Notes: Companion piece to 'Want', 'Need', and 'Have'

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

Patience

By Lucy Hale

Fraser was able to go through the next day with some modicum of normality. He was polite -- in fact, politeness served as a mask, as it often did, to help him hide feelings -- he was efficient as always. He wouldn't let his memories of the night before interfere with his duty.

Ray was a ruin. The man who called him the night before, sounding so shaky and scared, was nothing like the Ray Fraser had gotten to know over the last months.

Ray was such a mess, in fact, that he told Fraser what happened. There was no disguises or posturing, no attempt to lie or deceive about the marks on his body. Fraser had to pry for details, but eventually Ray told him every sordid thing he could remember.

Fraser could picture it easily. His Ray, his bright, vibrant Ray, thinking he had to be punished into feeling anything. His energetic partner, stepping into some dark, cloudy bar, searching for something he wasn't in any way prepared to handle. And finding it.

Rape. Despite Ray's jerky protests that he had gone in search of it, and that he had willingly gone to a back room with that strange man, Fraser knew it was rape. Ray knew it too, but there was something like shock or guilt, or shame, stopping him from admitting it.

Fraser was calm and cool the next day. He hadn't slept the night before, not after that frightened phone call. He was distracted and lost in thought, but he was confident no one knew it.

He would help Ray. The past of him that was so dedicated to duty, to protecting the innocent and healing the hurts of the world, demanded he help this innocent man recover. The part of him that loved Ray with every single fiber of being inside of him demanded it as well.

But that side, the lover in him, the part that realized maybe Ray was broken beyond repair, was demanding something else just as loudly. It demanded revenge. For one of the only times in his life, Fraser was prepared to arm himself and hunt down the people responsible. Not since his father had been killed had he been so ready to throw everything else away and find the person who had caused his life so much hurt.

Fraser knew the name of the bar. He knew about the back room, the room that would haunt Ray's nightmares, no doubt, for a long time. He remembered Ray's description of his attacker.

He would find this man. He would make him pay. Any other and to the story was impossible. Any other reaction on Fraser's part was unthinkable.

A part of Fraser, that day sitting at the Consulate, was screaming at him for reacting to this with the same methodical analysis that he used to sort out most things. A part of him was shocked that he could sit there and think about it so calmly. A part of him really wished Fraser would just jump out of that chair, go downtown, and beat Ray's attacker to an unrecognizable pulp. It wanted action, movement, revenge. It didn't want to wait or think.

But Fraser himself was too set in his ways. Fraser wouldn't abandon the Consulate. He would do his duty. And when his duty was over, he would go to Ray's apartment and be with him, help in some quiet and studious way. He would see that Ray recovered from this as much as was humanly possible.

He would bide his time. He would see every last tear Ray needed to shed. He would count every nightmare, watch every flinch from a touch. He knew the signs, he knew what Ray would go through. He would stand by his partner and watch it all as it happened. He would feel the anger of every tear, or nightmare, or flinch. He would bury that anger deep, let it grow, fuel it with his own love of Ray. Fuel it with the self-hatred that knew if Fraser had just been what Ray wanted, Ray wouldn't have had to go out in search of his own ruin.

And then, when he was ready, and when Ray was ready to go a night without him, he would find the bastard responsible, and he would let that anger explode.

And for once, he would damn the consequences.

End