The water tasted like plastic. The taste was faint, of course, and apparently imperceptible to the rest of the consulate staff, but they had all been raised on city-water or, in Constable Cooper's case, well-water. To Constable Benton Fraser, it was plastic.

Thatcher had the Consulate stocked with the bottled water, ostensibly freshly bottled Canadian Spring Water - Straight From the Source, about a month ago, for some Ottowan dignitary or another. She had appreciated the change from Chicago water so much, she'd decided to keep the bottled water in stock.

It was a sight better than the Chicago tap water, missing the mud and acrid taint of the city, or the bland, carbon taste the filter in the kitchen left behind, but the bottled water still tasted of the packaging, not the source.

Fraser sighed at the bottle in his hands, then turned to pour the remainder of the water into Dief's water dish. The wolf could undoubtedly taste the difference, but given his gastronomic excesses in other areas, would likely not care about the additions of further long-chain hydrocarbons to his diet.

He gently set the empty bottle and its cap in the recycling bin at his feet, and pondered the choice of tea instead. He briefly yearned for an infusion of lichen, but dismissed the idea out of hand immediately due to a decided lack of lichen in Chicago.

The image of his grandfather whipping salt and yak butter and bitter, pale tea in a bowl flitted past his eyes, from a time when he'd been showing young Benton the wonders of ancient China through one of its most ancient traditions - tea. But yak butter had been astonishingly easy to acquire in Yathket Flats, and Grandfather had just gotten a package from one of his old friends in China...

No. That would not help. He could likely find the proper tea in Chinatown, but he was looking for simple afternoon refreshment, not a culinary project, and there was an astonishing dearth of good yak butter in Chicago. Not quite as amazing as the lack of pemmican, but lacking, nonetheless.

He could oversteep one of the Lipton tea bags that Thatcher kept hidden from Turnbull, and approximate his grandmother's infamous (at least in Tuktoyaktuk) tea that she served with the bannocks every morning.

But he didn't really relish waiting for the tea to steep for at least an hour, and he had never quite gotten used to the hard consistency of the bannocks, even dipped in bitter, milky tea. He was out for refreshment, not trying to recapture that elusive, fleeting sense of home...

Fraser closed his eyes against the welling tightness in his throat and attempted to banish the memories of his grandparents, and the endless nights and endless days of the North, and the taste of pine, and cedar, and gravel from the MacKenzie River...

The buzz of the phone shook him from his reverie, and the automatic words of duty fell from his lips. "Canadian Consulate, this is Deputy Liaison Officer Constable Benton Fraser speaking. How may I be of service today?"

"Frase." One word from Ray was enough to bring a smile to his lips, and something in his adjusted posture made Dief's ears perk up.

"Ray."

"Gotta meeting with a guy about that burglary case in a couple of hours, but you can't wear the stop sign when the meet goes down."

Fraser took breath to protest the insult to the uniform. "It's not..."

"It's loud, and this guy don't do loud. So how 'bout we meet at home, I help you ditch the uniform, we have coffee - no, tea or something, then we see the guy?"

'Tea.' Odd moments of the sheer enjoyment of Ray's company in the privacy of his home. One of a strange assortment of herbal and green teas that found their way to the apartment in Ray's crusade to try to find the twig and bark tea that most resembled his boyhood experience. Odd, then, how the mango-passion fruit tea had gotten in that assortment.

He hadn't told Ray how little it resembled the tea of his memories, between the water, the tea or the strange mugs left in the aftermath of Ray's divorce. Or the company. Fraser didn't acknowledge the loosening of that ache in the back of his throat, or the loosening of his spine just that fraction that almost let him sprawl back in his chair and listen to the curl of Ray's voice around his ear...

"Fra-ser!"

"Yes, Ray. Tea sounds lovely."

"Great. I'll pick you up." The connection closed, and Fraser gently placed the handset in its cradle. Platitudes aside, it really did sound lovely, just the sort of thing to wash the taste of plastic and the past from his mouth.

He left the office with his Stetson in his hand and a small smile on his lips.

Feedback welcome at <misha@drizzle.com>