Getting out of the Mountie suit was proving much harder than it had been to get into it. That probably had a lot to do with the fact that, at the moment, there was no aggressively helpful Turnbull around.

There was, however, a silent Fraser.

Which in itself wasn't strange, but the quality of the silence was a little... strange. And the friggin' serge was too damned scratchy for him to think. God, no wonder Fraser wore sixteen layers of clothing every day of the week. Ray was morbidly sure it would turn out he was allergic to wool, or maybe to bright red dye.

//Kool-Aid comes in more subtle colors.//

He was probably covered in hives or something, but he'd never even find out because the friggin' lanyard would choke him to death first and Jesus God what he wouldn't give to be in the sweats that were, right this moment, laying at the foot of his big soft bed, which was located in his apartment, which, in turn, was in *America* --

And that's when Fraser made three quick, unfollowable motions that cracked the stiff serge open *just* like a lobster shell. What with the steaming thing. Christ, wool.

"Thanks, Frase."

"You're welcome, Ray."

And then Fraser turned his attention back to... well, that was the thing. They were in what appeared to be a utility closet of some sort -- one that still managed to be bigger than Fraser's home and office -- and Fraser wasn't doing much of anything at all, really.

Fiddling with white-out at the moment. Just hanging out in the utility closet while Ray got changed, doing nothing... Ray wondered if he was wearing a sign or something.

"Please lust at me in an ambigiously homosexual way, my ass is up for grabs."

Volpe, Turnbull, and now Fraser. Though he had no business making assumptions about Fraser. And Turnbull may have been pawing him for entirely different and utterly incomprehensible reasons.

And Volpe was dead now.

//"You wearing a wire?"

//What, to a date? "Who, me?" What's wrong, 'dre? Why'd you call me here?

//"Mind if I check you out?" Tiny smile twitching at the corners of the full, almost ludicrously sensual mouth.

//Strange to see it instead of feeling it on the side of his throat, against the shuddering flesh of his belly, but still... it brought things back where they belonged. And the feel of that broad warm hand shaping itself to the base of his spine, skating over his ass not quite professionally... cupping and squeezing him and then lingering there and oh, fuck yeah, he could smile all right --

//Pain, darkness and then the jolt of his feet hitting the pavement, running scared and blind, stitch in his side bullets following him, screams and...

//The Consulate.//

And what was this, anyway? It's not like he'd even really known the guy. They'd had each other's pager numbers, and they'd used them a couple of times because, apparently, the sex was just too fucking amazing to be smart about things.

"Ray, there's something you're not telling me."

He took a deep, shuddering breath. Of course he hadn't mentioned that part to Fraser. Because even though it wasn't Volpe's style to a) set up a meet through a third party b) set up a meet for anywhere but some anonymous motel so far away from his turf as to be nearly out of state c) set up a meet for *daylight* and *Christ* but he wasn't sure whether the worst part of this was the lies, the fucking, or his own idiocy.

And what could he say? 'Sorry, Fraser, but if you'd ever had a piece of that ass you'd understand?'

"... Ray..."

And no way was that the first time his name had been called.

//"Call you Ray? I'll call you anything I fucking want, bitch."

//"Funny how much more believable that tough guy shit was *before* you sucked me off."

//Surprising laugh. Maybe the first honest one he'd heard from the guy all night. Probably hadn't been the brightest idea to try to chat up a one-night stand while said stand was pacing around the room looking pole-axed, but...

//Liquid black eyes on his, over his still-naked body. Ray could see hunger, shock, anger... none of it was a surprise and all of it just made him hard. Again.

//"Call me Andre."//

"... you if I don't know the whole story?"

"What?" And he saw Fraser frowning and tried to recover. "I... this... Fraser, I swear I thought the meet was legit."

"Even though you'd never met with him before."

Not even close to a question. Why, he could probably just ignore it. Leave it sitting there. "I knew him, Frase."

"But how?" Fraser did everything but hold Ray's chin steady while searching his face. "Oh."

And back to the white-out. Shit, shit, shit.

"That was pretty fast, all things considered."

"Hmm? This makes things a lot more complicated. Cahill will undoubtedly use this against you, try to make it seem as though... as though..."

And there was something so damned *hard* about watching the other man flounder there, helpless. "... as though I'm a dirty cop who likes it up the ass, Fraser? Are those the words you're looking for?"

"Ray, I only want to help you --"

"Am I still the same person you patched up this morning?"

"How could you think you wouldn't be?" Genuinely confused look, edge of hurt Ray would've been able to feel even if he couldn't see it plain as day.

Of course he was. Of course Fraser's Ray was exactly the sort of guy to have a cheap little affair with another guy who also happened to be a criminal and Ray knew he was losing it, going too far here but damn if he wasn't still waiting for his mind to check in with something helpful. Something like, oh, say 'no, you definitely did not kill Andre this morning, despite the fact that your prints were on the honest-to-God smoking gun.'

Fraser's hand on his shoulder, firm squeeze. Supportive and manly.

"Did anyone else...?"

Ray shook off the other man's touch, leaned back against the shelving. Tried to concentrate on the feel of metal digging into his back. "He didn't exactly bring me home to meet his parents, Frase. Christ, we didn't even know who we were until that raid on the Sol."

"I don't think I remember that..."

"You weren't there for it. Hell, I wasn't there for it. Somebody got shot at the club's back door and a tip came in that it was one of Volpe's men and this, and that and the next thing I know I'm walking in to a precinct full of hard guys..."

//Walking through the mob, trying not to bump into anything in cuffs. Ray hated raids worse than anything. The two-seven's precinct house was old, too small and the holding cells *always* overflowed. And, of course, there would be some scumbag with a rapsheet a mile long cuffed to *his* desk and he'd be expected to do his part to process the guy and never mind his own rapidly aging case load --

//And at the sight of that bald head moving into the thick, not quite muscular neck, buttercream skin sliding under the black leather jacket... his face tried to wince and grin at the same time. Frannie shot him a look but his legs kept moving and by the time he was sitting in his chair he may have even been blank-faced again.

//However, the shocked horror on Andre's face was just a little too blackly funny to be ignored... especially since his mind was on overdrive. The words 'mistake, wrong place at the wrong time' were alarmingly loud in his own head.

//"I think this would be a good time to get to know your full name, Andre. I'm Detective Ray Vecchio."

//Black eyes went blank, shuttered. White, even teeth showing through the perfectly trimmed goatee that had rubbed him raw enough to bruise in more than one place, at more than one time. "Andreas Volpe. Pleased to meet you."

//"You're fucking kidding me."

//And the real humor came back, just like that, but before anything else could be said Dewey came by and claimed his prisoner.//

After a while Ray managed to get out "it was kind of a shock for both of us."

"Yet you continued seeing each other?" Spoken into the immediate silence after Ray's words, yet there was no blame in the words -- just curiousity that Ray couldn't quite believe in until he remembered. Victoria.

Ray scrubbed a hand through his hair and tried not to search his partner's eyes for... anything. "The charges didn't stick." And that wasn't what he'd meant to say and Ray remembered he was still wearing Turnbull's pants with vast relief.

Used the opportunity to turn his back on Fraser and fumble for as long as he possibly could before getting the awkward things off. But he couldn't decide whether he felt Fraser's eyes on him --

//Slow, confident glide deep into him and God he felt so damned full --

//"Gonna fuck me through the wall this time, 'dre?"

//"Gonna stop talking long enough to scream my name when you come?//

-- or just wanted to feel Fraser's eyes on him and either way he was bent over in nothing but boxer shorts and the last thing he needed was to be any more naked. Ray got his jeans on as quickly as possible, turned around to find Fraser fiddling with the toner this time.

"He paged me two weeks later. We didn't talk about it... he was never my informant, Fraser."

The other man nodded. "And you thought he'd set up yesterday's meeting so that the two of you could be together again?"

And the way Fraser said it made Ray simultaneously want to blush, deny it and hear Andre whisper something dirty in his ear while jerking him off and and -- "I don't know what I thought, OK?"

"All right."

"No, no it's not all right. Yeah, I thought he was calling me over for... for another round, but the set-up was all wrong and I shoulda known that and I don't remember anything after patting each other down for fucking *wires* -- I... we could've done anything, said anything..."

"Do you think he might have been trying to blackmail you, Ray?"

And there it was right there. Ray had never let himself think about the possibility the whole time he'd been with Volpe. Stella had been so *there* in his mind and there'd been nothing, no one else who could chase her away like Volpe could. Opposite in every way, huge and dark and oddly easygoing. Blunt and shamelessly obscene.

"I... don't know. I never really..."

Fraser nodded, let him trail off. As far enough away as he could be, but probably more because of the body language Ray knew he was giving off than anything else. He managed to ease one hand off the shelf behind him, but the other seemed trapped in a white-knuckle death grip.

//Number came up on his pager as a pay phone and that was more than enough to tell him who it was. The charges hadn't stuck, after all. When he'd called back from his own pay phone of choice there was nothing but street sounds and maybe something like the shift of a phone in a careful, careful hand. "It's me."

//"Yeah, I know."

//Pause and Ray wondered if Andre was listening to *his* breathing, too. Finally:

//"Tomorrow night?"

//"You know it."

//"Same place as last time. 11:30. I'll find you."//

And then there'd been a dead line and he'd wandered back into the station house. Wandered blankly throughout most of that day and the next and when, a month later, he'd found himself with unauthorized copies of damned near every piece of official and unofficial policework ever done on Chicago's own crime triumvirate...

Well, he hadn't been exactly surprised, but the whole thing had gone on mostly unnoticed. He'd slipped in under his own radar and... studied.

"I don't even really know why I had those files, Frase. I just started collecting information after it became clear that we... that we weren't done.

"I sometimes thought I was trying to make something respectable out of things, but the truth is I never even tried to do my own investigation into anything Volpe might have been doing. Never pumped him for information, anything like that. It was like... It was like being two different people. The cop who'd go in and dredge through other people's files looking for any kind of in, and the... the other guy. Shit."

And there Fraser was, in his space, hands on his shoulders. More support and a lot of pain. Easily visible from so close. "Ray -- "

"So who's to say 'dre didn't have his own little multiple personality thing going on, hunh? Sure he had as much to lose as I did rep wise, but he was known for being crazy. Psycho. Who knows what he'd do to get a cop in his hip pocket?"

"You said he didn't know you were a police officer before the raid."

"Yeah, but he did after and... God, Frase, everything I told you about Volpe... it's meaningless. Yeah, everything in his file is probably absolutely true *and* incomplete, but he was just this guy. Or he seemed like it. What I'm saying is that I have no fucking clue what to think, but now that he's dead..."

"The only person left to think about it is 'the cop who was looking for an in.' The cop who deliberately did not do his job in terms of a known criminal, and thus left himself in a vulnerable position the criminal could easily exploit. Perhaps did exploit yesterday morning... or tried to do so before you killed him. Is that correct?"

"Maybe?" And he grinned ruefully into the other man's eyes, had his shoulders squeezed just a little harder for a moment.

"It's just not true, Ray. All we have is more speculation. There's nothing here that would make me believe you committed this crime -- "

"You've been wrong before."

"And I'll be wrong again someday. But not about this. Not about you."

"Ah, Frase... let me ask you something."

The other man released him finally, stepped back and nodded. "Of course."

"Before this, did you have any idea I was seeing anyone? At all?"

Frown. "No, I did not. You never spoke about any romantic interest beyond Stella -- "

"Just because I talk a lot doesn't mean I say everything."

"What do you *want* me to say, Ray? That you're right? That my partner is a cold-blooded killer, out to protect nothing but his own skin?"

"I had the gun in my *hand*, Fraser!"

"Ray. Ray... Ray. You did not do this thing. I know it, and I think you -- "

"Don't fucking tell me what I know and don't know! I can't *remember*. One minute I'm messin' around, pretending to check him for wires, the next minute I'm looking over... I'm looking over and he's all sprawled out. Not a lot of blood but his eyes were wide open, his mouth... fuck."

And Ray didn't realize he was slamming his fist into the shelf again and again until Fraser caught his wrist and held it.

"Lemme go, Frase."

"Not until you -- "

"I'm serious, Frase, lemme go. *Now*."

"Listen to me -- "

He jerked in the other man's grip and just had his other wrist taken prisoner for the trouble.

"*Listen*."

"Fuck, I'm listening. What. *What*?"

Quietly, so quiet he might not have heard had they not been pressed so close. "You're grieving, Ray."

And before he could get his mouth open to say anything something lurched inside of him, fast and devastating. Ray shuddered once, swallowed it back. "Christ, we didn't even... once. *Once* I woke up and he was still there. I went out and brought us back a six-pack.

"He was getting dressed when I walked back into the room, but in the end we just sat there, drinking beer. Talking about the fucking *Cubs* until... until we ran out of beer..."

//Laughing, watching Andre sprawled out on the cheap creaky bed from the equally cheap and creaky chair. His shirt was still balled up on the floor and his chest was out for Ray to view... broad and well-muscled but still a little soft.

//Silence except for the constant traffic sounds from the highway and the quiet wash of beer sliding down through a bottle and down Andre's throat.

//"I can almost forgive you drinking the last of the beer, considering what that bottle does to your mouth."

//"You still thirsty, Detective?"

//Just like that. Every stupid comment caught and returned in spades and Andre had patted the bed beside him and there was that kiss, fucking attack kiss and Jesus he was lucky he didn't bruise easy 'cause those hands... and that mouth.

//Sweet fucking juicy mouth, hard little teeth hiding in there, trying to relocate to Ray's skin and then Andre was moving. Over his jaw, down his throat.

//Ray couldn't quite get a hold on the slick skin of the other man's torso and so he found himself gripping his head instead, cupping the curiously innocent-feeling cheeks and dipping in to run the flat of his tongue over Andre's lightly stubbled scalp.

//Low, breathless laugh that warmed him up alarmingly but only lasted until Andre got his lips around a nipple and sucked -- //

Not entirely pleasant surprise to find himself surrounded by no one's scent but Fraser's. "I... God, Frase, it was only once. Every other time it was just..."

"Sometimes that's all it takes, Ray."

And Fraser released him, but stayed close for another few moments. He appeared to be about to say something else, but then they both heard someone knocking on the outer doors of the Consulate.

"I should get that." Broken contact.

"Yeah, you should. I'll ah... I'll just get my sweatshirt on."

Fraser nodded, walked out. Ray heard him talking to someone who could only be Lieutenant Welsh and sighed. He couldn't just sit this conversation out.

Though there was some measure of relief in that -- there were any number of things Ray wasn't looking forward to thinking about.

End.

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