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Author's Notes: This is a really fruckin weird story. Just all over.

Story Notes:

But that was Just a Dream
by Cythera

The tranquil halls of the Consulate rested in dim dignity in the last hours of the evening. The long corridor of darkness was broken only at the far end by a glowing exit sign and a single line of sharp yellow light below. Constable Fraser moved softly about in his contained office, bumping the low cot with his knee as he reached around his desk to pull out a spare Henley. He softly hummed bars from the song that had been playing in Ray's car on their drive back to the Consulate after dinner, imagining Ray's wise fingers tapping out the rhythm on his knee. He would use his other hand to alternately steer and gesticulate when his frenetic word play was not enough movement to emphasize his point.

Tonight the topic of contention had been the efficiency of polite behavior in Chicago. Ray had pointed out that in a city where blatant disregard for the wishes of other citizens was completely commonplace, an act of unexpected courtesy caused confusion and occasionally suspicion, actually disturbing the flow of the established system. To demonstrate, he had slowed to allow a car from an alley ahead to enter traffic -- the car, not understanding Ray's gesture, remained in the side street, and Ray's show of generosity was met only with the sound of angry horns from the vehicles behind.

"That," he had pointed to Fraser as they drove past the alley, "is how Chicago says `thank you kindly' for being polite all the time."

"There ~was some confusion, yes Ray -- but the reaction would not be the same if it were instead, for example, you or I holding the door for those entering and exiting a building."

Ray's mouth had twitched into an almost-smile, but he kept his face to the road.

"Saves ~them about the same effort as scratching their asses --"

"Ray."

"-- and takes however-many minutes out of our lunch break while you wait for the stampede to die down." He had glanced back at the passenger side, as if to check he hadn't overstepped his bounds in the argument, before continuing. "I'm not saying cancel the Mountie World Civility Scouts banquet or nothin', Frase, just that maybe you'd be better off using all that super-politeness power to maybe get Dief a doughnut or somethin'." The ever-vigilant wolf must have read Ray's lips through the rear-view mirror, because he had jumped to his feet and whuffed in a way that would have disgraced half his noble ancestors...

Fraser glanced around the floor of his office. Where had the shameless beggar gone? He pulled off his shirt in favor of the clean Henley in his hand and stepped over to his cabinets to find his hamper. Frowning, he scanned the empty dark space under the desk where Diefenbaker usually made his bed.

"Dief?" he asked the room, surveying along the walls. A minuscule noise from somewhere nearby made Fraser pause, willing his breathing to silence as he listened. Behind. He turned, startled momentarily by the noise of his feet on the wood floor, and opened the door to the closet. There, in the half light of the one desk lamp, was Diefenbaker, looking up at Fraser with mild curiosity. His tail thumped once and Fraser relaxed, kneeling to scratch the wolf's thick scruff.

"You could easily have been locked in there until morning if I'd simply rolled over and slept without giving it a thought," Fraser warned, smoothing back Dief's ears. "Or my father would have found you in here and you'd be forced to listen to him give you only entirely unusable partnership advice."

Diefenbaker seemed to look at him strangely, tilting his head to one side in a contemplative posture. Then his lips parted and the corners of his mouth pulled up into an impossible grin, baring his teeth and the dark gums in a smile that was nothing canine or lupine. Fraser's hand stilled on the broad neck, then he pulled his arm back and pressed against the wall of the closet opposite the insanely grinning wolf. Diefenbaker's expression stayed fixed as he regarded Fraser.

Fraser felt his heart fluttering as his face tingled, not moving any more than shallow breathing. He whispered from his dry throat, "Diefenbaker?"

The glee in the eyes of his possessed companion seemed to grow. No, no, this was a scenario he recognized, one he'd been an unwilling part of before -- this was a dream. Some disturbed remnant of a traumatic event he could not consciously recall, but that had chosen to manifest itself in the demonic mockery of his friend's visage -

Suddenly the wolf growled and lunged at Fraser, who gasped aloud and knocked his head against the wall behind before realizing there was no way to leave the suffocating closet. The wolf's smile remained and he let out an abrupt laugh that shattered layers of glass in Fraser's mind. He had to get out, to wake up -- where was his father?

Diefenbaker laughed again, this time a harsh cackle that seemed hysterical although the wolf's eyes never left his. The fleeting idea that if Diefenbaker was able to hear himself he wouldn't make such a chilling noise skidded through Fraser's dulled panic.

Lucid. Lucid dream. Stand up.

Fraser swiped his tongue along his lip and slowly pushed himself to his feet, holding Dief in his view. The grinning wolf followed his eyes with a slight growl.

"I am going to leave now," Fraser tightened on his wavering voice. "I want no more of you. Stay." Diefenbaker showed no signs of comprehension. Fraser hesitantly moved to the lip of the closet, pressed against the wall as he stepped out into the office. He reached back and quickly grabbed the door handle to yank the gaping closet shut. He could hear no protest from within. Diefenbaker was just sitting there, staring in the dark.

Wake up.

Fraser had certainly experienced nightmares before, seemingly real ones such as this, and had learned a technique for releasing himself from their grasp. Usually, though, the realization that he was in a nocturnal hallucination was enough to wrench him from his distress to consciousness. Yet he was still in this disturbing scene.

What was there left to do? What did he ever do anymore when he could not remedy a situation himself?

With one last glance at the closet door, Fraser reached to pick up his phone, dialing the familiar number. He waited through the alternate rings and dead silences until he heard the click of a receiver being lifted and an abrupt exhale, "Yeah."

"Ray." Fraser had several side-swiping thoughts at once -- what would Ray be able to do about a deranged wolf in his closet, or rather, about waking himself from a dream? If he were to explain the situation to Ray over the phone, would the likeness of Diefenbaker be able to hear him speaking through the closet door? And -- was that moaning in the background on Ray's end of the phone line?

Ray himself was silent.

"Ray?" Fraser repeated, turning so he could watch the closet as he talked. "Are you there?"

After another long pause and more of what sounded like muffled pleading from nearby room in Ray's house, Ray whispered dubiously, "Fraser?"

"Yes, Ray, I'm very sorry to disturb you at this hour, but.." He paused to lick his lip in thought, when a low voice on the other line very clearly purred near the receiver, "Ray-love, answering the telephone this late after so eloquently convincing me that courtesy is a waste of precious time..."

Fraser guessed that Ray placed his hand over the receiver then, but he could just barely hear Ray say something like, "One second more," before returning to the phone. "Frase, you there?"

"Ah, yes. Yes, Ray." The deep voice had been eerily familiar. `Courtesy'?

"...Fuck."

"Ray?" He could almost see the man's restless body shifting the phone around during the silences.

"You, uh....where ~are you?" Ray sounded as if he'd never called him at home before. The dream was becoming overly complex.

"I'm in my office at the Consulate." Fraser kept his eyes on the door handle. "I wouldn't have called if it wasn't important."

Another hushed stretch from Ray's end, and it seemed to Fraser that Ray had forgotten he was there at all. From somewhere in the detective's house, that same intimate voice intoned, "But it would be unimaginably better if it were you, Ray..."

Fraser heard the clatter of the phone being dropped to the floor, and his partner's tinny speech, "Holy Jesus, fucking gymnasts can't do that, Ben..."

And then the distanced response, "Actually, Ray, I believe you'd find that many athletes regularly stretch the hamstrings to a point -- "

"No, you don't tell me flexible-Inuit stories, you say things like, `Ray my friend, I'm going to knock you up into tomorrow.'"

"Ray my friend, I'm going to knock you up into tomorrow."

"Damn straight. ~Good subconscience."

"Subconscious. You left the phone off the hook."

Fraser listened as the soft expletives grew nearer to the receiver and it was picked up.

"Frase, sorry, can't talk now."

A small panic swept through Fraser as he imagined Diefenbaker's demented expression in that close closet. "No, Ray, please hear me out --"

"I gotta go with the naked one, Buddy, sorry." And he hung up.

Fraser slowly set the dialtone-buzzing receiver back on its cradle. He couldn't sleep here. Or even if he could -- how would he ever know if he was truly awake again? He wondered if dreams could possibly seem to span years in the course of one night.

"Bark." The rough tone came shockingly from outside of Fraser's view, directly behind him and at his level. Mind lurching, he whipped around to face Diefenbaker sitting on his desktop, a menacing smile from his thin black lips. Fraser backed up quickly only to hit the closet door, from which he also hastily stumbled until he was caught between a metal file cabinet at his cumbersome cot. He stared at Dief's pleased smirk, noting in peripheral vision that the closet remained closed as he had left it. This was very, very wrong.

"Penny for your thoughts, Constable," Diefenbaker pronounced, though that was not his own voice he was using, that was the Lieutenant's unmistakable gruff speech. "You got pennies in Canada?"

Fraser gaped. Diefenbaker, or Lieutenant Welsh, or whatever deranged element of his psyche this was, obvious wanted an answer. "Yes," he pushed out, "it is the same color as yours but has the Queen on one face and our maple leaf on the other." He had always been on good terms with the Lieutenant. Perhaps if he cooperated he would be allowed to leave the room unharassed.

Dief moved to the edge of the desk closest Fraser. "Come `ere," he ordered. Fraser obediently took a stiff step up. The wolf's grin widened again so all teeth were visible in a held maniac snarl. "Tell me, Constable -- I heard somewhere one type of currency your government put together not long ago's got loons on it."

Fraser nodded numbly.

"You got many loons up in Canada? Or is it just you?" Then, raucous laughter, terrible tearing cries of fiendish mirth from that face he had trusted as the only permanence in his life -- now stretched to chaotic screaming realms of a whirlpool Dali version of his friend.

He was going to go mad.

"Get out," he uttered over the offensive laughter, "or let me leave."

The mindless chuckles dwindled until there was only the empty grinning of Diefenbaker again. "You can't leave," he assured, smiling. "You have to wait for someone to come drag you out through that door. And no one's coming." Splaying his mouth in another obscene grin, he finished in Ray's voice, "Freak."

Fraser lifted his hand and pinched his own pale forearm. Hard. The wolf was still on the desk.

"You know what they say, Frase," Diefenbaker continued as Ray. "All work and no play makes Jack a fucking psycho."

Gazing at Dief, void of thoughts, Fraser stepped backward towards the wall by his cot. The wolf altered his voice to the soft intensity of Turnbull's speech. "You're in a cozy blank room in a hospital ward, Constable, calmed to a state of complete tranquility by the best psychological practitioners Canada can buy."

Fraser slowly allowed himself to slide to the cold wood floor, his knees up and his hands against his forehead.

"You've been there for a while. Sometimes you can talk. Sometimes they visit you."

Fraser closed his eyes.

" `Frase, Benton-Buddy...Ben. They said you were tired, so I won't talk yer ear off...Dammit, Fraser, can you look at my face? Can you lift your fucking head?' He visits the most." Diefenbaker paused. "Listening, Constable?"

Fraser's head remained tilted against his cold fists. So softly that the only real noise was the vibration of the humming in his own skull, Fraser kept the song from the car ride home in his mind while he waited to wake up, until even the simple tones left him to dissolve into the obscurity of the dark Consulate halls.

End Scary Story -- What Diefs May Come by Cythera: SphinxEyes@aol.com

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