Author's Notes: Thanks in extremis to, in alphabetical order, Mondschein, Nos4a2no9, and SecretlyBronte. What they didn't make me fix probably couldn't be saved.

Story Notes: Written in August and September 2008 for due South Match 2008's Team Reality. F/K/V triofic (not yet a pairing option offered by the archive uploading interface when I put this story up). Takes place in the Northwest Passages 'verse, after "Guns Don't Kill People," "Immovable Forces," and "Slow Like Honey". The rating is for language and serious character illness; no one dies, either in the story or elsewhere in the 'verse as I envision it.

I know they'll do this for me.

One of them will, anyway--and where one of them goes, the other one always follows. Eventually, and bitching all the way, but it's pretty much inevitable.

And they have to do it. Have to.

Granted, I might have to argue them into it. Kowalski won't like it. Hell, Benny probably won't either, and this far into things he's not gonna be shy about saying so, like he would have been when we met. When it wasn't an issue, and none of us knew it ever would be. But after all this time we've-- and I've-- And Christ, Christ, there isn't anyone else I can ask, and it's a little late now to make that any different.

Not sure I'd choose to change things, either. Pretty sure I'd choose not to, in fact--would choose to do exactly what I've done, what we've done. All of it, start to whenever the finish turns out to be. Even knowing what that says about me and how far I've come from where I started. Who I was supposed to be. What I promised to do, to not do, to believe.

God damn it.

But then, if Father Fratelli's got that direct line to God all those guys are supposed to have--which these days I'm afraid that maybe he does--I already damned myself a long time back. Would've been two or three times over if the Church saw Kowalski and Benny's marriage as anything remotely approaching legit, I guess, so at least this way I've spared myself a couple of mortal sins. Adultery, for one. And whatsit, polygamy? Being married to more than one person at once, whatever that is. Benny would know. Will know.

And now this. Something else I know I shouldn't do, shouldn't even want, but something else I flat-out need to stay sane. The only other thing, really. Figures this one would be all about them in the end, too.

God: what did I do wrong to make this how it is?

~~~

The counterman and cook at Three Happiness are new, and--I take a deep breath of the heavily scented air, just to be certain--they've changed their brands of sesame oil and soba noodles since the last time we were here. New management, I suppose. Plus a change, j'spere que plus c'est la mme chose... I order anyway, our usual plentiful pan-Asian mix, assuring myself that Ray Vecchio would have told us if the food had gone downhill.

But I'm not so sure.

Sure of Ray, certainly; we are years past any opportunity for doubt to creep into that equation. What I doubt is his awareness of the minutiae of his surroundings in light of his current struggle. Particularly in light of whatever is now making that struggle so much worse than it has been even in the recent past.

That it is, in fact, worse has been clear from the moment he called to change our long-laid plans, to ask that we come to him here rather than joining him at the Adirondack cabin we had reserved for this late-fall week. Not since our first few times together has Ray wanted to meet on his "home turf," as Ray Kowalski calls it, for anything other than the professional reasons legitimately shared by three active and experienced officers of the law. And we have respected his wishes, knowing--and, over time, hearing him painfully confirm--that to be what he is, Italian and Catholic and divorced and gay and the sum of all of that and more, is enough of a minefield for him to navigate on a daily basis that he absolutely requires some distance from our connection to maintain his equilibrium.

If that distance must be defined by geography for the connection to be actively preserved, so be it.

Given this longstanding agreement, Ray's break with tradition troubles me. I know he is not well. That much was obvious when last we saw him, in his bearing and his face and the way he kissed and the force of his need for us, separately and together. He is neither dark nor despairing by nature, but some of both showed clearly in how he loved us then. I have been waiting since that visit for a phone call, a letter, an email--for the hovering axe to fall, so that we know where the injury lies and can take all available action to address it. I think that this visit will bring the necessary knowledge.

To be honest, I fear that it will do so.

I find a parking place on the street close to Ray's building and maneuver our rental into its confines. Filling my arms with the fragrant Three Happiness bags, I check the door closed with my hip, set the car alarm, and cross the road on a diagonal towards the building's imposing front entrance. Ray's balcony sits directly above that entrance, and the warm light spilling out across it beckons welcomingly--a welcome shattered almost immediately by the sound of raised voices from within. I know those voices better than I know my own, and although I cannot yet hear the content of the conversation, the edge to one and the insistence in the other are clearly audible.

I sigh. So it's to be unto the breach right at the outset, then. Considering the personalities involved, I should hardly have expected anything different.

The din of the argument into which I am deliberately walking fades once I enter the quiet luxury of the building--lobby, elevator, and halls all constructed for optimal privacy, very much Ray Vecchio's developed style. But it assaults me insidiously the moment I step into his apartment, pocketing my key and prising each boot off with the heel of the opposite foot. True to form, they are up and circling one another, always the pugilistic side of this complex arrangement we have crafted. Even as I watch, however, Ray Vecchio sinks into one of his dining-room chairs, one hand still proffering a document of some kind to the room's other occupant.

"Damn it, Kowalski, it's not like I haven't thought about this, okay? Way too fucking much, if you want to know the truth of it. And you have to know I wouldn't even be asking if it wasn't-- It's a piece of paper, asshole. It won't bite you. Put on your dorky glasses and calm the fuck down for once in your ADD life and just read it, will you?" The needling words emerge in a pale echo of his customary impatient tone. Indeed, he looks and sounds unutterably tired, more so than ever before in my experience. No small feat, considering our lives, both separate and shared.

"No. Oh, no. No, no, no, nix, nada, nyet. You are not bringing that thing anywhere near me." Ray Kowalski whirls on him, storming back to the table where he sits, tearing the paper from his hands and flinging it angrily--if ineffectually--across the polished surface. "I don't have to read it to know I don't want to know. I'm not doing it, Vecchio, and neither is Fraser, and to be honest I don't get how you can even ask."

Ray Vecchio's eyes close as though he has been struck across the face. I clear my throat and essay a brief, desperate distraction. "Ray, pardon my interruption, but I believe you neglected to close your French windows this evening."

He flushes: the hatred of public display he developed while undercover in Las Vegas years ago has only deepened over time, and he knows I must have heard them arguing on my approach. But he doesn't open his eyes, and he does not move.

Cannot move, I suspect. Could not do so, at this precise moment, even were he not pinned to his chair under the white-knuckled grip of Ray Kowalski's hands.

Clearly, whatever is going on here will not be solved by the food I carry. Not at this stage, at any rate. I set the bags down on the passthrough counter and cross to the windows myself. Once there, I close them and draw the sheers, more to give myself something to do than for any aesthetic or acoustic reason, and then turn to look at the tense tableau before me.

The self-protective message broadcast by the arms I have unconsciously folded across my chest does not escape me.

"Fuck the windows, Fraser." Ray Kowalski's voice, tight with angry pain, breaks the stasis brutally. "The windows are not our problem here. This guy"--he pushes himself away from Ray Vecchio, throwing his long body down on the black leather couch against the far wall--"this guy here, he is our fucking problem. Do you know what he's doing--what he wants us to help him do? Do you have any clue? Huh? Tell you what, Vecchio, you want somebody to read that thing?" He flings out a hand towards the paper on the table. "Let Fraser do it. He's gonna have to know anyway, am I right? And maybe he'll be able to make you see reason, because I am a big zero for one on that right now and I don't hold out a lot of hope for the next round."

I raise a cautious brow in Ray Vecchio's direction. "Go ahead, Benny," he says wearily from behind the hand now massaging the bridge of his nose. "Take a look. You're gonna have to sign off on it anyway--I need you both for this to work." He laughs, or tries to. "Figures. Never could manage to have one of you without the other."

I let that go: it's shorthand for an old half-healed wound, a dividing line the three of us have tried time and again to bridge, and even if the topic merits further discussion--which I question--this is manifestly not the time for it. Instead, I simply reach for the document.

It's short, a single page, and the words are clear and devastatingly simple in their import. Not wholly unexpected, of course--Ray and I have talked around this subject before, more pointedly on his last visit than ever before--but no less devastating for all that. Undeniable. Inexorable.

Dire.

But I go numb so swiftly with an odd, welcome relief--the axe has finally fallen, and planning is now possible--that I barely need stop to acknowledge the blow. There will be time for that once the current situation has been defused--or, given its chief components, has exploded and the resulting fallout come to rest. Either way, resolution is required. I scan the document again, quickly, and raise my eyes to those of my companions, projecting my best impression of bland, competent incomprehension. "It's a living will, Ray. A current one. Quite legal in Illinois, as I recall. I fail to see--"

"It's a fucking deathwish is what it is," Ray Kowalski snarls. I open my mouth to--what? Argue? Remonstrate? Protest? But that's torn it for Ray Vecchio. He reacts well ahead of me, surging to his feet with the skin tightening to white over his cheekbones, his fists clenched in turn. We have arrived, it seems, at the apex of this argument. And I can only watch, and hope.

~~~

Vecchio lunges out of his chair towards me, crowding me back on the couch with the force of what he's finally letting go, and I can see in his face that we've read each other just about a hundred and eighty degrees wrong.

Not for the first time, either.

"Oh, so you, of all people, are gonna judge me for this? You, Kowalski? You learned what's right and wrong when you were a kid, same as me--same exact way as me, except for where there was Polish in your promises."

One fist comes halfway up, and for a second I'm dead sure he's gonna pop me one. Which I might deserve and I also might not. But it's his house, his couch, his knuckles, and I can see he's got a lot more to get through here, so. Bring it on, Vecchio. Which he does--with his voice, his hand just...falling back to brush against the side of his fancy-pants slacks. For a second I'm craving the punch--which is weird and I don't quite get--but then he's off again and I'm the proverbial captive audience.

"And you have been spitting in the Church's face for years, same as me again but more so. Divorced your wife, fucking guys, marrying a guy, fucking another guy on the side, and none of it ever bothers you, it all just slides off your back like you're Teflon, untouchable."

I must've made a noise at that, because he sticks a hand in my face to hush me, like the finger of God.

"And you're gonna give me dogma now? Gonna go all self-righteous Catholic on me, like I don't get enough of that from Father fucking Fratelli and the parts of my family that still speak to me on the high holidays? Gonna tell me I can't have even this much, that it isn't fucking right?"

He turns half away from me, getting Fraser square in his sights as well. Not that I'd be able to move right now even if he took those beyond-haunted eyes all the way off my sorry ass.

"You think I'm just doing this to do it, as an exercise, for fun or practice or something? You're fucking idiots, both of you."

Fraser's turn to object, but Vecchio's not having it from him any more than from me, and Fraser, smart man, sees that and shuts it before more than half a syllable makes it out of his mouth.

"Listen, I know you both know I'm not feeling too hot, that I've been low for a while, right? I know you both saw that in March, the way I couldn't keep up with you, couldn't do all the stuff we had planned. But-- Look, I'm not just under the weather, okay? I mean, this is not a garden-variety thing here, a standard-issue far-side-of-fifty thing. This is not just me after thirty years on the force with an ulcer and insomnia and starting to wish on the sly that I could ride a desk instead of breaking in another rookie in the Riv. This is not just I need a vacation, not just I need to fuck and get fucked and stop hiding and wish that, for once in my literally goddamned life, I didn't have anything to hide in the first place. This is huge, okay? This is--"

He chokes, turning his back on us. God, what could be so bad that he can't look at us, can't even look at Fraser?

"I'm dying, Benny," he says from behind the hands he's got over his face, like he's keeping himself together by sheer will. "Dying, Kowalski. And I am so scared I can't even breathe."

No.

Oh, no.

No, no, no. No way in hell did he just say what I thought I heard. Just, no.

...oh, my God.

I try to say something--anything, anything, please--to make what he's said not be true, never be true, never even have come out of his mouth to ricochet around this room like a boomerang with a razor edge. But my throat's closed up and I've kind of forgotten how to breathe, and while I'm figuring out how to restart the system he turns back around and I have to hear him out.

"Cancer," he says, and it's like that one word just sucked every bit of air from the room. "I have cancer. Stage three kidney cancer. Right kidney and one of the lymph nodes. I thought it was just being tired from everything piling up, the job and the travel plus Ma's death, a little food weirdness and a little low energy, nothing that needed the doc. Mistake, turns out. Big one. Now they say I need a-- a-- shit, what is it, what the hell is it called--"

"Nephrectomy," Fraser murmurs from where he's leaning against the far wall, arms crossed high over his chest the way he does when he's just barely holding on.

"Jesus, Benny. Figures you'd know that off the top of that freakish head of yours. And it's polygamy, right, that thing where you're married to more than one person at a time?"

Combined with the look on Fraser's face, that's almost random enough to unfreeze me, but Vecchio's unstoppable now and he just keeps going.

"An operation. Next month. They're taking the kidney and the lymph node. Maybe more. Depends on what they find. And my family, we don't do so good under general anesthesia, with being cut open and rearranged inside. It doesn't tend to agree with us much. Not to mention what happens after, which is a big mystery. Lots of options at that point, apparently, drug trials and clinical trials and fucking acupuncture and whatever else, but I have to say, none of them look all that great to me from here."

He's swung back to me now, right in my face even though he's still upright and towering over me where I'm pressed back against the couch cushions.

"So that's where I'm at, Kowalski. That's the reason. That's why the living will--and the DNR, which we haven't gotten to yet and maybe won't, given your chickenshit self. It's because I'm sick, you asshole. Because they're putting me all the way under before we hit Thanksgiving and I don't know if I'll even see Christmas. Because the Church and I don't see eye to eye on what dying means, and because after all this time flying in the face of what the Church says is moral, I'm not about to buy its right-to-life bullshit now, no matter how scared I am, which by the way is plenty."

God. I am doneski; I got nothing. Unfortunately,Vecchio's not finished yet.

"So it's going to be me who says what's going to happen when I'm dying. Me. Not some priest who doesn't know shit about me except from what Frannie says when she goes to Confession and the First Communion handshakes he gets out of me every time someone else in my family signs up for the fucking Catholic life sentence.

"Except that before the great state of Illinois will let me have any say about the end of my own bed-ridden life, I have to make two other poor suckers admit to knowing me and agree I'm not insane. And the two of you are all the chosen family I have and the only people I know who might just be crazy enough to sign off on all of that."

His shoulders slump, and all of a sudden he's back to how he was when we started this profoundly shitty evening: a low, grey, ragged shadow of his usual self. "Or so I thought. Hoped, anyway. That's why. Got it? Yeah? God."

Fraser twitches against his wall, and I know he's fighting off the impulse to get in the middle of this. More in the middle than he is just by being with us and being here, I mean. If that's even possible. But I hold up a hand to stop him--a shaky hand, which irritates me in a sort of painful distant way but which, between the potful of coffee this morning and the fact that I can't eat for shit on planes and the jetlag and the extreme what-the-fuck factor of our current situation, is not exactly a huge surprise. And he stops himself, my partner--God, how he knows me--and he lets me do what I need to.

Which is the only thing I can think of to do, the only thing my body will let me do: I slide off the couch onto my knees at Vecchio's feet, wrap my arms around his waist tighter than I would've thought I could manage, and bury my face in his belly.

Totally familiar position. Totally alien tonight. Like the world's taken a quarter-turn to the north: nothing is quite what it's supposed to be.

I inhale, breathing Vecchio in, wanting--needing--that sensory reassurance. And mostly he smells like he always does: cologne at the end of the day and the cedar blocks he keeps in his sweater drawer and that chemical tang his drycleaner leaves on his fancy silk slacks. But the sweat coming up through all that familiarity stinks of fear and what has to be the sickness he's fighting. And he doesn't touch me, doesn't put those strong hands of his on my head, doesn't stroke or tighten or unbutton his pants or make fists in my hair. He just stands there, and I can feel him looking down at me.

Waiting.

"I thought..." Shit. I really kind of hoped I wasn't gonna cry, given how much I hate that. But I have to turn my face to the side to get any air into my lungs and I've left a wet spot on Vecchio's shirt right above where the pinstripes start, so apparently I was wrong.

Once again, not for the first time.

"I know you're sick, Vecchio. I'm not stupid. But I saw that paper, that living will, saying it's the 'final expression of your legal right to refuse medical or surgical treatment and accept the fucking consequences of your refusal'. And I thought you'd given in. Given up. On yourself, and on us, and on the chance that you might maybe make it in the end after all. And that you wanted us to give you up, too--to pack it in, to let you go, even if--. 'S crazy, I know--shit, it sounds wrong even to me, I know you better than that--but I...I panicked."

God, I can hardly breathe. I pull in as much oxygen as I can, another huge wet gasp in the face of Vecchio's silence, and I make myself keep going.

"I mean, I knew you were sick when you came to visit in the spring, knew there was something wrong. I know you, Vecchio, and I watched you, and I knew. But I didn't, I couldn't lean on you the way Fraser can, make you talk to me, tell me what was up. I was worried about you, but I couldn't ask, and you didn't tell, and what was I supposed to-- And then when Fraser dropped me off tonight, and you came at me first thing with that fucking paper, and I--"

All solid truth, as far as it goes. But I haven't hit the key thing yet--the center, the heart of what we're chasing here--and I have to, somehow. I push back to look up at him, shifting my hands to grip his hips like I think he's gonna try to run.

Which maybe I do, because maybe he is, if I can't make this work somehow.

"Vecchio. Ray. Christ. I don't fucking care what the Church has to say about this. I. Don't. Care. You have to know that."

I can feel the tremors in his body now, can see the desperate doubtful hope in his face.

"Yeah, of course I got the same lessons you did. Got the same extreme unloving crap crammed down my throat, judgment and anger and damnation if you even thought about being different. Which I always was, same as you. And I'm not Teflon"--so very fucking far from it, Jesus--"and it scratched and scraped the shit out of me, trust me on this. Ask me and I'll show you the scars. It's just that I got lucky"--I don't look at Fraser, I'm not that cruel--"got handed something to believe in that finally made some kind of sense, got believed in myself. Found Fraser. Found my feet. Found you. The Church couldn't keep me then, I knew better. I know better now. I know you better now. I should have known you wouldn't give it up--give us up--without a fight. Without a reason."

Am I overselling this? Fuck, I probably am--yeah, of course I am, who am I kidding, it's me here, right? But if there was ever a time for selling the shit out of something, this would be it, and--

"Christ, Ray, I get it. I get it. Okay?"

I'm out of breath, out of voice. Out of time. It's all in Vecchio's hands now.

And thank God: here come those hands, down--finally, finally, God--to rest on my head, working their slow unsteady way through my hair. A little sweaty, a little shaky, a lot needy and desperate and hot.

A benediction: not one Vecchio's priest would recognize, but that doesn't make it any less a blessing.

It's not the first time I've been on my knees for Vecchio, for damn sure--and please God it's not even close to the last. But usually the connection between us has been about sex, plain and simple. Sometimes love. Sometimes even both together, as impossible as that's been for either of us to admit out loud. But it's like we don't quite speak the same language, so that what's honest for me makes him grit his teeth and what he means as respect hits me just exactly wrong. Fraser's done his best to translate--and his best has been a hell of a thing to see--but what Vecchio and I have made together over the years has always been a makeshift thing at most.

One thing it's never been about, though--even at its rocky, hostile worst--is dying. Leaving. Loss.

And I am damned if I'm gonna let that change now.

~~~

I'm up before either of them the morning after, and not just because I don't sleep all that well these days. Last night cut pretty close to the bone, even before we moved it into the bedroom, and I guess I'm feeling a little...exposed. Even after everything we've said and been and done together, this is more of me than I've ever let them see. Ever let anyone see, honestly; even Ange didn't know this much about me, and back then, let's face it, there was a whole lot less to know.

It's a good thing, having them in on this. The right thing. Just like having the paperwork filled out and on file and guarding me is. Will be.

I have faith in all of that.

But right now I'm a lot more comfortable with sitting sore from where Kowalski pounded my ass--weird, right, given where we are? but he gave me what I asked for, thank God for trust--and the ache of the fingerprint bruises Benny left on my arms than I am with the need for that faith.

"Regional kidney cancer has a sixty-percent-plus survival rate nationwide, Ray." Speak of the devil. Benny pads past me to sit across the table, wrapped in the snowy white Turkish toweling robe I gave him a couple of years ago. The dim light Chicago gets on early fall mornings hits the balcony side of his face like a spotlight, creases and flecks of silver in his hair and that small scar near his eye, the one Zuko's goons gave him, never shows except when he's tired or worried.

Bet the robe I gave Kowalski has coffee stains all across the front.

And Christ, can't the guy give it a rest? "I know, Benny, although God knows how you do. I can read, you know, and the docs haven't exactly been shy about giving me stuff on all this. Not to mention Frannie and her unstoppable Googling habit. But statistics aren't going to fix this one."

"I'm not trying to fix it, Ray." He looks at me through the steam off his cup, solemn and still. "Not in the way you think I am, anyway." He looks down, sips his coffee--which in and of itself says something about where his head is at right now, that he's drinking my French-pressed sludge. Then he's looking back at me, straight as an arrow, like he always has from the beginning. "Lies, damned lies, and statistics," he says, half to himself even though he's aiming all that focus my way, and I'm still blinking at him when he surfaces to finish the thought. "You're not dying, Ray. You're ill, undeniably. Neither Ray nor I doubt that, much as we wish it was not the case. And--"

"And yeah, we'll sign off on your...'living will' while we're here. Christ, what a weird idea. But if that's what you want, we're in." Kowalski, Jesus: the man is coming up on fifteen years nicotine-free and that voice still makes me hard, even with death--and, hah, his coffee-splotched robe--staring me in the face. He kisses the top of my head before I can punch him, sneaky goddamned Polack, and wanders away towards the kitchen, muttering pre-caffeinated bullshit under his breath.

Benny forges on. "Agreed. But that readiness isn't all, Ray, and you need to know this. To remember it." In any other situation I'd be laughing at him, all serious and shit with his hair half on end and that robe open way past his nipples. But this is now, and believe me, I'm listening. "'Chosen family', you said. I presume you mean that?" He doesn't wait for an answer--color me shocked--just plows ahead. And I do mean it, so there's no need to argue. "In that case, you will not deny us the opportunity to care for you. The right, Ray. As family. We will honor your end-of-life desires should the need arise. In return, you will allow us to do everything we can to stave off that need. Are we agreed?"

"Amen." Kowalski's contribution from the kitchen, typical him: short, unsweet, pretty much completely to the point.

How can I argue with these men?

"Agreed," I say. Of course.

So, yeah. Okay. This is how it is, then. And I--and we--will deal with that.

Whatever it winds up being.