Volpe, by Te  Volpe
 by Te
 July 1999
 
 Disclaimers: Not a single individual mentioned in this story belongs to
me. 
 Spoilers: Asylum.
 Summary: Fraser tries to get the whole story.
 Ratings Note: NC-17 for language, m/m interaction.
 Author's Note: I'm cheating on my own challenge egregiously... ah well,
it's the thought that counts, right? This story is meant to be a little
missing scene type thing -- takes place during that stretch of time
between Fraser and Ray escaping from that warehouse/chop shop/whatever
place Herndorf had them imprisoned in and Welsh arriving at the Consulate
alone. 
 Acknowledgments: Thanks go to Viridian for her constant encouragement of
my dark, twisted lusts. <g> Also to Spike for fine audiencing and mucho
help, and to the lovely Maxine for the final once-over. 
 Feedback: Slurped joyously at Daddy793@aol.com.

 *

 

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

There was, however, a silent Fraser. 

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

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

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

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

"Thanks, Frase." 

"You're welcome, Ray." 

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

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

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

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

And Volpe was dead now. 

//"You wearing a wire?" 

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

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

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

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

//The Consulate.// 

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

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

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

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

"... Ray..." 

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

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

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

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

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

//"Call me Andre."// 

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

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

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

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

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

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

"That was pretty fast, all things considered." 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Did anyone else...?" 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

//"You're fucking kidding me." 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"All right." 

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

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

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

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

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

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

//"Yeah, I know." 

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

//"Tomorrow night?" 

//"You know it." 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You've been wrong before." 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Lemme go, Frase." 

"Not until you -- " 

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

"Listen to me -- " 

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

"*Listen*." 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

//"You still thirsty, Detective?" 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I should get that." Broken contact. 

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

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

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

 End.

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