Author's webpage: http://home.att.net/~lojojan

Author's notes: This was written as a sequel to Lori J's Want. With her permission, as I am her friend and she cannot refuse me.

I can never be what people want.

It's the one lesson I've been forced to learn from childhood on. I can never be exactly what anyone wants me to be.

My grandparents, who were not as stern as my current personality leads people to believe, simply wanted me to be as little trouble as possible. They wanted me, in effect, to raise myself. They had their own lives, which weren't exactly conducive to raising a child. It isn't that they didn't love me. They did, and I knew they did. They simply didn't have much time or energy to spend raising me.

Still, they wanted me to be easy and self-sufficient, but as much as I tried, it was impossible at that age. I had questions -- about what had happened to my mother, where my father was, what kind of new life I was being expected to live. I was not what they wanted.

My father...actually, I have yet to be made aware what my father wants me to be. I think that after my mother died he simply didn't want me to be at all. Again, he loved me. I'm sure of it. But he didn't really know how to show it.

I followed stories of my father, and as I started to grow as a person and learn more about myself, I discovered that who I wanted to be was very like who those stories said my father was. I wanted to live for a cause, for my land and its people. I wanted to be the kind of person people respected and trusted, came to for help. I wanted to be brave and intelligent. I wanted to be my father.

And so I figured the RCMP would be one place I would be accepted. What I want to be and what other people want from me would, for once, be the same thing.

But the legends were just legends. If my father was truly the man of the stories, than he must have wandered the abandoned lands of the north in part to get away from fellow officers. They were nothing like I imagined they would be. Too...modern. Too absorbed in the glory of the job, or too busy trying to keep themselves clean of the muck.

I didn't fit in there. No more than I fit in anywhere else. I did my job. I did more than my job, and I was ostracized for it. Alienated, until the cold, white, abandoned plains became more comfortable than the presence of any other person.

My inability to get along with society at large is something I'm used to. It's almost comforting. I would feel out of place somewhere where people did not look at me with eyebrows raised. I might even enjoy the second looks. I think somewhere deep inside I like the attention it gets me.

I'd be satisfied to be at odds with the status quo, if it didn't affect the few personal relationships that I've had in my life.

Victoria. The first person to be close to me. It was a mistake from the beginning. I knew that going in. I would have had to be insane not to realize that nothing would ever come of it. We were stranded, facing death, and I suppose every emotion the two of us were feeling was more intense than it would have been otherwise. I don't know if it was real love. At this point, I've ceased to care.

All that matters is that she wanted me to be something I wasn't, and it was impossible. If she had her way, I would have abandoned my principles for her.

But my principles are me. I wouldn't give them up. Not for her, and probably not for anyone.

Then came Chicago. Ray Vecchio. My friend. My first real friend, I think. At first, he knew I was strange, but he didn't seem to mind. It was unusual to him, but he didn't try to change me. Much.

Then we became closer, in a new way. Ray was suddenly starting to become more than a friend to me.

That's when things went wrong. Strangely enough, it wasn't my oddness that became a problem. He seemed more accepting of my quirks once we began sleeping together. Still and all, I wasn't what he needed. Not entirely.

Ray...I believe he needs a strong partner. Someone willing to stand up to him, to tell him what to do. Someone to order him around, give him purpose. If I was feeling Freudian, I would say someone like his mother.

I'm strong, but I am not a dominant personality. Not when it comes to relationships that serious. I can take the dominant role in bed. And I'm strong.

But what Ray wanted, I couldn't be. He wanted someone to hold on to him. If I was the kind of lover Ray wanted, he would have told me about the undercover operation, and I would have told him not to go. He would have obeyed.

I think in some way that was a motive behind the last phone call. I think he wanted me to pick up on the fact that something was wrong. He wanted me to demand to know the problem, and then forbid him to leave me that way. Despite the fact that I would never ask anyone to go against their duty, he wanted that from me.

I couldn't do it. Even if I had picked up from that conversation that something was wrong, which in hindsight I can't say honestly if I did or not, I wouldn't have done anything about it.

So Ray left.

Then came a few likely candidates. Inspector Thatcher and I shared a few moments that weren't quite professional, but there is no way I could be what she wanted from me. I doubt she even knows what she wants. A devoted, efficient lover who will keep track of the bank statements and do the laundry, then come in at night and make her scream in pleasure.

It should shame me to think of my superior in that way, I suppose. I refuse on all grounds to talk about her to other people on a personal level, but my thoughts are my own.

Other possibilities. Janet Morse, who desired, I believe, one part babysitter and one part secret lover. I would be neither. Lady Shoes...her motives and desires are more a mystery to me. Needless to say, I wasn't what she wanted.

Ray Kowalski.

The source of new pain, the cause for this reflection now.

Ray wants me. He hides it as well as he can, but he bares his emotions in his eyes. He can't help it. I see what he wants.

I want it too. I have let myself fall harder for this complete opposite of me than I have let myself fall for most people, Ray Vecchio and perhaps Victoria aside.

He is awkward but graceful, temperamental but gentle. He is America -- energy and life and strangeness, with a kind of acceptance that wars with near snobbery. He accepts me for what I am, but he thinks and always will think that his ways are better.

I would like nothing better than to make a go of things with Ray. I would have tried when I first saw that desire in his eyes, but the past has made me wary. I settled in to watching him, to see if and how things would change when I accepted his love.

Inside, in my own, private thoughts, I let myself dream. I dreamt of giving in to him, or letting his energy and light into my arms, my bed, my heart. I have imagined his expressive eyes shining with untempered love, I've imagined his graceful, slender body beside mine. I've dreamt about what that fire and energy would be like entering me for a few brief minutes. Would it leave any of itself behind? In my dreams, it does.

I wake from those dreams with a smile.

Still, I see more clearly now what he wants from me. All I knew at first was that he desired love. I could have given that. But now, after Stella, after Beth Botrelle, I see more definitely what Ray needs.

He needs control. He needs hardness, dominance. He needs someone to bring him kicking and screaming and moaning out of this neutral state of being he's drifted in to. He needs someone with enough fire and energy and passion to drag him into life.

I can imagine what he would want from a lover. I doubt he would be dominant. I would give a fairly educated guess that Stella Kowalski was very dominant in bed.

I can be a top. I have been, with Ray. In fact, the times where I let myself be submissive to him I can count on one hand.

I could be that for Ray. I could be the seducer. But I can't be the man he wants me to be. I could make love to him, but that's not enough for my Ray. He needs me to take him, to force him. To hurt him.

I don't analyze the various kinks of sex. I have slept with men, which most would consider a kink of its own, if not an absolute deviant act. I have tied Ray Vecchio's wrists and made him helpless against me.

It's not enough. Not for this Ray. He wouldn't be happy unless I hurt him in the way he thinks he deserves.

I read him, but I won't allow him to read me. I won't allow him to see how much I wish I could be that for him. I wish I could hurt him and feel nothing about it. I would like to be the kind of person who could listen to their lover cry in pain and feel their body tense with anguish, and be able to keep on punishing them.

I'm a different kind of man. When I love someone, it's with the same strict attention to what's right that I give to anything. Like everything else, I have developed principles and ideals where love is concerned. I would never hurt a lover. Never. I have seen too many abused spouses who started out with a single slap or raised voice. I will not let myself sink into that.

I would be too caring. Too gentle. I would let him inside of me. I would show him things no one else has ever seen. I would let him behind the mask, behind the politeness and efficiency. I would risk everything I am to let that beam of light into my soul. I would give him everything I am.

But. But he sees what I am. He sees enough, anyway, to know I'm not what he wants. He wishes I could change, and I wish it too.

But I can't. I can never be what anyone wants. Not even myself, I suppose.

Ray won't accept what I am. He loves me, but he won't come to me. I'm not enough for him, though I love him too. He needs more than I can give. I'm unfit for the task, and it's painful. I know he will find someone else. He will stifle his own feelings, and he will crush me, but of course he won't know that.

I won't let him.