The Voyage Home	 The Voyage Home

 by Blue Champagne

  

 

 Disclaimer: I don't own anything at all, which point is made
rock-poundingly clear by the story itself. 

 Author's Notes: Thanks many many to Kalena for pimping me to the fandom
and for sticking with me while I wrote this. She didn't bail on me. Thanks
also to Speranza (and to Heuradys) for giving it web home since I no
longer have one. They both took a chance and I appreciate it. We may have
to experiment with different versions, though.

 Story Notes: 

 

 

 Parody
 Drama (some scary moments)
 Rating: Uh, call it R, for language and conversation topics Pairing:
Kowalski/Fraser (among other mentioned character pairings. Slash, het,
and, um, otherwise) Buddy-Only-"Pairing": Paul Gross and Callum Keith
Rennie trying desperately to get the hell out of ANY kind of fic and back
to reality. Uninvasive, respectful treatment, as characters, not as real
people. Fic parody stuff. 

 There are notes at the end of the story. Since this is NOT an RPS but a
SENDUP of RPS, using "due South"'s characters, stories, backgrounds,
settings, and other such of that which made "due South" what it was, you
may wish to check them out before you read the story. If not, don't worry;
it's not necessary to read them to understand the story. 

 There is a tiny bit of French in here. It has no accents, because the
French language speller that keeps brightly telling me to wave a magic
wand and call for it does not come, and I know less about how to fix this
problem than I do about phrenology, so my word processor program is
currently incapable of including said accents. Therefore, yes, the French
words are, technically, all misspelled. Them's the breaks. 

 I would like to thank my cheerleader, Kalena, for putting up with me
while I wrote this damn thing. She didn't bail on me, and she helped with
some sticky parts, and some more sage advice esp. concerning when
something I liked was turning out to be hopeless in the context of the
story. Thanks, Kalena. 

 Callum Keith Rennie (star for seasons 3/4 of "due South"): "Paul Gross is
a delight. He had a great deal on his plate and hundreds of decisions to
make, but he was always straight-ahead as both the executive producer and
an actor. He's got terrific timing and a keen understanding of his craft.
It was a joy to go to work every day...not to get mushy, but as an actor,
when you have that kind of backing, you feel as if you can do almost
anything, and we did." 

 Paul Gross (star and 3/4 seasons executive producer, head writer, and
soundtrack consultant for "due South"), on his costar, Callum Keith
Rennie; he is trying to get his laughter under control as he peruses a
slash zine the interviewer has given him to ask him what he thinks of it.
He has been reading passages aloud--he particularly likes a very purple
passage concerning the color of his eyes--and the interviewer is becoming
concerned that, since they are in a bar which is largely inhabited by a
blue-collar crowd, at least one of them is going to get punched: "What do
they do, masturbate to this stuff? I tell you, slash fiction is going to
go crazy when they see the new guy. He's really good-looking and sexy, the
dangerous side of Fraser. It will be totally homoerotic. How can I see
this stuff? Where do I go on the Internet?" 

 Callum on being new to Due South: "I followed Paul around like Mutt and
Jeff: 'Paul? Paul? Do you like me? Do I suck yet? Am I fired?'"  The
Voyage Home  

 Pt. One: Making a Break For It 

 They were in the locker room, being eyed suspiciously by the characters
milling about, who, suspicions or no, said nothing to them and went about
changing their respective gear as they made their transits from one story
to another. There was a hollowness about them, a presence of absence, as
it were. Callum wondered briefly if he was losing his mind, as he realized
the previous thought had actually made sense to him. But hell, if he were
going to lose it at all, it would've been long gone by now--oh, shit.
"Paul!" 

 To Callum's big-eyed chagrin--not at the action, but at the danger it
might put them both in--Paul was pulling on his own jeans, muttering
tightly "Stop freaking out, Callum, we don't have much time. If this is
going to work we have to act fast. I still can't believe we managed to get
out of RPS even temporarily." He shoved Callum's cased glasses into his
alarmed co-star's hand. 

 Callum, still in his Kowalski voice, said "I can't argue with that, but
I'm still waiting to hear why that nutcase bondage skit was better than
yet another roll around your dressing room, even if we did have to do it
in our own names. And if you keep breakin' the fourth wall in
Fraser/Kowalski and anyone notices, our nuts'll be hangin' from somebody's
rear view mirror. These people don't take no for an answer." 

 "Believe me, I've noticed that." Paul slammed the locker door, then
slammed the door of the one he'd retrieved Cal's glasses from, then turned
and threw the rest of a jeans-and-Henley outfit to the other man. "C'mon,
Cal, shake your utter lack of an ass. We're getting out of here. And keep
your voice down. These people may only be made-up characters, but a hell
of a lot went into creating some of them. There may be enough to them that
they'd realize what we're up to, here." 

 Callum started getting into his clothes at speeds normally associated
with orbital breakaway, but continued "Just how do you think you're going
to manage getting us out of here? Though I admit if we are getting out of
here it oughtta be you managing it because you're the one who managed to
get us stuck here. Talkin' about finding the slash on the internet's all
well and good for you, Mr. Easygoing, but did you have to drag me along
with you? God, this has gotta be why Marciano did a rabbit." 

 "I had nothing to do with that. I hadn't said what I said when David
left; that was because of a contract dispute, and the fact that--" 

 "--that maybe he couldn't do his job right hanging from that freakin'
chain, I'll bet that's what he was disputing." 

 "I still don't believe it," Paul was muttering to himself. He glanced
around rapidly, and made a subtle this-way gesture to the now-dressed
Callum. Both of them dodged behind a bank of lockers. "One little stinking
quote. It's the damn Twilight Zone, I swear. One quote and here we are..."


 "And calling me sexy to a reporter wasn't the brightest move in the
world, either--" 

 "You are sexy, for pete's sake, you're intense, it's why I wanted you for
Kowalski, and I'm married, I didn't say I wanted to jump you! How'd I know
everyone was going to seize on it like this and write stuff about the two
of us instead of Fraser and Kowalski? It's worse than that damn Kit-Kat
thing. I'm gonna commit a felony if one more person gives me a Kit-Kat. I
have grown to loathe Kit-Kats. I've got a drawer full of fucking Kit-Kats,
half of which are probably shot full of rohypnol--" 

 "--but then," Callum was continuing as though he couldn't hear, "I forgot
I'm talking to a man who let it be generally known that he cracked his own
rib in the process of trying to cure his hiccups." 

 "--and by the way, you can stop talking like Kowalski now. You were born
in England, for God's sake." 

 "Sorry. I guess it's reflex, being stuck in here. Speaking of which, not
to misquote Star Wars or anything, but when you got us in here, did you
have some kind of plan for getting us out?" 

 Paul had his head bent over something he held in both hands, his back to
Callum. "You could say that. When I got us outta RPS into character fic, I
mean, not when we got kidnapped into RPS in the first place. Let's see if
it...okay." 

 "Hey. There weren't stairs here before--wait a minute, Paul, what are--?"


 Paul looked up from the little notebook he'd been scribbling in, and
shoved the aforesaid item into his back pocket, along with the pen.
"Something finally occurred to me, somewhere between this stupid-ass
bondage crap--and if that's good for anything but a laugh I'll eat my damn
truck--and that last RPS we did; namely, that I'm a writer." 

 Callum blinked. "Uh...that counts? Like, from inside here?" 

 "I say it does, dammit. I'm also a professional, which means I outrank
them in the reality department. My reality ought to be able to kick their
reality's ass. I think." 

 "You just think?" 

 "Yeah, because possession is nine points of the law, and we're not out of
here yet. But, without further ado..." He opened the door to the stairwell
in front of him. "Let's find out. After you." He grinned. 

 Callum stared at the "exit" sign that now gleamed over the doorway
leading into a shadowy stairwell. "You think you can keep us one step
ahead of, uh, 'them'?" 

 "That'll be easier if you'll get it in gear." 

 "Yeah, sorry." Callum closed the door softly behind them. "So, you can
just...write whatever you want? Like this side door out of the locker
room?" 

 "No, it doesn't look that way. Until I figure out just how to write us
out of this--all I've really done so far is dropped us off their
radar--I've got to stay within the parameters of the show." 

 "How do you know?" 

 "I tried to cut to the chase a little." 

 "What?" 

 "Let's just say that when we didn't get beamed out of the locker room and
rematerialized on set--the real one--I figured out there were limits.
Besides, we don't want to attract their attention." He grabbed the handle
of the door at the bottom of the last flight of stairs, then caught
himself, pulling up abruptly, pausing. He let go of the handle and pulled
out the notebook again, starting to scribble. 

 "What?" Callum wondered. 

 "I forgot to write anything out there." 

 "You mean we could have...vanished into limbo or something?" 

 "I don't know, Cal. I just don't want to take any chances. Let me think a
minute..." He tapped the tip of the pen against his forehead lightly. "I'm
wondering if I could use the set as kind of a transition point between
this fiction reality and the real world; that's where the fiction and the
reality connect." 

 "Hey, man, you're the EP. Do anything you want," Callum told him. "But if
that's the way you think it might work, I suggest staying away from the
location sets and the temporary studio sets. They changed too much." 

 "Yeah, that occurred to me, too." Paul opened his eyes and began writing.


 "Where're you putting us?" 

 "The third-season consulate set." 

 "Just don't put us back in the damp part of the Henry Allen set." 

 "No, that wasn't the most comfortable experience of my life, either." 

 "At least I didn't breathe any pastrami breath into your mouth...how's it
coming?" 

 "Faster if you'll be quiet." 

 Callum folded his arms and leaned against the wall with a sigh of
exasperation. 

 Finally Paul said "Okay. Let's give it a shot." 

 "I'll let you have the honor of going first," Callum said, with a gallant
gesture at the door. 

 Paul gave him a look and held out his hand. "C'mon, Cal. We go together.
I'm not going to lose you in some kind of bizarre reality transition." 

 Callum sighed. "Yeah, yeah. Sorry, all the blood's still pounding in my
head from swinging on that chain like a side of beef." He smirked.
"Y'know, you're right--it'd've been funny if it weren't us." 

 Paul just gave him another look--this one speaking volumes of
agreement--took a deep breath, and opened the door. He had to let go of
Callum's hand as they rounded the edge of the door and he reached behind
himself to maintain contact. Callum caught his wrist nervously as they
went through. 

 And stopped dead, staring around. 

 "Paul." 

 "Shit..." 

 "Paul!" 

 "Keep your voice down," Paul hissed, pulling Callum against a wall, by
the wrist Callum was still holding onto, now with something of a
deathgrip. 

 "This is not the set, Paul--" Callum further iterated. 

 "I can see that!" Paul whispered back. 

 "So where the hell are we?" 

 "In the consulate, obviously, please keep your voice down," Paul muttered
rapidly, leaning out from their dubious shelter and glancing up and down.
"Somebody's probably here; looks like broad daylight outside." 

 "What happened to the door?" 

 "What? Which?" 

 "The one we just walked through!" 

 "I don't know, Cal, I suppose it went the way of all things. It doesn't
exist in the consulate, after all...oh, Christ." 

 Callum was eyeing him. "That was your Fraser voice. And it didn't look
like it was on purpose." 

 "I know, I heard it. And it wasn't. Shit. Okay, we're not out of the
woods, but we may be a step closer to it." 

 "How is this a step closer!?" 

 "We were already one step closer doing a Fraser/Kowalski instead of an
RPS, which, along with certain AUs and some really weird violence fic, is
about the ultimate in unreality. We may have made another jump...we need
to find out if we've made it out of fanfic and into canon." 

 "I'd almost settle for just making it to gen. I love you and all that,
which is actually pretty incredible after everything that oversexed bunch
has put us through, but to put it very mildly certain portions of me are
getting tired, man." 

 "Same here--oh, shit!" Paul whimpered, reiterating his new favorite word,
as a rustle and a thud came from Thatcher's office. A chair scraped. 

 "Oh, God--is that Thatcher?" Callum hissed. 

 "Unless she's grown considerably, it's Turnbull--run for it before he
gets a good look at us!" As they both crashed into the front door, Callum
realized he still had hold of the arm Paul was trying to use to open it,
and let go. They bolted through and kept pelting until they were around
the corner, out of sight. 

 Where they pulled up abruptly, looking around. 

 "We're..." Callum murmured. 

 "In Chicago," Paul finished. "Yeah." He was gazing through the distance
toward the John Hancock building as he spoke. 

 "Is it the real Chicago?" 

 "Not with Turnbull in it. Hell, not with that--" he jerked his head
toward the consulate, "--whole building in it." 

 "Uh...has it got us in it?" 

 "Obviously it's got us in it!" 

 "I mean the show us, Kowalski and Fraser! Or are we them now?" 

 Paul blinked. "Um...I don't know." 

 Callum was pacing in a tight circle, one hand to his forehead; after a
moment of breathing, he said "Okay, now I know why the sidestep into a
Fraser/Kowalski, even one that bad; you were trying to get us somewhere
you could pull the writing trick. Okay--so, what, then? What now?" 

 "You're asking me? I know the rules?" 

 "You sure as hell sounded like you did!" 

 "Cal, I'm making it up as I go along. I just had to try something. Face
it, we weren't going to last much longer. We were about to kill ourselves
out of sheer embarrassment." 

 "Look--you said the magic words and got us here, and now you're writing
the magic words that are supposed to get us back out. If you don't know
the rules, nobody does, so invent some and get on with it!" 

 "I'm not sure how bright a move that would be. Not after what just
happened with the jump from the stairwell--" 

 "Well, you've gotta do something. You're a writer, you came up with this
idea, and I'm feeling pretty helpless, here, because ever since we got out
of the locker room I've basically been existing inside your head! Which is
better than existing inside some slasher's, but still." 

 Paul blinked. "Um. I hadn't thought of it that way. But we aren't
literally in my head, we just--" 

 "And by the way, try to control your endearingly twisted sense of humor,
would you? God alone knows what it might bring on." 

 "I will if you'll control your adrenaline addiction. God alone knows what
that might...Jesus, I don't believe this..." 

 "All right, all right--stop looking shell-shocked and listen for a
minute." Callum grabbed Paul's arm again and conducted him over to a
doorway, out of immediate sight of anyone who might happen past the alley.
He said quietly, "Like you said, you're a professional writer, and you
wrote for the show, and that ought to mean you can at least get us out of
fanfic and into canon. So we could be in canon right now. And you were
saying that canon should be closer to the real world, because the show did
exist in the real world, right? The canon show." 

 Paul blinked. "Yes, I was thinking...that canon would be closer to
reality than fanfic for that reason, but the only problem with that
theory, I've just realized, is that fanfic exists in the real world,
too--" 

 Callum shook his head rapidly. "Stop thinking like that, or you'll end up
on some existential plane where it's impossible to define reality, and
we'll never get back. Think in terms of gradations, like you were before.
RPS is about the ultimate in out-there, along with certain AUs and stuff.
Character slash is a lot less out-there, but can occasionally be pretty
damn silly, as witness that last gig; some of it's fairly realistic,
though. Gen is sometimes stupid but sometimes good enough that it could
actually be canon if it got studio approval; and canon is the realest
thing next to reality, because the show is realer. Real people acted on
real sets with real props and real legal binding contracts and--" 

 "And a bad tendency to get canceled and then sprung at the last minute
more often than damn near any other show in history." 

 "Okay, okay, that can't help, but like I said, don't think like that.
Think real. Think three dimensions. Think about the time you lost control
during a foot chase scene in the granny boots because your heel came down
on a rock, and you staggered off sideways at about eighty miles an hour
and ran over the line producer." 

 Paul stifled a loud snort behind his hand. "Yeah. For a month after that,
Frank wouldn't walk into a room where I was without taking a bearing on my
trajectory." 

 "Yeah, now remember the shock? Remember how real it was? Remember all the
times you screwed yourself up in action scenes? Remember the time you got
stuck in the harness for an hour for a roof scene while some damn
technical problem held everything up--and you really had to go?" 

 "Yeesh, don't mention that." 

 "Remember the time you nearly fell off the top of a moving train while it
was on a bridge because you did a fight scene up there without the safety
cables?" 

 "Okay, now I'll have to ask you to shut up." 

 "Whatever. Think of all the real things about the show, things that felt
real--hell, if anyone knows everything about that show, it's you--you
eventually did just about everything there was to do on it. You saw every
fake front and dark underbelly and equipment screwup and scheduling
disaster and budget crisis and legal dispute and general indicator of
realness that it had, right?" 

 Paul took a deep breath. "Right." 

 "So, okay. Get in the mindset. And whatever you do, don't forget yourself
and start thinking like Fraser!" 

 "Uh, no, getting into character head would not be a good idea, here,"
Paul agreed, taking another glance around to be sure they were still
unobserved. "We might never get out again. I guess that was the only good
thing about being stuck in RPS--we were at least us. So to speak. Are you
having that problem, too? Creeping Kowalskiness?" 

 "Yeah," Callum said grimly, "and frankly I'm sick of being a Chicago
flatfoot, though I've got to admit it's better than finding eighty-seven
new ways to screw you every day. So how do we find out where we are
exactly?" 

 "Well...we're not back in the real world, but we're also not still in
RPF, because we'd be on the set, or in my office, or at one of our houses
or something, not next to the real--uh--the unreal consulate, in some
version of Chicago. Right?" 

 "Yeah. And if it were RPS in particular, we'd probably be screwing, too."


 "Or one of us would be pining for the other one. Or there'd be mutual
pining. Any pining at your end? Generalized horniness, anything?" 

 "Nah. Like I said, I love you, but I'd just as soon not fuck you." 

 "Yeah, same here. Okay. Stipulated we've definitely at least made it out
of RPF. Unfortunately, that may be all we know right now--after all, the
consulate, and Turnbull, exist in fanfiction--all kinds, except for RPF.
This could be either canon, or almost any kind of character fanfic." 

 "How do we find out which?" 

 "Well..." Paul pondered. "Back to where we were for just a minute. We
were in a Fraser/Kowalski." 

 "Yeah?" 

 "So where exactly were Fraser and Kowalski?" 

 Callum blinked. "Well...they could've still been around somewhere. Just
because we didn't see them doesn't mean they weren't. Since it wasn't one
of those twisted out-there fics where the actors meet the characters." 

 "Right, not one of those. So Fraser and Kowalski...oh, shit." 

 "What shit? What?" 

 "I read a fanfic once--" 

 "You read this stuff?" Callum stared. 

 Paul rolled his eyes. "You don't? You sounded pretty knowledgeable about
it a minute ago." 

 "I'd kind of have to be by this time. I mean, how long have we been stuck
here? Besides, I hear things. You wouldn't believe what's in some of my
fan mail. But you read it?" 

 Paul shook his head. "Not exactly. It was a book of Star Trek fan fiction
that Paramount published, award winners in some contest or something. I
was ten, I was bored, somebody gave it to me. Can we move on now? Oh,
Christ--" he put a hand over his mouth. "I've gotta stop doing that. Okay.
It was called 'Visit to a Weird Planet Revisited', and in the story, when
some of the actors ended up in the Trek universe, the guys they were
playing ended up on the set in L.A." 

 "You think Fraser and Kowalski might be...in Toronto? Our Toronto?" 

 "Um...if it's canon, maybe. I mean, it's not like you can really think of
some wacked-out amateur effort as a precedent, but right now we don't have
much else to go on. What you were asking about earlier--are Fraser and
Kowalski here? If they are, and we could find them, we could...well, use
'em as some kind of a barometer." 

 "We could what?" 

 "You know, see...how they act, what they do. If they do anything they
never did in canon, we'll know we're still in fanfic. If they fuck, we'll
know we're still in slash." 

 Callum smirked. "While it is, unfortunately, conceivable that if we're
still in fanfic, they might let us watch if they did, that still might be
no help--those two didn't do it in all the slash. Sometimes it's different
characters. Like, sometimes you fuck Vecchi--" 

 "Not me, damn it, Fraser!" 

 "Right, right, sorry, gotta remember. Paul, I don't think that would
help. Some of the fanfic is pretty straight-ahead--some of the gen
especially, like I said." 

 Paul eyed him. 

 "So I'm told," Callum muttered, sounding just a bit defensive. 

 Paul shook his head at him, but only continued "But if this is canon,
they should be following one of the scripts completely to the letter at
any given point that we see them, assuming we see them in a scene that was
explicitly included in the script instead of just alluded to." 

 "Would it even be possible to see them in an implied scenario? Wouldn't
they only exist in the scenes that were aired?" 

 Paul rolled his head on his shoulders, rubbing at the back of his neck,
with a pained expression. "I don't know, I told you I don't know the rules
here, will you please work with me? For instance, I'm assuming here that
if we are in canon, we're not in seasons one or two, or you wouldn't be
having Kowalskilike impulses. God, I don't know if you'd even be here. But
I can't guarantee that." 

 "Okay, so the only way to be certain we're in canon would be to see
Fraser and Kowalski, or somebody in the cast, anyway, playing one of the
scenes that actually aired. Or were filmed, at least...uh, oh..." 

 "No, no, we'll go with aired, we can't go wrong with that one; we won't
take backup takes or scenes that got cut as any kind of indicator." 

 "I got another question." 

 "What the hell, let me have it," Paul sighed. 

 "If we are in fanfic, do we want to get to canon, or do we want to
double-or-nothing right for reality?" 

 "Uh...okay, this is what I'm thinking. We're back to the other
problem--writing the set. I think we need it as kind of a link, between
the fictional world and the real world." 

 "You said something like that. It didn't work, obviously--" 

 Paul gave him a lowered-brow glare of exasperation. Unruffled, Callum
finished "--but for the sake of argument--and also because I haven't got
any better ideas--I'll go with that for now if you will." 

 "It's the specific reason it didn't work that's my point, here. Remember
I said I've got to be careful not to dump us right back into RPF? Since
the set and everything does exist there? That might be easier to arrange
if we take it in steps--if we start out in something closer to reality
than it is to RPF." 

 Callum nodded and pondered "So...what we need is to get to one of the
sets. One where our presence won't freak everybody out. No, I mean--we
need to get to one of the places the sets were depicting, so we can find
out just where it is we are." 

 "Cal, that was scary--I think we're actually starting to get good at
this. Where do you suppose...?" 

 "Well...we may have to...y'know, kinda hang around, since we don't know
if the behind-the-scenes scenes exist in the canon world. If we happen to
walk into the middle of one of those, that won't tell us anything until
the action gets to a scene that aired. Right?" 

 "So if neither of us recognizes anything that we can remember as being
word-for-word from a script, we're going to have to try to find out what's
going on, so we know what script we should be waiting to hear from, and
how long we're going to have to wait to find out if we're going to hear
it." 

 "Okay. So...well, obviously, either we're gonna have to hide and make
sure nobody sees us, which is not the fastest way to get the information
we need, or we're gonna have to pretend to be our characters. Which is
also not gonna be easy when we're trying pretty emphatically not to slip
into character, here." 

 "Yeah. So...we saw Turnbull. Well, I did. Unless there's another Mountie
as big as he is hanging around in Thatcher's office for some reason...but
Turnbull's around a lot. Doesn't mean this is a canon ep..." 

 "Doesn't mean it isn't. But a lot of people think he's pretty cute--you
should see Dean's fan mail some time--" 

 "Not much could shock me since that letter I got from the lady in the
retirement village detailing exactly what she was going to do to me if she
ever met me," Paul muttered. 

 Callum finished "--so we could still be anywhere from slash to canon, for
all we know." 

 "Yeah. Shit." 

 "Get a new word, Paul." 

 "I will when we get out of this. I hate to say it, but it looks like
we're going to have to..." 

 "...fake being them." 

 "Yes. Because I don't think we can get anywhere without talking to
someone. Not as long as we don't know what the canon world's like,
exactly; it'll just take too long to get the information we need any other
way." 

 "Uh, how about if we could get at one of the computer terminals in the
squad room?" Callum mused. 

 "They're police computer terminals; they're all passworded. Besides, we
don't dare just stroll casually into a crowd of people who know Fraser and
Kowalski, any more than we wanted Turnbull getting an eyeful of us. What
if one of them's in the hospital with a broken leg or something? Or, worse
yet, one of 'em's there in the bullpen? Assuming we haven't done some kind
of switch-out with them, I mean." 

 "But we're still left needing the information. We still need to get
somewhere that the sets depict." 

 "Like I said, we just were, and we just left like bats out of hell for
very good reason--" 

 Callum waved both hands in a hold-on gesture. "I know that, but hear me
out. The consulate's not a lot of help anyway if nobody's home but
Turnbull. There are not a heck of a lot of canon scenes of him alone
there, doing whatever he does all day, and none we could recognize even if
there were. We could end up hiding in a closet for a week in there, if
Fraser and Thatcher both happen to be in Ottawa or whatever in this fic.
What we need is something that can place us either in canon or fanfic, and
if it's fanfic, something that'll tell us what kind, so that we know what
direction we're headed in--and, preferably, we need to find that out
before we get too much older." 

 Paul sighed. "The station, then." 

 "It's a better bet. A lot more action with a lot more people goes down
there, most episodes." 

 "There's another problem." 

 "And God knows just how bad we need another one right now," Cal sighed. 

 "If we are in canon--or we get there--and we land in something like
'Mountie on the Bounty'..." 

 "Oh. Right. Most of the action's elsewhere. Hell, Paul, there's only one
way to find out. Unless you think your office or--Fraser's office or
Kowalski's apartment is a better idea." 

 Paul shook his head. "One of us, at least--depending on whether one or
both of them are at the station at the moment and if so, just who knows
where they are and who doesn't--should be able to ask some questions of
somebody there; whereas we might end up doing like you said and drooling
on ourselves 'til we starve if we try someplace more private, lower
traffic. So, the station it is." 

 "Um..." Callum looked around again, up and down the alley. "Got any idea
which way it's supposed to be from here?" 

 "Yes." Paul pulled out the notebook and held it up, wagging his eyebrows
in a "get it"? expression. 

 "Oh. Heh. Yeah. Sorry." 

 "Never mind." Paul thought, tapping the pen on his lip this time, then
turned Callum around and set the notebook on his shoulder. "Sorry, but my
handwriting's nearly illegible even with a surface to write on." 

 "Mi shoulder es su shoulder, just write." 

 Paul did, for a couple of minutes. Then he replaced the pad in his back
pocket. "Okay. Let's go." 

 "Let's go where? I don't see anything different." 

 Paul pointed at the door at the back of the entryway they were standing
in. "Walk through there." 

 "You know," Callum muttered, reaching back to grab Paul's wrist again,
"this jumping thing--I have this vision of me developing a neurosis and
never being able to walk through a door again without holding your hand." 

 "We'll address that problem if we ever make it out of here." 

 "Right."  

 "Well, that answers the question of whether Fraser and Kowalski's
panicked butts are in our director's chairs right now," Callum muttered.
"Of course, now we've got no explanation for our little identity crisis
problem." 

 "Hell, Cal, for all we know that might just be habit--" 

 "It isn't in my case, at least. The props and what have you may be the
same--I mean, the, the stuff, and the building or whatever--but it still
does not look anything like the set to me." 

 "Me either, but I can't pull an endless series of facile explanations out
of my ass without hitting the occasional wall." 

 "Thanks for that visual, and sure you can. You're a writer. Isn't that
what you people do?" 

 "Shut up, Cal." 

 Callum was shaking his head, looking concerned, as he watched Kowalski
talking to some unidentified inhabitant of the story they were in. "Paul,
do I really look like that in person? That...geeky?" 

 "Um...just so it's out there, I didn't say what I said--what landed us
here--because I think you're geeky. With that established...I'd have to
say he's kind of probably, uh, a little bit better looking than you,
actually. Well, not that I think he is, but--" 

 "What? Why? Well, maybe if we're in fanfic, since people probably
idealize our appearances some, but--" 

 "Even in canon. Because he looks like you do onscreen, with makeup and
specially engineered lighting and everything, except he looks like that
without any makeup or lighting or anything." 

 "Jeez..." Callum sighed. "Guess it's true. I really have no ass." 

 "Actually, he's got a little bit more than you've got." 

 "You can feel free to stop setting me straight about these little items
of import just any time now, Paul. I'd like to see your face when you see
Fraser. I'm willing to bet when he wears the pants, he doesn't look like
he's got a diaper on under there." 

 "You know, you've said you love me twice in the last half hour, but
that's not the vibe I'm picking up, here." 

 "I'll compose you a sonnet later; we don't have all day. Somebody's gonna
notice us eventually. You can't really lurk effectively in a police
station; they have rules and stuff about that." 

 "Okay, fine, here I go--" 

 "Paul--wait, hold it a second. Fraser and Kowalski can only meet you or
me in RPF, right?" 

 "Um...yeah." 

 "So if you walk up to that guy over there, does that mean we're in RPF?" 

 Paul blinked. "Shit. It might. You think--that if we're not, I wouldn't
be able to speak to him?" 

 Cal thought a moment, shook his head. "Nah, I guess not. We've already
been seen--" 

 "And recognized, in your case, at least," Paul muttered, referring to a
confused moment at their arrival when they'd emerged walking out of the
room they were currently hiding behind the door of, instead of into
it--Paul's phrasing had apparently been a bit ambiguous in that respect.
Their resultant stumble and subsequent scramble to hold each other up had
attracted the momentary attention of a couple of passersby in the hallway,
one of whom had nodded to Callum with a curious expression. Fortunately,
whoever it was had been occupied in an intense-looking conversation with
her companion, and hadn't pursued the matter. 

 Callum nodded, and finished "But if Kowalski...couldn't see you, if it
were impossible for you to interact with him in anything but an RPF, then
it ought to follow that no one in...in whatever reality this is would be
able to, right? I mean, if we're here, we have to be able to be here.
Whether we should be or not. Or something." 

 "Cal, that argument is eating its own tail." 

 "I know. My suggestion is we grab on and roll with it. And at the very
least--even if we can't interact with anyone without this being an RPF, it
doesn't necessarily mean we're still in RPS specifically." 

 "Unless the first thing Kowalski does is call me by my real name and bend
me over the desk. I think there are stories where you and me, or David,
end up in some version of--" 

 "Or Francesca does. Bend you over, that is. Or however that'd work." 

 Paul covered his eyes with one hand. "Shit. Real Person Het. I didn't
even think of that. Is there such a thing?" 

 "Paul, buddy, I got no idea," Cal said in Kowalski's accent, then sighed
in frustration and slapped himself. "At least I got your name right," he
muttered. "Do your stuff. Just be careful. Remember, I'll never get out of
here without you." 

 "Hell, no way I could leave you here now. You're the only one who's ever
going to believe all this." Paul stepped away from the doorway. Callum
faded back. 

 The dim, deserted filing room they'd taken refuge in had given them a
spot to observe and reconnoiter--for example, to find out that Kowalski
was present in the building, and that Fraser, according to a comment
Kowalski made to Huey, was not. Callum folded his arms, leaning against
the doorjamb, keeping the wall's shadow across himself, as he heard what
must have been Kowalski saying "Frase! My God, what the hell happened?" 

 "Um...I haven't been having the...the most profitable day, Ray. Please
forgive my appearance." 

 "That's it, Paul," Callum murmured. "Just don't lose it out there and
forget who you really are..." Apparently Paul had figured out that if
Kowalski had a few advantages over Callum in the appearance department
because he didn't need help to look as good as Callum did when he was
doing Kowalski, Paul was probably going to look like warmed-over death
next to Fraser. At least to Kowalski. 

 "Christ on a crutch, Frase, siddown. Shit you're white. You caught that
crud that's goin' around?" 

 Callum felt a frisson as Paul kind of fell into the indicated chair,
obviously experiencing the same frisson as Callum. They hadn't even
thought of that--at least one quick and easy way to determine whether they
were in canon or not. Kowalski shouldn't have been able to say anything
you can't say on network TV, if he were the canon character. This also
meant they weren't in gen, or at least not the
could've-been-an-episode-provided-it-was-professional-enough-and-contained
-none-of-the-words-you-can't-say-on-TV variety, which removed them at
least one more step from canon, possibly more. Callum smacked a palm into
his forehead and groaned softly, just as Paul managed to choke out
"Uh...language, Ray." 

 "Fuck language, and fuck this. You look like hell; I'm takin' you home.
And no, not your home, my home, the Ice Queen'll just have you doin' some
damn scutwork or other if you go back to the consulate." 

 "No--Ray. I'm not sick," Paul protested, as Callum swore internally
again. The "I'm taking you to my place 'cause you're sick and if I take
you to the consulate the Ice Queen will have you swabbing the decks"
scenario was a common set up for slash scenes, especially in hurt/comfort
stories. Fortunately, it wasn't the knell of death; it happened in some
cussword-having gen, too, so they might still have made it farther than
they thought. 

 "You always say that," Kowalski muttered, rolling his eyes, as he pulled
on the jacket he was carrying. 

 "Really--well, I admit I'm a little nauseated right at the moment, but
it's not due to--Ray! Goddammit--" Paul protested as Ray physically hauled
him out of the chair, Paul gripping Kowalski's wrist hard where the latter
had grabbed his jacket. 

 Ray froze, staring. Callum swore, quietly. Paul winced and shook his head
at himself. 

 "Oh, that's it. That is it, buddy, you are fried and we are so outta
here--" 

 "Ray. Please--" Paul paused, taking deep breaths, and said "I had planned
to rest right after speaking with you. I...have some questions." 

 "Uh..." Kowalski considered, then finally sighed. "Okay. You promise me?"


 "I promise." 

 "All right, shoot." 

 "We might want a bit of privacy for this." 

 "Supply closet?" 

 Paul sighed and rubbed his face. "It will do." 

 "No, wait, I think the file room's empty--" 

 Callum turned and lunged behind the nearest available cover--a bank of
filing cabinets in the corner; they surrounded a small table bearing an
ancient coffeemaker. 

 Paul didn't argue, probably realizing that it might be a good idea for
Callum to hear this as soon as Paul did, thereby saving them what could
turn out to be extremely valuable time. He did, however, stumble and crash
against the doorframe, somehow managing to catch the knob and pull the
door shut for a moment, presumably to give Callum the hint that he should
get the fuck away from the door and hide, if he hadn't already. "Oh, dear.
How clumsy of me." 

 "Fraser, are you drunk? What the hell is wrong with you? I mean, you walk
in here, lookin' like all hell, and--" 

 "I don't feel much better, Ray, but this is important." The door opened
again. "No--leave the lights off. I'm afraid I have a slight headache."
The unspoken part of the sentence, Callum thought, no doubt went something
like "...and I don't know whether Cal's managed to get all of his anatomy
out of plain sight or not." 

 "Which for you translates to 'death is fast approaching'. Come on,
Fraser, you are scaring me royally here. What's the matter with you?" 

 "I...I think I may indeed have some form of the 'crud', as you so
succinctly put it earlier," Paul sighed. "As I said, I intend to rest
soon." 

 "What about the Ice Queen?" 

 "Don't worry. She's cruddy too." 

 Callum swiftly raised a hand to his face to stifle a snort. 

 "Oh. Well, then she'll never know you're gone, right? And my bed's a lot
more comfortable than yours--" 

 "We can talk about that in a minute, Ray. Um...there's really not any
delicate way to put this..." Paul sighed. Callum acquired an expression of
extremely grim amusement as he wished Paul the joy of finding a Fraserlike
way to put this kind of question. "It's...rather a personal matter." 

 "There's not any delicate way to put that it's a personal matter? I think
you just overdelicated me right out of knowing what the hell you want to
know, here." 

 "Uh..." 

 "Christ, Frase, just spit it out. Stop worrying about being polite." 

 "That's not the problem. I really don't know how to put this," Paul
sighed, sounding, unfortunately, like Paul--like Tired Paul, for that
matter, who was a creature very seldom seen or heard. 

 "Frase..." Kowalski put his hands on Paul's shoulders, pulling him close,
staring into his eyes. Paul looked back, waiting. 

 "You're...Fraser, c'mon, what's up? You're really not yourself, here--" 

 "In more ways than one. I'm...fuck it. I'm the guy who plays Fraser." 

 A moment of dead silence. 

 Then, in a "Don't fuck with me, I'm crazy" monotone, Kowalski said
"What?" 

 "Where I'm from, you're a fictional character, and so is Fraser. I play
him. I also write him sometimes." 

 "Where you're from? You mean Canada? Fraser--" 

 "Callum," Paul sighed. "There's only one way we're going to make him
understand." 

 Callum sighed too, and got up. He came around the filing cabinets to
stand next to Kowalski and Paul. "Hi," he said. "Callum Rennie. Nice to
meet you. Though I guess in a way I have already, since at the moment I
spend every workday being you." 

 Kowalski stared. Then he stared some more. Callum pulled his glasses off
and raised his eyebrows at Kowalski. "Any better?" 

 Ray's eyes got really, really big. 

 Callum smirked. "Finally. Thought you might need yours," he said, waving
his own glasses in illustration. "You know, I've heard people usually
don't recognize themselves right off, because--" 

 Paul cut in "Uh-oh, I think he's gonna--" Kowalski started to go down;
Paul caught him. "Erf! Some help here, Cal, I think he's a little heavier
than you are." 

 "Oh, right. That lard butt." Callum put his glasses back on and helped,
and they got Ray safely lowered to the floor. "You know, if we make a run
for it while he's out, he might think he was hallucinating when he wakes
up." 

 "We can't. I think this pretending-to-be-them idea can be considered a
bust--" 

 "Not fighting you there. Schist." 

 "--but we still need information, and he's probably the only one we can
get it out of without major risk. Anybody else is only going to think that
me or you are Fraser or Kowalski--maybe with a bad hangover, and a case of
amnesia, especially since Fraser's had that happen to him once. We have
the same DNA, the same fingerprints...we could end up, I don't know,
drugged to the gills in the psych ward or something--and God alone knows
where, if anyone sees us all together. Anyway, this guy and Fraser are the
only ones who are going to know we're not them." 

 "Yeah, well, Ray here isn't reacting all that well to us, to say the
least; so what about Fraser? He's got to be in town and relatively okay
last Kowalski knew, or the first thing he said to you--well, maybe after
the 'You look like shit' part--would have been 'What are you doing here?'"


 "We've already blown Kowalski's mind; the fewer people even know we're
here, or why, the better. Besides, it'd probably be a better idea to see
it through than to risk Fraser arresting us for God-knows-what until he
can quote uncover the truth unquote--" 

 "He can't do that unless we're on Canadian soil." 

 "He can make a citizen's arrest. And he'll try. He did in--" 

 "He can't do that, either. I've been wondering where your head was when
you let that stay in. He's not an American citizen." 

 "Didn't stop him, did it?" 

 "You mean it didn't stop you and the other writers." 

 "What was he going to say, 'I'm taking you down to the cop shop. You can
come with me, or I can fuck you up and drag you, your choice.'? And since
fanfic is based on canonically established--" 

 "Paul, you're grasping at straws for reasons not to get near Fraser.
What--" 

 "Quiet, I think Ray's coming around." 

 "Ohhh, I get it. You're afraid you'll freak out if you have to talk to
Fraser, aren't you, Mr. 'Hey Cal, he's actually got a better ass than--'" 

 "Shut up, I said." 

 "You shut up." 

 "Shut up times infinity." 

 "Paul, you're so fucking strange." 

 "That's rich coming from--" 

 Ray's head stirred on Paul's lap. His eyelids fluttered as Paul shut up
mid-snark when he felt the motion. Ray graveled "I was gonna ask if you
were Frase, but judgin' by the evidence of my ears, either I'm still
havin' a nightmare or the answer's 'no'." 

 Paul, with a final embarrassed glower at Callum, who made a bug-eyed
ooh-I'm-so-intimidated face back, said "I'm afraid you're right. My name's
Paul. Paul Gross. But I am Canadian." 

 Ray's eyes closed again as he made a frustrated noise. Then he cocked one
eye open. "Your name is 'Gross'?" 

 Paul rolled his eyes. "It's not an uncommon name in Canada. From 'le
Gros'. It's a French word for 'large'." 

 "It's also an American word for 'disgusting'," Kowalski smirked. Well,
Callum thought wryly, at least the guy didn't seem to be quite so
gobsmacked any more. He resisted the urge to snicker at Paul. 

 "Believe me, I've been made aware of that," Paul muttered. "Starting
about the day I was born, all right?" 

 Kowalski started trying to sit up; Cal grasped his arm and assisted. Ray
was fine with that at first, then happened to glance up at Cal's face and
jerked away abruptly. 

 Cal gave him a mildly evil look. "You know, if anybody should be getting
pissed off about Body Thievery around here, it's me. You look like me,
Ray. Not the other way around." 

 "So you say," Ray muttered. He edged a little closer to Paul, eyeing
Callum with a tight-lipped expression. 

 Paul threw a quelling look at Callum and tried "Ray, we need your help.
We're trying to get the hell out of this place and back to our own
reality. I'm sure you don't want us around here any more than we want to
be here, so the faster you--" 

 Ray pondered. "I ain't tellin' you anything sensitive, you know that." 

 "Uh, some of these questions could be considered sensitive, but they're
of a personal nature." 

 "Yeah, that's what Frase--that's what you said while you were fakin'
being Fraser." 

 Paul opened his mouth, was silent a brief moment, then shook his head,
muttering "Oh, Jesus...Callum, how do I put this?" 

 "I don't know, but you probably want to get the gun away from him first."


 "What?" Ray demanded. "Why?" 

 "Okay. I need to know what cases you're working on right now, I need to
know--er--how things are going with you and Fraser, and I need--" 

 "Hold it, hold everything. Why you wanna know about my cases?" 

 "We're trying to figure out where we are," Callum said. "If we recognize
your cases from canon, that might mean we're pretty close to canon--" 

 "--say, in an episode-involving fanfic," Paul finished. "That won't tell
us for certain, but it's a start." 

 "What the fuck are you two goin' off about? Cannons?" 

 Callum shook his head, sighing. "I think this is going to take a while,
Paul," he said.  

 "Holy SHIT!" Ray said, lunging backward and banging into Paul, who let go
of his arm in the process of trying to keep his balance. Callum pushed
Paul back upright from his other side. Ray was stumbling into his
apartment, staring around in confusion. "Man. This is fucking, fucking
psychotic. I do not believe this. I do not--" 

 "Ray, try to calm down," Paul said, coming over to rest a hand on Ray's
shoulder. "I just wanted to save the time of the drive." 

 "You scribble a few lines and just go anywhere you want?" 

 "Not exactly," Paul admitted. "I have to know what to write. My...results
haven't been without the occasional snafu so far. That's why we need
information. We can't afford to be knocking around like pinballs through
however many levels of reality exist in a fictional milieu like this; God
knows where we could end up." 

 "You're getting the hang of it, though," Cal said. "We did end up at the
station, right where we needed to be. And here." 

 "Those weren't so complex. I wasn't trying to get to another section of
fanfic or canon or whatever. Or even to a different story." 

 Ray shot a glance at Callum. "Can you do that, too?" 

 "Um...not sure. I haven't tried." 

 "Why not?" 

 "Well, couple of reasons. For one, like he said, he's really a writer,
been doing it for years. He knows how to get the concepts down the way he
wants them, fast, and without leaving anything too ambiguous, which could
result in our showing up in an inner circle of Hell or something, and I
don't have much practice with that. It's not as easy as most people think.
Also he's the EP, so I bet--" 

 "EP?" 

 "Executive producer. In short, he's The Man. If he doesn't like
something, he's got the authority to burn it down and start all over." 

 "Okay," Ray was saying, looking pensive. "So...you said in the file room,
all the stuff you told me about knowin' where you are, how to get wherever
else, findin' your way back and all that, that's pretty much conjecture,
right?" He moved toward the kitchen area. 

 "Yes, on both our parts," Paul agreed. 

 "Siddown, you two," Ray said, rummaging in the fridge. "And do it on the
couch in there. Lookin' at you makes me nervous." 

 "We've heard that before," Cal muttered. Paul smirked at him as they sat
on the couch. 

 "You guys hungry?" 

 Paul and Callum looked at each other. "I could eat," Callum said. 

 "Yes. Thanks," Paul said. 

 "Hey, it's lunchtime. Whatta ya do at lunchtime? Ya eat. Okay. So you
need to know all this stuff, but your problem is you don't know what the
best way to find it out is--you're not even sure what questions you should
be asking. You also don't know what you might not know, and not know
enough to know you need to find it out, right?" 

 "That's one way to put it," Paul agreed provisionally. "I think." 

 Kowalski was building sandwiches. "As Frase would say, have you
considered the wealth of information available through the modern media?" 

 Paul and Callum were both startled quiet. Ray had done a credible Fraser
voice. Not like Paul's, of course, but not bad for an amateur. 

 "I didn't know you--" Cal started. 

 "--were a cop who does undercover assignments?" Ray wondered, raising an
eyebrow at them, then going back to the sandwiches. "You two hear what I
said or are you still bein' stunned I know how to study a guy when that's
my freakin' job? Though all they needed in this case was a warm body,
apparently." 

 "Uh. Media. Yeah. Good idea," said Cal. 

 "Well, since ya don't know what ya need to know, ya know..." 

 "He's right." Callum reached for the TV remote. "You got CNN?" 

 "I got everything. Go for it." He put down his mayonnaise knife and
reached for the phone. "Frase is droppin' some stuff off here in a little
while, too. I'll tell him to pick up a news..." 

 Paul, stuffing the notebook back in his pocket, began to unfold the
newspaper that had not been sitting on the coffee table a moment ago. 

 "...paper..." 

 "You get used to it," Callum said at Ray's disturbed look. 

 As Ray shook his head in bafflement and returned to sandwich preparation,
Paul leaned over to Callum and said "I'd really like to flat-out ask him
if he and Fraser are, uh, you know, but if we're not in slash, or we're
not in an F/K, he could easily flip." 

 "I could poke around the place," Callum murmured back. "Might be some
signs somewhere." 

 "Well, they're not living together, judging by what Ray said in the file
room. So maybe there wouldn't be." 

 "There are usually signs when a person has a regular overnight guest,
even if they're not living together." 

 "Good point. Give it a shot." Paul started scanning the front page. 

 Callum got up and started wandering around, allowing a touch of
Kowalskilike nervous pacing to color his movements. He frequently stopped
and turned to make a point of watching the TV--which at the moment was
coverage of what was apparently some half-election, half-coup in the
middle east; not a heck of a lot of help there--then he'd move off again. 

 Yeah, he was seeing signs of Fraserness--the CD's were arranged
alphabetically, and the place, while cluttered, was clean and relatively
dust-free--even the windows looked freshly washed, which might be more
than could be attributed to Ray's mother coming in to iron his shirts and
possibly do a little more general cleaning. Besides, as far as they knew,
canonically she only ironed his shirts. There was a Martin Backpacker in a
soft case leaning in a corner, like the one Paul--wait, Fraser--no,
Paul--screw it, the guitar the appropriate guy was playing in "Mountie
Sings the Blues". Though for all they knew this Ray played, too. Anything
could happen in fanfic. 

 He was just getting ready to check out the bathroom, that goldmine of
information for every nosy parker--and if Fraser did frequent overnighters
here his gutcutter of a razor would be a dead giveaway--when Ray emerged
from his creative sandwich fugue. He walked up to Callum, stuck a plate
with a club sandwich on it into his hands, and sat him down at the table
via the expedient method of putting a hand on his shoulder and planting
him in a chair. Apparently Callum was not being as subtle in his
observations as he'd hoped. Fortunately, all Kowalski said was "So, um,
Callum, if he can do stuff like that, why doesn't he just..." 

 "I know it seems kind of all-powerful," Callum said. "But the first time
he--uh--" Callum cleared his throat, decided that Ray didn't really need
to hear about the very first part of the daring RPS escape, and continued
"The second time he tried it, he was trying to get us to the consulate
set." 

 "Consulate set. Yeah, TV show, like you said. I got beer and water." He
turned from the fridge to display a bottle of said beverage in each hand.
Callum pointed to the bottle of water. 

 "Him?" Kowalski made an abrupt gesture with his head to indicate Paul. 

 "Beer, probably." 

 "Okay. Keep talkin'." 

 "So..." Callum thought a minute as Kowalski uncapped the water and placed
it on the table by Callum, "we ended up here, at your Fraser's actual
consulate. And the last three things he did worked, but like he said, they
didn't involve trying to get closer to our reality." 

 "And that makes you nervous enough you're scared to try it?" 

 Callum shot him a look. "I told you. There's reasons he's a better
candidate for that job. I'd try if I had to. If he got run over by a bus
or fell down in a coma or something." Callum took a casual bite of
sandwich. 

 Ray watched him a moment, pausing on his way to take Paul's sandwich in
and set it on the coffee table. With some care to make sure it sat on part
of the paper, Cal noticed. Another possible Fraser association. Paul
didn't look up from the portion of the paper he was currently scanning.
Ray uncapped the beer he'd brought along and wondered "Am I gonna have to
pour this over his head?" 

 Callum chuckled. "Probably. I've seen that look on his face occasionally;
usually he's always right there, but at the moment he's speed-ingesting.
He's turned into a human correlation device." 

 "A whatsawhosis?" 

 "Human. Correlation. Device. I happen to know you're not stupid, Ray,
because I don't play you that way." 

 "You ain't in canon, buddy boy." 

 Callum winced internally. "Good point," he muttered. But if Kowalski
could think of that after nothing but about a fifteen-minute
indoctrination lecture in the file room, right after waking up from a
faint, he still wasn't stupid. 

 "But I still ain't stupid," Kowalski said, making Callum do a double
take. Ignoring it, Ray continued "You mean he's thinking about a bunch of
stuff at once, tyin' it all together." 

 "Something like that. Hey, Paul!" 

 Paul blinked. "Huh? Oh. Thank you. Sorry." 

 "Any insights?" Callum asked. 

 "This doesn't seem to be AU, anyway, which would be right up there with
RPS, and the stories where one of us kills the other one and stuff like
that, as far as being as distant as possible from our own reality." 

 "You mean Fraser or Kowalski kills the other one." 

 "Yeah, that. Or one of them assaults the other." 

 Callum made a face. "Yeah." 

 Paul had started reading again, mechanically devouring his sandwich.
Callum had seen Paul survive on caffeine and cigarettes when things got
hectic, which they usually were, at least for Paul. But maybe there was
something about this reality-slipping that gave a guy an appetite. 

 Kowalski came back and sat down near Callum. "He come up with some kinda
system? For how close you are to home? You guys got, like, a conjectural
map?" he asked, gesturing vaguely as he spoke. 

 "What we have are a lot of hypotheses we've got no way to test. I came up
with the gradations idea, but he's running with it. That's why he wants to
get to canon. Ending up at the consulate instead of on the consulate set
rattled him pretty bad, I think. He about wet himself when he realized how
easily we might have ended up right back in RPS if he'd made the mistake
in a different direction." 

 "RPS?" 

 "Real Person Slash. Subcategory of Real Person Fic." 

 "Ff...oh, yeah, you said--the stories your show fans write." 

 "You may even have it here, for all we know, and it's just not something
you'd be interested in; so you wouldn't have heard of it. Fraser, either."


 "'Slash'? That like Night of the Living Dead Chainsaws or something?" 

 "No. It's when two characters of the same gender are paired in a story
in...um...a...romantic...well, sometimes romantic...uh..." 

 "You mean they fuck?" 

 "I mean they fuck. Sometimes, anyway. Though even if they do, it isn't
always graphically described." 

 "So...you guys were stuck in a story someone wrote? How is that
possible?" 

 "Something Paul said seems to have acted as a kind of catalyst. Well,
he's said that kind of thing more than once, but there's a particular
quote that blew across slash fandom like a tornado and...well, the rest is
history. So it's not always...uh..." 

 "Not always what?" 

 Callum shuffled around in his chair uncomfortably. "Characters. Not
always the characters. Sometimes it's real people. Most of the fans
actually find it really tasteless, but..." 

 "And...and you and him were...stuck there, you said." 

 "Yeah," Callum said, concentrating very hard on his sandwich. 

 "And you guys don't usually..." 

 "Hell, no. He's married, even." 

 Kowalski exploded laughing. 

 "It's not funny, asshole," Callum muttered. "Not when it's you." 

 "But how did...how could...why..." 

 "I don't know! It's like some kind of sick metaphor. Paul opens his
mouth...and, uh...boom, there it is. It landed us here, and now he's
trying to use kind of a similar technique to get us out." 

 "Magic words?" 

 "In short, yeah," Callum muttered, not meeting Ray's eyes. 

 "'Cept he writes them this time." 

 "Well, it was certain of the fans who wrote us in there, not him, but
yeah." 

 "This happen a lot in your 'real world' world?" 

 "I have no idea," Callum sighed, taking a sip of his water. "If it did,
it's not the kind of thing anybody'd talk about, believe me." 

 Paul was now avidly going over the society page. "If it's slash, it's
probably not EIG--at least, not the kind where it's easy to be gay," he
said. "Everything's straight in the regular papers. Closer to our
reality?" 

 "I'd say so." 

 "EIG? What's that mean?" Ray wondered. 

 "Don't worry about it, Ray. By the way, I've got a question." 

 "Shoot." Ray got up and moved back toward the kitchen. 

 "You wouldn't happen to be zoomin' Frase by any chance, would ya?" he
asked, doing Kowalski. The plate Ray was carrying hit the floor with a
bang and spinning whong-whong-whong-clunk, but didn't break. "What?!" 

 Paul groaned and covered his eyes with one hand. "Smooth, Cal." 

 Callum ignored him. "You heard me. You and Fraser doing the wild thing?" 

 "What the hell does that matter?! Well, okay, it is kinda topical..." 

 "We need to know if we're in slash, and we've gotta start somewhere. It
might not be you; for all we know it's Turnbull and for God's sake Welsh,
but--" 

 "Oh, yeargh!" Ray protested. Paul looked a little put off, too. 

 "Sorry. But we need to know. Are you?" 

 Ray sighed. "This don't go anywhere?" 

 "Where the hell would it go except out of your universe with Paul and
me?" 

 "Good point...um. Yeah. We got a...thing." Ray was futzing around dealing
with the lunch stuff, not looking their way, speaking in a mutter. 

 "Don't worry about it, Ray. You wouldn't believe some of the things
they've had Paul and me doing," Callum said. "There was this weird one
with restraints and...well, we won't go into it." Cal shook his head,
looking rueful, with a low whistle. "Really, really embarrassing." 

 "Feel free not to tell me about it," Ray said, with a light shudder.
"That's really pretty rude, writin' about you guys. Be like somebody here
writing about me. Doin'...stuff. Ugh." 

 "You do do stuff." 

 "Well, so do you, I'm assumin', if you aren't totally pathetic, but no
matter what it is you do, you don't want people sittin' around imagining
it, do ya? With stories and stuff? Eesh. Like tryin' to do it with an
audience gettin' off to it." 

 "The idea doesn't do a damn thing for my digestion, I admit, but I can
deal with it being out there," Callum said. "When you're in our line of
work, there's a certain amount of weird shit you're going to have to put
up with from fans; that's just part of the job. When you're confronted
with it, you smile and act gracious, and then get the righteous fuck outta
there and do your best not to think about it, because if you dwell on it
you'll end up on a thorazine drip someplace with a permanent case of the
heebie-jeebies. Makes Paul's Kit-Kat problem look like a vacation." 

 "His what?" 

 "Nothing. But in any case, actually having Paul's dick up my ass is a
little farther than I'm willing to go for the sake of my career." 

 "Could be worse." 

 "How?" 

 "Could be my ass," Paul muttered, but quietly enough that they could
pretend they hadn't heard him. 

 Kowalski continued "You coulda been stuck in there with...well, at least
Paul's a looker, though I can see how that might not've been a big help to
your head at the time. What'd he say, anyway? That got you there." 

 "He said I was really good looking and sexy, that the whole thing was
gonna be totally homoerotic, and where did he have to go on the Internet
to find that stuff?" 

 "Uh...but, he's, like, a producer on the show. And he got himself what he
thinks is a good-lookin' co-star to boost his ratings. Sure he'd be doin'
the happy dance, talkin' you up, gettin' people interested. Including the
slash folks. Doesn't mean he really...uh..." 

 "I know. Throwaway comment, just talking off the top of his head, because
he was tickled by the slash fanzine an interviewer brought him to look at.
But you don't know some of these people. They can read something into
*any*thing. I could trip and fall on my face, Paul could help me up, and
*some*body out there would find something in it. Even though, c'mon, what
the hell would he do, stand there going 'Swift move, Cal, ha ha ha' while
I'm peeling my face out of the sidewalk? And that problem goes right off
the scale when you deliberately plant seeds in people's heads. He keeps
making these little comments..." 

 "Why's he do that?" 

 "Because his sense of humor is twisted like a Moebius strip and he thinks
playing to the slashers is fun." 

 "I heard that," Paul muttered, turning a page, but he didn't look around.


 Ignoring him as thoroughly as Callum, Ray wondered "You think maybe all
that might be why you...actually got kind of sucked in? Some kinda Star
Trek sort of fan overmind vortex?" 

 "Like Paul said, this is a lot more like the Twilight Zone. But God, I
hope not, or we'll never get home. Not if they find us again." 

 "Find you again?" 

 "Paul dropped us off RPS radar, he says. But we really need to keep
moving if we're going to stay ahead of the RPSers. What we do here is
going to show up in whatever story we happen to be in...this is too
surreal for words." 

 "Yeah, I noticed that when I opened the file room door to walk into the
hallway and walked into my living room instead. And the newspaper...you
gotta watch him every minute, don't you?" 

 "He's always been like that. Martha turns her back and when she looks
back around, he's written a movie or something. Next he'll be writing rock
opera--no, wait. He did that. Well, kind of." 

 "Martha his wife?" 

 "Yeah. She's an actor, too." 

 Kowalski nodded once, then went on speculatively "So, then...he's a lot
like Frase." 

 Callum looked up, startled. "Uh, no, I definitely would not go that far."


 "Well, y'know. He can do a lot of things, do 'em well, I mean. Never know
when he's gonna come up with something outta left field, though I hope it
doesn't make people want to whack him like when Fraser does it. He a
pretty nice guy?" 

 Callum, with his lips pressed together in a remark-swallowing smirk at
the hope-people-don't-want-to-whack-him part of Ray's comment, tilted his
head a little to eye Paul sidelong before he answered; Paul seemed
oblivious again. "Yeah, he's a nice guy. He's...well, an overgrown kid in
some ways, but not the annoying ways. He's kind of all over the place. But
he's got terminal modesty. He blames the fact that he can do damn near
anything, artistically speaking--including the parts that aren't really
art at all, like producing--on having a short attention span. There's
people standing in line to kick his ass for not only being gorgeous and
accomplished, but refusing to get an ego about it. He's got a reputation
for being perfect. I think some people would like him better if he were
arrogant." 

 "There, ya see? Like Frase." 

 "He's not in Fraser's category of nice by any stretch of the
imagination," Callum said, shaking his head. "He's got some twisted shit
in that pretty head." 

 "But nice twisted shit." 

 Callum shrugged. "Uh...not all of it. I admit I've wanted to slap him
occasionally, but I've never really resented him..." he trailed off,
shaking his head again, this time in exasperation, at the self-satisfied
smile on Kowalski's face. 

 "Right," his alter ego said. "You're makin' my case for me, here.
Fraser's kinda twisted, too. But nice." 

 "Ray, that isn't Fraser over there." 

 "Didn't say he was. I still think he looks kinda like Frase with the
flu." 

 "I heard that," Paul muttered, again not looking up from his efforts. 

 Kowalski chuckled. "There's another thing. Mountie ears." 

 "He's a musician," Callum said, rolling his eyes again. "Of course he has
good ears." 

 "He's a musician, huh, funny. So's Frase." 

 "Oh, for--it's not much of a stretch. Paul's a soundtrack consultant for
the show. He sings, they had him sing. He writes, they used some of his
songs. He's handy to have around when you're trying to produce a TV show.
But if he's like Fraser, it's because Fraser's like him, not the other way
around, like I said before." 

 "From your point of view, maybe. In your 'real' reality, maybe. But I'm
willin' to bet this place is as real for me as yours is to--" 

 "Don't do that, don't do that, don't do that. I had to slap Paul back
between the lines outside the consulate, too. If we start thinking like
that, we're fucked. We've gotta concentrate on the goal. We got a plan,
for all we can tell it's working so far. But that kinda thing'll fuck it
up beyond all recognition if--" 

 "You always start to sound like me when you get pissed off?" 

 "Shit. Shit, shit, shit--" Callum leaned his forehead on his palm, elbow
on the table. "No. I don't know, I guess the vibes get into us or
something, Frase--SHIT--Paul's having the same problem." 

 "Well, you know...I ain't no fancy-ass actor or anything. But I gotta
know how to play a role. And the best way to play a role is to put at
least some of yourself in it, you know? You can't try to totally be
somebody else and come off as anything but some dumb yutz tryin' to be
somebody else. Take some of yourself and use it, just use it so it comes
across like whoever you're playing. S'why maybe your guy there--" 

 "He's not 'my guy'." 

 "I mean in the sense that he's the only freakin' person on the planet
from the same place you are, okay? Your guy, your teammate, your buddy.
Relax." 

 "Sorry. You just don't know what it's like where we've been." 

 "Yeah, I gotcha. Okay, but what I was sayin', it's like your guy's like
Frase because--okay okay okay, Frase is like your guy, whatever--because
some of your guy's in him. Kinda has to be. He's a good actor, right?" 

 "He's done things I know I couldn't pull off. And I've never seen anyone
as old as he is who can do 'winsome' so well." 

 "So, some of him...is here, and in canon, and wherever else. 'Cause he
put it there. Right?" 

 "What you're getting at is that some of me is here, too, isn't it? In the
fabric of the place. And..." 

 "Somethin' in there," Ray said, reaching over to tap Callum's chest, "can
feel it, and it wakes up. And what happens is..." 

 "You mean--the way we react to that...we find ourselves getting into
character, losing...at least some touch with our own identity. Because
here...the characters are realer than we are. Oh, fuck it, I didn't need
to think of that." 

 "So quit thinkin' it. Stick to your guns. You know which reality's really
real." Kowalski gave him a half-smile and a wink. "For you, at least." 

 Callum wilted a little. Okay, so that was why Ray'd been commenting on
the similarities between Paul and Fraser. God, he was starting to go
existential himself. He rubbed his temples with both hands to keep his
skull from exploding and said "I suppose it's possible. That's the scary
thing about all this. Anything's possible, the rules could change any
time, and we have to keep up with it--figure them out, then figure them
out again, then figure them out again, every time the least thing
changes...in any event, no matter why our...senses of self keep fading
into the characters, we can't afford to let it happen; it could keep going
until I actually start thinking I'm you, or at least until I can't think
straight enough to focus on our little problem, and then we'll never get
out of here." 

 "Good point." Ray reached over and took Callum's empty bottle. "Like I
said. You got a plan, stick with it. Don't let the doubts creep in." He
went and retrieved Paul's plate and bottle. Paul still didn't look up. As
Ray passed by Callum again, he muttered "You're right, he's way worse than
Frase. Listen--think about this." He set the bottle and plate down on the
counter and turned to face Callum again, canting his weight to the side a
bit, snagging one thumb into his jeans pocket and talking with the other
hand. "Look what your bud there, and maybe you, can do. If you guys
weren't from something bigger, and maybe something where he's got some
kinda brass cojones to shake, over an' above whatever's makin' this place
tick--he wouldn't be able to do shit like that, would he? So you guys are
from...a place outside. A bigger place. A realer place. By your
definition, at least. I gotta hit the can." He left the dishes in the sink
and headed for the bathroom. Callum rubbed the back of his neck and
sighed, started to open his mouth to speak to Paul-- 

 --and the front door opened. Carrying a brown paper bag, in
walked...well, it could damn well nearly have been Paul, but Paul was
right again, on the appearance thing. If Callum was hot, Ray was a
bonfire, especially so in the world of fanfic. And if Paul was shockingly
beautiful--and he was, not that Callum planned on making a big point of it
in any upcoming conversation, since that kind of thing had a tendency to
make Paul duck and cover--then Fraser was blinding. 

 Fraser naturally didn't remark on Callum at first; in peripheral vision,
Cal was indistinguishable from Ray--they even had the same glasses--and
Fraser's eyes had happened to light first on Paul, who had looked up and
around at the door opening, blinking. "Um...hi," Paul said, then winced.
But then, Callum wondered, what the hell did you say under these
circumstances, anyway? Maybe "Hi there, you're a cheap and incomplete
rip-off of me, nice to meet you"? 

 Fraser paused, started to speak, paused again, put down the grocery bag
and walked up to Paul, eyes trained on the other man. He reached down and
lifted Paul's chin, scanning his face. Paul stared back up at him kind of
desperately. Just before he started to get to his feet, Fraser let him go,
turned away while rubbing frantically at his forehead, and then lifted his
head, opening his eyes. 

 "DAD!" he bellowed. 

 "No!" Paul lunged to his feet, bumping into Fraser in the process. Fraser
absently lifted a hand to steady him, but he didn't stop scanning the
room, or speaking. "Dad, I am going to kill myself, hunt you down and
wring your ectoplasmic neck if you don't get out here this very moment
and--" 

 "Fraser! Fraser, I'm not another, uh, half-sibling. We're not related,"
Paul tried. 

 Fraser looked at Paul sharply over his shoulder, still holding the arm
he'd caught him by. He said nothing for a moment as Callum noticed frantic
noises emanating from the bathroom, including an underbreath litany of
cursing, followed by a flush and Kowalski exploding back into the room.
"Frase, it's okay! Well, it's not okay, but it's not...hell. It's weird.
Keep it together anyway, okay?" 

 "Ray--" Fraser whispered--and only then did he notice Callum. 

 "I have this scene from a Bill and Ted movie going through my head,"
Callum sighed, as Paul reached out and caught the swaying but thank God
not fainting Fraser, and eased him down to the couch. "The one where
there's a knock at the door and Bill gets it and says 'Oh, hi. Hey Ted,
it's us!'"  

 "If you sigh one more time, I'm going to smother you with a pillow." 

 "Bite me, Paul." 

 Paul sat up. He was wearing shorts and a T shirt; Callum was in a similar
outfit. Unsurprisingly, Fraser and Kowalski's clothes fit them passably
well, though Cal was having to tug the occasional tug to keep everything
down there copacetic, which was responsible for at least part of the
sighs, not that he'd admit that to Paul, who was now wondering "What's up
with you, anyway? The thrashing stops, the sighing starts--" 

 "That's a really brilliant question, Paul." 

 "Okay, besides the obvious." 

 "Besides the obvious, I am nicking out bad." 

 "So am I, and your sighing every two seconds isn't helping." Paul rubbed
his forehead. "I know how you feel. But if we can't keep our heads
together, we're going to end up, where'd you say, in an inner circle of
Hell next time we try to make a jump. We need sleep." 

 "So lie down. I can't sleep with you looming." 

 Paul grumped something under his breath, but lay back down. 

 "Wonder how they're doing out there on the bedroll," Callum muttered. 

 "I'd imagine Fraser's fine," Paul muttered back. "Ray's probably going to
bitch about his back all day tomorrow, though." 

 There was quiet for a moment. 

 Callum murmured "I just don't get it." 

 "Don't get what? I mean, out of the plethora of things that are not
exactly easy to get with which we find ourselves currently surr--" 

 "The real-person thing. Here the fans have got these cool characters to
write about, the to-die-for Super Mountie and his partner, Loose Cannon
Kowalski. Why the hell would they bother writing about us? We're just
guys. We're staring down the barrel of forty, and we've got crow's feet
and we smoke too much and you're starting to get a gut--" 

 "This is the same gut I've always had." 

 "Yeah, right. You were about half as big around when you did 'Tales of
the City'." 

 "Oh, I was not. Besides, I was just a kid then." 

 "Anyway, we're real, with all the annoying shit that real people have,
morning mouth and bitchy bad days and everything. Kowalski and Fraser are
going to be young and beautiful and perfect forever, unlike us, who are
going to end up old and saggy and smelly. And that's if we're lucky. Why
would anybody want to fantasize about us, compared to them? Well, okay,
except for Martha." 

 Paul gave him a look. 

 "Oh, for--about you, I mean!" 

 Paul subsided, shaking his head. "It beats the hell out of me, Cal." 

 There was quiet a moment longer. 

 Callum wondered "You sure we shouldn't just break for it? Isn't it
dangerous to stay in one place this long?" 

 "Yeah, it probably is, but it's also probably, as we realized earlier,
surefire death to try to navigate the planes of reality when we can't
concentrate long enough to get our shoes tied, much less try to maintain
about half a dozen different POVs in our heads. Plus the nicking-out
factor." 

 "Good point. Fraser looked at you like you'd just said you'd kill to eat
a booger when you finally cracked and said you'd kill for a smoke." 

 Silence again. 

 "We're going to get out of here," Paul muttered. "You believe that, don't
you?" 

 "I believe we'll get out or die in the attempt," Callum said. 

 "No. You've got to believe it. I get the feeling doubts could cause
people in our situation even more problems than doubt always does." 

 Callum sighed. Again. "I'll try, Paul." 

 Quiet for a few breaths. 

 "I can't take it," Paul muttered, sitting up again and turning on the
table lamp by Ray's bed. "You're still sighing and I'm getting the sweats
and I cannot take it, I have got to have a cigarette." 

 "Planning on pulling one out of the air?" 

 "No," Paul said, flipping to a clean page on the ever-present notebook
and scribbling. "I'm planning on pulling them out of my..." he set the pad
down and reached for his coat. "...jacket pocket." He did so. "Well?" 

 "Are you nuts? I'd kiss your ass and even let you draw a crowd first, but
Fraser will smell it and have a shitfit. 'This is a nonsmoking enviro--'" 

 "Damn, you're Kowalskied." 

 "I think it's because I'm lying in his bed." 

 "Uh, that would do it, I guess. Anyway, just open the window. Didn't you
smoke pot in college?" 

 "I was busy working on my dry-fly cast." 

 "Oh. Yeah. I forgot about that." 

 Callum got up and opened the window while Paul threw his pants against
the crack under the door. 

 "You really think that'll keep eagle-nose--" 

 "Eagle-nose?!" 

 "--from smelling anything?" 

 "No. But I doubt he'll bother us if we take precautions not to stink up
the apartment. If he does, fuck it, we'll go outside. I can't take this
anymore." 

 "Then sheesh, why didn't you get ballsy a couple of hours ago when the
walls started closing in to begin with?" 

 "I'm not sure this writing-things thing is an ability I should overuse.
The more I screw around with the fabric of this reality, the more likely
it is that we'll get noticed, and someone's going to figure out just where
we've got to." 

 "Kowalski's gotta have matches or something around...here." Callum found
a lighter in the top dresser drawer. "You may give up the smokes, but you
can't lose the habit of keeping something around to light 'em with." Paul
joined him at the window, after turning the lamp back off. Callum lit two
from the pack Paul handed him and gave him one. 

 Exhaling smoke in a long sigh, Paul muttered "Ambrosial." 

 "Why do people start smoking? It's a fucking life sentence. And it's not
even a decent high." 

 "It's a fucking death sentence and it's not even a decent high," Paul
corrected him, to a small snort of agreement from Cal. Paul took another
drag and wondered "But then, why have either of us ever done the kind of
stupid-ass shit we've done? How did I manage to get arrested for drunk
driving--well, drunk parking, at least--in a church parking lot? How did
you wind up with a piece of glass through your eye?" 

 "You were drunk and I was, shall we say, overconfident, once I had a
window between me and that asshole construction worker. But I get your
point." 

 "One night--around last Christmas--I actually managed to get enough
eggnog down to get wasted. How, I'll never know; the stuff consisted of
cream, half-and-half, more cream, a little cinnamon, vanilla, nutmeg, rum,
and more cream. And presumably eggs, though you couldn't have told it by
me. It could've stood there all by itself, no punchbowl necessary. If
anyone bumped it, it would have transformed instantly into butter. There
should have been a defibrillator sitting next to it on the buffet table." 

 Callum chuckled. "Sounds like some nasty shit." 

 "Anyway, I had this giant weepy guilt attack about it. Smoking, I mean,
not the eggnog. Like, I have a family, how can I keep pounding the nails
into my coffin with these things?" He took another drag. "Needless to say,
the first thing I did when I woke up the next morning was chain smoke for
two hours." 

 Callum smirked, his gaze focused somewhere out the window. They were both
quiet a moment, then Callum murmured "I wonder just how...detailed all
this is. I wonder...if we got on a plane to Washington State, would we
find a city called Cascade? Or one called Seacouver? If we went to
Washington D.C., would we be able to look up a couple of neurotic FBI
agents named Mulder and Scully? Or..." he shook his head, staring at the
skyline. "Is all of this so much light and shadow? Is there anything in
those skyscrapers, any back side, any people? Or are even Kowalski and
Fraser nothing but...some kind of mockup, not really in there at all...or
is this place, like Ray said, just as real to him as our world is to us?" 

 Paul's mouth quirked in a vague half-smile. "Maybe lake Michigan is
pouring off the edge of the world, and we're floating on somebody's
brainchild--a world in limbo, rising out of the overmind ether like foam
on the water, vanishing again as soon as there's no one there to observe
it..." He laughed softly at himself and added "'But oh, beamish nephew,
beware of the day, if your Snark be a Boojum! For then--you will softly
and suddenly vanish away, and never be met with again...'" 

 Callum was quiet for so long that Paul apparently finally noticed it, and
turned his gaze from the skyline back to Cal, who was watching him
intently. Cal said "Thanks for completing my creep-out, Paul. That was
some very fancy imagery. And out of that poetic mind came 'Santa Drives a
Pickup'. Who'd've thunk." 

 Paul smiled again, looking back out the window, and said "Blame Dean for
that one. It's plagiarized. The imagery, I mean. And the line from
Carroll." 

 "I know that, brainiac." 

 Paul just smiled even wider, and Callum managed to smile as well. Then
Paul looked back at him and added "And I hope you're not going to suggest
hanging around to find out just what kind of world this is. If it is one."


 Callum shook his head. "No way. Get enough rest to see straight and we're
outta here." 

 Paul nodded and pitched his depleted cigarette remains through the
window. He stared at the skyline another moment. "I actually think I can
sleep now. Nicotine as a sleep aid. Look, Cal...I'm sorry I got you into
this." 

 "Yeah, well." Callum tossed his own scorched filter out after Paul's.
"Just as long as you get me out." 

 "I'm...I'll try." 

 "Hey." Callum reached up to touch Paul's shoulder. "You wanted faith? You
wanted belief? You got it. Here it is, right in front of you, wrapped in a
skinny guy with a silly name. You can't turn around and start having
doubts now." 

 Paul reached to close the window. "Yeah, I'm doing one-eighties all over
the place, aren't I? Have been since this started. Probably not a lot of
fun for you to deal with." 

 "Paul, I'm freaking out, too; I think you're allowed to be acting a
little screwy when you find yourself in...in whatever the hell it is we
find ourselves in, exactly." He was getting back in bed by this time. "Now
lie down and get some sleep." 

 Paul climbed back in bed, too. 

 Quiet for a few moments. 

 Paul murmured "Your name's not that silly. I'm the one Ray took the jab
at." 

 "My parents fled England in mortification at how goofy their name was. At
least in Canada, weird names are taken for granted." 

 "How'd you get stuck with a name like 'Callum' if they were so worried
about that kind of thing?" 

 "They couldn't help it. They're Scottish. They had an attack of
Celticness or something." 

 "You know, until I met you, I thought 'Rennie' was a French name. Maybe a
variant of Renne." 

 "I don't think it's of this Earth, frankly. Why do you think I use
'Keith'? It's the only one that sounds halfway normal. Though I'm told
that in England it's considered kind of a pencil-neck name, like Egbert or
Poindexter. Wait, maybe that was 'Neil'...you got a middle name?" 

 "Michael." 

 "Paul Michael?" 

 "Uh, yeah, unless someone changed it while I wasn't looking." 

 "Mm. Pretty." 

 Paul was still a second, then actually got up on one elbow to stare at
Callum, as well as he could in the dimness. "Did you say 'pretty'?" 

 "Though I admit it's a little offset by the 'Gross' part." Callum held
his hands up in the air before his eyes, like a camera operator framing a
shot. 

 "I do not have a 'pretty' name." 

 Callum glanced over at him, grinning. "What'd you rather I say? 'God,
Paul, your name is the quintessence of masculinity, lemme roll over and
show my underbelly?' Sorry, but it's pretty." He reached up and patted
Paul's cheek, smirking. "Goes with your face." 

 Paul's mouth twisted in an expression somewhere between amusement and
annoyance. "You're just jealous because your name is 'Callum'." 

 Callum whapped him in the breadbox with the back of his hand. "Low blow.
Go to sleep." 

 Paul lay back down. 

 A moment later, Callum murmured "You and Fraser think you've got the bugs
ironed out?" 

 Now Paul sighed, and turned over. "We can only hope." 

 "Yeah...yeah." 

 After another moment, Callum reached over and closed his hand around
Paul's wrist. 

 Paul opened his eyes, blinked and turned his head to look at him. 

 Callum said "I don't want to wake up and find out that either this story
involves slavers who kidnap blonds in their sleep--or brunets--and just
nobody in this apartment knows that yet, or that somehow our subconscious
minds managed to send us space-warping off to God-knows where. Or any
combination of the two. But if, God forbid, any of that happens, I want us
both to end up in the same place." 

 Paul was quiet. Then he turned to face Callum, holding his arm out.
"C'mere." 

 Callum eyed him suspiciously. "Why?" 

 "You'll never be able to keep hold of my arm in your sleep. Scoot over." 

 "Shades of a slash setup." 

 "Oh for God's sake, I'm not gonna screw you, I'm just gonna sleep on you.
I could wish you weren't so goddamn wiry. Now get over here." 

 Callum slid over. There was a brief but painful knee war, accompanied by
appropriate monosyllabic commentary, before Callum turned over and spooned
up, eliminating the problem. Paul wrapped an arm over him, sliding the
other under the incurve of Cal's waist, where it wouldn't get the
circulation cut off. Callum wrapped his own arms through Paul's and sighed
again. 

 "Stop sighing. And don't fart on me, okay?" 

 Callum stifled a snicker. "Can't promise anything. Kowalski's Polish
however-you-pronounce-it seemed largely based on cabbage..." 

 "Hell. I forgot about that. Stuff's not really for the uninitiated to
approach without caution, is it? Well...at least fart quietly, then." 

 "And you can try not to shove your morning boner against my ass." 

 "What ass?" 

 "Shut up, Paul." 

 Quiet for a few moments. 

 Callum said "I've been trying to remember something." 

 Paul let loose a resigned sigh that blew warm across Cal's neck. "Will
you decide once and for all if you want to sleep or--" 

 Callum just talked over him. "It's something Ray said while you were
still going over the paper. I was losing my grip a little, and he thought
he was just giving me a rationale to hang onto--but whether he knew it or
not, it's some kind of set-out principle or other, I can't remember where
I read it. Or even if I read it, maybe I saw it on--" 

 "What is it?" Paul cut him off. 

 "It's got a specific wording, but I can't remember what that is. It was
something to the effect...say you build a robot. The robot can think, but
still, it was built by humans--it's fully understood by humans, it can be
programmed by humans, activated, deactivated, whatever. Right?" 

 "If you say so." 

 "But the robot can't reprogram itself, activate itself, et cetera. A
human has to do that. And then, there's us. We can't ever fully comprehend
our own reality, or even our own minds, because we're inside them, if you
see what I mean. We're, I mean, we're in and of it, and it's in and of us.
We can't get separate enough from it to see it." 

 Paul nodded. "Yeah." 

 Cal continued, in the same quiet murmur, "The upshot was that a level of
reality cannot be fully understood, nor fundamentally manipulated, by a
being at that level of reality. That has to come from at least the next
level higher, a level we're incapable of perceiving." 

 "You do realize this concept has been used about a million times in
arguing the case for the existence of God." 

 "Ray was using it to argue the existence of you. Or maybe of us. Of why
you can do what you can do here. Because--you're from a higher level.
Here, you--for all practical purposes--well--" 

 "Say it and I break your neck." 

 Callum was astonished to feel Paul's forehead pressing against his
shoulder. "You okay?" 

 "I just need some sleep...fuck. And I thought being a father sounded like
a hell of a lot of responsibility." 

 "Well, you do have that reputation for being perfect..." 

 "Cal. It's not funny." Paul's forehead pressed a little more firmly
against Cal's shoulder. 

 There was a pause. 

 "Yeah," Cal answered, "I'm beginning to figure that out." He turned over
on his back, readjusting Paul, so that they were still wrapped up enough
not to come apart in the night, barring excessive thrashing on at least
one of their parts. "Here." 

 Obviously self-conscious, but apparently appreciating the gesture, Paul
lowered his head to Cal's shoulder. Actually, Cal thought it was rather
decent of him to just do it and not make a big embarrassing deal about how
it er um wasn't necessary, especially considering the fact that Paul's ear
would likely have a major crease in it in the morning from the prominent
endpoint of Cal's clavicle. 

 "Thanks," Paul muttered. He tried to move his head a little lower. 

 "No problem." Callum closed his eyes and shut up.  Pt. Two: Show me the
Way to go Home--One Vignette at a Time	

 Paul and Callum stepped out of the doorway into a small, blind alley; the
faint illumination of a streetlight spilled into the open end. 

 "Not bad," Callum said, glancing around at the windowless brick walls to
either side. "Nobody saw us show up here, for sure. But I still don't get
it." 

 "That's probably because you're thinking in three dimensions." 

 "Paul, there's not anybody alive that doesn't. Except possibly Fraser. If
you can call him alive." 

 "I'm not saying I don't, just that I know what the pitfalls are. If I
start thinking that we can't wind up right back where we started in just
one jump, we probably will wind up right back where we started. The
associational paths are not straight-line, point a to point b. You have to
remember how huge the world of fanfic is. And every slightest happening is
relevant--that's why our attitude and our ability to focus is at least as
important as me getting the writing part of it correct. Which is one
reason I need you." 

 "What, like, you're the announcer, I'm the color commentator?" 

 "Kind of. Perspective, exactly how you perceive a given situation, is as
important as what I write--as the situation itself--in determining exactly
where we end up and where we go from there. You...provide the
perspective." 

 "Paul, if there's one thing a guy in your position has to have, it's
perspective. You don't need me for that." 

 "Then maybe what I mean is...your perspective is louder than mine, even
if mine might be more precise." 

 "Why do you think that is?" 

 "I don't know. Maybe because somebody put all the plugs in your
switchboard wrong and you're a fucking psycho." 

 "Ah. So, like, you're still the announcer and I'm still the color
commentator." 

 "Something like that. Not that either of us couldn't do either thing,
but..." 

 "I think I get you. What do you mean that it's a problem that I think in
three dimensions?" 

 "Did you ever study topology? N-space? Superstrings? Anything having to
do with space existing in something other than three dimensions? Usually
time is brought up as a viable dimension, too--" 

 "You telling me you have? Studied that stuff?" 

 "I've read about it. I understand the idea that we're not simply stepping
through a doorway when we do the reality-shift thing." 

 "Sounds like a dance craze. That crazy reality-shift thing..." Callum
sang to the tune of "Time Warp", doing a brief hip-shaking dance. "And by
the way, what is it with doorways? You didn't need one for the paper or
the cigarettes." 

 "Uh...actually that's just kind of a device on my part. A metaphor for
going out of one place and into a separate place." 

 "So it...helps you visualize." 

 "Also, it seems like it might be safer to write something like 'Paul and
Callum stepped through a door and found themselves blah blah et cetera'
than to write some kind of fade-out or describe an effect. I'm thinking
about what might have happened to us if I hadn't written anything on the
other side of the stairwell door, you know?" 

 "Namely, that there's no telling what might have happened to us, right.
Not to mention it's probably a lot easier on our heads to have at least
that much to prepare us for a transition." 

 "Yeah, that occurred to me, too. You know, it's a good thing the show's
so bent, or I probably wouldn't be able to do anything at all like this." 

 "The transporter that didn't work. Yeah. Too bent, or not bent in the
right way. So keep trying, I'll get this. Tell me some more." 

 "Okay, see, there could be...an infinite number of steps between where we
are and where we want to be. The number might be limited only by human
imagination--and I'm not talking about a single human, despite your
comments about us being in my head. Everyone has a different perspective
on every story. It might not be that there's only 'room' for so many. Even
more importantly, the connections most likely don't run one-way, and they
don't always run through jumps we've made before. The number of
associations could well be infinite. Which is why it's a good thing that
door vanished when we landed at the consulate the first time--if we'd just
turned around and walked back through, God alone knows where we might have
wound up. That's why we have to have such a clear idea of where we want to
end up to ensure that we get there, no matter how well I've phrased it or
not." 

 "So, once again, why don't we shoot right for home?" 

 "Because--okay, this is going to directly contradict what I just said,
but to explain concepts like this coherently you have to speak math, and I
don't. Though Fraser does, that Fraser, at least. Christ. I felt like I
was talking to a Univac half the time--" 

 "'Univac'?! We're not that old, Paul." 

 "--because trying to say this stuff in English is like trying to describe
the way a computer works in Etruscan. The vocabulary just isn't there; all
that comes out is gibberish." 

 "I got you that far." 

 "So, the reason we don't shoot straight for home is that even though you
shouldn't be able to multiply infinity--it's already infinity, there's no
increasing it--for our current purposes, speaking purely practically, you
can increase infinity. Or decrease it. We can improve our chances of
hitting what we want to hit by taking it in shorter jumps." 

 "Um...you're saying that even though our heads can't really handle the
concepts anyway..." 

 "...we've still got a better chance if we keep things as uncomplex as
possible. The possibilities increase exponentially for each additional
assumption, each stage we try to skip. It's a...it's not a time*line* with
a linear progression of possibility we're dealing with here, it's a
time*space*. Nothing linear about it." 

 "Except from our viewpoint." 

 "Right." 

 "So we're trying to simplify infinity. Even though that's not possible." 

 "Uh...yeah." 

 "You know, I don't think I'm confused because I'm thinking in three
dimensions and linear timelines. I think I'm confused because you have no
clue what you're talking about." 

 Paul hung his head with a rueful smirk. "Guilty. I told you, I don't
speak math. Why do you think it took Fraser and me hours to hash out what
came up being an almost obscenely simple plan? He had to stop and try to
translate for me about every five minutes. Okay, for the next jump,
think..." Paul was frowning at the notebook. "Think Kowalski long about
'Ladies Man', but try to throw in that he's got the hots for Fraser." 

 "I thought we weren't trying for anything that canon yet, episode-related
and like that." 

 "We're not. We just came from plot-driven slash, with canon-like
characterization..." Paul flipped pages in the notebook, scanning, then
flipped them back. He made a note in a margin, muttering "...remember to
keep characterization points up..." finished writing and continued "Fraser
and I decided that the next step we could easily break it down into would
be episode-related slash, and 'Ladies Man', 'Mountie on the Bounty', shows
like that, with a lot of intensity in Fraser and Kowalski's
interactions--or at least some suspicious comments--are discussed in
slash, and fanfic in general, more often than the eps with less of that.
And you really had a couple of moments in 'Ladies Man', so I picked that
one. Let a little horny-for-Fraser loose in your head when you put
together your Kowalski." 

 "Ah, okay, I got you." 

 "We could break it down even more," Paul continued, evidently on a roll
now that he'd gotten warmed up, "by trying for even tighter specifics, but
that would involve near--or actual--jumps to and from specific stories,
rather than subdivided categories; while theoretically that would be
safer, considering the fewer steps we skip the more likely we are to hit
what we want to hit, we run the risk of trying to jump to a specific story
that doesn't exist. After all, you can find damn near anything in the
world of fanfic--but only damn near. That number isn't infinite, though
interpretations may be." 

 "I take your point." Callum readjusted his grip on the pack and wondered
"What all did Fraser put in here, for God's sake? I'm about to hoist you
over my shoulder and let this thing walk. Feels like there's a body in
it." 

 "Yeah, he went a little crazy when I told him I think the
writing-stuff-out-of-the-air trick, if I overuse it, might shake the
ficworld shingles even more than our just being there in a story in the
first place--enough to be an even bigger danger of pointing up where we
are to those with whom we do not wish to become reacquainted. The changes
aren't going to go unnoticed forever. In fact, if we land in a more
popular story, they might get noticed immediately, and if it gets back to
the RPSers, they'll know just where to find us, and if we haven't made it
back to reality yet when that happens..." 

 "Did you put it like that?" Callum asked with a half-smile. 

 "Pretty much, though I suppose I must have sounded more desperate than I
do now, because Fraser had a real proper-preparation panic. I'm not even
sure what all's in there. A medical kit, for one thing, which is likely
one reason it's so heavy." 

 "Bottles of water likely being the next reason." Callum tugged at a strap
to resettle the pack. 

 "You want me to take it for a while?" 

 "No, I want you to keep your hands on that pen and notebook in case we
trip over someone's mental tangent and need to make a quick getaway. There
are too many stories out there that aren't what you could call typical for
their category for us to get too comfortable with these jumps. So what
else? In the pack." 

 "Food I will have to be very, very hungry before I eat any of--" 

 "Pemmican?" 

 "Yeah. And dried fish, stuff like that. There's a list in the outside
pocket of everything he put in there, and how much, and how long it should
last..." 

 "Figures." 

 The Goat was parked around the corner they were currently turning, and
Paul reached over to touch Callum's arm. "It's them. Fade back." 

 They both did so. "It does look like we've struck episode-related fic of
some kind, that's the setup--uh, only I guess it's not a setup, for that
scene in 'Ladies' Man'. How'd you manage to land us this close?" 

 "It was more a matter of not landing us too close, if we don't want to be
taking the next jump in a big damn hurry when they see us." 

 "Good point. We haven't got time to make friends with every Ray and
Fraser in the fanficverse. Ow..." Callum rubbed at his chest. "This is the
place, all right. Damn..." 

 Paul eyed him in concern. "Vibes getting to you?" 

 "Yeah, I must've done a hell of a job on this scene. That guy is
miserable." 

 "Yeah, and Fraser's worried as hell about him, I'm not feeling so great,
either...and...yep, he's crawling into Fraser's lap...and Houston, we have
contact. Slash city." 

 "Okay, so we know where we are, let's get moving before I need therapy
over how torn up Kowalski is." 

 "Looks like Fraser's handling putting him back together pretty well.
C'mon, this way..."  

 "Cal," Paul said faintly, "in future, I will place greater reliance on
your judgement about these things." 

 "Told you not to look." Callum hopped down from the tree branch he'd
climbed onto to get a line-of-sight through a second-floor window of the
consulate, helped Paul down off the branch that was threatening to become
kindling under his weight, and picked up the pack. "Okay, so we've
obviously made it to het, or at least slash/het." 

 "I am never ever ever going to be able to look Camilla in the face
again," Paul groaned, still slightly bilious-looking. "What the hell were
those things? Ostrich feathers?" 

 "I have no idea, and I'm good with that. You know, this was kind of to be
expected. No I don't mean the ostrich feathers--I mean the pairing.
Fraser/Thatcher is one of the most common het pairings in the fandom. The
good part about this is--Paul?" 

 "I'm okay." Paul sighed and managed to take his face out of his hands. "I
feel like I ought to apologize to Camilla." 

 "That wasn't Camilla. It was Thatcher." 

 "Who looks exactly like Camilla!" 

 "Actually, you don't know that for sure, especially since the difference
between you and Fraser, and me and Kowalski, is distinguishable. Plus,
you've never seen Camilla naked...have you?" 

 "Cal!" Paul's green-around-the-gills complexion transformed into a flush
of irritation. 

 "Right. And my guess would be that no het writers have, either, so..." 

 Paul blinked. "Good point. I'll just keep telling myself that." 

 "You do that. Anyway, as I was saying, it means we're definitely moving
in the right direction--there's a canon basis for Fraser/Thatcher. The
characters showed interest in each other more than once." 

 "Yeah," Paul said. "Come on, we shouldn't be hanging around the
consulate..." They began moving away from the building. 

 "It could be worse, you know, Paul," Callum said, with a slightly
devilish twist to his smile. 

 "How? Fraser could have been doing...that, with Dief?" 

 Callum stifled a snort. "Yeah, that'd have been worse all right, but what
I meant was it could've been Fraser and Maggie. There's a canon basis for
an attraction between them, too." 

 "Oh, God," Paul groaned.  

 Callum figured that stuff he'd heard lately about the Theory of
Relativity possibly not being as accurate as was once thought must be
true, because he was pretty sure he and Paul had just broken the light
barrier. He collapsed as he stumbled through the door, losing his grip on
both the pack and Paul as the latter practically fell through behind him;
Paul's God-given ability to squirm creatively was the only thing that
saved Callum from being squished flat. "Who were they?!" he gasped, trying
to get his breath back. He looked around; they seemed to be in some kind
of storage shed. 

 "I don't know exactly," Paul panted, pushing himself back upright. "But I
know who they thought we were. Obviously, Fraser and Ray managed to piss
off an entire gang in that one." 

 "But you know something?" 

 "What?" 

 "That was the cleanest-mouthed bunch of gangbangers I've ever run like
hell from." 

 Paul blinked, then started to smile. "Hey, yeah...we didn't get a chance
to check our location, but if they weren't swearing--" 

 "We might've made it to gen. But we can't be sure--for one thing, we need
to figure out where we are now, if we took another step homeward, or got
kicked sideways. For another, there may be quite a number of dirty-minded
fic writers with exceptionally clean vocabularies." 

 "Yeah. We better triangulate."  

 "Paul!" Callum almost squealed with merriment, holding his sides and
staggering sideways a little. "Man, you're evil!" 

 A smirking Paul was sitting on his heels, holding the notebook on top of
the pack, writing intently. "Just thought I'd help out our alter-egos a
little..." 

 They were on top of a building in the warehouse district, at what
appeared to have been a bust gone bad. Chicago PD members were crouched
behind the barricade of their vehicles, exchanging fire with a number of
individuals that fairly screamed "bad guy" from their pores. Somebody out
there in fandom was either very good at character description, or badly
needed an originality infusion. 

 Paul and Callum were in a good position to observe the bad guys, who were
crouched behind their improvised fortifications. So far, their shoelaces
had tied themselves together, all their guns had jammed at least once, and
now... 

 ...all their pants fell to their ankles, precipitating shrieks of alarm
and a frantic scrambling to pull them back up--or to get up again and then
pull them back up, on the part of those who'd been in foot transit at the
time. However, before they could get their bearings, the pants vanished
entirely, being replaced by pink tutus. 

 Callum squealed again. "Come on, Paul, show some originality! Everybody
does the damn tutus." 

 "I would, but we're pressed for time," a calmly smiling Paul reminded
him, pen hand still moving. 

 Callum didn't know if he'd ever draw another breath. "Note to self," he
thought. "Never ever piss Paul off when he's holding writing materials." 

 An extremely localized thunderstorm formed over the bad guys' improvised
bunker and rained on them ferociously. Then a gigantic flock of low-flying
pigeons swooped over, providing editorial comment via defecation. A small
herd of moose thundered through, knocking over crates and carts, and
seriously compromising the structural integrity of one four-door sedan.
Interestingly, it didn't look like anyone was getting hurt. Being sent
into conniptions of abject fear for their sanity, yes, but not hurt. 

 "Okay, here comes the piece de resistance," Paul said. 

 "What's that mean, anyway? Piece of resistance?" Callum figured he could
at least contribute the occasional hoary joke. 

 Paul grinned at that, still writing, and said "It means the good part.
Quiet, I'm creating, here." 

 Cal could only stare in dropjawed amazement as the mother ship from
"Close Encounters" descended slowly overhead, big across as several city
blocks. It proceeded to blast out the five-note message-tune, in the giant
tuba effect that blew the glass out of the control tower in the movie. The
sound wave nearly knocked Callum over. It felt like somebody was using his
breadbasket as a timpani. 

 "Paul, shit!" 

 "I already did that with the pigeons." 

 Below them, the bad guys had flung down their weapons. Abandoning their
merchandise with unison girly screams and running like bugfuck, stiff
chiffon skirts bouncing with each step, they flung themselves directly
into the arms of the also-somewhat-disquieted representatives of the
Chicago Police Department. 

 The mother ship vanished. Smugly, Paul stood, assumed a version of his
studly-Mountie stance, and proclaimed "Looks like my work here is done."
Then he relaxed and grinned sheepishly at Callum. "I've always wanted to
say that. Come on, we'd better move quick. I really shouldn't have done
that, I just couldn't resist. Let's get out of here before all the
carrying on alerts someone to where we are." 

 But Callum still couldn't get up--and he was betting his face was going
to hurt like a motherfucker when he finally managed to stop laughing--so
Paul hoisted the pack over one shoulder and put the other arm around
Callum's waist, giving him enough support to walk--if in a
semi-doubled-over fashion--and they went through the roof-access door.	

 "PAUL!" 

 The shot had slammed into the front of Paul's shoulder, low toward the
chest, throwing him back against the building they'd just stepped out of.
By the time Callum got him out of the continuing firefight, into the alley
behind a stack of crates, Paul was barely conscious, blood pumping out of
him in powerful arterial bursts. 

 "Goddamn it, tank commander, don't you do this," Callum whispered. Paul
remained motionless, an unnatural pallor stealing over his features.
Callum heard shouts and retreating footsteps as both sides of the dispute
realized that a bystander had been hit, and that they'd be wise to take up
their difference of opinion at a later date and another location. 

 He tried to stop hyperventilating, which he couldn't, and managed to get
the notebook and pen out of Paul's pocket, fortunately just before a flood
of red poured over the edge of his thoroughly ensopped jacket to start
soaking his jeans. Oh God. If the shot didn't kill him--like it
wouldn't--Callum was likely going to finish the job himself if he didn't
get this just right, but no time to go over it, to make sure it was just
right--and what the hell did he know about physiology? 

 But Paul didn't stand a chance otherwise. 

 He forced himself to calm for a second, and thought: Keep it simple.
Didn't seem to matter if there were some fantastic elements in what was
written, so long as it didn't go too far outside the parameters of the
show's usual level of weirdness...think of what you need, just what you
need, no more, no less... 

 Now. Write. 

 He did. 

 "Please work," he then whispered over and over, sitting on his heels next
to Paul with his eyes closed, concentrating for all he was worth, rocking
back and forth. "Goddamn it, you fucking notebook, I invoke thee or
whatever. Please work, please work, please AAAK--" 

 He launched himself sideways in shock at the touch on his shoulder, heart
hammering. Paul was still down, still covered with blood--schist, how much
had he lost, it was all over the place, Callum realized he'd been kneeling
in it, and he found himself gulping spastically as his whole digestive
tract suddenly tried to vacate his body. But Paul's eyes were open, wide
and stunned-looking, their normal slatey color unnaturally vivid in his
chalky face. The hand he'd touched Callum with fell limply to the
pavement. 

 Callum started to grab him, but pulled up at the last minute, staring at
the crimson ruin of Paul's sweater somewhere near to where the bullet had
gone in. "Is it...are you..." 

 Paul sort of whisper-gagged "It's gone, Cal...did it." 

 Callum immediately resumed his aborted lunge. 

 "Can't breathe--" 

 Cal loosened up a little; Paul seemed to be trying to sit up, so Callum
tried to assist. "How do you...are you, I mean, shit..." 

 Paul took a wet, nasty-sounding breath, cleared his throat and abruptly
turned his head, which at least partly answered that question. Cal,
holding him steady as the blood, and a few other unidentifiable
substances, came up, blurted in sudden fear "Oh, God--are you still hurt
in there?" 

 "No." Paul shook his head a little, nearly went over on his face as a
result and Callum hauled him back upright, as carefully as possible under
the circumstances. Paul cleared his throat again and managed "Weak. Sick.
No pain, except where I hit the bricks." He rubbed the back of his head
with a shaking hand. 

 "Breathing okay?" 

 "Some crud in the airway, but..." a few coughs, "...yeah. Can't...sit for
long, dizzy..." 

 "I know fuck-all about this stuff but I think it's weird you're even
conscious at all. I mean, you were out and you're still a couple of quarts
low and, and your blood pressure's gotta be in the basement from
the--hell, blood loss, you need water--" Callum lunged again, this time
for the pack. "Try to avoid walking us right into the middle of any more
shootouts, for fuck's sake--I nearly fucking died, you--" He shut up. He
knew that had sounded a bit strange, since he hadn't been the one to soak
up a bullet; but either Paul understood what he meant or he was just in no
condition to comment. Callum came back and held Paul half in his lap,
holding the water bottle for him, while he rinsed and spat effortfully
into a nearby drain. 

 After a few go-rounds, Paul choked "Makes two of us." He managed to get
some water down, though the swallow looked iffy there for a minute. There
was relative silence while Callum mopped at Paul's face and throat with a
bandage he'd dampened with the bottled water. 

 In a minute, Paul graveled "Good job, by the way." 

 "I'm sorry I couldn't do anything about the blood loss, or your clothes,
but--" 

 "You didn't have time. Besides, I don't..." he paused while Cal poured
more water into him, "...feel that comfortable with the idea
of...uh...messing that extensively with our, you know...body functions or
whatever. Fooling with blood production rates and stuff. Now I'm really
sorry I couldn't handle the math for medical school...anyway, we could
screw ourselves up bad if we're not careful." 

 "Yeah, that was my thought." 

 "Ick...we've got to get me some more clothes." 

 "Me, too." 

 "Oh...yeah, you're...Jesus. We're going to stink to the moon." 

 "We're already pretty bad, but we're not moving until you're a little
more steady. You're white as a sheet and you're shaking. And you feel
cold. Shit, shock, why didn't I think of shock--?" 

 "I could argue that out of makeup I'm always white as a sheet, but
fortunately I'm not completely stupid." He let himself lean heavily
against Callum. 

 "I think I am, too. In shock, I mean." 

 "Probably. Maybe not the same kind." 

 "Here." Cal detached the rolled blanket from the pack, digging out some
of the emergency food to go with the water. So what if it tasted like
shit. He then pulled Paul close again and spread the blanket over the two
of them. "I need to keep you warm. I know that much about treating shock."


 "You're getting the blanket disgusting," Paul muttered dazedly. 

 "So we'll deal with it. You passing out again or having some kind of
serious medical crisis or whatever would be even more disgusting. Finish
the water and eat something." 

 "You're asking a lot of a guy in shock to eat when he's soaked in blood,
and likely just swallowed a fair amount of it. I'm not that much of an
irongut, I'm afraid. Pardon the expression." 

 "Then at least drink the water. Your body needs something to make blood
with. I have no idea why you're conscious. There can be no blood left in
your body. Why are you conscious?" Paul ignored that completely, as,
Callum thought weakly, well he probably should, and began concentrating on
getting the water down in such manner as to not throw it back up all over
them both. 

 A couple of bottles of water later, Callum was leaning against one of the
crates, still occasionally cursing softly under his breath, holding Paul
steady. "Never get shot again, Paul, okay? At least not in front of me.
I'm getting too old to easily afford the time that kind of thing takes off
my life." 

 "Believe me, I've--" Paul had to roll over and spit out another mouthful,
wait for the spasm to pass, then finished speaking before trying another
swallow, "--just assigned 'Not Getting Shot' a very high priority on my
list of things to do."	

 "Where...uh, where?" Callum wondered, waving a hand in a listless,
roughly circular gesture. They had just come from the nighttime streets of
Chicago; by this time, Callum was ready to be happy with any setting as
long as it was fairly low-traffic and contained a chair. A bed would be
better. And after the last couple of jumps, which had been heavily
affected by their mutual exhaustion, the only leather or latex he wanted
anything to do with involved things like upholstery and rug no-skids. He
let go of Paul's wrist and dropped the pack, then himself, onto the floor;
carpeted, he noticed, that being the only thing he could notice with his
head hanging and his eyes crossing. 

 Some jumps back, Callum wasn't certain by now exactly how many, Paul had
risked composing a slightly more complex scenario for the transition from
the alley where he'd left way too much of his DNA; the gamble paid off,
getting them both adequately cleaned up and dressed. He'd done it that
way, rather than doing a separate paragraph for it, in order to keep the
noise level to a minimum; but later he'd second-guessed himself about it,
deciding it was too dangerous a move to perform regularly. After all,
they'd already established that the more they tried to do at once--the
more complicated they made the transitions--the greater the chance of
screwing something up and landing God-knew-where. 

 "Hotel. Near the consulate." Paul managed a few more steps and fell over
backward on the bed. 

 Callum noticed this with a sympathetic smirk. Paul might, on occasion, be
capable of carousing 'til all hours and then working a fourteen-hour day
none the worse for wear, but this kind of thing would make even the
bushiest tail droop. Callum wondered "Just how long have we been at this,
since the last time we...uh, breathed, anyway?" 

 Paul glanced at his watch. "You want that in dog years or human?" 

 "Shit." Callum rubbed his forehead wearily and added "And those last two
jumps we made were about maximally tangential. I mean, you thought the
Fraser/Thatcher was bad." 

 "I have to admit that ostrich feathers aren't as disquieting as rubber
corsets. Though after that last Fraser/Kowalski we did--" 

 "At least Dief wasn't involved in the last Fraser/Kowalski we did." 

 "Fuck all, anyway, I don't know how we got turned around--but we need to
take a break. Before we end up in a damn death story or something." 

 "Shit. Good point. What do you think would happen to us?" 

 "I don't know, but considering the way we've been reacting to the stories
we find ourselves in so far--actual gunshot wounds aside, even--I can't
imagine that it would be much of a party. You were nauseated for nearly an
hour by that slash redo of 'Ladies' Man'." 

 "Yeah. Schist..." Callum rubbed at the back of his neck. "Um, does your
head hurt as much as mine does?" 

 "Probably. Fraser put aspirin in the pack." 

 Callum managed to bestir himself a bit and started rummaging. With
difficulty, he pulled a plastic bottle out. "How the hell did he get so
much stuff crammed into this thing? We're talking collapsed matter here." 

 "He's efficient." 

 "Too efficient." Rather than expend the energy to haul himself up and get
water from the bathroom, Callum cracked open one of the water bottles;
after swallowing aspirin, he recapped both bottles and tossed them up on
the bed, aiming for Paul's general vicinity and hoping said bottles didn't
hit any soft and personal parts. Not hearing any curses from bedspread
height, he assumed they hadn't. "I just scraped my knuckles on something
I'm pretty sure is supposed to be soft. Bandages, I think." 

 "I wonder what bandages turn into when you subject them to intense
pressure," Paul slurred, sounding, less than shockingly, like a person
whose mind was starting to go from sheer exhaustion. He made a choking
noise as he tried to wash the aspirin down without sitting up all the way.


 "Asphalt, felt like. You okay?" 

 Paul made a damp "mmph" sound and recapped the water, let the bottle roll
out of his fingers to thump softly on the carpet, and then let his elbow
slide out from under him as he collapsed backward once more. 

 Quiet for a few moments. 

 "Um..." Callum realized that Paul was probably nearing unconsciousness,
lifted his head to blink in the other man's direction, and asked "We going
to play spoons again?" 

 Pause, then: "Oh. Uh..." Paul lifted a hand to rub at his eyes, and
muttered "Well, you were right about not wanting to end up at opposite
ends of the fanfic continuum because of a vivid dream. Or not realizing
we're in a story which destines anyone in the room we're in to get
attacked by Hottentots or something." 

 "Didn't happen last time. Which is a good thing. If it had, we'd be
navigating the ficverse in our underwear." 

 "No shit. Your shoulder holding up?" 

 Callum lifted a wrist, demonstrating that he was still joined to the pack
by what he was beginning to think of as a hemp umbilical. "Okay so far."
He'd fashioned the safety line when he realized that as often as he had to
set the pack down, they might end up without it if they were forced
into/suddenly taken by an unexpected jump. Speaking of which... "We could
do the same with each other when we sleep, by the way. Wonder why we
haven't. If I didn't know better, I'd say some slash writer is lurking
around, finding excuses to dump us on top of each other..." 

 Paul only chuckled and said "Don't get paranoid, Cal." 

 Callum crawled over to the bed and clambered up next to Paul. "Get...up
on the..." he shoved weakly at Paul's shoulder until the latter grouchily
dragged himself over and up to rest his head on the far pillow. Callum
piled himself against Paul, hauling a sweater-clad arm across himself,
turning to rest his back against Paul's front. "Did you set your watch?" 

 "Uh..." Whoops. Fade out. 

 "Paul. Did you set. Your. Watch." 

 "Mmno." 

 Callum pulled Paul's wrist up to where, after a couple of minutes of
playing trombone with it, since he wasn't wearing his glasses--Paul never
moved, at least not under his own power--he could get to the tiny buttons
and fool with them; he cursed softly a couple of times, before getting it
right and muttering "I gave us four hours. Think that'll do it? Paul...?" 

 Soft snore. 

 "I'll take that as a yes." Callum let his own eyes close.  

 Callum, wearing a towel, was shaving while Paul took his own turn in the
shower. Every fifteen or twenty seconds, Cal had to stop and mop the damn
mirror so he wouldn't end up having to apply a tourniquet to his face;
shaving without his glasses was already putting him to considerable
trouble, but they steamed up in about a picosecond every time he wiped
them off, since he wasn't enough of an asshole to open the bathroom door
to admit a cold, humidity-dispersing draft and freeze the cockles of
Paul's heart, ahem. Or his own, for that matter. And he and Paul couldn't
afford to be out of earshot and/or quick grabbing range of each other. 

 As he picked up the razor again, a thought occurred to him. "Hey, Paul?" 

 "(Glub)Yeah?" 

 "What about smarm?" 

 Paul made a noise that was probably supposed to be some member of the
"derogatory snort" family, but had technical difficulties involving the
water that was apparently spraying him right in the face at the time, and
so sounded more like he was blowing his nose on the shower curtain. "What
about it?" 

 "Wouldn't that be a natural bridge between slash and gen?" 

 "Uh...well, as you'll recall, last time we made it to gen, it was through
het." 

 "Yeah, but somehow we still got turned around and hit that twisted
out-there slash thing." 

 "That's because we were too tired to think clearly. What I write can't
cover everything, on its own it can only go for the most literal
manifestation of--" 

 "I know, but smarm might be a more stable link. It's true that we've
established that we can get to gen via het, but generally speaking,
there's no sex in smarm, and it frequently still has all the attributes of
slash, in terms of the relationship between you and me--" 

 "Fraser and Ray." 

 "Yeah, right, sorry. Anyway, it's got everything slash has except the
actual sex or gay relationship or whatever, and it's widely rumoured that
the biggest writers and proponents of smarm are actually repressed
slashers." 

 "Which always makes smarm writers froth at the mouth." 

 "Yeah, and I could give about as much of a damn about the whole question
as you do. But if there's enough truth in it, we might be able to make it
back to gen in a lot fewer jumps than it took when we went through het. I
know skipping steps is dangerous, but every jump has its own element of
danger, too, in case you hadn't noticed." 

 Paul didn't answer, likely out of deference to the fact that he knew
Callum was still freaking out just as bad as he was himself at the
brush-with-death jump. Callum continued shaving while Paul thought,
splashings and soap-spitting noises emanating from behind the shower
curtain. 

 Finally Paul said "Well, do you think you can help me write us to a smarm
story?" 

 "Um...depends. You'll have to show me where you are--where we are, in
Slashland--and how you got us here. But speaking as the color commentator,
I can tell you that my role would probably be mostly concentrating on
loving you more than life, death or God--" 

 "Kowalski loving Fraser. And vice versa." 

 "Yeah, right, but then after we get that down we'd have
to...um...well...I'm not sure how to put this..." 

 "Are you trying to think of a way to say that we'll have to mentally
render ourselves nadless?" 

 "I wasn't going to use that exact phrase, but yeah." Callum swished his
razor in the sink and took another mop at the mirror. 

 "Uh..." 

 Paul's lack of erudition in this instance spoke volumes, and Callum
replied "Yeah, I guess it would be a hell of an acting job at that. We
could...well, how young a character do you think you can play? Could you
play a kid? That'd give us some kind of handle on the
I-love-you-more-than-I-love-anything-else-alive-or-dead-including-my-wife-
but-I-feel-no-trace-of-sexual-desire-for-you problem." 

 "It's been a while since I did. I think the last time I played a kid was
the public service spot I did when I was a kid...so not since Romeo, at
least, and he doesn't count. He was a teenager." 

 "What about Hamlet? Nah, he was..." 

 "Right, another teenager. Besides, Hamlet was a big downer-freak
queernelly with an Oedipal complex bigger than Rush Limbaugh's gut, and
the whole world knows it. Okay, I guess the important thing here is that I
know it. Even if he screwed Ophelia. He pretty much just did that to be an
asshole, fuck the whole 'I did love you once' bit. I didn't believe that
line while I was doing it." 

 "Well, yeah, and I guess Romeo screwed Juliet. Or they screwed each
other, if there is any politically correct way to describe two
thirteen-year-olds doing it. I guess what matters is that they had sex at
all. What about that Ray Bradbury thing you did? Didn't you play a kid in
that?" 

 "No, another teenager." There was a rustle and Paul stuck his head around
the curtain, dripping on the tiles. "Is there any reason we couldn't use
something from an acting exercise? You know, all that 'be a tree' and 'be
a dustmote' shit?" 

 "I suppose." Callum pondered. "But I'm not sure just what I'd do, without
speech, to convey the concept of being, for all practical purposes,
rapturously in love with someone and having absolutely no desire
whatsoever, in any part of my mind or body, to pork this person." 

 Paul snorted. "Uh, how about imagining you have no functioning
genitalia?" 

 "I'm not sure just what I'd do, without speech, to convey that concept,
either. Or with it, for that matter, short of standing around yelling 'I
have no functioning genitalia'. And I think there's a law about that." 

 Paul put on an accent that might have been Hungarian, and might not, and
said "You must beeee the part, my boy." 

 They looked at each other for a second, and both of them broke out
laughing as Callum, bending over at the waist with his hands crossed over
his bathtowel-swathed privates, hopped around squeaking "Ouchie ouchie
ouchie ouchie--" 

 "Don't get lost in the role, Cal." 

 "I don't think that's possible short of a trip to Sweden." 

 "Women have sex drives, too." 

 "I know, but they're at least able to think about something besides sex
occasionally, and, generally speaking, we aren't. On some level, guys are
always thinking about it. Dead guys are thinking about it." 

 "Dead guys have no functioning genitalia." Paul vanished behind the
curtain again. "Smarm, eh?" There were the sounds of contemplative
rinsing. 

 Callum was finishing up shaving. "We should consider it. Anatomical
correctness aside, we might be able to get to gen in one jump that way,
without the danger that comes with skipping a bunch of steps, if I
understand what you've been doing up 'til now, which I don't, but you know
what I mean." 

 "Uh...yeah. I'll show you where we are and you can tell me how viable you
think the idea is." The water shut off. "Throw me a towel." 

 Callum threw a towel over the curtain rod. "I hope I don't have to
wrestle my shorts to the ground before I can get dressed. Your jump fix
got rid of the blood, but they've been in those pants long enough to claim
squatter's rights." 

 "Check the bureau. I think I remembered to write us a change, too." Paul
stepped out of the shower wearing the towel around his waist, and abruptly
sat down on the toilet lid. "Whoa." He clutched at the counter with one
hand. 

 "Shit." Callum rested a hand on Paul's shoulder until he was sure the
latter's face wasn't about to make the intimate acquaintance of the
linoleum, then picked up a glass from the countertop tray and turned on
the cold water tap. 

 Paul watched, a bit hazy, but still there. "It's okay, Cal, I just had
the water too hot." 

 "You don't usually faint from a hot shower, do you? Besides, your eyes
were doing that disgusting rolling-up-into-your-head-crossed thing there
for a second." Callum tested the water temperature and began filling the
glass. 

 "If you pour that over my head I'll kill you," Paul warned him calmly,
eyeing the filling tumbler. 

 "I want you to drink it, idiot." 

 "Oh. Uh, I can do that." 

 Callum didn't go so far as to hold the glass for him, but he did keep his
hand on it until he was sure Paul's two-handed grip was secure. Then he
turned and opened the bathroom door, admitting a shock of comparatively
chilly air. 

 "Callum! Christ." 

 "Just trying to cool you down a little. You're like an Ivory Snow
commercial." 

 "As I've said before, how the hell can you tell?" 

 "Right at the moment, by the fact that you ought to be a lot pinker than
you are, having just stepped out of a hot shower." 

 "I'm okay, Cal, really," Paul sighed. "You're like a spinster aunt." 

 "Shut up, Paul."  

 They walked, once again under the semi-cover of night, toward the
consulate; Paul, apparently navigating by keeping Callum in the same
general place in his peripheral vision, was poring over the notebook in
the intermittent blue-white light puddles of the streetlamps. 

 Callum stopped, then seized Paul by the shoulder and shoved him into the
dense foliage bordering the sidewalk. 

 "What the--!" 

 "Quiet!" 

 Paul's voice dropped at once. "What's wrong?" 

 "I think someone's staking out the consulate." 

 "Oh, that's just perfect. Fuck." 

 "You stay down; if it is the consulate he's watching, he might not
recognize me, but you're pretty much a shoo-in." Cal dropped the pack,
tugged his arm out of the tie and began climbing the tree they were under.
Paul got behind him and boosted. 

 "Fraser, do not touch my inner--shit." 

 "Do not touch your inner shit? I wasn't planning on it." 

 "Nobody loves a wiseass, and be careful when you grab that." 

 "Grab what?" 

 Callum muttered and struggled upward again, then grew still. 

 "See anything?" Paul near-whispered. 

 "Uh...yeah. I think I was right. And I think we have another problem." 

 Paul deliberately banged his forehead against the tree trunk and swore,
quietly. "What now?" 

 "Come on up. I don't know if this guy could see us if he looked right at
us, but in any case he seems to be concentrating on the consulate." 

 With a little bit more difficulty than Callum, Paul did so. Callum
reached down to grab his hand, got them arranged so Paul could sight down
the line of his arm when he pointed, and said "Big blue car. Blonde guy,
curly hair." 

 "Um...yeah, I see him. Barely. You recognize him from somewhere?" 

 "I think so, but it's hard to say for sure from here. Still, we don't
dare get closer to make sure, if he's who I think he is." 

 "Who?" 

 "His name's Geraint--no, sorry, this guy's name--if he's who I think he
is--is Nicholas Knight." 

 Paul blinked. "'Forever Knight'? The vampire cop show? Didn't they have
about as much trouble with casting and semi-cancellations as we've had?" 

 "Yeah, that one. Geraint Wyn Davies?" 

 Paul glanced at him. "Yeah, I know the guy. I always thought his name
sounded like he's from your neck of the woods." 

 "Close. He's Welsh. He never could get rid of all the accent; if you run
into him, ask him to say the word 'clue'. But do it out of arm's reach." 

 Paul smirked. "His version of the Kit-Kat problem?" 

 "Yeah. Anyway, the show was set in Toronto." 

 "So? Due South isn't." 

 "But it's filmed there." 

 Paul frowned, piecing it together, then looked even more grim as
realization dawned. 

 Not wishing to let anything go assumed, Callum finished "If that is Nick
Knight, we are in a crossover, and that is a Very Bad Thing." 

 "I know. It looks like your maundering in Kowalski's bedroom was
prophetic. If we can wander into other fandoms--" 

 "Strictly speaking, we haven't. Crossovers supposedly belong to as many
fandoms as are represented in them. So we're still in due South--" 

 "--but we're also in Forever Knight, if that is Knight. And when we
leave, we do not want to end up jumping fandoms." 

 "The rough thing--one among others--is that there's no cheap way to find
out who he is. Knight has super vamp powers, and I don't remember what all
of them are, if I ever even knew. So we can't get any closer to him
without risking his sensing us, one way or another, if that is him. I
think he's got his vamp senses focused on the consulate, or he probably
would have noticed us already. Are we even still in gen, I wonder?" 

 "There's plenty of gen crossovers," Paul considered. "We might be." 

 "Okay, so we won't panic about that just yet. What we do have to worry
about is whether that's really him, whether this is really a crossover. We
can't walk up and ask him; he doesn't kill anymore, but he and his undead
compatriots can do a version of the Jedi Mind Trick. Even if he decides
we're harmless, he'll talk us out of remembering why we were here...and in
our case, that might include talking us out of knowing who we really are.
I don't know exactly what he'd reprogram us with, but..." 

 "...but if he does, we're in the same boat as if we let the Fraser and
Kowalski vibes take our brains over. We'd be stuck here. Not knowing what
was going on." 

 "Exactly." 

 "Christ. Of all the crossovers to land in. Why do you suppose we did,
anyway? That's sure as hell not what we were aiming for." 

 "Um, I can think of a couple of reasons off the top of my head, but let
me see..." Callum held out his hand for the notebook. Paul gave it to him,
and Callum tried to read in the dimness. "Damn. Too dark." 

 Paul jumped out of the tree, alighting fairly easily. "I'll get the
flash--" 

 "No. Vamp eyes." 

 "Shit. We absolutely cannot get a break." 

 "Has it taken you this long to figure that out?" Callum dropped down next
to him. "Light's a little better here...okay..." Callum was flipping
pages, trying to take note of anything that might cause a connection
between their own fandom and Forever Knight's. Paul was resting against
the trunk of the tree, looking pensive. 

 "Night," Callum murmured. "For one thing, at least." 

 "Hm?" Paul looked up. 

 "In what Kowalski called...what was it...the fan overmind--Geraint's a
Canadian born in the British Isles, like me, and there's the Toronto
thing--and, uh, other stuff--but I think it was our bright idea to make
all the jumps from one nighttime set--sorry, I mean nighttime, period--to
another, to cut down on our chances of being observed." 

 Paul groaned. "And on a vampire show, nearly all the action would take
place at night. We've probably been fading toward a Forever Knight
crossover for the last half-dozen jumps or so, but there was no way to see
it until we got here. God, I've got brainsprain. I may never recover from
having to learn to think like an entire folk culture phenomenon." 

 "I know. Also, probably a lot of the people who're fans of Due South are
Canadian, or just fans of Canadian TV in general, and ditto for Knight.
And...um...the crowning touch is that I did a 'Forever Knight' in '92,
remember?" 

 Paul sighed. "No, I didn't remember, obviously," he snapped. "You could
have just said so." 

 "I didn't think it mattered. We haven't been showing up in everything one
of us has done before, have we? And we've both done things that have their
own fairly sizeable fanfic following. If it were that, we'd have at least
hit Highlander by now--or, even more likely, X-Files. I did two of those,
and Carter offered me the Krycek part before he offered it to Lea. So that
can't be the only reason we're here." 

 Paul exhaled. "True. Then I guess it's just...another piece of the
puzzle, along with the other factors you mentioned. Which kind of has to
be a good thing in terms of figuring out--" 

 "More like another brick in the wall. How are we going to keep this up
not even knowing what we don't know? We're still flying blind, for all
practical purposes--I mean, I'm right that we couldn't predict hitting
other stuff we've done first off, but you're right that we've likely been
fading toward 'Forever Knight' for God knows how many jumps, there wasn't
any way to see it until we got here, and if we can't--" 

 "Cal, calm down. There's no need to panic every damn time we have a
setback." Paul sounded tired again, still leaning against the tree, now
bending over to rest his hands against his knees, letting his head hang,
rolling his shoulders a little. 

 Callum felt himself frost over. "I am not panicking," he said quietly,
subjecting Paul to one of his smoldering looks; this one, however, was not
smoldering in a good way. "But one of these little 'setbacks' nearly
killed you, in case you've forgotten, and it really kind of bothered me,
though at this moment I'm having trouble remembering why, and--" 

 Paul sighed again and muttered "I'm sorry, Cal, I didn't mean it like--"
but Callum ignored him, continuing "--and I hardly think it's irrelevant
that we don't have any kind of clear map for what we might be walking into
next, and no way to create one short of spending the rest of our lives at
this. Which I don't wanna do, and which, since infinity keeps coming up in
this irrational equation, probably still wouldn't do it anyway." 

 Paul glared up at him, those perfect brows drawn in irritation. "Well,
what do you want to do, then, if you think it's too dangerous to keep
going? Maybe we should just call it a night--no pun intended--go introduce
ourselves to your toothy friend, and let him help us forget all about
getting home?" 

 Callum steamed a bit, then said "You know, you're starting to sound like
one of Janeway's 'Get the Crew Home' speeches on Voy--" 

 Paul lunged for him, covering his mouth. "Don't say it!" he hissed. 

 For a moment, Callum's eyes widened, then they narrowed again and he
firmly removed Paul's hand from his mouth. "Now who's paranoid? Don't you
start panicking over one crossover, Paul. Remember the transporter that
didn't work? There are limits, quote unquote? I hardly think a stray
comment is going to eventually land us anywhere in Star Trek." 

 "I don't know, Cal, it's a gigantic fandom...and, uh, the limits
thing--I'm a little less sure of that since the mother ship." 

 Callum groaned. "Terrific." 

 They were both quiet a moment. 

 Then Callum looked around rapidly, as though for something that might be
sneaking up; he calmed himself and leaned against the tree with one arm,
rubbing his face. 

 "What?" Paul wondered, glancing around himself. 

 "It occurred to me that I've worked in...um...a few things with what you
might call high slash potential, and if we do start jumping fandoms..." 

 Paul blinked. "Besides...? Oh, Jesus, you and Don?" 

 "Craig and Patrick, you mean." 

 "No," Paul said with dawning horror, "I fucking mean you and Don, we
could end up back in RPS--just a different fandom--and oh, no, Christ--!" 

 Callum's hand flew out in a restraining gesture as he realized what Paul
was thinking, and his Kowalski accent got thick. "Don't even say it! Don't
think about him!" 

 "Yeah, well, we'll both do our best there, but we better pray that any
guitars we see before we get home belong to Fraser." 

 "Believe me, I am." 

 Cal must have looked as miserably exhausted as he suddenly felt, because
Paul reached over again to touch his arm. "Relax, okay? Don't think about
any of that now, just think about what we're dealing with right here." 

 "Right." 

 Paul continued "You're right that it can't be that easy for us to be
wandering into crossovers, or we would have before now. So maybe...the
limits I was talking about expand for every additional fandom we're
technically in, to include it--that would explain the mother ship, I wrote
it in--" 

 Callum continued "...and if we can go from category to category within
fanfic, what's to prevent us from being able to make the same kind of
jumps from fandom to fandom? By way, naturally, of crossovers? Yeah, Paul,
that was my point." He took a calming breath, removing himself from Paul's
grip with as little detectable prejudice as possible--they sure as hell
weren't going to get out of this if they started exploding at each other
under the tension. Doing his best to seem conciliatory, if not exactly
contrite, he continued "But we have to assume our own reality is out
there, no matter what show, or book or movie or whatever, that we're stuck
in; and as far as the Voyager thing--Forever Knight's pretty close to Due
South in terms of fantastic elements...okay, it's a lot less subtle. But
still, we're too far away from something like Star Trek for that to be
much of a danger, or why would it have taken this long to hit a crossover
in the first place? Unless you actually change the story to include it." 

 "Yeah, I got you. I think we've beaten the question into submission,
Cal." Paul leaned against the tree again. 

 "You still don't look all that hot." Worry tinged Callum's tone. 

 "I don't feel all that hot, either. So, we've got about as good an idea
of how we wound up here as we're going to get, if we're where we think we
are. The only thing left to do..." 

 "...is make sure we are where we think we are. Shit. Did we...what'd I
say before, get kicked sideways? Are we no farther but no closer--just at
a different angle?" 

 "Before we worry about that, we need to be sure we're in a crossover, and
unless I do some more notebook magic, I can't see any way to accomplish
that other than to get a better look at your friend in the car. You were
right before--if he's staking out the consulate, for whatever reason, he
probably knows what Fraser looks like, even if that's not who he's
watching for--though odds are he is, of course. Anyway, Kowalski he might
or might not recognize." 

 "He's going to have found out what Fraser's partner looks like, too,
isn't he?" 

 "Maybe. But he's a Toronto cop, right? He's a long way out of his
jurisdiction here. He might not have had the time or the resources to get
thoroughly familiar with the appearance of everybody who might have
regular business at the consulate; if he had Chicago PD's full
cooperation, he'd have a liaison partner in the car with him right now." 

 "Don't count on it. He's not that thrilled with having partners, I seem
to recall. Probably has trouble keeping his fangs out of them. So what did
you want me to do?" 

 "Walk past on the other side of the street and take an unobtrusive look
at him. Even if it's past midnight here, the pack'll make it look like
you're just between flops. But don't skulk." 

 "I'm an actor, Paul, I think I can do a non-skulk walk." 

 "I'm going to circle around and meet you--" 

 Callum held up a hand at that and admonished Paul "Don't you try anything
furtive, either, because his vamp feelies are probably all primed to
detect stuff like that--I mean, who are you going to pay attention to, the
guy walking along without a care in the world or the guy sneaking around
like an escaped convict?" 

 "Cal, I know that!" 

 "Okay, okay," Callum said, making settle-down motions with his free hand.
"So just fly casual, and make sure you stay out of his direct sight, and
he'll probably ignore you, too, even if he does know you're there." 

 "Right...but Callum...there's one thing..." 

 Callum muttered "Yeah, I already thought of it. What if, against all
odds, it is Kowalski he's after?" 

 Uncomfortable silence. Paul muttered "I can still write something to--" 

 "You've been doing way too much of that lately. I think I felt the hot
breath of slavering RPSers on the back of my neck during the last couple
of jumps." Callum sighed, then said "I guess if he nabs me, I'll throw
myself on his vampy mercy. He's supposed to be a nice vampire, after all.
Unless this is a Bad!Nick story or something. But anyway, if he messes
with my head, you'll just have to hang back and keep me in your sights
until you can get me out of there. Do whatever voodoo it takes, and hope
it doesn't point up our location, or send me...somewhere you don't want to
send me." 

 "Yeah. Um, I'll meet you two blocks up, behind the far building." 

 "Right." 

 They both stood there, still uncomfortable. 

 "You know how in horror movies people start dropping like flies as soon
as the group separates?" Callum muttered. 

 Paul shook his head ruefully. "Yeah, first rule. Both for horror movies,
and for being lost--never separate. Even more crucial than usual in our
case." 

 "We haven't been apart for more than a few seconds even to use the can,
for God's sake, since we figured out there's no particular reason we
should both end up in the same place, since our heads have so much to do
with it, unless we're in contact with each other." 

 "Yeah, we got a disturbed look from Kowalski for that. The, uh, can, I
mean, not the figuring part." 

 "I noticed." 

 Another silent moment, and finally Callum reached out and clasped Paul's
wrist, squeezed once, and let go, turning around to start for the sidewalk
they'd been on when Callum noticed Knight. Paul followed, but turned the
opposite direction, heading the other way down the block. Callum, in
setting up his casual demeanor, nearly went into his Kowalski walk, then
tripped and staggered once in his haste to cut it out. 

 Five minutes later, he narrowly avoided committing a Skorr commercial
when he sighted Paul in a doorway of the designated building. Paul was a
little more restrained, just reaching out a steadying hand as Callum ran
up the cement steps to where he waited, out of direct sight of the street.


 "Well?" 

 "That's him, all right. And remind me never again to volunteer to walk
past an actual blood-sucking vampire in the middle of the night alone.
I've got eyetracks burned onto me. Next time I bump into Ger, I'll
probably scream and bolt." He gave an illustrative shudder. 

 Paul's mouth twisted, partly in sympathy and partly in displeasure at the
news. "Okay, we haven't wandered out of gen since that bit with Dief and
the rubber corset, when we were too tired to think straight. I'm going to
assume this is a gen crossover." 

 "I should probably argue for a more thorough check, but at this point I
could give a shit; I just want out of this story." 

 "I know how you feel, but let's put a little more distance between us and
the consulate, in case the sun's about to come up. We don't want to bump
into Vamp Cop when he heads out to hide from the light." They scuttled
around the corner to the side of the building facing away from Knight's
car, then across the street. "Wonder where he plans to go, anyway, this
not being his home turf." 

 "I'd think scouting out boltholes for just such emergencies would be
priority one whenever a vampire finds himself on alien ground--that, and
finding out where the herb shops and Italian restaurants are. Or maybe he
plans to spend the day in the trunk." 

 "Wouldn't he suffocate if it's sealed enough to block all sunlight?" 

 "I think he can take indirect sunlight." 

 "I guess he must, if the moon doesn't get to him." 

 "Paul. I don't think anybody writing anything to do with vampires is
terribly concerned with things like the fact that moonlight is reflected
sunlight. Next you'll be wondering if full-spectrum lamps like those
people with Seasonal Affective Disorder use would burn him up." 

 "Actually, I was wondering if he even needs air anyway, if he's undead
and everything." Paul was flipping pages to the most recent transition
paragraph. "It took me nearly forty-five minutes to write the last one,"
he muttered, waving the book in illustration of the word "one", "and I'm
at the stage that I can't just pull the line about it being night--it's
too integrated, every jump with the last one. Like using what we learn to
avoid gunfights and such, for example, but I can't just write 'no flying
bullets', because the number of things that could screw with us or send us
to the wrong place is..." 

 "...infinite," Callum finished. "No way to guard against infinite
possibilities one by one." 

 "I've got to be more general, more encompassing, without leaving enough
room for us to walk into something totally unexpected." He was
concentrating, making little margin notes as he walked. 

 "Where are you aiming for?" 

 "I'm going to try to get us back where we were; like I said, trying to
head straight backward probably wouldn't work, but I might be able to do
it if I deliberately plot a different route--a different description of
the same situation. We were getting closer to canon. It'd probably be
simplest to treat this like a...dimensional cul-de-sac, rather than like
its own jumping-off point. We don't want to fool with anything as
dangerous as a crossover, even a tame gen."  

 Cal sighed. Paul had done, well, not bad for this last jump, actually. At
least, in the sense that they seemed to be in gen, still; and, if they'd
made no progress, neither had they lost ground in any area but one. And
neither of them were precisely hurt... 

 But the characterization points had taken something of a dive. 

 "Ooookay," Callum sighed, rolling over once, still holding the notebook
in one hand and not breaking his gaze on it, pen in his other hand.
"Paul..." he was forced to look up when he got no response. "Paul." 

 Paul, lying on his back in the grass, kind of head-to-head with Callum,
who was now lying prone on the restored blanket--the pack, for the moment,
was tied to Paul--stopped gazing at the two gigantic grey squirrels making
inroads into the remains of his hot dog and fries. He tilted his head to
look at Callum upside-down, grinned, and said "Hah?" Then he giggled. 

 Callum still wondered how many people, on seeing him helping Paul get the
food down without severe incident, wondered whether this was Field Trip
Day at the local mental health facility and if Callum was some kind of
case worker. He scratched Paul's head soothingly, rather like scratching a
dog behind the ears, while positioning the notebook so they could both see
it. "Is this an 'n', or an 'r' with an 'i' right after it?" 

 "Where?" Paul wondered dazedly, his gaze wandering all over the page. 

 Callum put the pen down and took Paul's hand, sorted his forefinger out
of the general jumble of relaxed digits, wiped it in the grass to get rid
of some mustard, and placed its slightly guitar-string-callused tip
against the page. "Right there." 

 "Oh. S'an 'r'." 

 "It can't be." 

 "Why not?" 

 "There's no such word as 'rihannsu'...of course, there's no such word as
'nhannsu', either." 

 Paul yawned and went back to contemplating the squirrels and the shifting
green foliage overhead. He began singing under his breath. 

 The first time Paul had stumbled, when they had stepped out of the
alleyway near the consulate in this particular version of Chicago, Callum
had thought that the lack of sleep and the blood loss were still making
themselves felt in Paul's strained metabolism. Then, however, Paul had
started to giggle. Of course, Paul was an inveterate giggler, everyone
knew that; but, Lord spare him, not like this. Callum remembered the
sensation--rather like someone had removed his diaphragm and digestive
tract and his thoracic organs were descending into the vacancy--when he'd
realized that somewhere in this world, Constable Benton Fraser was bombed
off his ass. 

 Paul had tried to keep it together, he really had; but he simply couldn't
concentrate for long, no matter what Callum did to keep him alert--pep
talks, following along with his trains of thought so he wouldn't lose his
place, dumping a bottle of water over his head--for which Paul had been
too woozy to kill him--but none of it had gotten them anything, aside from
a confused and uncomfortably wet Paul. Fraser, he'd realized, must be
wasted, if this was the best Paul could do to keep the Fraser vibes out.
Thank God that Kowalski didn't seem to be bombed, too. All Callum felt was
the same tiredness he had on their last jump. 

 He pondered the columns of words, and ballooned and arrowed
interconnecting notations. Paul might not be that great at math, but the
guy could make verbally expressed concepts interlock with the complexity
of a three-axis Euclidean figure. Unfortunately, since it wasn't a
mathematical construction, Paul was likely the only one who could follow
that complexity in anything like a useful fashion. You had to be inside
Paul's head to know just what some of these freaking connections meant for
the jump in question, and, probably a lot more importantly, just why in
the name of all things holy there even was a connection between some of
these ideas. Early on, the paragraphs and short notations had resembled
something Paul might write in a script, and Callum was fairly sure he
could have deciphered it all well enough as little as five or six jumps
ago; lately, though, as Paul began integrating more and more complex
trains of thought, like a conceptual logarithm, the things he'd been
writing for each jump had started to resemble a computer program more than
a script or a story. Mostly it was complete sentences, but the words "non
sequitur" were purely inadequate to describe some of what appeared to be
intuitive leaps, or maybe just some kind of personal joke. That'd be like
Paul. 

 "Rihannsu," Callum muttered. No matter how he tried, he couldn't make a
real word out of Paul's scribble. Hell, with his luck it probably was a
word and he just didn't know it. There were a few of those, though this
was the only one in the most recent jump that he couldn't figure out. The
ones that made him really nervous were things that were decipherable but
incomprehensible. For example, the words "amethyst blow dart" with about
half a dozen exclamation points after it. And what the hell did "Trois
personnes ont ete tuees a Chicago dans la nuit de mercredi a jeudi" mean?
Well, he knew what it meant--"Three people were killed in Chicago early
Thursday morning"--but what did it mean? Was it the prime motivator of
their last jump, into an episode-like gen story? It was written like an
afterthought, but Callum had seen a manuscript, thanks very much, and he
knew that some little note off in the margin could easily be more
important than the main paragraph. And why the hell had Paul written it in
French? A nameless personal association? Damn... 

 A sunset-colored plastic beach ball bounced lightly past him in the
grass. He automatically reached for it and glanced around; a small,
overall-clad child of indeterminate gender was trotting toward him. He put
the ball back down and sent it toward the child with a gentle tap. 

 "What do you say, Eric?" called one of two women seated on a bench, just
off the cobbled walk that wound past them. 

 "T'ank-yoo," said Eric, while picking up the ball, falling over--the ball
was as tall as he was--and getting back up. He eyed Callum speculatively,
glanced briefly at Paul, apparently classified him as a neutral quantity,
and returned his attention to Callum. "Wanna play?" 

 Callum smiled a little, distractedly. "Love to, but at the moment I've
got to figure out what the heck a rihannsu is." 

 The child was aiming a kick at the ball, apparently having given over
picking it up as a bad job, but at this he paused, looked back at Callum
and said "A romilan." 

 Callum's gaze flashed back up. "A what? Romilan?" 

 "A romulan. Like Spock." 

 "Like..." Callum sat up and held his hands out. "Roll it over here,
c'mon..." smiling, he gestured come-hither with both hands. 

 Eric vanished temporarily via getting behind the ball, relative to
Callum, and kicked, savagely and substantially off-center. Most of the
force was expended by the resultant spin, such that the ball wandered
slowly around the area for a bit before it meandered close enough that
Callum could grab it. "You like Spock, eh?" 

 "Yeah. He's smart." 

 "Yeah, that's what I've heard. He's a romulan?" 

 Eric gave him a vaguely disgusted look, but positioned himself to give
the ball another kick when Callum sent it back toward him. "He's not a
romulan. He's a Vulgar." 

 Callum carefully did not laugh. "Right. But romulans are like him?" 

 "They look like him." 

 "Oh...they're a Star Trek alien?" Well, at least he'd heard of that. God
help him if he found any references to Pokemon in the damn notebook; Paul
did have kids, after all. Callum'd have to kidnap a kindergartner to
translate for him. 

 "Yeah." 

 "So...why are they sometimes called 'rihannsu'?" 

 "That's Romulan for Romulans." 

 'And this is "Star Trek for Dummies",' Callum thought, smirking, before
saying "Romulan for Romulans. Romulans call themselves 'Rihannsu'." 

 "Yeah," Eric said, receiving the ball with both hands, eyeing Callum
speculatively, with some concern, as though he might be worried that such
a pleasant but slow individual had been allowed out alone. 

 "Eric! Time to go!" The women on the bench were getting up. Callum
wondered how much he personally had to do with that. Then again, it could
easily be the stoned party on the grass next to him. Maybe more easily. 

 "Bye, Eric," Callum said, waving bye-bye. "Thanks for the tip." 

 "Bye," Eric replied, beginning to herd the ball in the direction of the
bench. 

 "Well," Callum muttered, "that was convenient." 

 "Of course it was." 

 Callum looked around. Paul had rolled over on his front, and was lying
with his chin propped in one hand. He smirked a dizzy smirk and said "It's
a story. Even more important, it's fanfic. Lotta damn convenient things do
happen." 

 "So do a lot of inconvenient ones. Like you starting to write in
Serbo-Croatian or something long about day before yesterday." Callum waved
the notebook accusingly under Paul's nose. 

 Paul just smiled and batted at it, rolling over on his back again. "Hey,
this in't my story." 

 "For which I should probably thank God," Callum muttered, flipping pages.
"I know your stories. They tend to be nearly as twisted as your song
lyrics. Okay, Paul, I realize that you're not entirely yourself right
now--for one thing, I happen to know you aren't a giggly drunk--" 

 As if to give the lie direct, Paul broke into another spate of giggles. 

 "Christ," Callum muttered. "I'm gonna drown him, I swear." He was pretty
sure that somewhere out there, Stanley Raymond Kowalski had just said the
same thing, but for once that thought didn't bother him. 

 "I heard that." 

 "Whoopee shit. C'mere a minute." Callum flopped down again with the
notebook; Paul glanced up, then moved unsteadily, on all fours, around to
where he could see it, too. 

 "Is this what you were doin' wit da--shit. Is this what you were doing
with the Rihannsu bit?" Callum had made notes in blue ink, as opposed to
the black Paul was using. Picking things out of the jumble was still a
pain in the ass. "Here, and, um...oh, back to here." He flipped the
occasional page as he spoke. "Then here, and...last jump, and...the
crossover? You got worried about the Trek thing?" 

 "Uh..." Paul blinked and his arm slid out from under him, landing him on
his face in the grass. Callum winced, but didn't comment. 

 "Yeah," Paul said into the grass. "Wanted to...big, BIG fandom, y'know.
Really big fucker. Part of world culture, by now. Head it off at
the...uh..." 

 "Pass?" 

 "Yeah." Paul struggled back up onto his elbows, nearly overbalancing once
(which is not easy to manage when you're on your elbows). "But we were,
you said that, well, and we were thinking about it, and..." 

 Callum tried to help. "And so...you think Trek fandom in particular was
big enough to...get us in trouble if you didn't guard against it in
specific?" 

 "Big fucking fandom." 

 Callum took this as assent and said "Right. Okay, so when you wrote in
the...the whatever, the keep-away factor, you chose an obscure reference
instead of one of the more well-known ones." 

 "Big motherfucking fandom." Paul fell again. 

 "Um, I think we've established that." 

 "Specific...got the okay." 

 "I know I'm going to regret asking this, but...what?" 

 "It..." Paul heaved himself up, getting his face out of the grass and
sidling over on his elbows to lie right next to Callum and make a
beckoning gesture with one finger, looking around for observers, as though
preparing to impart a great secret. 

 Callum's lips pursed in a wry expression. "Paul, you've been in show
business too long." 

 "Got the okay. From Paramount." 

 "What did?" 

 "Rihannsu thing. Not too many of...of the fans know about it...I mean,
compared..." 

 "Compared to something like 'Beam me up, Scotty, there's no intelligent
life down here'?" 

 "Yeah. Like that." Paul appeared delighted. 

 "Paul, I am trying like hell here, but I think you've lost me. Can we go
back to the okay from the producers?" 

 Paul fell on his face again, this time in what looked like aggravation,
and bounced his head in the grass a few times. Callum reached up and
comfortingly scratched around in his wildly disordered hair some more.
"Whooooa, there, big fella," he soothed. "Take it easy. One thing at a
time." 

 "The producers," Paul said, into the grass. "They...adopted it." 

 "What? Oh--you mean it was originally some fanfic thing?" 

 "No, pro. But most of the novels..." he trailed off, then picked his head
up again. "Help." He stared imploringly up at Callum. 

 "I'm doing my best to, Paul. So...you're saying this thing, this Romulan
thing, was something in a Trek book. I mean, a pro book." 

 "Yeah." 

 "And that's not considered canon, usually." 

 "Yeah." 

 "But if the producers...what'd you say, adopt it--then it is considered
canon, but it still manages to be a relatively unknown canon point." 

 "Yeah," Paul said, threw an arm around Callum's neck and squeezed. Rather
hard. 

 "Gglk!" Callum pried the arm loose. "Yeah, yeah, love you too. So you're
saying this was a way to keep the whole shmear, the whole damn fandom, out
of our path, without calling attention to ourselves. I mean especially
since I didn't know...uh, oh. No, Paul, wait, I'm sure it's okay." Callum
was patting Paul's back hastily, trying to diminish the almost comic look
of alarm that had overtaken the other man. "Okay? Okay." Callum returned
to the notebook. "It's all right that we both know about it now. It won't
automatically endanger us. I don't think. Anyway, it's not like we have
much choice. So let's take another look...damn. I wonder what the odds are
of some toddler existing here who happens to know what a 'Rihannsu' is and
walking right up to...what?" Paul was eyeing him strangely. 

 "Of course the kid...of course he knew." 

 "Why 'of course'?" 

 "'Cause whoever wrote this story knows it." 

 "And we got here...via your equation or whatever--which it was
in...so--no, not everyone--I mean, every character--could know all the
things the writer knows, because that would--wait, Paul, I still don't get
it." 

 Paul had been trying to get up; he managed to get himself vertical by
hand-climbing a tree with some conveniently low branches. He gazed down at
Callum pityingly, as though perhaps echoing Eric's thought about why was
Callum out alone. "Y'know, issa good thing you're cute or you'd never get
laid," Paul opined, shaking his head slowly--then swayed a little too far,
the pack's safety tether tugged him off balance and he fell over the line
of soft evergreen bushes he was next to, vanishing entirely with a muffled
yelp. 

 Callum sighed. "Okay. I understand now. I'm dead, and hell is Paul
giggling drunk and generally making like an idiot-savante in a public
park. And having the nerve to insult my intelligence, for pete's sake.
Paul! Hold still, you're just making it worse." He got up, stashing the
notebook in his pocket with the blue-ink pen, shaking his head at the weak
stirring of the bush branches. "One way or another, I have got to get you
out of here..."  

 "Well, you got me out of there. One way or another." 

 "This is not my fault." 

 "Well I'd like to know whose, then." 

 "You wanna talk about fault, let's--unf--talk about your little dead cat
bounce with the characterization points and the
binge-drinking--unf--Fraser which forced me to handle the whole thing
myself in the first place!" 

 "At least all I did was lie around and giggle. You're the one who kept
wandering off with that stoned smile on your face in the schmoop series we
landed in." 

 Callum glowered. "I--mph--still only have your word for that." 

 "You see? You don't even remember it!" 

 "Well what was I supposed to do about it? Kowalski was--" 

 "--feeling pretty damned contented, obviously, but so was Fraser, and I
kept my shit together--" 

 "And landed us in that AU--erf--" 

 "It was only barely an AU!" 

 "--that it took us three jumps to get back to mainstream gen from, and
what do you mean 'barely' an AU? 'Klondike Gold Rush Kowalski and Canadian
Rockies Mountie Fraser in 1897'? Paul DUCK!" 

 Paul dropped like a stone and Callum swung the heavy shaft of wide-gauge
rebar that had once been part of a support, in the building where they
were trapped, into the space vacated by Paul's upper body. 

 Actually, they could get to one of the windows in the burned-out hulk,
but by the time they'd taken shelter here, the denizens of the radioactive
wasteland that was this story's Chicago had become too numerous for that
to be of any help; it was like a mob scene at a corndog stand. Apparently
said denizens knew a non-irradiated food supply when they saw one, and
unfortunately they were not looking at the pack Paul was still tied to. 

 "Paul, damn it--" 

 "Judging by what I've already got here, there's one way I can get us out
of here quick and know where we're going, but you're not gonna like it." 

 Callum swung again and a meaty thud resounded as their latest assailant
bounced down the huge pile of building debris Callum was defending while
Paul worked. "Then do it! They're starting to climb the walls, and I can't
keep 'em off from below and above!" 

 "Okay--" Paul wrote, stood up, unceremoniously hoisted Callum to the
window above them and joined him--there was a lot to be said for sheer
terror in some circumstances, Callum thought vaguely--then overbalanced
them both toward the outside. 

 "Paul!" Callum dropped the rebar and grabbed Paul's wrist--  

 ---and landed with a thud on Fraser's desk at the consulate. Paul landed,
also with a thud, on Callum. The pack landed on Paul. 

 "Glfgk!" Callum complained. 

 The pack rolled off, and Paul followed it. Callum tried to move, groping
around to see if he'd been impaled on anything and just hadn't realized it
yet. 

 Uh, oh. Something...definitely not a desk set through the abdomen,
though. He shuddered. "Uh, Paul..." 

 "Just hang on, Cal, I'll be right there." Paul was throwing everything
off the cot and pulling Callum off the desk, supporting him around the
waist, and helping him over, sitting down and lifting him a little to hold
him against his side with his left arm as he flipped pages frantically
with his right. "Shit..." 

 Callum shuddered again. "Paul...?" He noticed that the second voicing of
Paul's name had come out about an octave higher than the first, and he
could feel his body trying to draw itself into a fetal position. When he
realized that Paul was holding him as if he'd expected Callum to curl up
like that, Callum drew breath to demand just what the living hell they'd
landed in this time, but what came out was a loud gasp as he felt a sharp
wrench of anguish that practically bugged his eyes out, and he burst into
tears. The part of his mind that wasn't doing this sackcloth-and-ashes
routine kept enough poise to press his face into Paul's midriff to stifle
the noise. This caused his glasses to hurt the bridge of his nose and
probably Paul's ribs, but that was kind of low on the problem priority
list right now. 

 He dragged in a wet breath and tried again. "Paul--" 

 "Shh, it's gonna be all right, Cal. I've just got to get this--" 

 "I'm so sorry, I didn't even know there were post-apocalyptic due South
fanfics!" 

 "I know, Cal. It's okay. It's all right, I know. Just hang on. Breathe." 

 Callum found himself sort of crawling into Paul's lap, if that had been
possible, which it wasn't, since Paul had his right heel on the edge of
the cot, holding the pack steady with the side of his leg as he scribbled
in the notebook that was open on the tough green canvas, but Callum gave
it a damn good try. 

 "Paul..." 

 "Shhh, Cal, I know. I've just got to...figure this out..." 

 "What...where are we? I feel like...I didn't mean--" 

 "I know. But it'll be all right soon. Shhh..." Paul was not a father
twice to no good purpose. He did an excellent job of soothing Callum,
concentrating on what he was writing, and keeping them stable on the cot
all at the same time. Of course, he pulled off that kind of multitasking
every day at work anyway. Sometimes in his sleep. When the top of Cal's
head banged Paul in the chin, Paul just levered him carefully around
sideways with the arm devoted to Callum-care and kept writing. When Callum
got his arm around Paul's neck, sort of, hanging on around his waist with
the other, Paul's eyes bugged a little and he paused to move Callum's arm
off his throat, then returned pen to paper. 

 Callum managed "What the hell kind of story is this?" 

 "A death fic." 

 "What? You deliberately wrote us into a--who dies?" 

 "Me." 

 "WHAT?" The word was half-disbelief, half howl of anguish. 

 "Well, Fraser, I mean. Kowalski thinks it was his fault." 

 "Is that why...why you...why I..." 

 "It's why you're contemplating suicide, yeah. Kowalski's probably pretty
torn up. Worse than even the Botrelle thing. That's why I said you weren't
gonna like this." 

 Kowalski? What about Fraser? What about you?" 

 "I'm fine, Cal. I'm right here, see? Right here." 

 "But Fraser's--" 

 "--in there." Paul jerked his head toward the closet without looking up
from the notebook. 

 "In...oh." 

 "Yeah, hanging with his dad." 

 "So that's why you're not..." 

 "Feeling pretty darn crappy, right. It's only Fraser's body that died.
His POV actually doesn't leave the story." 

 "What about your body? Won't you--" 

 "Uh, apparently not," Paul muttered. 

 "You didn't know you'd be okay? How could you take that kind of--" 

 "It was better than taking the chance with you, you were a lot less
likely to continue hanging around as a ghost! Uh, Kowalski, I mean. Beyond
that, my choices were about as limited as it gets." 

 Callum buried his face in ribs again and just sniffed and whimpered for a
minute, still clinging to Paul like he was the last helicopter out of
Saigon; Paul kept absently stroking his back with one hand. 

 "You're okay?" Callum finally tried, mentally rolling his eyes at his own
tone. Fuck. This was pathetic. But as embarrassing as it was, some part of
him couldn't shake the conviction that something godawful had happened, or
was going to happen, to Paul. Nor could he shake the further conviction
that if Paul died, he personally couldn't see a lot of reason to go on
living himself. Which was ludicrous. Of course he'd be sad if Paul died,
probably cry and the whole works, but this was...then the sheer, crushing
grief won out and he gave up, sobbing softly. 

 Paul held him tighter. "I'm okay, right here, breathing in and out, see?
It's okay. Everything's going to be fine." 

 Callum huddled miserably for another few moments, and then Paul got up to
stick the notebook back in his pocket. To Callum's eternal humiliation, he
made a plaintive sound and clutched at Paul, trying to pull him back down.


 Paul took his hands, murmuring "Jesus, Cal, I'm sorry about this." Then,
with the comforting singsong in his voice again, he said "Come on with me,
now, come here..." Callum tried closing his eyes to see if that made the
awful immediacy of Kowalski's problem any more distant, but that was no
good because he couldn't see Paul that way and something in his head was
screaming that if he turned his back for even a second, Paul was doomed,
so he reluctantly let Paul guide him to his feet. "We're going through the
door," Paul said, "and I need you to concentrate for me, okay?" He spoke
as though to a small child. Callum, unfortunately, couldn't bring himself
to get pissed off about that, which scared him worse than anything else
had so far. 

 "Okay," Callum quavered uncertainly, sniffling. 

 "Put together your Kowalski..."  

 Callum was not entirely sure just what the two of them did, though he
supposed it had to have involved walking through the office door, and a
reasonable contribution to their navigation of the fictional continuum
from his end, because the next thing he knew, when he opened his eyes and
the world had settled again, Paul was calmly holding a couple of tissues
up to his face. "Blow," he said quietly. 

 Mortified, Callum didn't even think of protesting. Paul changed wads of
tissue, and, with obviously practiced technique, finished wiping his face
up. 

 "Uh...thanks," Callum muttered at his lap, throat still thick and aching,
but the sheer gut-busting angst had subsided, at least. He wondered if
Paul could conceivably be so major an asshole as to EVER mention this
again. Nah, nobody could be that low. So he decided to quash the childish
urge he was feeling to point out that the only reason he'd completely
imploded at the thought of Paul's demise was the Kowalski phenomenon, as
had knocked Paul on his can (in its Fraser version) when Fraser was
wasted; but that sounded, to put it mildly, a bit less than gracious. He
cleared his throat and sniffed, then asked in an unfeignedly nasal voice,
"Where are we?" 

 "We're in a very obscure drabble, if I've done my job right. We should be
okay here for a while, at least." 

 "Uh...Paul..." 

 "Cal, you don't need to say anything. That was Kowalski flipping out, not
you. It's okay. Take a few deep breaths. It's just like coming down from a
rough scene." 

 "I do love you, you know?" 

 "I know." 

 "Good, because I've gotta tell you that there are times when I want to
put on some stiletto heels and do the Watusi on your alabaster-skinned
face. What the fuck were you thinking?" 

 "I was thinking that we didn't have a lot of options," Paul said, with a
dry smirk at Callum's choice of imagery. "And that somebody really beat
the shit out of that bunch with the radioactive ugly stick, and I couldn't
stand it if your face--" he started to reach for Callum's cheek. 

 Callum wasn't pacified by the attempted silliness. Swatting Paul's hand
down, he snapped "Don't you ever take a risk like that again with your
life, you hear me? Not as long as I'm the only one around who could
possibly bail you out--because frankly, I don't need that kind of
responsibility, not in a place that'll turn around and bite your ass worse
than the mushroom when Alice fell down the hole, okay?" Hell, he sounded
petulant even to himself, not to mention semicoherent. 'Nice try with the
tough guy act, Rennie,' he thought, almost too wrung out to care anyway. 

 Fortunately Paul was decent enough not to remark on it; he only said "I
won't, if it's humanly possible to avoid it. Besides, staying where we
were was an even worse risk." 

 "Which is the only reason I haven't killed you myself." Callum sighed and
fell backward on the bed they were sitting on. "I could sleep for a week."


 "Yeah, I know what you mean." 

 This time nobody bitched about the necessity of having to spoon up to
sleep.	

 Callum didn't know at first what woke him, because he felt dead,
still--oh, smooth choice of words (thoughts?) there. He winced a little as
his various sore muscles, cramped from Kowalski's bout with Fraser's
death, announced themselves. He managed to pull his eyes open. 

 Oh. That was what had woken him, the "Hey! Wherethefuck is he?!" feeling
of not feeling Paul. If they didn't get out of this soon, Paul was gonna
have a really fun time explaining to his family why Callum now couldn't go
through a door or sleep without him. "Kids, this is uncle Callum. He and I
find ourselves with a little problem involving classical conditioning, and
so he may be something of a fixture around here for a while..." But no
problem for now; there was a warm, square hand resting on his ankle. He
looked down toward it. 

 Paul noticed the movement; he was lying across the foot of the bed,
propped on an elbow, staring contemplatively at the notebook. He glanced
up at Callum, then looked back at the book. "Hi. Did I wake you?" He
absently squeezed the ankle he was holding. "Thought it might help if I
held on to something." 

 "No, not when you moved. I didn't wake up until my back got cold. Does
Martha snore?" 

 Paul smiled a little and didn't bother to answer, evidently grasping and
dismissing the joke at the same time. 

 "What are you working on?" 

 "Well, I just thought of something while I was asleep..." 

 Callum smiled, his eyes closing again. "Like when you sleep at work
standing up?" 

 "Probably." The sound of a small chuckle. "I'm wondering if I've found a
way to make it to canon in one more jump. I hit the death fic, and then
this thing, right on, using a pretty simple twist--when it worked for the
death fic, I knew I could use it, and it worked again for the drabble--and
I think I just realized what we did right. Not that I could explain it to
save my life..." 

 Callum rubbed his eyes. "Then don't try, you'll probably jinx the whole
thing. But is, uh, is that safe?" Or something. God, he needed more sleep.


 "I'm not sure yet. I'd need you." 

 "I think we've established that when it comes to making jumps, we need
each other. It doesn't seem to work very well when only one of us handles
it, at least since the equation's gotten so complex." 

 "Good point," Paul said, making a face. "I guess together we make at
least half an idiot. You should go back to sleep. It's only been an hour
or so." 

 "You should go back to sleep, too. We've also established that exhaustion
is as bad as there only being one of us in the driver's seat, when it
comes to queering a jump." 

 "Yeah," Paul murmured, still staring at the notebook. 

 "Write down what you need to remember and come back here. You're beat,
and I sure as hell don't want to have to go through that weird
tabloidesque slave-market scenario again, or something even worse. Such as
smarm, God forbid." Callum shook his head. "I'm still trying to coax my
nuts back down out of my abdominal cavity. That was not one of the better
ideas of my life." 

 Paul looked at him, smiling again. "At least it worked. Though now I know
why you've been so snippy." 

 "Your nuts aren't any better off than mine, I'm willing to bet. Come back
to sleep, eh?" 

 "Uh...yeah, okay." Paul, barely managing to train his eyes on what he was
doing, stuffed the notebook back in his pocket and crawled back up the
bed. 

 They were quiet for a few. 

 Then Callum muttered "We're gonna need couples' therapy after this." 

 Paul was silent a foggy moment, then puzzled "Huh?" 

 "I think we're gonna be the western medical community's test case on how
to counsel two mature, intelligent people--" 

 Paul snorted. 

 "Okay, intelligent people, at least, both of them willing to work and
sacrifice and do whatever it takes...to find a way to break up." 

 "You know what, Cal? I love you, too." 

 "Of course you do. You're a smart guy. Great taste." 

 "Cal?" 

 "Yes, Paul?" 

 "Shut up." 

 "Yes, Paul."  

 "Wait--didn't we end up in schmoop that time?" 

 "Uh, no, low-grade smarm. Just after buddy-sex was schmoop." 

 "Oh, right, right..." Paul was making a note in the margin. 

 One thing about being holed up in a drabble was that the damn things were
so short, even the slightest changes were readily apparent; just the
actions they'd taken since they woke up the second time had likely put
pages on the thing. Usually they rested in the longest story they could
make it to before they passed out. Fortunately drabbles tended to be
throwaway stories that vanished into the fandom ether, though they might
still technically exist in an archive somewhere. In any case, they could
reasonably hope the RPS contingent wouldn't have any connection to this
drabble in particular. 

 They'd woken when Paul's watch went off and got cleaned up, both of them
with a grim feeling of inevitability, sort of a home-or-bust
determination. They had then torn through a gigantic bag of barbecue
take-out that Paul informed Cal could be found on the other side of the
door. Being confused and battle-fatigued and so jumpy they were sometimes
afraid to let go of each other even when they were awake, and eating the
kind of crap Benton Fraser thought was fine dining, was just too damn
much, drabble or no drabble, especially when they were about to make the
big leap to canon, and, hopefully, the even bigger leap to reality right
after. Then they got cleaned up again, barbecue being what it is, and now
they were plotting. Literally. 

 "You know, in canon...Fraser and Ray are us." 

 "No, we're them. No, wait--" 

 "Okay, whatever, what I mean is, will we metamorphose into being Fraser
and Ray? Then we'll just be stuck in canon forever instead of fanfic." 

 Paul shook his head. "I don't think so. Canon is still fiction. Fraser
and Ray will exist separately from us there, just like in fanfic." 

 "If you're sure." 

 "Uh...yeah." 

 "Oh, that's real comforting." 

 "Shut up, Cal."  


(wind!)BANGsunfliesover(ow!)VIBRATION(grabsomethinggrabsomethinggrabsometh
)BANG!--GlassescatchouchTHUD, OW, PAUL! 

 Right in his face, yet. Paul was lying smack on top of him; the both of
them were on top of something hard that was making a hell of a lot of
noise. Not that Cal could hear it; all he could hear was the air blasting
by them at what felt like mach three, and his back was doing something
human backs were not meant to do. It felt like he was trying to stretch
out across a large stack of unequally-sized wooden crates. 

 But he could feel the rumbling, for sure, even if he couldn't hear it; he
had a couple of old fillings that he didn't think were going to survive
this, any more than his back was going to if Paul didn't get off of him
somewhere in the neighborhood of right now. "Where are we?!" Callum
screamed. 

 Paul was trying to put his glasses back on his face for him. "Turn your
head--" 

 "Thanks, now what the FUCK happened?! This is not the final scene of
"Odds!" 

 "No shit. I, uh, I hate to say this--" 

 "Paul, you're breaking my back--" 

 "Sorry, that's the pack, it's trying to pull you over the side, that's
why I'm--um--here--" Paul started moving, apparently prepatory to letting
Callum up, but suddenly Callum felt a sensation of hideous cold and
stabbing pain in his left wrist and hand. 

 "OW! Paul--I think the rope, uh, I think it--Paul--?" 

 "Oh, God," Paul whimpered, his eyes riveted on, apparently, the arm
Callum was flailing in reaction to the loss of the pack. 

 "Paul, what--" 

 "We're in canon," Paul said quickly, "but--" 

 "The train show," Callum realized. "You wrote for that one. It's probably
easier for you to whatever, to resonate with, than the ones you didn't
work on the scripts for." 

 "Uh, also I nearly got killed--during a fight scene on the roof up here.
We unhooked the safety cables because we couldn't get a shot without them
showing up--" 

 "I know, and you fell and nearly slid off while you were going over a
bridge. Okay, we got bumped to a different ep, we've never tried the canon
jump before, it's not too surprising we ended up in one that would kind of
grab you like that; the important thing is we're in canon. Now we've
just...gotta get to...somewhere we can rewrite the last...I mean, we wrote
the reality jump for...from 'Odds', so we'll have to redo the next jump or
it might not...Paul, I'm..." Callum felt a strange breaking-up sensation
behind his eyes, as though the signals of the outside world, being picked
up on his personal receivers, were starting to stutter. 

 "Cal? Oh, my God--" 

 "What...?" Callum's voice faded alarmingly before he could get the rest
of his intended sentence out. He tried to shake his head, resulting in a
fuzzy roar in both ears. 

 "Cal, the pack rope didn't slide off! It went right through your wrist." 

 "It--oh shit--" 

 "Kowalski didn't exist yet in this ep. There's--I don't know, nothing to
anchor you or something!" 

 "But how did we...if it--" 

 "I don't know, whatever, it doesn't matter now--oh, Jesus, Cal, stay with
me here--" 

 Through the increasing haze, Callum realized that the abruptly greenish
cast to Paul's features probably had something to do with what was causing
his own gut to twist--Paul, in apparent sudden concern, had tried to touch
his face, and all Callum had felt was a vaguely invasive sensation of
pressure, amorphous and slight. He didn't even want to think about what it
must've looked like to Paul, to put that expression on the guy. 

 "We don't have time to rewrite, we've gotta go while you're still here,"
Paul was shouting over the wind. 

 "But we might end up--" 

 "You might end up nowhere!" 

 "Can't you just go? Maybe I can--" 

 "I can't go without you, you know that, now if you can still move hang on
tight and remember what we talked about for the reality jump!" 

 Callum wasn't in any shape to argue. Callum was not altogether sure he
was in any kind of "shape" whatsoever. His back didn't hurt any more, but
this largely had to do with the fact that he couldn't feel much of
anything but a miasmic sensation that he supposed must be the pressure of
Paul on top of him, wrapping himself around whatever parts of Callum
seemed solid enough. "Whatever you can hang on with, do it, and
concentrate!" 

 "Yeah," Callum managed, but judging by what he could see of the look on
Paul's face it had sounded more like it had felt coming out than like the
word he'd intended. Something like "hhhaaa(mufflemuffle)". 

 "We're going to roll off the side. I'll handle it, you just hang on and
focus. On three. One--two--" 

 "--three," Callum joined in, or hoped he had, and the next moment, in
addition to trying to hold the necessary coordinate reinforcement in his
mind, he flashed on what it might be like to be soaked in a vat of
Lidocaine and then tossed over Niagara falls in a closed barrel. The last
fragment of thought that he could isolate had something to do with
wondering if he was still wearing his glasses, and hoping they made the
jump with him. Assuming there was enough left of him to make it. Hell,
they might make it without him. He felt an all-encompassing blow like the
hand of God slapping him into the afterlife, and then everything went
dark.  

 The next thing he was aware of was something unpleasantly cold and wet
along his back and the backs of his legs. Then he noticed that his ass
hurt like an absolute bitch. After that, he realized that one, he was
naked; two, the weight holding him down was Paul, who was also naked (and
why the hell did Callum always end up on the bottom when the two of them
had to take a mutual dive?); and three, the reason he felt something cold
and wet along his back was that he was lying on a white cloth on top of
something he could only tentatively identify, but it smelled like Jell-O
salad. Part of the cloth was lying over them, too; they were wrapped in it
kind of like a human burrito. 

 "Oh God no," he whimpered. Lying naked in Jell-O with an achy butt and
Paul on top of him did not serve to reassure him that they hadn't simply
completed some kind of full circumnavigation of the fic continuum and
ended up right back in RPS. "Paul? Can you move?" 

 Paul could, evidently. The next thing Callum knew, he was being hauled
upright, still under the cloth, various comestibles in different degrees
of disrepair were falling off of him in all directions, and there was a
concrete floor under his feet. "What the--" 

 "Come on!" Paul was behind him, shoving. He didn't sound like he was in
much of a mood for answering questions. "Move it already!" 

 "I can't see anything. Where the hell do you want me to--" 

 "Just go! That way, up, down, I don't care, but I'm not getting caught
with you like this, this place is chock full of cameras, now go!" 

 Then they were moving, huddled under the cloth, doubtless leaving a trail
of food and containers splopping and rolling around in their wake. "I
think I broke my butt, ouch, ouch ouch OW, damn it, not so fast!" 

 "I wouldn't be surprised. We fell about a story before we hit the
catering table. It collapsed under us. God, I only hope nobody happened to
be looking right where we materialized...ow!" This last was uttered in
connection with the distinctive crash of a light stand being knocked over,
apparently by Paul's face. Then they both ran into something, who knew
what, maybe a wall, and the general sounds of mayhem and of people in
various states of consternation were increasing dramatically. 

 Paul seemed to know where he was going, at least. "Where are we?!" Callum
wondered desperately, trying not to slip and kill himself on what felt
like the ketchup or something that was dripping down his side and on down
to his feet, to create little bare Callum-footprints on the floor. 

 "On the set. Keep moving, my trailer's this way--" 

 "We're back? I mean home? I mean, not in RPS? We're naked, if you hadn't
noticed." 

 "There's no way to tell yet, we won't know until we OW--" he had just hit
something unyielding, bouncing back against Callum. 

 "We won't make it to your trailer alive unless at least one of us sticks
his head out of this thing for a look around." 

 "No, I refuse to be stuck explaining this! We're almost there....here we
are, fuck it, fuck it fuck it fuck it, just fuck it--" he was groping
frantically at a vertical surface. "Ha, here's the door, come on, come
on--" 

 The door slammed behind Callum, as loudly as a trailer door can slam, at
least, and he risked a peek out of the tablecloth. "It's okay. There's
nobody in here but us." 

 There was, however, an immediate pounding on the door, accompanied by
confused demands for a freaking explanation. "Fuck off, we're busy!" Paul
bellowed as the tablecloth slid off them both. 

 "'Fuck off we're busy'? Is that the best you can do?" Callum asked,
rolling his eyes. 

 "Do you want to explain what the hell just happened to everybody and his
fucking dog?" 

 "Uh, right now I'd be happy just to wash this food off myself and rub
some sports cream on my ass." 

 Paul sighed. "You know where the bathroom is." He collapsed on the couch.


 "Uh, you might wanna put some pants on before you get too comfortable,
Paul. I hear it's generally not considered salutary to the level of
professionalism in a workplace to have the boss running around naked.
Though I guess if the boss in question looks like you, it might actually
be kind of a morale booster, unless it made all the guys feel inadequate
or something--" 

 "Asshole!" Paul grinned at him and flung a cushion at his head. "The
really scary thing is that I no longer feel even slightly strange about
being naked in front of you. Or seeing you that way. I mean, after what
we've been through, mere nudity doesn't seem all that titillating." 

 "That is scary," Callum agreed, mopping halfheartedly at himself with one
hand. "Christ. Is this...what is this? Banana yogurt or something?" 

 Paul reached over and ran a finger down Callum's arm, then tasted the
finger. "No. It's pineapple." 

 "How come you're not covered with food?" 

 "I landed on the napkins and stuff, and you, not the food." 

 "Christ," Callum muttered again. "After you get dressed, could you send
somebody to my trailer to get me some clothes?" 

 "No problem. Why do you suppose we're naked anyway?" 

 "Well, considering my glasses made it, I'm going to assume it's because
we were wearing fictional clothes. You wrote them for us, remember? When I
was wondering if I was gonna have to subdue my shorts with a hammer?" 

 "Then..." Paul grinned. "We are back in reality. If we'd hit RPS again,
we'd still be dressed." 

 Callum grinned back. "Yeah. I guess that's true." 

 They just looked at each other for a moment. Then Paul started to giggle,
and they both broke up laughing at the sheer relief and exhileration. 

 "We made it. We fucking made it." 

 "Yeah. Go shower. I'll see about getting you something to wear. God." 

 The pounding on the door started up again. "Paul! What the living hell is
going on in there?" 

 Paul smirked. "Hi, George. Callum and I are screwing like bunnies. You'll
understand if I don't open the door." 

 "Paul, Jesus. What if Martha happened to be standing next to me?" 

 "Then I'd be hearing her laugh herself sick right now. Look, do me a
favor and tell Larry we'll both be available in about half an hour, okay?"


 "Your set call's been blown already and you want me to tell him you'll be
another half hour? We can't really get started at this point without
either one of you, you know." 

 "George, we're ahead of schedule, or we were this morning, anyway. Tell
him he wants me and Callum to take a half hour, and he absolutely does not
want to know why." 

 "Any reason you can't call him and tell him yourself?" 

 "I never use the phone when I'm screwing my co-star. I read something
about it being poor etiquette." 

 Callum, listening in the bathroom, started laughing so hard he fell down.
"Ow!" 

 "Cal, try not to kill yourself in there, okay? I doubt we could pull off
the introduction of yet another Ray." 

 "I'm fine, I just hit the bruise again." 

 "I really don't need this information," George sighed. "All right, I'll
tell him. Are you planning on explaining this any time soon?" 

 "Ummmm...no." 

 Callum snorted. "GOD it's good to be the executive producer, isn't it?" 

 "Shut up," Paul hissed at the bathroom door. 

 George kept muttering to himself as he moved off: "It's a lucky thing
you're so stinking lovable or somebody'd have drowned you by now." 

 Paul cackled. "Cal, there's liniment under the sink. Do you want any
help?" 

 "No, thanks, I can reach my own ass." 

 "No, I was just gonna help you find it. The liniment, too." 

 "Shut up, Paul."  

 Later, Callum had wondered why they hadn't fallen over dead from
dehydration as soon as they reappeared in reality. If the fictional
clothes couldn't make it into reality with them, why could the fictional
food and water they'd had? Or the oxygen, for that matter? The only
conclusion they could come to, leaving Callum vaguely freaked by the idea,
was that they must've assimilated it or something, as they'd had to be
kind of assimilated themselves to exist in fiction. Frankly it didn't make
a lot of sense, but not much about the whole experience had. For example,
they'd apparently returned to the same moment in time they'd vanished
from. If either of them had thought of that, Paul would have put it in the
last jump paragraph, but neither of them had. Paul's watch
notwithstanding, they couldn't really begin to figure how long they were
gone subjectively--no matter how they hashed it out together, they
couldn't make it any less than a few weeks or any more than two months.
Whatever the subjective truth was, objectively they apparently hadn't been
gone any time at all. 

 "What are you thinking under there?" Paul wondered. 

 Callum, his voice making the paper of the script currently lying over his
face buzz, said "I was thinking about...uh, the one where the writer wrote
the sequence with Ray and Fraser being called into the station in the
middle of fooling around, and forgot to have them put their clothes back
on or give them a segue break, and when we tracked them down for a
trajectory check they were both standing around Ray's desk stark naked,
chatting over an open folder, and nobody was paying any attention." He
snorted. 

 "The look on your face was priceless," Paul said. "I guess there's no
continuity checker in fanfic." 

 "I was a little less amused when you burst out laughing at that priceless
look on my face. Everybody looked right where we were lurking around
behind the shelves and we had to break for it before we got grabbed. God,
I could just see the two of us sitting in an interview room with this
naked Fraser and Ray trying to find out who the hell we are. My lungs felt
like fire by the time we lost the pursuit just long enough to make the
jump. I was afraid to look backward for fear there'd be Fraser, sailing
out of a window in his birthday suit, about to land on top of us. My head
just wasn't up for that." 

 "I wasn't laughing at you. I was laughing at--well, aside from the
blatant fact of them bare-assed over there--Fraser's hairy chest. Some
people apparently don't check anything." 

 "Yeah, he could probably grow a beard, too." Callum felt something small
bounce off the script on his face; the object plopped gently onto the
floor. 

 "Low blow," Paul was muttering. "Anyway, maybe Fraser can grow a beard,
no reason he couldn't." 

 Callum peeked out from under the script; the little object was a
half-dead pad of yellow sticky notes. He picked it up and threw it back in
Paul's general direction without looking. "Suck it up, I'm on a break." 

 Paul giggled. "Of course, I think my favorite was the one where EVERYBODY
TALKED LIKE THIS BECAUSE THE WRITER DID IT IN ALL CAPS!!!" 

 That got Callum laughing enough that the script fell off his face; he
rolled a little on the couch to pick it back up off the floor. "Yeah, that
was almost worth the headache it gave me, once we figured out what the
hell was wrong. It was the Convention of the Shouters." 

 "The one where everybody pronounced everything, including the
punctuation, as it was actually rendered in the story was a pretty big
headache, though." 

 "Thank God you could still write okay. The first time I got Kowalskied
and actually heard myself saying 'they're' instead of 'their' I stopped
talking. That was just weird." 

 "At least you never had to say 'prostrate' instead of 'prostate'." 

 "Damn right I didn't." 

 "How about Hero Turnbull?" 

 "One of Dean's fans wrote that puppy, obviously." 

 Paul sighed and there was the sound of a pen hitting the desk. "How the
hell am I supposed to concentrate on this? We're supposed to what, just
pick up where we left off, move along on our merry way? Hey, I'm
traumatized," Paul grumped. "There's got to be a way to cut myself some
slack." 

 "You? Not hardly, my friend, costar-soundtrack consultant-head
writer-executive producer. That's why they pay you the big bucks, eh?"
Callum said, with a grin he knew was audible in his voice, which was good
because his face was covered up by the script again. "Me, I'm just some
nobody actor. I get to lie here and wait for you to work out all the
details." 

 "That's the big bucks' office couch you're lying on, there, nobody
actor." 

 Callum was not about to come out and say that he still felt a little
skittish without Paul at least in earshot. "You gonna throw me off it?" 

 Paul sighed, and Callum could hear him slumping against the desk. "No.
I'm too tired." 

 "S'what I thought," Callum snickered. 

 There was a pause. 

 Then, "You know," Paul said, "if we were still in fanfic, we might have
to start worrying...both of us all tired and relaxed...in my office...with
the door locked...instructions not to be disturbed for anything less than
a full-scale emergency..." 

 "Paul, that's not even remotely funny." 

 "I didn't mean it to be." Callum heard motion, and pulled the script off
his face. Paul had come around the desk and was leaning back on it, gazing
speculatively at Callum. 

 "What is that? What is that look?" Callum said. He glanced around as
though for whatever party Paul might be staring at. Unfortunately there
was nothing there but the wall. "What?" he wondered again, looking back
around. 

 "Cal, really. Calm down. I'm just...thinking." 

 "About what?" 

 "Tell me--when we were still in slash, did you ever...notice...you know,
the way it hit you when Kowalski knew Fraser was dead. Ever notice
anything that strong up 'til then? Oh, I don't mean anything...anything
bad, you know..." 

 "Well, of course I...uh, no. I don't know." Callum sat up, eyeing Paul
warily. "What do you mean?" 

 "Oh...it was just...I could sort of tell...when we were in a story that,
um...Fraser was feeling exceptionally amorous in." 

 "The overflow hit you? That overflow?" Callum's alarm began to take
serious root. "Are you telling me you could, uh, you, uh, could tell by
what it made you wanna...um, do with me?" 

 "Not always. But part of the time, yeah." 

 "Paul, eek!" He pronounced it as a word, not a shriek. "Why the hell
didn't you tell me?" 

 Paul looked puzzled. "You mean you couldn't tell when Kowalski was
getting desperate for it?" 

 "No I could not, and if I could have I still wouldn't have. Geez, Paul." 

 Paul tksed. "Some people have so little artistic sensitivity." 

 "I've got plenty of artistic sensitivity. I just don't get hot over
married male people whom I work with who have kids and who just as an
aside happen to be my boss, for God's sake." 

 "C'mon, Cal, don't limit your options like that." Paul smirked
mysteriously. Or maybe not so mysteriously. 

 "Paul, if this is a joke--" 

 "Because it...made me wonder, just a little, you know. You already knew
that I think you're sexy..." 

 "You think I'm sexy like you were shopping for a co-star, not like that!
You think I'm sexy like 'Oh, hey, that's sexy, let's get it on the show.'
Or at least that's how I thought you thought it." 

 "Oh, Cal--you don't expect me to believe you've never thought about it." 

 "Well I have now, but not before we got shanghaied into fanfic." 

 "Cal. This is me. Come on, we're alone here. You can tell me the truth."
Paul moved away from the desk and began to slink in Callum's direction. 

 "Oh geez. We are not, through some machination of Satan--or RPSers--back
in RPS. We can't be. I mean, nobody'd write an intro that long before the
smut..." Paul's expression didn't change; Callum began to feel his own
expression changing like gangbusters, alarm making his eyes about three
times as big as usual. "Paul, you've gotta tell me you're not really--" 

 "I'd rather talk about you...well, about you and me. Us, as it were." He
giggled softly and leaned down, resting his hands against the couch back
on either side of Callum and starting to set one knee on the cushion just
outside Callum's-- 

 Callum squirted out from under him like a bar of soap being stepped on in
the shower and somehow ended up across the room, behind Paul's desk. Paul
switched directions and kept advancing; Callum's peregrinations maintained
an inverse relationship with Paul's, direction- and speed-wise. "Paul.
Come on. Don't mess with me like this. This is not funny, we can't be back
in--" he froze for a second. "Oh, shit. Oh, shit--what if we're not back
in RPS, what if being trapped in fanfic that long screwed up your
head--?!" 

 "My head, as you put it, is consummately unscrewed just at the moment, if
you'll pardon the expression, but I'd like to fix that if you'll just hold
still--" on the last word, Paul darted in for the kill. 

 Callum damn near ruptured himself leaping up on the three-drawer file
cabinet behind him and crashing headfirst into the ceiling. He dropped on
his ass on top of the cabinet, feet hanging off to either side. He had to
do a two-handed save to keep his glasses from taking a dive. "Ow! Fuck!
Okay, listen, Paul, just stay where you are and think for a..." 

 He trailed off as he realized Paul was suddenly no longer there. But from
the area of the room he'd been in--other side of the desk, around which
their pas de deux had been a fairly classic chase--now emanated the sound
of truly maniacal giggling. 

 Callum felt a twinge--the beginning of the sinking realization that
maybe, just maybe...he got to his feet on the cabinet, crouching, high
enough that he could see over the desk to the floor on the other side. 

 Yep, there he was, holding his stomach with one hand, pounding the floor
with the other, reeling and rocking like a Weeble in an earthquake,
porcelain complexion now as red as the costume he wasn't currently
wearing. "The look on your face..." 

 He couldn't get any more out, he was laughing too hard, but that was
quite enough for Callum to come off of the file cabinet and land on the
desk blotter in the space of maybe half a heartbeat, roaring like an
exceptionally foul-mouthed avalanche. Paul, for his part, bolted for the
door, banged his hip against the sofa on the way and staggered once in his
lunge for the doorknob, cast a slightly panicked glance over his
shoulder--Callum took a minor bruiser leaping off the desk and landing, or
trying to, with both feet right where Paul had just been--got the door
unlocked, and shot through, barely a hair ahead of Callum. 

 Callum thought grimly, as they charged across the warehouse, that seeing
as how he and Paul were about the same in the leg-length department, there
was going to be one more overused and less-than-literary aphorism
investigated as a result of their journey through the world of fiction;
namely, whether Scared as Shit really does run faster than Mad as Hell.  

 "Ramona!" Dean rolled his eyes, dropping his script on the table they
were next to. "You've got to stop breaking up when I say that line or
we'll never get out of here." 

 "I can't help it," she spluttered, trying to keep her heavy makeup from
running. "You're funny, okay?" 

 "I thought you said I was cute." 

 "No, Turnbull is cute. You, sir, are funny. I--" 

 The sound of pounding feet on a concrete floor made her look around. She
pursed her lips and shook her head at what she saw. Dean gave a low
whistle of disbelief. 

 As the two men shot by, Dean and Ramona both jumped back a bit, startled
about as much by the sheer volume of Paul's Renfieldish (not the Turnbull
kind) cackling, and Callum's nonstop stream of imaginative profanity, as
by their sudden appearance and subsequent disappearance. 

 "I wonder what the hell could possibly be up with them now," Dean
muttered. 

 Ramona looked up over her shoulder at him. "With those two? Who can
tell?" She looked back around, gazing after the sound of retreating
footsteps with a half-smile. "Everybody knows they're both crazy."  End  

 Notes	Despite the fact that I have scanned RPS stories that I considered
well-written in a technical sense, I am not a real-person slash fan, not
only because I object to the invasive nature of such fic to the actors (or
whoever) being so depicted (though I do), but also due to the danger it
presents to slash websites of host shutdowns of such sites. Personally, I
think RPSers should stick to mailing lists and/or heavily
password-protected archives, and not archive RPS where absolutely anybody
could surf right into it. Including the actor's (or whoever's) kids.
Garett Maggart has already disseminated a request for more intensive
warnings on slash pages, because his nieces surf the web. (He also--I am
not making this up--asked whether Blair could be the bottom less often
seeing as Richard is getting WAY too smug, but I digress.) 

 So, I decided to piss off the entire slash universe at the same time
(well, okay, I started the story and then realized that I was going to end
up pissing off the entire slash universe at the same time) by doing a
sendup of RPS. Yeah, Paul and Callum are in the story--where POV can be
discerned at all, we see things from behind Callum's eyes--so people who
object to Real Person Fic will be pissed that I wrote a Real Person Fic.
Though it's not slash. Also, I did the story as a way of expressing my
(not what you could call glowing) opinion on web RPS, so the people who
like RPS, and probably RPF in general, are going to be pissed at me, too.
What the hell. Like Hodgepodge said, "Let's alienate EVERYBODY! Jesse
Jackson and Jesse Helms in (election year)!" However, this story was not
written to criticise specific stories or authors. The "gradations of
reality" concept is not intended as criticism of any particular
character-fanfic category or subcategory. Besides, I needed a blueprint
for the two of them to follow, or I couldn't have written this; it's a big
metaphor made of many smaller metaphors. (It's a fractal metaphor, or
something.) 

 Some of the anecdotes in this story are true, some are made up, but most
of them are from interviews in which Paul and/or Callum told them
personally. For instance--yeah, Paul did do a fight scene on top of a
moving train in "All the Queen's Horses" without a safety cable, fall,
slide, and nearly go over the edge while the train was moving over a
bridge (though he didn't exhibit any particular residual trauma about it
while he was telling the story). However, I have no idea how Paul felt
about Hamlet as a person, either while he was playing the character or at
any other time. But I hated that sorry pre-Goth whiner when I played him
in school (I mean HAMLET, not Paul), though I admit this might have had at
least something to do with the extreme measures required to get my C cups
into the damn doublet--I'm afraid I was forced to do a very Rod-Up-His-Ass
Hamlet in terms of physical interpretation. (Also, I was five-two, and the
lifts in my boots didn't help a damn thing in that department, either.)
Anyway, Paul makes a few comments in this story about the ol' Melancholy
Dick that are, actually, all me. 

 None of the made-up stuff is particularly raunchy, or titillating, or
potentially defamation-of-character-lawsuit-inspiring, or anything like
that. Or even all that interesting. After all, either of those guys is
more than interesting enough without my meager help. I have also largely
kept their friends and families the hell out of it (Martha Burns, Paul's
wife, who is an actor, too, gets a couple of brief and innocuous mentions,
as does the fact that Paul is a father. And Callum makes a small [very
small] joke about why his parents left England). 

 One other thing I'll specify as being Not Made Up are the stories "Visit
to a Weird Planet", an early Trek fanfic concerning Spock, Kirk and McCoy
ending up on the soundstage in LA (on the transporter platform, of course.
The story's title is an homage to Leonard Nimoy's appearance as the alien
in "Visit to a Small Planet"). The subsequent story, "Visit to a Weird
Planet Revisited" is the companion piece, detailing Shatner's, Nimoy's and
Kelley's experience on the Enterprise at that time. The second story was
published in a Paramount-produced anthology of fan fiction. No details
were given, but I'm going to assume that in order to sell it in an
official anthology (or any other way, probably), they had to get the
actors' permission. I do not know this for a fact. It may be that the book
was seen as a promotional item, and I'm sure that the studio using the
actors' names in promotional items was included in whatever papers they
signed. 

 I will also say that while the story included some personal
information--some biographical, such as Leonard Nimoy's having grown up on
the coast and done a lot of boating with his family, such that he would be
familiar with tidal patterns; and some situational and invented for the
story, such as when Shatner answers an intercom page from the bridge,
snaps out a brisk, Kirklike "On my way," switches the 'com off, and stands
there a minute before he realizes that what he's waiting for is to hear a
director say "Cut"--there was certainly nothing in the dialogue or
narrative that could be seen as an invasion of the actor's privacy, or as
libelous. To put it mildly, RPS does NOT fall into the same category. 

 Callum and Paul swear a bit--maybe more than a bit--in this story, but I
don't consider that to be particularly slanderous, since in the situation
they're in they'd both have to be particularly devout nuns not to swear,
and besides, they're both on record using some pretty darned colorful
language in interviews--and we ain't just talking print, we're talking TV
and such--so apparently they aren't all that worried about such niceties
if they aren't in mixed company. And sometimes even if they are. (Though
I'm sure they'd be quite verbally circumspect on such occasions as meeting
the Queen for tea or whatever.)  

 To Paul and Callum, in the highly unlikely event that either of you ever
stumble across this bizarre little tale: Yeah, I realize you guys don't
sound like this; since I've never even met either of you, much less know
you anywhere near well enough to write your voices accurately, you both,
in this story, basically sound like me. You don't even sound Canadian,
because I'm an American. I probably wrote you both with midwestern US
accents. In other words, I could have picked any two real people who've
been RPSed, done a little research, and written essentially the same
story; only the details would have been different. You two just happened
to get tapped... 

 ...okay, there were three main reasons I picked you two: One, you seem to
be the targets of an abnormally large amount of RPS, for actors (a great
deal of RPS is devoted to various different boybands, and as a musician I
Could Not Handle That Thought) and frankly the way some of it depicts you
made me see red. Two, Paul's a writer, which gave me a plot gimmick to run
with (yeah, Paul, I know you largely write scripts for various media, and
song lyrics, not prose; but I'm willing to bet you wouldn't suck at that,
either); and Three, you seemed to be the most likely candidates--with
whose show I was familiar at all, at least--to find the idea of this story
amusing rather than upsetting. Frankly, I don't care whether RPS story
subjects are ever aware of the story or not; I don't like the idea of
writing anything about a person--rather, making up stuff about a real
person--that might upset them if they knew about it. I may not be a
Christian, but I want nothing to do with bearing false witness against my
neighbor. 

 To be perfectly frank, you guys per se aren't even the point of the story
(of which fact I suppose you're just as glad). I did consider inventing a
couple of actors for it, but it's much easier to visualize a character who
had an actor playing him, and besides, it was you two's honor I had vowed
to defend. So, even though you haven't given me permission for it, thanks
for the use of your names anyway. I've treated them as respectfully as
possible (barring a little physical humor, involving things like Paul and
a line of evergreen bushes, etc.) After all, it wouldn't make a lot of
sense to write a story like this in protest of stories which invade your
privacy and defame your characters, and then speculate on your private
lives or make you look like a couple of bozos. In any case, via my
approach, you're essentially still playing characters. Callum, you get to
be our POV man. <g> (Sorry to put you on the spot, but the idea of trying
to get inside Paul's genius/wackjob head just scared the crap out of me.
And no, before you get insulted, I don't mean to imply that you're not a
wackjob, too. Case in point: That TV interview where you offered to ahem
show your tattoo? Sheer beauty, man. <g>) 

 Of course, before the both of you relax, you may want to see the number I
did on myself when I answered a story challenge and put myself on the
canon Deep Space Nine, although you two came off a hell of a lot better
than I did. (You actually get up off your butts and start figuring out how
to get OUT of this bizarre fictional milieu and back home. I had
sequential nervous breakdowns and threw myself tearfully on the mercy of
Miles O'Brien.) I'm also being sent up (yes, as myself, we're constantly
doing that on the TSU campus) in a TSU story, written by one of my fanfic
readers, in which I somehow manage a transporter misfire and end up
stumbling into the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture (where she works). I can
hardly wait to see how bad I fuck up in the sequel. <g> 

 I also managed not to remember that you two might be more likely to use
metric measurements, not English ones (I believe the US is the only
remaining country in the civilized world that hasn't changed to metric).
Well, the hell with that. The damn story was nearly done by the time I
realized my mistake, and I'm NOT doing any corrections that extensive if
they involve math. (Paul? I'm no good with math, either. Not even wussy
math, in my case, math that's basically just arithmetic.) I mean, it's not
like I'm getting paid for this, you know? 

 But let me close the story notes with two specific advance apologies: 

 Paul--I have been told that you are, at least on occasion, capable of
giggling in a fashion that could make a typical thirteen-year-old-girl
roll her eyes in exasperation. If it's a vicious lie, I apologize
profusely and beg your forgiveness. (Not that I'm laboring under the
impression you actually give a shit who thinks you giggle or don't. I'm
just disclaiming, because--by golly--that's what we do in the world of
fanfic.) 

 Callum--your ass is beautiful. I swear. I worship your ass, man, I mean
it. I have an altar in my bedroom. The plaster reproduction's not finished
yet, though. I'm having trouble finding a still three-quarter view. And
no, I am not sufficiently out of touch with reality as to ask you to send
me one, for God's sake (though I am weird enough in general to make up a
line about having an altar to somebody's ass).	

End The Voyage Home by Blue Champagne: bluecham@mindspring.com

Author and story notes above.