Author's Notes: Hmmm, not what I thought. While I don't intend to write much dS fanfic, I do have a longer F/K/V story that is quite involved, and I thought it would start here, post-CoTW. This, however, turned out to be something else entirely. So I'm jettisoning it, for no real reason other than I kind of like the ideas I played with but they are not suitable for where I want the F/K/V story to go. *shrugs* So, it is just a set up for a story that I'm not going to write, and if anyone ELSE wants to adopt it and run with it to anywhere, please feel free. *waves hands in a vague blessing motion*

Subtext

When Ray left Chicago behind, he did not just leave a city. He left memories, and names, and possibilities. The possibility that he and Stella would get back together for instance; not that he wanted to, but the possibility was always there, and comforted him like a soft, well worn blanket. The name "Vecchio" which, while good to him, encompassed too much of who he was NOT. The memories left behind were legion and he found he had to pick and choose them, packing some away (the first time Stella threw him out, the day the `real' Ray Vecchio returned) and gently caressing the ones that, he hoped, helped make him the man he was today (he and his father working on the Goat, his mother's pirogies, Stella's 25th birthday at the Phoenix nightclub, his first kiss with Fraser).

He missed the city and that was what Fraser was always worried about, as if pineapple pizza in Whitehorse was ANYTHING related to Chicago. At all. No. Just, no. What Fraser did not understand was the fact that it was the abstract things that Ray missed most, abstract like Picasso or the Cubs winning anything or, yeah, Stella. Fraser was jealous of Stella, of course, but then Ray was jealous of Vecchio so hey, `even steven' as Fraser once said about it, when they talked about it, which was once. But Fraser had less to be jealous of, because Stella was more an `era' than a person, that abstract thing going on - `Stella' was Ray at 17, getting hard and getting it on with his gold coast girl in places where, well, where they should've been arrested for public indecency. `Stella' was telling his father to shove it when Ray decided to become a cop. `Stella' was the years he spent growing up, being stupid, learning not a damn thing and doing stuff with dildos that would make porn stars blush. Of which Fraser was the sole benefactor, so he got no room to complain about it.

So Ray kept in touch with Stella. In, you know, an abstract kind of way. Random phones calls, crazy tourist post cards (she sent sand, he sent snow), funny forwarded emails. Fraser knew about it, and in retaliation was very ostentatious with his phone calls to Vecchio, which did NOT have to take place every Thursday at 9:30pm like fucking clockwork, and which were NOT abstract, no they were not. They were `remember when?' and `what'd he do now, Benny?' and `did you get lane nine's pin lifter fixed yet, Ray?' which was all more like SHARING. Ray left memories, names, and possibilities (not to mention good pizza, yes, he did mention that on occasion) behind in Chicago, but Fraser did not lose anything. He kept Vecchio, and both the Vecchio and not-Vecchio memories, and probably kept on the back burner the possibilities thing too. Fraser and Vecchio were somehow STILL partners in a way that Ray and Stella were not. What Fraser and Vecchio had? Not abstract at all.

Fridays were always rough, then, because Ray felt morally obligated to be pissy, and Fraser (having just spent half the night on the phone with Vecchio) was very self-righteous about his rights in this relationship. Fraser never mentioned Stella, he made it clear that doing so was beneath him, but hello? Big old Stella-shaped elephant in the room, all day Friday, in whatever room they happened to be in, if they were in a room together. Which, honestly they usually were not, because Fraser was King of the Passive-Agressives and could disappear into NOWHERE for HOURS just about the time Ray was ready to really start yelling at him. Because there was something there, with Vecchio, that partners thing, that neither Ray (with Fraser) nor Stella (with Vecchio) could put a dent in.

Not that he really wanted to dent it, because Fraser was a big boy and was allowed to have his own friends. Ray totally agreed with that. He had friends.

But it was different, even if he could not explain why. Sometimes in an email or a conversation, he would pick up from Stella something similar, something wrong but he could not place it, and she was not his partner anymore so there was no telling what the hell she was really thinking. Those days between him and Stella were gone, and it was all kind of vague between them, all history and trying to make nice because their significant others were practically related. The day Ray realized that Stella was not his ex-wife anymore but had become his fucking sister-in-law was the first time he and Fraser argued about Vecchio. Not about Vecchio, Ray was careful to point out (yell, whatever), but...he was not sure what, and so he lost, since Fraser just got cold and mean and told him he was being a childish, jealous bitch. Not in so many words, or at least not those words, and involving some heavy metaphors and a reference to Dostoevsky which Ray STILL does not quite get but it was the same thing: Ray = Childish, Jealous Bitch.

Ray almost laughed in his face, because it was not as if Fraser did not know Ray was the jealous kind to start with. He was divorced and dumped cold by Stella and was still jealous about her dating other people. He did not stop being jealous of who Stella dated until he realized he was in love with Fraser, and he sure as hell was not going to stop being jealous about Fraser until one or the other or both of them were dead. A long time from now, in other words. He managed to not laugh in Fraser's face, but he owned up to the jealousy, and then had no where else to take the argument, even though he was pretty certain it had somewhere to go.

The word he needed then was `subtext,' but unfortunately he did not find out about that word until a long time after it would do him any good to know it. Stella said it when she finally got comfortable being his sister-in-law and not his ex-wife (which was a very long time after he did), and began talking about real things, not abstract things, but real honest to God things. She was talking about her feelings and he was tuning her out - twenty years of listening to her feelings, and he knew them all pretty well already - when he heard the word, and recognized her tone of voice, and everything came crashing down on him in one small moment of time that he could not rescue, retrieve, or re-live.

"Just, when they talk, it's not like they are really talking about what they are talking about, you know?"

"No, I don't know. What?" Ray sat with his feet up on the table in the kitchen, while Fraser expressed his displeasure over the surprise phone call from Stella by going outback and massacring a whole tree. The rhythmic sounds of the ax going `whump-ah' was hypnotizing, and Ray almost wondered if Fraser was doing it on purpose. Then he chastised himself for being stupid, because OF COURSE Fraser was doing it on purpose.

"It's the subtext, it's like they are saying all these things that THEY know what they mean, but no one else does. Or could." Stella's voice trailed off and that was when it all snapped together into some confusing picture that he did not understand except he knew it was a picture, and that was enough. Stella was upset because her marriage to Vecchio was falling apart. She was worried that her husband was closer to Fraser than he was to her and Ray knew it, heard it, and freaked out because if that was true for her, what did that mean for him?

"Fraser and him? Nope. Never happened, Stell, and ain't going on now. Guarantee."

"I know that, Ray." Stella sniped, then let out a huge sigh. "I know that, really I do. I mean, Ray isn't, he really isn't...and with all the good looking guys down here in speedos, believe me, I'd know. But..." She stopped, and it was maybe the third time in their whole lives he ever heard her at a loss for words.

"Look, Fraser told me. Nothing there." Which was a bit of a lie, because Fraser never told him that exactly, he just never told him that there WAS something between him and Vecchio, which was close enough. Ray nodded to himself while the `whump-ahs' of the tree-killing ax started up again.

"I just told you I know that, Ray. I'm just saying...well it's not that but it's something. I know it's something, I just don't know what, and it...Ray, are you and the constable, well...are you two, you know, doing alright?"

Ray rolled his eyes, wondering if `the constable' was ever going to become `Fraser' with her, then registered her question.

"Alright? As in, what, happily ever after?

"Yes. Well, no, I just mean..."

"You and Vecchio hit some rocky waters? Hey...he treating you right? He's not..."

"Ray!" Stella nearly shouted over him.

"WHAT?"

"He's treating me fine. Just, it's like, well, it's not like it was. Or maybe it's always been there and I just..." She stopped to collect her thoughts - he could see her doing it, in his mind, the little tilt of her head the biting of her lower lip. "I don't know. Maybe I'm just being jealous."

"Sure. Your more the jealous kind than I am. So yeah, maybe we both are. Okay?"

"...this has got to be the one conversation I never imagined you and I having together." Stella laughed, and suddenly everything was not-so-real again, and it was all just fine.

Although not fine, because now Ray knew he was looking for subtext, which is the thing that people are saying when they are not actually saying it. He had a good case to use as an example: him, and Fraser. Because the first year of their partnership was ALL ABOUT the subtext, the need and desire always right around the next sentence or shoulder hug or "And I you, Ray." Yes, they were the perfect example of subtext, because they spent a lot of time not saying the things they both knew was going on. Looking back on it now, it was obvious and stupid, but hey, that was kind of his trademark, so nothing unusual there. But looking back on it now also made him realize that this thing, this partnership between Fraser and Vecchio, was familiar because it was just like Stella said: full of subtext, which was something Ray was intimately familiar with, when it came to Fraser. Fraser and subtext were friends.

So, okay, the subtext was there, but Ray did not know what it was saying since he refused to accept the obvious answer. Confronting the question head on was a sure fire way to start a big fight and a stonewalling Fraser - and Ray was already listening to two hours of `whump-ah' tree killing as it was, on one of Fraser's rare days off, when they could be doing something fun. Like sex. Or something.

The subtext had to be harmless, Ray knew that. Something like, two years of friendship and partnership that managed to survive everything and kept going and going and was just always going to be there. Fraser and Vecchio were partners, always would be, and talking to each other like no one else existed was just a partner kind of thing. Talking about nothing because they had everything, and even being jealous of their respective spouses (and Ray was a spouse, he was okay with that, he had been a spouse more years than he had not) was an abstract thing since neither Ray nor Stella could come close to what Fraser and Vecchio had together. Which was a new thought, and it was circling him back around to the subtext he did not want to see going on. That he was sure was NOT there...

As the tree died a thousand deaths in the back (which was not a `back yard' because 200 acres was not a `yard', it was just `the back' and only because `the front' was where the driveway ended), he got up and went to look out the window. Fraser had stripped down to his undershirt and was dripping sweat, despite the cold. He was lathered, intent and determined, and he had no reason to be because what was there between Ray and Stella? Nothing now but an abstract history, something to remember and sometimes even laugh about. Ray had thought that Fraser's jealousy was all about Ray's history with Stella, but that was giving Fraser too much credit. Fraser really did not care about the past, just like he claimed, and Ray finally got that. What Fraser cared about was subtext; something he thought was there with Ray and Stella because it sure as hell was there with Fraser and Vecchio. Ray did not know if he was in a fun house mirror, or if he should be scared to death, because if things went bad between Stella and Vecchio, there was only one person Vecchio would turn to.

Ray watched quietly as Fraser kept chopping wood, and wondered.

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