Aria's Fanfic

due South: A State of Being (In Five Steps, With Flowchart)

2009-11-13T05:34:30Z

Fandom: due South
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 2828
Characters/pairing: Fraser/Kowalski
Summary: Ray always did things backwards with Fraser. Out of order, upside-down, hanging off rooftops, putting the sled before the Dief, all that good stuff. Ray Kowalski's guide to romantic relationships.

A State of Being (In Five Steps, With Flowchart)

due South: Carry On

2009-10-20T03:51:55Z

Fandom: due South
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 8299
Characters/pairing: Kowalski/Vecchio, Fraser
Summary: What's worse than a dead best friend? A dead best friend who sits in your armchair going on about unfinished business and giving you worried looks.
Notes: Major character death. No, really, Fraser is dead for the entire fic. This doesn't actually stop him from hanging around haunting Ray in the grand tradition of the Fraser family, but you've been warned.

Carry On

due South: Follow Without Pride

2009-10-13T03:36:49Z

Fandom: due South
Rating: PG
Word count: 4899
Characters/pairing: Fraser/Kowalski
Summary: "But you're pissed off when he does stuff like that?" Ray wanted to know. "When he doesn't listen and almost gets killed?"

Follow Without Pride

Battlestar Galactica: All That We Are

2009-08-30T20:02:49Z

Fandom: Battlestar Galactica
Rating: PG
Word count: 2024
Characters/pairing: Leoben & Kara
Summary: He wakes and stares into the dark and thinks that even if he understands the patterns he doesn't have to like them. In which there is human!Leoben and Cylon!Kara.
Notes: Written for cliche_bingo; fills the 'androids and robots' square.

All That We Are

Harry Potter: as disastrous as to lose

2009-08-29T03:48:03Z

Fandom: Harry Potter
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 4409
Characters/pairing: Remus/Tonks, Remus/Sirius
Summary: She wants connection before she dies. That can't be too much to ask.
Notes: Written for cliche_bingo; fills the 'doppelgangers, clones, and evil doubles' square.

as disastrous as to lose

due South: Signs of Affection

2009-08-16T17:32:43Z

Fandom: due South
Rating: NC-17
Word count: 5785
Characters/pairing: Fraser/Kowalski/Vecchio
Summary: Even Fraser had agreed, if a little resignedly, and Ray had felt like total crap for asking Fraser to bluff and mislead and prevaricate and anything else short of outright lying, even though he knew Fraser did it all the time. It was different if Ray and Vecchio were asking him to.

Signs of Affection

Life on Mars: Quicksand

2009-08-01T18:44:54Z

Fandom: Life On Mars
Rating: PG
Word count: 1998
Characters/pairing: Sam
Summary: There has to be limits to what the mind can do. Grit on Annie's palms, all the air knocked out of him when Gene slams him into a wall, cigarette smoke and the sticky drink rings on the tables at the Arms. Limits.
Spoilers: for the whole series.

Quicksand

due South: Saturday

2009-07-18T18:34:47Z

Fandom: due South
Rating: R
Word count: 1169
Pairing: Fraser/Kowalski/Vecchio
Summary: Ray Kowalski has always really loved Saturdays.
Notes: Written for cliche_bingo; fills the 'day-in-the-life' square.

Saturday

Harry Potter: Several Ways to Apologize

2009-07-18T05:28:01Z

Fandom: Harry Potter
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 3332
Pairing: Remus/Sirius
Summary: "The thing is, though," Sirius said, addressing the scarlet draperies, "Moony's not going to give me legumes and yell. He's too nice."
Notes: Written for cliche_bingo; fills the 'woke up in bed together' square.

Several Ways to Apologize

Hard Core Logo/Slings & Arrows: And Count Myself a King of Infinite Space

2009-07-10T06:06:29Z

Fandoms: Hard Core Logo/Slings & Arrows
Rating: R
Word count: 5713
Summary: Despite the music, despite the obvious patchwork lie that makes up the final cut, there is something raw and honest about this damn film, something -- something Geoffrey overused and abused, applied with indiscriminate disaster to his own life, something Shakespearean.
Spoilers: Spoilers like crazy for all of HCL and for a little s1 S&A.

And Count Myself a King of Infinite Space

due South: Forty-Five Years

2009-06-25T01:22:08Z

Fandom: due South
Rating: PG
Word count: 889
Pairing: Fraser/Kowalski
Summary: Ray's never going to get used to it, but it's the good kind of not-getting-used-to, like how he's never going to get used to waking up spooning Fraser.
Notes: Written for cliche_bingo; fills the 'character study' square.

Forty-Five Years

due South: The Love Song of S. Raymond Kowalski

2009-05-16T03:14:16Z

Title: The Love Song of S. Raymond Kowalski
Pairing: Fraser/Kowalski
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 4960
Summary: Ray dared to smush his experimental hair down in hats in Canada, dared to eat everything Fraser gave him including the freaky bark tea, dared ... dared to let Fraser turn his world inside out and meet his eyes afterward.

The Love Song of S. Raymond Kowalski

psa

2009-05-10T20:07:05Z

Migrating this journal's content to ariafic @ dreamwidth; if anyone likes I can link to new fic from here, but it will still be linked unlocked from my LJ and from relevant comms.

due South: Katabasis (Part II)

2009-04-08T19:05:03Z

Fandom: due South
Rating: R
Word count: 17,057
Pairing: Fraser/Kowalski
Summary: "I talked to your dad, I went through this place called the Borderland, I had a boat ride, I fed a wolf a doughnut, and I told stories for your soul," Ray interrupted. "This does not mean you are not insane."

Katabasis

{Part One | Part Two}

The place looked like it had more than one room, but this first one was deserted. Wooden floor, wooden walls, rafter beams in the ceiling. There were desks arranged around the room, not like a schoolhouse but like a police station. Knit rug on the floor -- Ray knocked the snow off his shoes before he shuffled onto it -- half-filled water cooler in a corner. Electric lighting strung up on hooks. One of the doors at the other end of the room was half open; it looked like a holding cell. Ray jammed his hands in his pockets and looked around some more. Windows, snow shushing up against 'em. A map of Canada tacked to a wall. And next to it ...

"RCMP," Ray read, eyebrows going up.

The board looked official, and said, in businesslike print, NOTICES. Ray kept reading, and his eyebrows kept climbing, because this sure as hell wasn't a normal list of notes and regulations. It said:

* ALL THE QUESTIONS YOU ASK ARE UNIQUE TO YOU
* THE ANSWERS ARE YOURS ALONE
* YOUR WHOLE LIFE IS RIGHT HERE
* NO MATTER WHAT DIRECTION YOU STEP, YOUR DESTINATION IS THE SAME

Funny thing was, Ray thought, reaching a hand up absently to press it against the rapid thump in his chest, funny thing, this made a lot more sense than some of the notices he'd read in stations. He stared at the last line for a while, until the letters stopped meaning anything. Then he squared up, shook himself out, and went to knock on the closed door next to the holding cell.

"Enter," a voice called. Not anyone he recognized, but Ray hadn't expected that. He went in.

It was a nice office; another rug, another map of Canada, only one desk this time. The man behind the desk, middle-aged and unremarkable, wore RCMP casual and a Stetson. With a little shock Ray remembered he was still wearing Fraser's. His hand started heading up to take it off, but after a second he left it, and instead closed the door behind him. Only then did he see the other figure in the room -- and he didn't know how he'd missed it before, couldn't have -- a man with his back to Ray, dark-haired, sitting hunched over the desk reading forms with intent. Ray opened his mouth, and the RCMP guy looked at Ray, shaking his head.

"Not yet," the RCMP guy said quietly. "He's filling in his transfer."

"Like hell he is," Ray said. "Fraser!"

Fraser raised his head slowly, like he'd been asleep. He turned and looked at Ray. An expression of mild surprise came into his face. "Ray?"

"Yeah, that's me," Ray said. "Hey, what're you doing?"

"Filing for transfer," Fraser said reasonably. The surprise in his face was turning into faint bewilderment. "Ray, how did you get here?"

"Uh, through your father's cabin," Ray said. The RCMP guy was pinging all his cop senses, so he shuffled unobtrusively closer to Fraser. "Y'know, generally speaking when you want to take a transfer, you ask your partner about it first. And I do not like the idea of you taking a transfer."

"Ah," said Fraser, and wouldn't meet Ray's eyes; and then he did, which was worse. Fraser didn't look surprised or bewildered or anything besides alert and ... frightened, Fraser looked frightened. "I'm afraid this transfer is not entirely up to me."

"Yeah?" Ray said, and he'd come close enough now that he could reach out and grasp Fraser's shoulder, solid and warm through the thin cotton of his shirt. "Who's it up to?"

"Me," the RCMP guy said, giving Ray a small cold polite smile. "Constable Fraser misses the north. Constable Fraser misses his solitude. Con --"

"Bullshit," Ray interrupted. The RCMP guy's polite smile went frozen. "I mean, okay, sorry, Frase, you probably do miss them Northwest Areas, but no guy who really wants solitude would last five minutes living with Diefenbaker."

"Ray," Fraser demurred, "I don't think that's quite --"

"Fraser," Ray said, "do you want to die?"

Fraser went very still and tense under Ray's fingertips. The RCMP guy watched Fraser closely, with the same hunger Ray'd seen in the wolf's face back there, but without any of the doggy softness. C'mon, Fraser, c'mon, Ray thought. Honesty's the best policy. He figured for a second that meant they were safe, because Fraser didn't lie, never, except ... when he did. By omission, by changing the subject, by feigning obliviousness. But not to a direct question. Please, not to this question.

"No," Fraser said, very softly. "While I find life sometimes bewildering and often frustrating, I would be most ... remiss to cast it aside."

The RCMP guy nodded. "Well said, Constable. If you'll just finish up these forms?"

Fraser nodded too, and reached for the top paper. Ray leaned forward with his free hand, knocked the pen from Fraser's grip and sent the whole damn pile of papers cascading to the floor. "Fraser," he said. "Forget remiss. Forget duty. Do you want to die?"

"I -- Ray --" Fraser said, trying to lean over and collect the paperwork. Ray tightened his grip on Fraser's shoulder and after a moment Fraser sat back up, still staring at the floor. Ray glanced over at the RCMP guy, who still looked that awful sort of hungry, but not angry, just intrigued. Ray looked back down at the top of Fraser's dark head and rubbed small circles with his thumb against the back of Fraser's neck. Fraser slumped a little. "No," he said again. "No. I'm tired, Ray. I'm tired. No matter how many criminals we bring to justice, there are always more to take their place. I wish very much that Francesca would understand what I feel for her. Living in the Consulate can be a trial."

"Uniform itches," Ray offered.

Fraser chuckled. "All the time." He looked up at Ray, reached up and clasped Ray's wrist in his hand; not stilling him, just making contact. And he did look tired, but he also just looked like Fraser after a long day. "I don't imagine they have hockey here, or pizza." He squeezed Ray's wrist lightly. "As I recall, a good number of people turned up for my funeral." And a faint smile crinkled the corners of his eyes. "No, Ray, I don't want to die."

"Good," Ray said. "Get up. Let's go."

Fraser nodded and started to rise, but the RCMP guy cleared his throat and Fraser sat back down, thump, at attention. Ray's head snapped up. The RCMP guy was watching them both with great interest. "Constable Fraser was correct on one count, Detective Kowalski. His transfer is not entirely up to him."

Ray tensed right up. "Yeah? Who's it up to?"

"Me," the RCMP guy said again. "Constable Fraser is in a rather deep coma at the moment, I'm afraid. His paperwork was almost entirely done. The white light is calling, and Constable Fraser doesn't know the way back."

"Frase?" Ray whispered.

"I'm afraid I don't," Fraser murmured back.

"So?" Ray said. "I know the way. He comes with me. No big deal."

The RCMP guy sat down behind his desk and folded his hands, looking between them with great consideration. Ray was reminded forcibly of Lieutenant Welsh about to take them to task. "It's irregular," the RCMP guy said. "Highly irregular. However, there is some precedent -- do you have any skills?"

This was obviously addressed to Ray, so he shrugged and said, "I can dance."

"Without music?" the RCMP guy asked. Ray shrugged again, but he shook his head. "No good. Can you sing?"

"Fraser can sing."

The RCMP guy gave Ray a hard look, full of that hunger still. "Constable Fraser is long forfeit. It's you we're talking about."

Ray glanced around wildly at the word forfeit, but Fraser was still sitting there, still present, although his eyes were getting very bright. "I'm sorry, Ray," he said.

"Yeah, I'll yell at you when we're both safe," Ray said. Turning back to the RCMP guy, he added, "Look, I'm a good cop, I'm a good dancer, I can box okay, I can fix an engine, and I got a Hurting My Back Badge for lying on the floor all night. That is it with the marketable skills. It."

The RCMP guy shrugged. "Then --"

"A story," Fraser said quietly. He looked up. "A story should be satisfactory."

"A story?" Ray echoed. "Fraser, I suck at telling stories. That's your thing."

"On the contrary, Ray. I find your conversation frequently engaging." Ray opened his mouth, to say something like, Yeah, but that's because you're a freak, when a spark of mischief -- just a spark, just a moment, but there -- came into Fraser's eyes, and he added, "You did say you're a poet inside."

"I --" Ray said, and slumped a little. "Okay. Is that our best shot?" he asked the RCMP guy.

The guy nodded. He took his hat off, placed it on the desk just to the left of his hands, fixed Ray with a cold polite hungry look, and said, "A story. A true story."

"Okay," Ray said. And came up totally blank.

He didn't know what this guy liked. He didn't know if he should talk about Stella; but that thought had barely come up before he got the happened-in-another-life, saw-it-on-TV feeling, so maybe Stella stories weren't true stories. He figured he should talk about Fraser, except Fraser was right there; it wasn't like Fraser had no idea what Ray thought of him, and a true story would probably have plenty of my partner's a freak but it might also have some and I want to punch him but sometimes I think that just means I want to kiss him and I'm scared. And that was it. Ray had two stories. Stella, Fraser. He had cop stories too, sure, but he remembered the look the boatman had given him, remembered: they don't want cops; they want poets. And all the time Ray was standing there, feeling dumber and more panicked by the second, he kept thinking irrationally of pomegranates.

"Last year," Ray said, and had to clear his suddenly dry throat. "In, uh, in the fall. We took down Lady Shoes, the FBI got their guy -- I'd jumped through the skylight, and Fraser'd messed up his back the day before, but when we got back to the 27 we played a hand of poker anyway. No real stakes, Fraser doesn't do real stakes. We played for air and my back hurt and I was happy."

He hated staying still so long. Fraser had half-turned in his chair to watch. He did not want to do this.

Had to.

"So it was late. Pretty damn late, like, professional poker always has to be played at night or something. I owed Fraser a lot of air but I figured -- how d'you give someone air?" He'd been staring at the desk, but he glanced up for a second and the RCMP guy was watching him, still with a little smile, but it was less polite now, more ... knowing. Ray felt his face starting to heat up a little. Yeah, he knew how to give someone air. But that was not this story. "I, uh, I figured, maybe if I got him dessert it would count. He said no, so I said, fine, I'll give you an IOU on air and I'll get you dessert because we had a long day and I'm hungry.

"So we got in the car, dogs in the back. We didn't know if Ante -- uh, Lady Shoes' poodle -- didn't know if she was used to, like, doughnuts or whatever, so we made her and Dief stay in the car. Went to this bakery-deli place near my apartment. Fraser was worried about keeping the dogs in the car but I figured they might like a bit of time alone." It was stupid. The story was stupid. He shuffled a little, cleared his throat again.

"Uh, I got this chocolate éclair thing, but Fraser -- he's a health nut sometimes. All the time. Whichever. So he asked for their fruit selection and, uh, it was September, maybe October, I don't know, I don't think it was fruit season, but you can import anything to Chicago. Like. Oranges, blackberries, I don't know, you name it. And they had this fancy dish with, uh, sugared dough and pomegranates."

The second he said it, something weird happened. Fraser, anyway, leaned forward and towards Ray with a look that was scarily like hope, but more than that, the RCMP guy had leaned forward too, and those were the only two clear things. The wood walls, the map of Canada, the desk and the Stetson on it, all of it was ... not gone, just not there. Fraser and the guy, who did not look much like an RCMP officer at all, and Ray's own hands, those were the only real things there. It made Ray feel a little sick. He squeezed his eyes shut, feeling the weight of Fraser's gaze on him and the weight of Fraser's hat on his head, and kept going.

"Me, I'm all for fruit, I like pineapple pizza and stuff. So, okay, Fraser's a health nut, but it looked pretty good. I, uh, told him that, said it looked okay; at least it wasn't pemmican or whatever. And he said -- he said 'I don't miss pemmican all the time, you know, Ray.' And I said, yeah, of course I knew, I said, 'See, some things you can't get up in the great frozen nowhere. Chicago's got the good stuff too.' Oh."

He didn't really mean to say the last part, the little oh, but he did, opened his eyes and stared at Fraser, because Fraser had smiled back at him across the plastic deli table, smiled like he was turning on the sun and said Yes, Ray, it does and -- oh. He stared at Fraser and Fraser stared back, his eyes still full right to the brim with hope, and Ray said, "Why didn't you say something?"

"I did," Fraser said; a simple statement of fact.

"Fine," Ray said. "I'm right here, Fraser. Why did you go back to the Borderland?"

"Because pomegranates don't last, Ray," Fraser said, but Ray shook his head, just clenched his fists and shook his head until Fraser swallowed and said, like it was being dragged out of him, "It was foolish."

"Damn right it was," Ray said, and twisted around in the nothing right as it snapped back into being an RCMP outpost, so he was looking across a desk at a middle-aged RCMP officer who was carefully stacking all the papers Ray'd swept onto the floor. "Well?" Ray asked.

"I'll postpone the transfer," the guy said. "It was a good story."

"Good," Ray said. "Good. Thanks." He breathed out. "Let's go, Fraser."

"A moment," the guy said. "You'll want to know the rules."

"I know the rules," Ray said. "The, uh, my questions are unique, I got the answers, the direction's the same no matter where I go. I read those."

"Good." The guy gave Ray a once-over and nodded. "The last rule is unwritten, but very important. Don't look behind you. No matter what you do, you're not to look, nor to make sure in any way that Constable Fraser is following you."

Ray swallowed and nodded. Another bit of tenth grade English floated through his head; he had an idea of what would happen to Fraser if he looked. "Okay," he said. "Starting now?"

"Starting now," the guy confirmed. "Good day, Detective Kowalski."

"Right," said Ray. "Bye." He started towards the door and hesitated.

"Right behind you, Ray," Fraser said quietly. "Go."

Ray nodded and went.

*

It was less easy than he'd expected. The RCMP outpost still opened out into the snowy hillside; it had stopped snowing now, but that didn't make it any easier to get down. Ray slipped and skidded, tumbled fifteen feet at a time and then stopped and waited for a few agonized minutes just in case he'd left Fraser behind. It was like don't think about pink elephants; he felt this itchy nearly physical need to look around, just once, quick, to make sure, because he couldn't even hear Fraser following. But he didn't look.

The slope evened out eventually. It didn't get any less snowy. After a while, wading through it, Ray started getting nervous. Where was the clearing? Where was the thaw and the lakeside wood? The nervousness tried to gnaw at him for a little while, and then Ray remembered that the answers were apparently his alone, and decided that this probably meant the answer to where am I was it doesn't matter and I'm gonna find the ferry eventually.

About five steps after he'd decided this, he skidded out onto a frosty wharf. The lake stretching out in front of him wasn't frozen -- Lake Michigan pretty much took an act of God to freeze over -- but it was really cold. Ray stood and shivered and stared resolutely into the blue distance and waited.

And waited.

It started snowing softly, flakes melting as they hit the water and the ice-rimed gravelly shore. Ray decided that this whole world had been created specifically to torture him, because either Fraser wasn't there or he was a lot more quiet than Fraser was ever, and there was nothing to distract Ray from the awful desire to just look.

"I didn't tell him what time I'd be back," Ray said conversationally. His voice fell, muffled by the snow. "I mean, I don't know if he even believed I'd be back. The ferryman. Your dad thought I'd be back. We'd be back. I kinda like him. Hell of a lot easier than meeting Stella's parents, that's for sure." He laughed. It sounded awful. He stopped.

Waited.

Waited, and dug his fingernails into his palms, hard enough to leave imprints, hard enough to hurt. As long as he concentrated on the pain, he didn't need to look. Only then that wasn't enough, so he gritted his teeth, too, until his jaw creaked. He unclenched his hands -- "Fuck," he hissed, because the nails leaving the indents hurt -- and stared at the four pink half-moon crescents in each of his pale palms. He watched the snowflakes fall and melt and turn to moisture in his cupped hands. He watched the marks slowly fade. He waited.

Eventually a muffled puttering noise came up over the water. Ray edged out towards the end of the wharf. The white hull of the Charon emerged from the swirl of snow. Ray waved, a little feebly, and the old boatman answered with a much more enthusiastic wave. "Hey, poet-cop!" he yelled.

"Hi!" Ray shouted back, and maybe from relief or maybe because he sort of felt like he'd earned the stupid title, for a second he actually felt like smiling.

The boat pulled up alongside the wharf. Ray, skidding, managed to climb onto the boat, rocking it sickeningly. He scooted up towards the front beside the old guy to make room for Fraser, but the boat didn't rock again. Ray squeezed his eyes shut. "Should we wait?"

"No need," the boatman said. "You want to?"

"Nah," Ray whispered. "Nah, let's go."

The old guy patted Ray's shoulder and roared the boat to life. Ray kept his eyes shut for a bit longer, and then he started feeling kind of seasick and opened them again. They were racing through the water, snow gone now, the Chicago skyline coming up before them but a little to the left. Ray was pretty sure there was development along Lake Shore for about a billion miles, but the old guy piloted them sure as anything up to a neat yuppie dock full of bobbing sailboats and, yeah, the shore above the dock was all green-brown grass and white flowers. The boat pulled up alongside the dock and Ray stood, swaying. "Hey, how much do I owe you for this one?"

"Nothing," the boatman said, and gave Ray a Mort-grin. "The return trip is free."

"Okay," Ray said. "Thanks."

He got out of the boat and kept swaying a couple of seconds before he got his balance. Walking up off the dock, he heard the boat go roaring away again. Had the guy waited long enough for Fraser to get off too? Ray couldn't tell. He shoved his hands into his pockets, stared down at the grass, and started walking. Then he kept walking, watching the grass go on for longer than it should've before he figured he'd hit highway, but Ray wasn't too surprised by that. He walked a bit more for good measure, until he knew the direction, until he was sure of the destination, and then he looked up and there, about ten feet directly in front of him, was Bob Fraser's cabin.

Ray nodded to himself and went up to it, walking around until he found the unlatched window. He tapped at it a couple of times, but no one came to answer, so Ray sort of wedged his fingers and feet into chinks between the cabin's logs, climbed up until he could get the window open wide enough, and wiggled through into an undignified sprawl.

"Ow," Ray said, and sat there on the floor of Bob Fraser's cabin in a slightly painful ball until he remembered Fraser would need to get in that way too. He crawled out of the way and then sat a little more, breathing hard, like he'd run miles or swam underwater. He didn't hear anything but the soft crackle of fire in Bob Fraser's stove. Ray winced and got painfully to his feet. No point in turning around. Fraser was either there or he wasn't. Ray went to the cabin door and opened it.

On the other side was Fraser's little office, filled with filing boxes, the soft reddish glow of evening, and an astonished Renfield Turnbull. "Detective Vecchio!"

"Hi, Turnbull," Ray said a little dazedly.

Turnbull fumbled with words for a moment. "What -- what were you doing in Constable Fraser's closet, sir?"

"Saving his life, I hope," Ray muttered, rubbing his face tiredly. He registered what he'd said and added, "Uh, metaphorically. For the top-secret thing. He needed stuff. From the closet."

Turnbull still looked like he was trying very hard to do an accurate fish impression. "And sir, why are you wearing his hat?"

Oh yeah. The hat. Ray felt a loony grin spread over his face. "Also top-secret. Hey, can you tell me if Fraser's, like, standing behind me in the closet?"

"Ah." Turnbull appeared to think very hard about this one. Maybe he thought it was some sort of test or code. "No, sir, it's just you in there."

"Oh," said Ray, the grin dropping off so fast it actually hurt a little. "Okay. Thanks. Later, Turnbull." He brushed past the astonished Mountie. Foyer. Door. Stairs. GTO, complete with parking ticket. Ray waited in the car for a while, just to see if maybe Fraser might open the passenger door. He didn't.

Ray still didn't look back, not the entire drive home.

*

His watch had started working again, the second hand still ticking away, but it thought the time was a little before eleven. Ray met Mr. Mulligan on the stairs. Mr. Mulligan told him it was about quarter to six; Ray thanked him and fixed his watch, feeling hungry and a little bit sick.

At his door it took him about three tries to find the right key, and when he did he thought for a second he'd let himself into the wrong apartment.

His chili lights were plugged in, along with just about every lamp in the place. That was maybe normal, except that Ray generally switched things off before he left. Weirder, though, the whole place smelled like -- pizza? pasta? something Italian. Ray walked in like a sleepwalker, blinking in surprise. Lasagna, that was it. Smelled great. He rounded a corner to peek into the kitchen, and --

"Jesus. Fraser."

Fraser turned. He was wearing Ray's mismatched oven mitts, the checkered one Stella'd left behind and the older one so burned and stained Ray'd forgotten the pattern by now. He was also wearing a white undershirt and his stupid pumpkin pants, suspenders and all, and he looked really definitely alive.

"Hi, Ray," he said.

Ray went from doorway to Fraser in about no seconds flat. Touched his shoulder, his cheek, his hair. All solid, warm, working order. "Fraser," Ray said. "Fraser, Fraser. Don't do that to me. God, don't do that to me!"

"I'm sorry, Ray," Fraser said. He turned a little and set the oven mitts aside carefully. Then he wouldn't look back at Ray. "I behaved very selfishly."

"No, you behaved very stupidly," Ray told him. "You wanna do something selfish, that's okay, everyone does selfish stuff. You -- Fraser. Fraser, look at me." Fraser looked up reluctantly. Ray jabbed two fingers against his chest. "You start having questions about the meaning of life, you talk to me. You do not talk to some toad. You talk to your stupid wolf, I don't care, but you deal with this stuff and you tell me."

"Yes, Ray," Fraser said.

"No. No 'yes, Ray' or 'of course, Ray,' none of that bullshit, you just -- you tell me. I see you being messed up, you don't go making up excuses or talking about cases or anything, you --"

"Ray," Fraser said, in the tone that meant he'd probably been saying Ray's name for a while now.

"What?" Ray demanded.

"I'm sorry," Fraser said, very seriously. "My behavior was --" He stopped and closed his eyes for a moment. It looked weirdly vulnerable and Ray's anger started splintering, started cracking into fragments and, shit, the whole world was splintering into crazy lines of light with Fraser's smudged face in the middle. "What you did was far more than I deserve," Fraser said, and opened his eyes again. A look of surprise and concern crossed his face, and Ray could hardly stand that either, all these human looks that had nothing to do with anger. "Ray," Fraser said, and reached up to brush a thumb under Ray's eye. The world splintered into more fragments of light and Fraser's thumb came away wet.

Ray shuddered. "Yeah," he said hoarsely. "What you deserve. God, I should punch you. You suck, Fraser."

A faint smile tugged at the corner of Fraser's mouth. "Understood."

"Just -- don't do that again, okay?"

"I won't," Fraser promised, and cleared his throat, stepping back. "Would you like some dinner, Ray?"

"Would I ever. It smells great." Ray scrubbed his jacket sleeve really quick across his face, and bumped into the brim of the Stetson. "Oh, uh. Would you like your hat back?"

Fraser's smile widened. "It does look quite fetching on you -- but yes, I think I would like my hat back."

"You got it." Ray set it down on the island counter. "Hey, where's Dief?"

"Napping, I believe. He quite exhausted himself with worry." Fraser pulled the oven mitts back on. "I really did behave most reprehensibly."

"Stop that," Ray said. "I mean, yeah, you did, but there's only so many times in one day the universe can handle you admitting you're wrong. Eventually all of space and time will, like, collapse or something."

"Indeed," Fraser murmured. "Ah, Ray, where do you keep your cutlery?"

"I'll get it," Ray said.

Five minutes had them sitting on Ray's couch, a tin of lasagna on the coffee table and plates on both their knees. It wasn't exactly five-star, but Fraser was sitting right there, his thigh up against Ray's and giving off heat the way normal not-dead Fraser did; Dief was behind the couch, chowing down on his own helping of lasagna, and the turtle watched calmly from on high in its tank. Ray started relaxing.

"Ray," Fraser said.

"Hmm?"

"I, ah. What exactly --? When you were out today, what --?" Fraser stopped and breathed in sharply, sounding impatient with himself. "I'm not sure how to ask this without sounding, ah, as though I might not be playing with a full deck, but --"

"I talked to your dad, I went through this place called the Borderland, I had a boat ride, I fed a wolf a doughnut, and I told stories for your soul," Ray interrupted, before Fraser hurt himself trying to get the words out. "This does not mean you are not insane."

"I -- you fed a wolf a doughnut?"

Trust Fraser to focus on the irrelevant stuff. Ray chewed through a mouthful of lasagna. "Yeah. Not Dief. Well, Dief too, he was looking pretty upset, but, uh, the one with three heads. I mean, it didn't have three heads, but if it was Greek it would've."

"Cerberus," Fraser said. "Yes. I gave him some pemmican."

Ray snorted. "You know what?" he asked. "Aside from the dead dad thing and the part where the scenery didn't follow physics, this was pretty normal."

"Charon was normal?"

"Okay, transportation usually costs more than fifty cents." Ray kept eating and tried not to grin around it.

Fraser ate too, very composedly. "Cerberus was very like Dief, I imagine."

"You got it."

"Surely you can't mean to tell me that a conversation with the lord of the underworld was particularly normal," Fraser said, and then seemed to think about this for a moment. He didn't even try to hide the twitch of smile this time. "Ah. I see your point. However, Ray, you made no attempt to arrest him."

"RCMP," Ray pointed out. "Not my jurisdiction."

Fraser grinned outright at that. Ray snorted. Then both of them were howling with laughter, not even because it was particularly funny but because it was that or start crying for real this time, because no one else in the world would believe them, because Fraser was alive and Ray still wanted to punch him or maybe kiss him, didn't know, laughed himself breathless.

"Ohh," Fraser said at length, sitting back and wiping at his eyes. "Oh dear. Ray." He chuckled a few more times. "Ray, I made far too much lasagna."

"It's cool, I like leftovers." Ray stretched. "I'll get it in the fridge. Don't move. You made it, I clean it."

"Yes, Ray." Fraser handed Ray his empty plate and smiled, that brighter-than-the-sun smile, full force. Ray took the lasagna and went hunting for plastic wrap feeling funny, shook out with laughter and exhaustion and ... not relief, this was too big for relief, this thing he was feeling because Fraser was here and alive and smiling up at Ray from his ratty couch.

"So," Ray said, loud enough to be heard over the hum of the fridge, "what was the deal with the pomegranate?" He shut the door and came back around to plop down on the couch next to Fraser again. He sort of felt like a cold beer might be perfect right now, but he was already feeling giddy and it wouldn't help. "I don't know why I told that one. I just kept thinking about pomegranates."

"Persephone," Fraser said.

Ray grinned. "Bless you."

"Ray." Ray made a little consolatory gesture and Fraser settled back. "Persephone was the daughter of Demeter, a goddess of agriculture and fertility in Classical Greece. She was abducted by Hades and made queen of the underworld. Her mother was devastated and looked for Persephone everywhere, abandoning her role so that the crops slowly withered in her absence. Finally so many were starving that Zeus ordered Hades to give Persephone back; Hades agreed, but before he did so, he offered Persephone a pomegranate. She ate four seeds from it and was therefore bound to Hades for four months of the year."

Ray sat up straighter. "That makes no sense."

"Well, no, Ray, a common theme in Western mythology is the eating of forbidden food, resulting in exile or entrapment."

"Yeah, but -- a month for each seed? What if she'd eaten the whole thing?"

"Ah, but Ray, it's an origin myth. You see, for the four months of the year during which Persephone is in the underworld, Demeter mourns her daughter and the earth becomes barren. It's an explanation for winter." Fraser frowned a little. "Of course the whole thing falls apart in any non-temperate climates."

"Huh." Ray leaned back. "So, what, since you ate the whole pomegranate dessert thing you were supposed to stay in the material world?"

"Possibly." Fraser sounded cautious. He looked it, too; he wasn't sitting Mountie-at-attention straight, but he wasn't really relaxed anymore either. "Perhaps you appealed to his sense of ... Perhaps he remembered Persephone."

"Right," Ray said, because he kind of got it. His heartbeat was picking up; they'd done every available avenue of conversation, even taken the scenic route and stopped for lasagna, but they were still up against Ray's realization in the RCMP outpost beyond the Borderland, and they definitely both remembered it.

"Ray --" Fraser said, right as Ray said "Fraser --" They both broke off. "Uh," said Ray, without really thinking further ahead than that, but Fraser said, nearly stumbling over the words, "If you'd like to assume nothing more was said, we really don't have to --"

"Fraser," Ray said again, and Fraser stopped. Licked his bottom lip nervously. Ray'd definitely been about to say something this time, but it cut right through his train of thought. For a moment his brain hummed, totally blank.

Then he thought: no matter what direction you step, your destination is the same. And it was easy.

"Fraser," Ray said, "I did not go through hell and high water, and we are talking more literally than usual here, to just pretend that everything is good and normal. I am pissed off as hell you didn't say something about your near-death whatever, and I am even more pissed off that you had to eat fruit or be mythical or something, and I am really, really pissed off you did some weird code thing like agree when I said Chicago had the good stuff instead of just telling me, because I have been sitting on this for months, Fraser, months I have been trying to stop you doing stupid things and just talk to me and I've been kind of freaking out here."

"Ray," Fraser said, "you're not making any sense."

"Okay, maybe I am a poet on the inside but I suck at this." Ray clasped his hands together and stared down at them. "Can I kiss you?"

Silence. Behind the couch Diefenbaker gave a wuffling sigh. Somewhere a few blocks down a police siren went wailing past.

"Yes," Fraser said.

Ray looked back up at him. Fraser looked mostly calm, if a little more determined than usual, but the longer Ray looked at him the more Fraser's expression turned to that same naked hope he'd worn in the outpost. Ray reached out and touched tentatively along Fraser's jaw, and Fraser's eyes fluttered closed. Okay. Ray leaned in and pressed his lips to Fraser's.

For a moment Fraser stayed absolutely still, which was fine; he was warm, he was here, his lower lip was a little damp from where he'd licked it earlier, and he wasn't pulling away, all of which was pretty great in Ray's book. Then he turned his head a little, his lips yielding under Ray's, and it was a real kiss, a tentative slide. Breathing each other's air. Ray started heating up, a full-body flush. He leaned in a bit more, let his tongue glide briefly across Fraser's lower lip like he'd be able to really taste him under the linger of the lasagna, and Fraser -- Fraser made this soft startled noise and all of a sudden Ray wasn't in charge anymore.

Fraser's hands carded into his hair and Fraser nudged his mouth open demandingly, like he had on the sinking ship only with a lot less lake water, and Ray was a hell of a lot warmer now. Then Fraser's tongue started getting seriously acquainted with Ray's mouth, which, Ray had known Fraser liked licking things but oh God. Ray cupped Fraser's jaw with one hand, held onto his shoulder with the other, and kissed back as well as he could, heart going like crazy and his head starting to spin. Breathing. Right. But that meant stopping, and Ray couldn't, absolutely could not be any further from Fraser than he was right this second; he could feel Fraser's pulse thrumming under his fingertips, and Fraser was making another soft noise, not startled now but so intensely pleased that Ray's knees turned to water. Good thing he was sitting down. He laughed a little against Fraser's mouth, breathed in through his nose as best he could, made a muffled noise half-surprise, half-laughter still as Fraser tried to get even closer.

And then Fraser was tugging Ray forwards, sprawling back against the couch and pulling Ray down atop him. They jolted when they landed, their mouths coming apart; Ray heard himself make a desperate little noise and Fraser surged up to meet his mouth again. Ray settled down on him -- God, it was nice knowing he wasn't crushing Fraser with his weight -- and suddenly all of Fraser spread under him wasn't close enough either. Warm, Ray thought, warm, licking into Fraser's mouth and feeling Fraser shudder, hands tightening in Ray's hair. Ray shimmied a little, trying to get closer to Fraser's body heat, and without any instruction from his brain his hips rolled into Fraser's, like, God, like he was sixteen and without any self-control. He started to freeze up, maybe apologize, but Fraser gave a low desperate moan and arched up right back.

Okay, so necking on the couch and humping his suddenly-not-buttoned-up partner was not the weirdest thing Ray Kowalski had done today. It was still pretty insane.

Ray pulled back from Fraser's mouth, and then had to do it again because Fraser pulled him right back, but the second time Fraser got the picture. Ray stared down at him, panting a little and quivering with the effort of not moving for just a few seconds, and Fraser stared back up at him, mouth red and pupils blown and hair a total mess. Ray knew he was supposed to say something reasonable, because they really needed to talk about this, probably starting with what the hell 'this' was; but what actually came out of his mouth, breathless and a little desperate, was, "Bed. Bed, Frase, now."

Fraser stared at him for a second longer, and then nodded, moving already, up on his elbows while Ray sort of rolled off him and helped Fraser to his feet, which brought them about an inch apart, which meant they were kissing again, Ray's hands fisted in Fraser's shirt like the beginning of a fight and Fraser's arms wrapped around Ray, drawing him in.

"Ray," Fraser murmured against his mouth. "Ray. Bed."

"Right," Ray said, and somehow managed to get far enough away from Fraser that they could make it the six whole feet from the couch to the bedroom. Ray got in and turned back in time to see Fraser shutting the door in Dief's surprised face. Ray laughed. Fraser turned, raising his eyebrows, and Ray explained, "Just -- Dief, he just -- poor guy."

"I'm sure he doesn't need to know about human mating rituals in any more detail," Fraser said, which, first, how in hell was he still using complete sentences, and also -- human mating rituals. Okay. That's what this was, and it was actually happening.

"Uh," Ray said, suddenly not feeling like laughing anymore.

"Ray ..." Fraser came over to him, a little hesitantly now. He touched a hand carefully to Ray's cheek and Ray leaned into it instantly, no thought necessary, the way he always leaned into Fraser.

"Can we," Ray said, and tried to sound less scared (of what, Kowalski?) than he was, "can we just -- I need you to be here, okay? Really here." He reached out and pressed a hand to Fraser's chest, and Fraser seemed to get it, because he nodded and took his hand away from Ray's face in order to shrug off one suspender, then the other. Ray let his own hand fall, toed off his boots, pulled off his shirt, and got to the button on his khakis with his hands shaking. The fuck. He felt more than heard Fraser stepping forward, and looked up as Fraser pushed his hands gently aside. Fraser. Just wearing his boxers, which looked like they'd probably been starched. Between wanting to laugh about the starch thing and wanting to just stare at mostly-naked Fraser as much as possible, Ray's jitters went away pretty much instantly, and then they went way away because Fraser was carefully unbuttoning Ray's pants and sliding them down over his hips, and Ray's knees wanted to stop working again. His khakis fell to the floor, the much-abused bag of doughnuts giving one last dying crinkle of protest, and then Fraser's thumbs were hooking under the band of his boxers and Ray absolutely did not care about the fate of any doughnuts ever.

"Wait," he managed. "Wait, I -- get in." Fraser stared at him in bewilderment. "The quilt's a bitch to wash," Ray explained, and Fraser's face cleared right up -- he actually smiled -- and then he was shucking his boxers and shimmying into Ray's bed like this was totally normal. Ray swallowed and tugged his own off as best he could, slid in the other side. At once Fraser grabbed his arm and tugged Ray back over atop him.

Yeah.

He could actually feel Fraser now, all the warm living skin. He kissed Fraser's left eyelid, the eyebrow above it that Fraser always rubbed at; kissed the tip of Fraser's nose, the middle of his chin where now late in the day he could feel the beginning rasp of stubble. His mouth again, softly, then less so. Then the world tipped and spun, Fraser rolling them, so Ray ended up sprawled out breathlessly under Fraser, blinking up at him.

"Hey," he said, feeling almost idiotic with relief that Fraser was here.

"Hey," Fraser echoed, and kissed down the side of Ray's neck, bit lightly at the junction of his shoulder. Ray gasped and bucked up sharply, a little startled but mostly a hell of a lot turned on, and then Fraser settled down between his thighs, a warm heavy blanket that made Ray feel weirdly comforted even as he clutched tightly at Fraser's shoulders and made some inarticulate noise.

Fraser kissed him, and between kisses said things like "It's all right," and "I'm sorry," until Ray managed to gasp, "Fraser, shut up, I don't care --" and after that Fraser confined himself mostly to Ray's name, which was fine by Ray. For his part he probably said Fraser's name back a couple of times, but everything in his head tangled into a jumble of sound while he rocked up into the hollow of Fraser's hip and tried to get closer, closer, kissing Fraser and starting to shake and trying to hold Fraser to him until Fraser kissed the side of his mouth and whispered, "I've got you, Ray," and Ray came apart, twitching and crying out until Fraser kissed him again, trying to breathe and trembling through the aftershocks.

"Mm," Ray said, and blinked up at Fraser, who was staring down at him with fondness and not a little desperation. "Oh," added Ray, and sure as hell couldn't move worth a damn, but he opened his legs a little wider and gave Fraser a blissed-out grin; Fraser shuddered and started moving again, and Ray watched him, the flutter of his pulse and the movement of his eyelids, each breath he sucked in, a little sweaty curl of hair that had come loose by his temple.

Ray found he could move again, a little, and raised a hand dreamily to brush the curl back behind Fraser's ear. Fraser turned his face towards Ray's hand, nuzzled blindly into his palm and then gasped, eyes squeezing tighter shut and gritting his teeth. Ray stroked the side of Fraser's face in fascination until Fraser slumped down atop him.

"Mm," Ray said again, but a little more protestingly this time. Orgasm plus Fraser definitely equaled too heavy to use Ray as a mattress. He wiggled a little and Fraser eased up until Ray could sort of roll out from under him and flail at the bedside table; he made contact with the lamp and managed to click it off. Then in the half-dark he pressed up against Fraser again, sticky wet sheets be damned, wrapped one arm firmly around him. No way was Ray letting Fraser go anywhere.

Fraser didn't seem inclined, though. He yawned and scooted up a little closer. "Goodnight, Ray."

"Night," Ray mumbled, and drifted off.

*

Ray woke slowly. Sunlight was striping the sheets next to his hand, and everything felt warm in a way that had nothing to do with sunlight or his body heat, and everything to do with this spark Ray could feel lodged in the center of his chest, the sort of warmth he hadn't felt since ... God, since years before the divorce. Ray blinked, bewildered. He'd had a weird dream about Fraser's dad and a lot of snow, and then -- then --

Ray rolled over and stared. Sitting next to him in bed, calmly reading a paperback book, was Benton Fraser, shirtless and with his hair still a mess. All the bewildering fear Ray'd felt last night came rolling back in, but this time it got mixed up with the bone-deep warmth and suddenly Ray got it, what this feeling was. He shut his eyes, and didn't panic, and admitted to himself that this was not new at all. It was just that now Fraser knew it too.

When he opened his eyes again, Fraser had placed his finger against the book's inside spine and was looking over at him. "Good morning, Ray."

"Hi," Ray said, and just in case Fraser got the wrong idea from the way Ray probably looked like he'd just been hit over the head, he rolled a little closer and pressed a clumsy sleepy kiss to Fraser's rib, then flopped back on the pillow. "Whassa time?"

"Just before eight," Fraser said. "I thought you might want coffee, but, well ..." He fumbled the words, and Ray felt about a billion times better, which he hadn't known was possible.

"Didn't want me getting the wrong idea," Ray finished for him, sitting up. "It's cool, Frase." He leaned in and kissed Fraser's mouth, just a dry press of lips, because if Fraser's hair could get messed up, he could probably get morning breath too and Ray didn't want to deal with that before coffee. "Uh, what you reading?"

"Ah, it appears to be concerned with an English lord named Gerald and an heiress with the improbable name of Kitty ..." He broke off, his eyebrows going up slightly, because Ray was laughing.

"You found Frannie's romance novel," he said. "I, uh. I borrowed it. Trash reading because there was nothing good on TV, you know? And I thought it might give me some insight about Frannie."

"Has it?" Fraser asked mildly.

Ray chuckled. "No idea. Oh man." More and more of the previous day was coming back now, caffeine or not. "Oh man, Frannie. I suck, Fraser, I should've told her last night you were okay."

Fraser set the book aside, looking a little alarmed. "She knows?"

"Yeah, but -- just her and Mort. And maybe Turnbull, I couldn't really tell." Ray scrubbed his face, trying to wake up more. "Welsh probably wants to kill me. I took a personal day. Uh, if Turnbull did like I asked, the Ice Queen thinks you stayed here because you were coming down with a cold. But damage control shouldn't be too bad besides Frannie."

"Ray," Fraser said. Ray looked up. Fraser touched the side of his face gently. "Thank you. What you've done ... I can't possibly repay it."

"Hey, you, uh, you stayed," Ray said, and looked away. "That's a good start."

Fraser scooted over a little and wrapped his arms around Ray, kissed his temple. Ray held on tight and felt like maybe his heart would burst or something just as unlikely. "I'll make coffee and the necessary phone calls," Fraser said. "Take the first shower."

Ray nodded.

It took them a little longer to actually get up, because Fraser seemed about as unwilling to let go of Ray as Ray was to let go of Fraser, but eventually Ray's eight o'clock alarm went off, and that was enough incentive to get them going.

Ray spent a while in the shower, just standing under the hot water and letting all the muscles in his shoulders ease up. He spent a while in the bathroom after he was done with his shower, too, making sure he was actually clean-shaven for once and then messing around with his hair. It wasn't like he thought Fraser cared what he looked like. It was just that he had to ... deserve it, or something, an unshakable habit from having spent most of his life trying hard to deserve Stella. Considering how much Fraser'd been thanking him, he probably had a surplus of deserving, but still.

By the time he'd turned the shower over to Fraser, dressed, shuffled out, and downed the first cup of coffee, he felt human for real and nuked some frozen waffles for Fraser's breakfast while he nursed the second cup. Fraser came out then, cleaned up and dressed almost like his Mountie self but without the serge.

"I made a few phone calls," he said. "I think you'll find Lieutenant Welsh is somewhat less displeased with you now. And, ah, Francesca --" and here he rubbed his thumb over his eyebrow -- "was overjoyed to hear from me. I imagine she'll be very pleasant to you for at least a week."

"She'll be hanging all over you," Ray said. The microwave beeped. "Uh, want syrup? She'll be unbearable."

"Yes please," Fraser said. "And I think that is rather unfair to her, Ray. I gave her a shock."

"Yeah, well," Ray said, and brought over syrup and the plate of waffles.

"I also spoke with Inspector Thatcher," Fraser said, and he looked a little nervous now. "She seems worried that my cold might be infectious, and has instructed me to take as much time as I need. I imagine she would like me back by the end of the week, but in the meantime I find myself, well, rather exiled, and --"

"Fraser," Ray said, "the only difference is you'll just be staying here after dinner instead of going back to that stupid cot of yours."

"The only difference, Ray?"

"Oh, well, I," Ray said, and made himself look at Fraser. "Frase, I thought you were going to die. For real this time. And maybe if I hadn't been so pissed off I wouldn't've done anything, because -- one, I am undercover here, and unless I am seriously missing something I do not think Vecchio ever slept with you." Fraser looked startled and shook his head. "Yeah, I thought so. So, y'know, stupidest way to blow cover ever. And my dad'll probably try to disown me all over again."

"Ray --" Fraser said.

"But, uh, I don't know if it will blow cover," Ray went on, wanting to see this through now he'd started. "I mean, you're basically my whole social life anyway. I don't think -- I mean, if you spend a little more time here the only one who'll maybe notice is the Ice Queen, and she's not gonna see what she doesn't want to see. So I figure -- I figure, I go to the goddamn underworld to get you back, I get to keep you." He stared down at his coffee. "Unless that's not cool with you."

"Ray," Fraser said again. Ray looked up. Fraser was giving him a smile so brilliant it was a little scary. "It's fine. It's more than fine."

"Good," Ray said. "Good. Okay. You done?"

"I think so, yes," Fraser said, mopping up the last of his waffle. "I'll clean up."

Ray nodded briskly and went to find a jacket and his badge.

*

They stopped by the Consulate so Fraser could get changed for real. Ray stayed in the car and contemplated the parking ticket he'd gotten for leaving the GTO there so long yesterday. Like the universe couldn't give him a break when he was going off and being heroic. On the other hand, the ticket was only twenty bucks; it wasn't like Ray was gonna contest it. Sorry, I had to park here in order to rescue my partner from the next world. Yeah, it was important; he's great in bed. Ray grinned to himself and felt happy and felt a little scared about feeling so happy, but mostly he seemed to be doing okay.

At the station they were waylaid by Frannie, who punched Ray's arm and told him off for not calling her, and then hugged Fraser, who stood very still under her ministrations; then, to pretty much everyone's surprise, she punched Fraser in the arm too, and said, "Don't scare us like that, Frase."

"I'm very sorry, Francesca," Fraser said.

"Vecchio!" Welsh called from his office door. Ray turned, and saw out of the corner of his eye Fraser turning too. Welsh fixed them both with a look. "I got something new for you two. First, Vecchio, you can redeem yourself by bringing me a coffee."

"Right you are, sir," Ray said. Fraser gave him a quick look, but Ray shrugged. "It's good, considering the stuff he coulda done. I'll meet you in there."

"Right you are, Ray," Fraser said, with a slight smile Ray didn't get until he played his own words back at himself. He laughed a little and headed for the lunch room.

It did sort of suck having to pay the coffee machine for Welsh on his own dime, especially on top of the parking ticket and the fifty cents he'd given the boatman, but he stuck the money in the slot anyway and bounced on his feet while the machine hummed and did its thing.

"That was good work, you know," said someone behind him.

Ray whirled and stared at the old Mountie standing at attention about two feet from him. Bob Fraser gave Ray a shrewd look, and Ray fidgeted under it. Maybe he'd spoken too soon about this being less awkward than meeting Stella's parents. "Uh, thanks," he said.

Fraser's dad cleared his throat. "And I just wanted to say ... keep it up." He pressed his lips together and nodded decisively, and ... no, this was not like meeting Stella's parents. Stella's parents were always saying things and meaning something else, and it was like trying to understand another language; this was different. This was just a few words but Ray could hear them, hear Bob Fraser just saying thank you, but glacier-deep. Ray sort of mirrored Bob Fraser's expression, smiled a little awkwardly and nodded.

"The coffee's ready, son," Bob Fraser added.

"Oh," said Ray. "Right, uh, thanks," and turned to get it. When he turned back, Fraser's dad was gone.

Ray went out and across the bullpen to where Fraser was waiting at the door to Welsh's office. Fraser gave Ray a questioning look, and Ray shrugged a little. Tell you later. Fraser nodded. Ray reached out and brushed the arm of Fraser's tunic, casual and not casual at all, perfectly normal, because they did this all the time and had for pretty much as long as Ray could remember.

"Let's go," he said, and they headed inside for the next thing.

due South: Katabasis (Part I)

2009-04-08T19:02:17Z

Fandom: due South
Rating: R
Word count: 17,057
Pairing: Fraser/Kowalski
Summary: "I talked to your dad, I went through this place called the Borderland, I had a boat ride, I fed a wolf a doughnut, and I told stories for your soul," Ray interrupted. "This does not mean you are not insane."

Katabasis

{Part One | Part Two}

If Ray was gonna take a guess, he'd say it started on the way back from the funeral home.

Besides getting Van Zandt and his goons into holding -- which was taken out of their hands pretty quick -- it was up to him and Welsh and Fraser to wake everybody up and explain how Fraser hadn't actually been dead but was just under the influence of the secretions of the Whatsit Toad. Ray found himself doing most of the explaining, though, because Welsh was busy making like he wasn't ashamed of all his detectives keeling over like that, and Fraser ...

Fraser was just quiet. Maybe Ray should have asked.

Okay, Ray did ask. Fraser climbed into the GTO and Dief bounded over him into the back, and as Ray peeled out of the parking lot he asked, "You doing okay there, Frase?"

"Yes, Ray," Fraser said, and maybe Ray shouldn't have left it -- Fraser would probably have to be dying, or at least seriously pissed off, before he'd admit to not being okay -- but if Fraser's quiet was a different sort than the normal silence Ray was used to, well, funeral homes sure as hell weren't Ray's favorite place either and he hadn't spent all night in one.

They went back to the station and signed off on the paperwork, and Ray figured Fraser was better because leaving the bullpen they were walking in step, and when Ray tried calculating how long Van Zandt had before his parole was due, Fraser said right away, "A hundred and forty-three years." And he did look pleased about it, though maybe not animated like he usually was at the close of a case.

"Wanna get lunch?" Ray asked. He probably meant breakfast, since neither of them had eaten yet, but it was almost noon so he didn't really care which meal it was.

"No, I'm afraid I --" Fraser started. He stopped in the hall and looked around, frowning. "Where's Diefenbaker?"

"No idea." The mutt had been with them all the way into the station, but he'd beat it the second it looked like there was going to be paperwork. Ray didn't much blame him. "I think maybe he's sulking somewhere."

"Oh dear." Fraser frowned. "I hope he will come to understand, given sufficient time."

"And doughnuts," Ray said. It was probably too late in the day for doughnuts.

"I would prefer not to bribe him, Ray."

Ray grinned a little and slung an arm over Fraser's shoulder. "Lunch?" he repeated.

"I'd love to, Ray, but ..." Fraser went sort of tense under Ray's arm, so Ray backed off. "Would you mind taking us to the Consulate?" Fraser asked. "I'm afraid I'm neglecting a backlog of forms."

Which meant the Ice Queen didn't want Fraser out of her sight much right now. Ray didn't really blame her, though. "Yeah, okay," he said.

They found Diefenbaker downstairs. He made grumbling noises when he learned there were no doughnuts in his future, but he climbed into the back of the GTO and sulked quietly. Up in front, Fraser was just as quiet, although Ray didn't think he was sulking. Just ... not really all right.

"Hey," Ray said, pulling out of the station lot, "are you, um --?"

"No, I should have the forms well in hand by noon tomorrow," Fraser said, completely ignoring Ray's tone.

Ray sighed. "Okay. I probably got my own paperwork to do." So that was it as far as conversation went.

He parked in front of the Consulate. Fraser got his hat and let Dief out, shut the door and smiled at Ray through the glass, the first real smile Ray'd seen from him that day. Ray waved him off and didn't think about the way a Fraser smile destroyed all the suckiness of paperwork and weird cases and sulky wolves. It'd been that way for months now, ever since the crazy case with the gold and the ships. Fraser'd said he wanted to keep being partners, had smiled at Ray, and it was like he had a light switch to the goddamn sun. And it just kept on, every single time he smiled now, with little laughter-crinkles around his eyes.

Ray shook his head and went back to the 27. He got some takeout on the way, but it just wasn't the same eating alone and not sneaking any to Dief.

Hours and a lot of paperwork later -- at least Welsh would be happy -- Ray decided he deserved to go home, maybe have a night in, feed his turtle, have a beer, read the beat-up romance novel he'd stolen off Frannie's desk for the hell of it. He shuffled the last few papers around his desk to make it look like he was a bit less of a slob, said "What?" a little too defensively when he caught Francesca looking sideways at him (you never knew, she could definitely be suspicious about her book vanishing like that), and clocked out.

He went home, ate and watched the turtle eat, told it, "I am so glad you do not talk back like Dief does." The turtle didn't pay any attention to him, so Ray grinned to himself, broke out the beer and the paperback. This one was about an English lord and a beautiful heiress; the English lord was still in love with some dumb girl who'd gone and married an earl, and Ray was willing to bet -- probably because the back cover had a few hints about it -- that in a few pages the beautiful heiress was going to be kidnapped, and the English lord would realize he'd been pining after the wrong girl, and go save her come hell, high water, and some two-dimensional bad guys.

So Ray got his kicks where he could. But this sort of thing was an easy read, there'd been this brief phase when Stella kept bringing them home so there was something comfy about them, and Ray figured they probably told him a lot about Frannie's psyche, which might be useful one day.

He found his place, bookmarked with the receipt from the last pizza Sandor had delivered. Kitty took one last glance into Gerald's smoldering eyes before she turned towards her suite, little suspecting the long cruel days that would unfold before she would set eyes on him again ... "Don't gimme that look," Ray told the turtle, and settled in to read.

*

In the morning Ray drove in feeling pretty good, like maybe Welsh was gonna be nice to him and just for kicks Fraser would lick the right thing this afternoon and they'd have some breakthrough on one of Ray's stalled cases too -- and reaching the station parking lot, Ray slammed the brakes too hard, jolting to a stop with a screech.

Diefenbaker was sitting at the 27's side entrance, this daub of white in the gray universe without any accompanying daub of red.

Ray was out of the GTO and crouched next to Dief in about two seconds flat. "Heya, Dief," he said, fingers wrapping in the wolf's ruff to keep Dief from licking him or getting away. "Where's Fraser?"

Dief whined a little and managed to lick the end of Ray's nose anyway. But he didn't try anything else, just did that little whine and gave him this sincere amber-eyed doggy look. Ray'd maybe been hanging around Fraser a bit too long, but he was pretty sure the big eyes weren't saying I'm looking innocent so you'll give me doughnuts -- no, Diefenbaker was saying I don't know and I'm upset. Ray didn't know when interpreting Dief had started getting normal, but he did know that going with his gut was something that'd pretty much always been normal, and that meant an easy equation: early morning plus Fraser's wolf here freaking out minus Fraser equals bad feeling.

Another whine, another little lick. "Hey," Ray said. "Cool it, buddy, we'll find him." He got to his feet, and tried not to feel like he was nuts or panicking or maybe in a Lassie film. "Where'd you see Fraser last?" The mutt cocked his head and gave Ray this considering look, like he was figuring out whether Ray was serious about this. "I'm serious about this," Ray told him. "I am all over it if Fraser's doing some stupid thing, Dief."

Diefenbaker snuffled a little, apparently satisfied with this, and took off for the street. Ray followed him.

He'd already gone about six blocks when he realized he hadn't clocked in, that he was about fifteen minutes late for work already, and that Welsh was going to chew him out no matter how many good excuses he had, but Ray had this weird feeling of just not caring. The job was the job, and when Marcus Ellery was in town or Diefenbaker thought Fraser was missing, good career moves were not on the top of Ray's priority list.

A couple more blocks and Ray realized they were heading the quickest street route to the Consulate. He wasn't sure whether this meant he should be relieved or pissed off or freak out a bit, but whichever, it would still be quicker to go back for the GTO than to walk the rest of the way. Ray ran up next to Dief, stopped him with a well-placed foot in his path, and, when Diefenbaker looked up reproachfully, said, "Are we going to the Consulate?"

Bark.

"Okay, I got it, now let's go the fast way with the car."

Bark, bark.

Fifteen minutes more, and Dief seeming a bit less agitated after the treat of riding in the front next to Ray, the GTO was parked in front of the Consulate and they were heading up the steps. Ray knocked on the door. Knocked again. Was just reaching into his pocket for a credit card to jimmy the lock when Turnbull answered it. "Ah, Detective Vecchio!"

Diefenbaker took advantage of the gap in the door to rush in past Turnbull. Ray made to follow and found his way blocked by a wall of Mountie, so he sighed and said, "Hey, Turnbull, where's Fraser?" He peered over Turnbull's red shoulder at the dim Consulate interior, but a) it was pretty dark in there, and 2) he wasn't wearing his glasses, so everything more than three feet away was a blur anyway.

"I haven't yet seen Constable Fraser this morning," Turnbull said, a tiny frown marring his bland face.

"Is he here?" Ray asked, about as patiently as he was ever able to with Turnbull.

Turnbull's face lit with a sudden idea. "I'll check!"

"Nah, I'll just --" Ray pushed in past Turnbull, who made a couple of protesting noises which Ray ignored. The Consulate seemed empty -- no one else staying at the moment, he figured. He heard a doggy noise from Fraser's little box of a room, so he headed that way.

Fraser was lying quietly on his cot, which might've been okay except that Fraser was not a guy who slept in, and Dief was nudging worriedly at one of his limp hands and whining again, and Fraser was not wearing his ridiculous red thermal things, he was in pumpkin pants and suspenders and Henley. Limp hands. Fraser, very still. Ray's brain, running on autopilot, did a quick detective's check of the room -- boots placed neatly next to the cot, Stetson on the desk -- but by then he was at Fraser's cot, leaning over and shaking him a little. "Hey. Fraser. Frase."

Nothing.

Ray checked quick for breath and pulse, but it was nothing again. Ray really did not feel like panicking yet, so he snapped his fingers in Fraser's face a couple of times, shook him maybe a little harder than he should've, knelt next to the cot and said, quiet and angry in Fraser's ear, "You didn't tell me this was one of those, like, trick wells you fall down again even if you don't mean to!" Nothing. "Dammit, Fraser!"

Dief barked.

Ray looked up slowly and saw Diefenbaker pawing at Fraser's closet. "Yeah, I know the uniform's in there," Ray said. "It'll be fine, Dief, it's not the important thing right now." Dief looked reproachful, but Ray just gritted his teeth and called, "Hey, Turnbull, get in here!"

"Now, Detective Vecchio," Turnbull said reprovingly, appearing in the doorway, "it only takes an extra second --"

"Yeah, shut up and help me with this please," Ray interrupted. "Fraser's, uh, trying this top-secret experiment for this case we're doin'. So you gotta help me carry him out to the car."

He didn't know where that had come from. Ray's mouth and Ray's brain and Ray's body all seemed to be running separately. What his mouth was saying, it was flimsy as hell, especially considering that everyone had seen the results of the top-secret experiment yesterday. But it was also Turnbull, so he tapped the side of his nose wisely and helped Ray half-drag, half-carry Fraser down to the GTO. "Thanks," Ray said, actually meaning it, when they had Fraser safely stowed in the back seat. "And if the Ice Qu -- if Inspector Thatcher gets ticked off Fraser left, you can blame it on me."

Turnbull frowned confusedly. "Yes, Detective Vecchio. Have a safe trip!"

"Yeah," Ray said, and peeled off.

He didn't start getting the shakes until the first red light. Diefenbaker, in the back keeping Fraser company, leaned up and licked the whole side of Ray's face, and Ray kinda yelled at him. Diefenbaker didn't even get offended, just nuzzled at Ray's ear. Ray gripped the steering wheel hard and gunned it.

*

He'd hoped he'd be able to sneak the spare wheelchair out of the supply closet downstairs and get Fraser to Mort, no mess no fuss, but this was not Ray's day. No one prone to asking Ray questions should've even been in that part of the station, but Ray wheeled out the chair and there was Francesca in the doorway, looking startled. Ray swore inwardly.

"What do you need that for?" Frannie asked.

"A thing," Ray said shortly. "Move, Frannie, I'm in kind of a hurry."

"A thing?" Francesca repeated. She followed him down the hall. "Oh my God, you haven't found another dead body in the walls?"

"Keep it down," Ray snapped, harsher than he'd meant, and when he saw Frannie's eyes go theatrically wide, he added, "And no, no we have not found any dead bodies in the walls. That is the sort of freakishness that doesn't repeat itself." They were almost at the outer doors. He stopped, leaning up against them and blocking Frannie's way. "Don't you have, like, telephones to answer or something?"

Frannie crossed her arms. "Just so we get this over with now, I'm following you outside."

"Uh, no, Frannie, you don't want to do that." Ray saw her face stubborning up and had the weird idea he wanted to hug her, like she really was his sister and a hug might make them both a bit better. "Trust me, I don't want to do it."

"You're digging yourself a hole, pal," Frannie told him.

"Okay, okay, fine," Ray said, and went back to the GTO with Frannie trailing him. He unlocked the door, let Dief out from where he'd been sitting guard, and felt the exact moment when Frannie realized what was up; heard her little indrawn breath and the way she froze. Ray angled the wheelchair up next to the car and started dragging Fraser into it, carefully as he could. "Told you you didn't want to," he said.

"Is he --?" Frannie whispered. Louder, "I mean, he's just -- doing the thing with the toad again, right? It's not -- it's nothing serious."

Ray hauled Fraser upright in the chair, pulled it back and closed the car door with a bump of his hip. He looked up at Francesca and she looked back at him with this pleading in her eyes even worse than Dief's, and that was ... good, that was a good thing, because if everyone else was busy freaking out, then Ray could be the cool one, not freak out, keep a handle on things. "I got no idea," he said. "I'm taking him to Mort."

Frannie's face started stubborning up again. "So let's go then," she said.

They went.

*

"Well, he is not dead," Mort pronounced.

"Yeah, I know," Ray snapped, about half the tension in his shoulders vanishing. "It's the, uh, he had a relapse from the toad thing, or --?"

"A relapse?" Mort looked up and fixed him with one of those Mort looks that wasn't actually a glare but damn well felt like one. "No, there is no reason for the secretions to have aftereffects. It would have left his system by, let us see, ah, yesterday evening."

"So something else happened to him!" Frannie edged up anxiously next to Ray. "Right?"

"No, I think we can safely say that this is the work of our friend the bouga toad," Mort said. He set his little eye-flashlight thing back on a tray and frowned thoughtfully down at Fraser's still form. Ray shifted unhappily, and Mort looked back up at him. "Do you have any idea why this would be?"

"No," Ray said. Thought of the handful of aborted attempts at asking how Fraser was doing. Realized, feeling really dumb, that the last time he'd tried, Fraser had actually headed him off with the most transparent of Fraser-tricks, the guileless subject change. "No." He shook himself quickly in a way that might've made Dief proud. "Okay, I don't know how long he's been like this. Maybe an hour, maybe all night. But he's gonna come out of it sometime soon, right?"

Mort fixed him with an awful Mort-look.

"So ... what do we do?" Frannie asked, real quiet.

"I do not know," Mort said, and shrugged, began pottering around the room. "I deal with them when they are already dead, yes? Perhaps you should take him to someone who deals with the live ones."

"A hospital?" Ray asked. And yeah, hospitals creeped him out a hell of a lot less than the morgue did, but -- "No, no, they'll stick him full of needles and they'll ask questions and, jeez, they'll sure as hell want to hold him for psychiatric; we'll lose days of work and the Ice Queen will kill him. Nah. I'll take him home, he can sleep it off there."

Mort didn't say anything to this, but when Ray looked at Frannie she nodded a little, and together they got Fraser off the slab and back into the wheelchair. Diefenbaker, waiting just outside the doors, yelped and danced up on his hind legs when they came out; Ray pushed him back down and tried to give him a reassuring look. Dief seemed less than reassured, but he trotted after them as they went back out to the parking lot.

"Okay," Ray said, turning to Frannie when Fraser was safely in the GTO's back seat again, "you gotta cover for me until I get home. Then I'll call the lieu."

Frannie's eyes were glued to Fraser, utterly still and silent somewhere behind Ray. "What are you gonna say?" she asked softly.

"I don't know," Ray admitted. "But not this. There is no way anyone knows about this. You got that?"

Frannie looked back at Ray. Her eyes were shiny with tears, and Ray felt a little bit sick. "I got it," she whispered.

*

Ray got Fraser hauled upstairs and settled onto his bed with the help of Mr. Mulligan from the first floor. Mr. Mulligan, probably aided by Fraser's pumpkin pants, concluded that Fraser'd had a rough night out; Ray made a few grunting affirmatives, thanked Mr. Mulligan, and more or less shut the door in his face.

He hated seeing Fraser lying like that, spread out on Ray's quilt, his skin too pale and his eyelids unmoving. Ray's insides were getting all twisted up, maybe from how damn helpless Fraser looked, maybe from how it was ... so close, so close to the back corner of Ray's brain that thought maybe Fraser plus Ray's bed equals greatness, but, God, not like this. Ray carefully rearranged Fraser's limbs from the awkward sprawl he'd been set down in to something a little more comfortable. Then Ray sat on the edge of the bed, his fingertips about an inch from Fraser's cool ones, and whispered, "Fraser, this sucks."

Diefenbaker came up and rested his muzzle on Ray's thigh, whimpering softly. Ray scratched Dief behind the ears, feeling about as miserable as the mutt sounded. "Dief, buddy," he said, "would you like a doughnut?"

Dief actually hesitated before giving a little yip of confirmation, which twisted Ray's insides up even more. He brushed his fingertips over Fraser's knuckles, left the bedroom, and fumbled around the kitchen until he found a day-old paper bag full of the powdered sugar doughnuts that Dief loved even though they made him sneeze. Ray got one out, shoved the crinkling bag absently into the pocket of his khakis, and gave Dief a treat for holding it together so damn well. Dief sneezed and scarfed the doughnut and gazed sadly back up at Ray. It was not a feed-me-more look, just a ... look. Ray dropped down next to the wolf, sort of carded his fingers through Dief's ruff, and then leaned forward and hung on, the way he'd wanted to when he was about eight years old and his parents wouldn't get him a dog. He breathed in deep, not really caring that Dief smelled like slightly damp dog hair and every street in Chicago, because by now the GTO smelled a bit like that too. Dief really was a damn smart wolf, because Ray was probably holding him too tight to be comfortable, but he just shuffled a little and sat patiently until Ray felt okay enough to let go.

Ray got up and called the station.

"Vecchio, where the hell are you?" Welsh demanded the second he was put through.

"Uh, personal thing," Ray said. "Came up suddenly. Put it on my sick days."

An ominous silence. "Detective," said Welsh, "is there the remotest possibility you're going to tell me what's going on?"

"No," Ray said. Held the phone a little too hard. "Sorry, Lieu."

Welsh sighed. "Fine. I expect you to be here first thing tomorrow," and he hung up before Ray could say yessir.

"That went well," Ray told Diefenbaker, and frowned. "Dief? What the hell." He went over to where Dief was snuffling and whining by the door -- wrong door. He'd been standing sentry over Fraser, but now he was at Ray's front door. "There is no way you are having a doughnut craving right now," Ray told the mutt, and Dief threw him an injured look, so, okay, no. "There is no way I'm playing Twenty Questions with a wolf," Ray added, but it was mostly just on record to the universe, because the next thing he said was, "Is it something we need at the station?" Growl. Okay. "Uh, the Consulate?"

This time he got a bark and a jump and the wild waving of Dief's tail. Ray felt a little crazy and a lot tired, and mostly dumb again because, yeah, he had some Turnbull damage control to do, and probably more excuses to make, and Fraser would probably appreciate a change of clothing when he woke up. He had the brief thought that he sure as hell didn't want to leave Fraser alone right now, but Dief -- who was, what, psychic now as well as maybe a lip-reader? -- solved that problem by trotting back into Ray's bedroom the second it got obvious Ray was going to the Consulate after all.

So twenty minutes and Ray was parked in front of Canada, up the stairs, and dealing with Turnbull again for the second time in about as many hours.

"Welcome back to Canada, Detective Vecchio!" Turnbull said, looking up from the reception desk. At least the Consulate was unlocked this time of day. "How is the top secret mission going?"

Ray'd spent those twenty minutes in the car figuring out what to say to Turnbull. Well, that and beating back his rising panic. Or, well, he'd spent so much time beating down the panic that he hadn't really come up with any sort of plan. He was a little surprised, though maybe less than he should've been, when he said easy as anything, "Still top secret, okay? So don't say a word. Not even to the Inspector, you got it? Because it's American top secret." This was almost as flimsy as the first thing he'd told Turnbull, but the words were just coming, so Ray listened and let it happen. "Uh, if she asks, Fraser was feeling kinda under the weather this morning, so he's over at mine, uh, filling up on soup and cold medicine and stuff, and he doesn't want to get the Inspector sick or anything."

"Ah!" Turnbull looked delighted. "Very cunning, sir. You can count on my discretion."

Some of the panic eased up a little. "Great. Thanks, Turnbull."

He went into Fraser's little room. The cot was unmade, which Ray already knew, but it still made him just stop for a minute. He stared at the crumpled sheets and everything became real. Fraser was three-quarters dead and Ray was acting calm and Frannie was acting fucking calm and what the hell was Ray doing getting Fraser a change of clothes when he should be taking him to a hospital? But Ray already sort of knew the answer to that one, even if he didn't want to look at it straight on. "Okay," he muttered, "okay, let's just --" and snatched Fraser's Stetson up from the desk. He didn't want it to get crushed under his arm, so he jammed it onto his head, just for safekeeping, and went to the closet in search of the red tunic and maybe some civvies.

On the other side of the door, it was sure as hell not the inside of a closet.

Ray stood in the doorway, staring. It didn't even look like the inside of the Consulate. It looked -- it looked a lot like what he imagined cabins in the Great White Nowhere looked like, and there definitely seemed to be a lot of snow outside the cabin windows, and it was in the coat closet.

"I'm goin' nuts, I'm goin' nuts," Ray chanted quietly, and pushed his way past the coat hangers. The floorboards creaked under his feet and the air was different somehow, thinner, fire-warmed. "Uh, hello?" Ray called.

A shape unfolded from the chair in front of the fire. Ray tried not to twitch, to act nonchalant like he'd seen this guy here the whole time, and -- the wry knowing look on the older face was familiar, as was the hat. Mountie, then, and maybe a relative of Fraser's, although it could be all Canadians looked like that. "Hi," Ray tried.

The man looked him up and down. "You'll be the Yank," he said. "Well, the other Yank." He nodded decisively and held out a hand. "Bob Fraser."

Ray stood there. Okay, he was in a cabin inside a coat closet and Fraser's dead father was offering him a handshake. For a second he felt like crying, or maybe punching the guy out, but he fought it off and took the hand, which felt warm and dry and a little wrinkled; an old guy's hand, sure, but not a dead one. "Kowalski," he said. "The other -- whatever. What the hell is this?"

"My cabin," Bob Fraser said, which, okay, kinda obvious, Ray maybe deserved that a little. "I take it you're looking for Benton?"

"No, I was -- um." Ray felt stupid with the Stetson still perched on his head, and shuffled a little. Outside, snow shushed up against the windowpanes. Behind him in the Consulate Turnbull started up a vacuum cleaner. "He's at my place."

Fraser's dad gave Ray a sharp look. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah I'm --" Ray started, before the available facts started lining up in his head. His mostly-dead partner was in his apartment and his mostly-dead partner's definitely-dead father was having a conversation with him in said partner's coat closet, and a lot of things Ray thought he knew were getting drastically revised very fast. Think, Kowalski. "His body's at my place."

"Now you're thinking," Bob Fraser said approvingly. "Tea? Pemmican?"

"What --? No." Ray watched Fraser's dad narrowly. Bob Fraser had gone to a corner of the cabin and was putting tea on in an old iron kettle with a lot more ceremony than he needed to. Ray knew a Fraser delay tactic when he saw one, and he didn't have time for it now. "How come Fraser's laid up?"

"Oh, he's stubborn, you know that. You're sure you don't want any tea?"

"I'm sure," Ray snapped, bouncing a little on the balls of his feet.

Bob Fraser sighed. "He was a bit lost the other night," he said. "Heading towards the white light, all that sort of silliness. I, ah, took him on a detour. The Borderland, you know."

"Borderland?" Ray demanded. Fraser's dad waved vaguely out at the snowscape. Ray nodded. "Okay, good, he didn't head for the white light."

"However, I may have piqued his curiosity," Bob Fraser admitted, although he mostly admitted it to the tea kettle, with an edge of pissiness that Ray was really familiar with. "I told him it was a waste of time. But he declined my offer of a guided tour out of my cabin. Said some nonsense about having to figure it out for himself."

"So, what, he put himself in a coma to figure out the meaning of life or something?" Ray asked. Bob Fraser nodded and pressed a hot cup of tea into Ray's hands. "That's stupid," Ray pointed out, and sipped the tea angrily. It was bitter and scalded his tongue a little. He sputtered and stared at it. "Jesus, that stuff's real!"

"Of course it's real," Fraser's dad said impatiently. "And so is Benton's mind, out there somewhere. I'd go get him myself, but he never listens to me, and it might be best if someone ... living went after him. He might get the right sort of ideas then."

Ray set the tea aside with a thump. "Or he's just gonna be stubborn and work it out in his own time. What makes you think he'll listen to me?"

Bob Fraser looked really uncomfortable for the first time. "He may have been ... compelled."

"Compelled," Ray repeated flatly.

"The Borderland is not kind," Fraser's dad said. "It's a sort of waiting room. I'm allowed to live here because of my unfinished business, and I get the occasional visitor from both sides -- Benton, you know, and last week I went ice fishing with Roy Davison, whom I'd last seen at the Depot in '73. We'd been caught in an avalanche together and I thought an invitation to go fishing might assuage some old diff --"

"Yeah, great," Ray interrupted. This guy alone was an education in Benton Fraser, which didn't make him any less annoying. "So what's so bad about this waiting room deal?"

"Oh, well, outstanding obligations aside, they like you to make a definite choice in one direction or the other," Bob Fraser said reasonably. "That's Benton's problem, you know. He misses the Territories, and he won't say a word as long as he's held up in Chicago. And, well, you've seen him around armed felons. I'm not saying I approve, but he really should make up his mind whether or not he wants to get shot. More trouble than it's worth, if you ask me, but there you are."

"He --" Ray tried, and thought angry things, but out of the gut-punched feeling all he actually said was: "They'd like you to make a choice one way or another?"

"Oh yes, it's all very organized," Bob Fraser said. "Death and taxes, you know, someone's got to oversee all that." When Ray continued looking blank, he sighed. "There is a reason for all those stories you hear about travels to the underworld, you know."

"Oh," Ray said, and picked up the teacup again, fiddled with it a bit, took another sip of tea. It tasted just as disgusting this time. "How long have I got?"

"Not much time at all," Bob Fraser said. "You'll be wanting snowshoes."

"Hell no, I'll spend all my time on my ass." Ray glanced back at the door. Turnbull was still vacuuming upstairs. He looked back at Fraser's dad. "Which way?"

"Out the window, son," Bob Fraser said, and didn't say anything more, but he got a look on his face that made Ray feel a little better. It was pride, and real solid faith in Ray, and he even gave Ray a leg up onto the windowsill. Ray looked back, and Bob Fraser nodded; Ray gave him a little salute and tumbled out into the snow.

*

It melted.

Everywhere Ray touched it felt like the melt of cotton candy, and when he got to his feet there was a Ray-shaped snowless patch, all covered with short green-brown grass and little white flowers. Ray shook himself and glanced back at the cabin; it was covered in snow and looked pretty much like he'd expected it to: small and made of logs. "Okay," Ray said to himself, and set off in a direction that was basically Away.

All around him were snowy woods, full of tall straight silver-barked leafless trees. He tramped on through, doing just fine without snowshoes. It was completely still. Ray's heart was going about a mile a minute, not because he was scared, exactly, but because he was so far out of his depth he was in another pool entirely. At least Fraser'd taught him to swim.

After a bit Ray glanced back the way he'd come. The cabin was out of sight now; he was surrounded by the woods in all directions. But he could see his footprints, freakishly straight like his path had been drawn with a ruler, and in each hollow in the snow there was a Ray's-foot-shaped patch of flowery grass. "Weird," Ray mumbled; turned, kept going.

The ground was rising now, first gently, then steep enough that Ray tried leaning forward and using his hands to help him up. The snow did its freakish cotton-candy-melting thing again, but Ray ignored it; the flowers were pretty, anyway. Ahead of him the snow was thinning out, too, turning to grass and then rocks right before Ray got to the top of the embankment.

He stopped.

Embankment was the right word. No way. No fucking way. He was down on a little patch of gravel, a river in front of him, car bridges one on each side a couple hundred feet away, and right across the river was the Sears Tower. Ray glanced back a little wildly, and yeah, about a foot from his nose was a wall of concrete backing the river. Adams on one side, Jackson on the other, the Chicago River right in front of him. Ray backed up until he was pressing against the wall, which felt real, rough and grainy and solid under his fingertips.

He squinted up again. Light glancing up in sparks off the river. Twin spikes atop the Sears Tower gleaming. What was wrong with this picture? Oh yeah. He could see clear as anything and his glasses were still in his pocket.

Someone was coming up the river.

An old man, humming to himself loudly enough to be heard over the engine, puttered over on a motorboat. He reminded Ray a little bit of Mort: same hum, same creepiness. "Hi!" the man called out, and that at least wasn't like Mort; that was a Chicago voice all the way. "Want a ride?"

"Don't know yet," Ray called back. "Where're you going?"

"Anywhere you like!" the man called back, "long as it's in city limits."

The boat's stern bobbed up enough Ray could read it. CHARON, the boat said.

"Have you seen Fraser?" Ray asked. "Mountie. Uh. About my height, dark hair --" but the old guy was shaking his head, so Ray shut up.

"You want information, pal, you gotta give me a penny. It's the rules."

"Oh," said Ray, and dug around in his pockets. He only had laundry quarters, so he flipped one of those the few feet to the Charon. The old guy caught the quarter deftly, examined it, and said, "Yeah, I saw him. Ferried him to the far shore."

"Take me where you took him, then," Ray told the guy.

"Rules," the guy said, holding out his hand again.

Ray sighed and tossed him another quarter -- that was a load of socks and underwear right there -- and jumped from the bank into the boat. It rocked a little, puttering idly. Then the old guy pulled on the throttle and it took off up the river, rising and falling in gentle rhythm. Ray held on hard to its white side and watched the Sears Tower go sliding off behind him. They passed under the Adams St bridge and kept on. Ray started counting bridges. Munroe, one. Madison, two. Randolph, four. Ray blinked a couple of times. "Hey, you missed one."

The boatman chuckled. "I'm only taking you on his route. Don't like it? Complain to him."

"Huh," Ray said, and then they passed under the train cage of the Lake St bridge, rounded the curve in the river, and were out on a lake. Ray stared around, at the pine trees shivering on a distant shore and the silver of fish flashing by under the boat. Even the water was the wrong color. "This is not," Ray said decidedly, "Lake Michigan."

"Don't like it?" the old guy said. "C --"

"Complain to him, I got it," Ray said, but he did like it. The air was -- nice, water-washed. It smelled like trees. He took a couple of deep breaths and watched the dark trees rise as the boatman pulled them in towards the shore. Ray felt a little funny about it. He'd thought maybe all of it was going to be snowy, but everything here was green. "You sure this is the place?"

"Yeah," the boatman said. He glanced back at Ray, and he didn't look like Mort at all anymore. He just looked like an old guy worn out from too many tours of the river. He looked a little like Ray's dad. "Listen," he said, "you get off here, getting back's a lot harder."

"I figured," Ray said. He stared at the dock coming up to meet them, and knew with instinctual clarity that if he asked the boatman to turn back, he'd get dropped off outside some door, and on the other side he'd be back in the Canadian Consulate. He could get in the GTO, get Fraser, drive him to a hospital. And there'd be nothing. Empty Mountie. Getting back's a lot harder. "This is my stop," Ray said.

"Got it," the old guy said, pulling the Charon around to a purr, idling in the water. "Hey," he added as Ray hopped off onto the shore. Ray took a moment to get his balance on the half-rotted wood of the dock, then turned. The boatman gave him a long look and said, "Here's some free advice: watch out for the wildlife. Don't go towards the light. Honesty is the best policy."

"What, are you a fortune cookie all of a sudden?" Ray asked.

The old guy grinned, making him look less like Ray's dad, maybe more like Mort again. "They don't want cops here," he said. "They want poets," and his boat roared to life, chugging out again into the lake and making waves slosh up hollowly under the dock.

"Huh," said Ray, turning, and started walking again.

Like the snowy woods, there was no path here, just random patches of plant life and clear space. Ray headed off to the left, keeping up against the shore, because it seemed like the thing to do. He wondered how long he'd been here, but of course his watch had stopped working, or there was no time at all, because the hands were frozen at a little after ten. If there was wildlife, it was staying out of Ray's way, which was fine by him. He listened to the faint splash of water on the lakeshore, the crunching of his own feet, a wind hissing softly through the trees.

He walked on like that for a while -- minutes, hours -- watching for a flash of red even though he didn't think Fraser had brought the serge with him. Then he became aware of a sound outside himself, different than the wind and water: a sort of snuffling. It sounded a lot like Dief did when he was contentedly chilling on Ray's beat-up old armchair while they all watched some hockey. Watch out for the wildlife, the boatman had said, and Ray was all over that, but something that sounded like Diefenbaker couldn't be that bad --

He stepped into a clearing and stopped, because, right, Dief was half wolf, and this thing ... was definitely not doing anything by halves. A huge black wolf, lots bigger than Ray thought wolves had any right to be, was lying indolently across the path. It raised its head and fixed Ray with a look, and its eyes ... its eyes were a lot like Dief's, smart and looking for the next meal, but basically okay.

"Hi," Ray said.

The wolf snarled one of those low rumbling snarls Diefenbaker made when cornering a perp. Okay. How did he calm Dief down?

Doughnuts.

Ray suddenly remembered absently shoving the bag of powdered sugar doughnuts into his pants back at the apartment. He fumbled in his pocket and came up with the crumpled bag. The wolf lifted its head a bit more and looked really interested. Ray opened the bag; the doughnuts were a little squished, but basically edible. "Here's the deal," he told the wolf. "I give you a doughnut, you let me keep going."

The wolf gave a little snort that sounded a lot like Dief agreeing, so Ray said, "Okay, cool," and gently tossed a doughnut in its general direction. It lunged up, huge, and caught the doughnut midair. Settling back on its haunches, it gave Ray a smug look. Not one to waste an opportunity, Ray gave it a little salute, stuffed the paper bag back into his pocket, and hurried on.

He was starting to remember a few things from tenth grade English. Most of what he remembered from tenth grade English was that Stella liked to sit at the front of the class, with her hair all long and golden, and that Ray liked to sit in the back even though that meant he couldn't see the blackboard because no way was he wearing his nerd glasses to school, and that he went through about a pack of mint gum every class because it was the last one of the day and after that he could usually convince Stella to hang out a few minutes by the back fence and kiss him before she went off to do her homework. But all of that seemed hazy with distance, or maybe like it had happened to other people on TV, and now, tramping through a lakeshore forest outside the material world, Ray was remembering other things. Like Charon the ferrier of the dead. Like the three-headed dog that was only soothed by music -- or doughnuts, Ray figured. And he'd only seen one head. But he was getting the picture. He tried to figure out what might be coming next.

Problem was, he'd been paying a lot more attention to Stella than to any of the Greek stuff, so trying real hard to sift back through twenty-three years of irrelevant memories, he came up with a guy who pushed a boulder, something about a pomegranate, and how the music thing was probably important for other stuff besides the dog. On the other hand, it was probably irrelevant. The dog liked doughnuts and Ray hadn't sung a note.

The path opened up into a clearing ahead of him, full of green-brown grass and small white flowers. Ray shivered a little and started tramping across. About halfway through he noticed that maybe the shiver hadn't just been from déjà vu; it was getting colder. He could see his breath. And the meadow was a lot bigger than he'd thought. Snowflakes began swirling down around him. Ray thought about it and then zipped up his jacket. The grass gave way to building snow, and when Ray glanced back, the cold hollows of his footprints were being filled in fast.

"Okay," Ray muttered, although it really wasn't.

The ground started going uphill again, and just before Ray decided to start panicking about how maybe he was stuck in some sort of freakish loop and in a second he was gonna turn up on the edge of the Chicago River, he almost bumped right into a door. He caught himself in time and stumbled back, blinking. Wooden door. Wooden house, bigger than Bob Fraser's cabin. "Okay," Ray said again, and raised a fist to knock, but a particularly violent gust of snowy wind behind him blew the door open.

He went on in.

{Part Two}

Battlestar Galactica: Patterns in the Blood

2009-03-30T03:09:23Z

Fandom: Battlestar Galactica
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 2646
Pairing: Kara/Leoben (sort of; & canon pairings)
Summary: A tale of Kara Thrace and her special destiny.
Spoilers: everything! up to and including Daybreak.

Patterns in the Blood

She watches until he has become a vanishing speck, her hand still pressed cold to the thin film protecting her from the vastness of space. Everyone else drifts off: one toaster, ejected. Toaster with fear, sweat and gasping lungs and more faith in the light of his eyes than Kara possesses in the whole of her. Her hand slides down.

The interrogation room is empty. No bucket, only the faintest traces of moisture on the dark floor where water had been. The table, shoved against the wall, forgotten, is not so clean. Blood traced with fingertips sits half-dried and sticky to its surface, and Kara stands over the table, staring down. The synthesized blood of some silicon thing, she thinks; she thinks, Leoben Conoy sat here and smiled at me and made sense of his own insides. Kara runs a finger over the blood, erasing his patterns, making concentric circles, meaningless.

"Lieutenant Thrace?"

A guard at the door, black-clad, gun-clutching, nervous. Kara can't remember ever being that nervous. "The Raptor is leaving," he says.

Kara sits in the back of the Raptor with blood on her hands and feels wrung out, rib-kicked, tired of this crap. If the Lords of Kobol are real, she doesn't want forgiveness. But she wants something, something new, not an adrenaline rush, not a good frak, not anything physical.

Meaning, maybe.

*

She holds steady, without panic, for as long as she can in his house in the blue dimness. She's terrified for Sam; she's terrified for everyone, even Lee and the Old Man out there in the dark. She isn't terrified for herself, not really: he's stronger, she knows it, the memory of the way he threw her against the doorjamb and held a hand to her throat an indelible adrenaline-stamp, but he won't force her. Not physically.

He serves Kara dinner and talks, light easy conversation as though they're having an intimate dinner party in his nice little place in Delphi or somewhere. She sits still and silent. The food is ashes because the world is ashes, and Leoben talks to fill all the silences.

Kara drinks her water. "I prayed for you," she says.

Leoben glances up at her, through his eyelashes, startled and strangely coy. "I know."

It comes to Kara that maybe she has all the power here. He wants her approval. Stupid toaster -- for all his games he never bothered to master real dishonesty, not about something he desperately wants. Kara has all the power and none at all.

"You said," she begins, rising and coming over to his chair. Leoben looks up at her, a curious tilt to his head. "You said my role was to deliver your soul to God. So I will."

He bleeds out on the carpet.

After that she isn't allowed knives at dinner, but the second time she slips a knife past him anyway. The third time she pushes him down the stairs. The fourth time it's a knife again, and the fifth, a tuning fork. By then he should know better and stay the frak away, but, Kara supposes, hope wins over caution when God gives your soul new bodies on demand. By then she should be used to the give of flesh and the smell of blood, but she never is, quite.

Give her a Viper over this any day.

*

In the Sacred Scrolls there is a story of Lord Hades, who took to wife a woman of Kobol without seeking any permission. She tried time and again to flee him until she was worn down and came to know him, whereupon she stayed of her own will.

Kara has never liked that story. Be content with what you have, it seems to say.

Now she isn't so sure. Now Kara wishes she hadn't assumed the scripture to be a book of metaphors; now she wishes she'd paid attention, paid some real frakking attention to what the Scrolls were trying to tell her rather than just choosing those parts she liked best.

She will not, she will not, be the repetition of some stupid pattern.

*

Kasey makes Kara remember things she hadn't known were there for the remembering. She remembers things besides the broom handle and rubber bugs and the shattering pain in her fingers; things besides the smell of endless cigarettes, the flare of bottomless disappointment in her mother's eyes. She remembers the rare moments of terse affection; she remembers some distant morning on a piano bench, close against her father's side, That's my girl! She remembers planning in meticulous detail the sort of wonderful vigilant and above all loving parent she would make some day, until those plans were superseded by other more tenable daydreams.

So, jolted into memory by the little girl's blood dark on the stair, Kara remembers love.

Love is different than the afterglow of a good frak; that afterglow, even with Sam or Zak or (gods help her) Lee, is like a good ambrosia, not like -- like something where every last simile fails. Like the awed filling-up Kara feels sometimes wheeling her Viper through the countless pinpricks of light in space, maybe. Kasey lying so small and still under a coverlet makes Kara think of freefall, and Kasey's eyes flickering open and focused and okay makes Kara think of an even more beautiful rush, so that she must anchor herself, hold Kasey's little hand in one of hers and Leoben's in the other. That sneaky bastard.

Soon she'll kill him again for it. Or maybe thank him. She doesn't know.

*

Pressed with her back tight against the wall she says, "I love you," and it doesn't even come out in words this time, but a breathless whisper, like she means it. Like Leoben doesn't know she won't say the words even when the meaning is there. And it's not, frak no; love is the endless constellations of emotion she has for her daughter, and the tingle under her skin like she's waiting for a fight around Lee, and the way she always wants to laugh with Sam. Love is not this feeling of leadenness and empty spaces. Love is not the way Leoben kisses her as though she is not an assumed thing, not an easy frak and Starbuck the screw-up; and Leoben kisses her like she is worth dying for (five times) and coming back for more because maybe her mama was right and Kara Thrace is something special.

Her hand goes for the knife. Any second now. "Was it everything you imagined?" she asks Leoben. And more, he says, maybe agreement, maybe demand. He tilts his head and Kara reaches for the knife and a small noise escapes her, to fool him, to make him think he's won, and she isn't starved for honest touch, and she doesn't want to be special, and her hand closes over the knife.

Any godsdamned second now.

*

Sam holds her and she thinks of Lee; Lee holds her and she thinks of Leoben. Zak is an untarnished memory slowly fading, beginning the comingling with one-night-fraks Kara does not try to keep; and somehow one godsdamn skinjob toaster has become important, like paint and novas and all the things Kara cannot eliminate.

She dreams, endless dreams in variation. Sometimes he takes the paintbrush from her. Sometimes he comes for her before she's even found the paint. Sometimes her feet slide and skid in the white on the floor. Sometimes she stays crushed back against the wall, and sometimes she pins him to it and claws at him. But in all the variations she fights him and wants him, wants the surging heat of being wanted. And all the time she's so godsdamn scared to look, scared to be seduced or forced into being anything she is not, because she knows what she is, knows, no matter what one Cylon or her frakked-up subconscious wants to say about it.

She goes to bed braced for impact and fighting exhaustion, and she wakes up wet and sweating, too jumped up, but only just, to go looking for a frak now now now.

At least she finally knows what really going crazy feels like.

*

"I'm the same person," Kara tells him, with all the luminous conviction she has; but Leoben's right about one thing, one difference between New Caprica and now: the petty things of this world have ceased to trouble her. There might be gaps in her memory, but she remembers the important things and so knows what they are.

She lets him hold her: lost, crammed like canned fish with a half-mutinous crew, she paints a comet with his hand around hers, the other cradled snug to the curve of her waist, feeling like all of this has happened before; getting it right this time.

For a long crucial second she doesn't understand the look on Sam's face.

*

She visits the sick one. He looks at her and gives her the brief tired flash of a smile she can conjure now with eyes closed. She doesn't smile back -- nothing to be smiling about, not in this world -- but she holds his hand, watches the exhausted flutter of his eyelashes, and knows the strangeness of knowing so intimately this man who has never met her.

*

Then he leaves her: in the gray skeletal world he backs from her skeleton and the last thing she knows deserts her.

The unfairness of it is terrible, worse than the horror of the desiccated body, worse than the crushing disappointment of this ruined Earth, worse than the wrenching rudderlessness, worse even than the worst unfairness inflicted by Socrata Thrace upon her daughter. Kara had thought, in her infinite frakking stupidity, that maybe Leoben knew her, saw her, lavished such patient attention because there was something in her sorry life worth the cherishing.

Turns out toasters are good at imitating that most indomitable of human traits, betrayal, just as easy as imitating the more tangible things.

She passes him now and again in the halls, when he's on the Galactica on business. He never looks at her; none of them look at her. Maybe only the one ever cared for her, frakked-up as it was, and for the others she's just another human. Maybe she's important to all of them and none of them can bring themselves to meet her eyes. She doesn't care.

*

And here is the great irony in the life and the next life and the whatever-the-frak-this-is of Kara Thrace: Leoben was right about her, even beyond despair, even beyond losing his own faith. I see an angel, blazing with the light of God. He saw it true.

Gaius Baltar saw it true too. Maybe that's the real great irony.

Whatever the way of it, though, Kara is what she is, and Kara may be the harbinger of death and Kara may be Leoben's fallen angel but she leads them to Earth, true Earth and newness and the one moment of clarity, and Kara Thrace finds meaning.

*

She sits on a rise and watches the swelling clap of pink birds rising from the lake. The air is sweet and heavy; not like the dry cold of New Caprica, not like the car-grit of Delphi, not like the dull recirculation of oxygen in space. Kara wraps her arms around her legs, chin rested on her knees, and breathes deep of this air that is like a thousand dreams and not for her waking.

A movement at her side, the flash of a patterned shirt. Kara turns her head a little to meet Leoben's eyes. There is a look in his face she's never seen before; not the machine-calm, not patient amusement, not even fear. But she knows he's the Leoben that knows her.

Kara nods briefly.

Leoben grins and that look Kara recognizes, the honest flash of happiness that used to scare the frak out of her, not that Leoben should be happy but that Kara Thrace should be the cause. It doesn't scare her now. Leoben sits down next to her, a graceful fold, a little too close. Kara feels a tight smile pull at her face, and leans against him, the shoulder-bump of camaraderie.

"What did you think?" she asks.

Leoben for a moment holds very still. Maybe he's surprised she's tangible. Maybe he thinks she'll run.

"About what?" he returns, quiet, quiet, not with carefulness but with the soft reverence used inside a temple.

"About me," Kara says. She shifts, stretching her legs out, leaning back on her arms, leaning against him. "Before I turned up dead. You thought something about my destiny."

Leoben makes a little noise of acknowledgment. He watches the birds. Kara squints at the sun and waits.

"This," he says, after a time. "I looked and I saw life. I saw constellations, I saw ... things beyond myself." He leans back on her now, a warm pressure against her side, spiky hair tickling her cheek. "I saw you and I knew that one day we would sit above this lake together and ..." He laughs, the soft laugh half breath that used to make her want to kill him. "One day we'd sit in peace. Change the patterns."

"Have we?" Kara asks.

He shrugs, jolting her a little. "Is this peace?"

She closes her eyes. "Yes."

She can feel Leoben nod. Some animal yet unnamed lows in the distance. She opens her eyes to watch the birds come circling back, clattering down on the lake and throwing out rainbows. "Kara," Leoben says, his voice caressing over the syllables, and for the first time Kara understands why she hated it when he said her name. He sounded like Lee. He sounds like Lee now, the burgeoning apology behind the word, and she's heard enough of Lee's apologies to last her a lifetime. Maybe even two. Lee apologized for anger, for faithfulness, for abandonment, for intangible things, and Leoben is going to ask forgiveness for -- what? Keeping her? Holding her? Telling her the truth? Letting her go?

"Don't," Kara says.

So he stays silent awhile. Kara watches the birds forming random patterns of wing and water on the surface of the lake. It doesn't have to mean anything.

"What will you do now?" Leoben asks.

Kara tilts her head in his direction. She doesn't quite go cross-eyed looking at his face so close. He needs a shave. He needs a whole new wardrobe but some things are old news. "What, no more insights?" she asks.

"No more insights," he agrees, and reaches over to tuck her hair behind her ear. There is no motivation to the gesture besides all the normal ones Kara's known about for years. She doesn't know why that should be so surprising, but it is, surprising enough she wants to laugh, and instead ducks her head against his shoulder until she's mastered herself.

"Thank you," she says, and looks up. "You frakked-up bunch of circuits. Thank you."

"Any time," Leoben murmurs, giving her another of those shatteringly honest grins. He doesn't stop her when she gets to her feet, but merely leans back on his elbows and squints up at her. "Where are you going?" he asks, the same question as before, but it sounds rhetorical now, a check to make sure Kara understands herself. She does.

"Going to say my goodbyes," she says.

"I'll miss you," he tells her, one of those artless statements of fact he's so fond of.

"Yeah," she says, and swallows. "I'll, uh."

"Go," he says gently. "God is waiting."

And maybe he's a little ahead of himself, because she's got others waiting first: Helo and Athena, Laura Roslin, the Old Man, and her Lee; but for the first time Kara hears Leoben's words and knows them, and goes without regret.

due South: No Cocoon

2009-03-29T02:36:07Z

Fandom: due South
Rating: PG
Word count: 2664
Pairing: Fraser/Kowalski
Summary: When he awoke on the outskirts of Chicago, he felt raw all over and Ray was holding his hand.

No Cocoon

Upon arriving in Chicago, Benton Fraser's first moment of true culture shock occurred when one Detective Raymond Vecchio set a hand on his shoulder.

It was not the touch itself that shocked Benton. Detective Vecchio had already slung an arm over Benton's shoulder and grinned for a tourist's picture while Benton was on duty; but he had supposed that was a harmless thoughtless gesture, much like the gawking of schoolchildren who had come to stare at the Mountie. As far as Benton could tell, nothing of vital importance was kept in the Canadian Consulate -- so the guard outside was standing for show, and for the amusement of the natives. Detective Vecchio had been an amused native on the street.

But at the police station, while Benton looked at the photo Detective Vecchio had pulled up on the database, said detective settled a friendly hand on Benton's shoulder and leaned forward. Benton could feel him grinning. Benton stared at the mug shot, and with some effort of will said, "It's exactly the same nose."

He felt Detective Vecchio's grin get wider.

*

Benton had some faint memories of being held by his mother. He was fairly certain they were fabricated, patched together from the things he had read in books about how mothers were supposed to be, and one lone black-and-white photograph that went from house to house with him, showing a bundled-up four-year-old Benton out in the snow, held snugly against his mother's hip. His grandparents never carried him -- frail bones, his grandfather said; "Don't be ridiculous, the boy can walk," said his grandmother. His grandfather patted his shoulder, and his grandmother gently touched the top of his head, or gently cleaned the small cuts and scrapes so easily incurred by a small boy playing out-of-doors with his scout troop.

When Benton's father visited, he shook Benton's hand. His father's own hand was dry and warm, his grip very firm and assured. Benton wanted to shake hands like that one day.

*

He developed a theory: all of Ray Vecchio's casual touches to his arm or shoulder were not general to the American, but specific to the Italian-American, or perhaps to Ray's own family. Mrs. Vecchio shook Benton affectionately by the shoulders; Ray's brother-in-law Tony liked enthusiastic handshakes and manful claps on the back; the various Vecchio children, after the third time Benton visited for dinner, were apt to cling to his legs or tug on his shirt-cuffs while demanding stories.

Francesca Vecchio did not quite fit the theory: her casual touches were more often than not anything but casual, and, to Benton's enduring bewilderment, most apt to settle on his chest. A number of women (he forbore the keeping of an exact tally) tended to follow this pattern, the delicate hand to Benton's chest. He often had trouble breathing when this happened. How did one politely request the removal of a hand from such an obvious place? Benton usually stepped back and drew in.

Drawing inwards -- shielding, wrapping himself in the proverbial cocoon -- was alarmingly easy in Chicago. The smells were often unpleasant. The people had no wish to meet Benton's eyes. Besides Ray, no one made any effort. Benton girt himself, metaphorically and in uniform both, and made the effort instead. He did not catalogue fauna and patterns of migration; he catalogued people, names, hobbies, histories. Some of them met his eyes.

He knew them. They knew the Mountie.

*

Mark Smithbauer body-checked Benton, threw him into snow banks, yelled gleefully in Benton's ear whenever they were on the same team. Benton yelled back, throwing an arm over Mark's shoulder, and carefully labeled the warm glow inside him joy. The next year, he and his grandmother moved away.

*

When Victoria touched his chest, her curl-fingered fervency turned all the other women's gestures to mere caricature. Victoria stripped his outsides away, leaving him helpless but willing in the inexorable tide. The warmth inside Benton made him shake, as though with fever. Love, he called it.

She vanished and he lit his candles, counting as he went; one, two, eight, twenty-three, sixty, one-hundred-ninety-two, warm stumps of wax guttering against the windowsill. The warmth in Benton was a banked fire, trembling ashes waiting for kindling, and he knew he had found the wrong word. Need, perhaps. How terrible.

In the hospital, all fires long extinguished by diamonds and lead and the endless saline drip, Benton waited for Ray to touch him again. He was grateful when Ray waited, grateful for the quiet assured professionalism of Jill Kennedy's hands, so terribly grateful he suspected it bordered on the pathetic.

When Ray leapt in front of him, a hand flung across his chest and the impact of the bullet jerking through both of them, Benton did not feel grateful. He felt guilt and horror and remorse and worry and, perhaps, the faintest pleasure at the ironic justice of the universe; later, when they sat together at a window and Ray yanked the pair of binoculars from Benton's hands -- "Even Steven? Nobody says 'even Steven' anymore!" -- he felt something else, too: the clean love of a comfortable friendship.

*

The other Ray Vecchio did not behave like the first one. Obviously.

This Ray Vecchio behaved, perhaps, as one might after studying the physical habits of the Vecchio clan and extrapolating. Perfectly reasonable as this theory was, though, Benton still had his second moment of true culture shock, Kowalski style: this man hugged Benton after a bare minute of his acquaintance the way Ray Vecchio had after almost a year; this man slung a friendly arm over Benton's shoulder and gestured with expressive hands so that his thumb whispered against the naked skin above Benton's collar; this man jabbed his fingers against Benton's chest and looked him in the eye, from the first moment met Benton's eyes so that despite all the turmoil Benton trusted him.

He found himself echoing the familiarity, leaning towards this new Ray, figuring out the mysteries and the differences not with intellect alone but with determined physicality. Ray Kowalski fell back against him, the impact of the bullet jerking through both of them, and Benton unthinking cradled the new Ray, arm across his chest, eased him down, touched his face, pulled him back to his feet with a warm firm clasp of hands.

Benton supposed Ray Kowalski might be a very good actor.

Benton sat and stood too close to Ray, drawn in the inexorable tide, unwrapped, unraveled, answering all Ray's questions honestly.

*

He didn't realize the extent of his strange dependence on Ray's nearness until the water-soaked afternoon when, without warning -- with the warning of Ray's angry words and the week of tense mornings with Ray always to one side of him and his gesturing hands never touching Benton -- the only touch was a blow. Benton tasted salt, and knew Lake Michigan was freshwater, and wiped the blood from his mouth with a thumb.

Benton did not want to make a fist and connect it to Ray's jaw. Such a request -- such a demand -- even Steven, Ray didn't say, although Benton heard it -- was furthest from his mind.

He wanted to touch Ray's hair with the curve of his hand while they communicated in whispers between verses of song. He wanted to clasp Ray's cold wet wrists, an imitation of handcuffs until Ray was still enough that the handcuffs might be shot off. He wanted to seize Ray's shirt, skim the surprisingly silky skin of his back, and curl a fist in Ray's belt to tug him through the sinking current. He wanted to lean back against the press of Ray's body in the submersible and breathe in confined rhythm.

He wanted to cradle Ray's head in his hands and give Ray every last scrap of his own vitality.

Ray gasped, flat hair dripping in his face, open half-angry confusion writ large. "What the hell was that?!"

Benton told him the truth.

Well, no.

Benton lied.

*

In the afternoon Welsh gave them a lift as far as Ray's car still parked at the docks in Sault Ste. Marie. The sun drifted down red and dazzling over the water, and Benton calculated the last time either of them had slept. They had been escaping the sinking Henry Allen on the previous evening; all the night before, Ray had broken an appalling number of traffic laws to get them to Sault Ste. Marie on time. Benton had been technically up from six that morning, Ray from perhaps eight -- and it being nearly six in the evening again, they had both been awake nearly sixty straight hours, and Benton doubted they had slept well beforehand.

"Ray --" he started as soon as they were both in Ray's car; he intended to suggest they only attempt the drive back to Chicago after a full night's sleep, but they both seemed to be reading one another's signals quite well without language, because Ray overrode him.

"Let's find a hotel, Frase," he said. "I'm beat."

Benton agreed to this idea with great enthusiasm.

He slept deeply and, he thought, well, but in the morning he awoke shivering a little with cold, despite the rather alarming heat of the cheap hotel blankets sticking to his body. When he sat up, the room buzzed and spun. Benton clutched at his head.

Ray, emerging from the shower in the sailor's pilfered clothing and his hair in damp spikes, saw Benton and stopped moving entirely for a long second. "Morning," he said at length, in a blessedly quiet voice. "Fever?"

"I'm afraid so." Benton tried to push the covers away and had to stop, breathing too hard in an attempt to master sudden pain. He ached all over, the way he had ached after the beating from Zuko's men, but more insidiously, with a burning. "Oh dear."

"Hey," said Ray; and for a moment Benton expected Ray Vecchio's response, pointing out that Benton was human after all, as though he was ever for even a moment unaware of that; and for a moment more Benton expected what might have been this Ray's response of late, a sort of sad savage triumph at Benton's fallibility. But all Ray said was: "Let's get you home."

*

In the car Benton dozed, beset by fever dreams. His skin, hot as it was, naturally peeled away white at the corners as a sunburn would. In his dream he scratched away at a knuckle; watched a thin sheet of flesh crackle and peel away with the small satisfaction he took from pulling masking tape from packages. He was not in Ray's car and he was not wearing clothes, so there was no hindering the careful satisfying shedding. At the end of it Benton felt like some molted creature, a reptile or a moth; bigger, more suited to his skin, shed of something he no longer had a need for.

When he awoke on the outskirts of Chicago, he felt raw all over and Ray was holding his hand.

*

"Ray, I thought you said you'd take me home."

"Yeah, and I did, so shut up," Ray said, steering Benton into his bedroom. Benton felt too wrung out and shaky with fever to protest. "Clean sweats in the dresser," Ray added. "They're old, so stretch 'em as much as you like." He got them out and pressed them gently into Benton's hands before Benton could voice any objection. "Now get into bed. I'll, uh, I'll make you tea."

Left no choice, and with no real desire to protest, Benton obeyed.

Ray returned a few minutes later with a mug in each hand, and nodded with apparent satisfaction when he saw Benton carefully propped up against the pillows with Ray's comforter over his waist. He sat on the unoccupied side of the bed and pressed one of the mugs into Benton's hands. The mug had a waddling line of improbably yellow ducks following each other möbius-like around the rim. Benton sniffed carefully at the tea, gauging caffeine content.

"Raspberry," Ray said. "Uh, I hope it's not too sweet. And Echinacea. Stella swore by it -- you drink enough of that stuff and you'll be better in a day or two. And I'm having it too in case you're contagious or anything." In demonstration, he blew a waft of steam off the top of his own mug and took a sip.

Benton closed his eyes and drank his tea in slow soothing gulps. It was not too sweet, not with the bitterness of the Echinacea underneath, and he thought, one small murmur of a pattern of thinking he tried very much to avoid on grounds of pointlessness, that Ray Vecchio would not have done something like this. Ray Vecchio would not be sitting next to Benton in his own bed, drinking tea with him in a determined combat with fever. But then neither would Victoria have done, nor Meg Thatcher, nor anyone from the police station Benton liked so well, not even Frannie Vecchio however much she would like to believe so; nor would Mark have done so when they were children, nor Innusiq, nor Quinn his guide, nor even his grandmother. At most any of them might have sent Benton on the path back towards self-sufficiency. This was not a fault.

Ray Kowalski was unique in the world.

Benton drained his tea and opened his eyes. Ray was holding his own mug with curled fingers; the tea was half-drunk, the mug patterned with stylized turtles. Ray was watching him, without expectation, even without worry. Just ... watching.

Benton licked his cracked lip. "Thank you, Ray."

"'s what partners do," Ray said, ducking his head and setting the mug aside on the bedside table. He looked back up at Benton and raised a now-free hand, pressing his wrist to Benton's forehead. The gesture was unstudied and terrifyingly intimate, as all their gestures had been since ... since -- well. "Fraser," Ray said.

"Yes, Ray?"

"It did," Ray said. He moved his hand, sliding it down, resting it casually against Benton's burning cheek. "It changed things." And there was no mistaking what he meant, not with his hand a gentle imitation of the way Benton had earlier held his face.

Benton was feverish and exhausted; perhaps Ray was taking advantage of a vulnerable state. Perhaps there was something necessary in that. Benton leaned into Ray's hand and said, reasonably, "It doesn't necessarily --" but Ray was shaking his head, a denial of the offered reprieve, his thumb brushing absently over Benton's overheated oversensitive skin, and God, how had Benton missed this, this embarrassment and abundance of signals now unmixed?

"It changed things," Benton said.

"Okay, good," said Ray, and leaned forward, not uncertain but certainly more careful than was his wont. His lips hovered a scant inch from Benton's and Benton wanted to protest the irresponsibility of spreading his illness, wanted to lean forward and press his lips to Ray's, his mouth already half-open in another imitation of a drowning night. Ray tasted of tea and of blessed cool skin, and he kissed softly, stealing Benton's scant breath and pulling back again.

"Ray," Benton murmured, solidifying the moment into reality.

Ray laughed, his normal half-manic cackle reduced to indoor sounds. "You're gonna kill me, being sick like that," he said. But he must not have minded, because he leaned in again and pressed a kiss to Benton's forehead. "Now get some more sleep, and we'll do this for real when you're better."

Benton considered thanking him. Instead he nodded and slid down in the blankets, and was strangely unsurprised when Ray followed as he always did, wrapping himself around Benton as best he could through the layers between them. The gesture of protection was evident regardless. Benton felt very warm, although perhaps it was just the fever.

He thought he might call it something else.

due South: Magnetic (Part III)

2009-03-04T01:21:40Z

Fandom: due South
Rating: R
Word count: 20,909
Pairing: Fraser/Kowalski/Vecchio
Summary: Ray returns to Chicago and finds Vecchio is back too; Fraser's coming down in a month. What could possibly go wrong.

Magnetic

{Part One | Part Two | Part Three}

Ray didn't really sleep that night. Instead his brain replayed, on endless sadistic loop, the photo fragments of scenes. The brilliance of Fraser's smile in the corridor of a ritzy hotel with Armando Langustini on the other side of the door, no admittance. Some half-forgotten night spent shuffling around to Stella music and noticing the shocking absence of ache in his own chest. The clear green of Vecchio's eyes. The two of them, walking. Ray spent a lot of time pummeling the pillow, but it didn't make much difference.

In the morning he let Fraser put a single spooned pile of sugar in his coffee. Drove him to the Consulate. The not talking was just not talking, the quiet preparation of the day. On the curb Ray leaned over and said, "Bye, Fraser;" when Fraser smiled back to say his own goodbyes, Ray's heart cracked a little more, like it'd been doing since the day Fraser had seen him off to Chicago on the tarmac.

He drove away.

The second Ray got into the station, he went over to Vecchio's desk and practically grabbed Vecchio by the collar to drag him into the supply closet. Vecchio said things like, "Hey, whaddya doin', whaddya doin'?" but he went. He slammed the door behind them, and Vecchio clicked on the little bare bulb overhead, turning the anonymous dark into a little green space full of paper and shelves. Vecchio looked puzzled but not angry. "What the hell was that, Stanley?"

"You got him," Ray said without preamble. "I'm done."

Vecchio looked completely floored. "What -- what the hell happened?"

Ray took a deep breath, and it came in embarrassingly shaky. "I cannot do this."

"This," Vecchio repeated flatly. Like Ray meant the damn closet or something.

"This -- custody thing," Ray said. "The pretending. The -- Okay. The other day. After the diner. Fraser said, I don't want to choose."

"Oh," Vecchio said. His eyes went wide. "Jesus, he actually said that? Like, it wasn't in Fraser-code, you didn't just figure out he maybe meant --"

"No, no." Ray jittered a little and tried to lean back, but the shelves just poked into his spine. "No, he did that first, he did this whole speech about teamwork and logistics and shit like that, and then he just -- he said it, he just said it."

"Jesus," Vecchio said again. He fiddled with a cuff and frowned, crossed his arms, uncrossed them, said, "So what do we do?" like he was thinking yesterday, Johnson, maybe it wasn't a fluke.

No. There was no way.

"You do nothing," Ray told him. "I'm done, I'm out, he's your partner. You had him first."

"What," Vecchio said, and had the nerve to actually sound angry about this, like he didn't know what it cost Ray to say that. "Jesus, Kowalski, of all the idiotic things -- I had him first?"

"Yeah," Ray snapped. "And, you know, most people, when they don't see each other a couple of years? It gets weird, it gets off, maybe you never find the rhythm again. But you two, I've been watching, and you still got it. You still got it down to goddamn telepathy almost, it's scary. So you win and I'm done."

"Kowalski," Vecchio said, and Ray was learning to recognize that voice. It was the quiet one like he'd used that night in the Riv, like nothing he'd ever heard before because Stella'd never sounded like this, and it scared the hell out of him. He looked at Vecchio anyway, and there was the face to match; Vecchio had upgraded him from you're a freak to you're an idiot, but the qualifier was still there, the never gonna matter bit. "You ever try lookin' in a mirror?" Vecchio asked. "You and Benny would probably need a freaking crowbar to pry you apart."

"That's --" Ray started, and the stupid died before it left his mouth, because it had freaked him out a little, how he and Fraser had been in the same space here and not constantly touching. "Uh," Ray said.

"I'm thinkin', if you really don't want to be his partner you can probably do it," Vecchio said, "but you'd have to do it far away, and I just might break your face on the way out for hurting him."

"I can't --" Leave. Do this. Ray pressed a fist to his forehead and muttered, "Okay, yeah, what do we do?"

"I was considering the possibility of maybe panicking a lot," Vecchio said, a little wryly, "and also of staying in this closet for the next ever."

"I hope you mean the supply closet," Ray said, peering at Vecchio over his knuckles, "cuz otherwise I'd have to break your face. For, y'know, bad puns or whatever."

"Supply closet," Vecchio confirmed, and tried the leaning-on-the-shelves thing too, but maybe they wrinkled his suit or something because he gave up on that pretty fast. "Anyway it's Fraser-specific," he added, very, very casually.

"Oh yeah," Ray agreed, feeling like he might start doing something hysterical at any second. "I like women. It is a Fraser-specific thing."

"Yeah, definitely," Vecchio said, which was great, which meant they had established something important here, which meant that a moment later Vecchio's hands were gripping Ray's hair and Ray's hands were shoved up inside Vecchio's suit jacket and they were kissing the way Ray had never, never done before. It was kissing like a goddamn fist fight. It was not like kissing Stella on the way to makeup sex after a shouting match; it was easier than that, a different charge. Vecchio still tasted a little like good wine, so maybe he was just like that, and a little like blood, which was unsurprising because they were kissing messy, their teeth getting in the way in all the urgency, and it was great. A few seconds and Ray was being backed into the shelving, a board digging into his lower back, which for whatever reason was pretty great too. He started tugging at Vecchio's dress shirt, because skin, skin was also greatness, he wanted --

And Vecchio pulled back, wide-eyed and panting with all his designer clothes skewed.

"Oh wow," Ray said weakly, clutching at the shelf behind him.

"What are we gonna do?" Vecchio said again, plaintive and panicky.

"Hey, Frase," Ray said, rehearsing. But that was ridiculous; he sounded like he'd been kissed within an inch of his life, and Vecchio was a mess, so if Fraser decided to come into the station right now with a craving for paperclips, there really wouldn't be a lot of background-type explaining they'd need to do. "Hey, Frase, we --" We were in a supply closet, kissing like maniacs, maybe gonna have sex, hell if I know. "Vecchio," Ray said. "Vecchio, this, this thing, this is not about Fraser."

"Yes it is," Vecchio said back, the panic ratcheting up a notch.

"Yeah?" Ray said, and got his stance fixed up the best he could, fighting-ready, because it made him feel a bit less panicky himself. "So that right there, you're telling me in your head you were going 'oh hey, I wish this was Fraser'?"

"Hey, maybe I wasn't thinking at all," Vecchio snapped.

"Ooh, thanks," Ray said, giving Vecchio a tight grin that wasn't supposed to get an answer. "But I know in my head I was not thinking 'I wish this was Fraser'."

"What, then?" The question came out a scratchy whisper.

"I don't know," Ray said, which was no answer at all. "Probably 'hey, that's great, keep doing it'."

Vecchio gave this little barking laugh, more than half misery, the top of his head shiny under the closet light bulb and his clothes still all wrinkled and pulled, and just like that all the mixed-up fucked-up confusion inside Ray shook itself out into a pattern he understood. Whatever he saw in Vecchio's face, in those tiny moments, the you're a freak but it doesn't matter, that did have something to do with Fraser. It was the same thing. Fraser was a freak and it was never gonna matter; Vecchio, in his own suave mafia way, was kind of a freak too, and Ray was starting to think that it was never gonna matter either. And Ray had dealt with worse than this -- he'd spent years trying to convince Stella it was worth it when she probably hadn't really loved him since high school. Convincing Vecchio, that should be easy, because Ray actually had things to work with here.

Ray shuffled a step forward and sort of thumbed Vecchio's lapels. Vecchio stared at Ray's hands for a minute, then back up at Ray's face. Ray said: "Hell if I know why, but this is specifically about you, okay?"

"Okay," Vecchio said, sort of like he was accepting that the posted speed limit was fact, but not that he had to like it. "And again, Kowalski, what are we gonna do?"

Ray held on a little tighter. "About Fraser?"

"Yeah, about Fraser."

"Right, yeah," Ray said. He let go of Vecchio's jacket and balled his hands up into fists. Then he said maybe the two scariest words he'd ever said in his life. "Tell him."

*

Canada was probably as close to neutral territory as they were going to get. There was no way they were waiting until Fraser's shift was over, and there was no way Ray was gonna let Vecchio drive right now, so they took the GTO. Vecchio moved around in his seat, never really managing to stay still, and after a while said, "What are we going to tell him?"

"I don't know," Ray said. "The truth, I guess. We improvise."

"Fine," Vecchio said. "So what's the truth?"

Bastard was gonna make him rehearse, Ray realized. Fine. Nothing could possibly be worse than that final year with Stella, trying to force out the words. "The truth," Ray said, "the truth, the truth is, I -- I woke up one morning, I went through my day, I got a call from my mom, she said, 'Hi, Ray, Stella's told me about her new boyfriend,' and I ... didn't feel it. Hey, Mom, that's cool, how are things with Dad? And it wasn't other girls -- I'd tried other girls, and all of 'em had the blonde hair and blue eyes and ended hating me." He thumped the steering wheel. "This isn't working."

"It's three words," Vecchio said, in this voice Ray didn't get at all, and when he glanced over, Vecchio was giving him this kind of stunned look, like Ray'd been saying real things after all.

"I know it is," Ray told him. Eyes to the road. Two more blocks; stoplight on green; one block. "And you know what, I've said 'em, I've said 'em a hundred times and every single time he says it back, he says I love you too Ray like he's thanking you for passing the salt --" He slammed on the brakes. "Okay, everyone out, welcome to Canada."

Vecchio just stayed where he was, staring at Ray. "Jesus Christ, Kowalski, what?"

"I don't know, I do not know, I just started saying it and he probably thinks I'm being nice." Ray got out of the car and had to lean on it for a moment, because somehow his life had become shuttling around a panicking Italian so they could visit an oblivious Mountie, and if Ray had to spend one more second being the emotionally articulate one, he was gonna kick something hard. He banged on the roof. "Out, Vecchio!"

Step one to not kicking something hard was to let Vecchio go first, and knock on the Consulate door. Then they had a few moments to fidget and second-guess things before Fraser opened the door, all done up in the red serge but without his Stetson. "Ray!" he said in some surprise. "Ray! Is something afoot?"

"'Is something afoot'," Vecchio muttered. "Yeah, in a manner of speaking. Let us in."

"Certainly," Fraser said, stepping aside. "Welcome back to Canada."

"We're not interrupting?" Ray asked, maybe a little bit because he was stalling but mostly because asking that sort of question was another thing three years of Benton Fraser could do to a guy.

"Not at all," Fraser assured him, ushering them both in. "In fact my only present task is to bake a cake for the new inspector. I was considering the crossword, but I'm sure your company will prove better." He shut the door and looked a little anxiously between them in the relative dimness of the hall. "I assume this is not an official visit, since you mentioned, Ray, that you would prefer to no longer work with Ray."

"Yeah, that's --" Ray started, and Vecchio said, "That's what we're here about."

"Ah," said Fraser, and then, of all ridiculous things, darted a concerned glance at the portrait of the Queen above the stairs. "If you might follow me into the kitchen?"

So they followed Fraser to the kitchen. Vecchio leaned back against the counter with his arms folded, which Ray had meant to do, but since Vecchio got there first he sat down in the kitchen's singular chair, turned it backwards so his arms were resting on the back and he could slouch forward. Fraser hadn't been kidding about the cake; he had the oven turned up to 350 and a bowl full of gooey cake ingredients from scratch. Open cookbook with a neat bookmark in it and not a single pile of flour anywhere. Fraser gave the contents of the bowl a cursory stir, then started pouring the whole thing into a cake pan with studied meticulousness. On anyone else it would've been obvious and petty, but on Fraser it was really damn careful, and like ten minutes ago in the supply closet Ray had another moment where it fell into patterns.

Fraser got it. Fraser absolutely one hundred per cent got what was going on here.

"So," Ray said, the minute the cake pan was in the oven and Fraser had run out of things to do with his hands, "me and Vecchio were doing this crazy kissing thing right before we came over. It happened last week too."

Vecchio jerked upright and made a choked sound of horrified protest, but Fraser just carefully wiped his hands on a towel and said, "Yes, I can see how that might create concerns in the question of professional partnership."

"Yeah, therefore me the other night," Ray said, nodding. They seemed to be doing good so far in this conversational ice field.

"Okay, Kowalski is tellin' it wrong," Vecchio said. "We're not here to tell you why we can't partner up. We're here to ..." He folded his arms again, and for a second Ray thought he was gonna take refuge in Langustini, which would have been the worst thing possible; but Vecchio just said, "Uh, confess," which was a dumb way of putting it, but basically accurate.

"Ray," Fraser said, a faint frown line appearing, "what you and Ray choose to do in private is certainly not something that merits confession --"

"Okay, Vecchio's telling it wrong," Ray interrupted. Vecchio shot him a look that said Jesus, don't help! but Ray ignored him. "What I was saying, it was not a confession, it was a -- a thing, a lead-up to a thing."

"The thing being both of us are crazy about you, Fraser," Vecchio said, and -- wow. Wow. Ray sat there, kind of feeling like he'd asked Vecchio to pull off a Band-Aid slowly and instead it'd been ripped away, that's how direct it was.

"Ah," Fraser said, and set the hand towel aside in a crumpled heap.

"That's it?" Vecchio asked. "That's it? 'Ah'?" He couldn't keep still, did something theatrical and Italian with his hands while Ray hung onto the stupid kitchen chair for dear life and tried to keep breathing. "So," Vecchio said, "is it 'ah' like 'ah, I'm sorry, I got enough of this bullshit from your sister and somehow in all the years I've been alive and gorgeous I've never figured out how to say no,' or is it 'ah, I'm glad someone said something because I'm too damn saintly to worry about me but I actually like the idea of you being crazy about me,' or --"

"Ray," Fraser said, and Vecchio stopped, sort of quivering. Fraser tugged nervously at his ear and went on, really quiet, "I thought it -- imprudent -- to change the pattern of something good."

"I think that's option two," Ray said. "Vecchio? You think that's option two?"

"Yeah, I think that might not be a 'no'," Vecchio agreed.

"But if a routine no longer works --" Fraser said earnestly, and stopped mid-sentence, took a deep breath. "It's not a no, Ray."

"Right, okay," Vecchio said, and actually glanced over at Ray like he was asking for permission, which was fucked up on a lot of levels and made Ray feel weirdly warm. Ray just gave Vecchio the you gotta be kidding me look, and Vecchio nodded.

This next part, Ray wasn't sure he wanted to see. It involved Vecchio going up to Fraser slow and careful, like Fraser was half-wild, which might've been accurate, since Fraser was standing there wide-eyed and frozen. Then Vecchio's hands came up and slid tentatively over Fraser's shoulders, and Ray saw it, saw something in Fraser just snap, because all of a sudden Fraser was all over Vecchio, Vecchio was more or less in Fraser's arms and they were kissing like they needed it to live. Ray started heating up, toes to crazy hair; part of it was a weird equal-division jealousy, part of it was this strong conviction that he was witnessing something really personal and private and important and it was gonna feel weird whether or not he had any right to see it, part of it was straight-up lust. After a moment he had to look away and just try to breathe, and a moment after that he had to look back, because Vecchio was making these soft desperate noises and him kissing Fraser was maybe the most fascinating thing Ray'd ever seen in his life.

They pulled apart slowly -- magnets that didn't want to let go -- and Ray saw Vecchio's face was just alight, like he'd found the meaning of life or something. Fraser, though, Fraser was shaking, actually visibly shaking, and though the look on his face was vivid, Ray couldn't tell if it was anything like happy.

"Hey, Benny, it's okay," Vecchio said then, really soft and gentle, and it hit Ray, wham, this double revelation. One, he knew, absolutely clear to the last detail, why Stella and Vecchio hadn't worked out: she'd gotten annoyed, and he'd used that voice on her one too many times, and she'd had enough, because Stella Kowalski hated being coddled and patronized. Two, Ray also knew that this voice Vecchio was using, it was not a voice that said it's okay, the big strong man has everything under control now; this was a voice that said hell if I know what I'm doing, but I'm gonna try because I care about you more than anything in the world. So that was it, that was officially the end of Ray Kowalski's unofficial career making time being ticked off at Vecchio.

"Yes, I," Fraser said, and glanced almost involuntarily over at Ray. That hit Ray too, the urgency with which Fraser was looking at him, and Ray'd maybe got echoes of that look before but never the real thing. He was up from his chair in a hot second, and Fraser, in typical Fraser style, went out of Vecchio's space and into Ray's without looking like he'd done anything at all.

So suddenly Ray had an armful of Fraser.

Suddenly Ray had an armful of Fraser kissing him, and it was like nothing, nothing Ray'd ever felt. Fraser kissed with absolute assurance, and kissed like Ray was something he already knew inside-out; he pressed his tongue to Ray's in a way that made Ray whine and shimmy up against him, pressed his hands to the small of Ray's back so their hips rocked together and Ray saw stars, an honest-to-god shock overload in bright lights behind his eyes. Fraser was solid as anything, and still shaking a little, like a tree in high wind. Ray hung onto him for dear life and tried not to actually think about the fact he was specifically kissing Benton Fraser, or he was gonna completely lose it.

Then a second pair of hands slid over his hips, tentative and determined -- Vecchio. Ray jerked a little, less from surprise than from the sheer shock of how amazingly good just Vecchio's hands resting on his hips felt. Then Vecchio stepped forward, full-length up against Ray, and kissed the back of his neck; and somehow that, that, set Ray shaking too, not fear and not really shock anymore either, just need.

He pulled back from Fraser's mouth -- maybe the hardest thing he'd ever done, in a day of difficult things -- and "Ray," Fraser said, "Ray, Ray," completely stunned; Ray turned a little and somehow got one of his hands tangled with Vecchio's. Vecchio squeezed it tightly, and sort of gave Ray a look, maybe telegraphing I can't believe sometimes we actually get what we want, but that might have just been Ray projecting because mostly the look in Vecchio's eyes said Why are we still wearing clothes?

"Why," Ray said, "Frase, why are we still wearing clothes?"

"It's a kitchen, Ray," Fraser said.

"Hey, yeah, Benny's right," Vecchio said. "We're in a kitchen, Kowalski. I think Benny is trying to imply that there's no bed."

"Yeah, that sounds about right," Ray agreed, trying to get the script when he could barely speak in full sentences, because Vecchio's eyes were still going We're wearing too many clothes and Fraser still had one hand on the small of Ray's back, and Fraser was looking back and forth between them and this was all in fact really damn important. "The thing is, the thing is all Fraser's got is some little military-issue cot, and -- hey, Frase, what happens if you have sex in the Queen's bedroom?"

"I shudder to think," Fraser said, although he had, Ray'd felt the deep involuntary shiver Fraser'd done right when he said the word sex. "In any case --"

"We just have to be inventive," Vecchio finished for him.

"I have to watch the cake," Fraser said reprovingly, and added a little "Mmf!" at the end because Vecchio'd had enough of this crazy Mountie talk and was kissing Fraser again. It was kind of knee-weakening close up, and Ray nearly squeezed his eyes shut to keep from going right into sensory overload when he got a better idea.

"So you guys seem kinda busy," he said, sort of mumbled so they wouldn't get distracted, and even though he was still hanging on hard to Vecchio's hand, he slid right down between them. The principle of the thing was, he wanted something done right, say, anyone getting naked, he would have to do it himself. All of himself, though, both hands, so he let go of Vecchio's and got to work figuring out how exactly the ridiculous Mountie pants came off.

It involved unhooking Fraser's belt and unbuttoning the last few buttons on the red tunic, and then a few complicated fastenings on the pants themselves, and then figuring out how exactly to get Fraser's boxers out of the way; this was all made more difficult by the fact that somewhere around step one Fraser had figured out what he was doing and actually stopped kissing Vecchio to say, "Ray, I -- you don't have to --" before Vecchio let him know he was being ridiculous. And then Fraser just carried on, still kissing Vecchio but making these little half-panicky totally turned-on noises and moving his hips around, which wouldn't be a problem if he could just wait a few seconds.

Then Fraser's clothes were off, and Ray allowed himself a crazy grin before getting down to business. Yeah, here was a catalogue of unexpected things: Ray would never in a million years have guessed he'd be giving Fraser a blowjob while the guy made out with Vecchio right over his head. Actually he'd never have guessed he'd get the opportunity to give Fraser a blowjob anyway; the rest was probably just trimmings, like the fact that he was also in the kitchen of the Canadian Consulate, and that Vecchio'd reached down again to card his fingers through Ray's hair and set his spine tingling, and that Fraser was not polite, not at all, he was still making those little noises and moving enough that Ray had to hang on hard to his hips -- yeah, these things were not trimmings. Maybe the kitchen-in-Consulate part was, but Vecchio's hands in his hair, the way Fraser was moving, those things were making Ray dizzy and unbearably hot and, of all things, happy.

He didn't quite register at first that Vecchio and Fraser had stopped kissing, but he heard Vecchio say, "Oh Jesus, Kowalski," in slightly choked awe, and then Fraser, his voice low and shaky and half-moan, "Ray, Ray, Ray, I think --" and yeah, Ray got it, so he ignored them until Fraser gave this soft little cry that was basically the hottest thing ever; Ray swallowed reflexively and held onto Fraser's hips for a minute longer, until he was sure Vecchio was holding Fraser up. He got shakily to his feet.

"Ray," Fraser said again, and Ray was pulled into a kiss, languid and awed, which was not what Ray usually expected in a kiss. When Fraser let him go, Ray tried to focus enough to look at him; Fraser's hair was sticking to his forehead, eyes wide and blissed-out, mouth shiny with kisses.

"Oh god," said Ray, with feeling.

"Uh, yeah," Vecchio agreed, and when Ray turned his head enough to give Vecchio a look, Vecchio looked a lot the same way, although maybe like he was still waiting for Ray to give him the best orgasm ever. Vecchio gave Ray a slow grin. "Think he can stand?"

"I doubt it," Fraser said quietly.

"We'll give you the chair," Ray said, and it came out easy, we. Like he and Vecchio were some sort of Fraser-protecting and -working-with and -loving and whatever-else-Fraser-needed team.

"No, Ray, I -- I'd like --" Fraser tried, and Ray could guess what Fraser would like and probably wouldn't articulate, but Vecchio said firmly, "If you can't stand by yourself you're not gonna do anything else until we've got a bed," which was good and sensible and got Fraser to stumble to the chair, and got Ray all set up with this completely insane mental image of them all getting actually naked and going at it in specifically Ray's bed, and maybe afterwards doing normal things like going to work and getting dinner and then being in Ray's bed all over again, and this -- this Ray was not going to think about with a hard-on, because it was crazy enough to think about even when he did have blood in his brain.

They got Fraser settled boneless in the chair, and then Ray looked at Vecchio and Vecchio looked at Ray, and Vecchio gave Ray that slow grin again, and Ray was gone, kissing Vecchio kind of like a fistfight still, but all urgency, no violence. He fumbled with Vecchio's pants and got a hand inside them about a second before Vecchio did, which was a good thing because Ray was gone gone gone then, throwing his head back panting and trying not to wail gone, and Christ, Vecchio's hand. Ray lasted maybe a minute, and then came, shaking like mad, totally silent like he only was when it was really, really good.

When his brain switched back on Vecchio was swearing like crazy and they couldn't actually hold each other up anymore, so they collapsed down together right by Fraser's chair. Vecchio started laughing, this delighted astonished sound, totally disbelieving of his own luck. Ray leaned half on Vecchio's shoulder and half back against Fraser's leg, and made some blurred happy noise of agreement.

Things couldn't possibly get any better, Ray thought; and Fraser's hand settled in his hair, stroking through it lightly. Ray squeezed his eyes shut and through the haze of endorphins had to fight a sudden urge to cry, because this was the single most intimate thing Benton Fraser had ever done with him, just this hand in his hair.

Eventually Fraser said, in his normal calm voice, "I have to pick up Diefenbaker from quarantine after I finish with the cake. Would you be interested in driving me?"

"We only got Kowalski's car," Vecchio said, voice a little fuzzy around the edges.

Ray kind of nudged at him. "You can have shotgun."

"Yeah, Benny's not licensed for a firearm. He can sit in back with the wolf."

"I think that would do nicely," Fraser said, and actually got up, carefully buttoning himself back up into his uniform. Vecchio and Ray glanced at each other, and Vecchio's face said Can you believe this guy? which, no, Ray wasn't sure he could. It was still Fraser in there, but Ray was about half convinced that any moment he was gonna wake up with sticky sheets and hating the world. He grinned at Vecchio and held Vecchio's hand, not because he really had a thing for hand-holding but because he needed something to anchor him here, and Vecchio seemed to get that. He squeezed Ray's hand and they both watched Fraser perform some complicated cake ritual involving oven mitts and a toothpick.

"I think that should do for now," Fraser announced, absently running a hand through his hair, which should have just made it sweatier and messier, but instead worked as well as a comb. He set the cake into the little Consulate refrigerator, then turned to Vecchio and Ray. "Shall we get Diefenbaker?"

"Sure thing," Vecchio said.

*

By some Fraser-related miracle they both managed to make it out to the GTO more or less like normal people. Fraser settled into the back seat, Vecchio started messing around with the radio, and Ray gunned it down the street to the first stoplight. The magnet thing was still going on; Ray knew exactly where Vecchio was and where Fraser was even though he was looking at the road, because the air or something curved weirdly to make them the two most obvious objects in the universe. It was tension, too, but good tension -- Ray could tell all three of them were waiting for the moment it would all just break and get impossible, but it didn't, and didn't, and didn't.

Vecchio settled the radio on something that was actually a bit punk, which was probably his way of saying the GTO was Ray's territory. Ray tapped his fingers on the steering wheel and wondered what musical indignities he'd have to suffer in the Riv, and thought, hey, he didn't mind, they were all freaks in this together. At least Vecchio didn't listen to sheet music. Then he thought, hey, that assumed he'd be spending quality time with the Riv. With Vecchio.

Yeah. Yeah, okay.

Ray reached over to turn the music down. "Hey, Frase?"

"Yes, Ray?" Fraser met Ray's eyes briefly in the rear-view mirror and suddenly okay didn't cover it.

"Forget the logistics," Ray said. "You're liaising with both of us, you got it?" Which as pronouncements went was a good one, because Fraser's face in the mirror lit right up, the way Vecchio's had earlier, that discovered-the-meaning-of-life look, which should have freaked Ray right the hell out but didn't. "Right, Vecchio?"

"Jesus, gimme a few minutes, Stanley," Vecchio said, but it was in that particular voice, the one Ray'd been called a lot of things usually with the word freak in them, but what Ray was hearing was just three words, that was it. He held tight to the steering wheel and nodded.

Giving Vecchio a few minutes meant they got to the quarantine building, and Fraser got out with a "I'll only be a minute," leaving Ray and Vecchio alone with a soft radio beat.

"Jesus," Vecchio said again, and started laughing, with such infectious joy that Ray actually laughed a little too. Vecchio looked at Ray with shining eyes. "I'm sittin' here thinking 'I shoulda done this years ago'," he said. "But you know what, Stanley? I don't think it works like that."

"Hey, yeah, it's Ray," said Ray.

"No, that's me," Vecchio said, smirking, but after a second it softened down. "You want it can be Kowalski."

Ray started saying Vecchio'd better, and then thought of Vecchio calling Fraser Benny, which was totally nuts, and the way maybe Vecchio'd started out saying Stanley like he wanted a rise but was saying it now like it didn't mean Ray was Brando or an asshole or anything, but sort of like Vecchio just compulsively nicknamed everything he loved, and Ray said, "Whatever, whichever, just don't be a jerk."

The smirk came right back. "You got it, Stanley."

Ray punched him in the arm and Vecchio started laughing again, which, yeah, he was officially in the freak club. Ray turned the punch into just sort of running his hand up and down Vecchio's arm until Vecchio stopped snickering. "So what now?" Ray asked. "I mean, Welsh'll go for it, and your entire damn family's already adopted us, but where's Fraser gonna stay?"

Vecchio tensed up, just the tiniest bit, so that Ray barely heard him say, "That's up to Fraser;" Ray thought, we're back to custody rules here. Which was wrong, wrong like a very wrong thing, and it hadn't turned into a Fraser contest yet, but this was not supposed to be about shuttling Fraser back and forth between them.

"You're still living with the folks, right?" Ray asked.

"Yeah," Vecchio said warily.

"So if your house is big enough for Ma Vecchio and Frannie and the kids, and Tony and Maria every weekend, my place is definitely big enough for three."

Vecchio stared at him.

Ray started tapping his hand along to the music again.

"We'd kill each other," Vecchio said. "You dress like a hobo. You never clean. You think the height of cuisine is pineapple pizza. Jesus, Kowalski, you get on every last nerve I have."

"Hey," said Ray, "maybe I just wanna pay less rent."

Vecchio snorted softly. "Sure."

"Look," Ray said, "you ever done something crazy, Vecchio? Like maybe gone undercover with the mob and turned out okay?"

"You ever maybe married the wrong person and hung on too long?" Vecchio shot back,

It was way below the belt, but his eyes had gone hard and scared so Ray didn't flinch, just said, "Jumped when Fraser told you how high?"

"Maybe," Vecchio conceded, his face softening again.

"Maybe what?" Fraser asked, opening the door on Vecchio's side. Vecchio didn't answer, just went "Hey hey hey Dief ow get off!" because Diefenbaker had leapt in and was using Vecchio as leverage for his paws so he could slobber all over Ray's face.

"Hey, Dief, buddy, hi," Ray said, trying to get Diefenbaker off him. He grabbed Dief's ruff, looked deep into his eyes, and said, "Get in the back seat."

Dief went.

"Oh, sure, he listens to you," Vecchio muttered.

"Certainly, Ray," Fraser said, climbing in after Dief. "Ray and Diefenbaker became very close during our year in the Territories. Perhaps if you made an effort to become something more to him than simply a doughnut dispenser --"

"Yeah yeah," Vecchio said.

They sat there for a minute, Diefenbaker panting away contentedly in the back seat. It was probably about noon. Ray coughed and said, "Hey, speaking of, anyone for lunch?"

"You got any food at your place?" Vecchio asked.

Yeah, Ray had some -- enough for sandwiches, anyway. "Sure," he said, starting the GTO up and pulling out onto the road. He fiddled with the radio dial and started to turn the music up again.

"Hey, Benny," Vecchio said. Ray turned the radio back down. "You got anywhere to stay yet?"

"I've only been back for a few extremely busy days, Ray," Fraser replied a little reproachfully. "I haven't even begun to look for accommodations that will take wolves --"

"Kowalski, your landlady fine with pets?"

"I think so, yeah," Ray said, wondering what exactly Vecchio thought he was doing.

"You pay a third of what Kowalski's paying for rent right now and I bet it won't cost much more than living on Racine did." Vecchio gave Ray a grin and Ray's heart just about punched right out of his chest.

"A third --" Fraser started.

"Yeah, yeah, both of you," Ray said. He caught Fraser's eyes in the mirror. Fraser looked stunned, like all those casual I love yous were coming back and hitting him in the face, every one of them. "Frase?"

"I think," Fraser said, and looked away, at Dief, at Vecchio, back to Ray. "I would like that. Very much."

"Good," Ray said. "Okay, good. Greatness."

Which maybe it wouldn't be. Dief was gonna shed over everything; Vecchio wore stupid suits and both of them got to Ray in more ways than he liked; Vecchio was divorced twice now and Ray still woke up sometimes wondering if he should've hung on harder or let go quick and Fraser, Ray was sort of scared to go touching some of the things that went on in Fraser's heart. But Vecchio was grinning and Fraser -- Fraser was grinning too, as uncomplicatedly happy as he'd been the day they fell out of a plane into snowy tundra. So when Ray pulled the GTO into a space in front of the apartment, he was maybe grinning too, and definitely looking like he'd found the meaning of life, because, because ...

He got out of this car, he watched this wolf go bounding up the steps toward the apartment, he looked at this cop and this Mountie who were total freaks, and he walked back into his life.

"Hey, well," Vecchio said, pretty much to both of them. "Welcome home."

due South: Magnetic (Part II)

2009-03-04T01:18:25Z

Fandom: due South
Rating: R
Word count: 20,909
Pairing: Fraser/Kowalski/Vecchio
Summary: Ray returns to Chicago and finds Vecchio is back too; Fraser's coming down in a month. What could possibly go wrong.

Magnetic

{Part One | Part Two | Part Three}

"Hey, uh, me and Vecchio don't have to start anything today, right?" Ray asked on Monday, hovering in the doorway of Welsh's office. "I mean, Fraser's back tomorrow."

Welsh sighed and gave Ray the familiar I-don't-know-what-to-do-with-you-Kowalski look. "I'm sure you both still have lots of paperwork, Detective."

"Okay, good," Ray said. "Uh, if Fraser's still doing his liaising thing, who's he gonna be doing it with?"

"I imagine that's up to Constable Fraser," said Welsh, the evil bastard. Ray was pretty convinced Welsh liked Ray a lot better than he liked Vecchio, but no, he wasn't going to back Ray on this one. If Ray needed backing. Ray had a headache and really needed coffee.

"Right," Ray said, and got the hell over to the lunch room with the view of messing around with Frannie's old cappuccino machine. Of course Vecchio was already there, having some sort of fight with a vending machine. Ray almost turned back, but he wanted his damn coffee, so he dug his nails into his palms and went in.

Vecchio's back was to him, but Vecchio still went tense right away, like he could recognize Ray from the way he walked by now. Vecchio kicked the vending machine a couple of times, about as violently as Ray would've under the circumstances, then gave up and announced to some Pepsi ad: "I want to go to the airport."

It took Ray a moment to figure that one out -- I want to be the one to pick Fraser up -- and when he did, he didn't say anything for a bit, just tried a couple of things with the cappuccino machine until it gave him something passable in a Styrofoam cup. "Yeah, sure," he said.

Vecchio turned to him, kinda fidgety. "You sure?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm sure," Ray said, and felt like maybe all the caffeine in the world wouldn't make him feel less tired. "Jeez, I don't even wanna go. He's not --" Mine, yours, Frannie's, anyone's. Ray felt Chicago all over him like a second strangling skin; twitched his shoulders and threw his coffee in the trash. "I should ..." Do paperwork, beat his head against a wall, run away to Canada, something, anything.

"Hey," Vecchio said quietly, when Ray was almost at the door. Ray stopped, made himself turn back. Vecchio was still standing by the vending machine, looking like maybe his expensive tailored suit didn't fit so well today. Vecchio just looked at him for a long time, until Ray got the awful sick feeling that maybe Vecchio was going to apologize.

"What?" Ray snapped finally.

"Nothin'," Vecchio said, which was a goddamn lie, but Ray left anyway.

*

He didn't really sleep much, just tossed around on his bed and punched his pillow a lot. He mostly drifted, and once had a half-dream that Diefenbaker was still trying to tell him something really damn important, but Ray tried so hard to concentrate on what Dief was saying that he woke himself up and had a moment of blind frustrated anger before he remembered he'd been asleep. Then he drifted again, his brain running over the last day with Fraser before he'd caught a prop plane out of Inuvik: Fraser on the runway, the fur of his parka framing his face and his eyes blue blue blue, giving Ray a brilliant smile and saying, "I'll see you in a month."

Ray replayed it in his head, only it came out different, a quantum hallucination; this time Fraser said, "Don't go." And again: "Stay with me." Ray twisted and fought with the covers a little, and Fraser said, "My father will build us a cabin." Ray mumbled something about Fraser's dad being dead, and woke himself up again; when he drifted off it was worse. "I think you should have told me about Ray," Fraser said. "I don't think I'll be coming back to Chicago after all." Ray woke up again and punched the mattress a bit. The clock glowing on his bedside table said 6:23; Ray groaned and rolled over. He could a) give up and roll out of bed and get coffee, which sounded awful, or 2) jerk off because then at least he would get some real goddamn sleep, but that would be worse. Just staying here until the dream hallucinations got to the point where Fraser said he hated him seriously didn't bear thinking about.

With a groan Ray crawled out of bed and went to brew himself like six cups of coffee and maybe find all the sugar in the house, and just get through this day.

*

Ray went to the station as soon as he stopped feeling like he was maybe gonna die from his brain exploding. Probably there were things he needed to do but he just sat at his desk and shuffled papers around, took a pen and scribbled aimlessly until he tore through the paper, bounced his leg until his knee started bumping against the underside of the desk. He thought about going to the gym and beating the hell out of a punching bag, but he was having the funny feeling of too much caffeine, the world being really immediate and telescoping away all at once, which meant if he tried hitting something he'd probably end up with a broken hand. So he tried to do his work, pretended to do his work, snapped his head towards the door every time someone new entered the bullpen, waited.

Just after lunch -- Ray had maybe a sandwich or something, didn't taste it -- Vecchio came breezing through the door, heading for Welsh's office. Ray waited one heartbeat and another and there was nothing, no Mountie, Vecchio coming in alone. Ray was on his feet and right in Vecchio's space before he had time to think about it.

"Where is he?"

"Consulate," Vecchio said, shouldering past Ray, so Ray was forced to follow Vecchio into the lieutenant's office. "Fraser's back, sir," Vecchio announced, trying to shut the door on Ray, but Ray shouldered right back and got in, making Vecchio look a bit stupid when the door slammed behind him. Vecchio took it in a beat, though, said smoothly, "He said he wanted a day to settle in and find a place. He'll be back tomorrow."

"Tell him there's no rush," Welsh said, and sort of looked back and forth between Vecchio and Ray, maybe calculating something out. "Anything else?"

"Yeah, c'mon, who's he gonna --" Ray started, and over him Vecchio said "I'm just thinkin', sir, it might be hard for him to liaise if we already have the partner thing covered."

"Well," said Welsh, and then he did the unthinkable and sided with Vecchio. "God knows you work better with the Mountie than alone, Vecchio. Kowalski's record is a bit more solid."

"What," Ray yelped, "come on, this guy was under cover with the mob for two years, you are not gonna tell me he won't get results --" and then his brain caught up with his mouth and he took a breath, jammed his hands deep in his pockets. "I thought you said it was Fraser's decision, sir."

"Hey, this is just my professional opinion," Welsh said mildly. "Constable Fraser can liaise with whoever he wants."

And that seemed to be that, interview over, done; hey, Kowalski, maybe you should just get out of here, do the undercover thing again, start over and make the same mistakes in exciting new ways. Ray yanked the door open and stalked out. Vecchio followed him, then actually grabbed his shoulder, and it was a good thing Ray's hands were still shoved in his pockets because otherwise he would've punched Vecchio right in the face. Instead Ray just froze.

"Listen," Vecchio said, in this soft, urgent, incredibly weird voice, "I got things to do, you go to the Consulate, okay?"

Ray had no idea what that meant, no idea what the fuck that meant, but he nodded blindly and tore away from Vecchio anyway, needing to get out of there and needing to see Fraser and probably needing other things too.

In the GTO he clutched hard at the steering wheel and almost crashed at least twice, going to the Consulate on instinct alone, trying not to think. Years and years of Stella had not prepared him for this at all, years with Fraser and years being Vecchio, a year in the arctic with just a bunch of dogs and Inuit stories and his own thoughts -- none of it had prepared him for this because he didn't even have any idea what this was; it meant his shoulder was still tingling where Vecchio'd grabbed his jacket, and he could hardly breathe he missed Fraser so much, but what it was, that he was really unclear on.

Then he was at the Consulate, ignition off, out of the car, knocking at the door, one two three, and the next moment the door was open and Ray had himself an armful of Fraser. He was in civvies, jeans and leather jacket, smelled like airports and jet fuel and pine trees, was warm and hugging Ray hard and Ray's knees wanted to give out from sheer fucking joy.

"Hi," Ray said, and Fraser pulled back enough to give him this soft smile about two inches from Ray's face.

"Hello, Ray," Fraser said.

They held on maybe a second too long and then Fraser was turning, pulling Ray along in his field of personal Fraser-gravity so he was still up in Fraser's space with their arms almost touching. "I was unsure whether to unpack," Fraser said, making his way towards the miserable little back room he'd been living in as long as Ray had known him. "It seemed a little presumptuous to impose myself without clearing it with the new Inspector, and since my move south has something of permanence about it this time ..."

"Yeah?" Ray prompted after a moment, then, "Oh. Oh, hey, if you need a place to crash for a few nights my couch is yours. Least I can do."

The look Fraser gave him was full of -- not relief, even, just pleasure at Ray's company, and Ray realized that, yeah, maybe he could do this like he'd done in the arctic even if here there were reasonable temperatures and reasonable layers of clothing, but wow, wow, tomorrow, Vecchio was going to kill him.

"Thank you, Ray," Fraser said, blissfully oblivious to all this, and followed Ray with his duffle out to the GTO.

*

Somehow even with the change of scenery they did their arctic camping routine, or at least motions that felt the same: Ray got the food, Fraser got what they'd be eating it with, and they ate in companionable silence with their elbows almost touching. Yeah, it was pizza in ceramic plates instead of pemmican and whatever in collapsible camping tins, and there were sirens outside instead of sled dogs scuffling a few feet away, but it was the same, the same in a good way.

"So you met the new Inspector?" Ray asked.

"Briefly," Fraser said. "Inspector Brown seems like a capable man."

"Hm," Ray said, and that pretty much covered the companionable silence and all the available conversation. It was like a week of good tundra and then suddenly ice fields for the next fifty miles. Fraser's new living space, the 27, Vecchio, those were Ray's ice fields. He took the last piece of pizza without asking.

Fraser drew in a deep breath, like he was going to say something -- about manners, maybe, or something else about the new Inspector -- and then let it out in a sigh, leaned back a little, smoothed a finger over his right eyebrow.

"Okay," said Ray. "What?"

"You mentioned you're currently partnered with Ray Vecchio," Fraser said, and here it was, ice crevasse number one.

"Temporary thing," Ray said. "Just until you're back, which is now."

"I took the liberty of investigating the records," Fraser went on, which, okay, how, but Ray had learned a long time ago that Fraser could do pretty much anything once he determined to do it. "You've already achieved impressive results together."

Beginner's luck, Ray almost said, but that was too dumb. "I guess so."

"And, well, I wouldn't want to step on any toes --"

"Did you talk to Vecchio about this?" Ray interrupted. Fraser blinked at him, this polite confused blink that could mean anything, and Ray said, "Because if he picked you up at the airport and said, 'Fraser my friend, I am enjoying my productive time with Kowalski,' he was probably lying."

"It didn't come up," Fraser admitted, a faint frown line appearing between his eyebrows. Ray had even missed that look, the Ray, your mind baffles me and I don't like it one. "I take it your partnership has been less than ... amiable, then?"

"Amiable," Ray muttered. "Yeah. No." It was lots of things, frustrating and a little inspiring and freaking Ray the hell out, but that -- "No. We, uh, personal stuff, Fraser. We got too much of the same life."

"Ah," Fraser said, with just the faintest note of disappointment. "I see how that might become detrimental. I'm sorry to hear that, Ray."

"Yeah," Ray said, setting down his last half-eaten slice of pizza. He closed the pizza box and shoved it to the side, tapped his fingertips against the table, gripped the edges and watched the blood seep out of his knuckles. All of a sudden it was really important he see this through. "So it'd suck for me and Vecchio to work together, but we're both still at the 27 and if you're gonna be here too ..."

"I'm sure I can work it case by case, as my assistance is required," Fraser said, getting it, making it all easy, one sentence fixing everything right up.

Ray could breathe again, and did, in relieved gulps, really fucking obvious. Fraser reached out and touched a hand to Ray's shoulder, this brief solid warm touch in exactly the same place Vecchio had, leaving Ray with not quite enough air again. But he looked at Fraser, and Fraser was wearing this little rueful smile as he said, "Surely you don't think I came back to Chicago for the Consular position, Ray."

"You got a point, my friend," Ray said, and got to his feet. "Blankets are in the closet. I'll do dishes."

So, okay, they were good here.

*

Only Ray hadn't calculated in the part where Fraser was sleeping like ten feet away, never mind the bedroom wall between them. Sleeping alone had not been an issue in the pre-arctic quest days, except in the pathetic-loser-missing-Stella way, which was old hat; maybe Ray got to be sort of fond of the weird campout sleepovers with Fraser, even if they were hell on his back, but by then Ray was fond of all the wildly bizarre stuff he did with Fraser. Then on the arctic quest it had been a non-issue, because it was thirty fucking degrees below most nights, and Ray shook until his teeth rattled unless Fraser zipped their sleeping bags together and wrapped himself around Ray. Ray had briefly worried it was going to be a problem, but it wasn't, it was this camaraderie-and-survival thing and Ray didn't really associate sex with being wrapped in six layers with a Fraser-blanket on top. It was still nice, though, breathing in rhythm with someone, sharing that. Back in Chicago everything was so weird and different Ray hadn't associated sleeping alone with loss anymore than he'd missed the dance of driving the sled, but now with Fraser sleeping ten feet away it was completely different.

Because Ray wasn't wearing six layers and trying not to freeze to death; Ray was in an apartment in Chicago in the late spring, wearing a t-shirt and boxers, and he was replaying Fraser touching his shoulder, and Vecchio touching his shoulder, and Vecchio's goddamn tongue in his mouth in the Riv, and how exactly Fraser's would feel, which was an old obsession but it seemed dangerous now, like any second everything might go solid and real.

Ray groaned into his pillow in sheer frustrated panic, and fell asleep slow and dizzy, scared he was gonna get Fraser and Vecchio all mixed up in his head, more scared when he realized right on the edge of sleep that getting them mixed up wasn't the real problem at all.

*

He woke to the smell of coffee, and for a disoriented moment he was back in the bed and breakfast in Inuvik, where they'd been staying a couple of days before Ray's flight; then he remembered what was actually going on, and jerked up out of bed, shuffling to the doorway. "Coffee?"

"Good morning, Ray," Fraser said. "Sugar?"

"Black," Ray said, and gave Fraser a bleary smile when a hot mug was pressed into his hands. A few minutes later, when he was awake enough for full sentences and could see Fraser was all done up in his red serge, this dream of a cartoon Mountie Ray had known years ago, he said, "You want me to drive you to the Consulate?"

"That would be much appreciated, Ray."

So Ray drove Fraser to the Consulate, and made him promise to come by the 27 when his shift was over, because Ray figured the sooner he and Vecchio worked out custody, the easier it'd be in the long run. Then Ray went into the station by himself, and even though it was some ungodly hour of the day when only Canadians should be awake, there Vecchio was at his desk five feet from Ray's, looking the same sort of strung-out from nerves that Ray had been feeling yesterday.

"Morning," Ray said, coming over and sitting down on the edge of Vecchio's desk.

"Morning," Vecchio returned, sounding surprised more than anything.

"So Fraser, he said he'd work it case-by-case," Ray said. "Whoever wanted the help, that kinda thing." Vecchio just sat there, nodding a little, and Ray had it figured out by now that a healthy happy Vecchio was expansive, maybe loud, maybe mocking, whatever, and that Vecchio sitting there quiet was not a good sign. Yeah, and probably it wasn't a good sign that Ray had the physical-indicators-of-emotion thing all catalogued with Vecchio the way he did with Fraser and Stella, but Ray was already walking down this road and maybe Fraser was back now but that didn't mean this new road, metaphor, whatever, was just going to vanish. Ray tapped his fingers on the desk and added, "I got nothing big right now. You probably got a bigger pile of the unsolved ones. You want him first, go for it."

"Yeah, sure," Vecchio said, and gave this great gusting sigh, which, cool, at least he was showing emotion again. "This is really screwed up, Kowalski."

"Like having joint custody," Ray agreed, and tried a grin; it actually worked for a minute, even if it was just a flash. "Only, hey, no divorce procedures first. Woo-hoo!"

"You're completely nuts, Stanley," Vecchio said, grinning back, and there, there it was again, everything he felt right out on his face, like a two-by-four straight to Ray's head, because Ray had lived with Fraser the Stoic Mountie for three goddamn years and he didn't know what to do with this. He'd thought he and Vecchio were not good, not buddies, and all of a sudden Vecchio was giving him this open grin, and it had the same this-is-your-new-magnetic-center-of-gravity quality to it that being around Fraser had. Ray found himself leaning helplessly into it, arm braced hard against the desk; he was about two inches from Vecchio's mouth when he realized what was going on.

They both jerked back. The worst part was Ray wasn't the only one breathing hard.

"Don't do that," Ray muttered. "Do not do that!"

"Yeah, next time I'll try to not talk or somethin'," Vecchio snapped. "Jesus, Kowalski." A pause. "Get off my desk."

Ray got the hell off Vecchio's desk.

He spent the rest of the morning making friends with the never-ending paperwork.

*

Fraser turned up around noon; he went to Ray's desk first, probably because it was closer to the door. "Afternoon, Ray."

"Hey," Ray said. "I got nothing outstanding or weird yet. Try Vecchio."

"I shall, Ray," Fraser said, and sort of bumped his hand against the shoulder of Ray's jacket as he went past, leaving Ray all tingling and a little shaky. He had a good seat to watch, too, his back to the door and facing the whole bullpen; Fraser went over to Vecchio, and Vecchio looked up with theatrical surprise, like he hadn't known the hot second Fraser had come through that door.

"Hey, Benny," he said. "Shift over?"

"That it is, Ray," said Fraser, who was standing -- yeah, right up in Vecchio's space, like he couldn't escape the magnetic whatever any more than Ray could. Ray remembered something about that from high school science class, something about how magnets with the same charge couldn't get near each other, but high school science had been wrong, because Ray was the one pinging off the walls over here, while Fraser and Vecchio were just standing there, easy as anything. "I was hoping I might make myself useful."

"I have some outstanding thefts from about a week ago," Vecchio said. "Wanna go make inquiries?"

"That sounds very good, Ray," Fraser said, and waited politely while Vecchio got his jacket. Then they were going to the door, moving like they were sure of things, like they were the one-two punch. "Goodbye, Ray," Fraser said over his shoulder, and Vecchio said, "Yeah, see ya, Stanley," and they were gone, leaving Ray sitting there feeling like all the air had gone out of the room with them.

Something queer, he thought vaguely, the way Fraser could say Ray and Ray and Ray didn't even know if he was saying them with particular inflections or anything, but he could still hear the difference.

*

Of course with Fraser back Ray's life went right out of normal-people-problems territory and into the surreal, which was how he found himself that evening sitting in a sticky bright-red diner booth, Fraser's serge clashing horribly with everything, Fraser and Vecchio wedged together in the booth seat opposite, Vecchio laughing his head off and Fraser chuckling a bit while they told Ray about their day.

"So she wanted to sew all the handbags back together and make a, a, what was it, Fraser, a reverse alligator?" Vecchio giggled and wiped his eyes.

"Now, Ray, Ms. Miller honestly believed that she had stumbled upon a supernatural method of restoring life to a wronged creature," Fraser said seriously, but the corners of his mouth were curving upwards a little, like he couldn't quite help himself. "And she was admirably methodical; I haven't had time to investigate thoroughly, but it does seem that all the handbags she stole were, indeed, from the same alligator."

"Crazy animal rights people, huh," Vecchio said.

"So she got six months and a therapist or what?" Ray asked, prodding a fry against the edge of his plate.

"We did apprehend her before she had time to complete the, ah, alligator restoration ritual," Fraser pointed out. "Were it genuine, a therapist would not be required, although obviously an alligator loose in Chicago would present a new host of problems."

"I bet they live in the sewers anyway," Vecchio said, his eyebrows telegraphing to Ray, That Fraser, he's a nutcase sometimes.

"I thought that was New York," Ray said, and didn't try telegraphing anything back because one, Fraser could see him, and also hell if he was gonna commiserate with Vecchio about Fraser's weirdness.

"Pure hearsay, but possibly worth looking into," Fraser said. "And how was your day, Ray?"

"Boring. Paperwork. I kinda miss the alligators."

"Yes," Fraser said, with this little frown line, and looked between Vecchio and Ray. Ray saw him starting to wonder why maybe the three of them couldn't work together; Ray could almost hear the unorthodox, but and the effective teamwork, and he knew that Fraser would work his Fraser magic and make it sound like a good idea. But it wasn't, not when Ray and Vecchio were all over him like every other sucker in Chicago, not when he played totally fucking oblivious to this and also had that same problem Ray did, the one where he'd never been much good at having friends and all the lines of affection got real blurred, not when he had no idea all the screwed-up things that were going on between Ray and Vecchio. Get the three of them working together, and someone was gonna end up distracted or angry or dead.

Ray looked over at Vecchio, to see if he'd noticed the little cogs turning away in Fraser's brain. Help.

Vecchio gave a curt nod. He stole a fry from Ray's plate and announced, "Okay, I'm beat. Move, Benny."

"But we haven't --" Fraser protested, and Ray said over him, "No, yeah, I'm tired too, Frase, let's get you home."

They were up then, him and Vecchio splitting the bill and getting Fraser outside, into the GTO, Vecchio saying, "See ya tomorrow," and beating it, all quick and easy with no talk, like a dance. Ray slid into the driver's seat feeling funny, feeling like music. He stared at the ignition for a long moment before actually starting up.

Fraser waited until they were well away from the diner and jammed into evening traffic before he spoke, so he was either giving Ray a moment to get it together or he'd been biding his time for an ambush. Maybe both. "Ray," he said, "why are you and Ray so reluctant to work together?"

"It's, uh, it's," Ray said, and hit on a brilliant word. "It's logical, Fraser. Partners you can do, partners is good -- you watch each other's backs and it all works out. You can't do that if you're watching two backs all the time, right? The whatsits don't work. The, uh. Trying to keep track of a lot of stuff, you miss something important and you get hurt, or you're protecting your partner and you think, oh, hey, I got another one, I wonder how he's doing --"

"Logistics," Fraser said.

"No, logic."

"The logistics don't work," Fraser repeated. "I see your point, Ray."

"Oh, yeah," said Ray. The light changed color and he gunned it until he came up to the next wave of traffic and slowed back to a crawl. "Yeah, you sound convinced there, Fraser."

"Well, I simply think that given the right set of people, a team can work as well as a partnership --"

"Three's a crowd, Frase."

"Ray, listen to me," Fraser said, and he actually sounded angry now, the kind of Fraser-angry that meant Ray would have to sit this through. He nodded, and saw out of the corner of his eye that Fraser was relaxing, just a little. He still used his unwavering, This Is Fact voice when he next spoke, but at least he wasn't pissed off. "I think," said Fraser, "that you and Ray work together very effectively. Your case reports reflect it, but I also witnessed it not ten minutes ago. I don't mind saying I find it ironic that you should work so well together in order to not work together." Ray opened his mouth, and Fraser said firmly, "Furthermore, I know from firsthand experience that my partnerships with both of you have been productive and satisfying. It is of course possible that the logistics will present as many difficulties as you suggest, but I still believe it to be well worth trying."

Ray nodded, had started nodding about halfway through and just kept on, this funny jerky little movement, because he knew what Fraser was saying, and it sounded good, but it was like -- like icebergs, like Fraser saw the part that was sticking out of the water and liked it, but underneath there was this huge dangerous thing he couldn't even see; underneath Ray had this weird maybe-not-irrational fear that he was going to stick his tongue down Vecchio's throat without warning, Ray spent every minute of every goddamn day choking back all these stupid words he wanted to say to Fraser, Ray didn't have any fucking idea how to even start to reconcile these two facts. He gripped the steering wheel really tight and swung around the corner into his own neighborhood, the apartment starting to loom up before them.

"I know," Ray said. "I -- I can't, Frase, I can't do it."

Fraser stayed quiet while Ray parallel parked the GTO, right by the apartment's front door in a spot that was usually taken. Ray shut off the engine.

"Ray," Fraser said into the silence, sounding as torn-up as Ray had ever heard him, "I don't want to choose."

And there it was, five little words Fraser could have said instead of a whole speech, and even though Ray'd heard it the first time, hearing it like that, just quiet and simple and brutally stripped down, made his throat close right up. "Yeah," Ray whispered. "Yeah, I -- okay. I got it. Yeah." He got out of the GTO, fumbling a little, and had to wait for a minute, standing there shaking, before Fraser got out too and he could lock it up.

Fraser looked at him over the roof of the car, and Ray got that been-here-before feeling, the déjà vu thing, except last time his lips had been buzzing and Vecchio'd been doing just as much twitchy moving around as him, and this time Fraser hadn't even bumped up against his arm in hours, and if the look was the same, if Fraser was giving him that you're a freak but I still care look, then Ray -- god, Ray had no idea what any of it was supposed to mean anymore.

He let Fraser into his apartment, feeling like one of those bouncing-away magnets, trying to get close but completely incapable. Fraser went over to the couch, dug a little notebook out of his duffle, and started writing. In Fraser-land that was really impolite, so Ray took the hint, and went to bed without a word.

*

Fraser didn't make him coffee. Ray made it himself, and put like a whole bag of Smarties in, and drove Fraser over to the Consulate jittery and wired and absolutely quiet. It wasn't that they Weren't Talking, but wow, they were not talking.

Which would have been bad enough, but Ray got into the station and right away Vecchio was right there, grabbing Ray's elbow and dragging him into the lunch room. Ray dug in his heels a little from sheer panic, because they'd been pretty much okay last night and now Vecchio looked like he wanted to kill him, but when the door swung shut behind Ray, Vecchio let go of him and said without preamble, "Johnson's escaped."

Sharper jolt than a kick in the head. Ray stood stunned for a moment. "He's escaped prison?"

"Yeah," Vecchio said, looking tired and angry and a million other reflections of Ray. "I mean, maybe we cut corners, maybe we missed accomplices --"

"Jeez, who cares about accomplices," Ray snapped; "It's not like he was on parole, Vecchio, he was in prison!"

"Yeah, shut up," Vecchio said, and looked so miserable that Ray raised his hands, impatient surrender. "I guess," said Vecchio, "I mean, I don't think we overlooked anyone. He's never been picked up for anything serious before."

"There weren't -- Mort didn't find any other --?" Ray asked. Everything was ringing a little; it had been case closed, case fucking closed, and if they'd missed something ...

"Nah, nah," Vecchio said, "The prints were Johnson's." He rubbed at the back of his neck and calmed down visibly, but it didn't do much for Ray's state of mind. "We got to find out who his friends are, anyone with a record -- someone who might've helped him get out of that assault charge he had ..."

Ray started nodding, but what actually came out of his mouth was, "This in our jurisdiction?"

Vecchio stared at him.

Ray grit his teeth. "Okay, I wanna catch him, yeah, I wanna catch him, and we'll be a lot better than those idiots that let him escape, but this is tracking, this is --"

"Fraser's," Vecchio finished for him. "We need Fraser on this."

"Yeah." Ray pressed his knuckles to his mouth, moved away; the room was too small. "Okay, what seriously shitty karmic thing have we done?"

"I don't know," Vecchio said. "Kowalski --"

Ray whirled and glared at him. "Save it. Just fucking save it. We are going to do this thing because we have to, and then we are back to the plan."

Vecchio looked like he wanted to argue, but all he actually did was go quiet. "Fine," he said. "I'll look through the records."

"Fine," Ray said back. "I'll go get Fraser."

He stormed right back out of the station and then sat in the GTO for a few minutes, insulated in windows and doors. This was just a thing that had to be done. He thought of Jenny Knight, and thought, yeah, they were gonna see this through.

*

"Don't say anything," Ray told Fraser when he opened the Consulate door. Fraser's eyes went the sort of wide and innocent that meant he was about to say something, which, forbidden here, so Ray pointed a finger at him. "Zip. I mean it. We got a case."

"Ray, I --" Fraser said.

"No, shut up. You read about it, right, the Knight case? Johnson escaped the big house and we gotta get him back. Me and Vecchio. But you're coming too, okay, we want you to help with that tracking thing you do."

Fraser's hand curled a little on the doorframe. "We, Ray?" he asked gently.

"Don't, Fraser." Ray stared at Fraser's hand and then at his face, and Fraser, because he was a total bastard, didn't look accusatory or even satisfied. He was just ... waiting. "Do not make me do this."

Fraser stood there a moment longer, absolutely still; then he nodded. "One moment; I need to fetch my hat."

"I'll be in the car," Ray said, and they left the door in opposite directions. He slammed his way into the GTO and pressed his head against the steering wheel. He wondered dumb things like whose car they were going to take, where any of them would sit. How long before he blurted something stupid to Fraser, making Vecchio hate him forever and Fraser be polite and distant forever, how --

"Ray?"

Ray jerked his head up. "Yeah! Hi."

"Shall we go?" Fraser asked, sliding into the passenger seat.

"Yeah," Ray said again. Ignition.

"I'm pleased to be working a case with you again," Fraser said quietly. It wasn't an apology, but it was -- something. And Fraser wasn't the one here who needed to be doing the apologizing.

Ray gripped the steering wheel tight. "Me too, Frase," he said. "Me too."

*

They checked Johnson's old apartment first. The landlord was a guy who set Ray's teeth right on edge, and he was getting ready for a fight, could feel Vecchio getting ready for a fight next to him, when Fraser just stepped smoothly forward and started asking the polite questions. A year had taught Ray to trust Fraser's instincts all the time, not just on the days he had the patience for it, so he backed down -- and Vecchio did too.

It happened again when they followed the one address the landlord had given them that wasn't an obvious lie, this old guy down at the corner market. He was more willing to talk -- didn't seem thrilled at the news Johnson was out -- so Ray left Fraser to it and went to hang on the corner, to put a little distance between him and Fraser and Vecchio, who wasn't doing the Langustini voice or stance or anything, was just hovering over Fraser's shoulder and watching like he was fucking starved for it.

Ray did not slam his way out, because it would make the bell jingle; Ray shut the flimsy Plexiglas door as gently as possible and leaned back on the brickwork, hands jammed in his pockets. Traffic. Sirens. He tilted his head up and squinted at the sky, a sort of cottony gray that didn't look like it would ever allow for the deep, upside-down-bowl, almost scary blue the tundra got sometimes. But the buildings -- the buildings here shoved up against the sky, shoring it the way the peaks of the Mackenzies did, and for a moment -- a moment, nothing to write home about, wherever that was -- Ray felt still, Canada silence still, of course I'll be coming back down to Chicago still, maybe it ain't all about you still. Then Ray breathed and the sirens came back and the world was still just as screwy as it had been before, but he could make himself go back inside.

"Thank you kindly," Fraser was saying behind the jingle of the bell. Ray sidled over. "Ah, Ray. Our next stop, as I understand it, is at a waste management facility --"

Vecchio shot Ray a look that probably said Save the Armani! If people felt about whales the way Vecchio looked now about his clothes, Fraser would never have to worry about the fate of the narwhals again.

"You take the back, then," he told Vecchio. Muttered, "Yeah. Style pig."

"Have fun playing in the trash, Stanley," Vecchio shot back, breezing out the door.

"Thank you for your time," Fraser told the market guy, and went with Ray out the door, frowning. "Ray, are you --?"

"It's good, Frase," Ray said, glancing over at Vecchio, who was up at the car already, looking like he was trying to figure out the best place to hide from any potential garbage. "We're cool."

"Ah," said Fraser; his eyes went back and forth between them, and a faint frown line appeared, like he was starting to puzzle it out. Ray's mind raced silently through all the panicked swearwords he knew; he hustled Fraser into the GTO.

Garbage dump: stank like crazy, squelched a little. Vecchio didn't actually stay in the car; he picked his way carefully around stuff, while Ray tried to pick his way around stuff too without being obvious, and Fraser strode around looking like Dief after a scent. A year of Fraser trying to teach him tracking had completely failed, mostly on the grounds that he sure as hell wasn't gonna lick anything; but Fraser looked just as confident, just as clear-sighted, here in the middle of a Chicago waste fucking management facility as he'd done in the Yukon. Buildings and mountains, old mattresses and new snow. Ray and Vecchio watched Fraser, waited, both of them starting to fidget a little, and finally Fraser came back.

"Mr. White's information was correct," Fraser told them. "Michael Johnson has been dumping anything identifying his whereabouts directly into this area, probably in the hopes of leaving no trace of his location."

"So he's probably still staying in the same place," Ray said.

"Indeed. Now, I was able to procure this label -- a hotel --" He handed the label to Vecchio for inspection.

"I know this place," Vecchio said. "Southside. Want directions, Kowalski?"

"Trick question?" Ray returned. Vecchio smiled a crooked half-smile weirdly like Fraser's and gave directions while they headed back to the car. It'd be a good fifteen minutes on the freeway. Fifteen minutes in a tight space with both of them.

Second they hit the road, Vecchio turned halfway around in his seat and started talking away with Fraser in the back. "Speaking of hotels, Fraser, you gonna try to move back into that dump on West Racine?"

"Ah," said Fraser. "I'm afraid it was burned down."

"Burned down?"

"Yes, Ray. By a performance arsonist."

"Oh yeah, that's the -- Ma said the house got a bit scorched. Same guy?"

"Woman," said Fraser. About then Ray broke in, because telling the story of Ray Kowalski's First Day With The Mountie was way preferable to just listening to Vecchio and Fraser chatting away. So he told it, car chase and rubber ducks and all, let Vecchio chew him out about the Riv yet again, felt himself starting to relax, felt himself tense right back up when Fraser said, "Now, Ray, it can hardly be Ray's fault he had no idea you were so very attached to that particular car."

"Forget it, forget it," Vecchio said, actually laughing a little. "So Racine's out. Where'd you live after that?"

"The Consulate," Fraser said, quite naturally, but Vecchio made some aborted violent motion with his hands and shoulders, and when Ray glanced sideways, Vecchio was glaring at both of them.

"You just stayed in Canada?" Vecchio demanded, and put like that -- put like that, Fraser had spent two years crammed in a box and Ray had assumed it was just one of those freakish things he did, but Vecchio made it sound awful, not like a normal Fraser thing to do. Ray's hands curled tighter on the steering wheel. Number of things he did not actually know about Fraser: rising.

"It was an entirely sensible and fiscally responsible move, Ray," Fraser was saying, polysyllabic and faintly annoyed. So Vecchio was right to be upset.

"Fine, Benny. But this time you're gonna get a real place to live. Right, Kowalski?"

Ray did not say, Do not drag me into this. Ray did not say, Shut the hell up; he's fine at my place. Ray said, "Right."

"Certainly, Ray," Fraser said equitably.

"Good," Vecchio said, and started talking about something else. Ray didn't know what. He probably said words, or maybe didn't, but he thought about Fraser's little room in the Canadian Consulate, thought about boundless snow, and didn't know what to think.

*

When they got to the hotel, Fraser tried to go in first.

Vecchio seized his shoulder and Ray shot him a glare and Fraser glanced between them again, then nodded and backed up so the guys with guns could do their thing. That went smooth -- less argument than Ray might've expected from Fraser, actually -- but already his heart was revved up in anticipation of something; logistics, that was the word, logistics, two backs to watch.

"Ray," Fraser whispered. They both looked at him; he gestured, a tap on the side of his nose and thumb jerked backwards, Someone should cover the back. And Ray was all over that; a quick glance told him Vecchio was all over looking out for Fraser's stupid Mountie ass, so Ray got going. Only back here to watch was his own.

There wasn't a back door into the hotel room, just a dinky window with a moth-eaten once-white curtain. Ray crouched next to it, breathed in, breathed out, didn't switch off the safety. He heard the front door bang open, heard Vecchio -- "Freeze, Chicago PD!" -- heard a bang and another and a scrabbling at the window.

Safety off.

It was Johnson all right, because he and Vecchio could slog through a case for a week and maybe catch the perp, but give Fraser a free afternoon and the scumbag all but dropped right into Ray's lap. Dropped out the window, anyway, without seeing Ray, and Ray stepped forward to press the barrel of his gun to Johnson's head. "Hey," he said, real quiet. "Freeze."

Johnson froze.

Ray didn't have any free hands for handcuffs. "Drop the gun," he said. "Drop it," and now, now was not the time to start shaking, now was not the time to remember how Jenny Knight had looked in the morgue, now was not the time for every single millisecond to last a goddamn year before Vecchio shoved his head and shoulders out the window, gun held out, and yelled, "You heard the man, drop your gun!"

Johnson did the smart thing and dropped it.

Fraser pushed past Vecchio and came down neatly to his feet in front of Johnson. "Cuffs, Ray?" he said. Vecchio passed them over. "Thank you kindly," Fraser said, and smiled at Ray over Johnson's shoulder. Ray nodded a little, waited until the cuffs clicked into place, and read Johnson his rights again, even though he'd already heard them, even though he didn't deserve them, and by the end Ray was able to click the safety back on his gun.

Vecchio came out the window a little less gracefully, clapped Ray on the shoulder and took Johnson's right arm while Fraser took his left. He caught Vecchio's eye for a moment, accidental, and Vecchio looked just as adrenaline-shot, just as totally overwhelmed by how fucking easy this was, just as -- thrilled, panicked, yeah.

Then he turned away with Fraser, dragging Johnson along; they went for the GTO, Ray following. Ray following, trying not to watch the way they moved, not to see Jenny Knight behind his eyes, trying to keep the shakes down, trying to think of glaciers and the L and anything, anything besides how he could get used to this.

{Part Three}

due South: Magnetic (Part I)

2009-03-04T01:15:27Z

Fandom: due South
Rating: R
Word count: 20,909
Pairing: Fraser/Kowalski/Vecchio
Summary: Ray returns to Chicago and finds Vecchio is back too; Fraser's coming down in a month. What could possibly go wrong.

Magnetic

{Part One | Part Two | Part Three}

Chicago was a strange land.

The cars went fast, the sky was too small, and everything was loud -- or not loud, jarring; artificial sounds. Ray spent his whole first day back glancing in bewilderment at his neon wall clock, spitting out his Smarties-filled coffee and just drinking it black, eating pineapple pizza with astonished joy. He wondered how the hell Fraser had done it.

So Ray took a few days to get it together, and maybe convince himself he could take Chicago for the month and a half before Fraser came back down. Then he went to the 27, and discovered that Chicago was even stranger than he'd thought.

"I'm gone a year," Ray said, shutting the door of Welsh's office so the whole damn precinct wouldn't have to hear him freak out. "Just a year, and now --" He gestured with inarticulate violence.

"I'm aware of your frustrations, Detective," Welsh said, all long-suffering, and he probably was aware, considering he'd looked sort of braced for it. "Detective Vecchio has expressed similar." He pinched the bridge of his nose, a brief tired gesture Ray couldn't remember if he'd seen before. "If you'd like a transfer ..."

"A transfer," Ray repeated, and he hadn't felt like this in -- months, maybe a year, this shaking anger, this really strong desire to punch something. "Yeah. I bet Vecchio wants me to take a transfer."

Welsh got one of his blank polite sarcastic looks -- it was creepily like a less subtle version of Fraser's -- and Ray figured he'd somehow pushed Welsh too far, or he and Vecchio had. Sure enough Welsh said, "Funny you should mention that. See, I've been having a dilemma. I find Detective Vecchio is a much more effective officer with a partner. Since I hear Constable Fraser won't be back for at least a month --"

"Oh no, no, c'mon, you cannot do this," Ray said, not really respecting rank but making up for it in desperation, and he sort of meant he didn't want Welsh sadistically forcing him to work with Vecchio, but a lot more he meant that a year ago he'd run away from the world dropping out from under him, and now he was back, square one, and Welsh was gonna make Fraser choose.

"Detective --" Welsh said warningly.

Ray took a deep breath, and made a real effort to sound like a sane rational adult when he said, "Okay, so basically, sir, I gotta work with Vecchio for a month, or I'm out on my ass."

"Or you're transferred with a good record," Welsh corrected, sort of like he was warning Ray it could be out on his ass without recommendations only Welsh liked him too much, and through a year of snow and serious weirdness Ray suddenly remembered that Welsh looked after him. Grumpy uncle L-T for the awkward new kid.

"Yeah," Ray said, and relaxed a little. "Sorry, Lieutenant. Uh. I can do a month if he's good for it."

"He'll do it," Welsh said. "Play nice."

"Yessir," Ray said, and scrammed.

*

Some new guy had Ray Vecchio's old desk. Ray parked himself at Huey's; "Hey, you got Dewey's," he said to Vecchio, by way of saying hi, and Vecchio said, "Gardino's," in this tight voice, so as welcome-back conversations went, it sucked.

Ray decided he liked the arctic ghosts and non-conversations a lot better than the Chicago ones.

He tried again on his second day back at the 27. Came in late, over-caffeinated, and actually spent the afternoon catching up on policy updates, because three years of Benton Fraser could do that to a guy. Vecchio sat five feet away grumbling over paperwork. Just before five Ray sprang for pizza, and cornered Vecchio while everyone was clocking off.

"Pineapple?" Vecchio said incredulously, but at least he sounded like a real human being.

"Pick it off," Ray said unsympathetically, sitting down across the desk from him and taking a slice from the box. Vecchio snorted, but apparently he didn't think it was worth the fight, because he took a piece too.

Ray ate -- oh God, the joy of pizza -- and watched Vecchio. Still a style pig. Yeah. Stella wouldn't have minded the snazzy suits. A bit more balding, but he kept it short so it didn't look stupid. Lines around his eyes Vecchio might've had before, except they looked like Stella lines and Ray was the expert.

"So, uh, bowling alley didn't work out?" he asked, and it was dumb, really stupid, but Vecchio took it in the spirit it was given.

"Florida's a place to vacation," he said. "You don't live there."

"Like Canada," Ray offered. He wasn't sure he meant it.

"Yeah, like Canada," Vecchio agreed. He was eating the pizza without picking the pineapple off. "Hey, how's --" He stopped. "How's Canada?"

"Cold," Ray said. "Pretty." It was suddenly like talking in code, so he asked, maybe in a rawer voice than he'd intended: "How's Stella?"

"Loving Florida," Vecchio said wryly.

Yeah, Ray could imagine. He'd been Vecchio for two years and known Stella for more than twenty, and he knew how it'd gone. Girl meets boy, boy is somehow different from all those other losers. Back then boy was kind of sweet, stubborn, maybe even brave, could never quite stop being awkward; and Ray guessed that now boy's still stubborn and brave as anything but he wears Armani and has a suave smile. Ray'd be willing to bet Stella and Vecchio were still friends, and not in the awful obsessed story-making way, just the way where maybe it'd been their time and wasn't anymore, because Vecchio was Chicago, and Stella was ... something else. Stella. Stella was sheer justice in a dress, and no cop could live with that forever.

"Jeez, this is weird," said Ray.

"You're tellin' me," Vecchio said, and something snapped; they grinned at each other, and Ray thought, maybe it was gonna be okay. Ray'd been Vecchio and Vecchio'd sort of been Kowalski, and Ray had no idea who either of them were supposed to be undercover as now. But Vecchio was eating the pineapple slices and smiling away, and Ray figured they could work together as long as they didn't say too much. Yeah. Okay.

*

First case: some nut smuggling small arms. It was open-and-shut, really; Ray asked a couple of questions, Vecchio pieced them together into a good lead, they went in without a warrant but Jason Mathers had floor-to-ceiling guns and no warrant either, so it was all good, all easy. No one needed to lick anything or jump out of buildings, and there was one high-speed pursuit when Mathers bolted, but Vecchio just tore after him and Ray ran around to the other side of the building to head him off and that was it. Vecchio had a gun and was allowed to carry the damn thing; no one tried to reason unarmed with anyone else. Even after a year of tundra, it was weirdly low-stress.

"That was -- hey, that was good," Ray said, shoving Mathers handcuffed in the backseat, climbing in the passenger side. They'd taken Vecchio's new Riv, partly because Ray wasn't really sure how he felt about driving anything besides a dogsled just yet, partly because the GTO was way overdue for a tune-up, partly because doing this case so easy with Vecchio was giving him warm fuzzies and he had to sort of mock the Riv in his head and tell himself no way was the GTO gonna be sullied by Vecchio's pressed Armani trousers.

"Yeah, it was," Vecchio agreed, revving the engine, and maybe he was feeling the way Ray was, because he sort of smirked and added, "Good work, Stanley."

"Yeah, hey, drop dead," Ray returned, but shit, all the way back to the station both of them were grinning like idiots.

*

Fraser gave him a call right after they closed that case. It was night, but not dark out, not real sky at all, which Ray was still finding weird; but he felt damn fine about that arrest, bouncing-off-the-walls good. He ate some takeout, watched a hockey game without actually paying any attention, and when the phone rang -- his home number, which he'd written down on a napkin maybe an hour before catching his flight -- Fraser was on the other end.

"I hope I'm not calling too late?" Fraser said, sounding politely anxious and a little snowed out with distance.

"Frase, you're only like an hour behind," Ray said. "They do not have different time-zones above the forty-ninth."

"Understood," Fraser said, and Ray could fucking hear his smile, and a month was suddenly a hell of a lot too long. "How are you, Ray?"

"Good. I'm good. Pizza is god, Fraser, I've found religion."

"Pemmican will always be lost on you." Ray could still hear the smile.

"Yeah, whatever, it's gross." Ray took a deep breath and thought of saying, So my ex has got patterns of behavior and Vecchio's back with the CPD. Yeah, in a minute. He said, "Hey, you reapplied for the posting, right?"

"Indeed. I'm told it will take a short time to process, and heard a few observations as to the nature of my career vis-à-vis staying in Chicago, but on the whole I believe the transfer will go smoothly." By which of course Fraser meant people'd been telling him he was a dumbass to stick with the Americans, because after all those years basically exiling him Fraser had done one good case and now the RCMP was taking interest in him the same way every girl in Chicago did. Yeah, Ray could read between those lines.

"Good," he said. "Stick it to 'em."

"And you?" Fraser asked, probably because asking stupid questions about weird American aphorisms had worn thin a while ago. "Did Lieutenant Welsh allow you to resume work?"

Leftenant. Ray grinned, and didn't say, Hey, it's good to hear your voice, because it'd been about a week and he had rules in his head about the sort of things he was allowed to actually say to Fraser. He didn't say anything else either, just: "Yeah, the lieu's being good to me. Different desk, same old cases."

"I'm very pleased to hear that, Ray," Fraser said, and that was pretty much it, but Ray didn't really want to stop talking, so he asked after Diefenbaker, talked about how he wasn't used to the light pollution in the city, updated Fraser on Frannie and the One Liner and the state of the GTO. Finally he ran out of things to talk about, and they said their goodbyes.

"Hey, Vecchio's back," Ray said into the hum of the dial tone, and then just listened to it for a while. Finally he hung up and switched off the game and went to bed.

*

Second case: missing person, girl going to the University of Chicago who'd last been definitely seen four days ago. They took the Riv again and Ray spent a kind of hellish afternoon speaking to stressed-out undergrads, which in his book was up there with getting reliable witness statements from crackheads. By the end of it Vecchio looked about as beat and pissed-off as Ray felt, and when Ray said, "Fuck, I hate students," Vecchio pulled a U-turn with a screech and announced, "You're having dinner with my family."

"I've been yelled at all day," Ray said. "What are you, sadistic?"

"I want to share the pain," Vecchio answered, so Ray shrugged and hunched down a bit in his seat. He thought about bitching Vecchio out, and didn't, because part of the undercover gig had been getting to know the whole Vecchio family, and though maybe he'd been raised to speak one at a time and sometimes please pass the salt, he liked the loud company fine and he liked the food even better.

When they arrived, Ray could see pretty much instantly why Vecchio had dragged him along. It was one of the family dinners, everyone there, Ma Vecchio on a crazy dinner splurge, Tony and Maria yelling at each other and their three kids shrieking away, Frannie trying to coax her little girl to eat without throwing food everywhere, and Vecchio was obviously trying to use Ray as some sort of shield.

Ray shrugged Vecchio off, crammed himself right between Francesca and Ma Vecchio, crammed himself full of good Italian food. One of Maria's kids leaned around Ma Vecchio, going "Hey, hey, Other Ray, Other Ray!" which made Ray laugh and go shuffling through nutty Italian names until he came up with the right one and said, "Yeah, Gia?"

"Other Ray, I got a new Nintendo," Gia told him importantly, and Ray Kowalski, a man to whom even office computers were a closed electronic whatever, dutifully said, "A what?" So Gia was off, leaning around Ma Vecchio and chattering on about sixty-fours and the fifth generation and cartridges that had nothing to do with guns, or at least with non-pixilated guns, and the entire time Ma Vecchio was having a yelling match with Tony so it was amazing Ray even heard any of it. Then Maria noticed Gia giving Ray the whole videogame monologue, and more or less shouted her down.

Ray got himself more lasagna and caught Vecchio giving him this look that might've meant Jesus, you deserve a medal for listening to Gia or might've just meant Pass the lasagna, so Ray went with it, gave Vecchio a quick grin with attitude and passed on the food.

"So, Ray," Frannie said at Ray's elbow, more or less at a lull in Ray's personal conversation, "how's, uh," but Ray was having a nice evening, a really fucking good time, so he said, "It was great, Frannie, so are you gonna go back to the two-seven when the kid's grown up a bit?"

"Maybe," Frannie said, tilting her head a little and looking really pleased that Ray was taking an interest. Score one for Ray.

Funny thing was, it turned out Ray had sort of missed the way Frannie misused words and made crazy gestures with her hands all the time, so when dinner was over, Ray followed her into the kitchen and made a lame attempt at drying dishes while she talked at him and all the kids ran around shrieking. Ray kept on grinning, this face-cracking grin, and near the end of the dishes -- "Ray, are you even trying, they're all damp, God, you're as bad as my brother, you doof" -- he figured out why. It was the right kind of loud here. Loud like good things, not sirens and screams; loud like the sled dogs messing around in their traces, laughter loud.

Vecchio gave him a lift in the Riv afterward, and kept sort of glancing sideways at him until Ray twitched and said, "What?"

"They really did adopt you," Vecchio said.

"I was you," Ray said, but the sideways looks were making him jittery now so he tapped his fingers on his thigh and sort of shrugged. "Anyway, hey, my family's --"

"Out of a trailer park in Arizona," Vecchio finished for him. "And Stella got all the friends in the divorce."

"What, you went undercover as Kowalski?" Ray snapped.

"If I wanted, I could probably blame you for me and Stella not working out," Vecchio returned, all casual.

"Yeah?" They stopped at an intersection. The red flickered and jittered and reflected back at Ray. He blinked a few times. "What, she just told you stuff about me? Did you ask?"

"I can't remember," Vecchio admitted. Ray barked a laugh, and Vecchio's face slid into a rueful grin right as the light turned; green light, green eyes, and Ray had to face forward again and stare up at the light pollution sky until Vecchio pulled up in front of his apartment.

"We'll ask around some more tomorrow," Ray said, and slammed the Riv's green door behind him.

*

The missing girl turned up at the end of the week; dead, of course, so the search-and-rescue became a homicide investigation in an easy blink. She was in an alley, rope burns on her wrists and ankles and mouth, wispy hair and small, this nineteen-year-old still in her U of C sweatshirt. Jenny Knight, that was her name. Ray had all this useless vivid information about her just stuck in his head, and he went down to Mort to hear the autopsy but almost right away he started getting the dead-body shakes, stupid and obvious this time because the victim was bugging him worse than usual.

It was bad enough that Vecchio noticed and grabbed his elbow, pulling Ray out into the hall where it still smelled of formaldehyde or whatever. "You okay?" Vecchio asked.

"Yeah, I just --" Ray jammed his hands in his pockets and hunched up against the wall, far from the autopsy room as possible. "I don't like -- I'm a cop, I know, it's stupid --"

"Yeah, and sometimes you don't have to deal," Vecchio said. Ray searched his face and thought: okay, I get it now, of course Fraser was glad to see him. Vecchio was the sort of guy who saved all his annoyance and bitching and teasing for the stuff that wasn't important, and knew how to know when stuff was. Ray felt like maybe he was high-stakes to Vecchio all the time, but right now this was about him being a functional cop, end of story. "Get a coffee or something," Vecchio said. "I'll brief you."

"Okay," Ray said, and got out of there. Instead of heading for the lunch room, though, he went to the stairs and just climbed all the way to the top. Stood on the roof and pulled in deep lungfuls of disgusting Chicago air until he felt like maybe he'd be able to listen to Mort talking about rape and strangulation without having to haul off and hit something. Then he went back inside and found Vecchio, who looked like Ray felt again, all torn up with anger.

It was clocking-out time by then, more or less, and a big part of Ray wanted to go catch the psychopathic sonofabitch right the hell now, but what actually came out of his mouth after Vecchio'd finished the briefing was, "Wanna get dinner?"

This funny look flashed across Vecchio's face, the easiest thing Ray had ever read in his life; Vecchio might as well have said aloud, But I get dinner with Fraser. No Mountie, though, just a weird substitute-Vecchio with experimental hair, and somewhat to Ray's surprise, Vecchio said, "Sure."

So they went to the nearest dive for burgers and fries, and because shop talk would just about kill Ray right now, he asked Vecchio what number Riv the guy was on now. When Vecchio gave him a death glare he switched tacks and started talking about the GTO instead, and watched another change in Vecchio's face: tired lines smoothing out, eyes lighting.

"So you fixed her up yourself?" Vecchio asked, and Ray felt this pleased glow, unfamiliar especially given the kind of day he'd had.

"Mostly," he said. "My dad helped, but yeah, I keep her in good shape. Mostly. I mean, I left her alone for a year, she still needs some tuning up."

"Okay," Vecchio said, finishing his fries. "Up, Kowalski. We have a mission."

He drove Ray down to the garage where the GTO was being kept. Ray'd been to see it once or twice now, so it was fine, started up like a dream, purring the way Vecchio's Riv never would. Vecchio looked kind of impressed despite himself. Ray smirked and leaned against the GTO's side until Vecchio got over it and looked all mob boss to cover up. That, though, that wasn't what Ray was going for -- he was here, Vecchio was here, there was gonna be no trace of the Bookman just because the day had been hard.

"If you want, I can give her a look," Ray said, flicking his head at the Riv.

Vecchio's eyes stayed dangerous and narrow for a second; then he nodded and uncrossed his arms. "Let's go for it."

So they went for it, going over the Riv together; Ray found belts worn out, little things that needed tuning, so he and Vecchio were there for a while messing with Vecchio's old hunk of metal.

"I hear you burned the last one and drove into Lake Michigan," Vecchio said.

"Shut up and hand me that wrench," said Ray.

Later, when they were finishing up, Vecchio sort of stared in dismay at the grease stains messing up his designer clothes. "Oh, sure," he said, plucking at a dark-spattered sleeve, "I'm a mess here and I bet you still look pressed and --" Then his head shot up and he gave Ray this wide-eyed look, like Ray was a ghost.

"I don't have superpowers," Ray said, really casual, and Vecchio's mouth gave this little twitch of a smile.

"I guess it ain't contagious," he said.

"Yeah." Ray scrubbed at his ear and took the GTO's keys from his pocket, jangling them. "I'll, uh, I'll drive myself home."

"Night, Kowalski," Vecchio said, and retreated to the safety of the Riv.

Ray tried to enjoy the ride home, tried to enjoy having the GTO back, but he kept slamming the heel of his hand against the top of the steering wheel and muttering "Fuck," because apparently if they were gonna have the same Stella problem, they were gonna have all the same goddamn problems.

*

It didn't get weird, though, or any weirder than it already was, since Ray tensed up around Vecchio even when they weren't talking about the wrong thing. But there was no more accidental speaking in code for a week and change, because Vecchio was with Ray on the whole catching the bastard who'd murdered Jenny Knight deal. They followed up leads all day, Vecchio holding out mostly but sometimes coming over all mob boss again if someone didn't cooperate, going sharp edges and shark smile and Armando Langustini. Ray let him, because it worked, and Ray held out too, drank a ton of coffee (still black; Canada had done something to his sweet tooth), sort of stumbled home at night and went right to sleep, dreamed of the crackling aurora and Diefenbaker trying to tell him something important. Then the next day he did it all over again.

At the end of the week they finally tracked down a likely suspect, this guy Michael Johnson who'd been seen by a few of Jenny's friends, liked to hang around Jenny's end of campus, had a few priors although the assault charge hadn't stuck. They held him in Interview 3 and let him sweat for a bit, Ray and Vecchio both watching him from the other side of the glass.

"He did it," Ray said.

"We got nothing solid," Vecchio returned, but when Ray looked at him his mouth was set in a grim line and he was just as convinced as Ray.

"I'll get something," Ray said, and stalked into the interview room. "Hey," he said. "Afternoon, Mr. Johnson."

Johnson peered up at him, the sly between-the-handcuffs perp look that meant Hey, cop, we both know I'm a scumbag; now just you try and prove it. Ray grinned an angry grin right back, the grin that said Yeah, we could be in here a long fucking time.

"Do I get my lawyer?" Johnson asked.

"Yeah, sure," said Ray, and slammed his hands down on the table. "I hope you got a good one, Mike. Cuz, y'know, sick freaks like you? They're not too careful where they put their hands. She's got prints all over her."

"If that's true, why are you bothering to talk to me?" Johnson asked.

"Me personally, I like good clean confessions," Ray said. Problem was Mort had only been able to get partial prints off Jenny Knight, and if they could get a partial match it would be fucking great because a court wasn't about to listen to I just got a feeling he did it. "I mean, do you not just sometimes have this desire to confess? What you did to her, I bet that's a good story. I bet it's eating you up inside trying to get out, because you imagined getting the girl and then you really went through with it, you got her, and you wanna tell someone, don't you, Mike. Don't you?"

Yeah, he had this one pegged all right. Michael Johnson had gone straight from sly perp to that pupils-blown fascinated look the crazy ones got when Ray said the right words to them. Sort of hypnotized by the truth.

"I --" Johnson said, and swallowed. "I want my lawyer."

Ray's hands twitched; he was really goddamn close to something here. "Yeah, but lawyers, Mike? They don't wanna hear what happened, not when they have to lie for you. And what you did, this story you have, it's gotta be told. It'll just gnaw -- away -- until you have to tell --" and Ray realized he was slamming the heels of his hands against the table again, and again, punctuating his words.

The door opened and Ray shot up straight, Mountie-at-attention straight, vibrating like crazy. Vecchio was there, clean lines in a pressed suit, and for this wild second Ray thought he was gonna say some calm disapproving Fraser thing. But Vecchio just said, using that voice he'd been breaking out lately, the one Ray was starting to think of as the Langustini Voice: "Kowalski, the lieutenant wants to see you about those prints."

Ray thought suddenly: this is not bad cop, polite cop. This is not a one-two punch. This was crazy spaz cop and Italian mafia cop, this was a fucking beating, and he felt a little cold through the adrenaline buzz. But Ray nodded and slipped out past Vecchio, the jolt of contact he felt when his hand brushed Vecchio's sleeve just part of the buzz, and heard as the door closed behind him, Vecchio as the Bookman, saying, "We know it's you, Mikey, we got the prints."

So Ray went to Welsh, and miracle of fucking miracles Vecchio had meant it, Mort had got an actual match from the partial prints. "Good," Ray said when he heard this, "great," and Welsh gave him a narrow look.

"You and Vecchio doing all right?" he asked.

"Yeah," Ray said, and was surprised to find he meant it. "Yeah, we're good."

Welsh let him go and Ray went out to find Vecchio waiting for him in the hall, looking just a little rough at the edges. "Hey," Vecchio said. "We got him."

"We got him," Ray echoed, and suddenly there was nothing in the world less appealing than the idea of going back to his apartment for a drink and some TV and weird dreams about Canada. He took a deep breath and tried not to jitter too much. "Do you want to go do something?"

"Sure," Vecchio said. "Like what?"

"I don't know," Ray admitted.

Vecchio snorted and went to grab his coat from his desk chair. "Seriously?"

"Look, these things I know," Ray said. "I know all of Stella's favorite restaurants, and I know how to go home for hockey or baseball, and I know fifty-seven ways to get to the Canadian Consulate. And that's it."

"Let's do that," Vecchio said, and for a moment Ray actually thought Vecchio meant they should go to the Consulate, except then Vecchio clarified with something even weirder: "Let's go to one of her restaurants."

"That is not healthy," Ray observed, but neither was crashing alone after the Knight case, so Ray was somehow sitting in the Riv giving Vecchio directions to this place he liked uptown, which he figured would be a good bet, because Vecchio was probably a snob about wine selection and the place had a dance floor.

Vecchio drove them through the dusk and flashing lights while Ray stared out the window and tried to feel out his heart rate, tried to find normal even though he'd probably lost it the day he'd taken Vecchio's name. There was something familiar about this, and not in a going-to-a-restaurant-Stella-liked way, although that was maybe part of it; no, it was the quiet. It wasn't arctic quiet, but it was sitting-in-the-GTO-with-Fraser quiet, maybe even sitting-on-a-bed-with-Stella-when-they-were-sixteen quiet. Here he was in a car with Ray Vecchio, and somehow in the last week or the last thirty seconds, Vecchio had become Ray's third friend pretty much ever. Yeah, Ray knew how this one went.

Over dinner he didn't quite know what to talk about, but Vecchio gave him an annoyed litany of unsolved cases so could Ray maybe pick up some of the slack, and when it was time to order Vecchio got the most expensive house wine. Ray got to mock him about that.

"Shut up," Vecchio said. "I bet your fridge at home is full of cheap beer."

"Shut up," Ray said back, because it was.

They ended up talking about baseball (Vecchio liked the Cubbies; Vecchio was a freak), the old neighborhood Ray used to work (yeah, was Vecchio stupid, of course Ray'd known Italians, they were everywhere), dumb Chicago things they'd done as kids (yeah, did Ray look like he was Irish? and yeah, did it look like he couldn't have fun?), and both of them were startled into laughter more than once.

Vecchio ordered some ridiculous dessert; Ray stole a spoonful of whipped cream off the top and then left Vecchio to it, went to the edge of the dance floor and sort of waited around until some bored teenage girl with an elderly relative took pity on him and came out to dance with him. For a moment she looked like Jenny Knight, but then it was gone, and Ray was Fred Astaire, yeah, dancing out here he could make anybody look good. The girl was a decent dancer, laughed when he twirled her around, thanked him, and ran off. Probably wouldn't even remember Ray by the end of the week.

"You dance well," Vecchio said when Ray came back to the table. Vecchio had paid the bill when Ray wasn't looking.

"You bastard," Ray said, and Vecchio was giving him this funny half-amused look so Ray sighed and said, "Thanks."

Vecchio gave Ray a lift to his apartment, stopped by the brick side of the building, up against a NO PARKING sign. "Got a preference for the next unsolved case we start?" he asked.

"Yeah," Ray said, rubbing his neck. "Robbery. Heist. Drug stuff. No murders."

"You got it," Vecchio said, but he said it in a strange voice, soft and -- something that started with f. Fond, maybe. Or. Ray turned to stare at him, sort of smoothed out and half shadowed by the nearest streetlight, and god if he hadn't seen that look before, maybe just a half-dozen times ever, the look that said Ray Kowalski, you're a freak but that is never, ever going to matter to me.

"Good," Ray said. "Great," and then he went ahead and ignored all the warnings his brain had been giving him for a goddamn week, or maybe Vecchio was just a nutcase who had no concept of the ground rules, but either way they were kissing.

And Vecchio -- Vecchio was good at it. It was easy, just lean in mouths together and then somehow there was tongue involved, Vecchio tasting like good wine and tiramisu, Vecchio's hand sliding around to cup the back of Ray's neck real warm. Ray twisted to get closer, banged his arm on the gear shift and made a hot helpless noise that made Vecchio's hand tighten a little. It wasn't good then, it was great; Ray pressed in further and made that noise again, the world starting to pleasantly dissolve like it hadn't in years, when all of a sudden Ray remembered the word he was looking for. It was like ice sluicing down his spine.

He tore his mouth away, panting for breath and fighting to stay still.

Vecchio was staring at him, wide-eyed, like maybe this was Ray's fault.

"What," Ray said, and from a welter of stupid things he pulled the stupidest: "What was that?"

"I got no idea," Vecchio returned, with every appearance of honesty.

They just sat there in the dim light for a long moment. Vecchio fiddled with the cross around his neck, and his thumb rubbed little tingling circles just under Ray's ear, and the worst part was that he seemed completely unaware he was doing either.

"Uh," said Ray, a little desperate now.

"Is this about Stella?" Vecchio asked.

"Is it --" Ray echoed, and started laughing helplessly, shocked by the absurdity, by all of it. "No. No. Don't be dumb, Vecchio, do not be stupid, this is not about Stella." And he couldn't help but make it sound how he meant it, couldn't help shaking, probably laughing still, something.

"Hey," Vecchio said softly. "Hey, Stanley, cool it."

"Don't." Ray's voice had gone thick and funny.

One of Vecchio's hands was still cupping the back of his neck, but he brought the other up and ran his thumb just under Ray's right eye. It came away wet and Ray stared at it in surprise. "Jeez," he said.

"What's it about?" Vecchio asked, like he didn't know. Maybe he didn't.

Ray sort of twitched away and Vecchio pulled back too, more awkwardly than Ray'd seen him do almost anything. Ray swiped the back of his hand across his eyes and muttered, "This about Stella to you?"

"Nah," Vecchio said, still really quiet like he was afraid Ray would run any second. "Maybe Stella was about other people, but this ain't about her."

"Hah," Ray said, and looked up at him. "Hey, what if it was actually about me?"

"Maybe it is," Vecchio replied steadily.

"It isn't if you gotta ask me for motive." Ray sort of shuffled until he was up against the window, back of his head on the cool glass. It didn't help much.

"Yeah, but you have motive," Vecchio said, sort of halfway between the teasing of infinite patience and like he really meant it. "Innocent people don't break down that easy under interrogation."

"Yeah," Ray whispered, and stared out the window. Brick wall. Woo.

It stayed quiet for a long, long time, and then Vecchio said, in a bare murmur, "He got you bad, didn't he."

Ray's hand was on the door handle and he was out of the car almost faster than thinking it; slammed the door shut and leaned over the roof, shaking a little. After a moment the driver's side door opened too, and Vecchio got out, watched him over the Riv.

"This was stupid," Ray said. "This was really damn stupid."

"Maybe it ain't all about you," Vecchio said tightly, and Ray's head snapped up.

Yeah, it took two people to spine-meltingly and inadvisably kiss in the front seat of a vintage car. Vecchio was sort of hanging onto his cross again, looking unhappy, and just like that the streetlight was clear as a star-spanned arctic night and Ray could see: Vecchio had Stella lines, a wry crease on the left side of his mouth and a little dent between his eyebrows, but he had Fraser lines too, laughter-crinkles at the corners of his eyes and a tightness of the jaw that meant Jesus, did you have to jump onto that moving car? For a second Ray couldn't breathe.

"So he got you bad too," he said hoarsely. It wasn't quite a question.

"Yeah," Vecchio said. "Yeah."

"But you weren't kissing him," Ray added. It seemed suddenly really important.

"No, that was you." Vecchio sighed and hung his head, staring at his reflection on the roof of the Riv or something. He took a deep breath. "I've never done that before."

"Oh," said Ray. "Wow. Uh." He was feeling a lot of things already, like tired and scared and inexplicably homesick, and on top of all that he got this feeling of being fourteen years old again, so what came out next was, "I didn't suck, right?"

Somehow that was the right thing to say, because Vecchio actually chuckled a little, looked back up at Ray and said, real gentle, "No, Stanley, you didn't suck," and -- wow, wow, there was the you're a freak but it doesn't matter look again, twice in the same damn five minutes and that with Ray being a complete spaz. Okay, maybe Vecchio had it bad for Fraser. Hell, it ran in the family. Maybe this was something else.

"You didn't, uh, you didn't suck either," Ray offered, although actually Vecchio had, on Ray's tongue for just a bare second, and Ray started flushing warm and shoved himself back from the Riv. "Look," he said, "I gotta -- I'll see you tomorrow."

"Yeah," Vecchio said, "okay," but he just stood there by his car and didn't drive away until Ray was back in his apartment and locked in tight.

*

He called Fraser.

He thought about maybe getting drunk first, which would've been dumb, or sleeping on it, which would've been smart, but instead he took a shower, jerked off to nothing in particular, got the shakes out, and was still too goddamn wired from Jenny Knight and Michael Johnson and Stella's favorite restaurant and Ray fucking Vecchio to just sleep, so he called Fraser.

He was shuffled through about three different RCMP offices, at least one of which had a freakish Turnbull clone operating the telephone, and was put on hold for five minutes at the last one. He scrawled something that was maybe a pattern for a waltz in red pen over last week's crossword, listening to the crackle of the line, and then Fraser's voice was on the other end, saying "Hello, Ray?" and everything was fine. It all just went right out of Ray's head the second he heard Fraser, which was completely crazy; he sank back against the couch and breathed out and was okay.

"Hi, Frase," he said. "Sorry I'm calling so late."

"Not to worry, Ray; in fact I was just about to call you myself."

Ray broke into a dumb smile. "Hey, well, convenient. How's it going?"

"Very well," Fraser said. "The office here has been in contact with Inspector Thatcher's replacement at the Consulate, and it seems they're woefully understaffed and my new superior officer would appreciate my return as soon as possible."

"Mm. When?"

"In three days, I'm told. Naturally, Diefenbaker won't make it down before the weekend, which should give me ample time to ..." To something, Ray guessed, except the good feeling was gone, because three weeks was suddenly three days and maybe Ray had wanted to pretend just a little longer --

"Fraser," he said, "Vecchio's back."

He'd cut Fraser off mid-sentence and for a moment there was just startled silence. Then Fraser said, in this weirdly careful way, "Ray's back in Chicago?"

"Yeah. Back with the CPD."

"I take it, ah," Fraser said, and floundered for a moment. Ray figured he was shuffling through possibilities. That Ray and Vecchio were partners. That they were gonna kill each other. That he, Fraser, was going to have to apologize because if Vecchio was back for real, the working-with-Kowalski thing was moot, done, over. But Fraser said, "Florida didn't work out?"

"Yeah, apparently the Stella has bad luck with Rays." Ray took a breath and wanted to answer the unspoken questions or draw out the unspoken statements. The best he could come up with was "Hey, this is good, right? Me and Vecchio being around."

"Ray," Fraser said, with real Fraser sincerity, not just the polite kind, "there is nothing in the world I would like more."

*

"Fraser's coming back on Tuesday," Ray announced the next morning, which as morning after short inadvisable makeout sessions in a car hellos went, was really terrible but pretty apt. Then he had all the fun of watching the blood drain from Vecchio's face.

"This Tuesday?" Vecchio asked.

"Yeah," Ray confirmed, leaning his hip on the edge of Vecchio's desk. "I called him last night to say hi." And hey, speaking of which ... "Why haven't you called him?"

"Well, I just, I," Vecchio said, and wouldn't meet Ray's eyes.

Distance hurts, Ray thought. Cold out here, heat me up, just the one postcard, wording which had struck Ray as a little weird even at the time, and then nothing, and then being shot, bam, wedding with Stella ex-Kowalski, Florida and being the Bookman, leaving the Bookman, god knew what else, and Ray didn't have any idea if Vecchio had even ever said goodbye. He reached out, not thinking, and let his fingers curl on empty air over Vecchio's hand. "Okay," Ray said, because he couldn't think of anything else.

They spent the rest of the day doing paperwork, a careful five feet apart.

{Part Two}

Slings & Arrows: If We Shadows

2009-01-03T00:56:15Z

Fandom: Slings & Arrows
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 1775
Pairing: Oliver/Geoffrey/Ellen, although not all at once
Summary: Geoffrey presses his face to Ellen's hair and is wildly happy, happier than he's ever been in his life, and Oliver's gone.

If We Shadows

Oliver doesn't come to the wedding. Geoffrey imagines him sitting in the corner, first with a glass of champagne, then with too many glasses of his favorite whiskey from the bar. Geoffrey tries to imagine Oliver looking happy for him.

Even Geoffrey's mind has limits.

He turns to kiss Ellen again, just for the hell of it. She laughs. Cyril strikes a chord on the piano. Everyone cheers. Geoffrey presses his face to Ellen's hair and is wildly happy, happier than he's ever been in his life, and Oliver's gone.

~

He asks her, trembling with a sort of ecstasy, in a cold and glittering backstage alley.

She says yes nine years later while dipping a red-dress curtsey for a homegrown audience, Geoffrey standing exhausted beside her, and he doesn't even notice until the following morning. Maybe it's better this way.

~

"Geoffrey?" Ellen ventures. She's wearing that look she gets when she's thought long and hard about something, and isn't entirely happy with her conclusions.

"Mm?" Geoffrey tries to sound supportive in the middle of a mouthful of pasta. Ellen's creative spicing is particularly delightful tonight.

"We haven't done much," says Ellen. Geoffrey contrives to look bewildered and still supportive. "I mean," says Ellen, "we've never been anything besides actors. We've never done anything but the theatre. And I'm all right with that, really, I am, but sometimes I look at everyone else and I think, my God, I never even grew up." She twirls the pasta around her fork. "And now I'm probably too old. For children, I mean."

"Oh," says Geoffrey. He's not sure whether he should be petrified.

"But I'm also too selfish," Ellen concludes with an air of despairing finality, and Geoffrey can breathe again.

"So am I," he says, and when Ellen turns to look at him her eyes are huge and pleading for an absolution she's never needed. Geoffrey smiles. "I wouldn't know how to share."

~

Ellen tells him. She slips into his dressing room, her hair in ringlets and her face white and beautiful above her white dress. Geoffrey's doublet is all unbraced. He gives her a smile and can see it out of the corner of his eye in the mirror: he's never looked so alive. "Third time's the charm, Ellen," he tells her, happy enough for cliché, and laughs, grabs his tangling hair to contain his thoughts. "Every time has been the charm!"

"Geoffrey," Ellen says, and he comes down enough to see she's run out of whatever joyful madness is driving him still. She takes a deep breath, and says four words. Four words. Geoffrey is an instrument of words; he knows words can move a whole mass of bodies to laughter, to a collective gasp, to unashamed tears. But it's an aesthetic, words to create something beautiful, and suddenly, Ellen says, Ellen says ...

"What," says Geoffrey.

"I slept with Oliver," Ellen repeats.

"Places in five!" comes the tinny voice over the speaker.

Geoffrey sputters. The world is slowly folding away.

"I had sex with him," Ellen adds, in this awful anxious helpful sort of voice, as though Geoffrey hasn't caught her meaning. "I mean, I'm not sure why, I just --"

"Places, Ellen," Geoffrey hears someone say, in a distant, directorial voice. Ellen's eyes go wide. She knows what she's done is terrible; that makes it worse. She rises, gathering Ophelia with her. A sprig of rosemary stays behind on the dresser, shivering a little in the breeze of her passage.

Geoffrey makes a small and quiet character choice, frozen there in the little white room and all its reflections. Ophelia has made her wantonness her ignorance; tonight Hamlet will not be merely acting a play. Oliver is always saying he wants more from Geoffrey, Geoffrey is capable of more, more. What Oliver wants, Oliver gets.

"Time is out of joint," he whispers to Hamlet in the mirror.

Exeunt.

~

He meets Oliver in 1993 in a theatre bar in Ontario at the closing of a fairly shitty production of A Streetcar Named Desire. Oliver is wearing one of his habitual faintly rumpled suits. Geoffrey notices him instantly. Oliver is the first person to ever look at Geoffrey with the attitude of an entire rapt audience in one man. He won't be the last, but he's the first.

Even at the time Geoffrey recognizes the difference between artistic adoration and a simple come-on, so he lets Oliver buy him a drink and merely smiles when Oliver tells him the Stanley Kowalski was awful, dear boy, just a tragedy when he had to compete with you. He lets Oliver buy him a second drink because when Oliver asks him what else he's done and what he'd like to do, Geoffrey says "Shakespeare" and Oliver does not laugh at the pretention, looks delighted.

On the third drink Oliver finally introduces himself. "I doubt you were wondering, occupied as you are with this particular theatre, but if you're ever out of town I thought you might look me up. Oliver Welles."

Geoffrey's insides all go sliding right into some other dimension. "New Burbage," he says, in a very reasonable sort of voice. "Festival director Oliver Welles?"

"Oh good, you've heard of me," Oliver says, looking pleased in exactly the way the proverbial cat with cream would. "As I said, Geoffrey, if you're ever in New Burbage ..."

"Thank you," Geoffrey says, when all he wants to say is Take me with you, I'll go tonight. He lets Oliver pay his tab, and shakes Oliver's hand, and that night in the pathetic rundown apartment he shares with five other crazy people, Geoffrey laughs himself to sleep under the noise.

The Festival hires him that weekend.

~

Ellen is already there, already friends with Oliver. Oliver isn't so foolish as to cast them in alignment, but Geoffrey's trial by fire is A Winter's Tale, and he fights and laughs his way through Autolycus for Oliver's eyes until one day he sees Paulina. Their Hermione and Perdita are both very good, but Ellen's Paulina is better, full of a fierce passion that robs Geoffrey of breath every time he remembers it.

He watches Ellen the way Oliver watches him.

~

There are no swans in Hamlet.

~

Sometimes when Geoffrey laughs it creates a storm of feathers, even behind his eyes. He presses his knuckles to his forehead and breathes and breathes until the down snow melts. Days have no meaning and he speaks in blank verse. Sometimes he only remembers his lines, but no one will give him his fucking cue.

The psychiatrist -- psychotherapist? psy-something -- is an unassuming middle-aged man with infinite patience and a working knowledge of Shakespeare. He doesn't give Geoffrey cues, but he understands the verse. Geoffrey never finds out if the man had been a fan of his.

~

Andrew at the community church, with his children's' toys and his fold-out chair, suggests that Oliver might be Geoffrey's audience.

The really pathetic thing is that he's absolutely right.

~

Ellen never visits him, not once.

Oliver visits him all the time.

Geoffrey knows it isn't real because they won't allow him visitors. Oliver always wears the same clothes. The fifth time, Geoffrey says, "You're just making my sentence longer!" and Oliver looks hurt, as though it's all Geoffrey's fault.

The first time, Geoffrey screams and hits Oliver, hits him and hits him and shouts, "I hate you," and afterwards thinks in muddled horror that this is his mind trying to heal itself. The second time he does a line-through with Oliver, and Oliver gives him notes. "You sound as though you've already answered the question, Geoffrey," he says, after to be or not to be, and Geoffrey weeps uncontrollably. The third time, they just sit there. Oliver holds Geoffrey's clammy hand tight, just as he did in the few sick terrified moments before the opening of Romeo and Juliet. Geoffrey brushes his thumb over Oliver's knuckles and Oliver looks at him with the same pleading attention he always does, did, Ellen always did.

The fourth time, he kisses Geoffrey's forehead like an absolution and murmurs, "The fact of the matter is, it was just easier to get her to say yes." Geoffrey knows this.

In the aftermath, back in the wide bright world, everything inside reduces to a terrible blur. Geoffrey tries to keep it that way.

~

Exiled from Ellen's and hiding in a damn storage room with whimsical masks watching his every move, Geoffrey eats a plate of scrambled eggs made by a ghost and says, "Maybe I never did get better. Maybe I'm just so good I even fooled myself."

"I think that's the best any of us can hope for," Oliver observes dryly.

"A ghost capable of object manipulation made my dinner," Geoffrey says, flat. "What do I know. Maybe everyone's crazy."

Oliver eats his eggs and says nothing. Geoffrey sees himself shivering in a little room, and sees Ellen's pathetic attempt to drown herself in water six inches deep, and wonders what private hell Oliver endured for seven years before falling.

Wonders if talking to Geoffrey now with worlds between them is better or worse.

~

"I love you," Geoffrey says to an empty chair.

~

The Theatre Sans Argent makes its debut with Antony and Cleopatra, Ellen, of course, the Queen. Opening night has a full house, and Geoffrey has to take a couple of deep breaths, because this is Montreal, for fuck's sake, when did they get so famous? He slips into Ellen's dressing room and they laugh about it like giddy teenagers, five minutes to places. Ellen's eyes are dark and slanted and stunning. Geoffrey wants to kiss her and ruin the makeup.

"Maybe," Ellen says, and draws in a shaky breath. "Maybe -- Geoffrey, maybe we didn't do so bad." Behind her, photographs are tacked to her mirror: old casts, new casts, Frank, Cyril, Barbara, Kate. Snug among them is the old photo of Ellen and Geoffrey and Oliver and Yorick. Geoffrey thinks, in an electric slide of revelation: we still live in the same world.

"No, we didn't," he agrees softly, and kisses Ellen's forehead, careful not to smudge. "Go break a leg."

Left alone in the dressing room for a final moment, Geoffrey sees something move in the mirror. He thinks of shouting, or ignoring it, or wrapping himself in a protective shroud of sarcasm, or assuming he's mad. He says, still quiet, "So you're going to come to all my shows?"

"If I'm wanted."

Geoffrey meets Oliver's eyes in the mirror. "You are," he says. "Yes."

FIN

Young Wizards: Terminus

2009-01-02T14:47:58Z

Fandom: Young Wizards
Rating: PG
Word count: 8,540
Pairing(s): Tom/Carl, Kit/Nita
Summary: The snake, eating its own tail; the wayside boundary stone: by what measureless markers should Life be understood?
Notes: Written for wintercreek, Yuletide 2008.

Terminus

"And it must have been a very great amount, to require a lifeprice to be paid. There's no higher payment that can be made." Carl fell silent for a moment, then said, "Well, one." And his face shut as if a door had closed behind his eyes.
Deep Wizardry

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
William Shakespeare

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Dylan Thomas

The snake, eating its own tail; the wayside boundary stone: by what measureless markers should Life be understood?
The Book of Night with Moon

---

"The time is eight-seventeen in the morning and New York City is ready for another clear winter day!" announced some radio personality, right in Carl Romeo's ear. Carl flailed upwards in his bed and managed to hit the source of the noise, which unfortunately didn't come with a snooze button: his macaw Machu Picchu nipped at his fingers in retaliation.

"Ow!" Carl said, and glared at her. She blinked back impassively. "What's important enough for eight o'clock on a Saturday?"

"RING RING!" yelled Peach, who was obviously in one of her moods. "The future is calling!"

Carl groaned and looked around for a pair of pants. "Okay. I'm listening."

"Central Park," Peach said, in a much calmer voice. "Fifth Avenue across from the Frick." She climbed onto Carl's arm and edged her way up to his shoulder, combing her beak through his hair. "Watch for snakes and strangers," she added. In its own way, this last bit of advice was reassuring; Carl started getting nervous whenever Machu Picchu was this specific in her forecasts. She'd be sticking to the weather for the next few days.

"I'll bring back a bag of nuts for you," Carl said, getting to his feet gently enough to not dislodge Peach. "Off, bird." Peach flapped from his shoulder to his desk, and Carl got dressed.

Even in winter and with half of Manhattan to cross, Carl chose to bundle up and walk. These days he spent too much time inside: the combination of a college workload and a decline of wizardly power reserves kept him off errantry more often than he liked. He'd done some conflict-resolution on pigeon territory during Christmas break with his family in Brooklyn, but aside from that he hadn't done any major wizardry without Peach's prompting since the summer before college.

Maybe since a little before that, too.

Carl sighed and took the elevator downstairs. Outside his breath misted the air, and the slushy remnants of days-old snow clung to the edges of the sidewalk. He walked around the edge of the park to Fifth Avenue and started straight up towards Central Park. He passed pigeons and commuters, squirrels by Madison Square Park and early tourists going to the Empire State Building, where he paused to buy an overpriced bagel and coffee before continuing on. There was the Public Library, and a line of cabs heading towards Grand Central. Carl finished his bagel, burned his tongue on his coffee, and did a quick wizardry under his breath to repair the damaged cells. The coffee he let entropy cool, and by the time it was drinkable he'd reached the Park. He walked on until he came to East 70th. Then Carl leaned against the fence, finishing the dregs of his coffee and waiting.

A harried woman with two shrieking small children went by; a man with a newspaper passed the other way. A little old lady shuffled over to Carl and said, in a cracked voice, "Spare some change, dear?" There was nothing of That One about her, except so far as she was cold and hungry, so Carl dug around in his pocket until he found his laundry money. "Bless," said the old lady, clasping Carl's hand briefly with one of her gnarled ones, and shuffled off. Carl smiled after her and looked up to find someone watching him. Not many people were in the habit of making eye contact in Manhattan, but Carl looked back anyway.

The someone was a boy Carl's age or a little older, wearing an almost comically thick winter coat and a curious expression. When he saw Carl looking back at him, he said by way of explanation, "Not many people would do that, you know."

"I know," Carl said, feeling a slow smile of recognition slide across his face. "Cousin."

The boy grinned, a sudden brilliant grin that made his face very handsome. "Dai'stiho," he said, and somewhat incongruously held out a mittened hand. "Tom Swale."

"Carl Romeo," Carl said, taking it. "So, I might be on errantry, and anyway I greet you."

"'Might be'?" Tom Swale echoed, his eyebrows going up.

"My pet macaw sometimes tells the future," Carl explained, a little ruefully. "She shouted me out of bed and told me to come up here, and that usually happens when I need to do something important."

"Convenient," Tom said, sounding honestly impressed. "For you and for me. I'm in the middle of something a bit fiddly, and -- well --"

"Have you had breakfast?" Carl asked impulsively. "I know some really overpriced cafés around here, and I won't be sentient enough for a consultation until I've had another cup of coffee."

"Coffee," said Tom, "would be wonderful."

*

Nita stood in the middle of a great echoing space. Green light filtered down to her; she seemed to be in some sort of amphitheatre. Just in front of her was a little stone marker, like the ones she'd seen near the edges of towns in Ireland. A snake was carved into the stone; Nita moved a little from side to side and watched the snake's stone gaze follow her. Then she noticed the owl that was perched atop the stone. "Hi," Nita said.

The owl ruffled its feathers. "Entropy is not change," it told her. "Death is static."

"I know," Nita said. Something was digging into her pocket. She pulled out her space pen. "This changed."

"Do not go gentle into that good night," said the owl, and gave Nita a stern look. "Well?"

"Uh, Dylan Thomas?"

"Next time say it with conviction," the owl told her, and the greenish light turned blazing. Nita groaned and pulled the covers up higher, but the winter sunlight shone insistently in through her window.

Figuring sleep was a losing battle, Nita sat up and groped around on her nightstand until her hand found the Manual. She pushed her hair out of her face, drew her knees up to her chest, and began recording the dream.

*

Ten minutes of talking over coffee with Tom yielded the following facts: Tom was twenty, a junior at Sarah Lawrence College, and taking a semester at NYU in order to intern at a major publishing house in Manhattan. Tom was also from California. He doesn't look the way Californians do on television, Carl thought, and then, But Martians usually don't either.

"I've been investigating solutions and delay tactics with the pollution of the Sound," Tom was explaining. He allowed Carl to steal a pancake from the top of his stack with good grace. "The San Francisco Bay has mercury pollution like you wouldn't believe, and I thought that adapting the same approach to the waters here -- stopping the build-up, if not reversing it -- might be helpful."

"I couldn't say," Carl admitted. "The whales have some tricks to keeping it under control. I'm not big on theoretical application." He propped his elbows on the table and broke out the line that usually explained everything, at least to nonwizards: "I'm a communications major."

Tom laughed. "Appropriate," he said. "I'm in the really frustrating position of being good at theory without having anyone to check my work or provide supplementary power. There was another wizard at college for a while, but ..." He shrugged. "She graduated and moved to Connecticut, and the Powers saw fit to send me to Manhattan."

"And here you are," Carl agreed, draining his coffee. "Sentience achieved. What's the 'something fiddly' you mentioned earlier?"

"Faults," Tom said. Carl stared at him blankly. Tom grinned again and pulled his Manual from somewhere in the depths of his winter coat. "Tectonic chart of the San Andreas and comparison Clarendon-Linden," he told it quietly, and the book spidered out a display. Tom slid the Manual across the table at Carl. The left page displayed the California coastline, geography emphasized and cities all but forgotten; Carl recognized the half-familiar double wings of the San Francisco Bay. The right page held New York, from Erie to the Atlantic. A jagged red line down the California coast, sometimes at sea but more often running just parallel to the land, was marked off San Andreas Fault. A little red gash crossed the western part of New York, starting near Albion and continuing downwards.

"Clarendon-Linden Fault, I presume," Carl said to it, and looked back up at Tom. "And?"

"A certain amount of seismic activity is completely normal on any fault line," Tom said, "but -- well. I mostly have the San Andreas for comparison, because I've worked with it before. In theory, the Clarendon-Linden Fault is sizable enough to produce a 5.0 earthquake, and Manhattan might feel the aftershocks." He pulled the Manual back a little and told it, "Following page, display moment magnitude and epicenter for Clarendon-Linden quakes; past thirty years, Julian calendar."

The list included a few earthquakes in Albion, one in Warsaw, a handful more in little places Carl had never heard of. None of the earthquakes came above a 4.4 MMS. The latest recorded quake, though, was 1.8 MMS, epicenter of Manhattan. Jersey City, 2.2 MMS. Manhattan again, 2.1. "I'm not an expert," Carl said, "but that sort of thing's not normally physically possible."

"Tell me about it," said Tom wryly, reclaiming his Manual. "I figure this could use looking at with fresh eyes. Either the fault line has physically moved, and, as you say, that's really unlikely -- or something is mimicking the fault closely enough that the Manual's recording the data incorrectly."

Inside the warm café, Carl shivered. "Bad news?"

"When you have some free time, look into the précis on the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco," Tom said. He hesitated. "Uh, if that's not presuming. It was nice of you to get coffee with me, but if you have something else --"

Carl felt the beginnings of something uncomfortable and wonderful starting to uncurl in him. No, please, I seriously don't know how to deal with this. "I always listen to the bird," Carl said. "The bird told me to get out of bed and meet you. So: précis on 1906 later. Theories about the weird earthquakes here now."

Tom gave him another of those smiles. "I'll take you to the most recent epicenter. It's the playground in the Park."

*

Nita spent a long time staring at the morning mail -- so long, in fact, that her cereal went soggy. She didn't even notice until Dairine popped up by her side to whisk the bowl away with the observation, "Entropy in a bowl. How tragic."

"Where do you want to go to college, Dari?" Nita asked absently, refolding one letter and unfolding the next.

"Way to sound like Mr. Arnold," Dairine snorted, perching on the kitchen counter and swinging her legs. Mr. Arnold was the college counselor, and Dairine was way too old to be sitting on the kitchen counter.

"Off," Nita said.

"Yale," Dairine said, blithely ignoring this. "Harvard. MIT. I'll be a wizardly astrophysicist." She slid down until her feet were touching the floor again. "What's the latest?"

"Dartmouth." Nita refolded that acceptance letter too and tapped the envelope against the table.

Dairine looked at her, and Nita looked back. They both knew how much Nita loved the idea. "So go," Dairine told her. "I'll be accepted to every Ivy League in the country on full scholarship. Don't sweat it."

"Thanks, Dair," Nita said, meaning it, and peeled an orange to make up for the lost cereal. Dairine gave Nita an ironic salute and wandered off, probably to upgrade Spot or to go through the custom gating to Wellakh. Maybe both. Nita ate her orange, washed her hands, went to the phone, and briefly considered calling her father's cell. It would interrupt the mid-morning grocery shopping, though, but the phone was already off its cradle, the dial tone humming in Nita's ear. Impulsively she dialed one of the other numbers she had memorized.

"Morning?" answered a voice on the other end of the line a moment later, accompanied by barking in the background.

"Hey, Tom, it's Nita," Nita said. "Listen, if you're busy, forget it, but I could do with some life advice right now and Dad's out shopping --"

"No problem," Tom said at once. "My deadline's not until Tuesday and Carl's supposed to take the dogs to the vet's, so --" He was interrupted by an especially loud bout of barking. Tom probably covered the receiver, but Nita could still hear him shout, "Carl, get these mutts out of the house right now!" A minute later the barking faded, then ceased altogether. "Sorry about that, Nita," Tom said. "Come right over. I can't remember how to function with a silent house these days."

Nita laughed. "Okay, I'll be over in a minute."

She hung up and scribbled a quick note for her dad, At Tom and Carl's. --Nita. Then she headed for the back yard and the normal transit spot. A few words and a clap of outrushing air later, she was standing in Tom and Carl's yard. The trees were barren, clawing leafless at the sky, and the ground under Nita's feet was frozen, but the magically warmed koi pond bubbled placidly, and Tom was sticking his head outside, having heard Nita arrive. Nita ran over to the door.

"Can I get you anything?" Tom asked, shutting the door behind her.

"No thanks," Nita said. "Late breakfast." She followed Tom into the living room and curled up in an armchair. She didn't refuse the Sprite Tom handed her, either, nor miss Tom's knowing look.

"So what's up?" Tom asked, sitting down too.

"Uh, it's about college." Nita popped the Sprite open and listened to it fizz. "I just got an acceptance letter from Dartmouth."

"Congratulations," Tom said warmly. Nita made a face. Apparently everyone knew how much she'd wanted to get in. "So what's the attendant problem?" Tom asked.

"Technically, not quite as much financial aid as we'd hoped," Nita said. She sipped the Sprite and silently blessed Tom for remembering to give her something to do while she found her words. "But I know my dad won't let that stop me going, and Dairine's already told me she's gonna get into every Ivy League in the country on full scholarship."

Tom chuckled. "I don't doubt it."

"Yeah," Nita agreed. "And the thing is, I want to go. I really do. But I could just as easily go to NYU. They have a better aid package, it's closer ..." Tom was giving her another knowing look. She sighed and said it. "I just don't know how to do this without Kit."

"I'm guessing 'you can still visit him as easily as you do now while he lives down the street' isn't going to cut it, huh?" Tom said.

"Really no." Nita took another gulp. It fizzed in the back of her throat.

"Look at it this way: you have options, and all of them are good." Tom grinned. "And how often does your Senior have a chance to say that?" This drew a small laugh from Nita. Tom continued, "You could go to NYU. You'll have a great education, and the old cliché is true -- it's not where you go but what you make of it. You won't have to worry about being a financial burden to your family. You're familiar with the problems in the New York area. You'll most likely continue to collaborate with Kit.

"Or you could go to Dartmouth. It's your favorite -- and it might not turn out to be as great as you're hoping, or it might exceed your expectations. You can't know until you're there. You'll encounter different sorts of problems to solve by virtue of being in a new place, and both your wizardry and that place will benefit. If Kit is part of the solution to those problems, you'll find a way to keep him in your life; but he could just as easily fall out of it if you go to NYU and you end up being solutions to separate problems. Bottom line is, if the Powers need you and Kit to be a team, They'll find a way."

Nita nodded. She wanted to add, And if They don't --? but recognized it for the self-pitying rhetoric it was. "Thanks," she said. She finished her Sprite. "Uh, Tom? Can I ... stay here for a little while?"

"Sure." Tom got to his feet. "I'm going to work on the article for a while. Just give a shout if you need anything."

"Thanks," Nita said again. She waited until Tom was out of the room before turning on the TV, volume way down. She hadn't really watched much TV since Dairine had turned six and announced that television pandered to the infantile viewer. Of course this discounted the brief Pokémon phase, but all things considered the Callahans were very bookish, and Nita didn't recognize any of the Saturday morning cartoons. She watched some anyway, not really seeing them, and thought that Kit would probably say basically the same thing her dad or Dairine would: Nita would be making herself a pointless martyr by going anywhere besides Dartmouth, now she'd gotten in. On the TV, some commercial told Nita her life would be a lot more fun if she bought a doll with huge eyes and glittery hair. She knew being both a wizard and a conscious martyr was unhealthy. She knew Kit wanted her to be happy.

Nita switched off the TV and got up. She walked through the kitchen to stand in the airy arch that gave it the illusion of separation from Tom's office. "Tom?"

Tom finished whatever he was rapid-fire typing and turned from his laptop. "Any verdict?"

"I think so." Nita rubbed her forehead. "Tom, what am I gonna say to Kit?"

"He's your friend," Tom said, "and he's a fairly reasonable guy. I don't think you need to worry too much."

Nita nodded. The front door slammed, and Carl shouted something like "I'm back!" but it was drowned out by enthusiastic barking as the sheepdogs smelled Nita in the house. They came skidding into the kitchen and bounced around Nita excitedly until she crouched down and let them give her wet doggy hellos. This done, they raced off and Nita stood up, surreptitiously wiping her face with the back of her hand. She looked up to find Carl watching her with slightly raised eyebrows.

He gave her a grin. "Hey, Nita. What brings you here?"

"Not business," Nita said. "Just life stuff."

"She got into Dartmouth," Tom put in.

"Did you? Congratulations!" Nita gave Carl a rueful grin. He laughed. "That really is great. Well. Vox clamantis in deserto."

"What?" Nita asked.

"Oh. School motto." Carl leaned back against the countertop with a smile to match Nita's. "The voice of one, crying in the wilderness."

*

Tom and Carl walked back from the Park together as far as 13th Street; Tom went right, and Carl continued straight on. Peach was asleep when he arrived in his room, so he went quietly to his bed and whispered a request to the Manual for a précis on the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco.

The report was mostly unsurprising. Any major disaster had the Lone Power behind it somewhere, this one more than most; Carl already knew that the earthquake had been devastating, and the subsequent fires even more so. He hadn't known that some of the fires had started from poorly set and dynamited firebreaks, nor that the fire chief had died in the initial quake, but he could imagine the dark gloating laughter at the senselessness of the whole chain of events. What Carl hadn't expected was what the Manual had to say on the quake's origins.

In the aftermath of California's gold rush, Carl read, many of the wizards native to the area were incapable of reporting vital information to the newcomers. The breakdown of communication is attributed to agents of the Lone Power, both deliberate and unwitting. With no inherent knowledge of the land besides what the land itself could give them, wizards new to California and especially to the San Francisco Bay Area fundamentally miscalculated one particular aspect of the geography. Correctly perceiving the active fault line along the coast as a constant danger to Life, the wizards engineered a spell to diffuse the fault's pressure without resultant earthquakes. While this spell was effective in releasing some of the pressure, the rest stored and built up until a complete collapse fifty years later, resulting in the 7.8 MMS earthquake which destroyed --

Carl was rudely interrupted by a nip on the ear. He jumped; Peach squawked; Carl called her a few names not meant for innocent bird ears. After a few moments they both settled down. Peach ruffled her feathers. "Well?"

"Sometimes I hate you," Carl said.

"Sometimes you can't diffuse the pressure without earthquakes," Peach said loftily.

"I am not a metaphor," Carl snapped, and sighed. "And I don't want to have a partner."

"That One doesn't want you to either," Peach pointed out.

"You're way too smart for a bird," Carl grumbled. "Now if you don't mind, I've got homework to do."

Peach gripped Carl's shoulder a little too tightly. "Just look in the book first," she said. Because Carl sometimes remembered it was wise to listen to the bird who could rip his ear off, he pulled the Manual back over and flipped to the directory.

Carl Romeo: on errantry.

*

Nita found Kit in his living room, arguing with a cell phone -- the actual cell phone, not someone on the other end. "Look," Kit was saying to it in the Speech, in a very reasonable tone of voice, "calling your voicemail is a breeze. You're on the same service provider!"

"Bad time?" Nita asked, lingering in the doorway.

"Nah, it's being stubborn." Kit set the phone aside. "Hey, Neets."

And just like that, Nita got a lump in her throat. How stupid. It was so easy to be in life-or-death situations with Kit and have more important things to worry about than being choked up or afraid, but here in Kit's living room it was happening again, and it never got any easier. "Hey," Nita said, and came in to perch on the other end of the couch. "Cingular?"

"Verizon." Kit sighed. "Sometimes I think I should retire to somewhere without machines. Rural Madagascar, or somewhere in the Magellanic Cloud. So what's up?"

"I got my Dartmouth letter this morning," Nita said. "I'm in."

"That's great!" said Kit, sounding like he meant it. "You're gonna say yes, right?"

"I think so." Nita took the cell phone from where Kit had set it on the couch. It radiated sullenness at her, and she grinned a little before looking back at Kit. "I thought I should check in with you first, though."

"Neets," Kit said seriously, "if you don't go, I will personally help Dairine in her lifelong quest to make your existence one of obnoxious pain and misery." Nita opened her mouth and Kit added, "I'll visit you all the time, okay? Everyone will think you have a mysterious boyfriend or something, I'll be around so much."

Nita snorted. "Great. Five years and we still can't escape that."

Kit waited a beat too long before giving the usual commiserating grin. "The point is, you're going. It'll be good for us to do things differently for a while."

"Kit --"

He waved a hand. "And we'll have at least one more project and chance to die together before you go, right?"

Nita laughed. "Wouldn't miss it for the world."

*

Tom and Carl met Sunday afternoon to discuss options and theories. "I'm just here to check figures and provide extra power," Carl said as soon as he could, and Tom agreed; they went on to pour over seismic charts in Tom's dorm room, which was a little bigger than Carl's and not filled with loud macaw.

After about an hour, Carl sat back on his heels. "Okay, I'll say it: even That One can't move a whole fault three hundred miles east. We're looking at an undiscovered fault line or a new one. Either that or physics is getting screwed."

"It's mostly mica schist around here, and then bedrock. No striated rock or layering -- nothing to indicate a fault." Tom frowned and rubbed his eyes. "All the active volcanic activity is way off the coast, which rules out the most likely natural cause for a new one."

"Physics getting screwed, then." Carl went back to his Manual, and the list of recorded quakes that had transferred from Tom's. "What I don't get is why the Manual seems to think the Manhattan quakes are from the Clarendon-Linden fault. It's not prone to that sort of error."

"Physics getting screwed," Tom echoed. "Okay, bear with me. This fault line is the only major one in the Northeast. It isn't on a plate boundary, so, understandable. Even so, the quakes have been extremely mild and irregular. Reference for comparison," he told his Manual, and it brought up parallel listings for minor fault lines around the world. Most of them had a lot more activity than the Clarendon-Linden.

"Maybe an old wizardry was put in place to stop the fault." Carl met Tom's eyes; they were suddenly alight with the same idea. Carl felt a little breathless and hated it, and continued as normally as he could, "Like the wizardry used to calm the San Andreas. Only in that case the pressure relieved itself with a massive quake on the fault, and in this case the pressure was displaced."

"Conjecture," Tom said, but wizards know to trust their intuition, and the fact of Tom's origins in California alone were almost enough to confirm it. "I'll index for old wizardries in western New York."

"Imagine a massive earthquake in Manhattan," Carl murmured. "That would be ..." Really bad.

*

After Nita sent in the signed contract agreeing to attend Dartmouth, the world didn't change. Spot zoomed around the house making high-pitched noises until Dairine caught and subdued him; Kit and Nita spent a weekend at the Crossings helping Sker'ret clean up a complicated mess. Nita's dad spent long hours in the shop in the week leading up to Valentine's Day, then brought each of his girls a single rose and took them out to dinner; the following morning Dairine had a screaming fight with Roshaun over 'stupid Earth customs' and Nita found herself cleaning up another complicated mess. She even mostly managed to avoid 'Senioritis,' but she was very grateful for the approach of spring break.

"Winter's not letting go this year," Kit observed, watching still-bare trees flash by outside the window of the train. It was the weekend, and he and Nita had decided to take a day off and visit the city the nonwizardly way.

They got off at Grand Central, mostly to give the worldgates a quick check and say hi to Arhu, who was on duty that morning. Then they took the walk up to Central Park, chatting. Later Nita wouldn't remember the topic of conversation, only that she still wasn't quite used to Kit being taller than her, and that he made her laugh, and that his shoelace was untied. He bought them both huge fluffy pretzels just outside the Park.

"I always remember the statues coming alive," Nita said. "Maybe we should say hello."

"Sure," Kit agreed. "I was also thinking we might behave like little kids and go on the carousel."

"That would be amazing," said Nita, half-laughing but meaning it, and they stepped into the wrongness.

It was a subtle wrongness, like an invisible sheet of oil over the sidewalk, like nearly twisting an ankle. Both Kit and Nita stopped and stood quite still. A bit of snow hissed by them. The light was a shade too green for the grey late winter. "Neets --?" Kit whispered.

"I have no idea," Nita said quietly back. "Keep walking. Let's see how big the affected area is."

Five steps, molasses-slow, and they were through whatever it was, or it went away. Everything looked normal, including the bit of sidewalk they'd just covered. Kit shook all over like a wet dog, and Nita hugged her arms. "So much for the carousel," she said. "We'd better check this thing out."

"Yeah." Kit snorted. "Wizard's holiday."

*

The Manual didn't have Carl's current assignment marked as high priority -- apparently even the Powers understood that college was college -- so he spent his weekdays going to classes and reading up on seismology in his free time; every weekend he would meet Tom.

After the first time in Tom's dorm, they moved to neutral ground: note-taking over coffee in some cheap cozy café, or walking through the Park in deep debate. Tom liked to defend his position by citing times he'd worked through similar situations; Carl mostly agreed with him, but on those points where they differed he would back his arguments with raw data from the Manual or proofs he'd worked out, never from his previous work. He hoped Tom would assume Carl stuck to theory because he had no practical experience with earthquakes, but Tom was intelligent. Carl wasn't actually lying by omission, but he was coming close to it, and Tom could probably tell. If he could, though, he said nothing about it. Carl was a little grateful for that, which made him uncomfortable, because it was becoming very easy to appreciate things in Tom. The list started somewhere around Tom being a good debater and a better wizard, and ended somewhere around Tom being a funny guy who liked the same bands Carl did and had endless supplies of helpful advice about college life.

"I'm not used to this," Carl observed one day. He and Tom had been going over the trouble spots in the Park, and had moved to a bench to eat hot dogs and watch the kids shrieking and laughing on the carousel.

"The pitter-patter of little feet?" Tom asked.

"No, uh," said Carl, and Tom turned from the carousel to pay him attention. "Having a friend who's also a wizard. I don't usually do that."

"It's new for me too," Tom admitted. "I mean, I had some colleagues in California I could go to if I had trouble with the spell-work, but I've never had someone get worked into the equation with me." He bit his lip briefly, one of the first signs of uncertainty Carl had ever seen in him -- so he nearly missed the ghostly pressure against his own bottom lip. Nearly. "I'm not a terror to work with, am I?" Tom was asking.

"No, yeah," Carl said, and Tom gave him a bewildered look, so Carl bumped his shoulder gently. "Of course you're good to work with. I have no patience at all, so if you weren't I would've run off screaming a long time ago."

"Good," Tom said, and went back to people-watching. For a moment Carl felt him breathing from the inside.

"On second thought," Carl said, "I do have to run screaming now. I just realized something." He stood up and even managed to give Tom a grin. "I'll see you next weekend?"

"I'll have ground zero calculated to the last inch when you do," Tom said. "See you."

"See you," said Carl.

He was rattled enough that he snuck into the nearest public restroom and teleported straight to his dorm room rather than negotiating traffic. The bang of outrushing air resultant of his arrival caused Machu Picchu to give him a very dirty look, which Carl paid back with interest. "I can hear him," he said.

"I can hear you," Peach shot back, unimpressed.

"No, I can hear him," Carl said, sitting down in his desk chair with a thump. "I mean, I could feel -- I'm listening to his body." He groaned and pressed his knuckles to his eyes. "Why can't I have nice things, Peach?"

"Uncomplicated is booooring," observed Picchu the philosopher.

Carl couldn't really argue with that, so he took a moment to wallow in panic and then went back to the Manual. See if he couldn't find the problem spot before Tom did.

*

"Long time, no see, Kit," Carl said, opening the door for them. Kit and Nita came in out of the yard. "Excuse the mess," Carl added; "it's Tom's night to cook."

"I could hear that!" Tom called from the kitchen.

They followed Carl there. It wasn't a real disaster area, but it had its moments; Carl had to sweep a whole stack of cookbooks off the table and surroundings so Nita and Kit could see where they were sitting, and the countertop did look like a warzone of flour. Tom had his sleeves rolled up and was doing something violent to vegetables next to the sink. He paused to say hi, then carried on.

"So, to what do we owe this visit?" Carl asked, sitting down where he could very obviously keep an eye on the proceedings.

"We went into the city today, just for a day off," Nita said. "So, of course, wizard's holiday. We were in Central Park, near the playground, and we ..." She trailed off, glancing at Kit.

"It was weird," Kit said. "There was this little bit of the Park where nothing ... fit. Like it didn't belong. It was ..."

"Shaky," Nita supplied. "And a little bit green."

Tom stopped chopping the vegetables. In fact, he stopped mid-chop, the knife hovering absurdly for a moment. He set it down and stared at Carl. "Near the playground," Carl said, looking straight back at Tom. Nita had the slightly uncomfortable feeling she used to get whenever she walked in on her parents doing something completely normal that was nevertheless obviously private. She glanced at Kit; he looked the way she felt. Then Carl's attention moved back to Kit and Nita, and he went on, "Central Park West, just below 65th?"

"That's the place." Kit nodded. "Why, is it some sort of hot spot?"

"Not usually," said Tom. "Frankly I'm not sure what to tell you. Does the Manual have you on errantry?"

"Yeah." Nita flipped to the appropriate page. "It's also high priority, which is why we came here, because we don't even know what it is."

"A seismic pressure rift that could demolish Manhattan if it's allowed to become bigger," Tom said matter-of-factly. Kit and Nita stared. "It's been inactive for longer than either of you have been alive."

"Wow," said Carl. "I feel old."

"Pretend Nita was a zygote, then," Tom returned. "The point is, if you're the solution you'll need to get back there as quickly as possible. My only advice is to listen to the snake."

"And you'll need a containment spell," Carl added. "I don't know the specific parameters, but a catch-all terminus would be a good bet."

"This is advice so specific as to border on creepy," Kit observed.

"We have a personal history with the area," said Tom. "Nita?"

Nita started. "Sorry," she said. "I was just remembering -- Listen, do you have old rocks? A terminus delineates boundaries, right? A marker would be a good focus."

"I'll go look through the old rock collection and see if there's something suitable," Carl said. He gave Nita a wink and went out to the yard.

"What did you remember, Neets?" Kit asked.

"A dream," Nita said, frowning, and told him about it.

*

On a Friday morning in early March Carl found his Manual glowing gently. The message inside was from Tom. Found the exact coordinates for the trouble spot. Meet me at the Park, 10:30 AM.

Carl wrote back, somewhat cheekily, 40° 46' 56" by -73° 57' 55" and found his scarf.

"You might have told me," Tom said by way of greeting when Carl met him at the Plaza. The cold colored his cheeks, and Carl flushed a little too. Tom grinned at him.

"Dai'stiho yourself," Carl returned. "I only figured it out last night. I thought it could wait until the morning."

"Fair call." Tom headed into the Park, Carl matching his stride. "First bit of business: designs should always be adapted to the context in which they are located. So the spell to relocate the pressure to the proper geographic area --"

"Should be a rewrite of your recycling spell," Carl said, a smile starting. "You actually applied the principle of genius loci to a patch on a pollution matrix?"

"You actually knew where I was going with that sentence?" Tom returned. "And you think I'm impressive."

"I didn't say that," Carl protested, laughing. "It won't create any major earthquakes in western New York, will it?"

"It shouldn't," Tom said, unencouragingly. "Anyway." They stopped on the footpath. Tom checked around them, but it was just after ten on a school- and workday: they were alone. Tom pulled a long silvery string of Speech characters from his book bag, and shook them out like a piece of rope. He lay the spell carefully on the concrete; both of them knelt down by it, checking equations and switching Sea for land (island [Manhattan]) New York [Clarendon-Linden], Hg and Pb for mica and Sb. Carl added the shorthand for his own name, linked to the body of the spell next to Tom's.

Slowly the spell formed a circle around them. The listening silence pressed down, although they hadn't started speaking yet; and there was a malevolence to the pressure. Carl took several deep breaths. You can't avoid It forever, he told himself. Tom glanced at him; Carl nodded. Tom tied off the wizard's knot, making the spell-circle whole, and they stood, facing each other.

"This is a type six modified translocation spell," Tom started in the Speech, "to redistribute seismic pressure from --"

"Latitude 40° 46' 56" by longitude -73° 57' 55" to latitude 43° 14' 47" by longitude -78° 11' 37"," Carl said. He shared an incandescent grin with Tom and his heart pounded in his throat. The high singing attendant to the listening silence was starting in his ears. "The redistributed pressure is then to continue its normal geologic cycle." The light was getting greenish.

"Carl," Tom whispered; it carried, and echoed.

They were in a place like a giant amphitheatre, stone risers misty in the distance. It was much too warm for Carl's scarf or Tom's thick winter coat. The singing silence had been replaced by a far-off rushing noise, like a distant river or an underground train. "Um," said Carl.

"Timeslide?" Tom asked nervously.

"Horrible miscalculation," Carl replied, very calmly in the face of things. "The pressure here isn't entirely physical; it must have worn into the ground so much it created a little worldgate, and we've triggered it."

The far-off rushing was getting steadily louder. "Should we put the translocation in place anyway?" Tom asked.

"No," said a voice outside the spell-circle.

Tom and Carl looked. A large spotted snake with eyes uncomfortably like Picchu's was risen partway up out of the grass, regarding them both with some distaste.

"Genius loci," murmured Tom, and laughed a little, softly. "'Spirit of the place.' We are on errantry, and we greet you."

"It's not a kernel, is it?" Carl asked quietly, eyeing the snake.

"It is a guardian," said the snake pointedly. "I cannot hold this place if you come so ill-equipped." The rushing noise grew louder still, was becoming a roar that set Carl's teeth on edge. He glanced at Tom; Tom was going white.

"It's an earthquake," he said, nearly too quietly to be heard. "This is how they sound."

Carl took a deep breath and tried to ignore the dark laughter in the middle of the roar. Starsnuffer. "Open-ended timeslide," he said. Tom stared at him. "We'll send it forward until it reaches the appropriate materials."

"Do you want to die?" Tom demanded, and the dark laughter in the earthquake-roar was more pronounced, and Carl laughed with it, against it, had to swallow it down before he became hysterical.

"No," he said, veins singing, and began speaking the timeslide: a blank-check debt to stop Manhattan from collapsing. Tom stepped up next to him, taking his hand, and said a single word. Conduit. Carl wanted to yell at him for being stupid, but he guessed Tom wanted to yell at him for the same thing, so he kept clutching tight to Tom's hand and spoke the necessary words, swaying only a little.

The green world went dark and slid away, leaving them standing in the middle of a small cold grey Manhattan day. Carl tried very hard to stay standing, and didn't tear away from Tom's hand holding up his elbow.

He did have the energy to talk, though. "Why did you do that?"

"Because you have too much potential to martyr yourself," Tom snapped. Carl winced. "Now come on," Tom said, more gently. "Let's get you something to eat before you fall over."

*

Nita and Kit returned to Central Park the quick way. "What do you think that was about?" Kit asked.

"I don't know." Nita hefted the rock Carl had given her. "I think we're going to find out, though."

There wasn't anyone near them on the path for the moment, so they set up the spell parameters quickly. "This is a type six translocation spell to redistribute seismic pressure from latitude 40° 46' 56" by longitude -73° 57' 55" to latitude 43° 14' 47" by longitude -78° 11' 37"," Kit said, speaking quickly.

"The redistributed pressure is then to continue its normal geologic cycle," Nita finished.

It was not gentle. They were slammed from Central Park into the world from Nita's dream, and another spell flared up and attached to their own. Kit edged over until he was holding Nita's free hand. "Now what?" he muttered.

"Now --" Nita took a breath and knelt down, setting the rock firmly in the dirt so that it stayed upright. "This is a modified kernel construct spell," she said, "for the entwinement of Central Park's genius loci and this terminus, to delineate the boundary of the timeslide, and to reset the seismic pressure to its original source." Out of the corner of her eye she saw something like a snake gliding over to them; she stood back up and held Kit's hand. The spell demanded energy, and she gave it willingly, but Kit did too, halving the deficit. They leaned on each other and watched the snake glide up and around the terminus, becoming stone as it did so. A complex gating structure rose up, Central Park visible on the other side.

Kit and Nita stepped through together, and that liminal world closed behind them.

*

"Talk to me," Tom said gently.

Carl spent a while concentrating on his bagel. Tom sat patiently. Carl said, "That unfinished spell probably paid back most of the blank check. We have an energy surplus now."

"Yeah," Tom said. "What happened to make you so angry?"

Carl laughed. "I'm not angry." He sighed and mopped up some crumbs. "I just really hate it when That One wins."

"You can have the rest of my coffee," Tom said.

"Thanks." Carl stared into the black abyss of too much caffeine. "There was this girl in high school. She was a wizard too. A year younger than me. I hadn't known her before her Ordeal, but she found me in the book and thought we could try working together." Carl laughed again. It hurt his throat but it felt kind of okay, too. "I think she had a crush on me."

"Unrequited?" Tom asked sympathetically.

"Yeah. I don't --" Carl looked up and saw that Tom knew. He felt suddenly lighter. "Anyway," he said. "We did a couple of projects. She was a good partner. Competent. Then ..." He shrugged. "It's always the same story. I got us into a mess, and I thought I'd have to pay lifeprice to get us out. Which is fine -- I know what I signed up for. The problem was, since she was younger than me, she thought she could pay my debt and live."

He stared at the coffee some more. Tom was listening, and Carl could feel it; he could feel Tom feeling his heartbeat and the ache in his throat. It was both awful and comforting. "I thought she could pay without dying too," he said, "so I gave her the price willingly."

People chattered around them, and clinked spoons against coffee cups. Outside Manhattan roared its muted roar, different from the coming earthquake. Carl finished the coffee.

"I could say a lot of things," Tom said quietly.

"I'll give you a list," Carl said. "'Everyone gets tricked sometimes.' 'It wasn't your fault.' 'It will heal in time.'"

"How about 'everything happens for a reason'?" asked Tom, wryly.

"I hate that one," Carl admitted.

"How about this," said Tom. "Senseless awful things happen, and you weren't the only one being stupid or playing into Its hands. Absolutely the best thing you can do is laugh and defy It -- and frankly I think you're doing a pretty good job, since you're still practicing the Art. But the way I see it, we're the lucky few who do know that things happen for a reason. The Powers That Be are going to do Their best to keep you, and if that means being angry but carrying on, so be it. I just think it might be needlessly cruel for you to do it alone."

"You're going back to Sarah Lawrence in the fall," Carl pointed out.

"In six months, yes! And less than a year after that I'll be back here. Every publishing house in the world is on this island."

"Surely you exaggerate," Carl said. He felt like grinning, a huge happy grin, unafraid to be frightened.

"Surely you don't think the Powers waste resources," Tom countered, and leaned across the table. His thumb settled on the inside of Carl's wrist. Carl's pulse thrummed wildly. "You're not getting rid of me," Tom said.

*

They didn't go straight home, but walked together around Central Park, saying hello to the statues and talking about nothing in particular.

"When I'm away," Nita said, "look after Dari for me, will you?"

"I hope Mela didn't say that to you when she went to school," Kit said. Nita rolled her eyes. "Yeah, of course I will."

"Thanks," Nita said. She scuffed at a pebble. "Kit? How do you think Tom and Carl do it?"

"Do what?"

"Keep being partners after so long. You heard Tom: it's been at least twenty years. I mean, imagine getting a house with me!"

"I don't know," Kit said, shrugging. "The first trick is being a wizard and managing to live that long."

"And the second trick?"

"No idea." Kit squeezed her hand. "I don't know about houses, but I can't imagine ever getting tired of you, Neets."

Nita squeezed back. "But, I mean -- Tom and Carl. They manage because it's not complicated, right?" She took a deep breath. "Their parents probably never thought they were sneaking off to have sex together before they learned the truth."

"Complex set of assumptions, Neets," Kit said, frowning a little. "I tell you, my mama was really surprised when she learned Tom and Carl were wizards. She thought they were a couple."

"Oh," said Nita, and blushed a little. "Well, okay, I thought Tom was Old Crazy Swale and I didn't even know Carl existed, so your mama was a little better informed." They reached the statue of Balto. Endurance, fidelity, intelligence, Nita thought, barely bothering to look at the plaque after reading it so many times as a kid. She stopped and looked up at the statue for a couple of seconds. "Hey, Kit? Are Tom and Carl ...?"

"I don't think it matters," Kit said reasonably.

Nita kept staring at Balto. "Right now it does," she said, "because the only model I've got is my crazy kid sister and her crazy Sun Lord, and they'd be a model of amazing dysfunctionality whether they're wizards or not. But if Tom and Carl can pull it off ..."

Kit's grip had gotten very tight. "Nita," he said.

"I think this is just one of those things that sort of happens," Nita said, and turned to him. "Are we cool?"

Kit was staring at her like he'd never actually seen her before. "It depends," he said. "Do we get to kiss now?"

"I think that's the general idea," Nita admitted.

"Then we're cool," said Kit, and they kissed.

*

Night fell over Manhattan, as much as night ever did fall. Carl stood on the balcony of Tom's apartment, watching the traffic below, until Tom stuck his head out. "It's freezing."

"Yeah," Carl agreed, and turned to look at Tom. Tom made a face and dragged Carl inside by his collar. "The bird's angry she hasn't met you," Carl said, sitting down with a bounce on Tom's bed.

"I look forward to the pleasure of her company," Tom said. Carl snorted and scooted over to make room for Tom to sit. Tom turned on the little television he had propped precariously on his dresser; the news had no earthquakes or related weirdness to report. Tom leaned a little against Carl's shoulder. Carl leaned a lot more on Tom's, until Tom snuck an arm around to hold Carl against him. He could hear both their heartbeats.

"This might be one of those awkward question times," Carl said.

"Yes, I would like to have a thing; no, I don't know how it will interfere with work but I'm willing to risk it; and sorry, you do have to meet the folks sometime," said Tom, and grinned at Carl. "It's San Francisco. They'll be thrilled."

"Okay," Carl agreed, and leaned over to kiss Tom carefully. It was a lot like coming home, which was stupid. Carl didn't mind.

"The time is eight-seventeen in the evening and New York City should get ready for some unseasonable snow flurries!" someone on the TV announced, in a voice very like Picchu's. Carl smiled against Tom's collar. Peach could gloat all she liked.

Hot Fuzz: And This Time I'll Remember

2009-01-02T14:46:50Z

Fandom: Hot Fuzz
Rating: PG
Word count: 2,864
Pairing: Nicholas/Danny
Summary: Nicholas Angel knew it was going to be a bad day when he woke up on Christmas Eve face-to-face with a dead body.
Notes: Written for Stuffwelike, Yuletide 2008.

And This Time I'll Remember

Nicholas Angel knew it was going to be a bad day when he woke up on Christmas Eve face-to-face with a dead body.

"Shit," said Nicholas, and went from sitting down to standing without any of the bits between. This was probably a metaphor for Nicholas Angel's life right now, because as far as he knew he'd gone from pub-with-Danny to waking-up-next-to-dead-body without any in-between bits. "Shit," Nicholas said again for good measure, and took a look around.

The former occupant of the body was a Mr Dick Mason. He'd started working at the pub after Roy and Mary Porter's arrest, but he never went in weekends. Nicholas was sure Mr Mason hadn't been at the pub last night. He'd have been right ... here, in his own home, with a collection of carved sheep on the shelf above the fireplace, and blood all over the carpet. Nicholas didn't run a hand through his hair in agitation, because it would be very messy. Instead he rubbed the blood off his hands onto his own trousers as best he could, went to Mr Mason's phone, and called the station.

A Turner answered the phone. "Sandford Police."

"It's Angel, Sergeant," Nicholas said. He sounded breathless and hated it. "You'll need to get a forensics team down here -- fourteen Honeysuckle Lane -- fast as you can."

"Right you are, Inspector," Turner said with the cheer of obliviousness, and hung up on Nicholas. He set the phone very gently back in its cradle and breathed in and out a couple of times, just to make sure he still could. Mr Mason's sightless blue eyes stared at him accusingly.

Forensics arrived five minutes later, a curious Danny in tow. He went to stand by Nicholas in the doorway and watched the careful cleanup process. Nicholas felt a little better with Danny there; better enough, anyway, to start talking and be sure he would sound fairly normal. "This is terrible," he said.

"I know." Danny gave him a sympathetic smile. "'s a shame for this to happen on Christmas."

Nicholas stared at Mr Mason's face until the zip of the body-bag closed over it. "No," he said, quietly enough forensics probably couldn't hear him, "Danny -- I'm not sure who did it."

"Yeah. Never mind though, hey?" Danny bumped shoulders with him gently, one of a hundred bits of casual contact Nicholas had grown used to over their months working together. "We'll find out who did it in time for Christmas dinner."

"No, you don't understand." Nicholas found it necessary to take another one of those deep breaths. "I don't -- I don't know for certain it wasn't me."

Danny gave him a look of pure honest astonishment. "Course it wasn't!"

"Really? Right. What time did we leave the pub last night?"

"Dunno," Danny said. "Listen, Nicholas, you can't think you did anything to Mr Mason."

"Danny." Nicholas took his arm and pulled him out into the front yard. It was bitterly cold and Danny's breath puffed out in little clouds. "The best thing you can do for me right now is tell me exactly how I got from the pub last night to here this morning, because I don't remember a damn thing and anything you've got would be helpful now." Danny's face fell with awful swiftness, as though he'd hauled off and punched Danny without warning, so Nicholas added, perhaps a little pleadingly, "Anything you've got might help."

"We left around ... eleven?" Danny hazarded. "Yeah. You left me at my place and went right to yours. That's all." He wouldn't meet Nicholas's eyes.

"That's all," Nicholas pressed. "You're absolutely sure, Danny?"

"Mm-hm," Danny said unconvincingly.

"Get statements from the neighbors, then," Nicholas said, "and make sure to go round the pub. I'll get the Andys on it." He saw the look on Danny's face and added, as gently as he could, "This can't be my case, Danny, not while I'm a suspect."

"But you found the body," Sergeant Fisher protested ten minutes later, frowning. "Don't think you'd be reporting your findings if you did do it."

"I don't know if I did it," Nicholas explained yet again, and ignored the twin looks the Andys shot him on their way out. Instead he gritted his teeth and sat down at his old sergeant's desk. Far be it from him to go into the inspector's office right now.

"Well," Sergeant Fisher said, and ran out of small talk.

"Listen," Nicholas said, "you have a family to be getting back to, don't you, Tony? It's Christmas Eve. Go home."

Which left Nicholas alone in the station. Technically this was very unprofessional. He could tamper with evidence. The temporary station didn't even have a proper evidence room; they kept any impounded articles locked in the broom cupboard while the old station was rebuilt. Just now a gun with Nicholas' fingerprints all over it was sitting on some shelf in that broom cupboard, and while the Andys were out asking questions, while Danny was taking statements and Fisher was home with his family and Doris was on holiday, Nicholas was sitting here with his hands metaphorically tied, doing nothing. So. Last night.

He'd been in the pub, yeah, with Danny, as usual. Mr Mason hadn't been bartending that night; it was the new girl who was in on weekends. Ginny, that was it. Couple pints of beer for both of them, and then ...

That was all. Nicholas was on his feet and radioing Danny before he remembered any involvement with the case was strictly off-limits; but by then Danny had answered. Nicholas listened to the crackle and the expectant silence, and said, "Bring me a sandwich or something when you come back to the station."

"Right," said Danny half an hour later, sitting down across the desk from Nicholas and handing him the requested sandwich. "Don't look so down. You're in the clear!"

"And how do you figure that?" Nicholas asked, unwrapping it. Corned beef and lettuce.

"Cos I got time of death!" Danny said triumphantly. "Mrs Cocker said she heard a shot roundabouts ten-thirty. We weren't out of the pub until eleven. And," he added when Nicholas opened his mouth, "Jeannie's sister's brother's boy saw us go." He gave Nicholas a soft crooked smile. "Told you you didn't do it."

"Well," Nicholas said. Something tight in his chest quietly released. "In that case --"

"I want to know who set you up," Danny said. "Reckon they were the killer."

"Mmfl," Nicholas started, and swallowed the sandwich bite before trying again. "Tell me absolutely everything that happened between our arrival at the pub and when you left me in front of your house." He saw the objection start on Danny's face and said, "Please, Danny. I must've drunk something spiked or I'd remember, and from the way you're carrying on I expect I did something really embarrassing, but don't spare me."

"No, it wasn't bad," Danny protested.

" Two years ago I had a few too many eggnogs and ended up wandering shirtless around the station quoting the handbook at everyone," Nicholas said. "It could be bad, trust me."

This wrung a little smile out of Danny. "Weren't nothing like that," he said. "Anyway, Doris wouldn't've missed that for the world."

"Mm," Nicholas agreed, going back to his sandwich to avoid pursuing this line of thought too far. "So. What happened?"

"We just had drinks," Danny said. "Ginny Porter pulled the pints. Is she a suspect, then?"

"She's top contender for the one to spike the drink," Nicholas pointed out. "Mine, specifically, since you seem to remember everything just fine. Was she there when we left?"

"I think so," Danny said. "Hey, I'll tell the Andys to find out how late she was in. You finish your sandwich."

Five minutes later, outside the station, he reported: "She was there 'til closing. She's not our murderer." He looked up and down the road and added, "But the Andys found a whole box of pills in the back, so we're taking her in for questioning."

"Good work," Nicholas murmured, frowning. Because -- it had been the fourth beer, he was counting, he'd been counting to make sure he didn't get too drunk and say anything stupid, but Danny was saying something very earnestly and he couldn't quite focus any longer -- bright little fragments of the previous night were starting to filter back through. "Danny," he said, "what did you say Ginny's last name was?"

"Porter," Danny replied, and his eyes went very wide. "She's only Roy and Mary's daughter back from university! Do you think it's revenge?"

"Frankly I'm surprised supporters of the NWA haven't taken some sort of action sooner," Nicholas admitted. He glanced sideways at Danny and saw the awful closed-in look he'd thought they'd banished months ago; and for the hundredth time Nicholas hated Frank Butterman for hurting Danny like this. "Come on," he said, at a loss for anything else. "Pub."

At the pub they found Ginny Porter sitting at a table, looking angry and bookended by an Andy on each side. "It weren't me, Inspector!" she burst out the moment she saw Nicholas. "You think I would've kept pills right in the back if I had?"

"Could be trying to throw us off the track," Wainwright said darkly.

"No, she has a point," Nicholas said. "Miss Porter, did you notice anything suspicious last night?"

"I did notice something a bit queer," Ginny said; Cartwright made a noise like a cough and Danny went pink. Nicholas tried not to look bewildered. "What about Johnny Tiller?" Ginny offered after a moment. "He never used to come to the pub, and he's been here every night for a week."

"It couldn't've been Johnny, though," Danny protested. "The NWA murdered his mum, didn't they?"

"Unless he was closer to his uncle," Nicholas suggested. "What time did Johnny Tiller leave, Miss Porter?"

"Round ten, I think," she said.

"Thank you, Miss Porter," Nicholas said, "you've been very helpful. Danny?"

"It's perfect," Danny said a minute later in the car, over the sound of Nicholas shutting his door. "Your place is about halfway between Johnny's and Mr Mason's. Wouldn't be that difficult to find you after I left and bring you down, would it?"

"Suppose not," Nicholas agreed, frowning, because -- there on the lane in front of Danny's cottage, where Nicholas was still standing warm and a little shaky on his feet, the boy had come up to him; You'd better come quick, Inspector, there's been a murder! -- "I saw him, Danny," Nicholas said. "He was smiling."

Danny gave him a quick sideways look before focusing on the road again to take a turn. "You're starting to remember stuff?"

"Just fragments, but -- enough." Nicholas rubbed his forehead, frowning. "Nothing conclusive, but I think we have enough for an arrest. He was very sure of himself."

"Thought it out, didn't he," Danny said, frowning too. "Framing you and Ginny Porter."

"Well," Nicholas said as the car screeched to a stop in front of Johnny Tiller's house, "he didn't think it out well enough." They got out and walked up to the door together, and for the first time that day Nicholas felt something approaching calm: he hadn't killed anyone, and Danny was here at his side, Danny who'd never for a moment even entertained the faintest supposition that Nicholas might have been the murderer. Danny raised his hand to ring the doorbell, and Nicholas said, "Danny." Danny turned to look at him, and Nicholas took a deep breath, unsure what to say. He settled for, "Thanks, partner," but he was perfectly understood; a smile spread like sunrise across Danny's face. He rang the doorbell.

A long pause. Danny rang the doorbell again.

A faint slamming noise reached them. "Back door," Nicholas said, and shared another swift glance with Danny; then Danny was heading for the car and Nicholas was running full-tilt through Johnny Tiller's garden and out the back.

Nicholas liked chasing suspects. There was something very simple about it: he, the law-abiding officer, pursuing the guilty and bringing justice in his wake. He leapt over a hedgerow and started across the field after the shape of Johnny Tiller, hoping very fervently that his foot wouldn't go through a gopher- or rabbit-hole. The air started burning though his lungs. Nicholas went faster. And maybe it was the cleanness of pursuit, clearing his mind, or maybe whatever Johnny had slipped him was wearing off, but without warning --

Flash.

Nicholas remembered.

"No, I can't have another, Danny, I'm trying to tell you something," Nicholas said. He had another. Danny gave him a huge affectionate grin and Nicholas felt stupid and happy and tried to stop feeling stupid. "I'm trying to tell you I'm really glad you didn't die," he said.

"So'm I," Danny agreed, looking puzzled but not put off by this line of conversation.

"You know when I was stabbed," Nicholas said. "What I said?"

"Single most painful experience of your life," Danny quoted knowingly.

"Not true anymore," Nicholas said, privately blessing his beer. It wasn't hard to say. "The hour when they weren't sure you'd make it, Danny." He looked up and Danny was staring back at him with wide eyes, like he got it, the way understood every confession he'd gently unwittingly dragged from Nicholas. "Well," Nicholas said, a little embarrassed despite the inebriation, "it's late. We should be getting home."

"Yeah," Danny agreed. "No film tonight, eh? Don't want you to see the Christmas decorations before it's time."

"I like the decorations here," Nicholas said as they left the pub. "In London there are the same five songs in every department store and you wouldn't believe the shoplifting, but here --" Here kids cut out snowflakes in school and stuck them to the windows of their cottages; here white lights were strung up down the main street; here Danny had apparently shifted his cardboard boxes enough to fit a tree into his house so he could have a nice Christmas Eve dinner with Nicholas. He leaned on Danny and Danny leaned on him and they walked together towards Danny's cottage under the white lights.

"Well," Danny said, "this is me." They stood in front of the gate. "See you tomorrow."

"Wait," Nicholas said. He was still leaning on Danny's shoulder, and if he just turned a little and leaned forward, he could press his mouth to Danny's, so he did. It wasn't a proper kiss, but Danny held onto his arm and gave him a dazed grin anyway. "When I'm properly awake, we'll --" He wasn't sure what. "Okay?"

"Yeah," Danny agreed. "Just you remember this tomorrow."

"Of course I'll --" Nicholas started, and Danny kissed him again, properly this time.

"Oh," Nicholas said, and didn't trip over a rabbit hole or miss a step, just kept running; and in front of him Johnny Tiller did trip up over something, and went sprawling. Nicholas didn't laugh, because Nicholas never laughed while he was running, but Nicholas did grin a huge grin that almost hurt his face, and went for the handcuffs.

Danny appeared with the car a minute later. Johnny went into the back, scowling.

It took them until dinner to get Johnny Tiller processed, but it was worth it for Danny's pleased, "Told you we'd find out in time for Christmas dinner, didn't I?" as Nicholas clicked his pen shut.

"So you did," Nicholas agreed, and clapped Danny cheerfully on the back. Danny was very warm. Nicholas started grinning again and tried not to panic and followed Danny home.

Danny's idea of Christmas dinner probably left something to be desired, being very strong on fried food, but he'd remembered the eggnog, the Christmas tree was lovely, and it was miles better than Nicholas' previous Christmas. They watched It's A Wonderful Life pressed together on Danny's couch; Danny's present was a bigger pot for Nicholas's peace lily, which, despite its encounter with Lurch, was thriving.

"Danny, this is --" Nicholas rubbed his thumb along the ceramic edge of the pot and took a deep breath. "I think I bought you a jumper or something, but forget that." He looked up at Danny, who still looked happy despite the news about the jumper, and said, "I remember."

"Yeah, that's how we got Johnny Tiller," Danny agreed.

"No, I mean," Nicholas said, and gave up completely. There was no space between them anyway (hadn't been for months) so he just kissed Danny, the pot for the peace lily pressed a little uncomfortably between them and some ad playing Deck the Halls blaring from the telly.

"Wait," Danny said a little breathlessly, and tugged at the pot. "Don't want it to get broken," he explained, setting it gently on the floor, and Nicholas did start laughing then, in relief and astonishment.

"I don't care," he said. "I really don't care."

"Oh," Danny said, and, bless him, he understood that too, and kissed Nicholas again. So, safe under Christmas lights and wrapped up in Danny, Nicholas switched off, just a little. This time he wouldn't forget.

Life On Mars: Oh You Pretty Things

2008-12-10T23:27:24Z

Fandom: Life On Mars
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 7750
Pairing: Sam/Gene
Summary: A missing girl, a murder, and Gene Hunt's continued obsession with male bonding. Oh, and this morning Sam woke up as a woman.

Oh You Pretty Things

On the day Sam Tyler woke up a woman, his first reaction was resignation.

Second. Second reaction. His first reaction was to sit up in bed with a strange weight on his chest, look down at his own admittedly decent new tits, and flop back on the rickety cot with a groan of sheer horror. Then came the resignation.

He left bed eventually, slightly off-balance from the redistributed weight, and discovered that his closet was full of skirts and blouses and bras and panties and nylons, for God's sake. "Of course," Sam said to the world at large, and his voice was a whole fucking octave higher. He winced, tried to dress without actually touching himself too much or getting too tangled up in the bra clasps and nylons, and went to his cracked mirror to assess the damage.

The good news was that he still recognised himself. The person looking at him out of the mirror was obviously a woman, but she was also obviously a terribly lost police officer with Sam's eyes and mouth. "Testing," Sam said, feeling ridiculous. "Testing, one two three." He laughed a little, and heard a nice tenor laugh very like his own, and felt just a bit better. "Today," Sam told the mirror, "I'm going to work through the gender issues I didn't even know I had."

He went to the station.

As luck would have it, the first person he ran into was Chris, in the lift. Chris gave him a sort of nervous sideways smile, but that was normal Chris behavior. The fact he hadn't run screaming meant either that only Sam thought Sam was now in a woman's body, or that Sam in a woman's body was now totally normal. "Morning, Chris," Sam said.

"Morning, Sam," Chris mumbled back, with another quick sideways smile, and -- yes, he was definitely darting a look at Sam's chest. Even without the look, the fact that Sam had been demoted from Boss cinched it. He groaned inwardly and used every inch of willpower he had to keep from letting his head thump back against the wall of the lift.

In CID Sam went straight to his desk, which still seemed to be his -- at least, no one else was sitting at it. After a moment's rummaging Sam came up with files for his current cases. So far so good, except that Sam was having a very difficult time believing that Gene Hunt would have allowed any DI Samantha Tyler from Hyde through his doors. Sam sat down and shuffled through the papers, frowning. Investigations into petty theft with Chris: feasible. Ongoing enquiries with the Guv as to the murder of Lisa Tiller: much less likely. Sam flipped through the relevant files, saw the evidence photos, read his own signature. At a total loss by this point, Sam fumbled in the pocket of his leather jacket -- embarrassingly well-tailored now to fit his curves -- for his badge. And there it was: her Majesty's sign and seal certified one, yes, Samantha Tyler's right to the rank of Detective Constable. Absolutely perfect. He was being slowly demoted in his own head. Next he'd wake up nineteen years old as the newest shiny recruit. Disgusted, Sam got up from his desk with some vague idea that this was about the right time to start yelling at Gene until he felt a bit better.

Luck had Annie arrive then -- in street clothing, not the WPC uniform. Sam felt a knot of tension loosen somewhere in his gut. The world was altering as little as possible, it seemed, so at least he had a fellow Woman Detective Constable around. The thought made Sam grin, and Annie, seeing him, answered with that beaming smile of hers. "Morning, Sam," she said, coming over, and for a moment everything felt so ordinary.

"Annie," Sam said, "I -- morning. Listen, d'you think we could talk?"

"Course." Annie glanced around. "Here?"

"No, let's -- canteen." Sam went to open the door for her and had his second great shock of the day: like it was the most natural thing in the world, Annie had slipped her arm through his and was pulling them both through the door and down the corridor in the easy way he'd now and then seen her walking with her girlfriends. It was that, that, Annie's camaraderie and total lack of nerves, which suddenly brought home to Sam the exact nature of his situation. This was a whole new level of totally mad.

"Now," Annie said, sitting down across from him at one of the vinyl-topped tables and giving him a wide-eyed look, "what is it then?"

"I, um." Annie was still holding his hand and he had absolutely no idea what he was supposed to do with it. "This is going to be one of those days, Annie. The ..." He tried the vague universal gesture for I'm totally insane.

"Oh," said Annie. To Sam's astonishment, she didn't segue into worried-and-barely-patient, but merely endeavored to look put-upon and sympathetic. "Voices, or ...?"

"No." Sam thought of saying, Normally I think I'm male, and as far as I know this is the first time I've ever woken up as a woman. Sam thought of the disbelief and barely-concealed horror that would cross Annie's face. Sam said, "Just -- humour me. When I arrived ... from Hyde ... was our first case the Ned Kramer case? The kidnappings and the soundproof walls?"

"Yes," Annie said slowly. She squeezed Sam's hand.

"And Gene --?"

"Well." Annie gave a grimacing little smile. "He didn't take to you at first, of course. But you helped solve the case and he started learning to take you seriously." She peered at Sam. "Does that ...?"

"Yeah, sounds about right." Sam sighed and took his hand back from Annie to rub his forehead. "One more thing. Is the Guv in the habit of shoving me into walls?"

Annie looked astonished. "Course not!"

"Right," said Sam, and utterly failed to feel pleased by this news. Of course having fewer weekly bruises would only be a good thing, but if Gene were to curb his temper -- that would be too strange, especially with Annie acting just this side of different, and Chris failing to be subtle staring at Sam's nice new tits, and Ray -- "Oh Christ," said Sam, and got up. "Thanks, Annie. Really." He tried a smile and went back down the corridor to CID; there was nowhere else to go.

Ray was, as expected, a complete arse. The morning's case had Gene striding between desks as he briefed them -- missing girl, fourteen, family out of their minds with worry -- and Ray did spend most of his time paying attention to Gene, but he also spent some time giving Sam speculative looks when he thought Sam wasn't looking. Sam supposed that in this new version of whatever passed for reality, Ray didn't like him any better, skirt and breasts notwithstanding. Sam clenched his teeth and did his best not to notice.

Then they were out on the streets and it was worse. Of course Ray sat in the front of the Cortina beside the Guv, Sam shoved in back with Chris, who kept giving him nervous smiles. Sam couldn't figure out how to keep his skirt from riding up, or how to get it untangled when they reached the housing block where they were to begin enquiries. Sam asked questions at doors and was met with grins and non-answers and come-ons, and Chris, bless him, was useless. They got less than nowhere and, when they reconvened at the Cortina to report this, Gene didn't look at Sam. Didn't even look at him. Just snorted softly, unsurprised, and said, "We got a couple of blokes last saw her down at the canal. In."

Sam let his fingernails dig into the upholstery and just hung on.

They discovered nothing further that day; beer o'clock came round and no one invited Sam to the pub (which was normal) nor ordered him to go (which was less so). Sam stayed at the station as long as he could, going over leads and turning up nothing. When he ran out of things to do he went back to his flat.

Up the stairs, through the door; he sat on the bed, which creaked under his weight less than usual. Toed off his heeled loafers, peeled away the nylons. Shaved legs, Sam saw; he hadn't noticed in the morning. He sat there in his skirt and blouse and leather jacket and just tried to breathe for a while. "Okay," Sam said to himself. "Come on. Come on, you have to do this eventually."

Then he got to his feet and unbuttoned the blouse and slid off the skirt and panties and unclasped the bra and walked naked and shaking to the wardrobe. Squeezed his eyes shut while he wrapped a towel around himself before going the brief terrible open space across the hall to the little shower. The pipes shrieked as they always did and the water hit Sam hard, making his hair stick in wet curls against his cheek, making Sam really horribly aware of every last inch of skin. He found the soap and washed carefully, thoroughly, making sure to keep from letting it sting his eyes, making sure to keep breathing normally. Then he was done. He shut off the water and wrapped himself in the towel again and, back in his room, didn't even try to dry off; just collapsed on his bed dripping wet and tangled in the towel, and shook until he fell asleep.

---

In the morning Sam Tyler awoke in the wrong time with the wrong body and just tumbled out of bed to put on his nylons and get the damn day started. Until noon he was stuck in the collator's with Annie, bored half out of his mind and itching to get back onto the streets. Annie was wonderful company, but by quarter past ten she was just as bored as he was and by lunch they'd defaulted to swapping stupid stories, about Sam's gap year, about Annie's tenure as a barmaid, leaning on each other and laughing as they headed to the canteen. It was almost nice, except that Sam's jacket was still clinging to his curves, except that Annie was much more relaxed around him now than she'd ever been and Sam was trying very hard to not feel irrationally upset by this.

Halfway through a slightly soggy sandwich, Sam was interrupted in the middle of a really amusing story about his Aunt Heather by Gene slamming in through the door. "Tyler!"

The word went right past Sam's higher cognitive functions and to some part of his hindbrain that had him on his feet with his heart racing before Gene had even finished speaking. "Yes, Guv?"

"Got a lead on the girl. Done with your tea party?"

Sam rolled his eyes and headed for the door. Annie gave him a little smile and wave goodbye. Gene was never much inclined to elaborate until they were in the Cortina, and today was no different; they clattered down the stairs together, Gene in a much too impatient mood to deal with the lift, and all the while Sam's heart was rabbiting away like he'd already decided being on the streets with Gene was something important and rare. He was furious with himself by the time they reached the Cortina, and slammed his way into the front seat next to Gene before he remembered it was Ray's spot now. Neither Ray nor Chris were in evidence. "Where --?"

"Just you and me today, Tyler," Gene said, in exactly the same tone he said Gladys when he wasn't really annoyed with Sam but was pretending to be. Another stupid knot loosened in Sam's chest.

They roared out into the road. "Word on the street," Gene comments, "says little Rita Brown wasn't kidnapped. I've been asking around and I came across a few interesting little facts. One: she's living in a flat with a couple other kids. Two: her dear old dad has a couple old assault charges. Three: Mrs Brown didn't look none too upset when they filed the missing persons report."

"Runaway," Sam said. He winced. "Guv ..."

"Sometimes it's hard to learn to hit back," Gene said, eyes on the road. "Think we can get her home to Mum and arrest Dad all in a go?"

"We'd better," Sam said grimly.

"Good." They screeched to a stop in front of an old warehouse. Gene looked over at Sam. "Which is why you're going in to get her, Sam. No need for a crusty old DCI barging in on her. Use your womanly wiles."

Sam stared at him, for a long mad moment wanting to believe that somehow this was all Gene's fault; use your womanly wiles, just the way Gene always called Sam a girl. In a flash Sam saw that something was stable after all: Annie was treating him like a friend without strings or suspicions, Chris and Ray were giving him those same Neanderthal looks they treated to every girl, and here Gene was, still using exactly the same tone he always did and keeping his eyes on Sam's face. Somehow Gene the constant was more terrifyingly disorienting than any of the changes.

"On it, Guv," Sam said, the words sticking in his throat, and got out of the car.

Inside the warehouse, there was no one but a young teenage girl; she was sitting on a blanket in front of a television, watching what looked very much like The Sweeny, but as soon as she heard Sam she shut it off and turned to him with an angry look. "Rita Brown?" Sam asked.

She pulled her knees up to her chin. "Who wants to know?"

"Sam Tyler. I'm with the police." Rita made a disgusted little gestured and turned away. "Your mum's worried, Rita," Sam said.

"Yeah, well, Mum's a lot of things," Rita muttered. "What you gonna do, arrest me?"

"We were hoping we might arrest someone else," Sam said gently. Rita looked up at him, her eyes huge the way Annie's sometimes were, and Sam tried the smile he used to reassure witnesses. It was usually a bit hit-or-miss, but today it hit: Rita smiled, an awkward trembling little smile, and actually held out a hand for Sam to help her up. It was only after Sam had, and Rita didn't let go of his arm, that he remembered again what he looked like. Of course. A pair of breasts and he'd magically crossed the divide between professionally reassuring and, apparently, a sort of motherly comforting. It was almost funny.

On the way back to the station Sam sat in the back of the Cortina with Rita, who sat hunched and unhappy. He held her hand.

He and Annie were given custody of Rita while Gene took the cavalry to the Browns'. Sam thought useless things about warrants and evidence that would stick and the dirty evidence Gene kept in his office, and found he didn't care just this once. He and Annie and Rita had tea and biscuits, and after a short while Rita cheered up and started asking questions about policing. It turned out she had been watching Z-Cars (when Sam asked about The Sweeny both Rita and Annie gave him extremely puzzled looks) and wanted to know if there was anyone in the Manchester police like Bert Lynch. Annie smiled and answered Rita's questions as best she could while Sam watched the door. The moment he saw movement he was out of his seat and in the corridor. "Chris?"

Chris gave Sam a grin. "Guv says you'll be pleased to hear this. We got him for assault and drug-dealing and we didn't have to plant anything!"

"Pleased is one word for it," Sam muttered, but he was pleased, not least because he and Chris were sharing a smile and then Chris was off and hadn't once acted like he was painfully aware Sam was a woman. Of all things to feel pleased about.

They saw Rita and her tearful mother off, and while the boys were busy congratulating each other Sam took a half-hour to go over the evidence for the Lisa Tiller murder again. Then Gene announced pub time, and without thinking Sam shrugged on his jacket and followed the others out of the office. Ray shot him a mildly disgusted look, but that was normal, and no one else made comment. Of course when they arrived at the Arms Phyllis was already there, so perhaps Sam coming along wasn't so odd as all that.

A congratulatory round was bought for all, and when the other officers drifted off to play cards, Sam lingered at the bar with his pint. "Nelson?"

"Evening, Sam," Nelson said agreeably, rag-polishing his way through glasses.

"I'm really definitely not a woman," Sam said, going for broke.

Nelson smiled down at the current glass. "You're whatever you feel you are inside," he offered, and, just when Sam had relaxed enough to feel embarrassed that Nelson was humouring him, Nelson looked up and added gently, "Mon brav."

"Thanks," Sam managed.

A minute and fifty p later he was in the card game. Chris lost more miserably than usual, being more preoccupied with Sam's tits than with his cards; maybe it was the beer, but Sam found this amusing more than anything else. And Gene still beat them all, watching Sam's tells carefully as always, so that when Sam left an hour later, tripping over his heels a little in the dusk, his walk home was a strangely warm and contented one.

Perhaps it was the beer again, but this time when Sam undressed for bed, he didn't try very hard not to look. He just took off his clothes like he always did, and then he stood there and ran a hand over his hip, his side, all the strange new dips and curves. On Maya, on the few other girlfriends Sam had over the years, everything was familiar. Now all of the hairs on Sam's arms stood on end and he started shivering again.

He sighed deeply and went to bed.

---

The telly woke him slowly. Two characters on some early morning soap were talking to each other. "...healthy brain activity notwithstanding, it's possible Sam may sustain lasting psychological problems."

"Do you mean ... voices? Hallucinations?"

"It's difficult to be sure. My best guess would be some sort of identity disorder, to combat the crisis of a rapidly changing environment."

"God, it's not as though I want to be a woman," Sam told the television, sitting up and wincing. The room decided to pulse painfully, but that was less hallucination than hangover. Different body mass. Of course. Sam groaned and stumbled out of bed, and by the time he'd cleaned the horrible taste out of his mouth and brushed his hair into some sort of order, a different programme was on.

"Morning," Sam told his reflection. It smiled tiredly back at him with hair like Annie's and no stubble on its cheeks, and Sam thought for the first time that maybe the woman in the mirror was slightly pretty, hangover and all. The smile on her face became a bit less tired, a bit more real, and Sam went in to the station in a reasonably good mood.

He was barely up the front steps when he ran into Gene heading the other way. "Into the car, Tyler," Gene said without preamble, so Sam turned and followed Gene to the Cortina. Over the engine Gene said, "Just got a call in. Another one's turned up like Lisa: body taped up and left in the ditch like last time. Thought we might go while the trail's still fresh."

Sam started nodding and caught himself. "Guv?" he asked, staring steadily out at the street zooming by. "Why do you have me on this instead of ... Ray, or someone?"

Gene gave him a quick sideways look before watching the road. "Lisa Tiller's your case," he said, which was, yeah, true. How silly of Sam to suppose that the world had changed that much. "You're telling me you wouldn't've made an 'orrible stink if I'd handed it off to Ray?"

"Suppose you're right," Sam muttered, and had to turn away and grin at the window. He knew that tone. Tits in a jumper and still he could hear Gene saying, Course you're the best.

The good feeling lasted through their first set of interviews, right until the point when Sam knew that, painful as it was, they'd have to question both victims' families again at greater length, and Gene was absolutely convinced that Lisa's boyfriend Shaun Tracey knew something. "Come on, Guv, we've been through this," Sam said impatiently, striding after Gene up some residential street back to the Cortina. "He's a kid, and he doesn't know anything. It would be completely pointless."

Gene's lips were pressed into a thin line, his eyes burning as he snapped back, "And I say there's more to be had. I know from pointless, Tyler, and he's hiding something."

This would be the point at which Sam was to step up, get in Gene's space, retort scathingly; but Gene was too far away, the Cortina a sudden barrier between them, and like a punch to the gut Sam realised: through all of today there'd been a careful distance between them. Gene went through none of the usual motions, staying thoroughly in Sam's space, shoulder bumping his, circling when he wanted to make a point, grabbing Sam's arm if Sam said something of particular import. A lump welled up in Sam's throat and he had the brief savage thought that at least Gene wasn't going so far as to open doors for him.

A few months ago all of this might have been funny.

"Fine, Guv," Sam said tiredly. "Back to square one. Whatever you like."

"We'll --" Gene started, and the radio crackled. "Alpha one. What is it, Phyllis?"

"DS Carling requesting backup," came Phyllis' radio-garbled voice. She gave the address; Gene cursed and slammed the radio down.

"This one's yours for the afternoon, Tyler," he said. "You find out where our Tracey's about and hail me when you've got something."

Which was how Sam found himself, an hour later, bound in duct tape with the late Lisa Tiller's unassuming boyfriend giving him a lecture about the appalling state of modern policing, modern women, and modern society in general. Sam was nearly grateful for the duct tape; it kept him from laughing at the mounting absurdities, starting from the fact that bloody Gene Hunt had been bloody right about Tracey and going all the way to the bit where Shaun Tracey evidently thought Sam was one of those modern women he was filled with the need to deride. Also to tie up and then kill and throw into ditches, so Sam hoped Tracey had conveniently forgotten that Sam was a police officer and that Gene would start wondering where he was quite soon.

No such luck.

"Stop laughing," Tracey said suddenly, turning on a dime from his previous diatribe about the disgrace of female detectives. "Y'think I can't see it but I can, you know, right there in your eyes like y'know something I don't. Stop it!" And he backhanded Sam, hard.

It was the first time Sam had been hit in at least three days, and while Gene had given Sam a black eye or two in his time, it was usually the result of a misplaced elbow or a second salvo to the face after Sam's gut had been taken care of. Sam had never been anything approaching fond of Gene's tendency towards the physical, but there was a certain something about a punch to the kidney that made the sepia edges of Sam's 1970s dream world go abruptly Technicolor. Those times were not like this.

This was furious and impersonal and made Sam go cold in exactly the way he went cold when staring down the barrel of a gun. A soft noise of shock escaped him, and Shaun Tracey started smiling, the smile of a man at peace. The ice of terror started sliding gently down Sam's spine.

"Not so funny now, is it?" Tracey asked, and no, it really wasn't. Sam wondered where the hell Gene thought he was, and a small absurdity made itself known to him: he really was expecting Gene to come charging in like a white knight and save Sam. He hadn't thought his subconscious would be so backwards as to turn him into a woman in order to illustrate a point, though. It was so very not funny that Sam started laughing, a little wracking giggle that wiped the smile from Tracey's face and earned him another backhanded hit, another, another.

For fuck's sake, Gene, notice I'm gone already --

The door slammed open and a voice said, "Hands up, Mr Tracey."

Annie.

She wasn't holding a gun, but the uniforms she'd brought along certainly were. After a long terrible moment, Shaun Tracey raised his hands, trembling with what Sam supposed was fury. Annie nodded, and at once Tracey was handcuffed. He glared at her. Annie looked back at him and said, "Shaun Tracey, I'm arresting you for assault of a police officer and on the charge of two suspected murders. You do not have to, um ..." She glanced at Sam and gave him a little smile. "Now I can't remember the rest either."

This Annie wasn't like the Annie Sam knew. This Annie had been watching a Samantha Tyler do exactly what Sam would do, and she stood a little taller and carried out arrests. Sam tried to smile back at her through the duct tape and his eyes blurred with tears.

---

Back at the station, Annie snuck Sam upstairs to the women's department to "patch you up," as she said. Sam was really none the worse for wear discounting the livid bruises starting on his face, but Annie made him hold some ice to them, and foisted a cup of tea on him afterwards.

"I don't know if you heard, but tea doesn't actually solve everything," Sam told Annie over his cup.

She laughed. "Doesn't hurt, though," she pointed out, and gave Sam a close look. "You're sure you're okay? You know you don't have to go downstairs yet."

"I'm sure the whole department knows by now," Sam said, pushing his unfinished tea away. "The least I can do is show them I'm fine." He offered Annie a smile. "And maybe tell Gene to promote you to sergeant."

"I'd like to see the look on his face." Annie leaned over and kissed Sam's cheek. "Off with you, then."

Familiar gesture, kind and meaningless.

Sam stood, a little dazed. He went downstairs automatically, one foot in front of the other, and thought about all the ways in which Annie was a wonderful friend, just as she'd said she'd be. He felt much less disappointed than he'd expected.

In CID he discovered that the news of his unconventional part in the arrest of Shaun Tracey had not arrived after all. Everyone was listening raptly to Ray's account of his collar that afternoon, and though Chris's head turned when he heard Sam come in, he just gave Sam a little wave and turned back to Ray's story. Sam smiled slightly and scanned the faces: no Guv. So he walked the perimeter of the office until he got around to the Guv's door, and slipped in without knocking.

Gene was sitting at his desk, looking pensive and cradling a glass of scotch. He glanced up when Sam entered. "Tyler."

"Guv." Sam closed the door but stayed in the doorway. "I take it Ray's backup helped."

Gene made a noncommittal noise that might have been affirmation.

"And I take it you've heard about Shaun Tracey," Sam went on. He smoothed his hands over his skirt, a stupid nervous gesture he hoped wouldn't turn into habit.

"Yeah," Gene said. He set his scotch aside and stood, a slow loom that made all Sam's muscles tense. "Hear it was Cartwright's job. Good for the team, Cartwright."

"Yeah, she is," Sam agreed. Gene just looked at him until Sam added, "And don't say I was being stupid. You sent me in without backup, which would have been fine if you hadn't been right about Tracey, so either you were taking a shot in the dark or being deliberately careless, and either way --"

"Sam," Gene said, and Sam shut up mid-syllable. He hadn't heard his name on Gene's lips in three days and he'd never heard it quite like that before.

Gene came over to the shadow of the doorway and looked carefully at Sam's face, over the bruises and burned-out fear and months of this complete insanity. Sam gave him a steady look back, and saw: the Guv was tired too, and hadn't quite let go of the quiet panic he got when Sam was in danger.

"I'm fine," Sam said. "I'm fine."

"Like hell," said Gene, and this was the part where he put a hand on Sam's shoulder, a solid squeezing weight to make sure they were both still alive and something like whole; so Sam didn't twitch back when Gene moved, but instead of his shoulder, Gene's hand settled warm to cup the side of Sam's neck, thumb pressed to the pulse point just below his ear. Sam went utterly still.

"Don't you dare," Gene said, "do that again. I'm not losing my best copper cos some sad bastard can't have his way with birds."

"I won't if you think sometimes before you go tearing off," Sam said back, and it came out softer than he'd meant it to, but the miracle was that he'd managed to say it at all. The space between them was always close and electric, but Gene's hand was on his jaw and he couldn't fucking breathe.

Gene snorted softly, the nonverbal equivalent of like hell again. His other hand came up and touched one of the bruises just under Sam's eye with gentle fingers; Sam still twitched a little and gritted down the hiss of pain. "We're going to put him away for life," Gene said.

"I'm fine," Sam repeated.

"Sure, we all are," Gene said, and the moment shivered around them like a soap bubble, ready to disappear and leave them standing there awkwardly and checking the clock until pub opening. Sam's hands found their way into the lapels of Gene's camelhair coat, hanging on tightly to the moment, leverage for a fight, and though they were both standing still Sam could feel the rise of his breathing and the patter of Gene's heart through the coat.

"Gene --" he said, and Gene kissed him.

It was not a nice kiss. It was Gene slamming Sam into a wall and demanding what the fuck he thought he was doing, except that this time through Sam was a woman and Gene wouldn't hit him so this was substituting, or -- it came to Sam in a flash, not to his head but to his gut, so that he knew -- when Gene slammed Sam into walls he was trying very hard to not do this. This was Gene with one arm wrapped tight around Sam while the thumb of his other hand glided over Sam's cheek, this was Sam pressed tight against the door with the slats of the blinds digging into his back, this was Gene kissing him open-mouthed and devouring, tasting of scotch and cigarettes and Sam didn't care. His hands had gone white-knuckled on the lapels of Gene's coat, holding him in place and kissing him back just as hard for a long blinding moment.

Then Sam remembered several very important things all at once, and pushed Gene away.

They stared at each other for a long moment, gasping. Sam licked his lips and said hoarsely, "But you're married," which wasn't even the first in the long list of things that was very, very wrong, the most pressing one being and I'm not even a woman, for God's sake.

"And that means I can't have a little something on the side?" Gene demanded.

Sam flushed. "Of course it does!" he snapped; but that had never really been true. Had it? Gene knew any number of prostitutes, but even if he didn't always deal with them in the most diplomatic of terms, Sam had never seen him acting anything other than the Gene Hunt brand of professional, and knowing all sorts came with the job. And Gene was too married to said job to have any extramarital affairs, at least as far as Sam knew. Then like a slideshow he flashed through memories of Gene shaving in the office, there early in the morning, there late at night, and Sam took a deep breath. "I mean," he said. "It's none of my business. But -- Guv -- I work for you."

"Only when you're feeling cooperative," Gene returned. He still wasn't looking actually angry, just annoyed. "But I could've pegged you as the type to worry 'bout being unprofessional."

"Damn right I am," Sam said, and drew a shaking hand over his face. The bruises throbbed and he made a little noise of pain before he could stop himself.

"Have it your way," Gene said, and shouldered past Sam out into the main room. "Right, lads! Pub!"

Sam winced and decided that yeah, right now what he needed to do was get completely pissed. Pub.

Somewhere in the realm of an hour and three pints later, Sam was watching Gene play darts with his team and worrying vaguely that his skirt was riding up, because worrying about that was a lot easier than worrying about everything else that apparently came with being a woman. Of all the things he didn't want to deal with, the sudden revelation that Gene Hunt had a no-longer-closeted attraction to him just about took it. What he didn't want to deal with even more was his own reaction to it, which was, apparently, to kiss Gene back and really, really enjoy it. He glanced up from his pint at Nelson, who was leaning on the bar and watching the game, and remembered: You're whatever you feel you are inside. Definitely not actually a woman was one of them; now attracted to Gene Hunt was another. If Sam were to be honest with himself, which was a bit easier when he was well on his way to drunk, he'd have to admit the attraction wasn't actually new; it was just glaringly obvious now.

Sam waved Nelson over to give him a refill. "I think I'm attracted to everything I thought I really hated about this place," he confessed. "Really horribly attracted. Maybe I'm going madder."

"Then this is your last pint," Nelson said seriously, and gave Sam a sympathetic smile. It did help a little.

Last pint done, Sam got to his feet -- only swaying a little, which meant he was becoming better at wearing heels -- and headed out the back. The cool dark was wonderful, the ache in his face lessening. Sam started towards the road when light and noise spilled for a moment out into the lot; pub door opened and closed again. Sam turned and breathed out steadily as he could. "Gene."

"Tired of the company, are we, Tyler?" Gene asked, completely failing to sound conversational.

"Look," said Sam. "I kissed you back. That doesn't make it anything besides a really terrible idea." He looked at Gene and Gene looked at him. Gene opened his mouth and Sam added, "And don't tell me it didn't mean anything, Guv, cos we both know better."

"Right," said Gene, in a peculiar half-defeated sort of voice. "Go home, then."

Sam stared. "Really? That's it?"

"It's a terrible idea," Gene said, and stalked back inside.

Sam almost went in after him. Almost.

Instead he walked back to his fake flat and undressed and lay on the little bed, half afraid the little girl from the test card would turn up to make things worse, replaying the kiss with Gene in his head over and over until he fell asleep.

---

In the morning Sam woke up in his own body, everything in its proper place again. For a moment he lay there without opening his eyes and felt astonished and then relieved, just savouring it. No more bras. No more nylons. No more -- well, lower heels. He grinned slowly and opened his eyes to beam at the water-stained ceiling. No more hair in his face every morning. He'd have to shave again, of course. And lunches with Annie would take on the old edge. And Gene --

Sam was out of bed in an instant. He went straight to the cracked mirror and stared into it and yes, there was a bruise yellowing high on one cheekbone, another on his chin, a third on his eyebrow. The past few days had definitely happened. "Today," Sam told the mirror, and started laughing helplessly because there was nothing funny about it at all. "Today I get to work out Gene's gender issues."

Of course, he reasoned as he dressed -- pants, trousers, socks, shoes, shirt, jacket, done -- the world might have shifted slightly so that Gene expressed his concern for Sam's brush with death by just slamming him into something as usual. But Sam very much doubted that, and even if it were so ...

"What fun," Sam muttered, and went to the station.

Chris gave him a wave hello, and Ray made some joke in horribly bad taste about duct tape, Boss. Sam astonished him utterly by grinning at the inclusion of his reinstated honorific. Then Annie came in to ask after the bruises, and Sam drew her aside. "Annie," he said, "I never properly thanked you for coming after me yesterday. It's thanks to you I'm still here."

"Well, sir, anything for a fellow officer," Annie said, and she did have that slight edge of nerves again but she gave Sam a smile, and she was wearing a pretty flower-patterned blouse, and Sam knew how it felt to be walking side-by-side against her curves. Impulsively he gave her a quick hug, and pulled away before she really had a chance to stiffen in confusion.

"Like I said, Annie," Sam said, "thanks."

Then Gene arrived. He absolutely did not in any way look at Sam, and maybe Chris and Ray and even Annie could miss it, but the slide of his eyes right past Sam as he went into his office told Sam very clearly that he should get the hell in the Guv's office right now.

Sam slipped in and closed the door behind him. "Talk to me."

Gene gave him a cool look. "About anything in particular, Gladys? Thought you and Chris had some petty theft to investigate."

"Gene," Sam said, and he said it at exactly the perfect pitch, because Gene was up out of his chair in a moment and glaring at Sam across the barrier of his desk.

"I thought we agreed it was a terrible idea," Gene said, in a soft and awful voice. "That's the end of it, Tyler, and we are not going to talk about it like a bunch of girls."

Sam laughed. It was just one quick gulp of laughter that he absolutely could not help, but the irony was too great, and so help him, it was funny. He laughed and Gene stalked over, slamming him into the nearest filing cabinet. The air left Sam's lungs and then he couldn't quite suck it back in, because this wasn't exactly the way it had been last night but it was pretty damn close, and outside the entire department was probably watching one of Hunt and Tyler's little fistfights for the entertainment. "Not the time or place, is it, Gene?" Sam said breathlessly. "I doubt it will look good for you to beat up an already-injured DI."

Gene let him go with a curse and stepped back, face livid.

"I believe I have some petty theft to investigate," Sam said. "I'll just show myself out."

"You do that," Gene snapped.

So Sam spent an unproductive day with Chris and a squad car. It was nice to have the chance to drive, and nicer still that Chris wanted to tell Sam about the girl he was seeing, rather than looking at Sam's now-vanished breasts. It also gave Sam the chance to figure out what exactly he thought he was doing. He wondered if imaginary 1973 would imaginary fire him if he did some really excessive male bonding with his imaginary boss. He wondered again if Gene was even real, and what the hell his subconscious was playing at if Gene wasn't. He wondered if Gene would take it any better than Annie had if he said, jokingly or not, Please shag me, I'm in a coma. Of course the real problem was that, inside Sam's head or out of it, he was never quite sure what he wanted; and to be suddenly sure of this was its own special brand of absolutely insane.

Because they turned up no real leads, Sam and Chris went straight to the Railway Arms without checking in at CID. Chris went to join Ray at a table; Gene was getting another round of drinks, so Sam waited until Gene was heading back to the table before he went up to the bar. "Evening, Nelson. Pint of bitter." He watched Nelson pull the pint and added, "Do you remember what I said the other day?"

"Lots of people say a lot of things in my pub," Nelson pointed out, handing over the pint.

"I said I was, um, definitely not a woman," Sam said.

Nelson nodded. "And it seems you're right."

Sam smiled a little and turned away. There was something incredibly comforting in being told the right thing, even by a barman pretending to be from Jamaica.

He only had the one pint, then sat at the bar and waited. Gene could drink with the best of them, of course, but he stopped with the pints and went back to the flasks hidden around his person, sitting at the periphery of his officers rather than in the middle as usual. His eyes met Sam's for the flash of a second over Ray's head, and Sam casually left his seat at the bar and made for the door.

Outside he started walking slowly, and after a moment Gene came out to join him, both of them keeping pace in a sort of policeman's plod in the general direction of Sam's flat.

"Nothing new for the case today," Sam said.

"Well, it's Chris," said Gene. "Sometimes there's nothing to be done."

Sam smiled a little and thought: I enjoy this man's company. I enjoy his company when he's yelling at me and beating the suspects and slagging off our fellow officers, and sometimes there's nothing to be done about it. Sam said: "And sometimes there is."

"In Hyde," said Gene, "are they completely stupid?"

"Just more forward-thinking sometimes," Sam said.

Silence. "What happened to but you're married?" Gene asked.

"I can't answer that for you." Sam shoved his hands in his pockets and stared up at the dark sky. Clouds. "I thought you didn't want to talk."

"I don't," Gene said flatly. "I want you to take your noncy arse the hell back to Hyde, but we don't all get what we want, do we."

Sam stopped, back to a brick wall, and looked closely at Gene in the light of a streetlamp. "What do you want, Guv?"

"Hell if I know," said Gene tightly. He didn't look angry so much as he looked scared, but that was halfway to angry already. Sam remembered realising in the middle of yesterday's kiss that Gene had really meant to do that all along, that the fighting hadn't been, and knew what to do.

"I think," he said, "you shouldn't worry about it anymore. Yeah. Just forget it ever happened." He smiled a small angry smile and stepped right into Gene's space, blood humming. "Didn't matter at all." Gene's hands went to his shoulders and Sam was driven back into the wall with a thump. He laughed breathlessly and didn't try to get away. "Really, Gene?"

Gene's hands went tighter and he laughed too, soft and angry. "Are you trying to trick me into this, Tyler?"

"Um, yes," said Sam, because he was entirely past being subtle about it; and on a late-night deserted street thirty years ago, Gene Hunt kissed him again in his own body. Sam's arms went tight around Gene and his shoulder blades dug into the brick. Gene didn't even make a passing attempt at gentle. Sam's face ached and Gene still tasted like whiskey and smelled like nicotine and damp camelhair, and Sam wanted it so much that it hurt, just under his ribs.

They pulled back enough to breathe, foreheads pressed together, and Gene asked in a half-furious rumble, "Just how often do you plan to try tricking me, very bloody obviously, I might add?"

Sam grinned and clutched at Gene's coat. "Every time I get the chance, Guv."

Gene huffed quietly. "Fair enough," he said, and kissed Sam again.

---

On the day Sam Tyler woke on a half-collapsed bed with Gene Hunt next to him stealing all the covers and most of the warmth, his first reaction was an almost blinding happiness.

After that he moved on to things like worry and even a little panic, arguing with Gene about how he was going to eat a pansy-arsed fairy breakfast, which it wasn't, and why there was a bra in the back of Sam's closet, and whether or not they would have to sneak off separately or could get away with coming into the station together; and by the time they did get to the station (separately) Sam had even moved on to something like resignation in among everything else.

But it hadn't been his first reaction, and it was new, and good.

END

Buffy the Vampire Slayer/The Secret Garden: pretty maids all in a row

2008-11-29T14:55:27Z

Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer/The Secret Garden
Rating: PG
Word count: 5586
Summary: Mary Lennox, vampire slayer.
Notes: Thanks to the internet for help with various bits of Indian mythology. The speech about the Slayer is taken pretty much verbatim from s1 Buffy. Written for nextian's birthday. Happy birthday, Emma!

pretty maids all in a row

It was some years after Mary Lennox's arrival at Misselthwaite that she was given a governess. While her uncle was abroad no one spared any thought on the matter, and after he returned Mary was much occupied studying with Colin under Lord Craven's tutelage. Indeed it was four happy summers before the subject of a governess for Mistress Mary arose again. It started as a sort of underground discussion in the servants' hall -- that the young lady of the house should have no feminine companionship! -- and once the gossip arrived at the cottage on the moor, brought there by Martha on her day off, Mrs Sowerby at once put a stop to it. She spoke to Mrs Medlock in Thwaite, and to Lord Craven at the Manor some days later. This marked the end both of the gossip and of Mistress Mary's boyish freedom.

"Shall you mind terribly?" Colin asked, as anxiously as Colin ever asked anything these days. Mary had brought the news down to the garden, where Colin was reading a tract on Newton and reading choice bits aloud to Dickon while he clipped the hedges.

"It's not as though I am going away," Mary replied. She found a bit of earth that needed weeding so she might have something to do with her hands. "I should like to learn French and geography and things of that sort. As long as she doesn't mind my being in the garden, we shall probably be agreeable."

"And if she does mind, we shall send for another," Colin decided. He sighed and lay back in the grass. "Still, it will change things. Do you think it will change things, Dickon?"

"Th' garden will still be here," Dickon said mildly. Mary imagined that perhaps change was foreign to him. After all, one year was much like another in the Yorkshire countryside. In four years Dickon had gone from being a free spirit upon the moor to holding a position as most beloved under-gardener, but his animals still followed him, and he always found time to spare in Colin and Mary's garden, rain in his hair and the wind sparkling in his eyes. So Mary was much startled when Dickon added, "Mistress Mary's new governess may change nawt, but some change is comin'. Tha mark it, Master Colin -- 'tis in the wind."

Colin frowned. "Do you mean the war? It will be over before you're old enough to enlist, and certainly before I am."

Dickon frowned too, a brief sober expression. The war was not thought of highly by anyone at Misselthwaite, and none of the children liked hearing of sickly or dead things at the best of times. Colin had tried one of his experiments, but for once the Magic had not worked; or at the very least the war was too big, and even the whole country believing it would be over this Christmas past was not enough for the Magic to work. As a result they did not speak of it much, and Dickon's only answer was a noncommittal shrug. They talked of other things.

---

In the autumn the governess came. Her name was Mrs Bathurst. She wore severe little spectacles and a brooch at her throat like Mrs Medlock's, and she had a clipped London accent very unlike the broad Yorkshire to which Mary had grown accustomed. Upon their introduction Mary could feel herself going stiff and small and disagreeable, but she fought this and did her very best to seem, if not a charming young lady, than at least the Mistress Mary the Sowerbys knew.

On the first day of their acquaintance, Mrs Bathurst asked Mary all sorts of questions which Mary imagined were of the normal sort for governesses to ask. Did Mary know her history? Some, especially concerning the Empire and India. Did Mary know her geography? Only a very little. Did Mary like to read? Some, particularly books of science which were gifts to Colin from Lord Craven. Did Mary know any languages? Hindustani. Could Mary dance, or sew, or play an instrument? No, but she could sing, and imagined dancing would be easy, for these days she was an athletic child. Mrs Bathurst listened to these answers with her eyes gleaming behind her spectacles, and though Mary had some half-formed notion that her replies were less than satisfactory, her new governess seemed quite pleased.

Mary also had the idea that, as she had said to Colin, she would begin learning her French and geography, but nothing of the sort was forthcoming. Rather Mrs Bathurst encouraged Mary to take exercise, taught her to dance, and had her read a great deal more history.

This educational regiment endeared the severe woman to Mary nearly at once, so much that she was hardly resentful when sometime during the second week Mary was rising for tea with Colin and Mrs Bathurst said, "No, Mary, I think you'd better not spend quite so much time with young Master Craven. Shall you take tea with me?"

Mary considered making a fuss, but she was still allowed with Colin in the garden at all hours, and he might enjoy taking his tea alone with Lord Craven. She sat again while Mrs Bathurst rang for the tea things, and as Martha arrived to set out their meal, the governess said, "Tell me some tale of India, Mary." Martha paused in the middle of pouring the tea, her eyes very wide, and Mrs Bathurst added, "You may leave us, Martha."

Promising to herself to tell some story to Martha later, Mary waited for the door to close and asked, "What sort of story should you like?" In her head she prepared the sorts of stories she thought a governess might like: not the tales of tigers and elephants and officers and Rajas, but something older, blue Vishnu and his earthly form, fierce many-armed Kali and her consort. But perhaps those were stories for Martha too. Perhaps they would offend her governess's sensibilities.

"I always enjoyed tales like the Arabian Nights," Mrs Bathurst said thoughtfully, buttering a crumpet. "Stories within stories that go on for days. I imagine there must be something of the sort in India."

"Vikram and Baital," Mary said at once, somewhat relieved that the suggestion for a tale had been made for her. Those stories had kept her Ayah from Mary's boredom and wrath for a whole season while they were shut up in the house on account of the monsoons. "Baital tells Vikram stories. There are only twenty-five, though."

Mrs Bathurst smiled a polite little smile and sipped her tea. "Well, we needn't tell them all, certainly not in one tea-time. Who are Vikram and Baital, Mary?"

Mary might have thought it strange that Mrs Bathurst could pronounce these foreign words, but she was not the sort of girl to notice such things. "Well," she said. "Vikram was a Raja, and Baital was a Prét." At Mrs Bathurst's politely uncomprehending look, she added, "The spirit of a dead man. A Prét exists inside a dead body and moves about at night attacking the living." Mary remembered now that she had liked the stories Baital told much better than she had liked Baital himself. Four years at Misselthwaite had given her a healthy aversion to this sort of morbid tale.

"Oh, I see," Mrs Bathurst said. "Teacakes, Mary? I do believe your Baital is what we here might call a vampire. Have you heard the word before?"

This was delivered in a school-room lecture tone rather than one of condescension, so Mary went rather less disagreeable than she might have. "The library has books with vampires," she replied. "I haven't read them."

"A pity," Mrs Bathurst said. "Fascinating creatures, vampires."

Mary did not ask if Mrs Bathurst thought vampires were real. She did not care what Mrs Bathurst thought on this particular topic. "Should you like to hear one of Baital's stories?" she asked.

"No, Mary, I think we might return to lessons for a time before you go out to the garden," Mrs Bathurst said. And the subject seemed to be closed.

---

Mary gave no more thought to the conversation for some time. Autumn closed in around Misselthwaite; in the garden, the trees turned the brilliant colour of flames and all the petals dropped off the roses. Colin spent more time indoors, claiming as was his habit that the coming winter and the dying roses depressed him. Mary and Dickon gathered some of the last summer flowers for a vase in his rooms, which cheered him considerably, but most days he did not join them out of doors. Mary did not mind; she enjoyed Dickon's company very much.

One afternoon there was very little to do. Mary and Dickon sat together in the garden, enjoying the rustle of the autumn leaves. "Has tha got any stories of India?" Dickon asked absently. "Tigers or elephants? Tigers should hide well among these trees."

"I've told you all my stories of tigers and elephants," Mary said. A rose petal fluttered down and alighted softly upon her hand. "Mrs Bathurst wanted a story about Baital the vampire and the Raja Vikram." She turned to Dickon, perhaps to say something more, but the words died from her lips at the look on his face. It was not a look she had seen before. His lips were pressed tight together in a thin wide line, and the sparkle in his eyes was dangerous, like that of the fox cub when it had grown. That is what he reminded her of: a young fox that had suddenly grown while she was not looking. "Dickon?" Mary asked, hesitating.

"What does tha know of vampires?" Dickon asked, very quiet and serious.

"Not much," said Mary in some bewilderment. "They're stories. Stories about dead creatures preying on the living."

Dickon started to say something and thought better of it. In place of this he said, "Watch thy dreams, Mistress Mary."

"I don't remember my dreams," Mary said, but this did not seem to reassure Dickon at all.

---

Mary did not remember dreaming of a hot sun-baked land, like India but drier, and of racing over grass and sand with her lungs and veins afire, just as she did not remember dreaming of riding horses, being burned at the stake, shouting at an old man with a worried face and dusty books, just as she did not remember a hundred other such dreams. In India she had been too sickly and sullen to sleep well or remember anything for long, and at Misselthwaite she was healthily exhausted each night and slept deeply; each new day swept away the cobwebs of night, and she did not try to recall them. But Mary dreamed of smearing paint on her face and creeping like a stealthy predator, and in the morning she awoke feeling strange and a little fierce.

Martha, bringing her breakfast, looked rather pale and unhappy. Mary dressed hurriedly, for the smell of toast and bacon was very tempting, but she spared the time to say, "What is it, Martha?"

"Nothin', Miss Mary, really it is," Martha replied. The poor girl was not much good at lying, or at least hadn't had much practice since Mary had discovered Colin. Mary could see at once that it was not nothing. She started in on her breakfast and waited patiently until Martha burst out, "It's the Pendletons' flock, it is. All them sheep slaughtered in the night but we haven't got no wolves in this part of the country, and the foxes know our Dickon too well t' get up t' this sort of mischief."

Mary was not much acquainted with the ways of shepherding, and knew the Sowerbys didn't keep sheep on their farm, but she had been in Dickon's company long enough to know that the death of a whole flock was a tragedy by any Yorkshire standard. "Oh Martha, I am sorry," she said. "Does my uncle know? I'm sure he'll pay to compensate."

"Bless ye, Miss," Martha said, with a tremulous smile. Mary gave her a piece of toast, and Martha went on her way.

After breakfast, Mary made a venture to the library. It was rather dim and imposing, full of dust and the suggestion of rustling paper. Mary spent the morning among the stacks, paging through tomes in search of the sorts of creatures that might kill sheep. All the books suggested that sheep were most frequently killed by members of genus canis, and that to presume otherwise bordered on the absurd. Mary pressed her lips together and went on looking. A more reflective girl might have stopped to wonder what she meant to accomplish by this, but Mary simply persevered until, with the sense of inevitability she sometimes felt in the presence of Magic, Mary turned to books of folklore.

Vampires, of course, would savage anything.

Mary went to see Lord Craven and tell him about the flock. He promised to see the Pendletons. Mary thanked him and ran full-tilt out to the garden. Dickon was out in one of the vegetable gardens, gathering the last of the potatoes before they rotted in the ground. He came to his feet with a grin at the whirlwind of Mary bearing down upon him, but the grin dropped from his face as soon as Mary said, half-panting: "Dickon, could you have holy water around your house?"

"I could," he hedged. "I'd need t' go down t' th' vicarage for't. What makes tha ask such a question, Mary?"

"The Pendletons are not far from where your family lives," Mary said. "I only want them to be safe."

"From mad dogs?" Dickon asked.

"No," Mary said, and hesitated.

"Tha need not worry thyself," Dickon said gently. "All th' Sowerby ground is sewn wi' holy water and we've charms on the doors. Does tha not think I know this land if anyone does?" He knelt to pull another potato up from the earth and added, "They munot come wi'tout bein' invited, Mistress Mary. Remember that."

"I'll remember," Mary said.

She went back up to the house in time for midmorning lessons with Mrs Bathurst. Watching the governess lay out history books, Mary said abruptly, "Tell me about vampires."

Mrs Bathurst stopped, and looked up slowly at Mary over her spectacles. "Why would you ask such a thing?"

Mary went rather stiff, but instead of becoming sullen she could feel herself becoming a little fierce again. "Because a vampire killed the Pendletons' flock," she said, "and it is out on the moor right now or maybe near Thwaite, waiting for night."

"Well," Mrs Bathurst said. She began replacing the history books in her bag, and taking out others in their place. These books looked older. "I did wonder," Mrs Bathurst said. She did not expand upon this, but rather finished unpacking these new books. A late-summer apple, beginning to brown, followed these out of the bag. Then quick as a flash Mrs Bathurst threw the apple at Mary's head. Mary's hand snapped out and caught it.

"Well," Mrs Bathurst said again. When no more seemed forthcoming after this, Mary began to eat the apple, perhaps a little insolently. Mrs Bathurst watched her, apparently lost in thought. Then she said, "I had my doubts at first. After all, what could you be doing in an out-of-the-way place like Yorkshire." She saw Mary's stony expression and cleared her throat. "Of course, you were born in India. Your family was in Bengal, am I correct?" At Mary's nod: "Yes, there are plenty of your Préts in Bengal."

"I never met one," Mary said. "But there is a vampire here, and I want to know what it has to do with me." A thought arrived. "And what it has to do with you."

"Easily explainable." Mrs Bathurst sat down across from Mary. "You are the Chosen One, Mary, and I am your Watcher."

Mary could hear the importance of the capital letters fall into place, as she could hear them whenever Colin spoke of the Magic. She was not sure she liked how they sounded. Because Mary was not much given to imagination, she had never imagined she was particularly special; it was Colin and Dickon who were the special ones. For all that, though, she thought she wouldn't mind if it were not for Mrs Bathurst being her Watcher. "What does a Watcher do?" she asked.

"It's really only another name for a governess," Mrs Bathurst said. "I am to instruct you, to offer you assignments and advice." She frowned. "Shouldn't you like to know what the Chosen One is?"

"I should like to know what you mean by it," Mary said.

"Into each generation a girl is born," Mrs Bathurst said, in a strange tone halfway between lecture and recitation. "One girl in all the world, Mary. She alone will wield the strength and skill to fight the vampires, demons, and the forces of darkness; to stop the spread of their evil and the swell of their numbers. She is called the Slayer."

Mary sat quietly for a moment.

"You want me to kill dead things," she said.

"You are destined to," Mrs Bathurst said. "You are the only girl in the world with the power to slay vampires, Mary. It is a shame I have to spring this upon you so suddenly, but the Slayer before you is dead and your time has come to take up the mantle. The Watchers' Council meant to find you in India, but we had only just traced you when the cholera broke out and we were unable to locate you again until now."

Although Mary was not a girl much given to imagine things, for a moment she imagined what it might have been like if Mrs Bathurst had found ten-year-old Mary Lennox, sullen and small with her parents only just dead, dull and unloved. Mary imagined being told then that she was special and powerful and could kill demons. Mary stopped imagining this as quickly as she could.

"Is it a secret?" Mary asked.

"Of course," Mrs Bathurst said. "We do not want to alarm anyone, and to have it generally known that you are the Slayer will make it easier for vampires to find you."

"I am telling Colin," Mary said. "I think Dickon already knows." Mrs Bathurst started voicing some protest, and Mary added fiercely, "You shan't tell me what I can and cannot do, especially if I am as powerful as you say. I shall kill this vampire, and you shall teach me, but only because it has killed the sheep." She raised her chin haughtily. "Do you understand me?"

Mrs Bathurst looked somewhat amused. "Of course, Mary. Shall we begin your lessons?"

---

Mary did not go to the garden that day. She learned a little about the history and line of the Slayers, and then Mrs Bathurst took Mary into a long echoing gallery. She made Mary catch things, to test her reflexes. She made Mary hit and kick a large pad and then several smaller ones. Mary was very good at the hitting and kicking, having become practiced at it when throwing her childish tantrums in India, and her body, used to the exercise she took at Misselthwaite, remembered the old patterns easily. At first Mary was not sure if she liked it, but the activity did not recall any of her old bad manners, and there was something very gratifying in the way Mrs Bathurst was obviously impressed by her efforts.

In the morning Martha reported missing chickens, a frown marring her cheerful face. Mary listened and said what comforting things she could, then fetched Colin. "I have something dreadfully important to tell you," she announced, and they went together down to the garden, where Dickon was again trimming the hedges.

"Mary says she has something very important to say," Colin declared.

"Aye, that she does," Dickon agreed. "Let's hear't, Mary."

"A vampire has been killing the animals," Mary said. "Colin, you remember vampires. They're real after all, isn't that so, Dickon?"

Dickon nodded. "Them's real enough. Don't often come up t' th' moor, though, if they know what's good for 'em. Folk don't take kindly to 'em here an' most remember."

"But that's fascinating!" cried Colin. "Imagine the torment of a soul that cannot be laid to rest."

"Mrs Bathurst explained," Mary said, "vampires don't have souls, Colin. They are demon spirits inhabiting the bodies of the dead."

Colin's eyes went very round. Of course he was fascinated by all manner of things growing and living, but he had spent ten years being a very morbid boy indeed and Mary could see how this story of vampires excited him. "So what is it to do with us?" Colin asked. "Do we have some way of stopping it?"

"Consecrate th' ground," Dickon said. "An' --" He did not go on. His jaw clenched for a moment and he reminded Mary again of a grown fox.

"It can only be killed by burning, beheading, or driving a stake through its heart," Mary said. "Then it turns to dust and cannot harm again." She took a breath. "And I must be the one to do it, because I am the Slayer."

Dickon dropped his sheers, barely missing his own foot, and both boys uttered exclamations of protest. But Mary stood firm. "I am not sure I like it," she said, "but I am going to protect Misselthwaite. And I should like you to help me."

"I'll do th' rights as will protect th' village an' th' manor," Dickon said, breaking a moment of silence.

Colin sighed as though released from a spell. "And we had better lure the vampire here. Let's think up a plan."

---

Not all the preparations could be made in a day, of course, and moreover when Colin and Mary went to Mrs Bathurst, she told them quite severely that Mary couldn't possibly be expected to kill a vampire after a single day of training, and that Colin must be sworn to strictest secrecy. As they left Mrs Bathurst and made for their own rooms, though, Mary said, "I'm quite strong enough now," and Colin agreed solemnly: "Yes, our family is quite strong enough to perform miracles."

Mary's conviction to carry out their plan as soon as possible was cemented in the morning, when Martha arrived late with red-rimmed eyes and told Mary rather tearfully that a boy in the village had been found dead. As Martha said this, Mary felt herself beginning to get very angry. It was a slow and steady sort of anger, and it did not make Mary raise her voice or slam doors, but rather made her talk in a steely sort of voice when she saw Colin and said, "Have you heard?"

Dickon was not in the gardens; he was staying in Thwaite to deal with the grief and perhaps the panic. Mary felt a little unprotected without him until the anger rose up again and pushed aside unhelpful thoughts. Colin sent a kitchen boy down to the village with a message for Dickon in print, reading simply we shall do it tonight, and then he and Mary went to find Mrs Bathurst.

"I am going to kill the vampire tonight," Mary announced. "Teach me as much as you can before then."

Mrs Bathurst was, to her credit, too wise to argue in the face of Mary's new steely rage. She took Mary through the same punches and kicks as the previous day, Colin watching rapt on the sidelines. They broke for noon dinner, and afterwards Mrs Bathurst gave Mary a stake and made her practice on a dummy, so that Mary learned precisely where a heart was and how to drive a stake home. Sometimes during these exercises, Mary's anger ebbed a little, and she started remembering rose blossoms and little green shoots, and she would feel a little frightened of herself; but then she would remember Martha's face and the news of the dead child, and she ceased to hesitate.

Evening drew in around Misselthwaite. Mary and Colin took supper together, apart from the governess. Mary was quite hungry from the exercise but could barely bring herself to eat, and Colin was much the same.

"You don't have to," Mary said.

"Of course I do," said Colin. "No one and nothing else should die because Colin Craven is a coward."

Mary thought of saying, 'But if I don't reach you in time ...' She did not. She knew that would be the wrong sort of Magic. Instead she said, "I think you're being very brave, Colin."

"Yes; because I am not a coward," Colin agreed. "And I am quite sure Dickon has done his part."

Of course Dickon was quite trustworthy. The only snag was that he might not look quite serious doing what they had bid him; Colin, remembering various rumours and tales of vampires which were confirmed by Dickon, recalled that vampires and demons liked best those things which were innocent and beautiful. Mary was not quite sure she was either of those things, and thought she would be a terrible choice, but Colin, with his huge black-lashed eyes and delicate features, was quite perfect. It was Dickon's job, then, to speak of the lord's son up at the manor as a boy of uncommon beauty, and to say it in the hearing of as many people as he could find. This task was of course made easy by the love that had grown in the people of Thwaite for young Master Colin in the four years since he had ventured into the daylight. Even so, there was the chance this vampire might not take the bait.

Colin and Mary left their plates almost full, and once they were sure the sun had set, they put on their outdoor clothes and went for a walk.

It is difficult to chatter when one is waiting for something terrible to happen, and not sure when or if it will, but Mary and Colin did the best they could under the circumstances. In fact Mary started to go on about the fashions in London, which was the best topic she could have devised, for both she and Colin knew very well that she didn't know a thing about it, and both of them found it very funny; so Mary talked about parasols and dresses full of lace, and Colin laughed against her shoulder, looking quite vividly alive in the twilight.

The vampire when it came did not startle them nor attack them. Rather it came strolling up the garden path and doffed its hat to them, for it was dressed like a perfect gentleman, albeit one slightly out of date and with a smudge of dirt on one lapel. Colin started up from Mary's side and said, very surprised, "Good evening." Mary realised then that Colin must think the vampire was human. Perhaps he couldn't see the demon in its eyes.

"Good evening," the vampire said, with a smile. "Might you be young Master Colin? And -- you must be Miss Mary Lennox. How delightful to meet you both. I am Edmund Godard. I've been doing a sort of walking tour of Yorkshire."

In Mary's opinion, the worst thing to come from Colin's transformation from morbid invalid to radiant optimist was his willingness to presume the best of people. As a general theory it worked very well, but Mary still came across those who would speak ill of Colin, or anyone if they got the chance, and she did not presume everyone was agreeable. She was not very surprised when Colin said, "Oh yes, the countryside here is wonderful. Are you staying in town?"

The demon prepared an answer, but Mary spoke first: "And are you fond of sheep, Mr Godard?"

Mr Godard gave her a sharp look, and smiled again at Colin. "I am staying at the inn."

"Misselthwaite is always in want of company," Colin said. Mary pinched his arm. "Ow! Mary, don't be that way. I don't believe Mr Godard is who we are looking for."

"I suppose not," Mary said, trying not to clench her teeth. She could feel the steely rage rising up inside her again. She held out a hand to the vampire. "Welcome to Misselthwaite, Mr Godard."

It smiled again, for it was always flickering through smiles as a snake flicks its tongue. Mr Goddard took her hand. It was as cold as gravestones and the earth in dead winter, and Mary hardly suppressed her shudder; but it was well worth her trouble. Colin shook Mr Godard's hand too, and feeling it he recoiled. "Mary --!"

"I know you," Mary said. "Colin, get behind me. I know you. You haunt cemeteries and profane places. You have never held a rose or smelled the air in spring-time. You know only blood down to your bones."

This time when the vampire smiled it did so truthfully, with a face like a grotesque's mask and fangs where teeth had been. "And I know you, Mary Lennox. You have always been angry with death, because blood is in your bones too, no matter how you smother the scent with roses. Never fear; today you can stop struggling."

"Pig," Mary spat, and hit it. She might have killed it then, for it stumbled back in surprise, obviously not expecting the assault. Mary did not mind. She was angry. She was angry because a flock of sheep was dead, and a brood of chickens were dead, and a little boy in Thwaite was dead; because Colin's mother and her own were dead; because Mr Godard had been alive once and was now a demon. She kicked and hit and called it names, and when it fought back it was very strong, but Mary was strong too; she and Colin would live to see the summer roses.

The vampire slammed her up against the wall of the manor, knocking the air from her. "Even if you kill me, I will win," it whispered, so that Colin could not hear. "You will be a killer and a bringer of death until the day you die."

Struggling for breath, Mary remembered the Prét Baital and how his stories always ended in questions only the Raja could answer, until the story he could not and so said nothing. Mary remembered also other stories told by her Ayah long ago, about the goddess Kali who danced destruction. Mary had been very young then, and had not liked Kali's wild limbs and wilder grins, but Mary was older now, and pressed against cold stone on a Yorkshire night she felt for a moment as she had in her dream, in a smothering heat, gritty with sand and blood, all her limbs wild.

Mary understood, and Mary laughed. She drove her stake through the vampire's chest and it became so much dust around her.

"I do not need your stories," Mary said, and slumped back against the wall.

---

Dickon came into the house the next morning on Colin's orders, the better to regale him over breakfast with the story of Mary's victory. Colin told most of it, his eyes shining with pride while Dickon listened, eating his toast and jam in a thoughtful measured way. Mrs Bathurst came in partway through this recitation, and listened also, a frown never quite taking control of her features.

"You should have told me, Mary," she said when Colin was finished, "but I congratulate you on a job well done."

"I only did what I had to," Mary replied.

"Yes," Mrs Bathurst agreed. "But now we must consider your prospects. Vampires are most uncommon in the English countryside. If you are to fulfill your destiny, you must come to a city with all haste. York shall do if you don't wish to go far, but Manchester or London would be better."

Mary felt herself growing sullen. "I don't want to go," she said. "I shan't go to a city. I would smother there."

"And I don't want Mary to leave," Colin added, in his old Raja voice. Only Dickon said nothing.

"Think of those hundreds who might die in London if you stay here in the country," Mrs Bathurst said, rather severely.

Mary's sullenness was crowded out by old goddesses and the roar of Bengal tigers. "If I am the only Slayer in all the world," she said, "hundreds might die in all the hundred places I can't be all at once." Mrs Bathurst looked uncomfortable at this. Roses bloomed in Mary's mind to cover dancing Kali, and the song of robins in spring-time drowned out the tigers. "You see, Mrs Bathurst," Mary said, "I am staying here. You told me I'm one girl in a row of girls, but I think the Slayer goes looking for death and danger and finds it. I won't. I will stay here and if a dead thing comes to harm Misselthwaite I shall weed it out. Do I make myself clear?"

Mrs Bathurst tried very hard to look severe, but after a moment she broke into the sort of smile Mary saw so often on her uncle's face around Colin. "Very clear, Mary," she said.

"An' t' that I say, may th' weeds be few," Dickon added.

Together they finished their breakfast and went out into the bright morning.