he was part Chinese or something -- some kinda Asian. Shaggy dark hair and just a little bit of a fold to his eyes.

"I understand. But you see, my only official position in this city's law enforcement structure is as a liaison with the Chicago PD, and Ray is the officer I, well, liaise with."

Which was Fraser-ese for "He's cool, man, I'll vouch for him." Ray relaxed his shoulders with a conscious effort, turned his open hands just ever-so-slightly outward.

The kid looked at him for a moment, then nodded. "Okay, cool."

For just a tiny second, Ray felt like he maybe knew what it was like to be the Super-Mountie.

He sat down on another couch and Fraser made introductions. "Ray, this is David. He was at the club last night, and he may have danced with Miguel Ramierez."

"Great. Greatness. And?"

"And that's as far as we got, Ray."

The kid -- David -- bit his lip. "I don't even know for sure if it was him. I mean, we didn't exchange names. But he seemed, you know. Nice. Is he gonna be okay?"

Ray rested his elbows on his knees, and clasped his hands loosely. "We don't know. He's in bad shape. Could go either way."

David shut his eyes. "Fuck. I mean, I didn't really know him. But ...."

"Yeah, I know," Ray said. "The things people do to each other, huh?"

He nodded gratefully. "Yeah. Yeah, it really sucks."

"That it does."

Fraser continued, "Did you notice anyone else Miguel -- if it was Miguel -- seemed to take a particular interest in?"

David shook his head. "I don't know, it was crowded, and I wasn't, like, stalking him or anything. Does it matter? It's not like somebody from in there was the one who beat him up."

"Well." Fraser paused. "The alley where the assault took place doesn't seem to have been routinely used for entrance or egress to the club."

David looked puzzled, so Ray translated. "People go in and out, they use the front door, right?"

"Oh. Yeah." The kid blushed. "The alley, people sometimes go back there to -- you know."

Fraser nodded. "If someone made an acquaintance that he wished to, ah, pursue, they might adjourn to the alley to ... pursue it."

"People go out there to fuck," Ray supplied.

"Uh -- yeah. That."

"So Miguel probably wouldn't have gone out into the alley alone, and since he was assaulted alone, it seems reasonable to suppose that whoever he went out there with was one of the assailants."

David brought his hand up to his mouth. "Oh, shit. Shit, I didn't think of that. So it was somebody -- shit."

Fraser nodded. "That would seem to be the case, yes."

"Okay, let me think." He poured a lot of sugar packets into his drink and stirred it way more than he probably had to. "There was one guy, who looked like he didn't really -- I don't know. He was dressed right, but he was just kind of ... scary. I can't put my finger on why."

"Instinct can be a valuable warning sign of danger," Fraser pointed out. "What did this man look like?"

"I don't know, I didn't look at him too much."

"Do you have any idea of his age? Race? Hair color?"

"Oh, he was white. Almost everybody who goes there is white. That's why Miguel -- why I noticed Miguel, I think we were the only two brown guys in there. Uh, really short hair, kind of military. It was too dark to know the color. Tall -- taller than me, anyway. Close to six feet, maybe? And a little bit older than me ... twenty five or so."

Description like that wouldn't let them pick the guy out of a crowd, but at least it ruled out a good percentage of the male population of Chicago. "Great. That's a big help."

David looked over at him. "Yeah?"

"Yeah."

Fraser was standing up and handing him another one of Ray`s cards. "Thank you kindly, David."

Ray got up too. "Yeah, thanks. And listen -- be careful, okay?"

David met his eyes and nodded. "Yeah. Thanks. I will."

They got back to the bar just as the manager was unlocking the front door. He was less of a screaming queen than the guy with the Yorkie -- middle height, maybe forty, receding hairline. Built like he spent a lot of time in the gym, and dressed normal -- chinos, button-down shirt. "Good morning, sir!" Fraser said heartily. "Constable Benton Fraser, Royal Canadian Mounted Police. And this is my partner, Detective Ray Vecchio, Chicago PD."

"Yes, Stanley told me -- "

"Who?" Ray demanded, before he had a chance to think about it.

The guy -- Tom -- looked at him like he was unhinged. "Mr. Davenport, who owns the building and lives upstairs. You talked to him this morning?"

"Oh. Guy with the dog. Yeah, okay."

Tom continued, "Stanley told me you wanted to speak with my staff and I about what happened to that poor boy."

"Yes, we do," Fraser agreed. Tom got the door open, and they followed him inside.

Fraser started the rigmarole proving how the attacker must've picked Miguel up inside, but this time he hit a roadblock when Tom assured him that the alley was never, ever, used for any kind of indecent behavior. Fraser kept saying things like, "The material evidence suggests that's just not true," and "we have it on good authority that," until Ray had to interrupt. "Look, Tom, we're not here to arrest anybody for public indecency, or littering, or corrupting the morals of an alley. We're here to find out who just about killed a nineteen-year-old kid. We do not care what goes on in the alley except in that it relates to our case."

After that, Tom allowed as how the alley might once in a while be used, by his customers but without his knowledge, to transact some personal business. But he'd been in his office in the back for most of the night, and hadn't seen Miguel until another alley-user raised the alarm, and he'd gone out there to maintain order until the EMTs came. Hadn't seen anyone who looked suspicious, either. Didn't keep track of who was a regular and who wasn't.

In short, was absolutely no help at all. The rest of the employees started showing up, and most of them weren't much help either. The bouncer looked at IDs, not faces (and not very closely at either, since they knew Miguel was underage, and David probably was too). He wasn't paid to pay attention to who danced with who. The bartender had been filling glasses and changing kegs all night. "Sometimes I have time to pay attention to who's here and what they're doing, but not last night."

"Maybe you could tell us if this man was here on some of the other kind of nights," Fraser suggested, showing Miguel's picture. It was a high school graduation photo, cap and gown in the colors of one of the big Catholic schools.

"Yeah, he's been in. A few times. Cute, but not really my type."

And he was, oh my God, flirting. With Fraser. Fraser just said, "Ah. Well. Do you know if he makes a habit of visiting the, ah, alley?"

The bartender slowly wiped down a glass. "Maybe."

Fraser nodded. "Did you happen to see who he went into the alley with last night?"

"Like I said, I was busy."

Ray tried a different tack. "Did you notice anybody in here last night who wasn't the usual?"

"There were a lot of strangers here. Busy night, lots of out-of-towners. It gets like that on weekends."

"Not just somebody you hadn't seen before. Somebody who seemed out of place. Like he didn't belong?"

The bartender looked him up and down. "You mean like you?"

He made a conscious effort to put that old off-putting aggression into his posture. Shoulders up, hands closed and slightly back. If he reminded the bartender of the mysterious scary guy, playing up the resemblance might jog his memory. "Yeah, whatever."

The bartender put down the glass. "Now that you mention it, there was a guy who seemed kind of ... off. Not sure why. Lots of people are uncomfortable their first time in a place like this, but this was different somehow."

Ray nodded encouragingly. "What'd he look like?"

The bartender wasn't as good of a witness as David -- he hadn't been attracted to the suspect, either, and he hadn't paid much attention -- but what description he managed to get, matched.

"Okay, good. Now, you see this guy again, you let us know." He got one of his cards from Fraser's stash and added his home and cell numbers to the back. "Any time, day or night. If we're not in the office, we'll be at this number, if we're not at home, we'll have the cell phone turned on. Just keep goin' down the list till you get an answer."

"I get busy -- I might not have time to make a lot of calls," he said doubtfully.

"Sir," Fraser jumped in. "Protecting the safety of your community must take a higher priority than your other job duties. Detective Vecchio and I will make sure your manager understands."

"It's not just Tom; slow service means slow tips."

"Ah." Fraser reached inside his hat. "Understood. Perhaps I could -- "

Ray took the hat out of his hands. "No, Frase. You're not paying this guy to make a phone call."

"Possibly as many as three phone calls," Fraser pointed out.

"Yeah, and it's five minutes. He's gonna do it because it's the right thing to do." He jammed the hat onto Fraser's head and glared at the bartender. "Right?"

He nodded. "Yeah, okay. You're right, sorry." He tucked Ray's business card in his shirt pocket.

As they turned to go, he grinned over at Fraser. Look at that, he'd put the Super-Mountie whammy on a guy, all by himself, practically.

Fraser smoothed an eyebrow with his thumb and shook his head, amused. They rejoined Dief at the car, and Ray said, "Okay, back to the station I guess, unless you got a better idea."

"No, I don't think there's anything further we can accomplish on the street today," Fraser agreed. Ray had driven a couple of blocks before he continued, "But."

"Yeah?" Ray glanced over at him.

"It occurs to me that we might be able to locate some of the witnesses that departed the scene before the uniformed officers arrived last night."

"Yeah? How we gonna do that?" Ray asked, even though he had a pretty good idea.

"Well, we'd have to return to the ... establishment ... during its normal operating hours."

"Go to the gay bar when it's open."

"For purely professional reasons," Fraser added.

"Well, yeah." He thought. If it was just the awkwardness, the embarrassment, the teasing they were gonna be in for at the 2-7, he'd say go for it, couldn't hurt, might help. But once you added in their ... thing ... he had to worry about maybe somebody realizing that the teasing was hitting a little close to home. But they couldn't let that fear -- perfectly justified, necessary, and rational fear -- keep them from working the case the way it needed to be worked. They didn't become cops because they wanted to put protecting their own asses first.

Okay, maybe not the best choice of words.

"What for? I mean, what do you think we're gonna accomplish?"

"Well, we might be able to locate someone who got a better look at the man in question. Someone who was attracted to him might have absorbed the details of his appearance enough to furnish a detailed description."

Ray nodded. That could be. "Yeah. Maybe we can get `em to sit down with a sketch artist. Picture of the guy could really come in handy.'

"I could work up a reasonably accurate sketch myself, so we wouldn't even need to convince someone to come down to the station."

"Oh, hey, yeah." He'd forgotten that was one of the Super Mountie's talents. "Yeah, unless we get some big break in the case before then, we'll do it."

"It's a date," Fraser said solemnly.

They spent the afternoon on the paperwork for the previous case. With Fraser helping, he got most of it done and delivered to Welsh's desk by five. While they were in there, Fraser cleared his throat meaningfully.

"You comin' down with something, Fraser?" Ray asked.

He did it again. "Don't you think you should inform the Leftenant about our plans for the evening?"

Ray stared at him.

"So he can authorize the expenses?"

Now that Fraser'd brought it up, he pretty much had to. He'd just as soon have paid for their drinks himself. "Oh, yeah, that assault," he told Welsh. "We thought we'd go back to the bar, see if we can find any witnesses that maybe left the scene without giving their names last night."

"The gay bar assault?" Welsh asked.

"That's the one," Ray said, at the same time that Fraser said, "Yes, sir."

"All right, if you want to. But keep the expenses to a minimum -- you don't have to send a drink to every pretty boy you see."

Without batting an eye, Fraser said, "Understood," which was good, because Ray didn't have any idea what the hell to say. He knew Welsh was just messing with him, but it hit a little too close to home, giving Ray a half-second of so's panic that Welsh was on to them.

Finally, he pulled his wits together enough to say, "Funny, sir! I'll bear that in mind."

They left. "I should make an appearance back at the Consulate," Fraser said apologetically. "I suppose we have a few hours?"

"Yeah, a few," Ray agreed. Damn, he'd hoped to have some downtime with Fraser today. Greedy of him, since Fraser'd spent the night. "I'll pick you up at ten."

"Ten? Don't you think we should attempt to establish a presence before the evening's, ah, activities, are in full swing?"

"Yeah, I do," Ray said. "And ten should be about right."

Fraser squinted at him. "Are you sure?"

"Very sure." He drove toward the consulate. As they got closer, Fraser started shifting uncomfortably in his seat. "You gotta take a leak or something?"

"Er, no, thank you."

"Then what's the matter?"

"Well, I was just wondering ... "

Did he want to know what Fraser was wondering? No he did not. "What?"

Fraser's face had a brief but furious war with itself before he burst out, "What should I wear?"

Ray dropped his forehead onto the steering wheel. Fortunately, they were at a stoplight when he did this. "Your uniform, I guess. The brown one."

"The brown one? Ray, the light's changed."

He picked up his head so he could drive again. "Yeah. It's not as sexy as the red one."

It wasn't until an hour before he was due to pick up Fraser that Ray realized he didn't have the slightest clue what he was gonna wear. Deciding for Fraser was no problem: the man only had three outfits, and he looked like sex on a stick in all of them. Fraser was gonna get hit on -- boy, was he gonna get hit on -- but Fraser could handle it.

Ray didn't think he could. He didn't much care that he was havin' sex with a guy, plannin' on spending the rest of his life with a guy. Nervous enough that they hadn't done any of the real serious stuff yet, but he was okay with knowing it was gonna happen sometime in the future. Bein' in love and not having it thrown back in his face like trash felt good. Best thing ever, and he wasn't gonna let the fact that he and Fraser both had dicks mess that up for him.

But he knew how guys got when they were out lookin' for sex. Times like that, most guys didn't see a woman as a person. They saw her as a buncha parts -- tits, legs, ass, cunt, mouth -- movin' around and talking, maybe, but still not really adding up. He'd never thought of Stella -- or Fraser, either -- as a bunch of parts. He loved the whole overwhelming package, the gestalt. (One of Fraser's ten-dollar words.) He'd hated trying to make himself think of women that way when he was single and just wanted to get touched without gettin' hurt.

And anyway, he didn't much like the idea of a bunch of guys he didn't even know looking at him the way straight guys looked at women. He didn't know which'd be worse, if they liked what they saw or if they didn't. He had decent muscles, and he moved pretty; he knew that much. Looked like a total Poindexter in his glasses. He could keep them in his pocket, put `em on if he felt like he was looking too good.

Okay, so he had the glasses bit figured out. That just left what he was gonna put on the rest of his body. It oughta be something that said, "This here is a totally heterosexual cop who you can trust on account of he's totally cool with you bein' gay and is not gonna give you a hard time or lose your report accidentally-on-purpose, despite being 100% heterosexual and, by the way, kinda ugly so stop lookin'."

Kinda a lot to expect of some jeans and maybe a jacket.

Finally, he managed to get something on, deciding that the glasses, badge, and shoulder holster were the most important parts of the ensemble. Any trouble, he'd just flash his badge and gun. Or put on his glasses. Or all three.

When Fraser came trotting down the steps of the Consulate, Ray realized he'd made a terrible mistake. He didn't realize he'd said so, though, until Fraser slid into his seat and said, "Mistake?"

"Oh, uh, yeah. Turns out that brown uniform is, uh, pretty sexy too."

Fraser frowned slightly, looking down at himself. "I don't think it was designed for erotic allure, Ray."

Ray put way more attention than was really necessary on the road behind him, watching for a chance to pull out of the parking space. "Oh, well, yeah, maybe it's just you, then."

He risked a glance over at Fraser, who was smiling. "Ray, are you flirting with me?"

"No way, I am, uh, totally not doin' that, no."

"Ah." Fraser's mouth twitched like he was trying not to smile even more. "What a shame."

"Yeah, well, we got work to do. And you know me, duty first."

"Yes," Fraser said, like that wasn't a joke. "Yes, I know." He reached over and squeezed Ray's hand on the gearshift, just for a second. "What are we doing when we get there? Do we need a plan?"

They didn't need much of one. A few minutes' discussion, and they decided they'd tell the bartender and the bouncer what they were up to, and ask the first couple of people they bumped into if they knew anything, and then sit back and figure anyone who wanted to talk to them could find them. Wasn't like they weren't gonna stick out, even without the red uniform.

So they drove over to the bar, found a place to park the Goat -- the street was a lot more crowded than it had been during the day -- and went on up to the door.

The bouncer -- the same one from earlier in the day -- put his arm across the door. "I don't know if that's a good idea."

"We're not gonna give anybody a hard time," Ray said. "We just wanna see if there's anybody here who saw anything last night."

"Tom's not going to like it if you bother the customers."

"More customers turning up dead or injured would be worse for business than a couple of cops asking questions," Fraser pointed out.

Ray liked it when Fraser called himself a cop. Sure, he was, Ray knew perfectly well that a Mountie was a Canadian cop, but the word just didn't spring to mind when he thought of Fraser. "We aren't gonna hassle anybody," Ray promised. "We're here about an assault; we aren't gonna worry about fake IDs, or public indecency, or drugs -- unless maybe somebody's dumb enough to try doing them right where we can't even pretend we didn't notice. Okay?"

A few more assurances from him and Fraser, and they got in.

The bar wasn't quite like he expected. Hell, he didn't know what he expected. There was music, the kind of stuff that's all bass line, pounding like a drum or a heart, but it was quieter than Ray thought was probably usual, and the disco ball was spinning lazily over a mostly-empty dance floor. Instead of dancing, people were standing around in little groups of three and four, talking. There was a lot of empty space.

Probably a lot of people didn't want to come out tonight, after what happened -- or not to the very same bar where it happened, anyway. The ones that came anyway were spooked as hell.

He scanned the crowd, what there was of it. No sign of scary-guy, which wasn't exactly a fucking surprise. By the time he was done confirming that, though, Fraser was halfway to the bar, and he had to hurry to catch up with him.

Fraser was explaining something to the bartender, the guy was nodding, but looking over his shoulder at back where the manager's office was. "Ah. Ray." Fraser clapped him on the shoulder. "I think we should order drinks, in order to establish our presence here in a non-threatening capacity."

"Oh, yeah, sure. Beer's good."

"And I'll have a club soda, please." He took some money out of his hat and paid, tipping the guy more than he really had to, but Ray let him this time.

Fraser paying for him, he had a sudden flash of thinking, hey, this is almost like a date, and that scared him and excited him all at once. For a minute he almost wished it was, that he and Fraser had the balls to come to a place like this, not for work, but `cause they were together and they could be together out in public where other people could see.

The guy gave them their drinks and said, "I'll see if I can get anybody to talk to you. There might be some people here who want to bare their souls."

"Thank you kindly," Fraser said, leaning up against the bar and sipping at his club soda, which had a couple pieces of lime in it, on a stick.

The bartender lifted up the little gate and came around to their side of the bar. "Keep an eye on the register."

"Sure thing," Ray answered, sipping at his beer, giving himself another half a second of indulging the fantasy of him and Fraser bein' a couple of fags having a drink at the fag bar, instead of a couple of cops investigating a bashing at the fag bar.

The bartender came back, but didn't say anything to them, just started slicing up some lemons. Ray was about to decide that was a bust and they ought to start talking to people on their own when another guy came up and stood next to them. He ordered a drink -- vodka and cranberry -- but once the bartender started making it, he said, not looking at them, "You're the cops?"

Fraser opened his mouth, and Ray, figuring he was about to do the whole Constable-Benton-Fraser-RCMP-Ray-Vecchio-Detective-First-Class bit, said quickly, "Yeah."

"I was the one who -- I found the boy, last night." The guy was about their age, but nebbishy-looking, colorless face and colorless hair, dressed in chinos and a turtleneck sweater. Ray had a hard time imagining him fucking anybody in an alley, but what the hell, looks could be deceiving. "I should have stayed, I know, but I didn't want -- my job, you see, I teach high school mathematics."

"I understand," Fraser said. "So tell us what you saw."

Turned out he didn't see much. The beating had been over by the time he went out there -- not for very long; he'd gone up to the alley door, had heard some grunts and cursing, had figured he and his new friend -- that was what the witness called the guy he was with, his new friend -- could wait until they weren't interrupting anything. They went back to the bar, waited a little while -- two or three songs, the man said, and Ray translated, six or eight minutes -- and when they tried again, everything was quiet, so they'd gone on out.

"The man you were with, would he be willing to speak with us?" Fraser asked.

"I don't know. I'm afraid I didn't ask his name, and he's not here tonight."

"Ah."

They took him through explaining what he'd seen -- the poor kid, curled on his side, bleeding out of his head. "I thought he was dead, at first," the man confided, tears coming up in his eyes. "It was awful, just the most awful thing I've ever seen." Fraser offered him his handkerchief, and the witness mopped at his eyes and blew his nose. "Is he -- will he be all right?"

Fraser said, "He's in the hospital. His family's with him." Not lying, but not really answering, either.

The high school math teacher took his drink and went, but a few minutes later, somebody else came up and talked to them, and then somebody else, and somebody else. A lot of them just wanted to find out if the kid was alive, or to say how awful it was, or even -- and this made Ray ashamed for a minute to be a cop -- thank them for treating the case like it mattered.

Finally, the seventh or eighth guy that came up and talked to them said yes, yes to the most important question they asked. Yes, he'd gotten a good look at the man Miguel Ramierez went into the alley with.

Fraser took out his notebook and pencil and started working on a sketch. By the time he'd gotten enough of a likeness to make the guy sort of recognizable, half the bar was crowding around to watch, the ones who had also gotten a good look at the guy putting in their own helpful suggestions. Ray would've been shouting, "Shut up, shut up, can't just one a ya talk at a time, give me a chance to fucking think?" That is, if he could draw at all, which he couldn't. But Fraser just nodded at each suggestion and incorporated it into his drawing. About fifteen minutes, they had what everyone agreed was a good solid likeness.

They also had the names and addresses of several witnesses who were dead sure they could pick the guy out of a lineup. A few said they could come id him if they could trust completely in the police department's discretion -- to which Fraser was all, yes, of course, discretion is a Mountie's best friend, after his horse, thank you kindly -- and others said, yes, of course they could come in, no problem at all, didn't care who knew they'd been in a gay bar.

Ray wondered what it would be like to have that kind of freedom.

Fraser handed around a bunch of Ray's cards and made a little speech, telling everyone to call them right away if they saw the guy, be very careful, thank you kindly, and goodnight.

They went back out to the car. "I think it might be wise to make reproductions of this drawing and distribute them to other establishments in the city that cater to a similar clientele," Fraser said, getting the car.

Photocopy the picture and hand it out at other gay bars, sure. "Okay. Now?" Going to one gay bar with Fraser had been okay enough that he felt like he could handle more, as long as he didn't think about it too much.

"Tomorrow afternoon might be a better time -- we'd be able to speak to the management of the various, ah, locations when they aren't particularly busy."

"Oh, yeah. Sounds good." He stopped at a traffic light, not sure which way he wanted to be turning.

"I should go back to the Consulate tonight," Fraser said.

"Oh, right, okay." He was disappointed, but they'd had last night. And most of the day together, which was pretty great too, even if it wasn't sex. He had no call to get greedy. He put on his left blinker to head toward the Consulate.

"But perhaps not right away."

Right blinker. "Gotcha."

Back at the apartment, they had some snacks, necked on the couch for a while. It was kind of nice to be able to spread out over the whole thing, and not leave room for the wolf. Or have to notice him watching them, and listen to Fraser explain that Dief was fascinated by other species' mating behavior.

They were going slow, nothing too exciting -- just deep kisses, pressed up against each other. It wasn't a headlong rush to orgasm, but Ray liked it this way too. He knew he was gonna get to come before Fraser left -- that was one big advantage of bein' two guys together; Fraser would never leave him hanging -- but right now arousal was just a low fire in his belly, like a pilot light.

"Ray," Fraser murmured into his neck as he kissed it. "Ray, Ray, Ray."

Ray couldn't help laughing a little.

Fraser glanced up at him. "What?"

"I love the way you say my name."

Fraser sucked on his neck some more. "How's ... " Suck. "mmh, how's that?"

"Like it's the only word you ever wanna say again."

Fraser sat back a little, propping himself up with his hands on the back of the couch, on either side of Ray's head. "It is."

"Yeah? Make it hard to report in to Welsh or the Ice Queen." He imagined Fraser standing in front of Thatcher's desk, taking a dressing-down, maybe, except instead of "Yes, sir," and "understood," he said, "Ray, Ray," and "Ray." He laughed again, letting his head roll back against Fraser's wrist.

"Yes, it would be hard to explain."

"You could say you've taken, like, a vow of silence, only it's a vow of Ray-lence."

"There's an idea." Fraser shifted his weight onto his right hand so he could use the left to stroke Ray's hair. He bitched about the hair sometimes -- that he didn't know why Ray had to devote so much time and expense, not to mention use so many environmentally unfriendly chemicals, to his appearance -- but Ray knew he loved it.

"I'd take a vow of Fras-ulence, but that'd sound like I gotta stomach problem so I think maybe I won't."

"Hm, well, it would be impractical, anyway. The first time you attempted to Mirandize a suspect while saying nothing but `Fraser,' you'd lose your job."

"Yeah, and you can't answer the Consulate phone, "Ray, Ray Ray Ray Ray Ray Ray." He attempted to give the words the same cadence as "Hello, welcome to Canada," and then tried a French accent for, "Ray Ray Ray du Ray Ray Ray."

"'Du' is actually a word," Fraser pointed out. "And it's not `Ray.'"

"It's a word? I thought it was just kinda a sound, like `eh'."

"It's an article. Well, a contraction. Of the."

"A contraction of the what?"

"A contraction of the words `of the,'" Fraser explained.

"So when you answer the phone, you're saying, `Consulate of the Canada'?"

"Yes."

"So how come it's not called `the Canada' in English?" Ray didn't really care, but he asked because he knew Fraser would explain it, and he wanted to hear him talk.

So when Fraser started in on, "One of the peculiarities of the French language ...." He just leaned up against Fraser's chest and listened to the sound of his voice, and not the annoying actual words. Fraser went on for a while before he stopped and said, "You don't usually let me go for so long like this."

Ray yawned. "I like that you know stuff. I don't always feel like I got to know it too, but I like that you know it."

Fraser breathed into his hair. "I thought you found it one of my more annoying qualities."

"That too." He stroked Fraser's lightly-furred forearm. "I like everything about you, even the annoying stuff."

"Ah." He covered Ray's hand with his. "So do I."

"Yeah? What annoying stuff do you like about me?"

He liked that Fraser didn't try to deny that he had annoying qualities. "Your inability to sit still."

"Hey, I'm sittin' still right now."

"Your eagerness to argue even the smallest point," Fraser continued. "Your insecurity about your own worthiness to be loved."

Trust Fraser to slam right to the heart of things. "Yeah, well, you know, I haven't had much luck with that before. I kinda got used to having my feelin's, what's the word ...."

"Denigrated?" Fraser suggested.

"Yeah, that." He didn't totally want to talk about Stella right at that-there juncture, so he kissed the side of Fraser's mouth, and then they were done talking for a while.

Fraser kissed his way down his neck. He had some kinda thing for Ray's neck -- he'd even called it "swan-like" once. Usually, by the time he got to the neck, he stayed there for a while, but this time he kept going, down over Ray's collarbone, onto his chest. He covered one of Ray's nipples with his mouth's wet heat, circling with his tongue. Ray gasped. "Jeeze, Frase! Warn a guy."

Fraser's head popped up, face blankly innocent. "I'm sorry, Ray. Would you like me to stop?"

"No! God, no, keep goin'."

He meant, keep going on his chest, but Fraser took it a different way, and kept moving his mouth down Ray's body. He stopped to stick his tongue in Ray's bellybutton -- he hoped he didn't have lint in there, and damn, that went right to his dick.

Which it looked like maybe Fraser was goin' there, too. He paused, with his hand on the front of Ray's jeans. "Can I -- "

"Yeah, yeah. Uh, are you gonna -- ?" The idea of that mouth on him, on his dick, was enough to almost make him come right there. Almost. But they hadn't done anything but rub up against each other yet, and what if Fraser expected him to --

"I thought I might," Fraser admitted. "May I?"

"Yeah, yeah, do it, but -- "

"What?"

"I don't know if I'll be able to getcha back. The same way, I mean."

"It's okay," Fraser answered. "You don't have to. I wouldn't expect you to."

"I wanna try. But I might not -- "

"Understood." Fraser's head went down, and he found a better thing to do with his mouth than talk.

The first time Stella had done this, she'd sat there looking at his dick like it was something she found on the side of the road, before screwing her face up and putting her lips to his tip. Fraser was not exactly a natural at this, but he looked like he was studying it, not like he was totally grossed out. He tried a couple of different angles before settling into a rhythm, and once he did, Ray felt himself rising fast, incipient orgasm building in his balls. "Good, Frase, that's good, you got it, damn, not long, good, good, Fraser." When he was on the crest of it, seconds from exploding, he tried to warn Fraser, pulling away. "Frase, that's good, you gotta, gonna come, Frase, you gotta -- " But Fraser snaked a hand around his hip, holding him in close, not letting Ray free himself. He came, explosively, with another strangled cry of, "Fraser!"

Fraser sat back on his heels, swallowing convulsively, licking his lips.

"You swallowed that?" Ray squawked. No way was he gonna be able to match that. Not even close.

Fraser smoothed an eyebrow with his thumb. "Ah. I'm sorry, Ray. I thought that was how it's usually done. The book said -- but that's not important. I'll do it differently next time." He looked up at Ray as if anxious for forgiveness.

Ray's stomach twisted. Oh, fuck, he was such a fuckup. Fraser'd done that for him, and all he could do was complain. "Oh, Christ, I'm sorry. I suck, I'm a fuckup, you know I suck." Yeah, that was real romantic too. "That was great, Fraser, really, really, really great. I'm -- God, I don't know what I did to deserve you."

Fraser , apparently accepting Ray's reassurance, got up off of his knees to straddle Ray's lap. "Glad you liked it."

And he wasn't holding it against Ray that he'd said such a stupid thing. Filled with gratitude, Ray ran his hands down Fraser's body. "I did. I did. C'mon, now, your turn."

As they switched places, Fraser was saying, "Ray, you know that you don't have to do anything you don't feel comfortable with yet. We can just -- do what we usually do. As long as it's you, I'll be fine."

"I know," Ray said, sliding down onto his knees. "I know, and that's probably all you're gonna get, but I want to see how far I can go, okay?"

"Sure," Fraser said, resting his hands lightly on Ray's shoulders. "But you don't have to prove anything to me, you know that, right?"

"Yeah, I know." He opened Fraser's pants -- he'd finally gotten the knack of it -- and took him out. Just looking at Fraser's dick from this angle felt like a big step. Usually they were face to face, their dicks down at waist level. His hand was pretty up close and familiar with Fraser's dick, but his eyes weren't. He knew it was a little thicker than Ray's own, but maybe just a little shorter. But he didn't know that it stood out dusky red against Fraser's pale skin, that the big vein stood out so that he could even see it pulsing a little bit. He took a good look, holding Fraser loosely in his hand. Fraser jerked a little, with a soft, "Ray," that he figured meant you gonna do anything, or what?

Making an effort not to screw up his face like Stella had, he gave Fraser's tip an experimental lick. It wasn't ... well, really wasn't bad. Not like going down on Stella, where things got messy right away, which he was glad of. Fraser was leaking pre-come, though, and he wasn't totally crazy about the way it tasted, so he went a little ways down the shaft, where it was still kinda dry. It tasted like Fraser's sweat, which he didn't mind at all, and Fraser was keeping himself carefully still, giving these little tiny thrusts, like maybe one millimeter, when he couldn't help it, and saying softly, "Ray, Ray, Ray." And knowing that Fraser was liking it, that Fraser loved him so much he was turned on by this fucked up, completely incompetent excuse for a blowjob, made him feel so satisfied, so full, like the empty place left after Stella'd left him was finally gone, finally whole, the rough edges smoothed out.

He managed to lick all the way around and most of the way down before it hit him, really hit him that he was sucking -- well, licking -- dick. He was a very minor technicality away from being an actual, literal cocksucker.

It didn't upset him as much as he'd been half-anticipating it might -- he didn't have any trouble at all resisting the urge to run away -- but he did decide it was time to take his mouth off Fraser's cock. He let his hand come up as his mouth left, so Fraser wasn't left hanging for any longer than absolutely necessary, and switched to jacking him off with his hand, the fast, firm strokes he knew Fraser liked. Not much later, Fraser jerked, shouted, "Ray," and came.

Ray sat back on his heels, fairly pleased with himself. He hoped whatever Fraser had to say next wasn't too awfully smooth, or he'd feel like an even bigger heel than he already had.

But Fraser hadn't gotten his words back yet, and just gathered Ray into his arms, saying tenderly, "Ray."

Ray wiped his hands off on his shirt -- he was home, so he could throw it in the hamper right away -- peeled it off, and nestled against Fraser's shoulder. "Was that okay?" he asked shyly.

"More than okay." He ran his hands over the knobs of Ray's spine. "My brave, brave Ray."

"I just licked a cock, Frase, I didn't take a bullet for ya."

"You've done that, too," Fraser pointed out.

"So've you." He pressed his lips to Fraser's neck. "You didn't have any trouble with the, uh, cock thing."

"I don't think I have as many, ah, hang-ups as you do." His hands traced some of Ray's ribs. "While small communities generally have a well-deserved reputation for closed-mindedness, in practice people can be surprisingly tolerant." He was coming up on his point from even further away than usual, but Ray was starting to catch on that nerves made Fraser talky. "In a community of, say, forty-seven families, individuals who, if pressed, might say they don't approve of homosexuality are nevertheless accepting of, say, the two `confirmed bachelors' who own the only movie projector for more than a hundred kilometers in any direction, or the woman named Joe who delivers the mail."

Ray wanted to ask if "Joe" was a biological woman or a man in a dress, but Fraser kept talking. "In a city like this, of thousands of people, it becomes necessary -- or at least seems necessary -- to think of people as members of categories, whereas in a smaller town, everyone knows everyone, so each person is thought of as an individual, not an abstraction."

The sound of his voice was as nice as ever, but this time Ray thought maybe he ought to try to have some idea what Fraser was actually saying. "The thing is, I lose about twenty IQ points right after I come, and maybe you know I don't got them to spare. You wanna tell me what you're getting at?"

"I didn't grow up hearing negative things about homosexuality." His hands stilled on Ray's hips. "Of course, I didn't know it existed until I read about it in the Encyclopedia Britannica, but that's another subject. I don't think I heard -- what we just did -- used as an insult until Depot."

Ray rubbed the back of his own head. He couldn't remember when he first got the idea that guys being together was a bad thing. It was something he'd always known, like he knew that his name was Stanley Raymond Kowalski and he wasn't much good for anything. "Yeah, I get how that could make a difference."

"Anyway." Fraser's arms tightened around him. "I meant what I said -- you don't have to prove anything to me. Whatever you can give me is enough."

Ray didn't want to be Fraser's consolation prize, but he knew Fraser didn't mean it like that. "Yeah. I know. Thanks."

They rested against each other for a little while more, before Fraser shifted under him and said, "I should probably get back."

"Mmmph, yeah," Ray said into his neck.

"Soon," Fraser added.

"'kay."

A few more minutes and at the same moment, they both decided it was time to get up for real. Fraser found his hat and shrugged into his coat.

"Hey, I just gotta get a shirt, and then I'll drive you home," Ray said, ducking into his bedroom.

"To the Consulate, you mean."

"Yeah, the Consulate." He snagged a shirt that wasn't too stinky off the laundry pile and pulled it over his head as he came out of the bedroom. "Where you live."

Fraser stood by the door, turning his hat over in his hands. "Well I may live there, Ray, but I think this is home."

Ray blinked at him for a minute, then said, "Yeah, now that you mention it, you might be on to something there."

The next day, Fraser found out that he had to spend the morning shepherding a group of Canadian nuns on a tour of Chicago, so Ray stopped by the hospital by himself to check on Ramierez's condition. The family had set up camp in a waiting room near where Ramierez was in intensive care, and descended on him as soon as the sister caught sight of him -- not just the brothers and sister and grandma from yesterday, but what looked like dozens of cousins, aunts, uncles, nieces, and nephews.

"Hang on, hang on, sorry," he said over the din. "First, how's Miguel doing?"

Everyone tried to answer at once, but eventually he got the answer that Miguel was doing no better, no worse. "But what have you found out, Detective? Do you know who did this to my son?" the mother demanded.

"We have a suspect that we're looking at." He had Fraser's sketch with him, so he got it out and let them pass it around. "Anybody seen this guy before?"

He wasn't too surprised that none of them had.

"Okay, look, we have some promising leads and we're doing everything we can. Can I get that sketch back? Yeah, thanks. I've gotta get back out there, follow up some leads, but you have my card, right?" He handed out some more of them. "Let me know if he wakes up, and I know where to find ya as soon as I have some good news for ya."

He escaped from the room as fast as he could. Man, he hated dealing with families. It was almost worse when they were appreciative, like the Ramierezes were, because if even he found the guy, it wasn't gonna put their lives back the way they were before. Going down the hallway, he was trying to figure out what to do next -- after making copies of the sketch before it got any more crumpled -- when Ramierez's sister called out behind him. "Detective!"

He turned. "Oh, yeah, hi. Look, like I said, doin' everything we can."

"I know, Detective. I thought you should know." She looked back down the hallway toward where her family was, biting her lip. "What you said, about Miguel. That the men who attacked him may have thought he was a homosexual."

"Yeah?"

"I -- the rest of our family doesn't know. But he -- I have to tell you, in case it might help you find the men who did this. He -- is."

Ray nodded. "I know. We figured that, we just didn't figure we had to make sure your family knows that."

"Oh." She blushed. "I'm sorry, I just thought it might help."

"Yeah, it's okay. You did right. It makes our job a lot harder when people keep secrets from us."

"Thank you. For not telling them. We know that he might -- might not get better, and it would be so much harder on Mama and Grandmother if they had to worry that he was going to hell."

"Yeah, that's what I figured." He looked over his shoulder, down the way he had been going. "That everything? `Cause I -- "

"Yes, that's all. I won't keep you from your work any longer."

"Thanks. See you."

He loped on out of the hospital. So Miguel's sister knew he was queer, and seemed like she was okay with it. Probably didn't help the case any, but might help Miguel, if he lived.

Back at the station, he made his photocopies. Once Fraser was cut loose, they'd have to take them around to all the gay bars they could find. Definitely not something he wanted to do on his own, and not because he was uncomfortable with it. Or not only that, anyway. It was a job that called for the Super-Mountie, definitely. But he could get ready for the job, anyway. Proper preparation and all that jazz. "Frannie!"

She popped up behind him. "Yes, Ray? Is Fraser here?"

"No, not right now. We need a list of all the gay bars in the city, can you track that down for me and Fraser?" He found it helped with getting his fake sister to do things if he emphasized the Fraser angle.

"A list of gay bars?" she repeated.

"Yeah. We have this sketch of the suspect, and we want to show it around." He gave Frannie one of the copies. "You have any idea where you can get a list like that?"

"Yeah, I'll make some calls. See you, Ray."

He'd no sooner grabbed a cup of coffee and sat down at his desk than Welsh stuck his head out of his office and bellowed, "Vecchio!"

He slouched his way in. "Yeah, what's up?"

"How'd it go at the, ah, gay bar?"

"Fine," Ray replied without looking up.

Welsh sighed. "Yeah, sometimes I forget how cooperative you are when the Mountie's not here. Did your investigation produce any leads?"

"Yeah, we got a real good description of a suspect, made a sketch, we're gonna show it around some other places this afternoon."

"Okay, good. Some reporter got a hold of the story and is trying to turn it into a whole thing where the Department doesn't care when a gay Hispanic kid gets beaten almost to death. But I can tell them I have two of my best detectives on it and your investigation is underway?"

"Yeah, you can tell them that," Ray agreed.

"It's a good thing you guys took the case, otherwise this reporter might be able to write the story she's trying to write."

"Yeah." That was why it was a good thing, all right. Not because it was right or anything.

Fraser was rubbing off on him -- in more ways than one -- if he was thinking like that.

And maybe he was being a little unfair to Welsh, because his next question was, "How is the kid? Any change in his condition?"

"Spoke to the family this morning, no change."

"Good, so the family won't have any complaints about your handling of the case?"

"Don't think so," Ray answered.

"Good. Okay. Don't forget the Allessandroni paperwork; I still need that wrapped up ASAP."

"You got it." Ray stomped back to his desk. Yeah, that sure showed where Welsh's priorities were -- paperwork and keeping the press happy.

Still, he didn't have anything more to do on the Ramierez case, so he hit the paperwork hard for the next couple of hours, and made a few follow-up calls for some of the less important cases that had taken a back seat to the Allessandroni thing, and now the Ramierez thing.

He was looking at his watch and wondering how soon he could justify heading out to meet up with Fraser when O'Brien came over and leaned a hip on his desk. "Heard you and Fraser had a hot date last night."

"Yeah, me and Fraser at a gay bar, barrel of laughs," Ray mumbled.

"How many guys tried to give Fraser their phone numbers?" Huey asked, leaning over from his own desk.

"Ten, twelve, I stopped counting." What, like Fraser was the only fuckable one?

"Really?" Dewey asked, all ears.

"Total meat market," Ray lied.

Frannie, drawn to gossip like a moth to a streetlight, veered over to his desk on her way back from the copy machine. "What was it like? Were there guys kissing each other? Rubbing up against each other?"

Suddenly, he'd had enough. With one sweep of his arm, he knocked more-or-less everything off the top of his desk, shouting, "I don't wanna talk about the fucking gay bar, okay?"

O'Brien, Huey, and Dewey were all suddenly really interested in their work. Francesca had backed away, eyes like saucers. "God, Ray, soooo-ree. I was just asking a question."

The gesture drained all the rage out of him, and now, looking at the mess he made, he just felt embarrassed and deflated. "Yeah, yeah, sorry."

"Anyway, that list you wanted just came in on the fax." She handed him a sheet of paper.

"Uh, thanks." He stuffed the paper in his pocket. "Look, I gotta get out of here. D'you mind -- " He gestured vaguely at the pile of stationery on the floor by his desk.

"Yeah, I'll pick it up for you, but you owe me one."

"Sure."

He made it halfway out the door, too, before Welsh came out of his office, yelling, "Vecchio!"

Aw, shit. "Yeah, Lieut?"

"Do you by any chance have a real good reason why I'm on the phone with the mayor and you're in the squad room yelling obscenities?"

"I was, uh, role playing," he suggested.

"Role playing," Welsh repeated.

"Yeah, I was showing the other guys how someone might react if he was up to fucking here -- " He waved his hand over his head " -- with people giving him shit about going to a gay bar in the line of duty."

"I see. Well, in the future, Detective, confine your role-playing activities to your off hours, understand?"

"Yeah. Yeah. Look, I gotta go rescue Fraser from some nuns, okay?"

Fortunately, Welsh let him go. A quick phone call to the Consulate to check the nuns' itinerary, and he was on his way to Holy Name, where Fraser was supposed to hand his nuns over to some local ones at the end of their tour.

There were a couple of tour groups in the place when he got there -- one bunch of Catholic school kids in uniform, one of Japanese tourists -- but it wasn't too hard to spot Fraser, a flash of red in the middle of a bunch of nuns in those blue jackets they wore these days instead of habits. Fraser happened to be facing the other way, looking up at a stained glass window. As Ray got closer, he could hear him say, " -- fascinating similarities with Inuit ceremonial architecture. I've often thought -- " He turned back to look at his audience. "Ray!" A wide smile broke out on his face.

The nuns all turned, in unicycle -- unison -- to look at him, like he was the next thing on their tour. He waved sheepishly.

"This is Detective Ray Vecchio, with the Chicago Police Department," Fraser said earnestly, like he was one of Chicago's unmissable points of interest. "He and I often work together on cases involving Canadian citizens in Chicago."

The nuns all looked at him like they wanted to see if he could talk. Damn, he hated nuns. "Uh, yeah, right now we're workin' on this assault thing, and as soon as Fraser -- Constable Fraser's -- done here, we're gonna get back at it. But take your time," he added, realizing at the last minute that might've sounded like he was mad about Fraser doing his actual job instead of going out crimefighting with Ray.

But the nuns were all, Oh, an assault, how terrible, and none of them came at him with a ruler, not like in Confirmation classes when he hinted that maybe he had better things to do.

Fraser probably could've gotten away then, but instead he said, "Ray does a lot of good in the community. We got involved in a case once when he was coaching a disadvantaged youth in the, ah, sweet science of boxing. Athletics can provide a path out of poverty for the youth of Chicago. In this particular instance, however, the young man became a murder suspect when his opponent -- "

"Frase, I'm not sure the sisters are too interested in Levon's boxing career," Ray pointed out, even though the nuns didn't seem to mind too much. Maybe they just liked to listen to him talk, too. The Super Mountie had that effect on women, and nuns were women, sorta.

Fraser's spine straightened and he said, "Yes, of course. I'm sorry, sisters. I'll just go and see if I can find the Mother Superior for you."

It hit Ray, watching him go, that that whole business -- talking about Ray -- hadn't been Super Mountie at all, it had just been Fraser, talking about something he loved. Just like with his Inuit stories and caribou-hide-tanning advice, he tended to forget that other people didn't care about the stuff he cared about.

The nuns were still looking at him like they expected him to do something interesting. He bobbed his head a little. "So, uh, you guys like Chicago okay?"

"It's a fascinating city, Detective," one of the younger nuns answered. "Your department clearly has its hands full protecting the citizens from crime, though. Why, Constable Fraser intercepted two muggers and a pickpocket, and I'm sure he wasn't even trying."

"Yeah, he does that," Ray answered.

"He's very capable," another nun added, giggling a little and covering her mouth with her hand.

"He's Mr. Capable," Ray agreed.

"Constable Capable, I should think." The first nun was giggling now too, and it was impossible, just impossible, to ignore the fact that the nuns, the actual nuns, were into Fraser.

At least they were subtle about it, though. Not like Frannie, for example. Still, he was glad when Fraser came back. As soon as he introduced the Canadian nuns to the American ones and reminded them to contact the Consulate if they needed any further help, they were clattering down the broad front steps to the car. "So how come they have you playing tour guide? You've only lived here a coupla years."

"Three and a half," Fraser pointed out. "And Inspector Thatcher knows that I often spend my days off exploring Chicago's sites of cultural and historic interest."

"Before you started spendin' `em with me," Ray clarified.

"Well, yes."

"You know if you wanna do something historical-cultural, I'll go with ya, right?" He'd hated going to museums and so forth with Stella, but Fraser did stuff like that because he liked it, not because he thought Ray needed civilizing. Ray could go along and watch him having fun, even if it wasn't exactly his cup of bark tea.

Fraser said, "Certainly, Ray," but something in the way he said it made Ray thing he hadn't. "But I find spending time with you in private to be very culturally broadening as well."

Ray grinned, wishing there wasn't so much traffic, so he didn't have to focus so hard on the road. "Broadening, huh?"

"Yes."

He drove North into Boystown, then started looking for a parking spot. "A lot of the gay bars are right around here, so we'll find a place to leave the car and walk. The copies are in that envelope there -- I think they turned out okay."

Fraser peered into the envelope. "Oh. Yes, these are fine. It might have been a good idea to put our contact numbers on them, though."

"Oh, jeeze." He hadn't even thought of that. Just stuck Fraser's drawing on the glass and pushed "copy." "Don't know what I was thinking. I suck. Well, we'll just have to give out my business cards with `em."

"Yes, that'll work just fine," Fraser agreed. "It doesn't really matter."

Yeah, but it wasn't a mistake Constable Capable would've made. He found a parking space around the corner from one of the bars on the list, and parked. "All right, pitter-patter."

The bars all looked different -- some were like regular neighborhood places, some were all neon and chrome, one had racks of whips and shit hanging on the walls, and a list of rules that included, "No blood play" -- but the routine went pretty much the same at each one. They went in, identified themselves as cops, asked for the manager. The manager either came out to talk to them, or they got sent to an office in the back.

The managers always came out looking ready for an argument, and then they had to go into the spiel about how they weren't there to hassle anybody, why they were there, and then give over one of the copies. "We'd like you to show this to anybody you've got working the door, and have them call us right away if they see the guy." And Ray'd scribble down the rest of his numbers on the card.

Then the manager would usually say something about how he'd "Like to help, but having the police come in during peak hours is bad for business."

And Ray'd say, "Yeah, yeah, I get that, but having kids beat to death is bad for business too. Ask the guy who owns the bar where it happened. We went in there looking for witnesses last night, and it was D-E-D dead, even before we got there."

Fraser would add, "Individuals who commit these kinds of crimes -- bias crimes, they're sometimes called, or hate crimes -- rarely do it only once. And the savagery of this particular crime would suggest a very strong motivating force. I do think it's very likely that if the assailants aren't caught, they'll attack again, possibly quite soon."

And if the guy looked like he was maybe gay himself -- some of them were, some were just in it to make a buck -- Ray would add a third note to the one-two punch, something like, "We're working this case as hard as we can, but we can't be everywhere, so we have to count on members of the community being affected to be our eyes an' ears."

And Fraser would smile like a recruiting poster and add something like, "The satisfaction of having done your civic duty will outweigh any financial cost."

And then on to the next place.

About halfway through they hit a place where the bartender, the manager, and -- a careful look confirmed -- the bouncer, were all women. Ray interrupted Fraser in the middle of his part of the speech. "Uh, Frase? I don't think the suspect's gonna be able to make himself inconspicuous in here."

Fraser stopped and looked around. "Hm. Unless he's very skilled at subterfuge, you may be right." Then he shrugged and said, "Well, it can't hurt to be thorough," and gave her one of the pictures anyway.

By the time they got to the end of the list, it was about the time people were knocking off work, and the place they were in -- one of the neighborhood-type places -- was doing a little business. They went through the whole bit, the civic duty part and all, and handed over the picture.

Damn, it was hard work going to bars all day and not having a single drink. And it was a hell of a long walk back to where they'd left the car. So when the manager -- a woman, working behind the bar; it was a small place -- asked, "Is there anything else I can help you gentlemen with?" Ray made a snap decision.

He looked theatrically at his watch. "Wait." He let the second hand go half way around and said, "Yeah, it's quitting time. Get me a beer."

Fraser looked at him.

"What? It's been a long day, and it's thirsty work."

"Yes, but -- here, Ray?"

He looked around. "These guys look pretty normal." It wasn't just guys, either, there were some women couples there, too. "Don't worry, I'll defend your virtue if I gotta. Sit down, I'll buy you a club soda."

The bartender/manager watched them with a slight smile on her face. "Any particular kind of beer?"

"Whatever you have on tap is fine."

Fraser looked over at the row of taps. "I'll have a Wyder's, if you don't mind, Ray. Instead of club soda."

"Is that actual alcohol, Frase?"

"I don't think I've ever seen hard cider on tap in Chicago, Ray," he said, a little defensively.

"You don't go to bars much, do you, Fraser?" Ray had seen cider on tap lots of times, and he wasn't particularly looking for it.

"Only in the line of duty."

"That explains it. Sure, go ahead, be my guest."

The bartender came back with their drinks, but when he went for his wallet, she said, "No, it's on the house -- you're doing a good thing for the community, it's the least I can do."

Ray shrugged and put his wallet back away. There was no way a couple of beers -- or one beer and one cider -- could be considered bribery. But Fraser said, "That would be inappropriate. Duty is its own reward," and got some money out of his hat.

The lady bartender -- woman bartender -- hell, the bartender -- shook her head and smiled, hands in her pockets, but Fraser managed to find a tip jar and put the money in there.

When Fraser came back and sat down, Ray resisted the impulse to ask Fraser if he could push his stool in for him. `Cause, A, Fraser wouldn't get it, and B, if he did, it wasn't his kind of joke.

Wasn't really Ray's, either, but he sometimes did inappropriate things when he was nervous. Which explained a lot about his life, actually. This was dumb, really dumb -- the thing last night was strictly business, but this -- even though it is slightly work related -- isn't. This is him having a drink at a gay bar with Fraser because he wants to have a drink at a gay bar with Fraser.

But when were they gonna have a chance like this, a perfect excuse to be exactly where they are? After this case was over, never again. Unless maybe they went to another city, and even then they probably shouldn't.

Besides, Fraser didn't know any other place to get cider in Chicago.

He drank the first half of his beer real fast -- he was thirsty from all that walking -- but then realized he'd better slow down, if he didn't want them to have to run out the door in five minutes. He started sipping more slowly, and fortunately, Fraser was with the program -- or just wasn't much of a drinker, even when he had access to his beverage of choice.

He looked around as he drank, getting a feel for the place. This probably wasn't the kind of place their suspect would come, if his M.O. was to pretend he was picking up the victim for anonymous sex. It looked more like a place people came to hang out with their friends. The kind of place he'd be comfortable in, if --

He cut that thought off. There was even a pool table. So maybe the guys playing on it were taking looks at each other's asses when they bent over to take a shot, but hell, if it was Fraser bending over --

Okay, bad thoughts, bad thoughts. He looked over at Fraser, followed the path of his eyes over to a corner where there was a dart board, bunch of women playing darts. Ray watched him watch, noticing that he went "hm," every now and then. Different kinds of "hms," sometimes the kind that -- when it was directed at him -- meant "I hear what you're saying and think you're an idiot, Ray," sometimes the one that meant, "I hadn't thought of it that way, but you might have a point." Occasionally the, "You're about tomake a terrible mistake, but I'm too polite to point it out directly," hm. "You play darts, Frase?"

"Well, no, but it's very similar to a game played by certain Inuit tribes, which involves the throwing of projectiles carved from walrus tusk -- or bone, if walrus tusk isn't available -- at a target fashioned out of -- "

"Yeah, okay, why don't you go ask them if you can play?" Now he was just being shameless, but he usually only got the chance to see Fraser show off his weird physical prowess when they were in immediate danger of death or dismemberment, and he couldn't exactly take the time to appreciate it.

Fraser tapped his half-full glass on the bar. "You know, I think I will. If you don't mind staying a little longer."

"No, I'm good. Have fun."

There was somethin' funny about the way Fraser approached the darts-players. Sort of half Super-Mountie, half awkward kid who was afraid they wouldn't let him join in their reindeer games. Ray wondered if maybe Fraser hadn't fit in that well among the people of the frozen north, either. He'd already figured out that only some of his weirdness came down to being Canadian -- some of it was just Fraser.

But the women let him play. One talked to him for a while -- telling him the rules, maybe -- while Fraser nodded, occasionally said something that might've been "Understood." Then he got three darts in his hand and he and one of the players -- a woman who didn't look like Ray's idea of a lesbian, since she had long hair and a skirt on -- squared up in front of the board. Fraser got the first throw, and Ray didn't know from darts, but going by the reaction he got, it was a good one.

Then the woman threw, and it looked like she was pretty good, too. Another woman -- maybe her girlfriend, but she had a skirt on too -- patted her on the back and said something encouraging.

Ray kept watching, until his phone rang in his jacket. Shit, what if that was one of the other bars? He answered quickly. "Detective Vecchio, Chicago PD."

"Detective." Damn, it was the Ice Queen. "Inspector Thatcher here. Is Fraser with you?"

"Uh, yeah, he is. I mean, he's with me, but he's kinda busy."

"What's he doing?"

"Uh, he's playing darts with lesbians, Sir. Ma'am. Sir." He knew Fraser called Thatcher "sir," but that always seemed weird to him.

"Well, let him know that when he's quite finished, we can use him back at the Consulate."

"Will do, sir."

Fraser was already coming back as he closed the phone and stuck it back in his jacket. His face was slightly flushed, and he looked -- happy. Like he was having fun. "What's up?"

Ray wished he didn't have to tell him. "That was the Ice Queen."

"Oh, dear."

"Yeah, she said when you're quite finished, she wants you back home."

"Oh." Fraser turned to go -- back to the dart board.

"Fraser!"

He spun back around, shrugging, hands open. "I'm not finished."

Ray was about to point out that she hadn't really meant when he was finished -- until he saw how carefully, excessively innocent Fraser's expression was. He knew damn well what Thatcher meant. "Good point."

Fraser went back to the game, and he noticed that the bartender was watching him. "His CO," Ray explained. "She's kind of a, whaddya call it, micromanager."

She nodded. "He's your partner?"

Wasn't it obvious? "Yeah. I mean, unofficially. He's with the RCMP, I'm with the Chicago PD, but we make it work."

"Still, that must be hard." She took his glass, which still had about an inch of beer left in it, and topped it up.

"Well, somehow we seem to do a lot more jumping off roofs than is totally normal, and we get shot at a lot, so it would be kinda nice if he was licensed to carry in this country, but, you know." He shrugged. "He has his qualities."

"Have you been together long?"

"Couple years."

"That's good. A lot of marriages don't last that long."

"Hm, yeah. Mine lasted fifteen years."

"That's a long time to live a lie," she said sympathetically.

"Well, it wasn't a lie when it was happening. People fall outta love, I guess." He hadn't so much fallen out of love as been pushed, though. See, this was the problem with going to bars. The bartender saw you sitting there by yourself and got you talking about your crappy life, probably because you'd buy more drinks that way, and the next thing you knew, you were waking up with the worst hangover of your life and your Lieutenant yelling down the phone that you were two hours late and better show up in ten minutes or he'd have your shield.

Except that wasn't gonna happen today, because Fraser was here and would drag his butt off the barstool before things got that far. "We got married right out of high school. Childhood sweethearts, y'know? But we got older, what she wanted in a husband changed. I tried to be the kinda guy she wanted to be married to, but some things you can't change." Like him being a cop. Stella's colleagues in the District Attorney's office worked with cops, sure, but they didn't eat with them.

"I know what you mean. I tried to do the marriage thing for a while. I knew I was gay, but I thought, maybe if I give it a try, I can make it work, have an easy life, make my family happy. We only lasted about six months, though."

"Huh." That had to be a blow for the ex-husband. Imagine feeling like you'd turned your ex-wife off the entire male sex. "Did you love the guy?"

"Hm, I told myself I did, but I doubt it."

"When you split up with him, didja feel like you were having a hole punched in your chest?"

"Nope."

"Then I don't think you did."

"Probably a good thing, if that's what it's like."

What Fraser'd probably call "a bit of a ruckus" erupted over by the dartboard. Ray was off the barstool and halfway over there before he realized that the lesbians were clapping Fraser on the back and congratulating him, not getting ready to take his head off. (It was generally one or the other, with Fraser.)

Fraser caught his eye and broke away from the group. "Sorry to desert you for so long."

"S'okay. Had a nice chat with the bartender."

Fraser frowned slightly at that, then smoothed an eyebrow with his thumb and collected his hat. "Now that I am finished, I'd better get back to the Consulate. If you're ready?"

He tossed down the rest of his beer and said, "Sure thing," and once Fraser'd thanked the bartender kindly, they were on their way.

They got back to the Consulate faster than he would have picked, if it was up to him, especially since Fraser was holding his hand under the dashboard most of the way. "You think you're gonna get in trouble once you go in?"

One corner of Fraser's mouth turned up. "I followed my orders. If she wanted me to return immediately, she should have been more specific."

He could just imagine Fraser telling the Ice Queen that, all smooth innocence. "Insubordinate looks good on you."

Fraser did one of those fast subject changes. "If someone spots our suspect, come pick me up before you go after him. I don't want you facing these guys alone."

Getting Fraser would take time, and there was no guarantee the suspect would politely hang around waiting for them to come arrest him. But he said, "Yeah, okay."

Fraser nodded. "I doubt he'll show himself again so soon. He'd probably wait for the weekend, when the crowds are larger, and there's less chance he'd be remembered. I'll try to fix the duty roster so we can wait together Friday and Saturday."

And if they were waiting together until the bars closed, Fraser might as well stay over. Some of them were open until 4 AM. "It's a date," Ray agreed.

Fraser squeezed his hand again. "Okay. See you tomorrow."

He sat in the car and watched Fraser disappear up the steps, into Canada.

"What we really need is for Miguel to wake up and give us an ID." They were in the squad room the next morning, trying to figure out what to do next. One of those lulls that you got sometimes -- not enough to go forward, but you didn't want to switch over to working on something else. He'd already put his desk back into some kind of order, carefully avoiding Fraser's questions about why it looked like the aftermath of a very small tornado. Ray picked up his coffee cup and gestured with it. "If he got to know the guy well enough to take him out in the alley, he must've found out something about him we can use. Maybe -- " Ray sat bolt upright as the realization struck him. "I'm an idiot."

"No you're not, Ray," Fraser said automatically. "What?"

"Yes, I am, I'm too fucking stupid to live. What did we go around saying to people all day yesterday?" He didn't stop talking long enough to let Fraser answer. "That people who do this kind of thing usually do it more than once."

"Yes, Ray?" Fraser said politely.

"So what if they already have? What if there are other cases like this that didn't get solved because somebody like O'Brien was on them? Other cases with victims who are conscious and can talk to us." He got up from the desk so fast he tripped over himself, like he hadn't done since he got to his final height. "Frannie! Where the hell is Frannie?" he asked the room at large.

Huey said, "Maybe in the break room," so he headed on down there to look.

"Ray." Fraser was hurrying after him. "Ray. Wait."

He paused, and Fraser caught him by the arm. "What? What, Frase, I don't wanna lose any more time. We get the request out soon, maybe we can have some files to look at by lunch."

"It`ll only take a minute." Fraser opened the supply closet door. "In here."

Ray dug in his heels. "I told you, I'm in a hurry." He knew, in that back of his head, that a delay of a few minutes wouldn't make any difference, but the sooner he fixed his mistake, the sooner he could stop feeling stupid.

"One minute." Fraser dragged him into the supply closet and tugged the pull-chain to turn on the light.

"Nice place we got here," Ray observed. "Now what's the big emergency?"

"Ray, do you think that I'm `too stupid to live'?"

"'Course not. You're some kinda freaky genius, everybody knows that. You wanna let me go?"

"Well, it may have taken you a day and a half to think of looking for other cases, but I didn't think of it at all. So if you're too stupid to live, I must be even worse."

"Aw, shit, Fraser, you know I didn't mean that." Fraser couldn't really think he meant that, could he?

"I know you didn't." Fraser released him and bumped his shoulder against Ray's. "So stop insulting my partner, okay? Or I'll have to kick you in the head."

"Aw, really?"

"Well, yes, Ray. Anyone who insults my partner, insults me. And anyone who insults me, insults the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. And anyone who insults the Royal Canadian Mounted Police insults the Dominion of Canada. Therefore, anyone who insults you, insults the Dominion of Canada, and therefore, it would be my sworn duty to kick you in the head."

Ray was pretty impressed that Fraser managed to keep a straight face for the whole speech, but when Ray shook his head, smiling, Fraser grinned back like a loon. "Okay, then, let's go find Frannie."

Frannie was in the break room. "Francesca, I hope you can help us," Fraser said. "We need the files on any assaults that match the pattern of our gay bashing case, from any of the other precincts as well as the 27th."

Frannie didn't give him shit like she might've if it was Ray asking. "That might take a while. How far back do you want to go?"

Fraser glanced at Ray. "Let's go back a year," Ray decided. "But make sure the other precincts know to send us the stuff as they find it; don't wait until they've looked the whole way back."

"Okay, so what do you want me to ask them to look for? Anything involving somebody gay? Anything outside a gay bar?"

They hammered out a few parameters. Ended up casting a broad net -- Ray didn't want to risk missing something because the investigating officers had missed that it was three assailants, or if the guys were less picky about their choice of victims than Ray had a feeling they were. After stopping by Frannie's desk to help her write the email to her counterparts at the other precincts, they trooped back to his desk. "Okay, see, now we can kick back," Ray told Fraser. "'Cause as soon as that stuff we asked for comes in, we're gonna be sitting here reading and reading till our eyes bleed. Till then, we can just relax. Have a cup of coffee. Hey, you wanna take the wolf for a walk in the park?"

Fraser shrugged a little. "If we're going to be spending the rest of the day in sedentary activity, a walk might be -- what's that?" Craning his neck a little, he went over to Huey's desk.

Ray followed him. Spread out on the desk was the Metro section of the Tribune, and on the front page was --

A picture of him and Fraser, under a screaming headline reading, "Chicago PD Reaches Out to Gay Community."

"Oh, shit," Ray said, snatching it up. The lead paragraph gave the basic details of the crime, next was the usual attempt to explain what exactly a Mountie was doing working for the Chicago PD, and the rest seemed to be a blow-by-blow recap of what they'd done all day yesterday.

At least it didn't mention the darts.

Fraser looked over his shoulder at the paper. "It's a good photo of you. Although the space might've been better used for a reproduction of the sketch of the suspect."

"It is not a good photo, Fraser. Any photo of me, directly underneath the word gay, is the very definition of not a good photo. And where the hell did they get this thing? It looks like a frigging wedding picture." He and Fraser were standing next to each other, like they always did, but the way Fraser's hands were behind his back at parade-rest made it look almost like he had his arm around Ray.

"Nonsense, Ray, if I were getting married, I'd be in full dress uniform."

He thought the red thing was the dress uniform. "How is that different?"

"It has a gold belt buckle."

"Oh, yeah, that's a real important distinction there." He paced a little circle around Huey's desk. "How many people do you think are gonna see this?"

"I think a lot, Ray. That is the purpose of a newspaper."

"This is not good. This is not good at all."

"You're overreacting."

"That's easy for you to say. Your part of the picture is under the word `community.' Community is OK. Community is a good word."

"Ray." Huey, this time. "Stop being such a homophobe. Nobody's going to care."

"Yeah, easy for you to say." But he gave Huey his paper back and started back toward his own desk.

Behind him, he heard Fraser say, "Could I have that paper when you're done? I'd like to send the clipping to my sister."

"Sure, Fraser. You can have it now."

When Fraser came back with the paper, Ray took it out of his hands. "Where did they even get this picture?" It wasn't from yesterday -- he'd have noticed if somebody popped up and took a picture of them, and besides, he was wearing different clothes.

"It looks like one of the ones from when Francesca took that photography class at the community college."

"Yeah, but how did they get it?"

Frannie happened to be walking by. "Oh, you saw the picture? That's my favorite one of you two."

"You gave it to them, didn't you," Ray accused.

"Well, yeah. The reporter came by and asked for one, and I just happened to have it in my desk."

"Yeah, great, thanks a lot."

"What? What did I do? You got some kind of problem with having your picture in the paper?"

"When it's about gay stuff, yes."

"God, Ray, get a grip." Frannie rolled her eyes dramatically. "You're not going to get gay cooties just from having your picture on the same piece of paper as the word."

"You can't know that."

"'Cooties?'" Fraser asked.

"Imaginary invisible bugs that little boys think girls have," Frannie explained.

"Ah." He looked down at Dief. "Yes, I'll ask him. Ray, would now be a good time to take Diefenbaker for that walk?"

He scrubbed at his face with his hands. "Yeah, sure, let's go."

They went. Fraser didn't try to talk to him right away, which was probably a good thing. He didn't know what he would've said back.

The park wasn't anything too great, just a grassy lawn with some picnic tables and a swingset, and past that, a little patch of woods with a path running through it. Dief ran around sniffing stuff, and eventually they ended up in the woods, on the path. When they got there, Fraser said, "Were you really upset about the newspaper?"

"Yeah."

Fraser waited a while to see if he was gonna say anything else. "Because it might make people suspicious about -- us, or because ...."

"Both. Neither. I don't know." He didn't know what he felt. Except that he felt weird around the edges, like he could just fly apart at any moment, end up a pile of confused pieces, like the stuff he'd knocked off his desk yesterday. He couldn't get any of his thoughts to slow down long enough to figure out what they were.

"Ah."

Ray felt a sudden vicious impulse to pop him one right on his smug mouth for saying that, like he was so great, putting up with his partner being a fucked-up emotional mess.

But then Fraser said, in that terrible small voice, "I'm sorry I pressured you to take this case."

And he remembered Fraser was fucked up too, it just didn't show. "No, don't be. I, I'm glad we did, it's just getting inside my head."

They walked a little more, the gravel of the path crunching under their feet. "How do you mean?"

"Well, the kid. I mean, Miguel. I keep thinking what I was like at that age. Like he ... like he coulda been me."

Fraser breathed in sharp, like he hadn't thought of that at all.

Well, maybe he hadn't spent most of his growing-up years trying not to get beat up.

Ray kept going. "And then we go to those places, and see those other guys, ones who don't have to keep it such a big fucking secret, and I think, like, that coulda been me. If I wasn't a cop." He shrugged. He hadn't known till he started saying it that's what he was going to say. Felt a little better, just having figured that much out. "Just confused, I guess. Once we finish the case, I'll feel better."

Fraser nodded. "That makes sense. The case is exposing you to the conflicting realities that those who are openly, ah, gay can have happy, fulfilling lives, and that they can face great danger because of their, ah, orientation."

"Yeah," Ray agreed.

Fraser became very interested in the bushes they were passing by on the other side, away from Ray. "I have to admit, I'm relieved to hear that. I was afraid you'd been made so uncomfortable that you were considering ending our, uh, relationship."

"Oh, jeez, no. Nothin' like that." He realized after Fraser said it that it was a pretty reasonable thing to think when he was having a big gay freakout. "No, I don't wanna give up our thing. Never." He looked around to make sure nobody was watching, and gave Fraser's arm a squeeze. "You're stuck with me until you beat me off with a stick." He kicked at the gravel. "Even then I'd probably just lay there and bleed to death as close as I could get to you."

"That's very romantic, Ray."

"Yeah, no, it's not really a good thing. I'm pathetic. But that's how it is."

"Well, I have no intention of beating you with a stick, so I suppose we'll continue on as we are."

"Seriously, Fraser, you saw how it was with Stella. I do not handle breakups well."

"I had planned to pine away silently for the rest of my life. Once we reunited and -- and parted again, here in Chicago, it took me months to ... and I think losing you would be much harder to recover from. I don't know if I ever would. So I think we had better plan on staying together."

"Yeah, that'd be good."

They walked a little more. "Ray, have you had anything to eat or drink today except coffee and candy?"

He thought back over the morning. "Uh, no. I haven't been hungry."

"Emotional stress can have that effect. As part of the fight-or-flight response, the body slows down its digestive processes -- that's not important. But it can be easier to maintain emotional equilibrium when you're well-nourished and properly hydrated."

So Fraser took him to a nearby deli where they understood about Dief, and made him get a sandwich on whole-wheat bread and a big bottle of fruit juice. He went along with it, but said, "You have to get something. You've gotta maintain your emotional lithium too."

After they ate, it was back to the squad room, and there were some files waiting for them already. A lot of them. A note from Frannie on the top of the pile said, "Here are the files from this precinct. You'll get the others sometime this afternoon."

He divided the stack in half and gave half to Fraser, but before he had a chance to sit down, Welsh stuck his head out of his office. "Vecchio, come in here a minute."

He went in, wondering if he was gonna get yelled at again, and what for.

But Welsh just gestured for him to sit down, and said, "Ray, are you doing okay?"

"Uh, yeah, I'm all right."

"Look, I know you weren't happy about that thing in the paper, but like I said yesterday, the press wants to see that we're doing this right. You gonna keep doing it right?"

"Yes, sir. Fraser got my head back on straight, made me eat somethin', I'm okay now."

"Good, good. Keep doing what you're doing."

Okay, that was weird. He went back to the desk and picked up one of the files. Fraser looked at him over the top of the file he was reading.

"It's fine," Ray told him.

Fraser nodded and got back to work, and after a minute, Ray did too.

There were a lot of files, but most of them didn't have much in them -- often just the initial complaint and then a note dated a few weeks later saying no progress had been made. Ray figured he knew what that meant -- the investigating officer took the report, left it sit on his desk for a while, and then forgot about it.

Some of the cases they could eliminate right off the bat. Ones where the assailant was somebody the victim knew, ones where nothing about the victim or the M.O. matched. Ones where something matched but a lot of things didn't, he put in a new pile to comb through later if they didn't find anything that totally matched. Every now and then Fraser would pass him a file, or he'd pass Fraser a file, and he'd shake his head and put it in one pile or the other. Frannie came by twice with more files for them to look at, and they kept going.

"Hey." Ray sat up and took his feet off the desk. "Hey, I think this is it."

Fraser put down what he was looking at and gave him his full attention.

"Twenty-one-year-old kid. Badly beaten in the street behind an apartment building. Reported three assailants, one of who he was going home with after picking him up in the Jackhammer. Medical report says severe trauma to the head and torso, probably caused by kicking. Described the suspects as white, average height, average build, short hair."

"That sounds like our men. Is there contact information?"

"Yeah." Ray picked up the phone and dialed the number. After a few rings, a woman's voice answered. Sounded black, with just a hint of a southern accent. "Hi, yeah, this is the Chicago PD, I'm looking for a Tyrone Bleek."

"This is his mother."

"Okay, great. I'm calling about the assault, about -- " He checked the date on the form. " -- about six months ago. We'd like to talk to him about it."

"Have you finally found out who did this to my son?"

"Uh, well, not exactly. We're investigating a similar crime, and we're hoping Tyrone can help us with some information."

"He told the police officer all about it six months ago. You didn't help him then, but you want him to help you now?"

"I'm sorry. It was another officer who investigated his initial complaint. I don't know why they didn't make much progress. If he's able to sit down and go through it one more time with us, he might be able to tell us something we can use, that didn't make it into the other officer's report."

"I'll ask him." Before Ray could say anything else, there was a thunk, like she'd put the phone down on the table or something.

Fraser raised an eyebrow at him, and Ray nodded. He felt like this was going somewhere.

When the phone got picked up, it was the mother again. "He'll talk to you, if you can come by before I have to leave for work. That's at quarter till four."

Ray looked at his watch and at the address on the report. "We'll leave right now." They could make it, but with traffic, it might be tight.

It felt good to get out from behind his desk and behind the wheel of the car. Felt better to have Fraser belting himself in beside him. "The mom sounds like she's pretty protective of the kid," he warns Fraser on their way there.

"She has reason to be," Fraser pointed out.

The Bleeks lived in a little two-story row house. Neighborhood wasn't a great one, but wasn't a terrible one, either. Some of the houses had boarded up windows, trash laying around on the porches, stuff like that, but the Bleek home was neat and well-kept.

When they knocked, the mom answered the door. She was dressed in pink scrubs with a pattern of flowers on the top -- some kind of nurse, then. "You're the police?" She looked skeptically at Fraser's outfit.

Ray gave the usual explanation, adding, "Thanks for letting us come talk to Tyrone."

"You'd better catch those animals who did this to him," she warned them. "He's not the same. He was going to college -- just the community college, but he had a scholarship, he was doing real well. He was going to go on to a four-year school after he finished there. But he had to drop out. He can't read more than a few minutes at a time, can't remember half of what he did read. Now he just sits here in this house."

Ray swallowed hard. "I'm really sorry."

"It's a tragedy," Fraser said. "But perhaps he can help us make sure a similar tragedy doesn't happen to another young man."

Like a lot of row houses, this one had two living rooms in the front and middle of the ground floor, with the kitchen in the back. Tyrone sat in front of the TV in the second living room.

Fraser did the introduction this time, finishing up, "We'd like to talk with you about the attack you suffered a few months ago."

"Yeah, my moms said." He reached for the remote and turned the TV down, but not off. "You gonna do anything with what I tell you, or just write it all down and forget about it like those other cops did?"

"We're going to do something about it," Ray promised.

"Okay." He turned the TV off. "What do you want to know?"

"Tell us about that night," Fraser said.

His eyes shifted away. "I don't really remember that much. It was a long time ago."

"Start with when you arrived at the bar," Fraser suggested. "Did you arrive with a group of friends? Or were you meeting anyone there?"

"No, I was on my own. I figured I'd meet some new people there. I remember I had on this new jacket that I bought. Mom doesn't like me spending more money than I have to on clothes, she thinks I should save it for my education, but whatever. I remember when I woke up in the hospital, thinking how I only got to wear it once."

Fraser led him through some more details that didn't really matter -- what he had to drink, who he talked to, what songs they played that he liked. Ray was kind of annoyed, but knew why Fraser was doing it -- to help get the kid relaxed, trusting them. He's a lot more patient than Ray would be if he was the one asking the questions.

Finally, he got to the good part -- where Tyrone picked up the guy who took him out and beat him. Ray patted his jacket over the pocket where he had the drawing of the suspect.

"I don't go home with strange guys all the time. I mean, I ain't stupid. But he seemed okay. We talked for a while, you know, while we were dancing. And we did some kissing and stuff in the bathroom."

Ray broke in, too impatient to wait for Fraser to get around to asking. "What did he look like?"

"He was a white guy. Dark hair -- maybe black, maybe dark brown, I don't know. Good looking, you know? Nice butt, nice abs."

"About how tall was he?"

"Not too much bigger than me. That was another thing -- if it had just been him, I could of taken him."

Fraser frowned, looking at Ray. Tyrone wasn't a big guy; if his assailant was about his height, it wasn't the same man the people in the other bar had described. Ray took out the drawing. "Is this him?"

Tyrone shook his head slowly. "No, that's not him."

Damn. He'd been so sure this was the same guy. He scratched his jaw and let out a breath slowly, hoping Fraser knew enough to wrap this up quick.

But Tyrone went on, "He looks kind of like one of the guys who jumped me, though. I mean, I didn't get a good look, not like I did the guy in the bar. But that could be one of `em."

They were still in the game.

On the back of the photocopy, Fraser started a drawing of the second suspect.

The guy on the paper when Tyrone agreed it was finished didn't look too good to Ray -- kind of a rat faced little puke -- but maybe that was just because he knew better.

"Thank you, Tyrone, you've been a tremendous help." Fraser gave him one of Ray's cards. "In case you need to get in touch with us again. Will you be able to come down to the station and make an identification once we've apprehended the suspect?"

"Like a lineup? Like in the movies?"

"Yes, like that."

"I guess I can," he said doubtfully.

"We'll come get you, take you there and back, and stay with you the whole time, if that helps," Fraser suggested.

"Yeah. Yeah, okay, you find the guy, I'll pick him out of the lineup for you."

Fraser nodded. "Thank you kindly. One more thing."

"Yeah?"

"When you and the suspect were in the restroom. Do you by any chance remember if he was physically aroused?"

"Huh?"

"Did he have a hardon," Ray translated.

"Oh. Uh, yeah. Does that matter?"

"It may shed some light on the psychology of the crime. Good day."

They headed back to the car. "So the guy had a hardon. What's that suggest about his criminal psychology?"

"Well, there's a theory that homophobic attacks are sometimes -- or possibly even always, although that to me seems unlikely -- by the perpetrator's fear of his own homoerotic impulses. His fear of his own attraction to other men frightens him to such an extent that he lashes out against the men who engender those impulses."

"So you're sayin' that gay bashers are queer themselves?"

"In essence, yes. But they're unable to face that part of their own nature and the internal conflict is expressed in external violence."

For a second, Ray saw his own arm sweeping across his desk, knocking everything on top of it to the floor, Frannie stepping away, a second or so of real fear on her face. "Huh. Yeah, I can see how that could happen." They got into the car. "Okay, so what do we do next?"

"I'm not sure. One thing we should do is show the drawings of both suspects around the neighborhood where Tyrone's assault took place. He told Tyrone that they were going back to his place, and it's possible that they were, at least, going in the right direction."

"He'd have to be pretty stupid," Ray pointed out.

"Or not thinking clearly, and that's always possible. Now might be a good time to canvass the neighborhood, since people will be home from work. We'll also need to distribute copies of the second drawing to the same places we took the first one, and of course continue looking at the files."

It looked like Fraser wanted him to pick which to do first, so he said, "Okay, let's do it that way. Neighborhood first, then the gay bars -- shouldn't take as long, since we talked to everybody yesterday, and then the files." After spending most of the day in a chair, it'd be good to get out and walk some. He'd bet Fraser felt the same way, even though he didn't get ants in his pants like Ray did. He was used to being out in the tundra, doing whatever the hell there was for cops to do up where there weren't any people.

He almost asked, until he realized what a dumb question it was. And then he realized again that Fraser didn't think any of his questions were dumb, and they had a pretty good way to drive, in rush hour traffic. "So what did you do up there, anyway?"

"Up where?"

"In Canada."

"Recreational opportunities aren't as abundant and varied as they are here in Chicago, but if you aren't picky, there's a fair amount to do. Blanket tosses, traveling exhibits, the annual lichen festival."

Ray wasn't sure if Fraser was putting him on. Was there really such a thing as a lichen festival? But that wasn't what he'd been wondering about originally, so he said, "I meant cop stuff, what kind of cop stuff did you do?"

"Oh." He thought. "Police work is police work anywhere, I think. Here it's just ... concentrated. In my various postings in the Northwest Territories, my precinct, so to speak, covered anywhere from seventy-five to five hundred square kilometers. So just making routine patrols, to say nothing of getting from one crime scene to another, took a great deal of time."

So if he and Fraser were cops in the Northwest whatevers, they'd be spending a lot of time like this, just driving around. Wouldn't be so bad. Probably have a jeep or something four-wheel drive, for all the snow. "You have a partner up there?"

"No. We were spread pretty thin, so we'd usually patrol alone. There wasn't as much need for physical backup, since it's well known in Canada that you can't get away with killing a Mountie."

"Musta got lonely, all that driving by yourself."

"It afforded plenty of time for private reflection."

Ray glanced over at Fraser, raising an eyebrow.

"Yes, it got lonely. I had an advantage over some of the other Mounties in that I'd usually have Diefenbaker along for the ride."

Maybe that explained when he'd gotten into the habit of talking to the wolf. "So what kinda crimes did you deal with?"

"Everything. Traffic accidents, domestic violence, brawling, theft. Many of the First Nations communities are dry, which naturally leads to an illicit trade in alcohol. Not too many murders, but a fair number of hunting accidents, which have to be investigated thoroughly to be certain they are accidents." He got a strange smile on his face as he added, "Fishing over the limit."

"So you have, like, real crime up there." He felt stupid as soon as he said it. Fraser wouldn't be a real cop if there wasn't real crime, and Fraser was definitely a real cop.

But Fraser just said, "Yes, Ray."

A lot of what Fraser knew from being a wilderness cop worked out okay now that he was a city cop. Ray wondered if it would work the other way around. He grinned, imagining himself walking around an Inuit village -- not that he had any idea what one of those looked like -- explaining to the natives how it was actually a lot like a Chicago housing project.

Except he wouldn't even have the little bit of status that Fraser has here. It's not like Chicago had a Consulate in Inuvik. A cop without a badge was just ... just some guy running around in the snow yelling at people.

They gave the neighborhood canvas a good couple of hours, but didn't turn up anybody who'd ever seen either suspect, unless you counted one old lady who was sure Rat Face had been a contestant on Let's Make A Deal in 1982. After that, a quick blitz though the gay-bar district, handing out copies of the new sketch, and they could take the files and go home to keep looking at them in comfort.

He was all set to knuckle down, but Fraser took the files out of his hands and said, "Dinner first."

"Oh. You still worried about my emotional lithium?"

Fraser looked in the refrigerator. "Do you want eggs, or soup and toasted cheese?"

"Eggs, I guess." He knew those had been in there a while, and the canned soup would keep forever.

He knew Fraser's cooking habits by now, and he wasn't surprised when it turned out he wasn't just making eggs. He got some sausages out of the freezer, and sliced up some mostly-stale bread for toast, and diced up a couple of potatoes. He even made this weird kind of hot chocolate by crunching up Hershey bars and melting them into some milk.

Ray wasn't sure he could do justice to all that food, but once he took a couple of bites, he realized he was starving. Fraser looked happy, watching him eat.

It was kind of nice. Once they got over the initial thrill of playing house, Stella wasn't the "take your man home and feed him up right" type. They tried to eat together most nights, up until things got really bad, but most weeknights whoever was less busy would throw something together, and on weekends they went out. But with Fraser, it was like making dinner was almost kind of foreplay instead of a chore.

Not quite foreplay, though. There wasn't really anything about sex to it. Intimacy, that was it. He grinned at Fraser.

"What?"

"Nothin'. Just thinkin' about how much I like you."

He smiled back.

"How we make a better team than me and Stella ever did."

He frowned a little. "I hope you don't feel like you have to denigrate what you had with Stella to make me feel ... secure. I know you truly loved her, and that's all right."

Ray nodded. "I know. It's not like that. Hell, I'm glad you're not mad at me for talking about her all the time."

"Of course not," Fraser murmured. "Tell me more about her. What was your ... partnership ... like?"

"I don't know if I'd even call it a partnership. With her, it was more like ... like I was always working to be good enough for her. It was exciting at first, like she was this lady and I was a knight who had to prove himself worthy of her." He knew, just knew, that Fraser wasn't about to make fun of him for saying something like that. "But I was always terrified I was gonna come up short. It wasn't like she went around saying, `Ray, you're not good enough.' But I heard her saying it anyway. She gave me a book, it meant she thought I was too dumb and needed some smarts put on me. She gave me a shirt, it meant there was something wrong with all my old shirts. She'd say my hair looked good the way I changed it, and I'd hear `Thank God you did something, cause you looked like shit before.' And sometimes she did mean it like that, but not always, and I could never tell the difference."

Fraser was watching him with this serious look on his face. "That does sound ... less than ideal."

"Huh. Yeah, that's a good word for it. By the end I felt more like a dog running after her than a knight. I guess that's what I get for marrying somebody I felt like was way too good for me. And I want to be good for you, too -- a good guy, a good cop, a good partner -- but it feel more like you're bringing out the best parts of what I already am, instead of me trying to turn myself into something different to be good enough."

Fraser was nodding, but it looked like he was thinking hard about something. "I'm glad you feel that way," he said slowly.

"What?"

"I was just thinking, that my most -- well, my most significant and enduring emotional relationship has been with the RCMP. What you said about being a knight, reminded me of that. It felt sort of ... noble, shaping myself into an ideal Mountie, an ideal man. But I never got any -- it all started because I wanted my father to be proud of me. And I never got the slightest hint that he was, not until after he died, anyway."

There was something kind of queer about the way he said that, but Ray decided not to interrupt him by asking.

"And my superiors in the RCMP never -- well, I wasn't as universally admired as our friends here in Chicago seem to think I was. I cycled through a dozen different postings because no one particularly wanted to keep me. It's only since I've been here -- since I've been working with you, especially -- that I feel ... well ... particularly successful."

The comparison between his marriage and Fraser's career seemed a little bizarre at first, but Ray got it. Fraser had wanted to be a good Mountie the same way he'd wanted to be good enough for Stella. And he wasn't Super Mountie, not to the other Mounties at least.

Until he became this sort of weird mix of a Mountie and a Chicago cop, and somehow came into his own. "I told you they don't appreciate you enough," Ray said weakly.

Fraser shrugged and stacked his silverware on top of his plate. "You finished?"

"Hm? Oh, yeah." He handed over his plate. "I'll wash those later. Let's do some modern community-based policing."

He and Fraser each sat sideways at opposite ends of the couch, their sock feet meeting in the middle. There was definitely something to be said for doing police work cuddled up on the couch with your bestest buddy. Probably wouldn't catch on across the department, but Ray was glad they'd figured it out, anyway.

They plodded through the next few days without much progress in the case. None of the other old cases turned out to match the pattern, but it took a lot of phone calls and a couple more visits to victims' homes to find that out for sure. Fraser spent a lot of time at the Consulate, catching up on his playing-statue duties.

The one good thing that happened was that Ramierez took a turn for the better. The swelling in his head went down, and he woke up enough to squeeze his mother's hand. Not enough to id the sketches, but there was a decent enough chance he'd be able to do it later. And he was gonna live. That was big. Huge.

Friday night Fraser came over, like they'd planned, to wait and see if the suspects were going to turn up at any of the bars they'd canvassed. It was kind of like a stakeout, but the most comfortable stakeout Ray had ever been on, since they had it right there in his apartment. Ray stocked up on a few extra pairs of handcuffs, and Fraser wore his brown uniform -- not because it was less sexy, this time, but because it looked more like a police uniform than his other one.

But apart from that it was just hanging out at his place, and they watched a couple of movies, had some popcorn. Ray started to get himself a beer one time, but put it back when Fraser looked at him, reminding him they were at work, sort of.

It was near midnight when the call came in. Ray put the movie on pause and picked up, excitement building in his stomach. Watch it be his mother.

But the person on the other end said, "Detective Vecchio?"

"Yeah."

"This is Bobby at the Circuit Club."

He gestured to Fraser. This was it, this was really, really it. "Yeah?"

"One of the men from the pictures you showed us just came in."

"Yeah." He started shrugging on his shoulder holster. Dief, catching the excitement, got up and started jumping around him.

"I didn't know what I should do, so I just let him in. What do you -- "

"That's good, that's cool. We'll be right there." He hung up the phone. "This is it, Frase -- time to go knock some heads."

"Arrest some malfeasants with a minimum of violence, you mean."

"Yeah, that."

Ray drove as fast as he could on the way there -- zipping through stop signs, making illegal left turns -- but there was a fair amount of traffic, and that made more delays than he would have wanted. "Frase, let me ask you something," he said as they got close.

"Sure."

"You want to carry my boot gun while we're doing this?"

"Ray, you know I don't have a permit to carry."

"Yeah, I know, but who's gonna know?"

"I will," Fraser pointed out.

"Yeah, but -- I'd feel better."

Fraser went quiet for a minute or so. "I'm sorry, but I can't."

"Yeah. Okay. That's what I thought, I just ...."

"I understand."

When they got to the bar, Fraser went inside and Ray and Dief circled around the back from opposite directions. If only one of the guys was inside, the other two would probably be outside somewhere. Alley, maybe.

He rounded the corner into the alley behind the bar. There was enough light he could make out a few human shapes -- one guy on his knees in front of another one, two others in a clinch up against the wall, two more standing by a dumpster talking. Ray slowed from a dead run to a trot, then stopped to peer at the first couple he saw.

Not Rat Face or the other guy. "You got a problem?" one of them asked.

"Yeah. Chicago PD, get out of here," he whispered back.

"What?"

"Get!" They got up, zipped up, and got.

The second pair -- the ones by the dumpster -- was Rat Face and another guy. The third guy. This was it, this was really it. He passed them without saying anything, and sent the other two civilians away.

That alerted Rat Face and his pal that something was up, but it couldn't be helped. Rat Face took a step toward him and jerked his pointed chin. "Help you with something?"

Ray bounced on his toes. This was gonna feel good. "Nice place you have back here."

"Yeah, we like it," the third guy said.

"You, uh, waiting for somebody back here?" Getting them to link themselves to the man inside would be good.

"Yeah," Rat Face admitted.

"A faggot," the other one said, and before Ray could say anything else, they threw themselves at him.

Rat Face went low, the other guy went high, and they had him down on the ground before he knew what was happening. A punch to the head left him momentarily dazed, and that gave them time to get in a few good kicks before he pulled himself together enough to yell, "Freeze! Chicago PD!"

Now, that didn't always get the response Ray was looking for, but he was still shocked when Rat Face laughed, said, "Yeah, right," and kicked him in the head.

He scrabbled for his gun, losing track of it once when a kick to his shoulder sent a numb jolt down this arm. Finally he got it out and fired into the air. "Chicago PD, hands behind your head!" he shouted, lurching to his feet.

They were running the other way by the time his head cleared, but Dief turned up just in time, blocking that end of the alley. The two men stopped, caught between the snarling wolf and the guy with the gun. Ray switched to a one-handed grip on his gun so he could unclip his badge with the other. He held it out where they could see it, repeating, "Chicago PD. You're under arrest for assault, assaulting an officer of the law, and the attempted murder of Miguel Rodriguez. Move and I'll shoot you." He noticed that the music, which had been pounding out into the alley from the bar, had stopped.

"Murder?" Rat Face looked stunned.

That particular charge probably wouldn't stick, but Ray was going for shock value. "Up against the wall, motherfuckers." He'd always wanted to say that.

They were still trying to decide whether to obey or take their chances getting past Dief when Fraser burst out of the back door to the bar. "Ray!"

"I'm okay," he said, wiping some of the blood out of is eyes and throwing Fraser a pair of handcuffs. "Help me arrest these jokers. Did you get the other one?"

"He's cuffed to the bar," Fraser answered, catching the cuffs and cuffing Rat Face's hands behind his back.

"Both of you fuckers have the right to remain silent," Ray said, patting down the first one. They'd found out before that it could make things awkward in court if a suspect was Mirandized by a Mountie. "And I'd use that right if I were you. Anything you do say can be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney, which you're gonna need. If you can't afford one, which wouldn't surprise me at all, one will be appointed to you."

"Without charge," Fraser added.

"Right, yeah, for free. Do you understand these rights that I have explained to you?"

Rat Face and the other one didn't say anything.

"I'm gonna take that as a yes." He got out his cell phone to call for a patrol car, but heard sirens before he could start punching in the number.

He put his phone away, and Fraser took out his handkerchief. "You're hurt," he pointed out.

"Yeah, I know." He took the hanky and pressed it to the gash on his forehead. "You're lucky the cops are coming," he told the suspects. "This guy would beat the shit out of you if he had a chance. And it wouldn't be police brutality `cause he's out of his jurisdiction."

"Judging by the sound of the sirens, I have at least fifteen seconds until the patrol car coming from the east arrives, and another five for the one coming from the southeast," Fraser pointed out.

"Go for it. I'll shut my eyes."

But Fraser took used the time to feel around on his head and under his jacket for more injuries. "You need to go to the hospital."

"Yeah, I'll get checked out after we get these guys booked."

"You might have a concussion."

"I got a hard head, Fraser. I'll be okay."

The patrol cars showed up, and they let the uniforms get the two suspects loaded up while they got the other from inside the bar. The bouncer was holding a gun on him, but he quickly put it away when Fraser caught his eye and shook his head.

Probably meant he didn't have a permit -- and trust Fraser to have asked -- but Ray wasn't going to worry about that. "I advised the suspect of the charges against him and of his legal rights," Fraser said, "but you might want to do it again, just as a precaution."

"'kay. Did you pat him down?"

"Yes."

He switched the guy's cuffs from the railing along the bar to behind his back and formally arrested him. While he did that, Fraser told the watching crowd, "Some officers from the uniformed branch will be in to take your names and addresses in case we need to contact you later. Your personal information will be treated with the utmost privacy. If you have any concerns about your privacy or about -- anything else -- you can contact me or Detective Vecchio directly." He gave the bartender a handful of their business cards.

They got the third guy into a patrol car and proceeded to the station. To Ray's surprise, by the time they got the suspects cuffed to the tables in three separate interview rooms, Welsh had showed up, and Detective Huey wasn't far behind him.

"Something big going on?" he asked Welsh.

"Yeah, a big gay bashing case. Some special reason you didn't call for backup?"

"We took care of it," Ray answered.

"Okay, we'll talk about that later. How about I take door number one, Huey, you have door number two, Fraser, get started on door number three, and Dewey'll come sit in with you to make things official once he gets here."

"Hey, what about me?" Ray protested. "It's my collar. They're all my collars."

"The uniforms'll take you over to the hospital, get that head checked out."

"It's nothing."

"You're covered in blood."

"Head wounds bleed a lot. Everybody knows that." Why was Welsh trying to take this away from him?

Fraser stepped in. "Leftenant, if you'll allow me." He didn't say, allow him what, but Welsh made an approving sort of sound.

Fraser came up with a penlight somewhere, and shined it in one of his eyes, then the other. "Follow the light with your eyes." He moved it up and down and back and forth, almost in the sign of the cross. Ray tracked it with his eyes. "Good. All right, take off your jacket." He pulled Ray's jacket off and suddenly, without any warning, pressed the side of his head up against Ray's back. "Take a deep breath."

"What the hell are you doing?"

"First aid, Ray. I'm sure you've heard of it." He put his head against Ray's back again. "Deep breath, Ray."

Breathing was easier than arguing, so he took a deep breath.

"No broken ribs, then. All right, one more thing." Suddenly his hands snaked around Ray's waist and started roaming all over his belly, dipping down below the waistband of his jeans.

"Fraser, have you gone completely unhinged?" He'd thought Fraser knew better than to jam his hands down Ray's pants in the middle of the squad room, but apparently he'd been mistaken.

"I'm checking for signs of internal bleeding, and it would help if you relaxed."

"Okay, fine. I'm relaxed. This is me relaxing." He was painfully aware of Huey and Welsh watching him. They didn't seem to find Fraser's behavior any weirder than what you'd expect from the Mountie, but Ray didn't think it was particularly discreet. Especially since his dick was finding Fraser's behavior anything but clinical.

Eventually, Fraser was satisfied. "Leftenant, I believe that any injuries Ray may have suffered are not of a particularly urgent nature. Perhaps he could begin interviewing one of the suspects and go to the hospital later."

"Yeah," Ray said. "Like he said, I'll go later. We can let the suspect stew for a little bit while I clean some of this blood off me, and butterfly up this cut, then I'll be good to go."

Welsh looked at him for a minute and then nodded. "Okay. You sit down and fill us in while Fraser helps you get cleaned up."

It was pretty hard to concentrate on telling Welsh and Huey what had happened while Fraser was working on him, dabbing at his face with a wet paper towel, and then with his fingers and a smear of antibiotic ointment. He was leaning back in the desk chair with his head tilted back, eyes closed so he didn't have to look up Fraser's nose. He loved the guy, but had no particular interest in his nose hair.

"You didn't identify yourself as police until after the suspect attacked you?" Welsh asked him.

"Yeah, I ... I fucked that up." Fraser's hand went still on his forehead. "But they kept hitting me after I told them." Crackle of paper as Fraser peeled the wrappers off some butterfly bandages. "Guy said he didn't believe me."

"Didn't believe you?" Huey repeated. "Why not?"

"Dunno. Maybe he thought I looked like a fag or something. But I got out my gun, fired a warning shot, and they backed off. Dief kept them from getting away until I could get up, and then Fraser came out -- got there, and we arrested them."

"Fraser, what happened inside?" Welsh continued.

"I went inside and identified myself to the bouncer, who we'd met on the neighborhood canvass earlier in the week. He was able to direct me to where I would find the suspect, near the mezzanine-level bar. I tapped him on the shoulder, identified myself -- I'm afraid my identification of myself was slightly misleading; my exact words were, `I'm here with the Chicago police department,' allowing him to gain the impression that I was in fact an officer of that department, instead merely accompanying -- "

"It's fine, Fraser," Welsh interrupted him.

"Thank you, sir. I then informed him that I was required to bring him in for questioning about a case of assault. He attempted to flee the scene, but I was able to apprehend him by breaking a chair over his head and placing him in what I believe is called a `hammerlock.' At that point I heard shots from the alley, so I handcuffed the suspect to the bar and left him temporarily in the custody of the establishment's security personnel while I proceeded to the alley to ascertain if Ray was in need of my assistance."

Fraser usually talked pretty stuffy when he was giving a report -- that must be how they teach `em to do it at Mountie school -- but this was something else. Had to be something wrong with him, but what was it?

"And then events proceeded as the detective described," Fraser finished.

And he was done patching up Ray's head, but he was still standing there behind him, with his hand on the place where Ray's neck joined in to his shoulder, like he was getting ready to do the Vulcan nerve pinch. The groping he could've gotten away with, but that was just stupid.

Ray sat up fast, knocking Fraser's hand away in the process. "We ready to go kick some heads, then?"

"Yeah, let's get to it."

They ended up getting Rat Face, whose real name turned out to be David Magdun, and he broke down pretty quick, telling them it had all been the other guys' idea, he was just along for the ride. But that counted as a confession, and they had it right there on tape.

They left the guy in the interview room and went out to see how Welsh and Huey were doing. Not so good, as it turned out. Rat Face was clearly the weak link in that particular criminal enterprise -- judging from the body language, the other two were denying up and down that they'd done anything.

Welsh saw them outside the door and a minute later, came out. "What's up?"

"We're done already," Ray said. "Our guy confessed."

"Okay, good. That'll help -- I'll go back in in a minute and tell my guy his pal already sang." Welsh headed toward the break room, Ray and Fraser going after him. Welsh started pouring himself a cup of coffee. "We have him dead to rights on the assaulting an officer charge, but he's trying to say he had no idea you were really a police officer. Said he thought you were trying to pick up guys back there."

His stomach turned over. "That's ridiculous. That is fucking ridiculous. I was warning the civilians to leave the scene, like I said."

Welsh nodded. "I know. Criminals say stupid things all the time."

"I am not a fag, Lieutenant."

"Nobody said you were."

Fraser's hand came down on his shoulder. "Now might be a good time to have Ray's head injury examined, Leftenant."

Welsh was looking at him kind of queer. "Yeah. Vecchio, I don't want you driving. Have one of the patrol cars take you over to the hospital. Fraser, you want to help me, or Huey?"

Fraser's hand tightened on his shoulder. "I'm going with Ray. I can drive him."

"Okay, fine. Call when you're done."

Nobody seemed to care whether Ray wanted to go to the hospital right then, so out the door they went. Fraser circled around to the driver's side of the car and stood there with his hand out.

After a minute, Ray sighed and gave him the keys.

They got in and belted up, and finally Ray had a chance to say, "Fraser." Real serious.

"Ray?" Uncertainly.

"You do not touch me like that in the police station. We talked about this."

"I was giving you a medical examination, Ray," Fraser said patiently. "Anyone at all familiar with field medicine would -- "

"That is not what I meant and you know it. After you were done putting the bandage on my head, and then when you were telling Welsh you'd take me to the hospital. That was stupid, Frase." And maybe protesting too much when Welsh made that crack about him was stupid too, but they were talking about Fraser right now. "Drive, we can't fight in the station parking lot."

Fraser drove. "I don't want to fight with you at all, Ray. I'm sorry. I was -- I was worried. When I saw that those men had hurt you. It upset me."

"Yeah, I understand that. But you fucked up, Frase. We'll probably be okay, but you fucked up."

He went still and quiet for a while, just moving enough to drive. Finally he said in this awful small voice, "I'm sorry, Ray."

Something about it scared him. "Fraser, pull over."

"Ray?"

"Up there, in that parking lot. Just pull over for a minute."

After Fraser stopped the car, he put his hands in his lap and bowed his head. Like he figured Ray must've told him to pull over so he could yell at him.

"Hey. When I said we'd probably be okay, I meant Welsh and Huey probably wouldn't figure anything out. Not -- I mean, we're definitely okay. You and me."

He glanced up at Ray. "Okay. Okay, good." He turned his eyes forward, like he was trying to look like he was fine, now.

But he wasn't fine, not if he was going through life expecting Ray to break up with him any second. His head hadn't felt all that bad before, but all of the sudden it was throbbing. Ray wasn't sure if the idea he had in his head was right, but like usual, he followed his instinct. "What'd they do to you when you fucked up, as a kid?"

Fraser looked over at him then, eyes wide. Maybe surprised at the sudden shift in topic. "Ummm ... well, nothing terrible. Almost nothing at all. My grandparents would simply ... withdraw their attention until I'd made amends."

Took him a minute to sort that one out. "They gave you the silent treatment?"

"Not exactly. They would speak to me, but without, hm, warmth. Sometimes for a few days, until I'd determined how best to atone for whatever I'd done. It was -- fairly disconcerting," he admitted.

Fraser's habit of writing his own reprimands suddenly made a lot of sense. "Jeeze, Fraser, that's fucked up. That's seriously fucked up. You want to punish a kid, you yell, you take away the TV, or the bike, or the phone. You don't take away your love."

"Well, I didn't have a bike," Fraser pointed out. "And there was no television reception, either."

"Yeah, that doesn't make it okay." He was going to have to give this some serious thought, but right now all he could think about was raising Fraser's grandparents from the dead so he could give them a piece of his mind. And those kind of thoughts had to be raising his blood pressure, which was probably why his head hurt more.

He looked around quickly. The plumbing-supply store they were parked in front of wasn't open, and the street behind them was pretty deserted. "C'mere."

He and Fraser met over the gearshift, and Ray pressed their foreheads together. "I still love you even when you fuck up," he said softly, kissing him gently.

Fraser looked surprised but allowed Ray to kiss him, even opening his mouth to Ray's tongue.

Ray let him go and sat back in his own seat. "Good. Greatness. Let's go get my head examined."

One advantage of being a cop injured in the line of duty, the ER didn't keep you waiting. The doctor was impressed with Fraser's handiwork, but insisted on taking off the butterfly bandages and putting in a couple of stitches, then had Ray lay down and palpated his abdomen, pretty much the same way Fraser had. Ray, suddenly tired, didn't put up much of a fuss. He hoped Welsh wouldn't want them back at the station. It felt good to lay down. Would feel better on a real bed with Fraser next to him.

" -- see any need to admit him," the doctor was saying. "As long as there's someone at home who can wake him up every couple of hours and check his mental status."

"Hm. He lives alone, but I can stay with him," Fraser said.

"All right. Detective Vecchio, I think you'll live. You're going to be in a lot of pain tomorrow, though."

"Yeah, I know. I been beat up before." He sat up creakily and swung his legs over the side of the gurney. "Can you give me something for it?"

"Yes, but don't take them tonight, just in case there's internal bleeding we don't know about yet." He took out a pad and wrote something on it. "You can fill that at the pharmacy on the second floor, and the nurse'll be in with your discharge instructions."

The doctor left, and the curtains around the gurney gave them the illusion of privacy. Ray grinned up at Fraser. "I bet I look like hell."

"You look -- like you've had a rough day."

"Mm. Hard day. Hard, but good."

They were smiling at each other like idiots when the nurse came in. "I just have a few things for you to sign, Detective Vecchio, and here's your insurance card back."

He stuffed the card in his wallet and signed where she told him to sign. "You know what we oughta do?" he asked Fraser.

"What?"

"Swing by the ICU, see if any of Ramierez's people are there. Tell `em the good news." He signed his name for the fourth and last time, and handed Fraser the pink sheet of discharge instructions.

"Good idea," Fraser agreed.

In the elevator up, he called in to the station. "Hey, Lieut. Docs said I'm good to go."

"Good. We've got things under control here, so you go home and get some shut-eye. But Monday morning we're going to have a talk about you running into alleys without backup and getting your head kicked in."

"Okay," he agreed, and hung up.

A few of the Ramierezes were there, like he expected. The mom, the sister, one of the brothers. The brother and sister were curled up on some of the vinyl couches they had in there, their coats stuffed under their heads for pillows, but the mom was sitting up, rosary beads going slowly through her hands. "Hey," Ray said quietly, squatting down in front of her.

She finished the prayer she was on and looked up. "Detective."

"Just wanted to tell you, we got the guys. At least one of `em confessed already, so they should be going away for a while."

"Thank God," she murmured, "and thank you, Detective." She looked hard at him. "You're hurt."

"Yeah, they got a few licks in on the way to getting arrested. But I'm okay." He stood up, feeling a little dizzy as he did. "Anything else we can do, you give us a call."

They trotted outside, and despite his pain and weariness, Ray was happy. "We did good, Frase," he told him.

"Yes," Fraser agreed, getting into the driver's seat. "We did good."

Dief, who'd had to wait in the car on account of the ER's no-wolf policy, leaned up between the seats and whuffled at Ray, blowing warm breath on his neck. "Yeah, you did good too, Dief," Ray agreed. "You showed up just in the nick of time."

Dief turned to Fraser and gave him the same treatment. "We'll see about that in the morning," Fraser told the wolf. "For now, we're going home and to bed. I don't think any of the pretzel vendors are open for business yet anyway." Dief whined at Fraser, and he said, "That's none of your business. And Ray's tired and injured."

Ray thought he knew what Fraser was getting at, but it wasn't anything he wanted to talk about in front of the wolf, so he waited until they were in the bedroom with the door shut before he told Fraser, "I think I'm gonna want to stay awake for a little while."

Fraser paused in the act of unbuckling his Sam Browne belt. "It's almost 4 AM," he pointed out. Which was so late for Benton Fraser that it was pretty much morning.

"Yeah, but I'm kind of, you know, jumpy. All that adrenaline and stuff."

He nodded and finished taking off the belt; hung it and his uniform jacket up in the closet. "Certainly understandable. I could make you some herbal tea, or warm milk."

"Are you bein' deliberately dense, here?" Ray caught him by one of his suspenders and drew him into a kiss. The feeling of Fraser's mouth on his reminded him that he was getting a fat lip, but he didn't care.

When they came up for air -- well, when Ray came up for air; Fraser had that excess lung capacity thing going for him -- he said, "You are injured. Physical exertion might not be the best idea."

"I'm not made a' glass," Ray pointed out. "And we can just do somethin' easy."

"One thing you're definitely not, is easy." But Fraser backed him up to the bed and pushed him until he was sitting down on it, then knelt in front of him and took Ray's foot in his hands, pulling off his boot, and then his sock. He held Ray's foot for a few seconds longer than really necessary, like he was studying it.

"Don't lick that, not when it's been inside my shoes for sixteen hours," he warned.

"Wasn't going to." Fraser went to work on his other boot. "I'm just figuring out which parts of you are uninjured."

"Oh."

Fraser helped him off with his jeans next, clucking over the bruises that he uncovered. Ray wasn't sure how he felt about that, and Fraser must've known that somehow, because he said, "I know you can handle being injured, Ray, but I don't have to like it."

But there was a slight question in his voice, like maybe he was wondering if he did have to like it. "No, you're right, you don't. I'm not gonna like it when it's your turn to get beat up."

"Hm. I'd say that I'll endeavor to avoid such an eventuality, but we both know that's -- "

"Not gonna happen." Ray nodded. Fraser started unbuttoning his shirt, finding more bruises when he pushed it down over Ray's shoulders. Ray looked down at himself. "I really do look awful."

"You look beautiful," Fraser corrected him.

"Bet you say that to all your partners."

"I don't believe I ever said Ray the First was beautiful, no."

Now that he was mostly undressed, Fraser laid him back against the pillows for some laying-down kissing, which was always nice. The angles were different, and they could put some weight on each other, not have to worry about staying upright. They were both hard, Ray pretty obviously so in just his underwear, Fraser sort of hidden in his uniform pants. "Let's get you out of all that," Ray suggested.

"As you wish," Fraser said into his neck, before sitting up just enough to wriggle out of his pants and peel off his shirt, and throw both garments over the side of the bed. He could be a lot less fussy about his uniforms than Ray would've thought -- at least when he knew he was going to have to have it cleaned anyway.

Then he was back again, and Ray was sliding his hands over his shoulders, broad stretch of bare skin that nobody got to touch but him. "What do you wanna do?" Ray asked. That was the thing -- one of the things -- about sex with Fraser. So many different things to do, not just one basic act with a lot of variations.

"You pick," Fraser told him.

Fraser was licking at his chest, which made it kinda hard to think, bat Ray tried to give some thought to the angles, and what was gonna hurt now, and what he wouldn't be able to do for a few days after the hurt Rat Face and the others put on him had time to settle in. "Uh, let's do that intramural thing."

Fraser leaned back on his elbow and smoothed his eyebrow. "Ah, I'm not sure which one that is."

"The between-the-legs thing." He knew he didn't have the word quite right, but he'd thought he was close enough.

"Ah! Certainly, Ray. Shall I, or do you want to?"

"I'll take the top." As much as he liked having Fraser on his back, he wasn't sure he could handle the weight right now.

"All right." It was still sort of surprising, considering how masculine Fraser was, how easily he'd would get up on his hands and knees for Ray. It just didn't seem to occur to him that a guy might be embarrassed to do something like that.

Hot got up on all fours now, and Ray knelt behind him. "You ready?"

"Yep."

He grasped Fraser's cock in one hand and thrust in between his legs. It was good in there, warm, plenty of whatsit -- friction -- and Fraser's cock was solid and heavy and alive in his hand. "Good, Frase, you're so good, can you -- " Fraser squeezed his legs tighter around Ray's cock " -- yeah, like that, that's great."

Fraser answered, "Feels good, Ray. Ray. Ray."

Ray-Ray-Raying meant he was getting close, so Ray sped up. "Good, Frase, fuck, you, good, love you, fuck, good -- Fraser!"

"Ray."

And then he was goin' limp between Fraser's legs and holding a handful of what felt like wet glue, collapsing on his back and breathing hard.

After a half a minute or so to catch their breaths, Fraser squirmed around so he was laying on his back, with Ray against his chest, and Ray cleaned them off with a corner of the sheet -- it was time to wash `em anyway. "Don't know why that feels so good," Ray commented.

"Sex is supposed to feel good," Fraser said, so worn out and satisfied he didn't even have an Inuit story or a Latin saying to back up his point.

"Yeah, but it's not really sex. Just kid stuff, rubbing up against each other." Ray yawned. "Doesn't matter, I like it."

And Ray was tired and happy enough not to notice Fraser tensing up underneath him, not until he said, "I think it is sex," and sounded a little hurt.

Ray propped himself up on one elbow enough to look Fraser in the face. "Well, uh, it's very, you know, intimate," he tried. "But sex -- you know, sex sex, usually involves some, uh, whatsit." His post-orgasm IQ slump was making it even harder than it would normally be to explain what he meant.

"Penetration?" Fraser suggested.

"Yeah, that."

"Well, that's the definition encouraged by the phallic-centric perspective that dominates Western culture. But I don't see why other forms of intimacy are any less important, or any less mature, than, er -- "

And now it was Ray's turn to finish Fraser's thought for him. "Tab A into slot B?"

"Right."

"It just is," Ray answered. "And we'll get to it soon, I promise. I just don't, you know -- I'm kinda scared," he admitted, studying the sprinkling of hair on Fraser's chest.

Fraser stroked the back of Ray's head. "There's no hurry, not at all. You should look at those books with me -- you know which ones I mean?"

"Yeah, but you know I'm not a big reader. I got bad eyes." Looking at sex books with Fraser might actually be fun -- on the other hand, it might be awful.

"Your eyes are wonderful. But anal sex isn't any kind of a requirement. Plenty of, of men like us, never do it."

That didn't sound like it could possibly be true. "Really?"

"That's what the books say."

"Huh."

"So there's no need to worry. If you don't want to do it, we'll just not do it."

He didn't like that idea much, either. "I do wanna do it. Just, uh, not yet."

"That's fine too," Fraser assured him.

Ray yawned. "Okay. So we'll do the phallic penetration thing one of these days. We good?"

"Yes." Fraser kissed the top of his head. "Get some sleep. I'll wake you in two hours."

"Ray. Ray. Ray. Ray. Ray."

"Mmph."

"Ray, it's noon."

"Thas' nice." He and Fraser were sleeping like spoons, Fraser against his back. At first he felt pretty good, warm and snug, but as he woke, he realized nearly everything on his body hurt -- his lower back, his neck, his ribs. His face was throbbing, too.

Fraser breathed into his ear. "Wake up, Ray. Time to get up."

"I'm up," he answered.

Fraser's hand slipped around his hip. "No, you're not."

Trust Fraser to get frisky when he felt like someone had been beating on him with a sack of hammers. "Yeah. I think I'm just gonna lay here and not move for about six days. You'll have to wait on me hand and foot. Cater to my every need. That sound okay?"

Fraser moved away from his back. "I'm going to make coffee," he decided.

Ray dozed for another minute or two, then sat up against the headboard. He'd been beaten up enough to know that if he didn't get moving, he'd only feel worse.

Now that he was waking up a little, he remembered Fraser waking him a few times during the night, shining that damn light in his eyes, and asking if he knew who the president was. Remembered saying, "I don't fucking care, Frase, let me sleep!"

Awful nice of Fraser to put up with that.

Fraser returned a few minutes later with a cup of coffee. "Smells like heaven," he said, reaching for it eagerly.

He drank a few sips. Strong and sweet. Just like Fraser.

By the time he was finished with the cup, he felt ready to get up and take that shower. The hot water pounded some of the aches out of his muscles. He stayed in there until the water started to run cold, then toweled off and slipped into some soft old jeans and a t-shirt.

Back in the kitchen, Fraser was getting some toast out of the oven -- Ray had a toaster, but Fraser liked to make toast in the oven for some reason. "Feeling any better?" He was shirtless, but had put his pants back on.

"Yeah, I'm a new man."

"That's a shame. I liked the old one." He topped the toast with butter and jelly, and handed Ray a slice.

Ray leaned up against the counter and ate it. "We doin' anything to today?"

"We should take a walk. Not too far. It'll help." He opened the window by the fire escape and Dief jumped inside. "Yes, I know," Fraser said. "But I was looking after Ray this morning." He tossed Dief a piece of the toast.

Taking a walk didn't seem like much fun at all, but he knew Fraser was right. "Yeah, okay. Damn, I used to be able to take a beating and get right up and do it again the next day. Not as young as I used to be, I guess."

Fraser gave Dief a look. "None of us are."

"Yeah, but we're older and wiser and all that jazz," Ray said.

Fraser covered Ray's hand with his own. "That we are."

They spent the rest of the weekend lazily in Ray's apartment, except for a few walks and venturing out for food and dry cleaning. Fraser explained to Thatcher that Ray was injured -- choosing his words carefully to give the impression that Ray was in worse shape than he was, without actually lying -- to explain his staying away so long.

Monday morning, though, they had to go their separate ways. Fraser had "been neglecting my official duties of late, Ray," and Ray himself was due for a chewing-out in Welsh's office.

He was still hurting some, and had just eased himself down into his desk chair when Welsh yelled for him.

"Aw, shit." He swung his legs off the desktop and tottered into the Lieutenant's office.

"Sit down before you fall down, Detective."

He sat, saying, "Looks worse than it is, Lieutenant."

"It would almost have to." He sorted through some papers on his desk. "The Mountie's not here?"

"At the Consulate. But I'm sure he'll have a new reprimand for the file next time he comes by."

"Hm." Welsh found the folder he was looking for. "According to his report, you two were planning this sort-of stakeout for half the week. You gave the security staff at each of the bars your home telephone number so they could contact you directly if they saw one of your suspects."

"Yeah."

"On balance, your devotion to duty pleases me. But you knew perfectly well there were three of these guys. Any particular reason you decided to go into a situation where you knew you were going to be outnumbered?"

"We had the wolf with us," Ray pointed out.

"All right, if you count the wolf, there were even odds. But don't you think that when you're dealing with vicious criminals, it's better to stack the odds in favor of the forces of law and order?"

"Well. I guess. Usually."

"So I ask you again, is there any particular reason you didn't call ahead and have a couple of patrol cars meet you there?"

"Um ...." Ray didn't have a good answer for that one. "To be honest, sir, it didn't occur to me."

"Didn't occur to you." He shook his head. "Detective, I get the impression that you're taking this case kind of ... personally."

"I don't know what you mean," Ray lied. He knew. He knew, and he was gonna ask, and suddenly, Ray didn't feel quite as comfortable saying no fucking way as he thought he'd be.

Welsh sighed. "You and the Mountie ...."

Ray stopped breathing.

"Never mind. I don't wanna know. You're good cops."

"Uh ... thanks?"

"You're good cops, and as long as I'm in charge, this station will always have your back. Do I make myself clear?"

Ray was reeling, still trying to figure out if Welsh was saying what he thought he was saying. "Uh ... yeah. I think you do."

"Good. Get back to work."

Epilogue

When Ray came to pick me up at the Consulate a few days later, I had been thinking for several days. I had come to two very important conclusions. I knew that I could trust Ray with my biggest secret, and I knew that my father was proud of me.

What I did not know was whether what I had in mind would work, or was even possible. But I stood outside my closet door, with my hand on Ray's shoulder, and heard the sounds of a crackling fire coming from inside.

"What are you doing, Fraser? What's going on?"

"I want to try something, but you have to trust me," I told him.

"Okay. I mean, yeah, anything. But -- "

"Close your eyes." I didn't know if that would make any difference, but it seemed like it might help.

Ray closed his eyes. "Okay, what now?"

I opened the door and we stepped inside. Brushing past my spare uniforms, we went inside, stepping onto the rough planks that formed the cabin floor. Ray was with me, standing there beside me, his eyes still closed. My father sat in a rocking chair in front of the fire. "Son. What's ... what's this?"

Ray's eyes flew open. "What the hell -- Fraser, where is this?"

"Ray, this is my father. Robert Fraser. Dad, you know Ray. My partner."

Dad got up, and they shook hands, cautiously. Ray's eyes were as big as cartwheels, and although Dad's face didn't show emotion the way Ray's did, I knew he wasn't much less surprised. "Fraser, your dad's dead," Ray pointed out.

"Yes, he is," I agreed. "He's also ... here. Somehow. I thought at first he was a projection of my own mind, but -- well, that's not important. A few other people have seen him, too. My sister Maggie, and Dad's old partner, Buck Frobisher."

"And me," Ray said.

"And you." I took a deep breath, knowing that what I said next would explain to both of them why Ray could see Dad. Only members of our family -- Buck was like family to Dad, closer to him in some ways than Mother and I had been -- could see him. "Dad, you once told me that partnership is like a marriage ...."

End