Author's webpage: http://victoria.tc.ca/~wy236/fic.html

Disclaimer: Characters not mine, I make no money from this, all I have is my cats.

Feedback to: wy236@victoria.tc.ca

Perfect Love Casts Out Fear
by Iris Gray

Benton Fraser walked in to his lover's apartment. Ray Kowalski was bent over a box on the coffee table. "Hey Frase," said Ray as his partner entered. "How was yer day?"

"Same as usual, Ray," Ben replied, giving Ray a brief kiss. "What do you have there?"

"It's a game. It's supposed to be for couples, help them get to know each other better. I thought we could try it after dinner."

Fraser was intrigued. "How does it work?" he asked.

Ray briefly explained the rules: the players shook dice and moved around the board as they would in any board game, but each square was coloured to indicate a category. The player had to answer a question from that category. Sometimes he had to answer a question about himself, sometimes about his partner.

After dinner was over and the dishes had been cleared away (at Fraser's insistence), the two men started playing the game. Some of the questions were simple: What is you favourite colour? What is your partner's favourite food? Some were a little risque: What is your favourite sexual fantasy? Fraser blushed the colour of his red uniform as he hesitantly told Ray the answer to that question, which involved Ray and some chocolate syrup and whipped cream. "Am I yer lover or yer dessert, Fraser?" Ray asked after hearing the fantasy.

"Can't you be both, Ray?" Fraser responded innocently.

It was Ray's turn next, and he answered a question about his favourite childhood memory, involving a trip to the zoo with his father. Then it was Ben's turn again. The question was, "What is your greatest fear?" Fraser turned pale as Ray read the question to him. Then he got up. "I think I have to walk Diefenbaker," he said.

"No you don't, ya told me you already walked him before you came here," said his partner. "Now sit down and answer the question."

"Maybe we should wash the dishes before the food dries on them," Fraser suggested.

"The dishes can wait, Frase. I'll do them in the morning. C'mon, let's keep playing the game."

"Really, the longer you leave the dishes, the harder they will be to clean. I can do them now, it's no trouble," said Ben.

"Fraser, what's wrong?" asked Kowalski.

"Nothing is wrong, Ray. I was just suggesting that we do the dishes now rather than waiting until later."

"No, Fraser, that was not just a suggestion. Yer tryin' to get out of answering this question. Why?"

"I would simply prefer not to answer it, Ray," stated the Mountie.

Ray got up and went over to where his partner was standing. He put his hands on Fraser's shoulders. "Why, Ben? What are you afraid of?" he asked.

"Ray...." Ben's voice trailed off. "I would rather not say."

"I wanna know, Fraser. I'm your partner. I'm your lover. We shouldn't have secrets from each other. It ain't a good way to have a relationship." He paused, then went on. "What if I tell ya what I'm afraid of? Would that make ya feel any better?"

"I...I don't know, Ray. I didn't think there was anything you were afraid of," said Fraser.

"Of course there's things I'm afraid of. Everyone's afraid of something. Unless they're totally psycho. Stella was afraid of spiders. But that's not what we're talkin' about, is it?"

Fraser shook his head. Ray went on. "Ben, my biggest fear is of messing up."

Benton looked confused. "Messing up? What do you mean?"

Kowalski sighed. "My life has changed so much since I met you, Frase. Before, I was completely screwed up. I'd lost Stella, I'd lost the friends I had with Stella, and I took the job pretendin' to be Vecchio to escape from my own life. And now - now I have you. And my career is going really well. I even have new friends, like Huey and Dewey. I'm just scared of messing that up."

Ben put his arms around his lover. "I don't think you have anything to worry about, Ray. From what I know of you, it's not very likely you will 'mess up', as you put it. You're a fine man, a fine police officer, and I love you."

Ray kissed Fraser. "Thanks, Frase. I love ya too. Now it's your turn. What are you afraid of?"

The Canadian turned away from his partner. He walked over to the window and stared out at the night sky. Diefenbaker went to his side and 'wuffed' inquiringly. Ray approached him and put a hand on his shoulder. "Don't turn away from me, please, Ben," he said.

The Mountie turned back to face the man he loved. He just stood and looked at Ray for a long time. Finally, he said, "Ray, what I fear most, more than anything, is losing you."

Ray was surprised. "Benton-buddy," he said, "you're not gonna lose me. I'm not going anywhere. I love you. I'm not gonna leave ya."

Fraser sighed and shook his head. "Fear is not always a logical thing, Ray. Remember, you are a police officer. You put your life in danger almost every day. The day we first met, you were shot right in front of me. If you hadn't been wearing a vest...."

Ray thought for a moment. "Frase," he said, "you ever read the Bible?"

Ben was confused. What did the Bible have to do with their conversation? "Certainly, when I was a child. My grandmother taught Sunday School for many years. Why?"

Ray went over to a bookshelf and removed a leather-bound Bible from it. It looked fairly new. He opened it and turned to a specific page. "It says in here, 'Perfect love casts out fear.' (1 John 4:18). The more we love, the less we fear. If I love you, and you love me, and God loves us both, we have nothing to be afraid of."

"When did you start reading the Bible, Ray?" asked Benton.

Kowalski smiled a little self-consciously. "Jack Huey told me about this church. It's called MCC, Metropolitan Community Church. I've been going to services and Bible study classes there. It's a church made up almost entirely of gay people. People like you and me, Frase. " He held up a hand. "I know, you don't think of yerself as gay. I don't either, really, 'cause after all, I loved Stella, and I know you loved....her."

"Victoria," said Fraser.

"Yeah. Anyway, you an' me are together now, so whether we're gay or bi or whatever, we're a couple, and we're a same-sex couple. And the people at that church understand. And it's okay to be who we are there. I've never felt anything like it before."

"What prompted you to start going to church, Ray?" Ben had never thought of his partner as being particularly religious.

"I guess fear did, Frase," was Kowalski's response. "It seemed like, every time I was in trouble, like with the Volpe shooting, I wanted to do something, I wanted to *pray* and I didn't know how. I didn't know who to talk to. And every time that you pulled some crazy stunt that put you in danger, I wanted to pray then, too. And when I fell in love with you, it just seemed crazy that if I wanted to I could walk into a church and marry any woman I pleased, even if I didn't love her, but I couldn't marry you, no matter how much I love you.

"So when I found out that Jack and Tom were together, I mentioned that to Jack, and he told me about MCC. I think he an' Tom are planning to have a - what do they call it - Holy Union there. That's when two women or two men get married."

"Are you saying you want to marry me, Ray ?" asked Fraser.

Ray grinned. "Yeah, Ben, I guess I am. Benton Fraser, will you marry me?"

Fraser's grin was as wide as his lover's. "Yes, Stanley Raymond Kowalski, I will marry you."

The two men kissed, long and hard. When they finally moved apart, Ray said. "We need to make an appointment with Reverend Tracy at the church for 'pre-marital counselling.' That okay with you?"

"If it is required for us to be married, then it is fine with me, Ray," replied Benton.

"The Rev will ask some tough questions, ya know, Frase. Questions like the ones in the game. You gonna be able to handle that?" Fraser was silent for a moment, then spoke. "I'm not saying it will be easy, Ray. But I will do my best. I love you, and I want to be married to you. Like you said, for our relationship to work, we should not have secrets from each other."

Ray and Ben kissed some more, then Ben said, "Do you want to finish the game now, Ray?"

"I have another game in mind for us, Fraser," was his partner's response.

"What kind of game?" asked the Mountie.

"One that involves chocolate syrup and whipped cream."

"Now *that*," said Fraser, "is my kind of game."

END