Author's website: http://www.mindspring.com/~bluecham/

Disclaimer: Alliance-Atlantis and Paul and Paul and probably a lot of other people will not bother to sue over this.

Author's Notes: Hi, another bleeeahaahhhh, whatever-comes-out story. Hope you like it. Hope I get over my potty joke fixation. Probably something to do with that little episode in hospital less than a week ago.

Story Notes:

This story is a sequel to: Talking to the Dog

Talking to the Dog II: Life's a Beach

"You did what?"

"I said I fell asleep on him, okay?"

"Oh for God's sake. If you were that wiped, why did you even get started? The poor thing's probably still wondering what he did wrong."

"No, wait, I think you got me wrong. I fell asleep. On him. On his shoulder, kind of."

"Oh, uh...so what were you doing?"

"Watching TV."

"So what are you doing in here?"

"You'll have to ask him that."

"Okay, hold it just a damn minute." Diefenbaker, still a little hung over with the heavy dinner from last night, got up and began to walk back and forth across Fraser's office, waddling just a bit. "Ugh. I think I need the mineral oil."

"Then you must be pretty stinking bad off. My mum used to have to hold me down to get me to take that stuff."

"Ah...nah, forget it, I'll be okay. I just need to run around a little, then take a mass shit over by the new landfill."

"Dief! Jeez!"

"Shut up, it's excellent fertilizer."

"Maybe so, but the image ain't excellent anything. And if you can communicate so well with Frase, why haven't you ever learned to use the toilet?"

"Ray. Ray, Ray, Ray--I'm a wolf dog. I seem to remember your taking very explicit notice of a little fling I had with a drinking fountain yesterday."

"Are you trying to say that there are some things you just can't change?"

"Just like there are things about you you can't fight, that's right. Also...I, erm...tried the toilet thing."

"Didn't like it?"

"Fell in. Back legs too short."

"Oo."

"And I'd already used it. Very successfully."

"Oo."

"Fraser would hardly look at me for a week."

"You probably didn't exactly look all that fucking great."

"Ray! He bathed me, of course, idiot. Then he got up the next morning before the cleaning staff could get here and sterilized practically the entire place with something he still won't identify, but I suspect it was industrial solvent of some kind, because Turnbull and Thatcher were greenish for a day or two. He told them the carpet glue had been eaten by millipedes and he'd had it fixed and the millipedes eradicated in one swell foop."

"Millipedes?!"

"Ray, we're getting off track here." Dief came up to the cot where Ray was still lying; the latter was propped on an elbow, rubbing sleep from his eyes with the other hand. Dief continued "We might not have much time before he shows back up. And neither of us will hear him coming--but he'll hear us as soon as he opens the front door."

"Where'd he go?"

"He's picking up those breakfast sandwich things. The cheese ones you like."

"Ah, man, I usurp his cot and he's bringing me breakfast? What is wrong with him? Freak..."

"He's nice."

"Yeah, no shit, we talked about that yesterday. Okay, you were trying to say something and we got off on taking a shit. Or, uh, whatever."

"Beautiful segue."

"Willya just talk, ya damn dog?"

"Sure, ya damn primate. So, you and Fraser were watching TV, and..."

"And where were you, anyway?"

"Crashed out under Thatcher's desk. She's got this great furry foot-cozy sort of rug under there..."

"Fraser will murder you with an industrial staple remover."

"No, he won't. It's the same colors I am, and Thatcher isn't allergic to furred animals, with the occasional exception of other humans. And the cleaning staff throw the thing in the wash about once a week."

"Uh, okay. So, there we were, watchin' TV..."

"How did that happen? Last I saw, you were all ready to throw caution to the wind."

"I...kinda got hit by a downdraft."

"Burned out of the sky, eh?"

"Well, I wouldn't say that. It was just...there I was, tryin' to get it all out...oh, God, I can't believe I said that--anyway, I kinda choked in the clutch, and suddenly Fraser's just rubbing my hands, telling me there's all kinds of time, and everything was fine. God, he looked so pretty...um, anyway, I just...well, it felt...so great, and I didn't wanna blow it, you know? God, I'm pathetic." He fell over on his back again. "I just told myself--well, I hoped--I kinda still hope, you know, that he knows already. Or he knew what I meant when I said it, at least...I am pathetic."

"No, you're not. There's nothing pathetic about loving someone, especially not when it's someone as great as Fraser, and double especially when you already know he loves you."

Ray turned his head on the cot. Diefenbaker was lying on his side, wriggling just a little. "Damned gas bubble..."

"You never said he loved me. Did he tell you that? He told you that? Did you know that and you didn't say--"

"No, he didn't, and I did say that I wouldn't try to get anyone in bed with him that he didn't want to have there, but I don't know any details, I just have whatever you called it, dog instincts. All I meant was that he'd never get all weird on you even if he didn't want to, uh, play horsey."

"Play horsey? That is too weird coming from a dog."

"Blame your own psyche if you don't like my word choices. What I meant was that he'd still love you, still be your friend. You do know that much, don't you?"

Ray sighed. "Yeah. I know that much. If he couldn't deal, he'd only have to do his innocent routine--not to me, I mean, to himself, kind of. Just, you know, tell himself that I was his very good friend and it was a very sweet thing to tell him but there was no reason we couldn't just go on being friends, that I wouldn't get weird because, hey, we're all adults here, Ray, and I have the highest degree of respect for your abilities and your perspective and yadda yadda you know the drill."

"Do I ever. Yeah, that's pretty much what I meant."

"Yeah. Um...so..."

"You were letting Fraser talk you down."

"Oh, yeah. And he said that since I was obviously snoring out my ears, or however he put it, maybe I shouldn't be driving back home, and he offered to drive me and the car back to my place--"

"Hard to drive it without the car--"

"--and then walk back here, shut up or I'll kick you, and I said no, I didn't want him to have to haul his ass back here like that and anyway I was fine to drive, and he looked at me a minute and said maybe he'd make some Earl Grey--tell me again why I like that kind?"

"The bergamot oil."

"Oh, yeah. Smells good. Anyway, he'd do that, and we'd watch the tube for a few while I drank it, and I might feel more awake for the drive after that. So he sat me down on a couch in front of the set and went to make the tea. I don't remember much after that. Sneaky bastard, ain't he?"

"Told you. Mess with that man and he'll kill you with kindness. But how do you know you fell asleep on him?"

"Woke up there, for just a minute, I think. He was saying in this hardy-har-har voice 'So, feel a little more up to driving now, Ray?' and I said 'Sngfm,' and climbed on him. Well, more like...slumped with verve on him. Wasn't at my most, uh, coordinated."

"Oh, well, I guess the evening wasn't a total bust. Unloading to Fraser-wise, I mean--"

"Will you please just call it 'telling'? What is wrong with the word 'telling'?"

"--since he obviously has no problem puppy-piling with you. Which is interesting."

"He'll snuggle up with you. "

"Only for utilitarian reasons, and besides, I am a wolf dog, Ray. I told you, his problem is with people he might fall for in a certain way."

There was a long pause.

"So if he did that, you think I'm not someone he could really...you know..."

"Ray, I told you, he--uh-oh, catch this topic later." Dief's rolling around as he tried to get comfortable with his tummy had brought him around to the open door.

"I thought you couldn't hear--"

"No, but I can see him. Through one of the front windows. He's on the porch, talking to that woman from a couple of houses down--oops." In the quiet of the early-morning consulate, Ray heard the front door open, and Fraser's most-likely-unlaced hiking boots--actually a fairly soft sound on the parquet floor, but a distinguishable one to Ray, by this time--approaching the steps to the egress below the main staircase landing.

"You're awake." Fraser, as it was Saturday morning, was in comfy clothes. He had on a worn--but blindingly blued--white cotton button-down tucked into his equally worn jeans. His hair was a little damp, still. He stepped over Dief and came in.

"So am I," Dief said pointedly, wagging his tail a little, but since he was now lying on his back, looking like Captain Doggie Bloat, the effect was less than it might have been.

Fraser glanced down at him, then rolled his eyes. "Dief...if I really, really hated you, I would definitely give you one of these," he said as he set a white, taped-shut paper bag on the desk. "But I don't. Well, not that much. So don't even try."

Dief whined. It didn't sound like anything but a whine to Ray, but Fraser sighed and said "Maybe, but believe me, ham and cheese breakfast rolls would not cure what ails you. Now let me feel."

"Ah, jeez, here we go," Dief groaned theatrically, but he didn't move as Fraser went to one knee and leaned down, both hands moving gently over Dief's abdomen, fingers working a little into the fur. Despite the grouching, Dief went boneless under the touch. "Purr...purr..." he muttered, making Ray smirk and cover his mouth.

Fraser blinked, his gently massaging hands stilling. "What cat? Have you been chasing cats again?"

"Nah, just mumbling to myself. What's the verdict?" Diefenbaker wondered.

"You'll be fine," Fraser said with a half-smile, stroking Dief's belly lightly once and then standing back up to get into the bag. "I think your usual remedy will suffice. Unless you really want a nice slug of mineral oil this morning."

"Not if I'm not going to die in pain without it, I don't," Dief said, rolling over. "I'll just be on my way."

"I left the bathroom window up for you before I went out."

"You know I have to tippy-toe across the toilet tank to get to that window, so I hope you shut the lid."

"I most emphatically shut the lid."

"Right, well, see you pups later. You be around, Fraser?"

"Maybe. In and out, most likely. I'll change your water, and leave the bathroom window open for you until it starts to get dark."

"That'll work." Dief glanced at Ray on his way out. "You--just relax and fly casual, okay?"

Ray nodded tiredly. "Yeah, Dief. Thanks."

Fraser looked between them as Dief proceeded out. "Did I miss something?"

"Just me waking up and saying what-the-fuck," Ray sighed. "I didn't remember showing up in here last night. Dief finds me entertaining sometimes, I guess."

"Well...yes, he does," Fraser admitted, trying to hide another smile as he handed Ray a parcel wrapped with deli paper and a covered cup, both items only just cool enough to touch; he dumped a couple of paper napkins to the cot in front of him. "Two sugars. I thought you might like to wallow while you eat."

"Yeah, cool. Breakfast a la cot." Fraser got a constipated expression and Ray hee-heed for a moment as he got the lid off his coffee and set it just to hand on the floor--he was still lying propped on an elbow--and began to rip into the breakfast roll paper.

"Why is that actually amusing coming from you?" Fraser wondered, abandoning his histrionics for a more typical half-smile. Those time-and-space transcending fingers easily divested his own morning repast of its coverings in a picosecond, without the tiniest tear in paper or tape to show for it.

"Because I'm charming, Frase," Ray said, with a small, silly pose. "I ooze charm. No--I am charm." He slurped coffee noisily, making Fraser giggle a little, and continued "But it's not like yours. Not like your charm, I mean."

Fraser raised a brow at him. "You're actually telling me I have charm?" He took a neat bite of his breakfast roll.

"Oh, plenty. Everybody loves you, Frase. But it's sheer stupid-ass luck with you, see. You're the most aggravating human being on the planet; you're just damn lucky you happen to be so lovable, too, or you'd likely be dead by now. And I don't mean from walking up to trigger-happy crackheads with nothing on your side but sweet reason. Got any more sugars in that bag?"

Fraser fished a moment, then handed him one. "So, I'm charming and lovable. I'm glad Dief's not here. With the condition of his gastrointestinal tract at the moment, he might hurt himself if he laughed too much."

"You left out 'aggravating'."

"Oh, yes, I did. Okay, maybe Dief's gut would be safe after all." Fraser, still smiling, had a sip of tea. It was doubtless barely palatable compared to what he was used to, but he seemed satisfied enough with it.

"Though you're right it's kinda hard to predict anything where Dief's gut is concerned," Ray conceded, with his mouth full.

"Another good point. Might we talk about something over breakfast besides Diefenbaker's insides? I'm feeling unusually squeamish this morning, for some reason."

Ray grinned. After that story about Dief's attempts to get with primate plumbing, this somehow wasn't surprising, Fraser's usual penchant for being able to occasionally blithely go on about things that could make Mort sick notwithstanding. "Sure. So, where'd you sleep, if I slept in here on your cot?"

"In here, on my bedroll. You're a very sound sleeper once you're left alone, though you are a bit talkative if anything disturbs you."

"But then you knew that."

"Largely, yes."

"You could at least have taken the couch, the one I was sleeping on. It's long enough."

"My bedroll is about as comfortable as that cot, Ray."

"Turnbull really carried me there? I wouldn't have thought he could do that without waking me up. Thrown' me over his shoulder and all."

"He probably couldn't have done it easily at all, much less without waking you, if you hadn't been so cooperative. You wrapped your arms around his neck and hung on, while insisting that you weren't tired and didn't want to go to bed."

Ray groaned. "What did he do?"

"Turnbull has about half a dozen nieces and nephews. He merely said softly that he was just going to move you to the couch. You said 'Oh', and licked him."

"I must've liked it better on the table."

"Actually, it seemed more like an affectionate gesture than an attempt to get him to put you down."

"Well...my brother and me did kinda do it that way with Uncle Frank. We couldn't kiss him, because boys don't kiss, but we could do that because we could pretend it was a gross-out. You know."

Fraser swallowed tea thoughtfully. "Actually, no, I don't."

"Oh, yeah, I guess you wouldn't. Well, with boys, y'know...Stella used to tell me, if you're not really old enough yet to stop being touchy and stuff with your mum and dad and each other, but your dad thinks you're old enough, you find other ways, sorta. Like wrestling, when you're laughing too much for it to really mean wrestling wrestling, it's more like loud hugging that you're allowed to do, y'know. Or the licking thing."

"Then it was more of an ersatz kiss." Fraser smiled.

"Well not always, I mean, c'mon, most of the time we really were tryin' to gag each other or beat each other up or whatever. Just not...always." Ray found himself getting squirmy with the topic, what with what he'd said and yet hadn't said last night, and what with his current uncertainty with Fraser's perception of his feelings; he slurped coffee again, trying to think. Though he knew first thing in the morning after a night spent both on a hard cot and surrounded by Fraser's smell--not starch and neatsfoot oil and Woolite, but Fraser's smell--and before a shower, was not the best time to do any serious, not to mention crucial, thinking. The coffee and breakfast were all he had going for him. He'd better try to get neutral quick, conversation-wise.

"Could you always understand Dief? Like, what he said?" Okay, not neutral, but certainly distracting.

"More or less. I have thought, in the past, that it had something to do with the repeated blows to my head that occurred on and around the occasion of our meeting. Sometimes our communication isn't...words, exactly. Or perhaps never really words. I just...know what he means. Or I don't, sometimes."

"He comes through pretty clear to me. In words, I mean."

"Perhaps it's easier for you to understand him that way."

"You sayin' I'm not deep enough to get the ectoplasmic--uh, you know, the far-out points? Esoteric."

"No, I'm only saying that it isn't the way you normally communicate, not for everyday conversation. Dief and I have what most people would probably consider a kind of code."

"Like in-jokes."

"Yes, rather like that--a shared frame of reference that is ours alone. Not an uncommon thing between friends and other close associates, of course. " Fraser had another sip of tea. "But some of our communications depend very little on language-based concepts--from him, at least. We don't have any sort of telepathic bond, or any such thing, that I can detect; he simply...makes himself understood to me."

"Yeah. Me too. Wonder how he does it. Wonder if--"

"Not to curb your natural--and entirely understandable, not to mention professionally advantageous--curiousity, Ray, but if I may offer some advice...once you start asking yourself those questions, you'll never stop. And you may be surprised, and displeased, at some of the conceptual routes you'll find yourself following..."

"So you mean I'd be better off just takin' it and likin' it?"

"In a nutshell, yes."

"Still wonder how many people out there who aren't human can do what he does, though."

"He has told me that to one degree or another, all living things communicate with each other. It is not always easy for them to communicate outside their own species, however; he doesn't like to talk about why he has such a gift for it, but I suspect it may have to do with the fact that...he feels himself between worlds, in several different ways."

"Bein' a wolf-dog?"

"Among other things, which I really shouldn't go into without his permission. If he wants to talk about them with you, he will."

"So...Dief's a freak, too."

Fraser smiled after swallowing his current bite of roll. "You could say that."

"Must be why he loves you so much."

"I'd say, rather, that...while he does resent being called my alter-ego--as it implies that I'm merely talking to myself, through him--he does see us as being...well, kindred spirits."

"Does this mean he thinks I'm a freak? Since he'll talk to me now?"

Fraser thought. "I don't think it was a conscious decision on his part. I believe that Diefenbaker is aware of a reality, a consciousness, that supersedes even such things as kingdom or phylum, much less mere species or gender. He is perceptive, on a level most can't perceive, to a kinship that can be found even in that which superficially bears no resemblance to oneself whatsoever, and...he classes you as within that sort of kinship--as having the capability, the awareness, to belong to such a kinship. As he classes me."

"If I got all that right, an' it doesn't just mean he thinks I'm a freak, too...it mostly means he likes me."

"Yes, he does, Ray. He's very fond of you." Fraser said it genially, reaching over to pat Ray's knee.

"Ah, get off." Ray, grinning, swiped at his hand, and Fraser chuckled at him. "So he didn't like Vecchio? Or could Vecchio understand him?"

"He likes Ray well enough, as Ray does him. It's just that Ray, while not a closed-minded individual, of course--um, ahem, well, not usually--is not...sufficiently receptive in quite the way he would need to be, to...ah..."

"So Vecchio was embarrassed when you talked to Dief in public too, huh?" Though, come to think of it, Dief had been more embarrassed that Ray was talking to him in public, yesterday. Ray gave a mental shrug and supposed Dief didn't like being seen with a loon unless the loon was in a red uniform. Or maybe it was just that he'd been making cute for that girl and didn't want Ray wrecking it.

Fraser shook his head, looking distant, with a little smirk. "On the contrary. He would talk to Dief in public, sometimes, too, though I'm not sure how often he had any real expectation of Diefenbaker's understanding him."

"Hm. So I guess there's just no telling, huh?"

Fraser nodded. "I guess." He finished his roll with a few more neat bites. "I'm sure such standards are far more subtle than what mere humans, particularly 'civilised' humans such as ourselves, can hope to grasp."

"F'you say so. You're the word on civilization." Ray finished his roll, too, and then his coffee, and sat up all the way.

He saw the look Fraser shot him at his last comment, but pretended to be occupied cleaning up his breakfast leavings and didn't look back.

"Did he say how long he thought he'd be?"

Ray shook his head before remembering that Dief was too short to notice the movement unless he happened to be looking up at Ray's head, which he was not, right at the moment. Dief seemed to keep track of their conversation via a blend of what bits he could hear, from the narrow end of his hearing disorder, and frequent, unobtrusive glances between their path and Ray's face. "No," Ray said aloud. "Has he ever even tried to say no to Turnbull?"

"He tries all the time. Gets exasperated, rolls his eyes, throws up his hands--Turnbull wants a weird favor and Fraser insists that 'this is the LAST TIME'...it's the same way you try to say no to him."

"There is some karmic chi fate thing at work that Frase would end up as the report of the only guy in the world more like him than he is."

"I think you're right. It lets him know, even if only occasionally, how you feel sometimes, dealing with him."

"Gotta be harder, though. Fraser at least has to work at it, with me. But Turnbull upset, I mean...geez. Who could say no?"

Their topic of conversation consisted of the ramifications of the phone call that Fraser had received from Turnbull as he (Fraser) was disposing, in an environmentally correct fashion, of the remains of his and Ray's breakfasts. Apparently, in the course of the regular maintenance on the pond that constituted the centerpiece of the grounds of Turnbull's apartment complex, a mother Mallard and her nest of ducklings were about to be unceremoniously displaced. As Turnbull explained, between quiet sniffs, he had been perfectly reasonable in his explanation that even moving, much less destroying, the nest could have disastrous consequences for the survival chances of ducklings which had already imprinted, but the maintenance crew simply would not consider working around the nest and its environs. Constable Fraser, though, was always so persuasive--could he possibly....? Before the workers got to that section of the grounds...?

"Love him or strangle him," Ray concluded, with a smirk. "Just...worse."

"Yeah," Dief said.

"Your gut okay?"

"Yes, you won't have to put up with me stopping to take an explosive and/or bricklike shit behind every bush, don't worry."

"More having to clean it up that worries me."

"That's why I use the landfill."

Ray's gaze came up, behind his sunglasses, scanning around at the Saturday-morning-populated park they were strolling through by the lake. "Maybe Fraser could get you a cat box."

"Maybe I could rip your nuts off with one jerk of my vulpine teeth."

Ray only grinned. "Don't gimmie that macho wolf stuff. I saw you hangin' out with that cat, right before you saw me."

"That was Montgomery," Diefenbaker said stiffly. "He's all right, he's okay. He's an old tom that the other cats in the neighborhood respect. He helps keep the young tom packs under control."

"An' he reports to you?"

"We have a working understanding. If he needs help, he lets me know before animal control comes through and God knows how many queens and kittens get caught up in the raid along with the feral toms."

"'Queens'?"

"Females who haven't...been quote fixed unquote."

"That why Fraser thinks you chase cats?"

"I only chase the ones that deserve it."

"Well I guess, if you give a care about queens and kittens..."

"Fraser and I are officers of the peace. It's our job. Now shut up and enjoy the morning."

"Cat lover."

Dief glared up at him. "Do you want to know how they kill batches of strays, Ray? Puppies, kittens, you name it? It's even less appetizing than your basic rodent control."

"Sorry. Comment withdrawn, with interest. Can we talk about something else?"

"Best idea you've had so far. Let's talk about that ice-cream vendor."

"Dief, you just got done blowin' your last overindulgence into a dugout garbage pit."

"He has frozen yogurt. Fraser lets me have yogurt. Sometimes he even makes me have yogurt."

"This kind is frozen and full of added sugar."

"I eat sugar all the time. It's just usually more complex."

The "vendor" was actually the proprietor of a little alfresco frozen-dessert eatery, complete with sturdily-umbrellad sidewalk tables, in a small square that also included more self-contained comestible-vending carts. The area was shaded by numerous trees, and flowering plants hung in baskets. Also, the breeze off the lake was actually fairly clean-smelling today, and there were just enough fluffy cumulous clouds scooting across the sun to make the light and warmth nice instead of unpleasantly cement-intensified, and--despite Fraser's abrupt, unexpected and irritating-for-them-both departure from Ray's company--Ray was feeling magnanimous. Especially since Turnbull was right; this particular mission would not take Fraser long, especially since he'd taken a few moments to don the serge and its accoutrements. That outfit always got people's attention real fast.

Ray altered course to follow Dief. "Okay, okay. What kind you like?"

"Strawberry. Double serving."

"Not chocolate?"

"I got that poisoning thing once. God, it sucked, do you know the shit they put down you to get it out before your gut can absorb it? Charcoal slurry. But first they make you puke up most of what's still in your stomach. God. I can't eat chocolate any more, just the taste freaks me out."

"Ew...oh, that stuff Fraser said, that humans pee out real fast but dogs don't, and it builds up in your system and you end up dead? Thorazine or something, no, I mean..."

"Theobromine, and yeah, that stuff. We're nearly there; remember to act like you can't hear me if I say anything. Which does not mean 'ignore me'."

"Got it, I got it, Dief."

Ray procured two cups of frozen yogurt and Diefenbaker selected a table via jumping into one of the white-painted ironwork chairs that matched it. Ray placed the paper dish in front of him, complete with napkin, and plastic spoon laid neatly thereon.

"Very funny."

"I just didn't want you to feel left out." Ray grinned. "How are you going to eat that without knocking it in your lap? Or, uh, off the table."

"Like this." Dief placed his paws neatly to either side of the cup to hold it in place and began to lap at the yogurt, rather than snapping it up in his jaws in a lump. "Mm. Mm--nm (smackslurp) ymmnm..."

"Is there any way to turn the understanding-you thing off while you're making those kinda noises? I'm losing my appetite."

"Just eat your fucking Dove bar and stop worrying about it."

Ray attempted to do so, and, after a bit, the way Dief's smacking noises got translated through the formatting of Ray's brain sort of faded into the background. He consumed his own snack with a good appetite.

"You want my napkin?" Dief wondered dryly. "Before that gets all over your jacket?" Ray was now eating the melty Dove bar mostly by holding it over his upturned face and licking largely at whatever looked like it was going to fall next. He was not the unstickiest creature who'd ever lived, by this point.

"Mlaminute."

"Right," Dief muttered, and went back to his yogurt. In few moments, Ray had denuded the Dove bar stick and was wiping himself down with his own napkin. "Can I have yours?"

"By all means. Maybe you could ask the nice man there if he's got wet wipes as well."

"You fuck inanimate objects and shit in public. Don't get on me about how I eat ice cream."

Dief sighed. "I am a--"

"I know, I know, goose is NOT gander, ain't the same, yadda yadda, but still, why do you care?"

"I don't, really. Maybe I feel this...strange need to say what Fraser would say if he were here. Like I'm the Fraser pinch-hitter or something."

"Well, that is kinda what you do, sometimes. But Fraser wouldn't say what you said. He'd never pick on my ice-cream eating technique."

"He'd want to. He'd have said something like 'You know, Ray, the Tlingit believe that when a piece of frozen food falls on your face it means the seal god Shiverynutsickfuck is rebuking you for rudeness'--"

Ray nearly choked.

"--or even," Dief went on, "maybe he'd just say 'Are you sure you don't need any help with that, Ray?' and he'd have said it real brightly and he'd really have freaking meant it, too, but what would be lurking in his subconscious would sound an awful lot like 'Christ, you're a pig, Ray.' Or maybe that level of his mind would be too preoccupied with watching your tongue, I'm not sure. In either case, he probably wouldn't even know it himself."

"Probably not." Ray sighed, smiling. "You done?"

Dief nosed his paper cup in Ray's direction until Ray took it--and the unused plastic spoon, which, contrary to the spirit of Fraser lurking in the area, who would probably have stashed it in a jacket pocket for future use--he threw it out in the nearest appropriate receptacle, along with the strawberry-stained cup. "Come on, let's cruise chicks."

"I'm up for that." Dief hopped off the chair and they trundled on down toward the beach. It was being generous to call it a beach, because it was artificial, and nobody in their right mind would go in that water except that there were evidently some crazy people out this morning because some of them were in the water--the reason the beach was built here was that the water was, at the moment at least, deemed safe for swimming, unlike most of the shoreline near the city. If you watched a while, though, you noticed that nobody ever put their head under on purpose. And the beach pull-chain showers hanging out over a row of cement-funneled drains saw use even by people who apparently intended to go back in in just a few moments.

"Fraser would be sad," Ray said, and realized that, in a way, he was kind of sad, too, but mostly because the pollution of the water would make Fraser sad. Left to his own devices, Ray himself probably wouldn't have questioned it--it would just have been part of his world, like transistors and gravity.

"Yeah," Dief sighed, "he would. He will be, when he gets here. He's sad just about every time he turns around, Ray, while he's living here. People being thoughtless. Things both alive and otherwise being undervalued. There being no real spiritual component of any kind to daily life, among the general human population. He feels lonely, half the time that he feels lonely, not because he feels that way, but because everything around him--the humans, the water, the...just everything, looks so lonely to him."

"Dief, I thought we were supposed to be having a good time. I swear I'm really gonna cry here." There was some pissiness but no sarcasm in Ray's voice.

"This'll make you feel better. When he looks at you, or thinks of you, he feels a lot better. And there's a major set of truly fine gazongas perambulating this way, barely contained in a blue bikini top."

"Where--oh, my God, you're right. And she's a bodybuilder. Look at that. Oh man, look at that, mm..."

"I'm looking, I'm looking. Hey! Your friend's cute!"

"Dief!" Ray hissed, appalled, until the leashed German shepherd walking next to the bodybuilder barked back at Dief, and Ray realized he'd forgotten the whole understanding-Dief thing again.

"What'd he say?" Ray wondered.

"She. She said that judging by the amount of human companionship her friend gets, the humans definitely think so, but she--the dog--isn't equipped to appreciate it herself. But she said I was free to smell, or even hump her human's leg if I wanted. She's a guard dog, but she can tell I'm kind of one, too, see, with the peace-officer aura and everything."

"Oh my GOD."

"If you don't want to hear things like that, I suggest that next time I talk to another dog, don't ask what we talked about."

"I will definitely never ever ask that again, believe me. I don't wanna watch you having sex, Dief, I don't wanna think about you having sex, I don't want to get you associated with sex in my head in any way. It's nothing personal. I just like to keep it within my species. I know, I know, interspecies tolerance, not all species are like that..."

Dief snorted. "Not all? Try most species aren't like that. Humans labor under the impression that other species give a damn whether the other participant is the right gender, the right species, or even necessarily alive. Not so, at least not for any of the species I'm familiar with. Yeah, mating is mating, that's a biggie, but hey, if you're bored and it feels good..."

"Er...actually, that sounds an awful lot like humans."

"Doesn't it?" Dief gave him a wolf grin.

"Don't get smug. Do you say stuff like this to Fraser?"

"Not exactly this way. Besides, Fraser takes it in stride. Hey, he's lived among the musk ox and whatever."

"Kind of like trying to freak out someone who grew up on a farm with stuff like that?"

"Pretty much. The best you'll get is rolled eyes and an 'Oh, please.' Also, Ray, you'll notice that I did not complain about your verbal appreciation of the bodybuilder, which was not the kind of appreciation that does not call sex to mind, and on top of that I'm trying to be kind of a booster jet to help you get together with my own personal Fraser, and I know you're thinking about doing the naughtius maximus with him, so don't you think you've got a little bit of a double standard going there?"

"Um...mm. I, uh...I guess you're right. I dunno why it's different." Ray sighed. "My best friend's other best friend couldn't just be a rabbi or a flamer or a...a--I don't even know. It just had to be somebody from another species."

"Bigot."

"I am not. If they were Fraser's friend they'd've been my friend no matter who they were."

"Okay, okay. Let's just watch the tits and stuff a while and then cruise on up toward the planetarium, okay?"

"Yeah, yeah. Okay."

"Breeze is actually kind of nice this morning."

"Yeah." Ray breathed in and out, closing his eyes, trying to clear his mind. This, for obvious reasons, was something of a staggering undertaking.

A soft voice helped. "Just breathe in...and out, Ray....yes, just like that...in--and out, slowly....good...in, and out..."

Without opening his eyes, he felt the relaxation overtaking him and shimmied out his kinks a little, murmuring "Mm...hey Dief, you do that good, you sound almost like--"

A touch on his shoulder nearly sent him up nearly high enough to come back through a tunnel from the other side of the earth.

Fraser blinked. He'd changed back into civvies. He was criminally beautiful. Ray was having a heart attack.

Fraser steadied him. "I'm terribly sorry, Ray. I thought you knew I was here."

Ray glowered at Dief, who was only not smirking because his face was not capable of it. "'Sokay, Frase. Dief is an asshole."

"Well, on occasion," Fraser said. "But I still thought you knew I was here. I arrived right behind you just as Dief was quoting something from Cyrano de Bergerac, and then suggested looking for some quality honeydew melons before starting for the Adler Planetarium. I'm afraid they don't sell melons at the beach, Dief."

Ray nearly died laughing. Diefenbaker devoted great attention to scratching various points on his canine/vulpine anatomy.

"What?" Fraser wondered, smiling. "Did I hear him wrong?"

"No," Ray said with great emphasis. "You didn't. Great literature and fruit, that's me an' Dief. Did you save the ducks?"

"Yes, and Turnbull is forever in my debt," Fraser said, with a wry twist of his mouth. "Not that I didn't owe him one for getting you off the kitchen table before you rolled over one too many times and injured yourself on the linoleum."

"Great, then, greatness. Let's go check out the indoor outer spaces."

"I do enjoy the planetarium," Fraser said, falling into step beside Ray. "It's one indulgence I think the Northwest Territories really could benefit from. Perhaps not the only one, as a museum for our own geological natural history, on top of the centers devoted to our various native cultures--assuming a method of dealing with the permafrost problem in an environmentally sound fashion could be expedited--would be a wonderful way to catalogue and present the richness of..." he went on, and Ray and Dief went on with him.

END

End Talking to the Dog II: Life's a Beach by Blue Champagne: bluecham@mindspring.com

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